Category — Reviews: Books

Book roundup:
1. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: B-
2. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson: B+
3. Spook Country by William Gibson: B
4. Empathy by Sarah Schulman: B+
5. Jokes and the Unconscious by Daphne Gottlieb and Diane DiMassa: A
6. Gommorah by Robert Saviano: C

Stuff I’ve acquire recently that I hope turns out to be better reading material than this last crop:
1. Kingdom Come
2. Gravity’s Rainbow
3. The Hikiteia
4. Blood Meridian
5. The Mere Future
6. The Library at Night

Spoilers in the reviews ahead.

[Read more →]

I have been trying to keep track of all the books I read, even try to review them occasionally Facebook. Unfortunately, my little bookshelf application on Facebook keeps annoying me with popups and glitches, so I thought I would just record my recent reads list here, starting with the end of last year. I think I will try to do this every year.

2008

1. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: B-
2. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith: A-
3. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning by John Mahler: B
4. Persepolis I and II by Marjane Satrapi: A+
5. After Dark by Haruki Murakami: B-
6. Cover Me by Mariko Tamaki: B
7. The Devil’s Cup by Asshole McAsshole: F
8. Two Ends of Sleep by Lizard Jones: A
9. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith: B
10. After Dolores by Sarah Schulman: A
11. Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain: A+++
12. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami: B
13. Slow River by Nicola Griffith: A
14. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood: A+
15. Godspeed by Lynn Breedlove: B (But the first ten pages are, like, A. Too bad she couldn’t sustain the style.
16. The Corner by David Simon: A- (It had issues and some sketchy decision making, but it was too engaging to blow off.)
17. The Chelsea Whistle by Michelle Tea: B+
18. People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman: B
19. Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon: B (Clearly this is the section of the year where I was raiding Stark’s lesbian fiction collection)
20. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: A-
21. Tea by Stacey D’Erasmo: B-
22. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs: D- (This book was so profoundly disappointing. Ugh.)
23. The Code Book by Simon Singh: A
24. Every Contact Leaves A Trace by Connie Fletcher: A

2009

1. Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury: Unfinished.
2. From the Velvets to the Voidoids by Clinton Heylin: Unfinished, but let’s give it an F for pretension.
3. The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel: A+
4. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino: B
5. Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brien: A-
6. World War Z by Max Brooks: A
7. Homicide by David Simon: B (Having read The Corner first, it’s impressive to see how much Simon’s writing has improved. It’s amazing how many stories appeared almost exactly in Homicide.)
8. 2666 by Robert Bolano: Oh dear…. where to begin with this?

[Read more →]

Since the last time I wrote a review for a book, I’ve had several reading disasters.

[Read more →]

A few days ago I finished What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami. When I first heard about this new memoir, I resolved to wait until it came out in paperback to buy it. I ended up buying it while it was still in hardcover for a couple of reasons. Murakami is my favorite author, and I was eager to read something new in order to forget about the disappointment I felt after reading his last novel, After Dark. Also, next week I’ll be running the Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, my first half-marathon ever, and I thought I would reward/inspire myself after all my hard training by reading a book on running.

Yesterday, as I was off on an 11.5 mile jog, I was thinking about the Murakami book, as well another book I’ve read recently, “Slow River,” by Nicola Griffith, the TV show Heroes, and the Kowloon Walled City, which I’ve become obsessed with as of late.

[Read more →]

Books:
- After Dolores by Sarah Schulman
- Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain

Movies
- Roadhouse
- Magnum Force
- Friends With Money
- Batman

[Read more →]

Woo hoo, have I been getting a lot of reading done lately. I’ve made a point to skip off to bed at a reasonable time, thus having time to actually read more than two pages before going to sleep. Why didn’t I think of this before? Everyone else has books sitting on their bed stands and in movies, the wives are always reading in bed while the husband is out having an affair/killing someone/running the country, and yet the thought of reading prior to sleep never occurred to me until I moved to Toronto. Huh.

So, some assorted reviews for my future reference and for possible use on Stark and my queer book/movie review site, if we ever get that going:

Movies:
- Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
- Paris, je t’aime
- Escape from New York and LA
- Ripley’s Game

Books:
The Devil’s Cup
Two Ends of Sleep
The Glass Cell
[Read more →]

Life has been hectic lately. Work is out of control and, in addition to my regular job, I’ve also been doing some emergency copy writing, which is really fun, but also a crunch in terms of deadlines. I’ve been powering away at my running. I ran over 10K last week, which was exciting and also encouraging, as I registered for a 10K race at the end of July before I had actually hit that distance successfully and was starting to worry that I had hit a plateau and wouldn’t be able to increase my distance in time. I am starting to develop some tightness in my right calf that I’m worried about, though, and I’m hoping that stretching will keep it from becoming a problem before the race.

The article about the Canadian Club project was finally published in Time Out Chicago last week. It made the front page of the site, which was awesome. I’ve sort of reached a bit of a block while thinking about doing an adbusting blog. I just have a million projects going right now, and the thought of working on all of them at once has left me with no choice but to retreat to the couch to read magazines.

But, in exciting news! My parents came to visit and brought me two old cameras they had found while getting ready to move. One is a Cine-Kodak 8mm camera, which is really cool looking, but unfortunately 8mm film is no longer manufactured. And who can afford to process film anyway?

The other is a Voigtlander Brillant which, miracle of miracles, is a medium format camera that uses 120mm film! Stark and I are going to get the lens cleaned and buy some film for it, and hopefully many photographic adventures will be had.

This weekend is Pride, and I’m hoping I’ll get some good shots of the crowds.

Now, on to some general notes on things I’ve seen and read lately. Not really full reviews, but just for my own future reference:

Movies:
- Juno
- Sweeney Todd
- I’m Not There

Books:
- Persepolis I and II
- After Dark
- Cover Me
[Read more →]

I just finished reading Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bronx is Burning by Johnathan Mahler. I was definitely disappointed by this book. I had been looking forward to reading it after seeing pieces of the miniseries on ESPN while roadtripping across the country with my friend Gen. I am not a big baseball fan, but even I found the portions of the series that we caught in our hotel rooms to be gripping entertainment. The splicing together of the Yankees 1977 pennant run with the Son of Sam killings, the blackout, and the bankruptcy of the city was a great concept. ESPN’s use of fantastic stock footage helped bolster the story even more. I find it really sad to say “This book wasn’t as good as a made-for-TV-movie on ESPN,” but that’s exactly what I find myself compelled to utter.
[Read more →]

I just finished reading The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith. I’ve had all three books of the Aud series sitting around, unread, since Christmas, but after a bad experience with a Kathy Reichs novel, I haven’t been in the mood to read detective stories until now. Thankfully, Nicola got rid of the bad Kathy taste in my mouth, and has left me in the mood to read more.

I couldn’t decide at first whether or not this book was a parody or totally serious. It starts off in a fairly standard film noir way: While out walking in the middle of the night in the pouring rain, our hero, an angsty ex-cop and current PI encounters a mysterious woman running away from a house that explodes just minutes later. This woman then shows up at her door, asking for her help. Cue dramatic music.

[Read more →]

I finally finished reading George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. I started reading it way back in March, right before we left for Quebec, as I thought it would be great train reading. It was. But it was too long to finish on the trip, and then eventually it seemed like it would be too long to finish ever.

I think this book is probably the longest prologue ever written. It clocks in at 807 pages, plus an additional 25 page appendix. I knew it was the first book in a series when I started reading it, but I didn’t realize that a novel of this size was going to focus almost entirely on setting the story in action. I found that aspect of the book frustrating – so much time invested, and absolutely no satisfaction gained. It’s really not a standalone story, it ends on a cliffhanger, and you either buy the next book or never find out the fate of any of the endless numbers of characters. Although I’m not a huge Tolkien fan, I do think The Hobbit is a fantastic book because it both serves as a prologue for a series and as a standalone story. In fact, and I know this is blasphemy of the highest order, I never got very far into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I found them boring. But I read The Hobbit three times when I was a kid.

I have to admit, though, that by the last few chapters of A Game of Thrones I was pretty well engrossed in the story and despite all the complaints I am about to spout, I do want to read the rest of the books. Maybe I’ll get around to them one day when I’m retired or stranded on a desert island somewhere.

So, some general commentary: The first thing that annoyed me about this book was the structure of the universe that the author has created. I really don’t know why pretty much every fantasy book, from Tolkien to the billions of entries in the Forgotten Realm series, have to be set in a world that’s basically feudal England with different names and a few magical additions. C’mon, people, you can create any type of universe you want, why must you hew so closely to Medieval Europe? What is so appealing about the subjugation of women? What was so great about feudalism? Why must all the heroes be white people in armor and all the colored people be exotic Others and barbarians? Sheesh! It’s so damn frustrating.

The rest of the review is spoiler free.
[Read more →]