Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Over the years, Steve Martin has become a really accomplished actor and writer and many people don't remember him as the arrow-through-the-head, banjo-playing, King-Tut-inpersonating, Wild and Crazy Guy whose stand-up career was what made him famous first. However, like the voiceover from an episode of VH1's Behind the Music, at the height of his stand-up success, Martin walked away from it all and, aside from delivering opening monologues on Saturday Night Live over the years, he never did stand-up again. Here Martin looks back on how his career began (at Disneyland, at age 11, selling park maps) and what an unlikely success he became. He was part of a new breed of comics yet was unlike any of his contemporaries and that was part of the reason success eluded him for so long. In the book, Martin says he hadn't really examined this part of his life for many years as he distanced himself from his stand-up roots but this is a loving look back. This won't be out until January 2008 but will do well, esp. among guys my age who were in grade school and listened to his records over and over and over, memorizing his bits, some of which were a little over my head but hilarious nonetheless ("Grandpa bought a rubber!").

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

My limited abilities as a writer can never seem to concisely synopsize the elaborate plots that Fforde so masterfully conjures but I can say this—brilliant again. Thursday Next is a wonderful character that I have grown to love after a few books of merely admiring her immensely. This is the series for book people and is crammed full of literary jokes, clever turns of phrase, smart sub-references and above all, action. Fforde makes James Bond look underbred and illiterate and he seems to get better with each book. I just can't imagine how. Still, I'm always delighted to read his work and heartily recommend them to anyone who'll listen.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

What can I say that hasn't already been said? All I can say is thanks to Jo Rowling for this wonderful work and all that has come as a result. I'll miss the stories and the characters we've come to know as we watched them sort of grow up in public. I really doubt we'll ever see kids and adults line up at midnight to get their hands on any book and I doubt bookstores will ever see the excitement that accompanied these books ever again. We have witnessed a phenomenon that changed publishing and that changed history.

Flight by Sherman Alexie

Alexie is kind of a love him or hate him author. At least that's what I've found over the years. I love the guy's writing and can even stand him in person when he can be arrogant and condescending but he is also funny and usually pretty insightful. If you've never read Alexie before, I can't decide if this is a good place to start or not. Flight is his first new novel in several years and it's neither great nor a disappointment—just incredibly okay. The story revolves around a teenager named Zits, an Indian kid whose has been shuffled from broken home to foster home and is in danger of being lost to a broken system. Suddenly, as Zits is about to commit an act that will haunt him for the rest of his life and condemn him to becoming a sad statistic in that broken system, he is transported in time and place to different events in Native American history. While there, he inhabits different host bodies and sees things through another person's eyes but also has the ability to change events. On the plus side, it is very funny in parts and Alexie really nails the "teenage-ness" of Zits. On the down side, it all ties up a little too neatly—sort of a sci-fi ABC Afterschool Special with a happy ending and a few history lessons.

Heat by Bill Buford

Such fun. Buford, long the fiction editor at the New Yorker, had always cooked for friends and thought he was pretty good at it. After striking up a friendship with Chef Mario Batali, he decided to see if he could hold his own working in the kitchen at Batali’s restaurant, Babbo. Thus began his tenure as “kitchen bitch”, then line cook and the chronicle of what it’s like to work in an esteemed kitchen, high on pressure, long on ego and professional jealousies and short on tempers and patience. From there, Buford mimics Batali’s path to super-chefdom by going to Italy to learn to cook food where the food is from. He apprentices with a pasta chef in a tiny Italian hamlet and with an eccentric butcher in Tuscany. Here especially, he has a wonderful way with words and brings the character of these real characters to life. A remarkably insightful and entertaining story that follows both Batali’s rise from pizza cook to superstar and Buford’s own transformation from an accomplished home cook to a seasoned, high-profile restaurant-trained cook. Buford also goes into great detail and history about how dishes came to be that borders on the obsessive while remaining readable to those of us who have trouble boiling water.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon

Written by his former wife, Crystal, at his own behest, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is comprised of interviews with more than 80 of the singers friends, fellow rockers, endless girlfriends, and family. It is a warts-and-all biography, heavy on the warts, many of them genital. Zevon was an unquestionably gifted singer, songwriter and musician, was classically trained (a rarity among rock musicians) and was the distinct oddball coming out of the lame-ass 70's SoCal school of bedwetters like the Eagles, Jackson Browne, et. al. . However, he was plagued with an addictive personality that first showed up in his legendary alcoholism. Once he “beat” drinking, he became a sex addict and a shopaholic. From the very beginning of his career, Zevon was enormously self-absorbed, cutting people in and out of his life for perceived slights, all the while acting like a petulant child. Talk about a guy who believed his own press clippings--once the Internet hit, he would go to chat rooms about his shows and defend his performance, under an assumed identity, of course, being a giant chicken-shit who couldn’t deal with confrontation. The book certainly fills in the blanks and informs the reader on the man though I could've done without the tremendous detail. But apparently, that's what Warren wanted and, narcissist that he was, I'm hardly surprised.

I’ve learned to appreciate a person whose work I admire for their work and not for some bullshit perception that since I like the music (or writing or acting or whatever), the person must be swell and cool and share my views. Not so Zevon and this book leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth and the desire to take a long, hot shower.

God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.

A very dark but promising debut though bleak stuff, this. Currie imagines a world where God takes human form, that of a Dinka woman in wartorn Darfur. When her mortal body dies, God is trapped and dies, as well. As the world learns what has happened, it sets off a series of events that Currie relates by connecting the stories together. Some very thought provoking pieces here, including an interview with the wild dogs that ate God's body and the changes they go through (speaking ancient Hebrew and Greek among them), and a group of teenage boys who, left to themselves, make a very deadly pact. Other pieces makes light of attitudes and values society has given weight and importance only to find they mean little in the end. Sometimes the literary devices used make it obvious Currie isn't long out of grad school and he's reaching a bit but this is a guy to watch.

I just don't know how I feel about this

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070528/ap_on_re_us/book_burning

Anyone else read this? Anyone else sickened by it? I get it but I just can't justify his indictment of society by burning books. What about New Orleans libraries and schools that were so devastated by hurricanes? Could they use the books? There have to be other ways than burning them? I'd always heard good things about Prospero's but this guy is maybe just a little apeshit crazy.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

When the New Yorker ran what I later learned was an excerpt from this novel, I thought it was the best short story I'd read in years. As a full-blown novel, Krauss makes it work and established herself as something truly special. An old man, Leo Gursky (who has become one of my favorite characters in modern listerature) and a teenage girl, Alma Singer, have stories that intertwine as gracefully and as delicately as you could hope for though it isn't a light read. It can get confusing but the payoff is huge. It's the kind of book that you finish and want to start all over again in case you missed something. (You did.) You will laugh and you will ache and you will be moved. I got to meet Krauss very briefly and we spoke about the book and some of the characters and after just a few minutes, both of us were almost in tears. I doubt she'd remember it but, like the book, it has stayed with me and left a mark. And yet...(from '05 list)

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

Just marvelous. Chock full of history, this has everything: Early 20’s America, vaudeville, appearances by the Marx Brothers, Houdini, Warren G. Harding and Philo Farnsworth, corrupt Secret Servicemen, urban myths, revenge, resentment—what a wild ride. Gripping and informative while being entertaining. Read it. (from '05 list)

Luncheonette: A Memoir by Steven Sorrentino

­There was some real charm to this memoir of a young man barely getting his life started in NYC, who is forced to take over the family business in New Jersey after his father falls ill. However, what dragged the book down was the endless self-pity in which Sorrentino wallowed. It got tiring hearing over and over and over again how sad he was, how he never reached out to his father, how sick he was of the same routine and faces and sandwiches. It all ties up rather neatly at the book’s end but by then it was a task to get there. (from '05 list)

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policeman's Union imagines that after WWII, Sitka, Alaska became the new Jewish homeland instead of Israel. Enter our anti-hero, Meyer Landsman, a man clearly in a downward spiral. He is divorced from the woman he still loves, his boss, Bina Gelbfish. His sister, Naomi, died in a plane crash under questionable circumstances (he still grieves for her) and in two months, the process of Reversion will take place--the U.S. will give back the Federal District of Sitka to the Tlinglit Indians and the Jews, once again, have to find a home. The rumpled detective with Sitka's finest is called to the scene of a murder at the fleabag hotel where he lives and where he tries to drink himself to death nightly. As he investigates what initially looks like the murder of a spent junkie, he learns the victim, Emanuel Lasker, was not only a chess prodigy (chess plays a large role throughout the book) but was also the son of the Verbover rabbi, the leader of a secretive, ultra-orthodox sect that lives well apart from the rest of the Yids of Sitka. Oh, and Emanuel might have been the Messiah. Nu? Chabon has never been sharper. His similes are consistently clever and evocative and the dialogue is very much in keeping with the tough talk of the hard-boiled tradition but peppered with Yiddish. (I often read this with two Yiddish dictionaries at my side--a first. I don't think it will create a problem for non-Yiddish speakers but there will be some things you miss. Sorry.) It is also laugh out loud funny and his wordplay proves over and over that he is a dangerous man with pen in hand. After winning the Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon sold this at auction for big dough and, supposedly, all he had was a page and a half outline. Six years later, it was well worth the wait.

The Pulitzer prizes were announced today

A big year for Cormac McCarthy. I must read him sometime soon.

The Pulitzer Prizes -- 2007 Winners

Responsible Men by Edward Schwarzschild

The main character, Max is a mess. He is divorced, estranged from his son and a bit of a scam artist. He returns to Philly for the first time since his divorce for his son's Bar Mitzvah and has a chance to continue the rather questionable life he's been leading or turn things around. Schwarzchild delivers a decent debut novel that captures a certain amount of underlying tension. (from '05 list)

The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music by Nick Kent

Legend has it that Nick Kent is about as big a prick as you'll find among rock journalists and that is a dubious distinction indeed. Still he can write. The rub is that he reminds you constantly how "he was there", that he ended up a junkie for a while and a lot of other rock star poses that he got caught up in over the years (but you're a journalist, dork! Just write.). However, he does get good interviews that often bring out more than you might expect. Covering a range of folks from Brian Wilson to Roy Orbison to Shane McGowan to the Stones, if nothing else, it'll make you want to listen to the music. (from '05 list)

The Kite Runner by Khaleed Hosseini

My friends' Dad (Yo, Big Tom!) said that if you want to learn about Victorian England, you should read Dickens and if you want to begin to understand Afghanistan, you should read this. I couldn't agree more. Like millions of others, I loved this book! It was so many things--a father and son story, a window into a country that we're fundamentally "at war" with, a buddy novel, a coming of age story--and it succeeded as all these and just about everything else it attempted. The writing is beautiful and the characters have great depth. The examination of the changes to the country and people of Afghanistan over 30+ years was astounding and invokes compassion. At the same time, I was absolutely caught up in the story and choked back tears a number of times. (from '05 list)

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

Sorry to see you go. Hi ho.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18066068/

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

After his brilliant debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, I was anxious to see what Foer would do next, mindful of the sophomore slump many young novelists go through. Fortunately, that isn't the case here. Once again, Foer comes through with a tale that's equally funny, gripping and heartbreaking and this was among the first post-9/11 books actually dealing with 9/11. Nine year-old Oscar Schell is among the most memorable characters I've come across in years and I'd love to see the author revisit him. You. Must. Read. This. Book. (from '05 list)

How cool is that?

Well, it seems someone is reading this. If you look at the comment on the review of American Shaolin, you'll see it's from, Matthew Polly, the author of the book! How in hell he found my tiny corner of the blogosphere, I've no clue, but it was awfully kind of him to check in and say something nice.

American Shaolin by Matthew Polly

As a kid, I was a fan of the '70's TV show, Kung Fu, in which David Carradine wandered around the late 19th century U.S. trying to clear his name for a crime he didn't commit back in China but actually spent most of the time kicking much ass. Like me, Matthew Polly fell under the Kung Fu spell. However, while I spent my elementary school years half-assedly studying karate and eating my weight in Fudgetown cookies before losing interest, he not only studied kung fu, but Zen and Mandarin, as well. In the early 90's, he left college to journey to the Shaolin Temple in China to study with the monks there though he didn't know how to find it or if the temple still even existed (this was pre-Internet, pre-cell phones and he had been told it was destroyed during World War II). Naturally, everyone thought this tall, skinny Midwestern kid who spoke some Chinese and knew some kung fu was nuts, himself included, at times, but he found the temple and spent two years there, becoming a rather accomplished kickboxer before returning home to finish his undergrad at Princeton. While this could have been a gripping narrative of grit and determination and achieving one's dream, blah, blah, blah, it isn't. He achieves his dream, but it's a fast, funny, fish-out-of-water story that Bill Bryson wishes he could write. Points to Polly for also giving the reader a real sense of Chinese pride, culture, and their fear of the West and for sharing some of the secrets of the iron crotch.