. Book of the Month

I had read John Cheever's short stories. They reminded me a bit of Raymond Carver's. Carver is my favourite. Cheever and Carver were alcoholics together at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1973.

I didn't know Cheever also wrote novels, but I do now.


The Wapshot Chronicle was his first, and it starts off more like a bunch of short stories than a novel. The beginning 60 pages are not unlike last month's Book of the Month - they create and populate the world, and there's a whole load of begetting going on. Some seemingly important characters have entire chapters devoted to them, then they disappear, never to be seen again.

I'm not sure why that didn't annoy me. Maybe it's because I read most of the book while I was on holiday - a good chunk of it while I was hiding out in Chelsea Market waiting for the rain to stop.


When it does finally focus, Wapshot is mostly about two brothers growing up and going off into the world to discover life and love and all that. It's tragic and comic. There is a general tone of melancholy about it. The language is wonderful. It's hard to stop reading even when the weather clears up.

The only thing I did not love were the number of "wildly eccentric" characters. Being a grumpy old bastard, I have a hard time with eccentrics. I think that's why I don't enjoy Dickens.

Cheever wrote a sequel - The Wapshot Scandal. I might read it.

I still prefer the short stories though.

You?

Next month we will be reading New York Times bestseller "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave.

. Book of the Month

I know it's only the 8th of March, but I finished reading this month's book, and let's face it, you're not going to read it. You didn't read Candide, and you didn't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, unless you are Oliver, and then you probably just fell asleep again on page 16.

So why don't I just get it over with.

This month's book, as you recall, is "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb"

R. Crumb is famous for his underground comix.


He has also made more "serious" books.



"The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" is a comic book version of the first book of the Bible. Which is a lot of stuff.


I like that God is all crazy looking with wild hair and mad staring eyes, because God was pretty crazy in the beginning.


I'm sure I would not have read the Bible if it didn't come with cool pictures, although it turns out I already knew all the basic stories in Genesis from those interminable mornings at Clifton Methodist Church Sunday School.

The Creation


Adam and Eve

Noah's Ark


Abraham and Isaac


Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat


There's also a lot of sex and a lot of violence, which they tend to gloss over in Sunday School.


And then there are some surprises.

For example, after the flood, when the ark is safely parked on dry land, Noah grows a vineyard, gets blind drunk, and passes out naked in his tent. It is not clear whether he was drinking while naked, or gets drunk first and then gets naked, but however it transpires, he is unconscious on the floor with it all hanging out when his youngest son stops by. The boy sees his father's exposed manhood, and because of that, Noah turns him into a slave.

People were living for about 900 years back then. And this was Noah's youngest son. So say he was about 200 years old. That's 700 years of slavery for accidentally looking at his drunk dad's dong. Seems a bit mean to me.

Actually slavery in general seems a bit mean to me. God seems to have been okay with it.

And what is the lesson there? Do not under any circumstances ever, ever look at your pissed pop's penis, or suffer centuries of familial servitude?

And then there's Jacob's two wives, the sisters Rachel and Leah, who have a comedic baby-making competition. It's hard to keep count, but I think Leah wins 9 to 3 - although 4 of the children are born to the sisters' slaves who are also dragged into the contest.

And there are some dull bits. Characters have a habit of describing what they plan to do, describing it again as they do it, and then describing to someone else what they've just done. And there is way too much blah about who begot who and where they moved after they'd been begotten.

In the back of the book, Crumb offers possible explanations for some of the more confusing passages in Genesis (such as why men keep pretending their wives are their sisters). One proposition is that some texts in Genesis were based on older stories from a more matriarchal period of history, which were then "twisted around to fit the later patriarchal paradigm."

I'm boring you, aren't I? You've stopped reading this. You're just skimming to the end to see if there are any more pictures of tits and bums.

I understand.

Well, I enjoyed it very much. Except for the begotting.

As always, I very much look forward to hearing your opinion.

Next month we will be reading The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever.

Order yours today!

. Book of the Month

Did you read it?

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by late Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson?

You said you were going to read it. What did you think?

After the first chapter I did not like it at all. The language is boring and ugly (especially after reading Voltaire) and there is way too much guff about financial espionage that no one could possibly give a crap about.

But then the second chapter introduces an actual character (the girl with the dragon tattoo) and Nif was busy with school work, so before long I was half way through the book.

This is a crime thriller. The plot grows as thick and insidious as DreamWorks split-pea soup. But there's just enough dark humour and character development to keep you coming back for more (very much unlike the soup).

In the end it all ties up a bit too neatly, but maybe that's what detective fiction is supposed to do.

There are two more novels in the series - "The Girl Who Played With Fire," and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest". But shouldn't that be "Hornets' Nest" ? Surely the possessive apostrophe is in the wrong place. Or do all hornets live alone? Anyway, I enjoyed the first one, but I don't think I will read the other two.

Did you know there was a movie?


I'm waiting for the dvd to come out.

And Hollywood is going to make a version starring Brad Pitt.

Oh dear.

Next month we are reading "The Book of Genesis" Illustrated by R. Crumb. (I don't think that one ties up too neatly).

I very much look forward to hearing all of your fascinating opinions.

. Book of the Month

I have not read many books in the last couple of years. I have listened to a lot of audio books that I borrow from the library and illegally download into my ipod and play in the car on the drive to and from work, up and down highway 280, twice a day, 5 days a week, 360 hours a year.

But listening to an audio book is not the same as reading. When you read a book it's just you and the words. When you listen to a book it's you and the words and someone else telling you how to feel about them before you get a chance to make up your own mind.

So this year I have determined to read more actual books. A book a month. This month's book was "Candide" by Voltaire.

Here is my report:

[spoiler alert!]

Candide is an innocent young man who loses the girl he fancies and spends the rest of the book wandering around the world looking for her. And as he wanders he tries to figure out if it is "the best of all possible worlds," while he (along with pretty much everyone else in the book) is beaten, tortured, raped, robbed, swindled, imprisoned, enslaved, betrayed, and killed.



So it's kind of a black comedy in the guise of a romantic adventure. And lots of satirical jokes are made about religion, philosophy, science, law, war, mathematics, and all the stuff that the author didn't like, including publishers, journalists, the opera, the British, and Jews.

It was written in the 18th century, so half the book is footnotes that explain why the jokes are funny. So they are not.

Next month I will be reading "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", the European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson.

Why don't you read it too? You can tell me what you think. It will be like a Book Club, but no one will have to clean their house and make tea.

. Losing the War

'Losing the War,' written by Lee Sandlin, was the most interesting & excellent story in Ira Glass' “The New Kings of Nonfiction." But how annoying is it when you reach the end of the piece to find it's an abridged version? Very annoying. No polite teeny tiny 4-point asterisk note at the beginning. Nope, it's at the end, after you've finished it. Or at least thought you had finished it.

Perhaps it was just the odd preposition & extra comma that was removed. But then again, it might have been a big chunk of awesomeness (yes, 'chunk' is the official measurement unit of that silly word 'awesome'). So while I do find this abridged-nonsense exceedingly annoying*, it is likewise exceedingly cool that the author posted the full text on his web site: leesandlin.com.

Long live the internet & self-publishing.

*(original diatribe has been removed due to my ability to mis-convey humorous outrage as being very very angry & general refusal to use 'winkies' to indicate such things)