Citrus County

Read from Monday, February 13th to Wednesday, February 15th

Citrus County, by John Brandon.  This is a small book that I picked up awhile ago from the Museum of Unnatural History where I volunteer.  It was published by McSweeneys.  It is a quick story, dark most of the time, about a county in the backwoods of Florida.  In Citrus County, there are three main characters.  Shelby and Toby are middle school students, and Mr. Hibma is one of their teachers.  Shelby is bright, talented, with lots of promise.  She lives with her father and younger sister, and they are new to town.  Toby is a brooding, deeply troubled, quiet rebel.  He likes to take long walks by himself, and he lives with an abusive, alcoholic uncle deep in the woods.  Mr. Hibma is a young teacher, who skates by, sticks to himself, and prides himself on not trying very hard.  He is always harassed by one of the other, older, preachy teachers.

Of course, Shelby falls in love with Toby, and follows him around town.  But Toby realizes he is different, a villain, and knows he has to do something.  He kidnaps Shelby's little sister and keeps her locked in a bunker deep in the woods.  There is a big panic and search in town, but Toby's secret is kept for a couple of months.  Shelby works to get through it, even though it is with Toby by her side.  Mr. Hibma meanwhile is forced to coach the basketball team, while he harbors and almost goes through with a plan to murder the other annoying teacher.

Finally, Toby's guilt is too much for him and he goes to release the girl, but she has finally escaped.  Police converge on Toby's house, but his uncle decides to make a stand and he is arrested as the kidnapper.  Toby, an orphan, is adopted by Mr. Hibma, who is the only adult to take an interest in the kid.  Shelby's family is reunited, and it is a generally happy, although strange, ending.  This was kind of a bland, easy book, that I got through in just two days.  Not really something that will stick with me.  I don't really feel like spending too much time on the review. Three out of five stars.

A Very Minor Prophet

Read from Thursday, February 9th to Monday, February 13th.

A Very Minor Prophet: The Gospel according to Joseph Patrick Booker, as interpreted by his faithful scribe, Barth Flynn, a novel by James Bernard Frost.  This was my February Rumpus book club pick, and I really enjoyed this unique, large book.  It is set up, first of all, like a textbook, at least in the size, and the multiple columns of text on a page.  But then it is also meant to be a Gospel at times, with the fancy font, and also a comic book/ zine, complete with illustrations.  It is a hipster book, and an ode to that lifestyle of freaks and weirdos in Portland, and also to bikes, coffee and unique donuts.

Flynn is a young, college graduate who moves to Portland right before the Iraq war.  He goes for no discernible reason, and works in a coffee shop.  He tries writing zines, but with little success.  One day, while riding his bike, he gets a flat tire outside of an old church.  The church has been converted, haphazardly, into the home of Booker, a midget.  Booker has just returned from a trip down south, where he told people, for some reason, that he was a preacher, and so when Flynn arrived, he tried out a sermon.  These parts of the novel, where Booker preaches, are illustrated, with lots of word bubbles and cutting and pasting.   The sermon is about the real message of Jesus Christ.  How it is not the current bible-thumping, war-mongering Christians that closely follow his teachings, but actually the hipsters, weirdos, and self-proclaimed atheists that would probably be friends with a modern Jesus.

Flynn is inspired, and he creates a zine based on this experience, and this instantly becomes a hit.  He hangs out with Mercyx, a bike messenger, and develops a crush on her.  Flynn and other friends go to the church the following Sunday for another sermon.  Instead of wine and crackers, they eat Voodoo donuts and premium coffee.  Together, over the next few months, the zine does well and a professional illustrator is brought in to help.  The group has adventures, especially one bike trip up a mountain, that ends in a car crash and Flynn naked in Mercyx's room.  They kiss, but go no further.

Of course, things go downhill.  Flynn and Mercyx get awkward after she reveals she is a virgin.  He decides the logical thing would be to marry her, but his proposal is rejected and she is furious.  Flynn is also muscled out of all the proceeds from the zine, and is kicked off the project by greedy professionals.  Booker is also harassed by the leader of a local biker gang.  It is also revealed that Booker is a pimp.  That is how he made money.  Finally, in a moment of weakness, Booker and Mercyx hook up, and in retaliation Flynn buys one of Booker's hookers.  Flynn and Booker's relationship is in tatters, but Booker tries desperately to make it up to him.  He issues an apology to Flynn over the airwaves of Portland.  In this last sermon, Booker also makes the point that Americans need to take responsibility and apologize to the Muslim world for the wars going on.  Flynn rejects the apology at first, and then denies knowing Booker when the FBI come looking for him.  Turns out, Booker went to Iraq, and started preaching and apologizing, before he was strung up and martyred.  In their grief, Mercyx and Flynn are reunited, and end up getting married years later.  They inherit the church, and Flynn becomes the preacher every Sunday.

I really enjoyed this clever book.  I can really get behind all the preaching and the values of the characters.  I actually just bought a bike last week, so that I could take long bike rides like in the book.  Unique and very fun.  Flynn, the narrator, is relatable, but also deeply flawed at times, as all good characters should be.  Check this one out.  Four out of five stars.

Born to Run

Read from Monday, February 6th to Thursday, February 9th.

Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, is a fascinating non-fiction book that literally got me out of the door and onto trails.  I like books that actually have an influence on my life, and this book has been one of them, prompting me to run a lot more over the past few weeks.  BTR is the story of the Tarahumara tribe of the Copper Canyon in Mexico.  This tribe has existed mostly unperturbed by modern society, and they are known for their running ability.  Every member of the tribe is able to run incredibly long distances, usually over hundreds of miles at a time, at a fast pace, and without the numerous injuries that plague runners in our country.

McDougall profiles many of these Indians, along with Caballo Blanco, a white American from Colorado who is almost an honorary tribe member.  Caballo Blanco's main goal, and the main plot of the book, is to set up an epic ultra-marathon of 50 miles, in the Copper Canyon, pitting the Tarahumara against some of America's top ultra-runners.  McDougall discusses the world of Ultra-running in America, and some of the great races.  Some of these are up in the Rockies, or the woods of Virginia, or even Death Valley.  He also details his own training regimen, modeled after the Tarahumara, as he prepared for the race himself.  The diet was crucial, and it was all vegan.  He also advocates running barefoot, or in those Vibram five-fingers, because it is closest to our evolutionary progress, and it strengthens the feet.  In the years since Nike introduced the padded shoe, injuries have skyrocketed in the U.S., but are virtually non-existent in the Copper Canyon, where they only wear light sandals.

McDougall argues that humans evolved to be long-distance runners.  We are bipeds so that we can get more air into our lungs, and we practiced persistence hunting.  Unable to catch antelopes on a quick sprint, prehistoric humans hunted the same antelope over hundreds of miles, until it collapsed from exhaustion.  We are meant to run for a long time, but our sedentary society has evolved away from that.

The race finally ends up happening, and McDougall does a great job storytelling.  It is a close race, but it ends up binding the two cultures together over running.  I know it sounds cheesy, but it is an uplifting message.  The best advice in the book, and the advice that I have been passing along to others, is that to be a good runner, and to be able to run for a long time, you have to simply love running.  After I finished the book, I went out for a run, and I didn't want to stop because I was having a great time, just exploring, feeling good and getting the endorphins going.  I ran two hours that day.  I highly recommend reading this book, it is very inspirational.  I loaned it out to a friend the next day and others have requested to borrow it as well.  For what it tries to be, Born to Run gets Five out of Five stars.

The Alchemist

Read from Sunday, February 5th to Monday, February 6th

The Alchemist, by Paolo Coelho.  I was given this book the week before as a graduation gift from a week-long course in New York City at Momentum Education.  The themes in the book of personal journey, self discovery, and goal-seeking, correspond to many of the lessons taught in the course.

The Alchemist is a very popular book with very overt and simple themes.  I mean that in a good way.  It is a good story of Santiago, a young shepherd in Spain.  It is a timeless story, and seems to be able to exist in any era.  Santiago is a simple shepherd, but one day he has a dream of a treasure buried under the pyramids.  He dismisses it, but then he meets a king on the street who tells him that is his personal journey, and he must do everything he can to get there.  Santiago sells his flock, and sets off on a journey across the North of Africa.  At first, his money is stolen, but he works for a year in a glass shop, helping it to turn a profit.  Consequently he earns enough money to join a caravan across the Sahara.  There are dangerous tribal wars, but they manage to reach an oasis, where Santiago meets an Alchemist.  The alchemist teaches him how to realize his own personal legend, and this is more important than gold.  Santiago also falls in love with an oasis girl named Fatima, and he does not want to continue his journey.  But he realizes that if he does not fulfill his own legend, it might be easier at first, but he would end up being resentful and disappointed and disrespected. 

Santiago and the Alchemist continue onto the pyramids, but they are captured by an army.  They are sentenced to death, but the Alchemist convinces them to let them go if Santiago can harness the wind.  On the third day, Santiago is able to connect with his heart and the universal forces of the world.  He realizes how everything is connected, and causes a wind storm.  He is successful, and is able to return to Fatima.

It is a highly allegorical novel, with the themes pushed right into your face.  When you want something in life, the whole universe conspires to help you get it.  The key is to be persistent, recognize the omens, and be articulate about what it is that you want.  Along the way of your own personal legend, you are able to help out the personal legends of those around you.  Santiago was helped when he was given a job in a crystal shop, and he ended up helping the shopkeeper by developing new ideas and expanding the business. 

The Alchemist is a good fable that I recommend, even though it is probably more self-help than literature. I recommend it to anyone who feels they are stuck in a rut, or if their life isn't going anywhere.  You can all take charge of your life, make the decisions you need to make in order to fulfill your dreams, and the rest will work itself out.  Four out of five stars.

House of Leaves

Read from Saturday, January 14th to Sunday, February 5th.

What a crazy trip House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski, was.  When I first read the intro to this book, about a guy reading the same book and having nightmares, I fell asleep on my couch and had a nightmare myself.  It was crazy.  I was almost too freaked out to continue at that point, but I am glad that I stuck with it.  HOL is tough to explain.  It is a work of art, first of all.  An experiential book, one that would not work in any other format than the large, full-color, physical book.  There are pictures, diagrams, single words on pages, sentences on different parts of the page, going every direction, boxes of footnotes within pages, and words on top of other words. 

HOL is the story of a man, Johnny Truant, who finds a collection of writing by another recently deceased man, Zampano, who was writing about "The Navidson Record," a supposedly famous home movie about a man, Will Navidson, who explores his mysterious house.  So there are stories within stories within stories, told from many different narrators.  The bulk of HOL is Zampano doing an academic study of The Navidson Record, filled with all kinds of (fictitious) academic sources.  Johnny is organizing Zampano's work, but he comments frequently in a different font of footnotes.

Will Navidson is a famous photojournalist who buys a house in Virginia with his wife, Karen, and two children.  He sets out to record the family at all times with Hi-8s in order to capture intimate family moments.  Him and Karen have had difficulties because he was always out in harm's way, but now Will is trying to become a family man.  However they soon discover strange things about the house.  The inside seems to be growing larger than the outside.  Will, his brother and others cannot seem to figure out the anomaly.  Soon, a hallway appears in the house, and Will explores, using his cameras of course.  Inside, there is a never-ending maze of hallways, all pitch black and with no other discernible features, and much, much larger than the house should be.  Navidson, his brother and friends, and even some professional explorers, try to explore this fascinating, but freaky find.  The hallways always seem to shift, and although there is no sign of life, there is always a persistent growl heard from afar. 

One of the explorers goes crazy and shoots the other two.  After a shaky rescue mission, Will's brother dies as well, and Karen issues an ultimatum that they must evacuate.  They spent months apart, both from the house and themselves, and the marriage seems to be on the rocks.  But Will has to return to the House.  He cannot leave without seeing it through to the end, so he goes on an epic exploration that lasts for weeks.  Karen senses him in danger and follows him to the house, and Will is saved at the last moment by waking up on the lawn.  It is not a horror story, but in fact a love story.  They need each other, and once they realize that fact, they can go back to their own lives and are released from the house. 

Johnny, meanwhile, while trying to comprehend all that Zampano wrote, slowly sinks into a mentally deranged psychopath.  He hears and sees a monster following him at all times.  He cannot sleep.  He goes out with his friend Lude and picks up a lot of girls, but always falls back into a constant despair.  He leaves L.A. to try and find the house for himself, but he wanders around the country aimlessly, barely surviving.  Eventually, Johnny kills a guy, however he is a very unreliable narrator so it is difficult to piece together exactly what happened.  At the end of the novel, we are presented with a series of letters from his mother, who was extremely paranoid and crazy in a mental institute.  She misses her son terribly, and eventually kills herself.

This was a very interesting but great reading experience.  I was very exhausted after finishing the book.  It was very cool to constantly be shifting the book around to follow the story.  The set-up follows the mood in the story.  When the characters are cramped, the writing is cramped.  When they are lost and don't know which direction to go, the words go every which way.  It is a cool effect.  Definitely recommend checking this book out.  Four out of five stars.

Life : Keith Richards

Read from Monday, January 9th to Friday, January 13th, 2012

What a fantastic memoir by Keith Richards.  He is my namesake!  My mom loved him as a teenagers in the sixties and seventies, and named me after him.  After reading the memoir, I am honored.  Keith was a shy kid growing up in England, and he never lost that innocence.  Of course he was very susceptible to addictions, but I feel a strong connection to him.  He just wanted to sit there and pick at his guitar and play the blues.

Keith described his childhood in England, and his rocky relationship with his father, who he reconnected with in the 1980's.  He described meeting Mick and putting the original band together.  They scraped together shows, just enough to get by, until they grew enough of a following to start touring.  Then they were able to start recording, making hits, and make it to America and around the world.

Keith told the stories about traveling through America, and how many times they barely dodged the law.  He described the drugs, the groupies, the parties, the relationship among the bandmates.  Being kicked out of England because they had to pay too many taxes, so they were exiled in France, where they recorded Exile on Main Street (of which I am listening right at this moment.)  The Stones were the biggest band for the longest time, since the Beatles went their own way in the 1970's.  However, Mick and Keith had issues, and Mick went for an unsuccessful solo career, before rejoining the band for the megatours of the 1990's. 

Keith described the song-writing process, as well as the meaning behind many of the lyrics.  He is incredibly talented, and also humbled to have met many of his heroes.  Keith also described the difficult process of becoming sober and clean from the heroin, and reconnecting with his large family.  Ever since finishing the book, I have been listening to the Stones constantly, and have watched a few documentaries.  I find the whole story of the rock star epic life fascinating.  Four out of five stars.

Skippy Dies

Read from Thursday, December 16th to to Monday, January 9th, 2012

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray.  I read this book mostly by Kindle on the treadmill.  It is a tragicomedy about an Irish prep school, Seabrook.  Shortlisted for many awards, it is a recent novel that deals with a lot of current events, but feels timeless.  It took me awhile to get into the flow of the book, but once I did, I really enjoyed it.  The protagonist is Skippy, AKA Daniel Juster, who dies in a donut eating contest in the opening pages.  The rest of the long novel deals with events leading up to the event, and then the aftermath.

Skippy is a shy, awkward 14 year old boy.  His mom is sick, and there is a tension with his father.  He is on the swim team, but also takes pills to ease the stress of life.  But he falls for a girl in the neighboring school, Lori, the frisbee girl.  Skippy's best friend and roommate, Ruprecht, is a complete nerd, and obsessed with astrophysics and string theory.  He believes he can open the portal to another dimension, and almost thinks that he does at one point.  There are other boys, all obsessed with sex, girls, making fun of teachers, and pills and booze.  Murray does a great job of capturing the obsessions of young teenage immature boys, and girls as well.  There is also Carl, a drug dealer and aspiring sociopath, who is also madly in love with Lori, and will not tolerate any other competition.  He had been hooking up with Lori for a little while as he was giving her diet pills.  Also, a history teacher, Howard the Coward, a former Seabrook student who was disgraced for allowing a star athlete to get paralyzed in his place, factors into the plot.  Howard lives with his American girlfriend, but he is dissatisfied, and becomes infatuated with a new French geography teacher.

At the Halloween dance, Howard hooks up with the geography teacher, Aurelie, and he breaks up with his girlfriend, throwing all the eggs into that basket.  During the dance, Skippy escapes with Lori and they take pills and hang out and kiss, to the disbelief of most of the other students.  Skippy and Lori begin an awkward relationship, in which it is eventually revealed that Lori is just using him to make Carl jealous, even though she does like Skippy.  Also, on the Howard front, Aurelie has a fiancee and she leaves the school to get married, leaving Howard heartbroken and alone.  He has to deal with the Automator, the acting principal Greg, who is obsessed with renovating the school and breaking many of the Catholic traditions.  There are still priests teaching there, such as Father Green, who has to grapple with the guilt of molesting boys in Africa in the past.

Carl finds out about Skippy, and tries to beat him up, but Skippy miraculously manages to land a solid punch and knock him out.  However, Carl retaliates by hooking up with Lori, videotaping a blowjob, and sending the video to Skippy.  The shock of the video, and all the other stress of life, send him over the edge, and he collapses during the donut eating contest and dies while writing 'tell lori' in jam on the floor. 

Ruprecht is obviously devastated, and he gives up all nerdiness and physics and just becomes a drone that gets picked on contstantly.  Lori becomes depresses as well because she is wracked with guilt.  Howard tries to rally the students by taking them on an impromptu field trip, but this gets him fired.  The other friends rally around Ruprecht in the end at a school concert, and convince him to try one last time to communicate with the other dimension, where Skippy is believed to be.  Ruprecht plays music while also running a machine he built, and Lori sings a song from the clinic where she is held.  The story ends with a little bit of hope, as Ruprecht connects with Lori, and Skippy's memory is able to live on among them.

It was an enjoyable and well written novel.  Very accessible and stylized.  Murray is very talented, and  tells the story from all the main characters' points of views.  He uses great imagery and different styles, and is able to create both a comic mood and a tragic one.  I feel terrible for Skippy, and I also hate the people that did it to him, but I also hope for their redemption.  I would recommend checking it out.  Three and a a half out of five stars.