February, 2021 Reading: “February is the border between winter and spring." (T. Guillemets)

Starting off February alternating between fiction and non, plus browsing through some Verlaine poems to keep the cold at bay.

You?

THE GREAT GLASS SEA by Josh Weil.

Fascinating book, not exactly rich with incident but presenting a compelling look at near-future Russia, the oligarchs firmly in control. Twin brothers work for a gigantic greenhouse, illuminated 24 hours a day by reflective mirrors parked in orbits above. It's kind of a science fiction book and also an homage to those big, fat Russian novels we all wish we had time to read.

It took a couple of hundred pages for the hooks to really sink in and I wonder how many contemporary readers would be that patient.

Worth the investment of time and consideration but not if you're looking for a fast moving plot and plenty of conflict.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland -and- Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
Digital audiobook performed by Christopher Plummer
3***

Believe or not, I had never read this classic of children’s literature before. Oh, I knew the basics of the story. And, of course, I had seen the Disney movie when I was a child. I even had one or two of the chapters included in a series of books I had as a child (and still have to this day). But it took a challenge to read a banned book to finally get me to crack this one open.

I certainly understand why this story is so beloved by so many legions of children. There is absurdity, fun word play, unusual situations, talking animals, and a slew of outlandish characters. Still, I think I just may be too old to really appreciate it. I was bored with much of the craziness. I just couldn’t let my imagination run wild and enjoy it.

Christopher Plummer does a fabulous job of narrating the audio version, however! His gift for many voices and accents added to the experience; I absolutely LOVED the way he voiced the white rabbit. Also, there is a bonus chapter at the end – an alternate ending to the knight’s tale that Carroll wrote but which was never published. I’d rate Plummer’s audio performance 5***** (but I won’t increase the overall rating).

>3 BookConcierge: Sad to relate, this very evening the news has broken that Christopher Plummer has passed away at the age of 91.

>4 RobertDay: Yes, I heard it on the news. Immediately thought of this review.

Finished Michael Chabon's debut novel, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH.

Some hints of his talent evident throughout but despite its promise a relatively minor book.

Actually, I often prefer his short stories to his full-length efforts. They're much more concise and powerful.

Last night wrapped up Denis Johnson's TRAIN DREAMS, which was recommended to me on another thread.

A fast read and an excellent novella covering close to eighty years of a man's hard, solitary existence in the American northwest.

Impressive effort by an author who always delivers the goods.

(Thanks for the tip.)

Just finishing off an enormous graphic novel (500+ pages), David Lutes' BERLIN.

Many members of this group are likely aware of the ambivalent feelings I have toward graphic novels/comics, but this one is very ambitious, covering the years of the Weimar Republic in Germany and its eventual downfall, replaced by the guy with the funny little mustache.

I recommend this book, but only to people who can benchpress at least 100 pounds, it's a fat one.

>7 CliffBurns: my pleasure, glad you enjoyed it. a little classic.

>8 CliffBurns: this was the first graphic novel i read since Persepolis many years ago

here was my brief take on Berlin:

This graphic novel can be experienced on two levels. Like any novel of substantial interest, Jason Lutes has created a narrative with historical scope, interesting characterizations and the tension of conflict. Likewise, being a graphic novel, it offers a more, at ease reading experience. Here, there are no long paragraphs, enthralling detailed descriptions or deep reflective passages.
Yet, through his writing and artistic depictions Lutes captures the reader in a tale of personal discoveries in the great city of Berlin as the Weimar Republic disintegrates into the horrors of Hitler’s National Socialism.

This is a great respite. One I enjoyed and one which has the lasting impact of what might be considered more serious literary works.

I am encouraged now to explore this unique world of literature and I highly recommend Jason Lutes Berlin to my fellow readers.

Have finished in surprisingly quick fashion (thanks to the COVID quarantines):

Leaving the Atocha Station
Hades, Argentina
Mac's Problem

I've made a start on Iain Banks' last book, The Quarry, just a day after what would have been his 67th birthday.

Finished Michael Chabon's MOONGLOW.

From 2016 and one of his better efforts. Pseudo-autobiographical, some cool bits of history on German rocket science and the model rocket entrepreneurs and hobbyists of the 1960s-80s.

Recommended.

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Digital audiobook performed by Sissy Spacek
5***** and a ❤

Is this the quintessential American Novel? Will it stand the test of time as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has done? Time will tell.

I do know this, however. This is a singularly powerful novel that had a great impact on me when I first read it at age 13 (shortly after it was first published), and has never failed to move and inspire me as I’ve re-read it over the years (at least 20 times by now). It has touched generations of readers in the 60 years since it was first released, and remains high on many “must be read” lists.

There are many reasons for this. It’s a well-paced novel, a fast read with elements of suspense, family drama, humor and moral lessons. Scout is a wonderful narrator, both as a child and as an adult looking back on her childhood; and the fact that Lee was able to seamlessly move between these two viewpoints is a testament to her skill as a writer.

Many people feel this is a book about racism. I don’t think that is the core theme of the book, though it is the central plot device Lee uses. I think the major theme of the novel is personal integrity and courage – doing what you know is right when all about you seemingly disagree and even when it may be dangerous to do so, being true to your own moral compass, and instilling those values in your children by example not just words.

In this respect Atticus Finch shines as the protagonist of this work. He is a man of strong moral fiber, a man who is “the same in his house as he is on the public street,” a man “who was born to do our unpleasant jobs for us.” He embodies the lessons he tries to impart to his children: that courage is not a man with a gun in his hands but rather, “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

The novel aims a spotlight on a particular time and place in America’s history. Lee writes with clarity and colors this world for the reader with descriptions that put us squarely in Maycomb, Alabama circa 1935: Somehow it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

The minor characters, especially the women, are as richly drawn as the major players. I was struck by what a wide range of personalities, strengths, weaknesses and ethics Lee was able to express using characters such as Calpurnia, Aunt Alexandra, Helen Robinson, Mrs Merriweather, Lula, Miss Maudie, Mrs Dubose, Miss Caroline and Mayella Ewell. Some of them appear for only a page or two, but they come alive on the page and remain in the reader’s memories.

The audio book is performed by Academy-Award-winning actress Sissy Spacek. She does an admirable job, though her accent is wrong. She is a Texan, and the Southern Alabama accent is softer than her twang. Still, by the second disc I had stopped noticing this, and allowed myself to be carried into the story by her expert reading.

ENTER MURDERERS, a crime novel by Henry Slesar.

Not taken with this one--seemed terribly contrived.

A group of actors take revenge on a wealthy realtor who is forcing them out of their studio.

"B" movie material, not top-flight stuff.

>15 CliffBurns: Funny you mention Henry Slesar, because I came across a reference to him last month.

In parallel with my book reading, I also plough through a huge TBR pile of specialist magazines and journals. I've just finished a 1993 issue of the journal of the UK's academic Science Fiction Foundation, Foundation 59. Apart from finding some remarkably apposite comments in reviews of books set in the impossibly distant future year of 2021, I came across this in an article by Czech fan/academic Cyril Simsa on Slesar, and it put me in an interesting frame of mind for a Doc Smith re-read I was working myself up to:

"A lot of (Slesar's) stories are perfectly respectable examples of the way sf was written in the '50s, and may even have seemed well above average for their day. But so much has changed in the genre in the interim: plot-lines which may once have seemed agreeably adventurous now seem trite and melodramatic, ideas which were part of sf's stock-in-trade are now unbearable clichés, the little philosophical homilies with which so many '50s sf writers liked to finish off their stories (the "moral", if you like) seem dated and prevent the story reaching a proper conclusion. In a world where fascism and civil war have come back to the streets of Europe, where naked manipulation of the political process by the mass media has become the norm, where rival drug gangs regularly shoot at one another with Uzi machine-pistols in the ruins of Los Angeles and computer networks will soon be offering us sex in cyberspace for real, it's difficult to read a story about a mad scientist with a beautiful blond daughter, or a solitary genius who invents a new variety of domestic robot, or indeed any story in which the moral turns out to be (in the words of the '50s B-feature) that "there are things man isn't meant to know", without disguising a smirk behind the palm of one's hand. (Then again, in fairness to Slesar, one has to ask whether the second-generation cyberpunks like Walter Jon Williams will seem any less ridiculous in 2022, and whether we won't perhaps be just as incapable of taking seriously anything with voguish references to "ice", "jacks", designer drugs, artificial intelligence, multinational corporations, computer voodoo, banghramuffin orbital rave platforms, elephants in mirrorshades and so on, in an age no doubt as unimaginably different from where we are now, as the '80s were to the writers of the '50s.)"

I suspect a lot of that holds for his work in other genres.

Slesar was something of a hack, very prolific. He came out of the advertising business, which probably set his mercantilistic instincts. I'm sure he created some good work and maybe one day I'll come across it.

MARX'S DAS KAPITAL: A BIOGRAPHY by Francis Wheen.

A tome published as part of the "Great Books That Shook The World" series.

Short, well-researched, a helpful introduction to a notoriously difficult book. Marx's personal circumstances during the ten years it took him to write it were very dire; living in near penury at times, subsisting on handouts from his friend Engels and whatever money he could make from his journalism.

Not hugely successful during his lifetime...later, of course, it gained its author a certain amount of posthumous fame or infamy (especially among those people who either didn't read it or misinterpreted the author's intentions).

Recommended.

>18 CliffBurns: Still considered to be one of the best descriptions of capitalist economies, even by capitalists.