pileofgreybooks: a book ring

Last night I stayed up until 4 a.m. to finish this gem of a book. I could try to summarize, but frankly, the slow depth of the novel wants me to keep it all a secret--and thus force some of you to jump out of your seats and buy it. Let me just say that it is a very Christian-sensed book, but never becomes a preachy, Christiany diatribe (and you know what I mean about Christiany, if you've ever been or are one--none of this Dr. Dobson/Left Behind scheisse. At one point in the novel, and I paraphrase, he says people of faith in the US often go looking for martyrdom, they seek out ways the world is infringing on their rights--how true). It just is what it is: a pastor's thoughts as he writes a letter to his young son.

Many people have read this book and expected (because it was the first American book with openly gay characters) one thing (a homoerotic love story), but because it is a Gore Vidal novel and he is a subtle and nuanced writer (a self described truth teller (of course his ego is incredibly large, but his truths are truer than most so I let it slide)) it is more a study of living in the margins 1940’s America. Americans then (as now) viewed homosexuals mostly as stereotypical effeminate fairies and Gore Vidal wanted to take away the veil and show that homosexuals are varied like any other group in society.
I loved this book, but I am biased—I like most Gore Vidal novels (I have never been able to finish Lincoln and Burr wasn’t as good the second time around, but that’s just personal preference). This is not to say that the book is somewhat dated—it was written in the 40’s. But I couldn’t put it down and finished it in a few days. If you have never read a Gore Vidal novel this is a good place to start.

I've only read one other book by Philip Roth, Operation Shylock, which recounts a weird metafictional trip to Israel, and which I really enjoyed (up until an inconclusive ending). American Pastoral is generally acclaimed as one of Roth's recent masterpieces and it won him the Pulitzer. I've wanted to read it for a while.

Well, I was disappointed. The man writes very well, but frankly this book is overlong and didactic. It lacks much of the provocative humor, the grotesquerie and absurdity that Roth is known for. It tells us about Seymour "Swede" Levov, a Jewsih business man from New Jersey who comes up from humble beginnings, moves to the suburbs, marries a shiksa and pursues the American dream. His life falls apart in the late 60s when his daughter gets caught up in a violent branch of the antiwar movement. Basically, Roth wants to compress the whole post-WWII history of America into the life of one man, one ordinary seemingly bland man -- dealing with topics like ethnic assimilation, the decline of the inner city, the loss of manufacturing jobs, the debate between liberalism and radicalism on the left. It's all very potent stuff but the problem is that much of it is outlined for the reader in long internal monologues that highlight for the reader exactly what the sociological significance of this or that character or incident is. Starting with the title, the whole book is so weighted down by its status as an elegy for America that there is little room left for idosyncracy or sponataneous life. It's a worthy book but it seems more like a short story puffed up to the length of a novel with needlessly repetitive commentary.

One more thing: has anyone ever written about how conservative Philip Roth is? This was true of Operation Shylock, too, in which he dealt with the dilemma of a Jew who understands that Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians is problematic but feels that his identity as a Jew must lead him to support them. In both books, Roth flirts with radical ideas but puts them in the mouths of characters so comically extreme that his common-sense narrators must reject them. While both books feature a lot of debate about weighty political issues, to the extent that they advance any political philosophy it is pretty nostalgic, backward looking and supportive of the status quo.

Neil Gaiman is a popular man—I had no idea just how popular till I went to his book release reading at the Union Square Barns and Noble. I got there about an hour and a half early after jury duty hell and the reading room was already ¾ of the way full of excited Neil Gaiman fans and the curious—I was one of the latter. I had read his American Gods and thought it was pretty good, but this crowd thought he was amazing. Having read Anasi Boys—I agree with them.
In Anasi Boys—Anansi, the trickster spider god, dies and his two sons long separated finally meet and mad hijinks ensue. This is a terribly funny, beautiful book that I just couldn’t put down until it was done and when I was done I was sad to see it end.

I thought it was about time I read something by Brett Easton Ellis, and I happened to pick up a free copy of this at the Void Magazine reading in which our own Jessica presented her work last month. So... I loved it, which totally surprised me. It starts off as very broad social satire and you think that you will never be able to stand 400 pages of 1980s yuppies, full of inredibly detailed descriptions of the designer-label clothing that everyone is wearing. You almost want to say, "All right already, I get it." But Ellis carefully calibrates the revelation of the narrator's psychosis. Certain of the brief chapters are absolutely pitch-perfect and laugh-out-loud funny. Ellis uses the same elements again and again, tropes references, the same types of vacuous conversation between the characters, but rather than boring you they play like variations in a satirical fugue. There's a Balzacian quality to this cynical world of finance and sex.

And as for the gore: I like to think of myself as de-sensitized to descriptions of violence, but there are certain chapters of this book that made me feel immoral just for reading them. Gut-wrenchingly, unimaginably horrible. The book has a real power to it and, despite the incredible humor, it does "have something to say." That "something" boiled down to a platitude ("Capitalist excess destroys the soul"?) sounds trite but as presented through the hideous, freaky prism of Ellis's narrator that simple commonplace idea somehow becomes infinitely rich and readable. This book is certainly NOT for everyone; I would hesitate to recommend it to most women I know, for example. But for those who love writing, and especially crystal-sharp deadpan satire, this is an important and masterful piece of work.

Of course, this is a question that plagues all of us--or maybe just expats who live the liberal lifestyle. This book actually turned out to be much better than expected. I'd read a pretty harsh critique in The New York Times Book Review, and although I don't always take their critiques much to heart (they keep publishing reviews by Jonathan Franzen, who I merely hate on principle since the Oprah debacle and his psycho review of Alice Munro where he didn't review the book at all, just talked about how cool she was), but I'm always suspicious of books by liberals about a place they might not really know. But, the author is an ex-Kansan, brought up in Johnson County (the richest county in the state), but on the somewhat dodgy side as far as social strata is concerned--not poor, but middle class. And, although the first couple of chapters bestow the usual liberal diatribe about how hideous conservatives are, the further you reach into the book, you find out how this state, once a state of rebels and progressives, has turned into one of the reddist states imaginable. His notes in the back of the book are meticulous--I have yet to read even a few of them. There are some points where he dives back into the diatribe, but he suddenly pulls himself out, shakes it off, and moves on. A couple of tidbits about the history I never knew came up: how the town of Ulysses literally picked up and moved away to avoid the corporation that wanted to foreclose on them; the fact that a pope has been elected right in the heartland because of the heretical nature of the late Pope John Paul II, etc. One of my main problems with the book, other than the diatribe (which, by the way, I pretty much agree with, but do we have to hear it repeated?), is the fact that, except for a few forays into Wichita and Garden City, he remains geographically in eastern Kansas. It's his stomping grounds, I suppose, but were he to head out west a few more times he may have found a few yet-liberal strongholds. I guess I'm pissed because, as a south-central Kansas expat, I know a lot of people who aren't crazy rich or crazy redneck conservatives. So, a brief, ever so brief glimmer of hope in this world according to Frank couldn't have hurt. (And, he made NO mention of Mennonites, who brought the hard winter wheat that made Kansas what it was--but nobody's perfect, I suppose.)

This novel, by Michel Houellebecq, is very French. It's French in the way that Nausea by John-Paul Satre and Camus' L'etranger are French. In other words, it's as much of a philosophical treatise as it is a novel and that's something American authors don't really do. This novel caused quite a stir when it came out a few years back because it was Houellebecq's first (an incredible accomplishment) and because it's shockingly frank and cynical about sex and the decline of Western civilisation. The book is full of descriptions of rather tawdry, pathetic sex acts but it's a highly serious book, one that posits that Western society has basically played out its current state of evolution and that we're ripe for a "metaphysical mutation." In the world of the book, this comes in the form of an imagined future which I won't give away, but which has to do with genetic engineering.

It's hard to describe the effect of this book, and harder still to pin down its philosophical claims (given all of its meta-fictional conceits). If you tend to think that the world is pretty much set up in a generally positive way and that most people lead reasonably happy lives (or at least have the potential to lead them), this book is likely to temporarily destroy those assumptions. It is umremittingly pessimistic about the current state of our world, but ultimately weirdly dedicated to the beauty of the human soul.

I realise that I haven't really told you much about the book. It follows two French brothers, one a sex-obsessed schoolteacher and one an emotionally cold molecular biologist. Their lives intertwine and Houellebecq dissects late capitalist-materialist society, focuisng primarily on our drive for sexual pleasure and spiritual fulfillment. You may not end up becoming a disciple of Houellebecq's worldview but you will end up having a lot of your standard preconceptions tossed on their heads, which can only a good thing, right?

This is the classic story of the seafarer’s wife perched on her widow’s walk, looking out onto the sea, waiting for her Odysseus to sail over the horizon. It is the story of Clare the time traveler’s wife waiting for Henry, her husband, to return. Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder—a condition that causes him, through uncontrollable epileptic fits, to time travel. When Henry time travels he wakes up naked, hungry and confused having to resort to crime and thuggery in order to survive (an older Henry teaches a younger Henry how to pick pockets and locks—he has several outstanding warrants with the Chicago police).
Through the “wonders” of time travel Clare grows up with Henry, meeting him in secret in a meadow behind her childhood home, but Henry doesn’t meet her till he is older. His younger life is spent falling apart, searching for oblivion in alcoholism and meaningless sex. Clare loves Henry and becomes his anchor—I know, it sounds kind of sappy, but the writer pulls it off without overdoing the sentimental factor. I liked the book’s honesty and how the Author managed to keep the whole plot from unraveling under the weight of its crazy twists and turns.

A totally different kind of first-person narrative is offered in Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library. Hollinghurst, an English novelist, has been relegated to the "gay fiction" shelves until this year when he finally crossed over and won the Booker for The Line of Beauty. This novel is his first and it is masterful, incredibly engrossing and written in an arch, richly embroidered prose that's sort of a sexier version of Henry James. The subject is sex and there's lots of it described in this book -- random sex with men that the narrator picks up in clubs and trains and lavatories. It's pretty hot, but also psychologically astute. Our narrator is a beautiful English aristocrat in his mid-twenties in 1980s London, who lives off family money and spends his days working out and indolently satisfying his carnal desires. Along with his own sexual escapades, the book recounts his interactions with an 80-year old eccentric gay noble who adopts the young man as his prospective biographer. The stories of these two men's lives start to intertwine beautifully and Hollinghurst offers a melancholy, bittersweet portrait of homosexual culture throughout the 20th Century, existing on the margins both because of societal stigma and individual preference. It explores the beauty and the pain inherent in both men's desires and their dissatisfactions. It's an incredibly accomplished piece of writing that unfortunately ends rather perfunctorially when one wishes that the story would just go on and on. Hollinghurst has a hynotic way of telling his story, jumping from bit to bit and giving us just what we need. He doesn't underline obvious parallels or motives in a scenario (old man passing his traditions on to younger man) that could come off as sentimental. The book is elegant and erotic in the truest sense .

First of all, I want to thank Tom and Jess for inviting me to join this book ring. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer this year and is really worth reading, a novel that starts out deceptively simply and turns out to be very hard to pin down or to wrap your head around. It's told in the first person by an elderly Midewestern preacher approaching death and writing a letter to his young son, ostensibly to offer him worldly wisdom. The subjects covered include several generations in the life of the family, a family in which fathers and sons have all been preachers. The action travels back as far as the "Bloody Kansas" days leading up to the Civil War. At first, the narrator's tone seems downright treacly and, indeed, preachy and there are platitudes every other paragraph. Slowly, though, one realizes that Robinson is up to something: the preacher's certainty is breaking down and he may have been deceiving himself about a lot of things in his life. The book continually surprises the reader and, after the first 60 pages or so, really picks up. This is a book that is set among people for whom religion is woven into the fabric of life and Bibical narratives (especially those of the patriarchs and the parable of the pordigal son) are woven into the language of the book. The subject is religion, but approached in an incredibly sophisticated, challenging way. It asks whether devotion to religion can be squared with being a fully engaged, thinking, ethical human being and it doesn't provide easy answers. It has a tircky narrative structure that asks whether true wisdom can indeed be realted through sermons or indeed words at all. Despite it's short length, this is a very sophisticated and intricate novel -- the Pulitzer committee did a good job!

I picked this book up after slogging half way through Pete Hamill’s thoroughly disappointing Valentine to Manhattan Forever (he should have saved us the trouble and mailed a heart shaped box of chocolates)
Anyhow
This book concerns an aging beekeeping Sherlock Holmes in 1944 on the case of a missing parrot and a murder, but mostly on the case of the parrot. It is good, but (I think) too short. Just when it got good it was over. Chabon builds such beautiful, intriguing scenes that I wanted him to stretch out and to enjoy, but they came and went and then the book ended.
But it is still worth the read—a summer afternoons investigation into the insanity of the human condition.

For whatever reason I love this hard boiled, gin/whisky & laudanum soaked, blood simple murder mystery enough to name it among my favorites.
It is about an investigator known only by the moniker the continental op who is trying to clean up the corruption in a town named Personville (aka Poisonville) by it’s denizens. It is full of great lines like:
“Don Willsson’s gone to sit on the right hand of God, if God don’t mind looking at bullet holes.’ ‘Who shot him?’ I asked. The gray man scratched the back of his neck and said: ‘Somebody with a gun”. And others: “Are you married?’ ‘Don’t start that.’ ‘Then you are?’ ‘No’ “I’ll bet your wife’s glad of it.”
I don’t really like murder mysteries, normally, but this one built so many of the clichés and uses them so well making them fun--in a kind of twisted late 1920’s gangland kind of way. It is comfort food--a blue plate special for my soul.

You may or may not know this, but I am always suspicious of coming of age novels. Not that there's anything wrong with them in theory, but I've felt that at times people use the "coming of age" genre a little too often, giving them license to wander the pages pointlessly and have sloppy editing choices. I don't keep this suspicion from reading them, however; the novel was about Mennonites and a very dear friend sent this to me all the way from that distant land called Canada, so I had two very good reasons to try this one on. The pace of the novel was slow to me at first, but I found myself falling in with the flow later on and enjoying the ride. There was a lot of negativity about Mennonites in it, which annoyed me a little. I mean, there's a lot to be desired, but goodness! But the story was set in a very small town, so a lot of cultish things can happen there which is more or less nonexistant in other places. The pastor of a nameless Mennonite church recently gave a sermon stating that the priesthood of believers concept with regards to church leadership wasn't valid, and that anyone who disagreed with said leadership was "of the devil." So, maybe the narrator, Nomi (I love her name) wasn't so off the mark. The father, Ray, is a desperate loving character who slowly sells all the family's furniture--by far the best drawn one in this work. I don't understand Nomi very well, but she's 16--and who can really understand 16 year olds--I didn't even understand them at that age. The mother (who, not to give away too much, is excommunicated aka shunned from the Mennonite church) is a bit mystical, but she has gone missing, which makes her more of a dream to Nomi than reality. The reason her mother is shunned is only revealed in the final pages of the book, in a little too quick tying up the knots sort of way, that makes sense in some ways but not in others.

This is just to say that I found a used copy of Maus II and it was wonderful in that horribly sad sort of way. If only I could draw; I could see myself getting into graphic novels.

Ugh. This was a short story in a recent issue of the New Yorker, and it stank!! It was about this old guy who was hit by a car and has his leg amputated and all the stuff that follows. Granted, it had a great beginning and some moments, but it was so damn long and wandering. I'd maybe expect it from a first draft, but not a published version--and in the New Yorker, for God's sake! Maybe the fiction editor got together with the poetry editor and decided to publish some bad fiction with some bad poetry! Although, one of the poems was great. Which is a rarity. I can't believe with all the hungry writers out there, waiting for their break, this person was sent to the front of the line.

I put off reading the wheel of time series in college, choosing to “suffer” through long, tedious discussions full of mysterious, nonsensical terms like Aes Sedai, Dragon Reborn, Egwene and so on. It was not until the first weeks after my graduation while stuck in Atlanta with my family that I decided to pick up the first book…I was hooked.
I never really read Fantasy as a child (with the exception of a onetime reading of the Sword in the Stone), I was more into Sci-Fi (Arthur C Clark, Niven and Pournell), older books (Vern, Wells, Doyle, London (I fucking loved Jack London)), Techno Thrillers (Clancy (gasp)) and the occasional Grisham and Crichton novel. There was no history for me to rely on when I dove into the epic fantasy world—I did for a short time have a copy of the Hobbit, but I gave it away and read Robinson Crusoe instead (I have also since tried reading the Lord of the Rings books, but they are just so quaint and I really don’t like the style…sorry).
Jordan, while at times, can be tedious (the whole man vs woman thing gets old) and some of his characters become almost unreadable (Elayne…uhg), he is undoubtibly a master storyteller of complex engaging tales. You want to read not only to find out what will happen, you read because you are trying to figure out what will happen before it happens. And even if you have read them before (this is the fourth time for me) they are so long with tiny hints spread throughout thousands of pages that it is easy to forget what happened at the beginning by the time you get to the end. This time I am trying as hard as I can to fly through them—to outrun my bad memory for details so that I can have a better idea of the story for the upcoming next book in the fall (I am a geek I know). I of the four books I have read so far the last one The Shadow Rising is my favorite…it is the longest of all the books (as far as I can tell) and it starts off pretty slow, but by the time you get to the middle it is hopping. This is the book where all the characters transform (in typical fantasy epic styling) from country bumpkins to the badasses they were destined to become. Because of the character growth I feel that the series changes after The Shadow Rising. The story lines become more complex and the story arcs stretch out over the rest of the books. The story changes from a rowboat to an aircraft carrier…any movement takes a lot of planning and groundwork. The later books are where this series stops breaks out of the Lord of the Rings mold and becomes its own story. Many of the fans who loved the early books have a tough time relating to and making the shift along with the later books in the series. Personally I believe this is where the series becomes cool.

I think I did the whole reader's binge thing. I read too many wonderful books in too short of time (at least for me--I know Teddy reads like a mo' fo'), which destroyed any pleasure in reading that wasn't up to that same speed. I tried and tried to read Henry James' The Wings of the Dove, but his prudish, early 20th century, take-ten-pages-to-say-she-sat-down prose just didn't cut it for me. So, goodbye for now, Henry. But I finally got around to reading Maus I and The Hedge Knight, which are graphic novels. Since I read Persepolis this spring, I've been amazed at this genre. Maus I had a kind of immediacy that brought the realities of life during the Holocaust to my senses that I cannot describe. I need to get my hands on Maus II. The Hedge Knight was just plain old swashbuckling fun. Underrated squires and evil princes and good princes and a maiden in distress. Plus, it was written by George R.R. Martin, who has created the first fantasy series (A Song of Ice and Fire--the fourth novel is set to come out this fall) I've enjoyed in this life.

Although The English Patient has all the fanfare from the movie, its prequel, In the Skin of a Lion is as if not better than its lovechild. Although one can easily read the Patient without ever touching the Lion, you’d miss all these little insights that you’d only get from reading the Lion first. Patrick, the protagonist in the first novel, doesn’t ever appear in the second one, but he has a palpable presence (through his adopted daughter, Hana, the nurse of the English patient)—like an ink stain that has bled through fifty pages faintly but there nonetheless. Ondaatje whirls around these novels, caressing them and turning them around and sometimes talking to you, the reader, in a slightly postmodern (gasp!) Victorian way. He is a very messy writer, but I’m sure it’s controlled messiness. Although I would be happier if it wasn’t. I like messiness. I like feeling lost. Right now I’m only half way through the Patient, but I have also read it before. I’m liking it a lot more than the last time. Though right now is the romantic/violent parts between the patient and Katharine, which frankly is not my favorite section, though from what I remember of the movie it is the main focus. In the novel it is much more about Hana, and makes very strong anti-war comments. When I heard Ondaatje speak a couple of years ago (this was the time I was sitting in front of Salman Rushdie and didn’t know it), during the Q&A, this young, thin Indian-descent man asked him why the movie was so different from the novel. Ondaatje replied. And I paraphrase: “Well, a movie experience is so different from a book experience. There really cannot be a movie about a burned man lying in a bed for two-and-a-half hours.” Everyone laughed.

If I was able to write as good as Edward P. Jones, I would...I don't know what. Gladly accept the Pulitzer and rest on my laurels, perhaps. This book is amazing. Gorgeous. The story is told in this complex, linear way that confuses you but you don't mind being confused. You just let it glide through you and trust the understanding will come. I am tempted to write him a letter. I haven't been this moved to write to an author since I first came across Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev and Davita's Harp. This desire to write him came to me even after he had gone to the great beyond--when I saw the Asher Lev YMCA near Menno House I at first was amazed that they named a gym after a character in a book; then I realized it said Asher Levy. Lev means "heart" by the way in Hebrew. But back to E.J., as my dear professor Carolyn calls him. It ends in such a way that you do expect and don't at the same time. Some of the people in my craft class pooh-poohed it because of the non-linear story, but I love non-linear-ness.

this has to be, without a doubt, the most depressing book I have ever read. It is a ghost of a Braughtigan novel that reads like he just wasnt trying. or maybe couldnt try.

I loved this book. It was beautiful in its simplicity. Through the narrow focus of the main characters eyes the characters (his crazy dysfunctional family) come alive, but the true beauty is that he, being autistic, does not really understand the complexities of human emotion and drama. He truthfully says what he sees, without truly understanding totally what he sees, but still manages great insight. I felt it was kind of a resurrection novel, every character in the book does knucklehead things to each other (like “real” people do everyday), but the book is so well written that you the reader can come to terms with what each of the characters and come to a kind of reconciliation and understanding. A marvelous book!

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world…

Snow Crash is the book that put Neal Stephenson on the map. It is a typical Stephenson novel in that it manages to blend Sumerian mythology, linguistics, hacking, skateboarding, pirates, samurai sword fighting, harpoons, and the mafia.
It is not my favorite NS book (that would be a tie between the Baroque Cycle novels and The Diamond Age) and it tended to get a bit overly involved in ancient religious discorses, but when this book was hot it was scalding. The kind of book you fly unconsciously through, an action novel of substance. You just might actually learn something. And as always the badass quotient is high.

This book was an all-time favorite when I was a young, wishful time travel girl. It's about a boy named Jefferson Davis Bussey who goes off to fight the good fight during the civil war. For the North, of course. He's also from Kansas, which is of course dear to my heart. His folks' horses are stolen and his father's life threatened by some dirty ol' Bushwackers (Missourians), so he heads out and enlists. What I like so much about this novel, on my 26-year-old mind, is that it shows the humanity on both sides. Jeff meets people on the North and South side, and realizes that the Southerners have just as much desire to survive as Northerners. There are some scenes of heartbreaking betrayal of trust, a love affair between Jeff and a Southern Belle, and deaths of close friends. My only problem with the book is the fact that the author says, through the eyes of Jeff, that the war was only about slavery and abolishment. I know that is not true. Some of the writing is a bit archaic (like lots of elipses...), but for the most part it's still a great novel.

This book is glorious. About a woman-turned-priest who loses her memory of playing piano and goes to serve at a mission on a reservation in Minnesota, the novel moves in circles about the life of Agnes/Father Damien and the Native Americans who touch her life. The book's writing is so beautiful, one of my classmates at SLC said, "I just wanted to rub it all over my body--maybe it would improve my writing." My thoughts exactly.

I never read reviews until I am either done reading the book or so deep into it, the reviews have little power over my opinion of the book. The only reviewers I trust when it comes to books are friends. Most of the good folks who write reviews for Amazon are morons and I only read their reviews for entertainment value, not for informed decision making. I rarely find a review that I agree with, either I have bad taste or I am just too damn easy to please.
That said---I liked this book, while the Amazon crew did not. Maybe they were just too much in love with Time and Again, I don’t know.
Jack Finney did a great job immersing the reader in turn of the century New York and I think he is one of the few writers who can realistically tackle the intricate paradoxes of time travel and the what could have been. It is an elegant book of ideals and morals and the attempt to change the world for the better. Any way any book that mentions the Flatiron Building is alright by me.

It took a long time for me to get around to this book, too long actually. No less than two people had recommended this book to me and for whatever reasons I never read it. One was quite possibly one of the nicest most giving interim pastors I have ever had the fortune to live with, Stan Bohn. The other was my much better more well read half, the amazing Jessica Penner. Well having finished Live from Golgotha and in the middle of Burr but not really getting into it (I love Gore Vidal, but I like his American Histories less than his other books) I looked over our leaning alter of books and thought "Man I should finally read this one" so, not to belabor the issue, I did. If you have ever visited new york, hell even looked at a picture of or at the very least heard tell of this city, you should read this book.
In it a the secrets to time travel have been discovered and a super secret government group recruits several promising recruits. The best recruit is Simon Morely and this book is about his journeys to, of all places, 1880's NY. It is a NY of horse power, elevated steam railways, farms on the upper west side, and the lady's mile. There are no skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty is just the torch sitting in Madison Square. Simon Morley is attempting to discover the meaning of an old letter pertaining to a close friend's old family mystery. It is a smart elegantly written book that brings life to a relatively little known age.

This was the first Gore Vidal I ever read and I decided to reread it because I don’t really think I got it this complicated little book the first time through.
The basic story is that the New Testament gospels are being erased by a time traveling computer hacker. The executives at NBC, who also have time traveling abilities, go to Saint Timothy (friend and reluctant lover of Saint Paul) and ask him to write his own gospel so the Christian story is not lost as well as host the upcoming primetime broadcast of the crucifixion (take that Mel Gibson).
On the surface it is a blasphemous blast against Christianity’s soft underbelly (imagine a lusty tap-dancing con man Paul with a penchant for buggery), but it is also, in the skillful hands of Vidal, becomes a satire of mass media and American society. Bottom line if you don’t mind having your sacred cows tickled and you like your satire savage but genteel this book just might be for you.

You should read this book.
If I had a room crammed full of publicity goons at my call I would use every trick they had up their sleeves to convince you to read it.
With the exception of some brief intense affections with Clark, Asimov, Pournel/Niven and Card, I never really read Sci-Fi...it wasn’t my thing. I missed the whole cyberpunk craze during the 90—choosing instead to read techno thrillers and other republican action operas and when I finally got around to reading the book that started the whole cyberpunk movement (Neuromancer) I wasn’t all that impressed. But I figured I would give the whole genre another go around and also thought “what the hell I loved Stephenson’s other books, I should give it a shot”. I am glad I did…what more can I say the man is an amazing writer.
The story is set in the not too distant future (as all cyber punk novels) where nanotechnology has rendered all forms of national government as irrelevant, leading to the formation of hundreds of small groups, or phyles, each with their own rules and world views. One of the main storylines follows a poor girl who inadvertently receives a highly advanced interactive book (the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer) designed to train a child in the ways of innovative thinking and street survival. The book is designed in such a way that it adapts its teachings to her thoughts and what ever is happening to her growing and changing with her. The story also follows the maker of the primer, a neo-Victorian gentleman, as he is immersed into a crypto underworld of rival factions who are each trying to create new world order.
As always Stephenson is the master storyteller and explainer, few authors can create a new world as he can. When this book ended I wanted more. I was giggling madly with glee on the subway while finishing this book surrounded by jaded New Yorkers on their way to work and I would do it again in a heart beat.

This book is a complicated stew that is chock full of puzzles, genealogies, foul play, and dickinsian bleakness. It is the kind of book you struggle to finish-- eagerly counting off the pages to the end (that at times seems oh so far away), but when you do, finally, finish it you just have to mull over what what you read. It is the kind of book you talk about over and over trying to figure out just what it all means.
Now it is not the kind of book I would normally read. I dont like to try and figure out mysteries, I dont do puzzles, and I couldnt give two figs about genealogies and this book, for a large part, is nothing but the above. But hidden between the passages of puzzles and intrigue there are beautiful descriptions of Victorian England, sketches of fascinating characters, and deep intelligent discussions about trust, justice, equity, and altruism. It is the kind of book you could read several times and not totally grasp it(or at least it would take several readings for me). There are few books that really take the time--and this one (at 780 single spaced pages of tightly packed type) REALLY takes the time-- to confuse a story with the finer details, stories, and perceptions, of the characters who inhabit it.

The gods we took with us accross the oceans from our old homes are with us...slowly fading away into obscurity. Outshined by the new gods of telivision, internet, and security they grow old, forgotten. But a storm is brewing just on the horizon, a battle between the old and the new...
This was a great fun striaghtforward easy read. It is the kind of book you want after a long, hard, crazy day or after reading a "serious" depressingly literary novel. It is well worth the days spent. And what a concept! You will never look at tourist traps the same way again.
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I just finished this book and I am wondering if the two burbon and waters helped or hindered me in understanding this surrealist book. I am not too picky all I ask for in a book is a few stable places to gather my barings before jumping into the next plot laberenth. This book had no such areas, I do not know if I really understand it and I really do not know if we are supposed to.
The basic plot is that a woman hires a private investigator to look for her husband who has been missing for almost half a year. The clues are scant: a worn matchbook with two different kinds of matches and a photograph.
One of the persistant themes of the book is that every person's life is a map and in order to understand that person's life you must first construct their personal map. The missing husband's map is unfinneshed and does not make a whole lot of sense and as the investigator progresses into the mystery his life and map becomes increasingly fragmented and ruined.
To tell the truth I do not know if I liked this book. I think one of the problems is that it was originally written in japanese and translated in the 70's...so the original meaning of the book might of been lost in the translation and much of it seems dated in its machismo sexism.
It is one of those paradoxical books where it is an easy quick read, but it is almost impossible to get a grasp on.
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I got this 9and someodd hundred page behemoth on a one week lone from the library. Now I am not the slowest reader, but I aint gonna win any speed reading medals either. A book that size would normally at least take me a week and a half of reading to plow through, but I finished it and less than a week too. I couldn't put it down. I didn't want it to end. Now I am not going to lie to you the first hundred pages or so are not all that intresting, but once you have those under your belt it is smooth sailing.
The hype machine called this book the "next harry potter". With the exception of both containing magic soaked plots there is very little in common between them. This book moves slower the characters are more complex the magic is more understated and there is absolutely no quidditch.

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You cannot mention the Baroque cycle without mentioning Cryptonomicon. It was written before BC but takes place after BC during WWII and close to present day. I read BC and was able to understand what was going on (and loved it), but I think I would have gotten more out of it if I would have read C frst. There is just so many insider references in BC to C that I missed and did not get till I read C...oh well.
In alot of ways I look at C as a study in Badassery (is there such a word...there should be). It has a lot more action than BC (which is not to say that BC has little action it is just a different kind of book...anyway) and it is all pretty well contained in one novel...unlike BC which is spread out over three. There is some sections with some pretty complex mathmatics, but you can skim them and still follow the story. The author loves to explain things and while he does a great job of it, if you hate math no amount of great teaching will pique your interest.

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Warning this is a series of three long novels that are broke up into about 8 short (300 page) novels that all make up one loooong story. I loved this series, but I will admit that there were a few sections I skimmed (especially the Eliza and the french cryptologist...wordy as hell.
But
I know it is a cliche, but I am going to say it anyhow:
I look at the world differently from reading these books.
There is just so much history and information jammed into the cycle. As the reader you are lead out of chaos into a new order which in turn will in time become chaotic and a new "system of the world" will emerge.
Also they are just so damn fun to read. The characters are great and the action just kind of sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
I read the last book around christmas and I am still thinking about them. They are most definatly worth the effort.

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I just fineshed this book last week. It is one of those books where I wanted to read something else by the author and all the New York Public Library had was another of his books (Damn you NYPL and your millions of book hoarding members!)
anyhow I picked it up it looked at it saw it had some pretty good reviews and thought what the hell I will give it a shot.
It is an elegant book as expat novels should be. The characters are extreamly complex. In order to enjoy a book I have to feel for the characters and the author did a good job in accomplishing that.
There where areas in the book where I felt the story becomes mired down into the unnessary details of a buisness deal towards the end of the book. I felt the author could have accomplished the book without so much attention to needless dry detail. Personal preference I guess. And like the 90's it is drenched in Irony---which to tell the truth I have really had enough irony for 10 life times. If you are in the mood for an elegant character study this is a good choice.

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Disclaimer: I cant write book discriptions for shit....sorry I hope this is helpful

I have to admit that I began this book with terribly high expectations. It was the scifi book of the 80's and it is almost impossible to overemphisise neuromancer's impact on scifi written after (as I said on the link---the matrix would not have been made if there was not this book to rip off from). Before reading Neurmancer I had read Virtual Light (will review later), also by William Gibson, before reading Neuromancer and Neuromancer was mentioned in every review I read of Virtual Light. SOOOO short story long I was looking forward to reading this book. Of course, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out that my expectations far overshadowed my actual experience of the book. To tell the truth there were several times I just wanted to stop reading the book and go to something else, but I felt I should read it so I kept at it.
I think if I had read it without knowing the hoopla surounding the book I would have enjoyed it a bit more....who knows.
My biggest problem with the book is that it is writen under the assumption that the reader is incredably knowlegable about the workings of the fictional world. From the first paragraph you are thrown into it---there is relatively little exposistion. Which really would be okay but it is extreamly technical. Also the descriptions of the technical wizadry of this fictional near future while complex where also a bit on the sparse side so the book constantly left me with a "whaaaa...?" feeling.
What I did like about this book and what made the time spent worthwhile:
The characters are badasses.
I dug the seedy vibe.
The Rastafarian Space station was a nice touch.

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The way I figure is on the links section each person could post suggestions and in the blog/post section we could talk about what we are reading and talk about the books we got from each others suggestions.

Hello and welcome to Pileofgreybooks book ring.
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