Reading Update

Two weeks of vacation and lots of hours on planes make for lots of reading. Here's what I've read lately. Of the list, I didn't finish two for reasons I'll explain.

The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright. Great book. I was kind of burnt out on reading more about terrorism and the underlying politics and history. Someone I knew recommended this book, so I tried it and was glad I did. The book ends with 9/11. It leads you through the emergence of the extremist Islamic movement, the rise of Al Qaeda, and the work of the FBI to keep things in control in the U.S. It does what all very readable books like this do, which is to connect you at the people level and then relate that back to the history and larger picture.

Blood and Thunder, by Hampton Sides. An enjoyable biography of Kit Carson and his role in opening the American west. I've read a lot of California history at one time or another, and Carson plays a big part in that, since he was Fremont's principal guide. What was new and interesting to me was the story of the Navajo and Carson's role in finally and ruthlessly defeating them. Considering Carson was illiterate and left no real memoir beyond a cheesy, overblown thing he cooperated with someone on late in life, the author does a terrific job of capturing what he was like and the fast-changing times he lived through.

The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers. A National Book Award winner. One day I will stop being suckered in by these things -- always well written -- when my gut tells me it's just not my kind of book. The story centers around a guy in Nebraska who suffers brain damage in a car accident. He's okay cognitively, but he ends up with Capgras syndrome, that leads him to believe that his sister, with whom he was very close, has been replaced by an impostor. This is, as you might imagine, difficult for the sister, who has droped everything to help him make it through things. The author mixes in the migration of cranes along the nearby Platte River with the story, which I'm sure was a wonderful literary allusion for some book reviewer, but a waste of paper for me.

The Castle in the Forest, by Norman Mailer. I picked this book up before Mailer died, thinking "You know, I really should read something by Norman Mailer." I probably still should, but this book will not be it. It was billed as a novel about the young Adolph Hitler and sounded interesting. Nobody told me that the narrator and bud o' Adolph is actually Satan, though, or I would not have chosen it. Sadly, I had to read 75 pages or so to find out. I don't watch shows about angels on TV, and I'm not going to be reading books by Satan either.

Turpentine, by Spring Warren. Billed pretty much as a western, this book covers a lot more ground than the wild west. The main character is a kid who is sent west for his health, but ends up penniless and skinning buffaloes. He falls in love with a local girl, but heads back east to work for a Yale professor he meets on the prairie and shows some fossils to. From there he finds himself in the midst of various bizarre situations that eventually lead him back west to the girl. For me it was kind of Dickens-like in the way characters intertwine in improbable ways. Like Dickens, it has a happy ending that ties it all up. Entertaining, mildly recommended.

An Ice-Cream War, by William Boyd. William Boyd is terrific, and I'm going to be reading anything of his I can get my hands on. Funny, the first thing of his I read (Restless) was probably the weakest. This story follows two brothers in World War I. One is the flaky, younger, bon-vivant of a military family, and the other is the golden boy who ends up in east Africa and gets captured by the Germans. This is a nice complex story with terrific characters, and you can learn some history while you enjoy it.

Brazzaville Beach, by William Boyd. Now that I have confessed my love of William Boyd, I'll tell you that I liked this book the best of the four I've read. The main character is a PhD who studies chimpanzees in Africa as part of a large project. She discovers some very aggressive behavior in them, which the leader of the project can't accept. So, we have academic jealousy, rivalry, and intrigue mixed in with politically unstable and violent times in an African country. The usual Boyd mix of complex characters and unpredictable story to follow while you learn something new.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I'd resisted the new Cormac McCarthy book out of contrariness, since it seemed like a lot of people were reading it. He writes depressing and violent books to begin with, so a story about a father and son journeying down a highway, trying to survive following a nuclear holocaust couldn't be uplifting or particularly enlightening, could it? In case you were wondering: no, not really. You think you could imagine how horrible it could get, but rest assured you can't touch the world McCarthy has cooked up. Good story, though, if you're up for it!

Oil!, by Upton Sinclair. I'm afraid to see what the movie There Will Be Blood does to this marvelous story, upon which the movie claims to be based. Published in 1927, prior to the Great Depression and before capitalism kicked the ass of communism and socialism, the story follows an independent oilman and his idealistic son. The oilman father builds an empire among the "big boys", while the spoiled yet idealistic son is always looking out for the little guy. The father effectively swindles a family of hicks out of their land, together with all the surrounding properties, and hits one of the biggest oil finds in California. This leads to a life of riches for the oilman and his family, while the hick family has to deal with reality and the crumbs left behind. Plenty of politics and history, which is interesting considering the timeframe and the clarity of hindsight now.

The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud. I did not finish this book because my E-Book charger seems to have dropped out of my luggage in the return from the BVI. I didn't have enough juice to get beyond about 100 pages or so, but I confess I was not unhappy to put it down. While hunting down the link to the book on Amazon, I saw this reviewer's comments and was even more grateful for losing my charger. Unfortunately I have a couple more books on there that I want to read!