Going to an airport with only a few pages left on your book is a rookie mistake. Which I'm happy to have made recently. The Boy and I were flying back from the ABQ via Lost Wages, laying over for a couple hours. So I wandered into the book store and found this inviting biography of Alex Dumas, swashbuckling father of the famous novelist.
Tom Reiss's biography garnered him the 2013 Pulitzer. It's certainly a good read so far (~150 pages in). Dumas, the son of a ne'er-do-well French nobleman, the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and a black slave woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). Davy had been sponging off his younger brother, Charles, until they had a falling out in 1748. Antoine disappeared into the wilderness with three slaves and lost all contact with his family for 30 years. Charles eventually returned to France to take over the family estate, under the presumption that Antoine had died. In 1773, both Charles and their youngest brother, Louis, died. Somehow, word of this got back to Antoine, who then apparently sold Marie-Cessette and Alex's two siblings, but took Alex with him back to France to claim the estate in 1776.
France was an odd place in the late 18th century, both racist and progressive. Alex was raised as the legitimized son of Antoine, thus earning a title of "Count" as the son of a Marquis. He ws trained as a gentleman and swordsman at the academy of Nicolas Texier de la Boëssière, learning his swordcraft from the most famous swordsman of the day, the Chevalier de Saint-George, who also happened to be a mixed-race black man from the Caribbean. But Alex, as a care-free knockabout (taking after the old man), eventually clashed with his father over money (he was spending it fast, while his old man was going broke of his own accord), and, in a huff, ran off to join the army.
Rather than pressing his case as the more-or-less legitimized son of a nobleman, and thus receiving a commission, Alex joined up as a mere enlistee under his mother's name, Dumas, in 1786, only 13 days before his newly re-married father kicked off. The old man had sold the estate and squandered the fortune, so there was only an empty title to be had anyway. Alex entered service with the Queen's Dragoons and was posted off in a provincial town, where, as luck would have it, he boarded with the family of a local inn-keeper and rising Republican. Dumas became engaged to the innkeeper's daughter and went off to serve the emerging Republic. He quickly rose through the ranks and in October 1792 accepted a commission as the second-in-command of the "Black Legion." In July 1793, he was appointed brigadier general in the Army of the North and, by September was commander-in-chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees. These were exciting times, with French generals being denounced and executed left and right. But eventually he would win the (guarded) respect of Napoleon and be appointed commander of the cavalry for Napoleon's campaign in Egypt.
I've got a long ways to go in this book. It has some flaws -- fundamentally misinterpreting Rousseau's famous opening words from The Social Contract ("Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.") as fundamentally a commentary on slavery in the age when that quote really has almost nothing to do with the institution of slavery at all. But Reiss is an entertaining storyteller and the book is a wonderful introduction to the history of the French Caribbean, pre-revolutionary France and, of course, the Revolution, the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon. Dumas was fated to have a tragic ending -- dumped by Napoleon in Egypt, imprisoned in Taranto and all but forgotten for two years before being freed, a broken man.
Dumas' imprisonment provided much of the inspiration for his son's famed novels, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. This book helps bring the historical Dumas back into clearer focus. The book may not reach the majesty of a Robert K. Massie or the scholarly qualities of the Roommate, but I highly recommend it as a fun and informative read.
What are you reading?
I recently finished World War Z, and I am currently plowing through the Art Of Demotivation. I'm trying to find ways to implement the strategies I'm learning about in order to break the will of my coworkers.
We're out the door for Labor Day fun here, but I wanted to remind people of the Book Exchange. Participation has been ... slow so far.
If you want to participate, list books you're willing to send (anyone can edit the sheet), or request one that's already listed.
Back with my list of books read a little bit later.
The lease is up here in Buffalo at the end of September. After resettling, I'll add what I have to the exchange.
Books still packed, but the bookcases have been assembled now! They might be unpacked by Christmas.
Same...well, almost - bookcases are partially assembled and I anticipate a full book unpacking sometime next spring.
Hugo Award Winners were anounced last night.
Best Graphic Novel - "Saga, Volume One" by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples. I didn't like it that much, I thought the story was a little weak. Artwork was awesome though.
Best Short Story - "Mono no Aware" by Ken Liu - very good (although it wasn't my pick to win) - available here.
Best Novelette - "The Girl-Thing That Went Out For Sushi" by Pat Cadigan - I have the collection this is in, but haven't read it yet. I'll report back.
Best Novella - "The Emperor's Soul" by Brandon Sanderson. This one was very good, but I'd also like to repeat my recommendation for another nominee "After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall" by Nancy Kress.
Best Novel - "Redshirts" by John Scalzi. I like other stuff of Scalzi's, but I haven't read this one. Star Trek isn't really my thing, but I might check this one out.
please remind about the free download you mentioned recently, DG.
Link to a link to the link
I began reading the 3600 pages this morning.
Craaap. I was going to download it, but didn't want to use work bandwidth to do it. Then I forgot once I got home. How long is it up?
I was too lazy to register last night....
Up until yesterday I think. However, the EPUB file is still available, so the Kindle and PDF should also be available. I think you could still register and follow the links to download them.
I think it should also be noted that Seamus Heaney died this week. A big loss, indeed.
Apparently, Frederik Pohl died today at 93. Not sure how active he has been recently, but he was always one of the big sci-fi names when I was first getting into the genre.
Gateway made for some good computer games
Not much to report for me. I snagged a copy of A Memory of Light from the library, so I'm working on that. I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish it, though. Its been so long that I can't remember a time when I wasn't reading a Wheel of Time book.
I finished A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam the other day. I really enjoyed the micro look at Vietnam through Vann's experience, but the final couple of hundred pages (basically after Tet) left me a little flat. Sheehan didn't make much of an effort to really explain Vann's final years.
I'm just about done with Rome 1960. It's ok, but nothing special.
Unless I'm forgetting something, the only book I read this month was The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I'd read her short story collections and was interested to see how she handled a novel. The early part is definitely territory she's covered in a number of her stories (Indian couple living in Cambridge, MA; arranged marriage; husband/father with an academic career; focus on the generation of kids born in the U.S.). The novel reminded me a bit of Invisible Man in that it has to do with a man trying to find his identity and his place in the world. It was a good read, though I think I'd pick Unaccustomed Earth as my favorite of her books.
And . . . it looks like she has a new novel, The Lowland coming out this month. Realistically, I likely won't get to it for a while, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for reviews.
Stuff read this month:
Inscriptions for Headstones by Matthew Vollmer.
A collection of epitaphs, each one only one sentence long (usually a two or three page run-on). The second one in the collection was among my favorite things that I've read all year. The main themes of these were guardian angels and fatherhood (although not really at the same time). Really good.
Astray by Emma Donoghue.
All stories told about people leaving the familiar, these are good stories, the conceit of drawing the characters from letters/historical records is interesting. "Vanitas" was probably my favorite, a girl who gets in way over her head on several fronts.
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson.
Another good read. North Korea is unknown enough to me that it might as well have been set in a generic totalitarian state. I didn't react with horror to a lot of the government's practices that were supposed to spark that reaction, but perhaps I was reading a bit too detachedly, watching the author move the pieces through the story instead of getting fully invested.
I really liked the characters. There aren't many of them and most of them do horrible things and have horrible things done to them. Such is life in Johnson's North Korea. It wasn't until the beginning of part two that I really got into this one, but it was hard to put down after that. It's a book about freedom and whether you need happiness or truth or wealth to achieve it.
Errata by Michael Allen Zell.
Just finished this one, and I'm still a bit confused. An unlicensed cab-driver in New Orleans is trying to tell a story, but part of the story is too traumatic for him to tell it straightaway, so instead he's telling around the story. So many literary references, and there may be hidden messages. I'm pretty sure I didn't get everything out of it that the author put in. As it stands right now, it didn't blow me away.
College Unbound by Jeffrey Selingo.
I disagreed with a fair amount of things in here, and I think that occasionally Selingo relied too much on anecdote as evidence (although that's probably a function of writing a book instead of a thesis), but he's clearly thought a lot about what higher education will become and how it needs to change if it will continue to control the market of degrees and credentials.
Some very good points were raised about universities role as education vs. job training, and I most strongly agree that there needs to be a re-evaluation of the expectations of higher-ed's role in "employability" of students.
This book raised a lot of thoughts and ideas for me that I'm sure I'll continue to mull over (as someone who is currently getting involved on the faculty side of academia), so I'm very glad I read it.
Breaking from my "recently published books only" criteria, I'm currently reading Arabian Nights: The Thousand and One Nights for a semester-long reading and discussion series, "Muslim Journeys" held at my university on Thursday.
The Reading List for the semester:
The Arabian Nights / Husain Haddawy, Translator
The Conference of the Birds / Farid Ud-Din Attar
Snow / Orhan Pamuk
Dreams of Trespass / Fatima Mernissi
Minaret / Leila Aboulela
If you're so inclined, look for the edition of The Conference of the Birds illustrated by Peter Sis. It's gorgeous.
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach: I thought this was a really mixed bag. The baseball passages were absolutely great, elegantly written and exciting. Harbach is very good at describing the flow of a baseball game and the emotions that come with it. I think he'd make a great sportswriter in the old-timey tradition of creating drama from a box score. Unfortunately, everything that wasn't about baseball was kinda hacky, filled with contrived characters and inexplicable motivations. Pepper, I'd love to hear what you thought of it.
Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan: Oh my god this was wonderful. Easily the most fun book I’ve read in a long while. It may not be for everyone, since it has sort of a freewheeling structure and there’s very little there in terms of plot (I don’t know if I could even describe what the story is about in a way that makes sense). But it’s weird and clever and hilarious and poetic and I absolutely fell in love with it.
The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson: This is a pretty good noir-ish detective story that takes place in a semi-post-apocalyptic New York. The story was pretty good, the setting was pretty good, and the narrator was pretty good (although it felt like the author was coming through a little too much at times). I read it while on the beach this past weekend, so I guess I would officially call it a ‘fun beach read.’ All in all, it was pretty good. I guess it’s the first in a series though, and I don’t know if I liked it well enough to read the rest of them.
I also picked up a bunch of short-story collections recently that I’m really looking forward to reading:
One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin
The Peripatetic Coffin by Ethan Rutherford
This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death by various authors. I have a guarded enthusiasm for this one… I think I'm either going to love it or hate it.
I loved The Art of Fielding; I read it really fast and completely immersed myself in the book, pretty much turning off all critical filters. I can see what you're saying about the characters, though. I enjoyed the plot, the setting, and above all the writing so much that I didn't worry too much about the characters and their motivations/behaviors. I also tend to be very forgiving in a love story if the right people end up together in the end, even if it is contrived.
As I read, I found myself wondering if the idea that to be a good ballplayer one must act on instinct (honed through practice) and not overthink was also a metaphor for how Harbach views writing. Did that cross your mind as well, or was I just reading too much into it?
That's actually a really great point about the baseball being a metaphor for writing. I've read that Harbach spent like a decade writing the book, and that finishing it was an endless struggle. I think Henry's story very nicely mirrors the actual writing of the book.
I guess the biggest problem I had with it was the characterization of Owen.
if baseball is a metaphor for writing, what is baseball writing? *head asplodes*
Two lame jokes, not sure which is better:
A.
B.