The Corrections

The Corrections (or how to bring down Oprah's Book Club with what would seem like a simple refusal, but could in fact be a kind of literary or academic snub...aw, who are we kidding, that's what it is, but then again... is it? )
by Jonathan Franzen
Featured on the Time Magazine Top 100
           In October of last year, I told all of my classes about a book that was coming out soon. It was a book I was sort of thrilled about, not so much because of the actual reading experience itself, but because of the nature of the hype that was beginning to swirl around it. Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom had been given a release date, and it had been selected for Oprah's Book Club. This, in and of itself, was not the news. I doubted that any of my students knew who Jonathan Franzen was, and while they live on the planet Earth and so, naturally, know who Oprah is, I also doubted that they paid even the slightest little bit of attention to her book club. But what made this interesting, newsworthy stuff is that Franzen had been an Oprah selection before, and he had turned her down. His reasoning was a concern that an Oprah logo would dissuade male readers from picking up the book. He also said that while Oprah had picked some good books, she had picked enough bad ones that he did not want to be on that list. Winfrey uninvited him, and stopped her book club for a fairly significant period of time.
            I am of two minds here. To take Franzen's side to begin with, I can imagine it would be hard to see a novel, something that he had obviously worked very hard on, repurposed as a vehicle for a daytime talk show host. It was not as if the Oprah selection was just a passing mention that was done on the air once. Rather it is a logo that would be emblazoned on the cover of every copy sold. If Franzen doesn't want that, his saying no should not be cause for a misunderstanding. But because he had spurned the good graces of a beloved public figure, he was called a misogynist and an elitist. Okay. But I think there is something to what he is saying, though. I like book clubs, and have enjoyed every single one I have been a part of, but I have read some pretty awful books because of them (Apparently time traveling is rough on a marriage. Who knew?), and Franzen seemed more interested in being in a part of an artistic conversation than he was with selling books to people he was afraid would not fully appreciate his work.
           On the other hand, praise to Oprah for taking Franzen's bad behavior (and it is hard to see his spurning of her as anything more than an artistic temper tantrum, which, okay, I tried to empathize with him in the above paragraph, but really, Mr. Franzen, the people who would pick up your book, look it over, think about it, and put it down because of a daytime talk show host's logo, are not readers you need anyway. They would find some other reason to reject you. You won the National Book Award for this book. Are Oprah fans not allowed to like it too? C'mon!) as constructive criticism. The first book that Oprah put on her list after her book club returned was East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Granted, it was a safe call since Steinbeck was dead and couldn't say no, but it is an unquestionably good book. The books that followed, as far as I know, were a departure from the chick lit (okay, so chick lit is a sort of pejorative term, and nowhere near every book that was selected could be called that, but this was Franzen's case) that she had been putting on her list. For years (until she stopped the book club just recently) the Oprah Book Club logo was a sign of quality, and not just mass appeal. Indeed, Oprah really was a major force in book publishing, and hopefully someone will step up and fill that space before too long (before everyone has to depend on this blog to tell them what to read, which I guess would be all right).
             The book itself is fine. It wasn't my favorite book I read that month, it wasn't my least favorite. The novel was about a family that had grown up and apart. The children had all rebelled against the midwestern values they had been raised with, and were all going through a crisis of some sort. The father was also dealing with dementia. What I remember being intrigued by was the sense that Franzen did not necessarily like his characters, nor did he hate them. He also didn't really care if the readers liked them. Thinking about this now, I have to say this is a risky choice, and may have been one of the reasons I wasn't thrilled with the book. Since I didn't care that much about the characters, there did not seem to be much at stake. That was not Franzen's fault. It was mine. I think when I read this book, I was a bad reader. Franzen's thesis was one I did not comprehend at the time. His characters were definitely not bad people, they were simply self-serving. Even in nice or altruistic acts, they were self-serving.
           This observation made me uncomfortable, since I know that on some level every good act that I do has a degree of selfishness. I don't mean to suggest that Franzen should be compared with Ayn Rand, and that he looks down on altruism, but what Franzen excels at is stripping away the reasons why one would be altruistic, and for his characters, those reasons tend to be deep-seeded  longings that come from ancient slights, inadequacies, and personal tragedies.
          At one point I would like to go back and read this book again. I got a copy of Freedom for Christmas, and while it wasn't the Earth-shattering literary event that the hype would have suggested (Franzen was on the cover of Time Magazine! Do you know how many fiction writers have been on the cover of Time Magazine? Like, none.), it was still fairly amazing (when he publishes his next novel he will ride on a winged horse through Manhattan, carrying a copy of the book over his head. Or something like that. He has to do something ridiculous to top himself). You know what's on the cover of Freedom? An Oprah logo.

Coming Soon:

White Teeth

White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
Featured on the Time Magazine Top 100
        I had a professor in college who was a very outspoken woman. I think she was incredibly disappointed with us, since we had the gall to walk into her classroom not being able to read Old English with ease and sophistication. The class took on a very antagonistic tone early on. Our professor seemed openly hostile to anyone who became frustrated with the material, and students stepped up the normal eye roll or gritted teeth motions that accompany frustration. To top it all off, at least one day a week the room smelled like cat pee. Then she broke her arm. She didn't know what this meant in terms of her continuing as our teacher, but she knew what she wanted it to mean. She requested that someone else take over our class, and in the interim, while she waited for a decision, she stopped teaching the class and began a series of academic gossip (we got an earful about the former President of Harvard), angry sermons about the state of education in general (she said something concerning her good spirits upon hearing of Diane Hacker's death), and, most alarmingly, a rant about the large Pakistani population living in London.
        This last part was rather uncharacteristic. Although she could come off as a gruff and joyless person, it was easy to see (especially if a student dared to speak one on one with her) that this was a ruse, and that in actuality, she was a kind, warm, and even funny individual. But when she spoke of Pakistanis in her beloved London, it was with a disdain that came from a place that was hard to understand, and of all her bits of rather salty discourse, this was the one that made me actively uncomfortable (as opposed to amused or horrified).
         A while ago I wrote about a friend's reaction to Blood Meridian: "It's about America." Well, with the same enthusiasm and almost breathless praise, let me say this about White Teeth: "It's about Britain." More to the point, it's about how Britain's past has caught up with its present. The novel begins with a man named Archie on New Year's Day, 1975. His wife walks out on him, and, distraught and suicidal, he walks into a bar where he meets a younger woman named Clara. Clara is the daughter of a Jamaican woman, and has had a very devout upbringing. The two marry and have a child. Flash forward, and that child befriends the twin sons of Archie's old war buddy, a Pakistani who has emigrated to London following World War II. His twin boys, despite sharing the same DNA and looking exactly alike, are as different as two people can be. One is attempting, in a rather confused and bumbling way, to assimilate into mainstream British culture. The other is becoming a part of a Muslim Brotherhood (the end of the novel sees him furious at writer Salman Rushdie, whose publication of a novel entitled The Satanic Verses caused a fatwā, or death sentence, to be placed on him). White Teeth could be seen as no more than an allegory, a look at how the nuclear families of the novel do not reflect conservative values, but are instead more of a mixed bag, but that would suggest that the characters are there only to serve Smith's vision of contemporary London. And it is so much more than that. The novel humanizes the feelings of the people that my professor seemed so content to dismiss. Archie's friend is living in London, and there is no reason for him to think he should feel bad about it. He fought for the British in World War II. Archie marries a black woman, not out of any sort of social insight or need to make a statement. It is for love. Despite the chaos of the lives of these characters, the novel is partly hopeful about the state of Great Britain as it starts the journey toward the 21st Century. The novel sees these two families becoming one, if not happily (or even functionally), at the very least, irrevocably.
       It is interesting that the professor who was so indignant about the large Pakistani presence in London was teaching a class on The Canterbury Tales. That celebrated poem was about a group of people making a journey and telling stories, and in a way those stories help readers to understand what Britain was. And that was the Britain that made sense to my professor. But Britain has changed, permanently, over and over again during its history. White Teeth is a novel that shows us the state of affairs moving forward, giving the reader strings of multicultural stories and histories that are being woven into the tapestry of an ever evolving social landscape. I have been to London once, and I think partly because I was shown the more touristy part of the city, I did not see the London my professor saw, which was a city that was going through a turbulent change. No doubt the feelings of separation, rejection, and anxiety caused by being made to feel an "other" in the place that one calls home, contribute to the frame of mind that produced the vicious bombings of July 7, 2005. Zadie Smith's book helps to illuminate the past, to understand it, and to help the reader realize that it is not something that can be escaped. 

Coming Soon:

All the King's Men

All the King's Men
By Robert Penn Warren
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1947
         On a (probably) rainy day in early 2006, I was browsing in Chop Suey Books. This was something I did on days when I didn't have a class, had finished all of my homework, and was bored. So, a lot. My book collection grew exponentially during the two-year period where I lived within easy walking distance of that establishment, and I am still trying to make a dent in that stack. Anyhow, I was looking at the used fiction books when I overheard this sliver of conversation between the store's owner and a customer:
Owner-That is quite an impressive haul.
Customer-  Yeah, I'm planning on reading all the books that won the Pulitzer, but I really don't want to read All the King's Men.
          So...first I would like to say cheers to this stranger for planting, in the back of my mind, the desire to tackle this project. And now, jeers for giving me an apprehension about this book. I don't know how suggestible I am (at work a coworker told me she needed the candy bar I was holding, and this was something I didn't question, so the issue of my suggestibility is probably something best left unanswered), but that comment had a fairly profound impact. I know that in the summer of 2006, I had a list of the books I intended to read on an index card. There were 8 titles on that list. As of the beginning of 2011  All the Kings Men was still unread. Jeers indeed. I know there were plenty of times when my finger ran over the books on my shelf, and if it paused on the spine, I would hear the echo of "...I don't want to read All the King's Men..." In my head, this book became a chore, like mowing the lawn on a way too hot day, or going to the dentist. 
          One thing that worried me was Robert Penn Warren. Warren is not really remembered for his fiction. I could be mistaken, but I don't think he published any other novels in his career. Instead, he is known primarily for shaping the way English literature was taught in colleges and high schools more so than any figure that I know of. Warren established, with others, the New Criticism. This was a way of looking at works of fiction and poetry that completely divorced them from context or intent. New Criticism focused on a close reading of what was on the page. Perhaps it is not altogether unimportant, considering the subject matter of the novel, that the adoption of New Criticism was very political. Teachers could use this approach to look at works in as non-controversial a way as possible. Not that I require that every book I read be riddled with controversy, but in my head this was a bit of a warning sign that the king wanted to surround himself with milquetoast bores, and the real victim would be me, the reader and sucker who put cash on the table to get a copy.
             And when I started, I hate to say it, but I had the hardest time getting into it. Part of that was probably my fault. I was reading on a bus ride from VA to Manhattan. And while I was reading the opening paragraphs, there was a television right over my head that kept going in and out. When it was in, it was the Chipmunks movie. When it was out, it was the Chipmunks movie without sound. 
             Since reading it in a non-bus, non-Chipmunks setting, I have to let everyone know, lest they are unsure how I feel about it: This book was awesome.          
             The novel is about a powerful governor, Willie Stark, as seen through the eyes of Jack Burden, a man who Stark has hired to uncover the secrets of his political enemies. The bulk of the story revolves around the discoveries that Jack makes while working for Willie, and how corruption breeds corruption. The novel is also about how heroes are not real, but only imperfect people with undiscovered imperfections. Jack loves Willie and admires him because of qualities he saw in him years before the idea of power or influence were factors, but as he investigates for Willie his whole cult of hero-worship comes tumbling down.
             I have been reading a lot lately. Aside from pleasure novels, I usually do a lot of reading for work, and so I have become acquainted with a significant number of characters. At a certain saturation point, it is hard to care or empathize with some characters unless they are compellingly drawn. Warren draws characters that are compelling, and then some. The secrets that Jack Burden reveals, in the course of his investigations for Stark, bring about shocking reveals, stories of betrayal, corruption, and murder. And while I could generally guess what the reveals would be the page before they occur, in this case reading the words provided a certain nod of approval for Robert Penn Warren for so completely defying my expectations.
              To the random customer in Chop Suey all those years ago: First, how is your project of reading the Pulitzers going? So so for me. Second, whatever reservations you have involving this book (there was a regrettable film adaptation with Sean Penn and Jude Law and actually a lot of other notable actors that did nothing to make me want to pick this up), it is time to set them aside. If for no other reason, it will be good to strike it off your list.

Coming Soon:

 
     

Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
        I wish I could tell you I loved this as much as some BM admirers. No dice. I remember the day I picked this up at a bookstore, I mentioned it to a friend of mine. Here is the brief conversation:
Me: Hey, I picked up a copy of Blood Meridian.
Friend: (Way too excited) Yeah you did!
       This is the type of reaction I would expect if I had told him I had won a spicy food eating contest, met a celebrity, built my own canoe, or even had a request played on Delilah. All I had done was mention, in an offhand way, that I had picked up a copy of a book. I don't recall if he had ever mentioned liking this book before, or if, at this particular moment he was feeling more optimistic than a Kindergarten teacher on arts and crafts day (which I guess is everyday). I do remember this friend would get very excited if he saw a movie and afterwards could describe it thusly: "That was about America." He got very excited about There Will Be Blood. "That was about America." One thing you can say about almost any work by Cormac McCarthy, or any that I have encountered (I think the exception may be The Road), is that they are about America.
        I read Blood Meridian as part of a summer reading book club with another friend of mine from graduate school. I think that if I had not agreed to read it beforehand, I would have put it down early on. This book is extremely gruesome, opening with a battle scene where a group of men are killed, and then mutilated, and then it proceeds to get grosser from there. The main character is a runaway who joins up with a gang of men that massacre Indians along the Texas/Mexico border in the mid 1800s, shortly before the Civil War. As the men commit more atrocities, we see the violence that the United States was built on during westward expansion.
       By making the book stomachchurningly violent, McCarthy reminds the reader that the mythos of the American west, especially the one we see in John Wayne movies, is a construct. What is real are the corpses, and there are a lot of them. McCarthy does write good characters (good as in virtuous, not well-drawn), but they are not on display here. The difference between good and evil is decided by the litmus test of: took part in a genocide/orchestrated a genocide. The book is also written in a rather archaic style, very unlike the stripped down prose that he has been using lately.
       Harold Bloom, a critic and professor at Yale, said that Blood Meridian was an example of a "sublime text." To which I say, look Dr. Yale, perhaps we differ in the definition of sublime, but when I think of sublime things I don't usually think of graphic descriptions of viscera. Is this a telling bit of personality you're letting us in on? Was Hostel sublime, too? You sicken me Harold Bloom.
      And as much as Harold Bloom deserves our scorn, other notable people like this book, too. It was featured on the Time Magazine list (which is why I'm talking about it here), and that's something. 
        There is a film adaptation of Blood Meridian in the works. Hopefully, in terms of McCarthy adaptations it will be more No Country for Old Men and less All the Pretty Horses or The Road (because the former was awesome, and the latter two were lame). Right now James Franco is set to direct, which is interesting, and it may mean that there is a part in here for Seth Rogan and Danny McBride. Let me rephrase. I hope it means that.

Coming soon:

The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny
by Herman Wouk
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1952

        When I was around 8 or 9 years old, I decided to watch the television mini-series The Winds of War. For some reason this seemed to be a very mature and adult undertaking, and so I commenced (for a fairly short period of time) to work through a production that I could not in any way, shape, or form follow. I had vague ideas of World War II, which helped me slightly to understand what was happening, but this long narrative about the lives, love affairs, and careers of the central characters was decidedly not made with a child in mind. But for some reason I was willing to soldier on, hoping that there would be some plot thread I could follow. What I do remember very clearly is the fact that the German army was planning on invading Poland, and as that eventuality approached the accompanying music got darker and grimmer. And I panicked. I remember that some of my peers were watching slasher flicks at this point, but I couldn't handle the potential for violence that was threatened by a network mini-series depiction of a World War II invasion sequence (which is one of many reasons I am sort of a wimp and why I am writing a blog about books I have read, and not people I have beaten up). 
        Flash forward to the summer before 9th grade. My mom took me to the library and checked me out a copy of The Winds of War by Herman Wouk. I don't remember how this edition was paginated, but the edition I have now is 1043 pages. I read through that book with a workmanlike persistence, and I have to say I was engrossed (I remember one day announcing to my Dad that I had read 100 pages that day when he came home from work). The book took a fictional family (The Henrys) and placed them behind the scenes of several different key moments of World War II, with the novel ending when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I was primed to start the sequel, War and Remembrance, when my mom dropped a bomb of her own. "It's probably too intense for you right now. Try in a few years." Okay. I watched both miniseries (this, I remember, annoyed my brother since The Winds of War was 16 hours long and War and Remembrance was something like 20 hours, and this television monopolization really ate into his video game play quite a bit) and in the sequel, fairly early on, the main characters start dropping like flies. I remember watching the sequence where the first main character is killed over and over again in disbelief, since the events surrounding his death were very inconsequential. It seemed utterly unfair. Another character, who was marginalized as a sort of spineless jerk in the first book, dies a very lonely and unsung (or at the very least undersung) death, and I remember going to bed composing arguments about how this character was one of the most tragic heroes in literature (an argument I would not make now), and how I identified with both his early discomfort (that could easily be read as cowardice), and felt I had a similar slowly developing sense of responsibility that led him to become a man of action who was quickly in over his head.
        I think as a way of dulling the pain of keeping War and Remembrance from me, my mom gave me a copy of The Caine Mutiny for Christmas my freshman year of high school. The book was much older, written soon after the end of World War II, and not a lot of time to go look back and contextualize the war and its huge effect on U.S. history. Instead, the book is personal, and it is more apparent that what we are seeing is a personal account of the war. The book starts with the narrator, a young man, enlisting in the navy. He goes through an officer training program and is assigned to a minesweeper that is falling apart. He clashes with the captain who is incredibly slack, is pleased with a new captain who is assigned to the ship, but slowly comes to realize that this captain is insane. The events of the novel unfold slowly, and the characters are very vividly drawn. What is interesting here is that the narrator is not the main mover and shaker of the plot, but instead observes and relates a story that mostly occurs around him. Apparently, I wasn't the only person to make that observation. There was a film adaptation that was made in 1954 where Humphrey Bogart played Captain Queeg, Fred MacMurray plays a mutineer, and the narrator and central character of the novel is played by... I have no idea. His part in the film was minimized as much as possible. In my desire to minimize spoilers I won't go into specifics, but suffice to say the title of the book kinda gives things away. If you are a fan of Captain Queeg's command technique, you might find yourself a little disappointed to see what happens to him.
          It's been years since I've read this book, but the climax of the novel (which happens a solid 200 pages before the book ends) is a riveting one. My senior year of high school I wanted to direct a scene for our school's talent show, so I adapted the climactic scene into a sketch. (My wife says this makes me a nerd. I have to suggest that there have been many other things that should have clued her into that before.) This was a terrible idea, did not go anywhere, and if seen by an audience it would have been a disaster. I got a few people to agree to act in it, and we rehearsed once and decided to all walk away and never talk about it again. I guess the statute of limitations is past. Man, that was terrible.
        The Caine Mutiny was a great novel, and I would recommend it in a heartbeat. But I don't know if you will have the same reaction to it as I did. For some reason I experienced this novel on a fairly personal level. I was reading this right as I was going into high school, and I understood the narrator's difficulties getting acclimated to his new surroundings, making friends, and finally becoming a mature adult. That last part has generally eluded me.

Coming Soon:

To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird
by
Harper Lee

TKAM won the Pulitzer in 1961. It is also featured on the Time Magazine Top 100. It is also a classic novel of growing up, growing something else, maturing, and I have no idea what this book is about. It has been almost two decades since I've read it, and I don't remember it AT ALL. Now, I don't want this to suggest I did not like the book. My memories of reading it are mostly positive. I remember I was given the book as an Easter gift, not knowing it was a classic of any great repute, and then taking a longer time than normal to get into it. Then I devoured it. 
Here's something else that is sort of funny. I've seen the movie. I enjoyed the movie. I have no memory of it. I could tell you about little scenes or vignettes from either the book or movie, but I would be completely unable to reproduce the story, a line of dialogue, any sort of stirring moment...anything. This is the sum total of what I know about TKAM: Scout, Boo Bradley (and I might be wrong about that and be thinking of a band from the early 90s), it takes place in the south, and there is a courtroom scene. Also the narrator's father was a lawyer and I admired him as a reader and in the movie he was played by Gregory Peck (who is an iconic actor from a bygone age who I have always had a hard time taking seriously for some reason). If I had to write a book report on this novel I would get a D at best. Which is sad, since I generally suggest it to high school students.
This is not a normal phenomenon for me. My memory of specific scenes in books and movies is generally pretty sharp. It in fact kinda sucks that I'm starting with a book that is drawing a complete goose egg in terms of salient details. But for realzies, check it out.
One thing that I discovered about this book much much later (and I'm sure a lot of other people made this realization too while watching this movie) is that Harper Lee was actually a good friend of Truman Capote's, and actually worked with him as his research assistant while he was writing In Cold Blood. Another interesting thing about Harper Lee is aside from a short story published in Oprah Winfrey's magazine O, this is it. When I tried to write short stories and novels I was CONVINCED that a really interesting and compelling opening scene would be two people talking about how Harper Lee only wrote one novel (for thematic purposes the short story can be ignored) and maybe this conversation can lead our hero to have the courage to face any sort of quest he or she had to in order to get some sort of personal fulfillment, and be in the same league as Harper Lee, not a one hit wonder as a very cynical person would think, but a person who achieved a sort of artistic perfection and decided to never look back. I guess. I honestly don't remember very well.

Coming soon:

Coming soon:

Greetings to those in the blog world who found this by accident, or after I insisted you find it in increasingly desperate conversations where I happened to mention pointedly that I am starting a blog.

     Okay, so, a few quick things about me (assuming you are not a family member, a friend who I have told I am starting a blog, or someone who has overheard a conversation I was having with someone else about same) that you may want to know. I own a lot of books. I read a lot, but I own even more on the off chance that there may be a blizzard and I'm stuck by myself, and for some reason I have enough firewood that burning the books would not be necessary for my survival, and I also have plenty of food (I don't want to go insane with fear in this hypothetical blizzard). I'm sure as a consumer you know this feeling. It is the reason people own copies of the board game Risk and a copy of The Seven Samurai (by the way, anyone who would like to make a comment about how awesome and accessible The Seven Samurai is so that my wife will watch it with me, I would really appreciate it. My argument that it is a four hour black and white movie in Japanese was sort of a nonstarter). One day there will be an afternoon or five when I will read 160 novels without pause and this will somehow not alienate me from my family and friends, nor will it make me forget about various important commitments I have to myself, such as personal grooming (or to others, like pet poop scooping). So, yes, my bookshelves are impressive looking, and while I have read a lot of the books on my shelf one might get the impression by looking at these shelves that I am a literary dynamo (in terms of reading) and, to be fair, this is not an impression I generally dissuade people of. Sometimes if someone comments on the number of books I have, I give a little bashful smile and shrug, but part of me always knows the deception involved. I've never read The Brothers Karamazov, and there it is on my shelf taking up quite a bit of space. And Mason & Dixon...that's a huge book, and, again, no I've never read it. One day I will. One magical day when I have time and feel like it. Or if there is a blizzard. And I have firewood. And food.
      Now the Pulitzer Prize is an easily identifiable stamp of quality, that for years I had all but ignored when deciding what to pick up. Sure, I would note if a book I was reading had won the Pulitzer, especially if I was telling a friend they should check it out. I always feel that my recommendation might not be good enough, and a Pulitzer is sort of like a thumbs up from the Universe. Then last year I decided to see how many Pulitzer Prize winners I had read (thank you Wikipedia). I was a little surprised. I have a Bachelors and a Masters in English Lit. I have been an avid reader for quite some time. I think I had read like ten books. In order to make myself feel better I pulled up another list of "best books," which are pretty much a dime a dozen (a list that kind of cracked me up had Atlas Shrugged as the best book ever) and in no way are they really accurate since rating a book is entirely subjective. So in an entirely subjective way I decided to look at the Time Magazine Top 100. I did a little better on that list, but again, not as well as I would have wanted. So I decided, this will be my goal. This will be what I do. My reading has direction, at least for the next couple of years. And it will take me a couple of years. I know this. I am a deliberate reader, but slow, so very slow.
       My purpose writing a blog is this: I will discuss my process of reading books on these two lists. My goal will be to celebrate the books on the list that I love and straight dis the ones I didn't. Not really, I will try to be respectful since winning a Pulitzer is more than I will ever do. But I know me, and I know I won't have much in the way of nice things to say about some books (I'm looking at you Eudora Welty). I will also not reveal huge plot details without ample warning. So, there's that.
        Now, I hope you enjoy. I hope I have the sticktoitiveness to do this thing up right. And...begin.