Happy 200th Birthday to Mr. Dickens

Happy 200th birthday to Charles Dickens. I posted this little BBC biography a couple of years ago and was pleased to see that it is still available.  Take a look... the whole life of Charles Dickens told in just over four minutes.

 I haven't read any Dickens in several months but this is making me want to pull another one off the shelves.    Enjoy.

The Good Father

Political assassinations are such horrifying events that we search for ways to explain them to ourselves.  We hope that the murderer is insane or the member of some extremist group so far on the fringe that he and others like him are exceptionally weird - and rare.  The last thing we want to believe is that these killers can spring from average families that include loving brothers and sisters, or that their parents are as surprised by their sons’ crimes as the rest of us.  A normal person should just not be capable of such a crime.  What few of us ever consider is the effect, both long and short term, this kind of crime has on the killer’s parents.  Dr. Paul Allen, the main character of Noah Hawley’s The Good Father, is one of those parents.

Daniel Allen’s parents divorced when he was seven years old. After the divorce, Dr. Allen moved from Los Angeles to New York to begin his new medical practice.  There he remarried, fathered two young sons Daniel barely knows, and became one of New York’s most prominent physicians.  In the meantime, Daniel was growing up under the care of a woman who could hardly care for herself, much less him.  In his teens, Daniel would move to New York to live with his father’s second family but he would never feel that he belonged there. 

The country is stunned when the man who seems destined to be the next president of the United States is gunned down at a Los Angeles political event.  The Paul Allen family receives an even greater shock when, just minutes later, they see on television that 20-year-old Daniel is believed to be the shooter.  Suddenly, the FBI is at Paul’s front door and television news reporters are right behind the agents.  This marks the beginning of Paul Allen’s quest to prove his son’s innocence, a journey that will see him put his new marriage at risk, consider the most outlandish conspiracy theories imaginable, spend thousands of dollars, and relocate his family to rural Colorado in search of a place to live in peace.

Noah Hawley

The Good Family is a book about obsession, rationalization, and false hope.  It is a book about blind love and parental guilt, but it touches on broader themes such as how one instant can forever change individual lives and the direction of an entire country.  The Good Family is about choices – those made and those not made. 

All of these are worthy themes for a book to tackle, but the story itself is surprisingly lifeless considering the depth of emotions Paul Allen experiences.  Paul is the only fully developed character in the book, causing all the rest, even Daniel, to feel a bit flat in comparison.  Too, the numerous case studies of famous real life assassinations, within which Paul tries to find some similarity between those assassins and his son, give the book a disjointed feel.  There are also the way too many reminders that Paul is taking a “scientific approach” to proving his son’s innocence, the same approach he uses in his practice to diagnose a mysterious illness. After the third or fourth reminder, I grew bored with the repetition and began to question the author’s faith in his readers’ memories.  This is a case of a plot and message being better than their execution.

Rated at: 3.0

Squeezing in a Few Pages on Super Bowl Sunday

Ferris Bueller Superbowl Commercial

As I'm sure all of you know, this is Super Bowl Sunday.  It's hard to hide from it, even if you might want to do that.  I had lunch with my dad this morning and learned that his assisted living is going to show the game in the little movie theater they have there.  It seats about 60 people, the sound is excellent, the screen is huge, and it looks like a great place for up to half the residents to watch the game together.  I think I talked him into watching at least the first half of the game there.

My wife is in the kitchen preparing a potato salad to feed twenty that we are carrying to our own Super Bowl party this afternoon.  So, all in all, I won't have much reading time today.  I have, however, finished The Good Father, a novel about the father of a boy who becomes a political assassin.  I did not find it to be nearly as moving a read as I expected it to be, so I have to call it a bit of a disappointment.  I'm going to gather my thoughts on that one for a couple of days before trying to express them in a formal review.

I decided to go to my Library of America Raymond Chandler collection to choose one of his "later novels" as my next book.  I settled on The Lady in the Lake from 1943, and I'm already hooked.  It really surprises me how contemporary this one still feels.  Except for the obvious references to telegrams instead of cell phones, and the like, this one could be set in today's world.  Of course, I'm only about 35 pages in, so that will likely change.

Well, I'm off to get in another few pages before it's time to get dressed for the party...have fun.

It's Not Too Late - But Hurry

"Dear World Book Night book giver."  Hey, that's me - and it could be YOU!

I received an email this morning alerting me that my application to participate in World Book Night on April 23 has been approved, so it looks like I'll be giving away 20 copies of one of my favorite books, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, that night.  I'm looking forward to the evening, and I plan to document the experience via a few photos.

But, even better is the news that it's not too late to land a U.S. spot in the event for yourself because the application deadline has been extended to midnight (not sure what time zone that is, so play it safe) on February 6.

Visit the WBN site from this link and sign up if interested.  All the details can be found there, including the application and a list of 30 titles from which you can choose your giveaway copies.  Should be lots of fun - and a very rewarding experience to boot.  Hurry...

A Stranger on the Planet

Seth Shapiro is blessed, some would say cursed, with the ability to remember all the little things that have ever happened to him.  His estranged father tells Seth that he remembers “everything that’s not important.”  Perhaps what Seth remembers is unimportant to everyone else, but each specific incident he recounts in Adam Schwartz’s debut novel, A Stranger on the Planet, marks him deeply and helps make him into the man he becomes.

It is 1969 and the Shapiro family, having been abandoned by Seth’s father, is down to four: twins, Seth and Sarah; little brother Seamus; and Ruth, their 35-year-old mother.  Dr. Shapiro has moved out of state to start a family with his new French wife and Ruth is overly anxious about finding a new father-figure for the children.  Unfortunately for all of them, Ruth is the kind of woman willing to accept just about anyone she can plug into that slot.

The kindest thing one can say about Ruth’s relationship with her three children is that she means well.  She wants the best for them but, deep down inside, it is really all about Ruth.  Hers is such a fragile ego that she relies on her children for the kind of emotional support she should be offering them.  That their father seems oblivious to their existence (despite the financial support he provides), compounds their emotional instability.

Adam Schwartz

Seth, Sarah, and Seamus respond quite differently to their dysfunctional upbringing.  Seamus, too young to remember much about his father, looks to a strict adherence to his Jewish faith for the stability and structure he needs in his life.  Sarah and Seth turn to each other for that kind of stability, but react differently to their father’s indifference toward them.  On the one hand, Sarah accepts her father for what he is: a man too cowardly to confront his new wife’s feelings about his first family.  On the other, Seth never stops yearning for his father’s respect and love, but does not recognize how much alike he and his father are.  Each of them, to his detriment, finds it impossible to express his emotions.

Much of this coming-of-age novel is funny, some of it even laugh-out-loud funny – especially when Seth, in his refusal to compromise his beliefs or feelings, uses his wit and biting tongue to deflate the pretentiousness he often encounters.  But, as the years pass, and Seth continues his struggle to understand himself and his family, the serious tone of the novel becomes more and more evident.  The tragedy of a young man who cannot relate to the mother who raised him, but pines for the love of a father who wants as little to do with him as possible, can be hard to watch.   There is a lot to take from this one.

Rated at: 4.0

The Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon Battle Heats Up

In terms of capitalization value, it's almost this bad for B&N.

The Barnes & Noble announcement today that Amazon-published books will not be sold in Barnes & Noble bookstores is not much of a surprise to anyone who has kept up with the fight for survival that the chain is facing.  Spokesman Jamie Carey said today that the decision not to sell the books was made in protest of the exclusive agreements that Amazon is trying to negotiate with publishers, writers, and literary agents.

The Christian Science Monitor has all the details on its website:

“These exclusives have prohibited us from offering certain eBooks to our customers. Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content,” Carey continued.

“It’s clear to us that Amazon has proven they would not be a good publishing partner to Barnes & Noble as they continue to pull content off the market for their own self interest.” 

[...]

Barnes & Noble said it will continue to make Amazon titles available on its website. But thanks to the traditional book retailer’s latest move, Amazon may struggle to get its books into anything but a virtual marketplace.

Read the article.  You might be surprised by which company is publishing the Amazon print books and which authors have already signed exclusive agreements with the company.

And the beat goes on...