2006 Book Wrap-Up

Here is what I read this year, roughly in order:

1. Indecision - Benjamin Kunkel (240pgs)
2. A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle (207)
3. The Flaneur - Edmund White (211)
4. Damage - Josephine Hart (195)
5. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (192)
6. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (391)
7. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (529)
8. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (457)
9. A Mouthful of Air - Anthony Burgess (416)
10. Against Love - Laura Kipnis (207)
11. Woe is I - Patricia O'Connor (240)
12. Paris to the Moon - Adam Gopnik (342)
13. Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (348)
14. Stories of Roald Dahl - R. Dahl (520)
15. Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins (342)
16. Candide - Voltaire (120)
17. How I Became Stupid - Martin Page (160)
18. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (489)
19. Ada - Vladimir Nabokov (445)
20. Field Notes From a Catastrophe - Elizabeth Kolbert (191)
21. English as a Global Language - David Crystal (191)
22. The Human Stain - Philip Roth (361)
23. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth (271)
24. How to be Good - Nick Hornby (305)
25. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (315)
26. The Hours - Michael Cunningham (226)
27. Six Moral Tales - Eric Rohmer (262)
28. Perfume - Patrick Süskind (255)
29. Time and the Hunter (in progress) - Italo Calvino (152)
30. The Russian Debutate's Handbook (in progress) - Gary Shteyngart (476)

Page count: 9,056
Pages per week: 174

Well, that's not so bad, considering there was school in there as well. Occasionally I even interacted with others!

Winners:

1. Ada - Vladimir Nabokov.
This is the best book I've ever read. Gorgeously indescribable and life-changing, hilariously funny... a masterpiece. Is it creepy to say that I felt close to Nabokov while reading this? I feel like we're kindred spirits, which is one of the best things you can feel while reading a book.

2. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov.
It was a very merry Nabokov year, obviously. While "Ada" is a masterpiece, it's also a tricky mistress, and was sometimes so difficult that I was plunged into despair. "Pale Fire," on the other hand, has all of Ada's joys but few of its sorrows; really, there is no reason why anyone shouldn't love this book. Honestly, Pale Fire is probably even "better" than Ada (the writing and organization are flawless (!), whereas Ada tends to ramble and wallow in itself) but Ada inexplicably touched me on some crazy level, so I prefer it. Pale Fire really is fantastic, though; it's probably one of the funniest books I've ever read. It is also probably the only novel ever written that combines a fake poetry critique with a murder mystery, which is reason enough to at least think about reading it.

3. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Won the Pulitzer Prize, and rightfully so -- amazing! I'd recommend this to anyone. I believe this is also the first and only book to make me sob while reading it.

4. Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
Everyone my age has already read this, so I feel like some sort of sad 50 year old who has just discovered Led Zeppelin. Seriously, though... this is storytelling at its best; I read it in April, but I still think about it all the time. Epic!

5. Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Ben's dad gave this to me on Christmas, and I finished it 2 days later... it was that kind of book. I don't know what it is about these perfume sagas; I was completely, completely, completely engrossed while reading this, and I can't get the story out of my head. They've made a movie out of this (by Tom Tykwer of "Run Lola Run" fame!) which comes out next week, and which I am completely obsessed with (one of my great secret loves is reading books, then seeing the movies they've been made into).

6. Other things I loved but don't feel like writing about:
Indecision (except for the cop-out hipsteriffic ending)
Plot Against America (wonderful, I already wrote about this in a previous entry)
A Clockwork Orange
A Mouthful of Air
Stories of Roald Dahl
Six Moral Tales (I'll write about this later, I hope)

LOSERS:

1. How I Became Stupid - Martin Page
This book has no redeeming value; it never manages to find anything to say and keeps the story bland without ever becoming a "bad" book (which might have been funny or at least interesting). There is literally no reason for it to exist on this earth. It is so insipid that I forgot it existed until I looked at my list... if I had to describe it in one word, it would be "tolerable." Try again, Martin Page.

2. The Flanuer - Edmund White
Terrible.

3. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
I actually really enjoyed this book, but the hype surrounding it was so great that I couldn't help but feel disappointed. It's a good book, yes, but a Pulitzer winner? And why is it everyone's favorite? I couldn't see it. I don't want to be overly critical, because I really did enjoy the story (it's very well-written!) but the payoffs just weren't as grand as I had hoped, and the emotional impact was nearly zero. Is it lame to say I liked "The Virgin Suicides" better?

4. Time and the Hunter - Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino, I don't think I understand you. This is the second book of yours that I've gotten halfway through and dreaded finishing. Get away from me, I think we're through.

Go Cobras!

It turns out that Parkland is not where the smart kids congregate. I do a lot of forehead slapping when I'm there.

On the other hand, Parkland was offering free hot dogs the other day, which is something that never happened at the U of I.

well, this is the end.

"If you have no advertising in schools at all, it doesn't give our young people an accurate picture of our society."
-- a PepsiCo official, on why soft drink advertising should be allowed in elementary schools

(taken from Food Politics by Marion Nestle)

sesquipedalophobia

Today I finished watching Cinema 16: European Short Films, which surpassed all of my expectations; actually, it's pretty incredible. I'm normally not "in to" short films, but this caught my eye because of all the big names... we're talking Lars von Trier (his graduation piece! It's pretty much exactly what you'd envision if given the prompt "Lars von Trier Graduation Film"), Lukas Moodysson, Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Anders Thomas Jensen (featuring Ulrich Thomsen of Festen, one of my #1 secret heartthrobs!), and various other Europeans of note. This was also my first experience with Jan Svankmajer (Czech animator), who seems right up my alley, and who I plan to become obsessed with immediately. Of particular interest are several films by directors who either haven't done any feature films, or who've just started their careers (Juan Solanas, Virgil Widrich, and especially the hilarious Javier Fesser)... I'll be keeping an eye out for them. What an amazing dvd!

After watching the Moodysson short, I was looking up his newest film on IMDB (A Hole in My Heart) and noticed that it was out on PAL, so we should be getting that in soon; between that and all the Haneke I've been watching, I should be non-functional for at least several days afterwards. (Apparently, this one is even harder to watch than Lilya 4-Ever -- why am I excited by this?) Anyway, in combing the IMDB chat boards, I found out that both Lilya 4-Ever and A Hole in My Heart are available from Netflix on REGION 1... ?! How? These aren't available anywhere. I asked Geoff, and he said that they must have some exclusive deal, which is ridiculous. This is the exact kind of insidious bullshit that masquerades as customer-friendly policy ("We, Netflix, want to bring the best selection to you, Customer! PS: Not really.")... pardon my paranoid ramblings, but this is going to backfire and get us all in the end. I realize that my "Damn the Man!" ideologies will probably eventually degenerate into me crouching in the back of a darkened hovel, hissing at an errant sunbeam, but for now I'm 24 and it's still kind of cute. Peace, dude!

Mainly: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

In other news, yesterday I actually said, "You are gross!" to a spider. It didn't seem to care what I thought.

on the nature of love

First of all, this man is my ultimate hero. Oh, Vladimir Nabokov, you are something else. Not only did he write some of the most beautiful prose in existence, he was also a respected Lepidopterist. And a synaesthete! He spoke three languages and wrote puns that required understanding of all three tongues to make any sense of the joke. Every day, I come home and read Ada, and throw it to the ground in disgust, and underline words I don't understand, and get up and pace around the room, and try and try and try to make sense of things, because I want to understand every reference. It is not an easy book. Yet, I'm touched... very, very touched, and I really can't get this book out of my mind. I love her, I need her, I hate her, I'm giving my friend $50 to shoot her in the back of the head, I'll marry her today if she says yes, my oh my, I'm going to die.

Blar-blar. Second of all, I love making lists. Ever since I started Ada, I've been trying to think about who my favorite authors are. I'd say it's pretty clear: Nabokov, Roth, and Kundera. But who is king? I've read more Kundera than any other author, but always in translation. I really don't think I could count him as #1 favorite, since the exact words he labored over were Czech or French... not the ones I'm reading. He's a step removed. I love Kundera for his ideas and thought processes... not so much for his prose style.

So it's Nabokov or Roth, then. I don't know, I don't know! Lately, I think Nabokov edges out Roth by a small margin. Philip Roth does spin a good fucking yarn, though. It's so hard to compare them. With Philip Roth, it's very "What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be a member of this generation, or this social group, or this ____?" It's hard to put into words, but Roth really brings out a bittersweet patriotism in me, which I think is the best kind. Yet, with Nabokov, it's more, er... "What does it mean to occupy this small universe inside my head?" It's not even that he especially tries to address something like this (or, I dunno, maybe he does, I get lost in the issues sometimes), but I feel that we are kindred spirits somehow -- sometimes when I'm reading Ada, I feel like it's a giant inside joke that I've written for myself. I don't know, both have these beautiful, epic, human struggles, but they're just so different... Roth makes me turn outward, and Nabokov brings me in to a visceral little place. Perhaps they tie, then. Who knows... it's good to be in love.

My 5 favorite books, then, are (not in order):

* The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
* Immortality by Milan Kundera
* Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
* Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
* The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Ada doesn't count, because I'm not done yet.

Maybe my next update won't be so dry. I have a great story about spilling hamburger grease on a shirt the first time I wore it, so watch for that!

Progress so far

I've been trying to read a book a week this year... apparently, I've done 19 books in 20 weeks. So far (in rough chronological order):

1. Indecision - Benjamin Kunkel (240pgs)
2. A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle (207)
3. The Flaneur - Edmund White (211)
4. Damage - Josephine Hart (195)
5. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (192)
6. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (391)
7. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (529)
8. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (457)
9. A Mouthful of Air - Anthony Burgess (416)
10. Against Love - Laura Kipnis (207)
11. Woe is I - Patricia O'Connor
12. Paris to the Moon - Adam Gopnik (342)
13. Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (348)
14. Stories of Roald Dahl - R. Dahl (520)
15. Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins (342)
16. Candide - Voltaire (120)
17. How I Became Stupid - Martin Page (160)
18. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (489)
19. Ada (in progress) - Vladimir Nabokov (445)

This is 5,593 pages, or 280 pgs/week. Of course, after I started, I realized that anything over 500 pages was tough to do in a week, since I enjoy other activities as well (idleness, drinking). So, I'm focusing a little more on page count, since it's a more accurate reflection of progress, and doesn't penalize for a long, tough book. I'd like to hit 300 pgs a week, at least. DON'T CALL ME, I CAN NOT HANG OUT WITH YOU.

The clear winner so far has been The Plot Against America, a fucking fabulous book that I would recommend to anyone, though I think Ben probably got tired of me talking about it all the time. Other favorites were the Anthony Burgess books, A Clockwork Orange (which really made me love the movie even more) and A Mouthful of Air (a non-fiction book about language); Jitterbug Perfume; Indecision; and The Complete Stories of Roald Dahl (they're stories for adults). And, you know, Lolita. I had actually read Lolita before, but I gave it to Ben for Christmas, so I decided to read it again when he started reading it; somehow I ended up with the annotated version, which was interesting. Or hellish, whatever. In any case, it's a totally different book with the notes, and you probably owe it to yourself to read this version. It's kind of like repeatedly whipping yourself with a giant bunch of thorns, but some people like that. I sorta did.

The clear loser was How I Became Stupid. Since I love tales geared towards disillusioned 20-somethings (since, you know, those are my dawgs) I picked it up, only to have my naive hopes dashed by what I will now dub "Ye Olde Worste Book Ever." Seriously, if you're going to delve into that realm, have a point. "I don't know what to do with my life!" fiction is cool, but it's been done about 84 million times before, so you better do it well. (And, on that note, Indecision succeeds! Until the end. Maybe) As Dave Eggers once said, in some quote that I can't really remember at all and now suspect that I am making up entirely... the lives of people in their early 20's really aren't all that interesting.

Ada is a tough, lovely book, but I'm sure I'll talk more about that either later or never. Who knows!

Epicness

13 Piercings and Still Not Punctured

Youth, how wonderful to sit with you
in the cafeteria, you make Shiva
look like an amputee. I like this jelly,
I say, how they left in the seeds.
Yeah! you pop, and the fact it's flying
at such high speed! Youth, to be with you
is to drive the interstate without a windshield.
No wonder you can hardly stay in your clothes
and therefore wear almost none. I doubt
it's possible there's a death's head
under all that phosphorescent flesh
glued over an anti-gravitational fuselage
sponge-side down. Even in the classroom,
you're alpine skiing, spectacular wipeouts
even reading Wordsworth: proof he smoked
dope, plagiarized Tennyson, his dependence
on recollection really on forgetting.
Youth, your brain is more hand grenade
than a sack of scholastic slugs, tattoo
barbed wire circles on your bicep, eighth notes
hone in on your honeyed crotch, even
your barrette shouts, Get out of my way!
How is it possible for you to fall apart
every hour but still hop up for curtain calls?
Youth, I remember when I was always late
because I had so much time. You were waiting
then you hurried on.

--Dean Young

The worst April Fool's joke of all time

#1: Hijinks of Hussein and Son
Saddam Hussein and his sons may have been ruthless, power-hungry dictators, but that didn't stop them from trying to give the people of Iraq a good chuckle every April Fool's Day. On April 1, 1998 the Babil newspaper, owned by Hussein's son Uday, informed its readers that President Clinton had decided to lift sanctions against Iraq, only to admit later that it was just joking. One can imagine the knee-slapping guffaws when readers realized how they'd been taken for a ride. The laughs continued in 1999 when Uday mischeviously announced that the monthly food rations would be supplemented to include bananas, Pepsi, and chocolate. Again, just a joke. At this point, the Husseins appear to have run out of material, because in 2000 they recycled the sanction-lifting gag, and in 2001 trotted out the ration-supplement crowd-pleaser one more time. The merciless quality with which the same joke was repeated year after year had an almost surreal quality to it. In fact, it almost makes one sympathize with Saudi Arabia's chief cleric, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, who in 2001 decreed that the celebration of April Fool's Day should be banned altogether. It's not known if the Sheikh had his neighbor's hijinks in mind when he issued the ban.

Penis-Melting Robot Combs

Genital retraction syndrome (GRS), generally considered a culture-specific syndrome, is a condition in which an individual is overcome with the belief that his/her external genitals or also, in females, breasts, are retracting into the body, shrinking, or in some male cases, may be imminently removed or disappear. A penis panic is a mass hysteria event or panic where males in a population suddenly exhibit symptoms of genital retraction syndrome.

Penis panics have occurred around the world, most notably in Africa and Asia. Local beliefs in many instances assert that such syndromes are often fatal. Genital retraction syndrome in Southeast Asia is known as Koro (Malaysian/Indonesian) or Shook yang (suo yang) in Chinese cultures. Psychological diagnosis and treatments are under development. It is becoming increasingly clear that these forms of mass hysteria are more common than previously thought.

The phenomenon is often, but not always, associated with occult belief, such as witchcraft. These panics frequently, but not exclusively, occur in places where access to education—particularly in science and human biology—is limited, or otherwise restricted (for example, when government policies restrict such education). Others have been reported under the influence of drug use.

Sudan

In September 2003, the Middle East Media Research Institute reported an hysteria of "penis-melting robot combs" in Khartoum, capital of Sudan.

Sudanese victims were made to believe by force of suggestion that their penises would melt away after they shared an electronic (or "robot") comb, shook hands, or received a verbal curse. The so-called "penis-melting" has been blamed on Zionists trying to wipe out the Sudanese people by making their men unable to reproduce.

The hysterical reports were spread throughout Sudan by means of cell phone text-messaging.

Local media also contributed to the idea's spread. The Sudanese columnist Ja'far Abbas has warned visitors to avoid shaking hands with "a dark-skinned man". In reference to the electronic comb which was supposed to have caused one man's penis to disappear, Abbas writes, "No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull, [passes] to the lower body and emasculates a man!!"

Sudanese police investigated the claims and have found no evidence of anything supernatural, and that it is likely a hoax which victims believed through the power of suggestion. Mr. Abul-Gasim Mohamed Ibrahim, Sudan's Minister of Health, issued official statements to calm the public's fears.

In the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today," a daily summary of sensational or humorous news, James Taranto wrote a piece about this phenomenon entitled, "Where's the Rest of Me?" in which he coined the phrase "Penis-melting Zionist robot combs."

January Recap

For the sake of posterity, let's take a little peek at what I watched in January:

1. The Shining, Stanley Kubric, USA, 1980
2. 2046, Wong Kar Wai, China, 2004
3. Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Judy Irving, USA, 2003
4. Criminal Lovers, Francois Ozon, France, 1999
5. Love Me Tonight, Rouben Mamoulian, USA, 1932
6. Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow, Vittorio de Sica, Italy, 1963
7. l'Enfer, Claude Chabrol, France, 1994
8. Spirits of the Dead, Vadim/Malle/Fellini, France/Italy, 1968
9. Red Light Go, Ben Barraud, USA, 2002
10. Boyfriends & Girlfriends, Eric Rohmer, France, 1987
11. Damage, Louis Malle, UK/France, 1992
12. Bon Voyage, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, France, 2003
13. Head-On, Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 2004
14. Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix, France, 1986
15. A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, UK, 1971
16. The Aristocrats, Paul Provenza, USA, 2005
17. Agata and the Storm, Silvio Soldini, Italy, 2004
18. Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubric, UK, 1975
19. The Five Obstructions, Leth/von Trier, Denmark, 2003
20. Elizabethtown, Cameron Crowe, USA, 2005
21. Etre et Avoir, Nicolas Philibert, France, 2002
22. Eva, Joseph Losey, UK, 1962

January 10,2006 | CINCINNATI -- The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.

Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday.

Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.

It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.

>An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.

"Standing outside, one could smell death," Owens said.

Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body.

It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said.

Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a women in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter.

"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall -- (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home."