Although the title suggests that this book could feasibly be about me, it is not. Sue recommended this to me thinking I would like this and boy, was she on the money. I liked this book a good deal.
The book, non-fiction, is about a man, John Gilkey, with an addiction. The guy loves to steal books. For years, he would acquire rare and expensive books illegally, usually by using stolen credit card numbers. He was aided by lax law enforcement who, by and large, often couldn't care less about the theft of a book.
Someone who did, though, was Ken Sanders, the security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association and a bookseller himself. Sanders took his role as security chair seriously and managed to link several book thefts of Gilkey's together. By communicating with other dealers, he managed to catch Gilkey in a sting operation which sent Gilkey to jail.
Gilkey eventually got out (even though he had been jailed many times before) and went right back to stealing or planning to steal books. Gilkey was obviously a sick individual. He had no interest in reading any of the books, choosing to acquire them because he viewed them as symbolic of something more - wealth, power, intellect. He often talked with his father of leading a better life and creating an empire of sorts for them.
Sanders, however, was a much more interesting fellow. The more I read, the more I wanted to know about him and the less I cared about Gilkey.
In the end, it didn't matter because the book turned out to be largely about the author, Bartlett. I'm not sure why this was. She spends time trying to get herself interested in collecting books so that she might have a better appreciation of why people collect and what lead Gilkey to steal. Gilkey reveals a lot of things about his thefts to her which create some moral dilemmas for her.
I liked the book even though I didn't care for Gilkey or Bartlett. If not for Sanders, though, I probably wouldn't have liked the book as much. It's a nice light true crime book that I think would be a pleasant change of pace for most readers.
I enjoyed and hated this book, pretty much simultaneously. On the one hand, it reads like a decent adventure story. Each chapter ends with a little bit of cliffhanger which makes you want to read more. It also is an interesting piece of metafiction. This is good and bad. On the one hand, it is interesting. On the other....
The book is about a writer by the name of Ian Minot. Young guy, can't catch a break and get anything of his published. He works as a barista in New York City and dates a Romanian girl by the name of Anya who has written a memoir of her life in Romania and her trials as an orphan in the United States. Anya is asked to do a reading at a spot known for finding breakout authors. Sure enough, Anya's reading is a hit and her memoirs are sold to a publisher.
At a publishing party, they run into Blade Markham, a former gang member turned bestselling memoir writer. Blade and Ian get into a fight, Anya falls for Blade and Ian is left more depressed than ever.
A fellow turns up at Ian's coffee shop with a copy of Markham's book. Ian hurls the book down the street which results in him being fired from his job. The man with the book (known up to this point as The Confident Man (a play on confidence man, no doubt)), is impressed with Ian's hatred of Markham. Turns out the fellow, named Jed Roth, was a former editor. Roth's assistant went over his head to get Markham's book published and rather than work on it with the assistant, Roth quit. He has a plan for revenge.
Roth wrote a novel many years before called The Thief of Manhattan. It is about a writer who visits this unique library run by a fellow called "The Hooligan Librarian". Hooligan has been stealing rare books from this library and selling them to a shady appraiser for whom he used to work as a research assistant in grad school when she was part of the school's faculty. The narrator of the book discovers this when an attractive redhead wants to look at a book on display and Hooligan doesn't let her. Roth's narrator breaks into the library and takes the book to give to the redhead. Hooligan finds out, burns down the library, and he and the appraiser try to find Roth's narrator. The narrator buries the book, gets into a shootout with the bad guys and wins. Finds the girl and lives happily ever after.
Roth's novel didn't get published. He wants Ian to try and pass it off as a memoir now in order to get it published. They get the firm who Roth worked for to publish it, it is renamed The Thieves of Manhattan, and Ian becomes popular. The plan is to then expose the memoir as novel to embarrass the publishing firm.
It turns out that the memoir is not a novel but a memoir. The Hooligan and his boss begin to hunt down Ian. As he is being chased, Ian starts to record what's happening to him as a memoir. So we end up with a novel titled Theives of Manhattan, subtitled a novel a memoir, which is about a writer who publishes a book called Theives of Manhattan, passing it off as a memoir instead of a novel when it is really a memoir....sort of.
So it's exciting and sort of clever in its self-referential treatment. What didn't I like? Well, some more of the self-referential stuff. When Roth writes his T of M, he uses made up words that are authors or character names that are connected to the objects whose names he are using to represent said objects. We don't know that, though, and as we're reading Langer's T of M, which is told by Ian, we come across these same references. The first I recall is Ian saying someone has a chabon of hair. Now, when I read it, being a huge fan of Michael Chabon, I immediately pictured someone who had his hair. My reaction, though, was "Huh, I didn't know chabon was an actual word". Then people start drinking fitzgeralds. Not capitalized. How strange. Drinks with names are usually capitalized. You don't see people drinking bloody mary's or long island iced tea. Then folks start wearing gatsbys and golightlys. When someone lit up a vonnegut, I really got irritated. Finally, when we get to Roth's character, we find that Roth likes to do that and that his T of M even has a glossary for these terms. Turns out, so does Langer's T of M. I thought it was a stupid mechanism and could not see the point outside of advertising Langer's literary background.
There's more self-reference. Ian says he will dedicate his real memoir to Joseph, his former boss who ends up helping him out. Langer's book is dedicated "to J. for reasons that should become somewhat clearer sometime after page 195" which of course is the page where Ian declares his dedication intent to Joseph.
At some point it all stopped being clever and just started bothering me. I also really disliked how the book wrapped up. The ending was goofy and far-fetched.
The book also reminded me of a novel I read in 2009 about the publishing industry, How I Became a Famous Novelist. I'd call it a tossup as to which I liked more. I remember Hely's book being funnier but Langer's is more captivating. Neither, though, are something I would particularly recommend.
If you go back in the children's area of the library, you'll find a poster of Hugh Laurie, the actor known primarily for his title role in House but also for other acting roles, encouraging you and your kids to read.This isn't just the American Librarian Association using celebrity power for advertising. Laurie is a writer and The Gun Seller is his first novel.
I really enjoyed this book. It is sort of a spy thriller but yet, not really. The dustjacket calls it a spoof of spy thrillers though I didn't really view it as that either. The main character, Thomas Lang, is a former member of the Scots Guards who now takes on the occasional mercenary type gig to make some money. He is approached by someone wanting him to kill a businessman. Lang turns down the offer and decides it would be best to try and warn the target as well.
All good deeds go punished and Lang finds himself getting more and more entwined in a complex web of bad guys; an arms dealer, renegade government factions, a terrorist group. Why does Lang get caught up in this mess? Love. He falls in love with the daughter of the businessman he was supposed to kill and every time he seems as if he might be able to get out of the mess, thoughts of her drag him right back into it.
What I enjoyed most about this book was the language. It felt a bit like a Leslie Nielsen movie with the characters taking words too literally. Lots of sarcasm.
I didn't like how ridiculously convoluted the plot was. It felt like Laurie was trying too hard to make something special and new in the spy genre field and just went too far. I also didn't get how Lang fell in love so easily with this woman and was willing to risk his life for her when he barely spent any time with her. The ending is a happy, albeit unexpected one.
The Gun Seller is a very fun book It has flaws but they're not bad enough to ruin the enjoyment of Laurie's writing.
I'm a big fan of Steve Martin. More of his writings than his acting. I also like his humor and music. He's sort of an entertainment Renaissance Man. I really enjoyed his first two novels, The Pleasure of My Company and Shopgirl. Since then, though, I have been disappointed with his books Pure Drivel and, now, An Object of Beauty.
An Object of Beauty traces the life of Lacey Yeager as she makes her way through the art world during the 1990's and 2000's. The book is told by her friend who works as an art writer.
The novel starts as being about Lacey but as the book goes on, Martin spends more and more time talking about the conditions of the art world, especially in New York City. It gets to the point where the final third to half of the book almost reads more as non-fiction. In the final chapter, even, the narrator says that he may just make some changes and publish the book as non-fiction.
This is one of the reasons I didn't like it. It could have been a good novel. It could have been a good treatise on the business of art. Combined, it didn't work for me. I also didn't like how Martin portrayed Lacey. If you listed Lacey's interests in life, art would be first, sex would be second and everything else wouldn't make the list. She could have been made more admirable - woman works her way up through the male-dominated art world through skill, intelligence, charm and perseverance - but Martin's focus on Lacey's relationships with men covers up anything positive and makes her sort of sleazy (along with some other things she does). I didn't find her to be likable at all. I also didn't like the layout of the chapters. They were extremely short and did not flow into one another well in the least.
Martin is knowledgeable about art and it definitely comes through in this book. I almost wonder if he had to make it a novel because no publisher would take him seriously if he tried to do a work of non-fiction on art. It's sort of a shame because there is a lot of good stuff in the book. The book also is nice in that it shows many of the works of art that are mentioned in the story.
For me, the negatives outweighed the positives and I'm disappointed that after such a great beginning as a writer, I feel Martin has tailed off.
I just didn't get this book. It was short and quick and entertaining but I'm here, writing this review a few days after reading the book, and I find myself having a tough time remembering anything about it. I read a lot and I'm a fairly quick reader but I also tend to retain what I read. That just didn't happen here.
When the first sentence of the book is, "It was about the same time in my life, a calm life in which ordinarily nothing happened, that two events coincided, events that, taken separately, were of hardly any interest, and that, considered together, were unfortunately not connected in any way.", well, perhaps that explains some of my not getting it. I don't think anything really happened in this book.
The narrator is a man, of an age I could not determine. He's just learning to drive, which doesn't indicate much. He goes to get his permit and finds himself infiltrating the life of the "young woman" who operates the permit office. Some sort of relationship develops, although why and how isn't real clear (which is why I used the word infiltrating). The woman's father appears in the story and makes it seem as if the narrator is about the same age as the woman (which begs the question why the narrator refers to her as "young").
I guess it is supposed to be a bit of an existentialist book (given that the back cover blurb calls Toussaint , "A comic Camus for the twenty-first century", makes sense) but I'd call it self-absorption rather than existentialist. It isn't so much life that the narrator ponders but rather specifically, HIS life. And as he says, nothing happens in his life.
There were some funny points in this and it is really short. I didn't waste a ton of time on it. Maybe it's too highbrow for me but I just didn't get it and so can't recommend it.
I loved this book! (Your suspense is over – I’m recommending it.)
Aron Ralston writes of his experience of being trapped in a slot canyon for five days with minimal water and food. An experienced climber and hiker and over-confident adventurer, he set off on an easy solo day hike and ended up knocking a boulder loose which trapped (smashed) his right hand between the boulder and the wall.
He writes about his time trapped in the canyon, how he rationed his food and water and used his climbing equipment to keep warm at night. Every morning, a slice of sunshine reached down in the chasm and warmed slightly the tip of his leg for a few minutes. He logically thought through all escape and possible rescue options before coming to the conclusion that he was going to die in the canyon. Several times during his entrapment, he videoed himself talking to his family, explaining his predicament and saying good-bye.
I won’t spoil the book for you by telling you how he manages to live. If you have heard of or have seen the movie 127 Hours, you already know something about this book, on which the film is based.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place is beautifully written, with raw emotion and a passionate description of a ridiculously unbelievable situation. Aron Ralston includes painstaking details of climbing terminology, most of which I did not understand. And he weaves into the narrative many other aspects of his life, from his family to how he gave up an engineering job to work in the climbing industry to some of his many near death experiences, like almost drowning and getting caught in an avalanche.
His fresh and meticulous writing make his story riveting. I can’t wait to see the movie and am sad to place this book back on the shelf at the library.
They say truth is stranger than fiction. That may be. But based on the horse racing books I've been reading recently, fiction is much more entertaining than fact.
I got started on this kick with Keith Dixon's The Art of Losing. I was fooling around with the "card catalog" at the library and decided to look for novels with the subject of gambling. In addition to 3,423 books by Dick Francis, this one came up. I requested it from one of the other branches and plowed through it.
The Art of Losing is a very dark book. One of the darker ones I've read. The main character, Michael Jacobs, is a documentary filmmaker who makes decent films but they do not generate enough interest to be profitable. This shouldn't really matter since Jacobs comes from a wealthy family who are encouraging of his occupational choice and who like his movies. Nonetheless, Jacobs cannot bring himself to rely on assistance from his folks.
Jacobs' friend and producer, Sebby Laslo, has a problem with gambling. He has indebted himself too much with the wrong kinds of people and comes to Mike with a broken thumb received from a fellow he owes money to and a pitch for how to get them both on track.
Sebby has a friend who is a jockey. The plan is to get another jockey involved and have the two jockeys conspire to fix a race on which Sebby and Jacobs have wagered heavily. In order to do this, though, and get the kind of odds they want, they have to place the wager with an illegal bookmaker. In order to get a bookmaker (or multiple bookmakers) to give them odds on a big bet like that, they have to establish that they are chumps and so have to lose a bunch of money in advance, money neither of them has.
If this doesn't bode well to you in my review, well, that foreboding feeling isn't going away if you read the book either. Dixon does not create an inspiring atmosphere. You have a sense that those best laid plans are certainly going to go awry.
Even with the bad vibe, the book moves you along. There is a glimmer of hope....maybe...or maybe it's the sense that you're about to view a train wreck. Something keeps you moving ahead with the book. And it's good. Surprisingly good given that I picked it solely based on a card catalog subject heading. Just don't go reading it on a day where you could use some optimism.
Likewise, I felt like I had to shower every time I put down Lord of Misrule. The 2010 National Book Award winner for fiction, it takes place at a podunk race track in West Virginia, the absolute bottom rung of thoroughbred horse racing. Every chapter is told from the perspective of one member of a motley crew of characters. The way author Jaimy Gordon writes, though, it often takes a few paragraphs to figure out just who is telling the story this time. The book is divided into four sections, each of them relating to a horse that intertwines all the characters.
The book is about all of the characters and none of them. They range from those struggling to eke out an existence to those trying to maintain their status as a big fish in a teeny-tiny pond. A puddle, if you will. The horses at this level aren't Secretariat. At best, they're Secretariat after he's gone infertile, suffered through injuries and can hardly run anymore.
I've always been fascinated by the lower levels of horse racing where the purses are such that owners almost have to win just to cover their expenses. I often have wondered about the people involved with these races; the track operators, the jockeys, the trainers. Gordon gives one possibility of those types of people. You have people who race at that level because they love racing. There are those do it because they don't know what else to do. Some have had bad luck.
Like The Art of Losing, you never shake that foreboding feeling. There are a number of outright bad guys and their presence, coupled with the conditions at the track, left me feeling dirty. That says a lot about Gordon's writing as much as anything. She doesn't quite use dialects but she captures the rural, uneducated essence of most of the characters.
Much more so than Dixon's book, this book is for readers who appreciate good fiction, regardless of an interest in horse racing. I'm not sure Dixon has the universal appeal. And although Gordon's story has a slightly happier ending, the overall darkness and the difficulties keeping the characters straight make it less than perfect. It's still great and worth reading.
It's not often that a book leaves me feeling dumb. This book did. Subtitled "The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of it)", it talks about how completely irrational we humans are when it comes to price.
Having a background in statistics, I like to think I understand numbers and can't be duped by pricing schemes. I'll make a purchase sometimes and think I'm getting a great bargain and that it was I that duped the retailer. That's just what they want you to think.
The book is a summary of various psychological and economic studies that show how irrational human beings are.
For example, from page 146:
"Imagine that you are about to purchase a jacket for $125 and a calculator for $15. The calculator salesman informs you that the calculator you wish to buy is on sale for $10 at the other branch of the store, located 20 minutes' drive away. Would you make the trip to the other store?"
Most respondents said yes. In another study, the prices were reversed and the calculator cost $125 but was on sale for $120 at another store. The jacket was $15. Still a total of $140 being spent at Store A, $135 at Store B but this time most respondents would not travel to the other store. Even though five bucks would be saved either way, the respondents felt that it was worth making the trip for a 33% savings but not for a 2.5% savings.
Or how about this one? Students had to choose between two tasks. Either recall and write down a failure in their lives while eating a 15 gram piece of chocolate or recall and write down a success in their lives while eating a 5 gram piece of the same brand of chocolate. Most chose doing the negative task with the big chocolate. After the assignment was completed, the students were asked to rate their experience on a nine-point scale from extremely unhappy to extremely happy. Those who wrote about the success were happier.
As you can probably determine, the experiment was considered "a microcosm of life". We think the bigger piece of chocolate (or more money or more stuff) will bring us happiness when it's really what we do and how we lead our lives that brings true happiness.
Some of these studies I had read about before, either as statistical experiments or in other articles or books (such as Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational or Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. Even still, I was educated and learned a lot. The downside of the book (outside of glimpsing my own irrationality) was that many of the experiments were glossed over, omitting details I would've thought useful. With 57 chapters over 288 pages, you're only looking at about five pages an experiment. I think some could have been omitted and others expanded.
Definitely a good read, though, and a must read if you like hanging out in the 330 section of the Dewey Decimal system.
I'm on a bit of a horse racing kick right now, some fiction, some not. After reading a novel I'll review later, I decided I wanted to read about a jockey. The pickings are slim in our system and I opted for Yankee Doodle Dandy, about Tod Sloan. I felt good about this pick because within an hour after putting in the request for it, I checked Baseball-Reference's This Day In History section and there, on that very day, was something about jockey Tod Sloan buying a billiards parlor with New York Giants manager John McGraw. I figured if he was a business partner of McGraw's, he has to be an interesting fellow.
After reading the book, it's hard to say. Despite being touted as a biography on Tod Sloan, the majority of it is a history of horse racing through the end of the 19th Century. I think the author did this to flesh out the book since there wasn't a whole lot of source material on Sloan.
Sloan was most noted for supposedly being the fellow who popularized the current style of riding a racehorse; leaning forward and being up around the neck and head. Before Sloan, riders sat upright back in the saddle and rode like you see in Westerns.
Most of Sloan's success came abroad, even serving as the jockey for Edward, Prince of Wales's entry in the Epsom Derby. His success was rather short, though, as the British Jockey Club accused him of taking money from owners as gifts and wagering on races. He was banned from racing in England and the ban was enforced in America as well ending Sloan's career.
Sloan was such a popular figure that George Cohan wrote a musical, Little Johnny Jones, that was based on Sloan. This is the musical that gave the world the songs "Yankee Doodle Boy" and "Give My Regards to Broadway".
I found the book somewhat interesting but wish it had been honest in it's title. It's really only the last couple of chapters that deal significantly with Sloan. There's one chapter in which Sloan merits only a single paragraph. What bugged me the most about the book was the lack of citations and how it tied in to Dizikes' writing and research. I thought Dizikes' writing was pretty bland and a large amount of his writing is cobbling together fragments of sentences from newspapers. He then sometimes cites them (citations were really haphzard) in clusters in the endnotes. So you'll read a paragraph which contains four or five quotes of a few words apiece, turn to see from where they came, and just find a list of newspapers with no indication of what came from where. I thought it was really lackadaisical and unprofessional, especially from a college professor who also has won the National Book Critics Circle Award. While not an awful book, it annoyed me enough not to recommend it.
I then read Timothy Capps' biography on the horse Secretariat. It is part of the Thoroughbred Legends series that Eclipse Press put out. Unfortunately, the library system does not have any of the books in this series. These are really handsome books. I actually feel that the dustjacket detracts from the overall quality of the book. While the dustjacket is understated, the book itself contains the sepia-toned photo shown on the dustjacket on the cover which is a lovely red with a gold-embossed title and spine. Add a built-in ribbon bookmarker and it's a nice book. Sadly, they reissued the series of 24 books in softcover. I miss the days when books could be works of art. While I wouldn't go that far with this, it is mighty nice.
But books are for reading, and this was an OK read. The book has small dimensions and large margins which makes for a small amount of text for a 220+ page book. And it is about a horse so the content isn't dazzling. Secretariat was an amazing horse, one of a handful that transcended the sport. Mention the name and even non-racing fans know something. But still, what can you write about a horse?
Well, the author begins by talking about the farm on which Secretariat was eventually born and raised. He then goes into a chapter which reads like the beginning of the Book of Matthew ("Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren") only with horses. Then we get into Secretariat's career. This portion is the most interesting and Capps reports the races very nicely and discusses some of the rival horses that Secretariat faced.
Rival might be a bit strong of a word. The only time Secretariat finished outside of the top three in a race was his first race, where he finished fourth. The only time he was not the favorite in a race, he went off at 3-2 odds.
Of course, nothing demonstrated the lack of a rivalry better than Secretariat's romp at the Belmont Stakes:
Secretariat was retired after his three-year old season. The book talks about his career at stud and the relative lackluster nature of that career and then ends in a really goofy way with a fantasy race call between Secretariat and Man O'War. Lame way to end.
Not a bad book but not good either. It referenced Bill Nack's biography of Secretariat a couple of times, a book I own but have not read. Maybe sometime in the near future. The link I provided is to the newest reissue of the biography which the library system has. It was reissued in conjunction with the movie Secretariat.
Ah, yes, the movie. We just got that in at Strasburg and so I had to watch it. Didn't like it one bit. The movie was hardly about Secretariat but rather focused on his owner, Penny Chenery Tweedy. Instead of being about one of the greatest racehorses ever, the movie was about a woman succeeding in a man's world. That's fine, especially if you don't mind the Disnifying of facts, but then call it what it is. Secretariat was more a piece of scenery than he was the focus of the movie. I thought John Malkovich was entertaining as trainer Lucien Laurin. Otherwise there was little about the movie I liked. If you want to watch a better Disnified horse racing movie, I'd recommend Seabiscuit. Better story, better acting, better racing scenes, better everything.
Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated is both a prolific writer and reader. He lives in Missouri and like many throughout this country, his area was recently pummeled with snow and he was snowed in. He asked his Twitter followers for book suggestions and was amazed at the number of good books that others recommended that he, too, had already read and liked. He shared those in a blog post. I have read some of them and thought I would make mention of those in the post I've read that are in the system.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (at Strasburg-Heisler Library). This is one of the two books I have on the Staff Picks shelf right now. Yes, its size is intimidating. We'll happily give you some extra weeks for it. It is well worth taking the time. As Posnanski writes, "It's a novel about two very different magicians and there's some occult in there and some great footnotes and, well, it's just a wonderful reading experience." I've seen it called a Harry Potter for adults but I don't think that remotely does this book justice. In both my and my teenage son's top ten of all-time.
The Brothers K by David James Duncan. Posnanski doesn't like this but it was recommended by so many people, he thinks he'll try it again. Another long book, about family and baseball. Any book by Duncan is great in my opinion.
Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen (at Strasburg-Heisler Library). This will probably go up as a staff pick of mine some day. Interesting true story about a serial killer at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.
David Sedaris. (Several at Strasburg-Heisler Library). I reviewed an audiobook of his. Really can't go wrong with any of his books or recordings.
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. Awesome, awesome, awesome book. In my top 25 of all-time. Gold's novel on Chaplin is on my to-read list. Also of note, Gold is married to Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones, among others.
If you don't believe me, Joe Posnanski, and his followers, check out the card catalog itself. Remember when the system was closed Wednesday of last week? Part of the computer upgrade that was done that day involved connecting the card catalog to Google Books and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com). You can go straight to reviews from the catalog listing if you scroll to the bottom of the page after you have picked a title. Check it out.
