Book-A-Day

December 29, 2009 Book of the Day: His Excellency: George Washington , by Joseph J. Ellis Grade: B- First published: 2004 1-word review: Undeification 7-word review: Washington actually had some character to him. George Washington has always been a mystery to me. Despite knowing many facts about his life, I'd always felt like I knew nothing about him personally. Frankly, I thought he was quite boring. Ellis does a decent job of shedding some light on Washington's character. I enjoyed this biography much more than Ellis's over-hyped Founding Brothers . Washington quite literally commanded respect. If a person judged his character in a way that differed in the slightest from his image of himself, that person was cut off. He was constantly accusing people with which he did business of cheating him, fairly or not. He was a shameless self-promoter, and he capitalized monetarily from his name. He was one of the few prominent founding fathers to die wealthy. Despite all th...

December 28, 2009 Book of the Day: A Moveable Feast , by Ernest Hemingway Grade: B- First published: 1964 1-word review: Gossipy 8-word review: Hemingway dishes on some famous people, including himself. Hemingway's experiences in Paris as a young man had an enormous influence on his writing. Here, in a book published posthumously, he writes about that time, the city, the booze, the culture 0f expats, the famous writers he knew (Stein, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Pound), his first wife, etc. It gets a little too detailed and voyeuristic at times, but it's still an interesting read. Hemingway committed suicide in Idaho. What does this tell us about Idaho?

December 27, 2009 Book of the Day: Go Tell It on the Mountain , by James Baldwin Grade: B+ First Published: 1952 1-word review: Motility 7-word review: Man changes little in space and time. With energy and passion, Baldwin tells the story of an African-American family's struggles through poverty and segregation, in the South and the North. His writing informs all the senses, and not always pleasantly. His honesty is frequently discomforting, but necessary. Idaho has a Black History Museum (really!), despite the fact that no black person has ever set foot in the state. http://www.ibhm.org/

December 26, 2009 Book of the Day: The Hive , by Camilo José Cela Grade: B+ First published: 1953 1-word review: Groupthink 6-word review: Normal folks aren't all that normal. Franco's Spain has produced an excess of selfish, judgmental people among the lower middle-class. Cela tells their story as a series of interlocking vignettes. He revisits each of his numerous characters as needed throughout the novel, adding bit by bit to their collective story. Francisco Franco was a Spanish dictator. He ran his nation much as Idaho is run today. Spain was a single-party state, and its people were largely mindless automatons following whatever propaganda came their way. I shudder to think what Franco would have accomplished with Fox News.

December 25, 2009 Book of the Day: The Lawless Roads , by Graham Greene Grade: B+ First published: 1939 1-word review: Faithless 8-word review: In Mexico, they execute for treason, not religion. As I've said before, my favorite novel is The Power and the Glory , by Graham Greene. It is set in a Mexico that has essentially outlawed the practice of religion (i.e., Catholicism), and priests have been executed, imprisoned, or forced to marry. This book documents the journey that Greene took through the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, during the time of the clerical purges. This trip gave him the material to later write his great novel. While it doesn't compare to his best novels, The Lawless Roads is still a wonderful read. Greene is frequently a grouchy traveler, and he doesn't always appreciate the culture or scenery of southern Mexico. I found this refreshingly honest, at least compared to most travel books. He speaks of the barbarism of the state, whi...

December 24, 2009 Book of the Day: A Christmas Carol , by Charles Dickens Grade: C First published: 1843 1-word review: Bah! 5-word review: "I think I'd rather not." I liked Scrooge better before the ghosts visited him. Idaho-ho-ho!

December 23, 2009 Book of the Day: Black Elk Speaks , as told to John G. Neihardt Grade: B First published: 1932 1-word review: Smoke 6-word review: Traditions change, by force if necessary. We become eyewitnesses to the subjugation of a culture, yet Black Elk speaks plainly. This is the way it is. Our traditions are strong, and we fight for them, but we've had to adapt. We hope to preserve our culture, yet we realize the uphill climb that we face. This is a narrative told mostly in the voice of Black Elk, a Lakota holy man who is there for Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee, performs with Buffalo Bill, and dies in 1950. Neihardt admits to making slight changes to Black Elk's words, in order to make the narrative clearer, but he still manages to make the story feel authentic. It is heartbreaking and spiritual, in equal portions. Many Native Americans had to suffer to make room for white Idahoans. Are the potatoes really worth it?

December 22, 2009 Book of the Day: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories , by Flannery O'Connor Grade: A- First published: 1955 1-word review: Salvation 7-word review: The rural South is a happy place. Not many writers, even great ones, can write a good short story. There's something about condensing an idea to its very essence that a novelist can't handle. Flannery O'Connor was a great short story writer. Like a poet, she could communicate a complete idea in the fewest words required. Her characters are briefly described but fully fleshed out, and the reader becomes engulfed in each story's environment. The rural South is a scary place in her stories, yet there is always some sense of hope for salvation. However, I've come to the conclusion that a short story collection should never be read in one day. A writer has certain themes and settings that she likes to repeatedly revisit, so reading all of her stories in such a short period makes it difficu...

December 21, 2009 Book of the Day: Arabian Nights and Days , by Naguib Mahfouz Grade: A First published: 1982 1-word review: Genial 8-word review: It's better to be a genie than not. It is the end of the tales of Shahrzad (a.k.a. Scheherazade), and she is married to the apparently reformed sultan, but the stories continue in their kingdom. Mahfouz forms these interconnected stories into a powerful novel. Every human emotion is explicated wholly. Genies are mischievous and amoral, and they can't help interfering in human affairs, seemingly out of sheer boredom. And an angel walks around in a human disguise. Mahfouz is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. Perhaps you should give him a try, if you know what's good for you. Quick fact: One Thousand and One Nights was originally set in the wild lentil-laden plains of Idaho (not widely known). Mahfouz!

December 20, 2009 Book of the Day: The Accidental Theorist and Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science , by Paul Krugman Grade: C First published: 1998 1-word review: Capital 6-word review: Economics really is a science, really! Why do popular economics books always exaggerate the veracity of claims made by economists? Krugman manages to do this while at the same time insulting the many economists he disagrees with. How about just one mention of the generally recognized rule that an economic theory is considered to be a wild success if it can be shown to apply in just two-thirds of cases? Krugman has become famous in recent years as a public intellectual, specifically a liberal one. Despite his liberalism, he is an ardent defender of capitalism, and many of these essays reflect that. His writing style is only adequate, and this book is pretty forgettable. And I was disappointed that Idaho didn't get a single mention.

December 19, 2009 Book of the Day: Gilgamesh , by Stephen Mitchell Grade: C- First published: 2004 1-word review: Repetitive 7-word review: Gilgamesh was kind of a whiny jerk. Gilgamesh is a mediocre version of a mediocre, but historically important, epic. Mitchell has made a bit of a specialty out of stealing other people's translations of great works, dumbing the story down, and claiming authorship for himself (while crediting some of the translators' works he has stolen). And his introduction is absurd, both in length and quality. Here are some interesting facts about Idaho: The official state bird is the mountain bluebird. The official state fish is the cutthroat trout. The official state mammal is the white supremacist.

December 18, 2009 Book of the Day: This Side of Paradise , by F. Scott Fitzgerald Grade: B+ First published: 1920 1-word review: Lost 9-word review: Maybe an estate tax isn't such a bad idea. Here we have F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, a look at spoiled rich kid, Amory Blaine, with too much time and money on his hands. His father acquired the family's wealth via inheritance from dead older brothers (not a bad way to make a living). Amory lives a shallow life before serving in the Great War and winding up in advertising, a career perhaps shallower than any other. Ultimately, he is damned, and his hell is on Earth. And no, I don't mean Idaho.

December 17, 2009 Book of the Day: Blow the House Down , by Robert Baer Grade: B First published: 2006 1-word review: Incompetence 5-word review: Our intelligence ain't so intelligent. With prose like a hard-boiled detective novel, Robert Baer excoriates the U.S. intelligence system for its failures in the lead-up to 9/11. The signs are clearly there, but a stubborn reliance upon old practices, fighting among agencies, and a pathological fear of telling the truth lead to tragic results. Baer has gone down this road before, in terrific books such as See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil . The difference here is that Blow the House Down is a work of fiction. It's not going to go down as one of the great novels of the decade, but it's a good thriller nonetheless. A CIA agent is apparently being framed for crimes he did not commit. He chooses to not go down without a fight. Baer draws upon his own experiences in the agency to give the story a feel of authenticity. Nin...

December 16, 2009 Book of the Day: Into the Wild , by Jon Krakauer Grade: D First published: 1996 1-word review: Peripatetic 10-word review: Not all who wander are lost, but Chris sure is. Chris McCandless leaves civilization behind and roams the West. Sort of. He eventually finds his way to a remote corner of Alaska, where he starves to death. He embarks on this journey without money, wilderness training, much food, or many tools. He was a rich kid who grew up in the D.C. suburbs and graduated from college in Atlanta, at Emory. He became obsessed with stories about life away from civilization, especially the writings of Thoreau and Jack London. And he hated his parents with an intense passion, for reasons never made very clear in the book. Why is it that the writings of Jon Krakauer always make me angry? Not just at the people he writes about, but more so at Krakauer himself. Maybe it's because he so frequently jumps to ridiculous conclusions, whose lack of logic he manag...