Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby
Books of the aforementioned essays from the magazine The Believer. Reading About a Boy as part of my Chris Weitz mini-primer reminded me of how much I enjoyed High Fidelity and drove me to pursue more Hornby. The next time I have a stretch of time to read recreationally, I'll probably tackle some more of his fiction, but these essays were positively delightful. Above all, I really latched onto Hornby's basic philosophy, which paraphrased is basically "Read what you like, because life's too short to read something that makes you miserable." His anti-literary-snobbery stance is refreshing, and made me feel better about some of my literary choices of the past year, namely quitting on Blood Meridian after about ten pages, neglecting to read Housekeeping for class (his writing on the book convinced me that I couldn't have possibly given the book the attention it merits in the time given to read it for class, and made me eager to pick it up when I do have that time) and not feeling the least bit guilty or ashamed for enjoying the Twilight series.
The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Another exercise that grew out of Weitz assessment. I first read The Golden Compass back when it originally came out, when I was in elementary school, and didn't return to it until last month, when I prepared to watch the movie. Back in the day, I didn't move on to The Subtle Knife because a friend told me that I should wait until the third book came out because of the frustration involved in waiting for the conclusion. Knowing little of the joyous tension that can come from anticipating the release of a book (or movie, or album, or new TV season), I heeded her advice, and hence was no longer interested when The Amber Spyglass was released. It has thus taken the better part of a decade for me to get around to it. I liked the series, and I'm glad that I finally took the plunge and just finished it already. Lyra is a delightful, ballsy heroine, and the worlds that Pullman imagines around her are vividly imagined. It's not supplanting Harry Potter in my personal esteem, but it was a satisfying way to spend a few days.
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
A short mystery by another author who's becoming one of my favorites. Chabon has what many of my favorite authors have, which is an innate sense of history. By which I mean that the manner in which they write fictional histories weaves stories in an epic sense that evokes documented factual history (that is, history by academically trained historians). Though The Final Solution is brief, one gets the sense that among the silences and unfilled gaps in the mystery, is a deeply involved story that Chabon ultimately knows from beginning to end.
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas
Maybe it's weird to say so, but I find stories about substance abuse, fictional and otherwise, unbelievably fascinating. They frequently show life at it's most dramatic and melodramatic, small moments exacerbated or writ large due to the influence of alcohol or drugs. However, even if Zailckas' memoir wasn't about substance abuse, it would still be interesting due to her startlingly clear-eyed observations about what it means to be a young woman in America today. She looks at herself and her peers and draws their misadventures with alcohol out to make points about expected behavior of women as young people, as drinkers, as friends, as protectors that are sad but revelatory when plainly stated.
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