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Reading books is one happy endeavor. Reviewing books widens my avenues of literary pleasure. I enjoy hearing from readers who discovered books by reading this column.
I interview writers. I’m intrigued when doors fall open during these conversations. One glimpses a writer’s process.
Some favorites from 2008 are now out in paperback.
• “The Lazarus Project” by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, 304 pages, $16). My favorite novel from 2008. Hemon was a Bosnian journalist in the USA as civil war broke out in Sarajevo. He could not return home. He settled in Chicago and mastered the English language. “The Lazarus Project” is a fictional account of an actual incident that happened a century ago in Chicago. The chief of police killed a man, an immigrant from central Europe. Hemon imagined the chain of events that led this innocent victim, Lazarus, across the ocean to a terrible fate. Hemon writes with savage joy.
• “A Voyage Long and Strange — On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America” by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 464 pages, $18). The author is a former war correspondent who has transitioned his adventurous mode of journalism into another realm. He traces some obscure journeys. Horwitz finds himself in rather odd situations. His account of a visit to a Canadian sweat lodge is one of the funniest things I read last year.
• “Beautiful Children” by Charles Bock (Random House, 432 pages, $14). This novel about street kids in Las Vegas was one of the most anticipated books last year. Bock grew up in Las Vegas. His depiction of otherworldly pleasure seeking and desolation makes a dark read. The paperback has a quote from my original review; “Beautiful Children” uncoils like a gorgeous, deadly serpent. It sprawls with all the mind-numbing brilliance of Las Vegas’ hypnotic neon excess.
• “Reading the OED —One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages” by Ammon Shea (Perigee, 256 pages, $13.95). The author loves words. He collects dictionaries. He read the entire Oxford English Dictionary over the course of one year. This is his story, the gallons of coffee he drank, amazing words he discovered. Words like “petrichor (n.) The pleasant loamy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell.” We have all smelled that wonderful scent, haven’t we? There’s actually a word for it. I always wanted to know it. The book is filled with words like that.
• “Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock (Anchor Books, 224 pages, $13.95). Growing up in the southeastern Ohio community of Knockemstiff Don Pollock witnessed some bizarre events. During the 30 years that Pollock labored in a paper mill he never relinquished his dream of becoming a writer. In an interview he told me that he learned how to write by sitting in his attic at his typewriter where he re-typed books by authors whom he admired, word for word. The paperback quotes my original review: “These stories detonate ... Pollock writes with incendiary verbal pyromania ... this is a fantastic debut.”
Contact book reviewer Vick Mickunas at vick@vickmickunas.com
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 5/3/09; 4:38:52 PM
from the dept.
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