One Hour to Read

The Making of the President 1960

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:47:37 -0500

I seem to have a thing lately for history books that were written at the time. This study of the 1960 election was published in 1961, and I love how I can read about Kennedy and Nixon without having to think about Kennedy's assassination, Watergate, Vietnam, or anything else that was to happen later. This book is so firmly in the moment, and that's what great about it.

It's something of a classic. Whereas now it seems that just about every reporter came out with an instant book about the 2008 election, this was really the first behind the scenes account of a political campaign. It helps that 1960's race was one of the most interesting in history. White had access to all the major players, well, except Nixon himself, but that's understandable. Nixon didn't seem to be talking to anyone.

Speaking of Nixon, from reading this, it doesn't really seem that Kennedy won this election as much as Nixon lost it. Throughout the book, Nixon comes across almost as a sympathetic figure. He never recovered from an infected knee for which he spent part of the fall in the hospital. He forced himself to campaign in all fifty states in an insane schedule that practically destroyed him. That's part of the reason he looked so sick in the debates with Kennedy. He also refused to consult with his staff much of the time, insisting on making decisions without consulting anyone. Some of the odd decisions he made seem to have doomed his campaign, and it feels surprising that he came so close to winning.

White talks a lot about each candidate's all-purpose speech, the one each trotted out at every ordinary campaign stop. Every day, Kennedy would talk about how he wanted to get the country moving again and Nixon would talk about Peace and Prosperity. It made me realize how much tougher it is for candidates these days. With so many of their events on cable news, there must be an incredible pressure to come up with new material each time.

I remember watching Obama and Clinton's primary speeches every week in 2008 and feeling bored because they were saying the same thing each week. Well, they're supposed to do that. Back then, the candidates seemed more like stand-up comedians, using the same trusted material each night and only gradually working in new material.

The Beast in Me and Other Animals

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:04:24 -0500

I skipped enough stories in this book that I think I barely read it. I'm not entirely sure that I should even mention it here. Thurber is funny, but this just doesn't seem as interesting a collection as "My World and Welcome to It." The humor here just seems a bit too topical to remain funny today. Some funny pieces are scattered within here, but overall it was a little disappointing.

If you're ever inclined to read 70 pages about radio soap operas, however, this then is the book for you.

Conspiracy in Kiev

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:20:39 -0500

This was quite a gripping espionage story. This isn't one of my normal genres, but the novel was very entertaining.

My mother read it before me. She liked it too, but she had one complaint. She didn't like what the author Noel Hynd (who I know) said about Vladimir Putin. She didn't think he was necessarily wrong. However, she felt that he shouldn't have said such bad things about Putin, because Putin might come after him. I tried to explain to my mother that Putin probably has many other enemies on his list ahead of Noel Hynd. Personally, I think Noel's quite safe, but she's still worried.

For her sake, I won't say anything bad about Putin here. Such a nice man, that Putin.

Franny and Zooey

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:43:43 -0500

Of course, J.D. Salinger died a few weeks back, and like so many others I decided to reread one of his books. I remember liking "Franny and Zooey" a lot back in my impressionable college years. This time, though, I wasn't so thrilled by it. In fact, I almost didn't finish it.

The book is wildly uneven, which is really the worst thing a book can be. If it had been awful throughout, I would have never bothered finishing it. In this case, it had the occasional moment of greatness amidst all the tedium, just enough that I kept reading.

The first story "Franny" is really quite good, but "Zooey," the much longer story, could be infuriating at times. For example, it took about 80 pages, just for Zooey to make his way out of the bathroom. First, there was a letter from his brother to read in the tub, then a long conversation with his mother, and eventually some shaving.

And if you're ever wondering what was in a typical 1955 medicine cabinet, just turn to pages 75 and 76, where there is a 190-word sentence describing the contents of the Glass family medicine cabinet. (Note to self for Nanowrimo: Describing the contents of a medicine cabinet is a great way to pad your word total.)

At times, Salinger just seemed a little too clever and wordy for his own good. "The Catcher in the Rye" had many of the same problems, but there was also something magnificent about it. This book, though, just wasn't interesting enough for me to overlook the flaws.

Frankenstein

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:09:43 -0500

"Frankenstein" turned out to be a great novel, even though I almost bailed on it after the first hour. It doesn't really get going until page 28. Before that, we have a tedious author's introduction on how the story came about. Then, there's a preface. Then, there are a bunch of letters from some character who is definitely not Victor Frankenstein or the monster. And then finally, Frankenstein shows up and tells his tale.

I will say this about the monster: Man, does he have a good vocabulary. He's only been alive a few years when he starts talking to his creator, and he puts me to shame. Some words he used in his tale include: viands, recompense, imprecate, and scourge. He devours copies of Milton and Plutarch that he finds lying around. He may be a monster, but he is a monster of letters!

He's also grotesque, so grotesque that no one can look at him. The monster that we see in movies is ugly, but almost in a comical way. I found myself wishing I didn't have an image of Frankenstein's Monster in my head already when I read this. It felt like when you read a book that has been made into movie, and you can't help picturing the actor whenever reading about the character. (This can happen to me, even if I haven't seen the movie. For example, Freakin' Sean Penn almost ruined the book "All the King's Men," never mind the movie, just because my copy had him on the cover.)

And so I wish I hadn't seen the monster before reading about him, and I found I envied his intellect more than his brute strength.

The Unnamed

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:04:34 -0500

This is a very strange book to be reading while you have a head cold. It's about a lawyer who has episodes where he loses control of his legs. His legs will just carry him off on mammoth walks, and he's powerless to stop himself. This can happen at any time -- in the middle of the night, at the office, during a trial. He will walk for miles and miles, and then at the end of the walk he'll collapse wherever he is and sleep outside for hours.

Needless to say, this isn't conducive to a healthy life, a good marriage, a successful career, or pretty much anything else. As the book proceeds, the main character (as well as his wife) becomes a wreck. His body is ravished by the long walks. He suffers frost bite, loses fingers, and almost gets killed. He's also pretty much crazy by the last half.

In general, it was very odd to read this book about a man who can't control his legs from walking, when I really couldn't control my nose from running. The book had a very intense, feverish pace, and, well, I had a fever.

I loved Ferris' first book -- "Then We Came to the End" -- because it was funny. This one, not so funny. It's not exactly an uplifting comedy, but it's very well-written, and I couldn't put it down. I even liked it once I had recovered from the fever.

The London Embassy

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:06:38 -0500

This is really a very enjoyable book, but I just have little to say about it. It's really just a series of short stories featuring the same character. Great book, relaxing to read, but I don't have much to say about it.

Broadcast Rites and Sites

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:20:42 -0500

I Saw It on the Radio with the Boston Red Sox

Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione seems like a really nice guy, so I feel bad saying this, but here goes: This is not a good book. In fact, as they say about movies, it's often so bad that it's good. It's just a weird little book that seems to be in desperate need of an editor.

Sure, he occasionally has some interesting things to say, but there are also long sections where he talks about his favorite restaurants in the cities he visits. (In Baltimore, he actually recommends a food court.) Granted, the book is chock-full of behind-the-scenes details, but those details are often about the hotels he stayed in while on the road and the food in the press boxes of stadium which sometimes don't exist anymore.

Here, for example, are the last two paragraphs of the book, in which he discusses his participation in the Hall of Fame exhibit for the 2004 Red Sox, surely an exciting day:

I was honored to cut the ribbon for the exhibit, which included Curt Schilling's bloody sock. That night, I stayed at the beautiful Otesaga Hotel on Lake Otesage, within walking distance of the Hall of Fame. I was one of eight guests. I had the Otesaga's great brunch the next morning, then drove onto Franklin Pierece for a class.

November. We are still basking in the glow of the series victory and the trophy's tour. I hope we can repeat it next year.

Okay, maybe he did have editors, because you just know that the first draft listed all eight of the other guests and what he had for brunch.

By the way, it may seem like I'm on a baseball kick lately, having finished this and the Simmons book this week, but I really started the Castiglione book way back in the summer. It just took me six months to get through it.

Can You Forgive Her?

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:41:52 -0500

Yeah, pretty much.

Now I Can Die in Peace

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:23:31 -0500

How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank and the 2004 Red Sox

In the approximately 421 Red Sox books that came out after they won the World Series in 2004, I somehow forgot about this one. That's too bad, because it's one of the best. For some reason, I instead read the horrible diary by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan, a book that managed to be about the Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years and yet was somehow boring. Before reading it, I didn't think that would have have even been possible.*

Simmons, meanwhile, is not at all boring and also very funny. He's great at capturing the spirit of a fan. His columns are strangely much better to read in book form, if only because they don't seem quite so long. Online Simmons' columns seem so long that I get discouraged from reading them. I just don't have any patience reading online. But they were really just a few pages in a book. I think it will be much easier to read his columns in the future, if I think of them as chapters instead of columns.

And it's amazing to relive those games. The four-day stretch at the end of the Yankees series is something I will never experience again. There were so many ways that the whole thing could have ended in shambles, and yet they somehow still won.

Like many New Englanders, I made a lot of ridiculous purchases after the Red Sox won, including the 12-disc collector's edition of the 2004 World Series with all 7 ALCS games and all 4 World Series games. Of course, I've never had enough time to watch any of it, but I'm thinking now that I might pop a few of the games in.

* I also read Johnny Damon's "memoir," which was not my finest moment in reading.

King Solomon's Mines

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:41:12 -0500

I'll be honest. I didn't really enjoy this book, but I think that might have been because I read it through Daily Lit. This is only the second long work that I've read on Daily Lit. The first was "Around the World in 80 Days," which seemed to be ideal for the format. As this was another adventure novel from the time period, I expected it would be just as enjoyable.

I think Daily Lit is a little like listening to audio books. For me, I've found that I can only listen to certain types of books on audible. Non-fiction works much better for me than fiction, since it's easier to recover if you miss something in non-fiction. I imagine there will likely be certain genres that work better for me on Daily Lit too.

Here, because I was bored for the first third of the novel, I tended to skim a bit. (Hey, it was sent to me by e-mail, and who doesn't skim e-mail?) And then, even though the rest of the novel picked up, I still had trouble getting into it, because of what I missed earlier.

And so overall, it wasn't a bad novel, but I never really recovered from my bad start with it. I still wonder if I would have liked it more in book form. The answer may be no, but I'm just not sure.

All the President's Men

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:44:30 -0500

I'm not sure why, but I'm still on my Watergate kick. The cliché about Watergate is that "it's not the crime, it's the coverup." But you know, the crime was pretty bad. Or rather the crimes were. There were years of dirty tricks, and I wonder if even now it's all out there.

This classic by the reporters who broke the story was endlessly fascinating to me. The only problem was that for the life of me I couldn't keep track of who everyone was. There's Haldeman and Ehrlichman, John Dean and John Mitchell, Colson and Clawson, Liddy (wait I know him! He's the one with the mustache), Macgruder, McGregor, McCord, Nixon (name rings a bell, but I can't quite place him), and so many others.

I almost feel as if I need to read the original Washington Post articles in order to figure it all out, but that probably wouldn't work either. The amazing thing about the Nixon Administration is that Vice President Spiro Agnew had to resign for crimes that had nothing to do with Watergate. In any other administration, Agnew would be all that we remembered, and here he's barely mentioned.

The Guinea Pig Diaries

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:22:54 -0500

I think this is A.J. Jacobs' best book, and that's mainly because, instead of one big stunt, he does nine small ones. His stunts are somehow far more tolerable when they are chapters (or more likely magazine articles) rather than entire books.

There is a natural progression to his books. His first book was about reading the encyclopedia, which was funny but had some drawbacks because it was essentially a book about reading a book. His second book was about following the tenets of the bible for a year, which was better. It was still a book about reading a book, but at least he got out of the house a little with various experiments. Here, he seems to be a whole lot more active, and that makes it a much better book.

As whiny as I may sound here, I'm actually a big fan of Jacobs. He's always funny and interesting, though for his wife's sake I sure hope he writes a non-stunt book soon.

Juliet, Naked

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:34:00 -0500

It's a little strange writing about this book, as it's partly about an obsessive fan of a musician. And I'm an occasional obsessive fan of Nick Hornby. Well, to be honest, I'm far from obsessive, but I have read all of his books and will often cite him as my favorite author. He even partly inspired this blog.

Much like how Duncan in this book eagerly awaits the new release from musician Tucker Crowe, I was eagerly awaiting this new novel from Hornby. I can't help but think that Hornby might be mocking people like me in here. Then again, many of his books are about obsessive fans. And here the twist is that the book is more about the woman who has to live with the obsessive fan and the subject of the obsessive fandom. At times, it's like High Fidelity in reverse.

There's even a part in here in which the obsessive fan writes a review of the new release by Tucker Crowe right after listening to it for the first time, so this entry is beginning to seem very meta.

Here's what for me was the most striking passage:

The truth abut autobiographical songs, he [Tucker] realized, was that you had to make the present become the past, somehow: you had to take a feeling or a friend or a woman and turn whatever it was into something that was over, so that you could be definitive about it. You had to put it in a glass case and look at it and think about it until it gave up its meaning. . . .The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.

Here, Tucker has always hated his most renowned album, because he felt it wasn't authentic. That's sort of how I feel about writing humor columns now, like I'm trying too hard to catalog life in a snappy 750-word column. Many of my old columns all seem vaguely inauthentic to me. I seem to have been striving too hard for an opinion on which I could hang some jokes. When someone would write to me angrily about my opinion, a part of me would always be confused. I didn't mean anything by it. It was just a humor column, and they want to debate me?

It's a little similar to how Tucker feels about his songs. Unless, of course, it's not. On an unrelated note, the obsessive fan later decides that his initial review of the Tucker Crowe album was completely off-base. He's soon a little embarrassed by it, in fact.

My World and Welcome to It

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:52:10 -0500

I picked this book up to see if I still liked James Thurber. I hadn't read him for about twenty years, and the book itself is about sixty years old. Humor generally doesn't have a long shelf-life, so I was a bit skeptical. Still, much of this book was funny. His work doesn't hold up quite as well as that of Stephen Leacock, but there were times I laughed out loud.

The book is a bit uneven, but that can be said of most humor collections. One of the highlights is a piece at the end about all the strange translations Thurber found in a French-English "pocket interpreter" for travelers is one of my favorites. I'm hoping I never need to know the French expression for "he has burnt his face."

The collection also contains perhaps his most famous story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," which I still love. It always amazes me that it's only nine pages long. This is probably one of the shortest stories ever on which a movie was based.

Finally, I can't help but think of David Sedaris when I read Thurber. It's partly because they happen to be next to each other on my bookshelf and because both wrote extensively for The New Yorker. Still, the last section where Thurber wanders around France in a mostly bewildered state reminds me very much of Sedaris' articles about living in Paris. Sedaris just works a little more blue. That's all.