The Winners' Circle

I'm supposed to be running errands right now. Like, actual, real, important errands. But instead I'm sitting on my couch in my underwear blogging about books. Because when you work a half day on a Monday, pants are like kryptonite to the Superman of my laziness.

Before the wedding, when I was in the supreme funk of wedding planning mode and my fingernails were splitting up the middle and my brain was melting, I slipped into a sort of stress-induced illiteracy.  I tried to read, but the words went from my eyeballs into my brain all garbled. Sort of like I was trying to read with my feet instead of my face. It was very unsatisfying. I don't recommend it.

Since the wedding, my fingernails have grown back in very strong and healthy, thanks for asking, and I'm backing to ripping through books the way that Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, and all those years of the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Summer Reading Program programmed me to do.

I like it when I can gush about books instead of finding everything in the world dreadfully boring and unsatisfying. It's funny what a little perspective will do.

The Art of Fielding
By Chad Harbach

I began reading this 500-page monster before the wedding and should have known better. I only made it about 75 pages in before I hid it under the bed and decided that I would rather die than read another word.

This was a huge mistake. Or at least, I'm lucky that my reading funk is over and I picked the book up again (which I rarely do once I've put it down).  It turns out that this is a pretty delicious piece of literature.

It's a pleasure to read a novel where the two recurrent themes--baseball and Herman Melville--seem totally unrelated, but weave together invisibly. The characters in the novel are also surprising, complex, and real in that way that makes you think about them for hours after you put the book aside. Sexuality is treated as something human rather than over-the-top or scandalous! A woman makes a choice motivated by something other than a man! (Granted, there is only one female character in this book and she does pretty much EVERYTHING in relation to the gaggle of male characters, but considering that this is a very masculine book, some of her actions make my giddy with glee.) At the end of the day, it's one of those books that, when you find yourself at the end of a chapter and your logical brain is begging you to go outside or go to sleep or do the dishes, your eyes trail over to the next chapter completely outside of your control.

The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy
By Stewart O'Nan

The Circus Fire is a non-fiction work of historical reconstruction about a tragic fire that occurred in Hartford, Connecticut in 1944. The author is originally a fiction writer, so he begins by explaining why he chose not to fictionalize the book: the fire was already legendary, and the truth much more interesting and messy than fiction writing can neatly account for.

The circus fire itself was a massive blaze that consumed an entire Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey big top tent with somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 people inside when the fire began. The book is about what happened before, during, and after those five or ten short minutes, based on records and eye-witness accounts.

There are large portions of the book that unfold like a train-wreck. They're impossible to look away from. There are also portions of the book that are rather boring and difficult to follow; the fire naturally involved a lot of legal action, and people in the 40's weren't very creative with names, so folks begin to run together in the who-was-at-fault, who-sued-who sections of the book. Really, the biggest fault of the book is how difficult it can be to keep people straight, which is probably due to the nature of the subject matter.

It's difficult not to consider what you might do in a similar situation (and the author does discuss other fires and crowd psychology) as well as to compare the way the public reacted to the fire then to how we react to such tragedies now...  people were upset that the circus was blamed for something that was an Act of God.

Misery
By Stephen King

Another one from the King. Sorry... and you're welcome.

1. The metaphor of the "pilings" that King uses to describe Paul Sheldon's pain throughout this book is so astonishing and apt. How does he do it? He's really not the most amazing writer in the world, but sometimes he writes things that are just friggin' incredible. I think about this metaphor every time I get a migraine now, and probably will for the rest of my life.

2. If the movie wasn't gory enough for you, the book will really do the trick. Delicate gag reflexes beware. (If you haven't seen this classic film, please do. Kathy Bates plays Annie Wilkes and she just makes you cringe.)

3. If you're a writer, read this book. It's a horror novel with the added bonus of being a novel about the craft of writing and the not-so-delicate relationship between the author and the reader.


Ready Player One
By Earnest Cline

I challenge you to read the introduction to this novel and not want to immediately proceed to the next level. Er, chapter.

Does it tell you something that the Audio Book is narrated by Wil Wheaton? It should.

It's a dystopian future (is there any other kind?) and world is plugged into the OASIS, a virtual reality MMORPG where people attend school, have jobs, build homes, and live out most of their lives (if they can help it). When the creator of the OASIS dies he leaves behind an easter egg--a hidden treasure within the game--the person who finds it first inherits his vast fortune and control of the OASIS itself.

This book flies on the strength of its story alone. It's badass. However, it also envelopes you in a warm cloud of pop-culture nostalgia, specifically, 80's pop-culture nostalgia. It's a little like watching every John Hughes movie, listening to every Duran Duran song, playing every Atari game, and wearing every color of neon leggings at the same time, except fine-tuned for nerds, so there are a lot of light saber references, etc. What saves the novel from being nothing more than a kitsch-receptical is Cline's ability to create a completely engrossing and believable future. Not only does it seem like, yeah ok, that might happen... it seems like this future is pretty much exactly what IS going to happen and he's just reporting back to us like Marty McFly.

BONUS: It turns out that I sometimes buy multiple copies of books because I'm overzealous and scatterbrained and a little weird. I have a brand new copy of Misery just begging to be read by someone. I'll send my spare copy to the first person who can correctly answer the following three movie trivia questions, either in the comments or by email:

In the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, who is the Sausage King of Chicago?

Name all seven Goonies.

What instrument does Dana Barrett play in Ghostbusters?