16 Jun 2007 @ 15:31, by Jose Overalles

What I've read this spring, dead tree editions...

Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics

A Friend of the Earth
by TC Boyle

During the 1980s and '90s, Ty Tierwater had exchanged a sedately acquisitive existence--"the slow-rolling glacier of my old life, my criminal life, the life I led before I became a friend of the earth"--for a fairly ambivalent position on the front lines of an ecoterrorist posse called Earth Forever! The only complication is his dual penchant for empathy and ineptitude, exacerbated by a frustration that swells with accumulating incitements. After his daughter is taken from him, and his second wife, Andrea, becomes more committed to the cause than to their marriage, Ty finds solace in blind destruction. He serves his almost predictable terms in jail; he endures the eventual death--and martyrdom--of his activist daughter, Sierra. At 75, and a quarter of the way into the dismal and decayed 21st century, he unaccountably finds himself tending an eccentric rock star's private mini-zoo of ragged animals and wryly lamenting the collapse of his race. And then Andrea resurfaces--along with his long-fallow faith in love.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
by Ken Kesey

R.P. McMurphy is a sane man that, due to a brush with the law, opts for being committed in a mental asylum rather than be incarcerated with hard labor. Upon his entry in the secluded world of the asylum, he strips all the barriers formed and starts laying his own rules, in his own way. This leads to problems with the head honcho of the place. A big, gruesome, and menacingly evil Nurse Ratched, dubbed Big Nurse for her huge frame and even huger bosom. The rollercoaster, that patient McMurphy takes the inmates through, finally leads them to realize the ultimate goal. That man, no matter the situation, can always hold his destiny in his hands. This knowledge, achieved in the end, does not come without a price.

Snow Falling on Cedars
by David Guterson

The novel is narrated by Ismael Chambers, the publisher of the only newspaper on San Piedro Island, the fictional stand-in for Bainbridge Island, Washington. The islanders are, with few exceptions, either strawberry farmers or Salmon fishermen. When a white fisherman dies under suspicious circumstances, the evidence points towards a Japanese-American fisherman who was the last person to see the dead man alive. Ishmael's boyhood romance with Hatsue, the girl that later becomes the accused man's wife, provides fertile material for interesting flashbacks to the early 1940s, when virtually all of the island's Japanese-American population was carted off to internment camps soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle

Everyone in town thinks Meg Murry is volatile and dull-witted, and that her younger brother, Charles Wallace, is dumb. People are also saying that their physicist father has run off and left their brilliant scientist mother. Spurred on by these rumors and an unearthly stranger, the tesseract-touting Mrs Whatsit, Meg and Charles Wallace and their new friend Calvin O'Keefe embark on a perilous quest through space to find their father. In doing so, they must travel behind the shadow of an evil power that is darkening the cosmos, one planet at a time. This is no superhero tale, nor is it science fiction, although it shares elements of both. The travelers must rely on their individual and collective strengths, delving deep within themselves to find answers.

The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck

...a story built around a flawed human being and a teetering socio-economic system, as well as one that is layered with profound themes. The cadence of the author's writing is also of note, as it rhythmically lends itself to the telling of the story, giving it a very distinct voice. No doubt the author's writing style was influenced by her own immersion in Chinese culture, as she grew up and lived in China, the daughter of missionaries.

The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking
by Stephen Law

British philosopher and editor Law explores 25 of life's Big Questions in a sprightly volume designed to be a "course in thinking philosophically." Categorizing each philosophical "adventure" as Warm-up, Moderate or More Challenging, he addresses queries both grand and eternal ("Does God Exist?" and "Where Did the Universe Come From?" are two of his chapters) and controversial and contemporary ("What's Wrong with Gay Sex?" and "But is it Art?"). Lay readers looking for a comprehensible introduction to critical thinking will benefit from Law's straightforward exposition of each topic; opposing arguments are clearly organized in a tennis match of sorts: Law has two diners, for example, spar over whether eating meat can be morally justified. (Animals eat other animals, one says. But they don't know right from wrong, his companion says. Eating animals comes naturally to us, says the first. But so does violence, says the second. Etc.) In the chapter on morality's supposed dependence on religion, a section titled "

An Argument for the Existence of God" is followed by the impressively accessible "Plato's Refutation of the Popular Argument," which is then countered with the "'But God is Good' Reply," and so on. The writing is lively and accessible, thanks to Law's passion for his subject and his creative use of zany conversations between future scientists about the possibility of time travel, for example, and his whimsical examples of strange objects called "fubbyloofer s" to demonstrate the difficulty of determining what is art. The best of these essays end inconclusively, encouraging readers to consult the additional resources Law recommends. When Law unabashedly declares his final opinion-"In short, what creationists practice isn't good science-it's bunk"-it has the potential to offend. It detracts, too, from the book's admirable aim to "provide the skills needed to think independently" and "help fortify your courage in making a moral stand."

Not In Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic Is Transforming America
by Christine Wicker

Apparently vampires not only exist but are alive, well, and possibly living in your home town. It's also likely that the spirit of novelist Zora Neale Hurston is in North Carolina giving magical people very specific instructions about what to do with her grave dirt. At least this is what Wicker suggests with a lot of wit, a serious dash of journalistic curiosity, and always respect for even the strange and unbelievable characters she encountered as she journeyed across America in search of all things magical. A former religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News and author of several books including Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead, Wicker tries to sort out the difference between religion and magic, and examines the many varieties of magical experience found across America. Wicker is many things for readers—a memoirist, a reporter, a narrator of fascinating stories and well-written dialogue and, not least, a humorist. Readers will find themselves unable to put this book down, absorbed in the story Wicker has to tell that is as much filled with laugh-out-loud moments as it is with insights into a topic that continues to fascinate both Muggles and magicians alike.

Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer

The simplest thing would be to describe Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Holocaust. It is, but that really fails to do justice to the sheer ambition of this book. The main story is a grimly familiar one. A young Jewish American--who just happens to be called Jonathan Safran Foer--travels to the Ukraine in the hope of finding the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is aided in his search by Alex Perchov, a naïve Ukrainian translator, Alex's grandfather (also called Alex), and a flatulent mongrel dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. On their journey through Eastern Europe's obliterated landscape they unearth facts about the Nazi atrocities and the extent of Ukrainian complicity that have implications for Perchov as well as Safran Foer. This narrative is not, however, recounted from (the character) Jonathan Safran Foer's perspective. It is relayed through a series of letters that Alex sends to Foer. These are written in the kind of broken Russo-English normally reserved for Bond villains or Latka from Taxi. Interspersed between these letters are fragments of a novel by Safran Foer--a wonderfully imagined, almost magical realist, account of life in the shtetl before the Nazis destroyed it. These are in turn commented on by Alex, creating an additional metafictional angle to the tale.