When We Get to Surf City by Bob Greene

I could hardly wait to start When We Get to Surf City by Bob Greene, and once I did I didn't want to do anything but read it until I finished. I've read two other Bob Greene books: Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan, and Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War. Both would get a four-star rating here. He's got a journalist's ear and a columnist's eye. And he must be a pretty good guy to hang with, since Michael Jordan and the whole Jan and Dean band befriended him.
This story starts with a member of that band contacting him after picking up a Greene memoir in an airport. He ends up joining the band on tour whenever possible for years. On the oldies circuit and encountering Ben E. King, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and others Greene portrays the tragic Jan Berry as only the most extreme example of the unasked question, "What do you do when your life is over, but you're still alive." The answer is modern-day heroism: just keep living.
Maybe you have to be in your fifties to enjoy a book about playing surf music, but Greene sees young kids at the concerts who know every word to songs like "Help Me Rhonda." I never went more than ten pages without laughing or crying (often both at once). ****

The Annotated Northwest Passage by Scott Chantler

Yesterday I zipped through The Annotated Northwest Passage by Scott Chantler. In the annotatations he mentions that it is his first professional writing job. That's incredible! It is superbly plotted. If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of writing and visual composition the annotations make it a lot more fun. ****
I don't even want to bother to summarize plot. Click on the title to go to Chantler's home page. Or click here to go to a summary in a review on a blog.

Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe

I think maybe Gene Wolfe was inspired to write Pirate Freedom by reading Empire of Blue Water (see my review of last year). I further think, that since he's a Sci-Fi writer he framed the whole thing with a Sci-Fi device. Great story, if confusing at times. It implies a lot about the main character's life that it never explains. That, and the final Sci-Fi twist give a reader something to think about even when the book is closed, even when it is done. And the factually accurate pirate stuff isn't used like a lesson, only included as it serves plot and character. Very professional entertainment ****

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell has his formula down. The list of his works in the front of Sword Song threatens to spill onto a second page, which shows how prolific he is. From the Sharpe series to the archer/grail stories he's pushed back to the dawn of "English" history for stories of the West Saxon King Alfred. The main character is Uhtred, a Saxon raised by Danes. He loves the Danes, hates Christianity, and is bound by oath to serve Alfred. Great adventure set in essentially accurate history (I theorize that Cornwell and others of his ilk write as they do as a way to get paid to read about time periods and people that interest them). ****

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu

I sort of lied about reading a comic book next.
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu tells the story of the rise and change of the comic-book industry in the post-war years, along with the history of attempts to blame social ills on comic books, climaxing with Frederick Wertham, the Kefauver commission, and Bill Gaines's ill-fated attempt to stave off the disaster.
Hadju's work rests on an impressive depth and breadth of research, including primary interviews with comics writers and artists as well as consumers and boycotters.
I found myself skimming the details of the growing legal threats, knowing they were to inevitably lead to a collapse of the industry.
My interest was in the stories of the early days of creators who were to become legendary: Eisner, Kirby, Simon, Lee, Wally Wood, and more.
***
Hajdu also wrote Positively 4th Street, which is a fascinating and unique view of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez from early days to the paired motorcycle accidents of Richard Farina and Dylan (a central thesis of that work is that Dylan stole much of his persona from Farina; one comes away from the reading with the distinct impression Hajdu believes Dylan faked his accident, in imitation of Farina's fatal crash, as a way of withdrawing from a limelight he'd so aggressively pursued). Positively 4th Street helped me understand the ambitious drive of many top-level performers. The Ten-Cent Plague documents a broader social impact, but will connect with a narrower audience.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

For a while, I was switching back and forth between Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace and Shakespeare's Philosophy (see below). I think I've tired out my brain. They both seemed to have at least a tangential connection to my work, so I excused myself for spending an inordinate amount of time on summer days reading instead of gardening, housepainting, exercising or whatever by believing these books would make me incrementally better at my job. Consider the Lobster is a collection of essays. The title essay turns an assignment from Gourmet magazine to go to the Lobster Festival in Rockland, ME into a meditation on the morality of cooking lobster, sort of. The opening essay "Big Red Son" is about the porn industry. Reading "Up Simba" about John McCain's Straight Talk campaign of 2000 was pretty interesting in light of the current campaign.
I have to find a way to get my AP students to read "Authority and American Usage" as part of our classwork next year, though I don't know where I'll get the copies. Wallace is just so visibly rhetorical, and brings in so many connections that his writing will be great for AP.
The pleasure of diction and syntax, the breadth of connection, the occasional "aha!" all combine to make this at least **** But the strength is the weakness: the self-awareness that makes him bring debeaked chickens into the lobster article gets him critiquing his neighbors as they gather to watch news of 9/11; he's never purely in the experience, a piece of him is standing off flipping through the ramifications of it. After a while it is fatiguing. Reading David Foster Wallace is almost as much work as reading Colin McGinn. My next read is going to be a comic book. Here's an interesting blog entry on a couple of these essays (scroll down). Hold on! Go here to read a review (linked on that blog) that articulates the massive plusness coupled with minusness of DFW.

Shakespeare''s Philosophy by Colin McGinn

I probably would not have picked up Shakespeare''s Philosophy by Colin McGinn if I hadn't recently read Bryson's Shakespeare (see below), but I'm glad I did. It is the hardest reading work I've done in some time. I had to keep a vocabulary notebook for terms like epistemological, aporias, teleological, and veridically. The most thought-provoking theme he explicated was the inaccessibility of others' minds. I wrote a double-entry journal on a section of his Othello chapter on that. McGinn discusses Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest. I feel the need to watch, read, or reread them all now.
How to rate this? "Of its type"? What is its type? Philosophy, I scarcely feel qualified to judge. Books on Shakespeare, not much more. Let me say that if you enjoy the plays and appreciate any kind of critical writing about them you will appreciate this book. If you read the Bryson and want to investigate the thinking this is a good book. So that makes it ****, but for a very limited audience, I'm sure.

One-Way Ticket by William G. Tapply

One-Way Ticket by William G. Tapply is another Brady Coyne mystery as reliable as any in the series. It may be more weakly plotted than some. It involves Boston mobsters, people with gambling addictions, and Brady's lover Evie leaving for San Francisco to be with her dying father. There are more than the usual number of references to Brady's friend J.W. Jackson, and the book is dedicated to Tapply's friend Philip Craig, the author of the Martha's Vineyard mysteries featuring J.W., who died last year.
Clearly elements of the story were inspired by and/or intended as tribute to Craig, which gives it a resonance and weight it wouldn't otherwise have. ***
If reading one of these is like watching a Red Sox game, this is like watching a not-especially well-played playoff game that they manage to win.

The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz

I stopped reading The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz after about 30 pages, thinking it was dwelling too much on mood and emotion. A couple days later I decided to give it a couple more chapters to catch me, and it did. Andrew Danner, a writer of series detective stories has been accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend, but acquitted on grounds of temporary insanity due to a brain tumor. He has amnesia and isn't even sure himself that he didn't kill her.
His ex-baseball-player friend tells him he's in a game; his editor tells him he's in a story. Even with all this cutesy, wink-wink stuff going on -- The chapter after the editor tells him, "What you need is something to kick down the front door, come barreling into the plot, crashing into the story," an LAPD SWAT team breaks down his door, and he's accused of another murder that he's able to ascertain he didn't commit -- the story rises to the level of a weak Robert Crais or Lee Child book (both of them provided blurbs for the cover, and Crais gets strongly Acknowledged). It seems Hurwitz has read his share of Michael Connolly too. So I'll say ***, but I feel a little dirty for doing so. That said, if you read editorial reviews, everybody seems to like it without any of the reservations I've expressed.

The Black Diamond Detective Agency by Mr. Eddie Campbell

The Black Diamond Detective Agency by Mr. Eddie Campbell is another "historical" graphic novel. Set in the "old" west and Chicago just on the cusp of the twentieth century. The hero is a gangster who teams up with the title agency to hunt down ex-partners who set him up, only to get back together with a woman who sold him out to them. Great story, distinctive style, echoes of the Pinkertons and of CSI. ****

Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One by Eric Shanower

In Age of Bronze: Betrayal Part One, Eric Shanower continues his mega-epic retelling of the Trojan War. Scholarship, draftsmanship, and storytelling combine in a work for the ages. This book begins with the Greeks sailing (again) for Troy, and ends on the eve of battle. Much of the action takes place within Troy itself. Paris, Hector, Helen, and, of course, Priam are major characters. Among the Greeks the focus is on Achilles, Menelaus, and my long-time favorite, Odysseus (who is not admirable in this telling).
For lovers of graphic novels, and lovers of mythology. ****
Here's a link to Shanower's web site. Here's an extended review.

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

As you'll read in most any extended review (like these two or this one) Shakespeare by Bill Bryson separates the little that is known about Shakespeare from the mass of ill-founded speculation and outright fantasy that has been written about him. Then Bryson builds a logical and entertaining portrait of the man and his times.
A slim volume, easy to read, not the best of Bryson, but still darn good. You have to be curious about Shakespeare or like Bryson's work (I'm a huge fan), or both. But if you want to know about Shakespeare, there's no reason to look elsewhere. ****
Here's an excerpt; check it out.

Lois on the Loose by Lois Pryce

Lois Pryce bails out on her job at the BBC to ride a dirt bike from Alaska to Argentina. In Lois on the Loose, she tells the story of the ride with a good-humored, funny style. It's a quick read, and a fun story. Her matter-of-fact way of just keeping on regardless of obstacles may lead you to underestimate just how tough she had to be to complete the ride. ***+
Click on the title to visit Pryce's website; when I did, I learned that she has since ridden through Africa, and has a book out on that trip, too.

All*Star Superman Volume 1 by Grant Morrison + Frank Quitely

A cover blurb on All*Star Superman Volume 1 by Grant Morrison + Frank Quitely reads, "A stirringly mythic, emotionally resonan and gloriously alternative take on the Man of Steel." And that captures it in a nutshell. These stories work in all the elements any long-time reader of Superman will know (some I didn't know about, but they were used in an allusive way). Very creative writing and art. I do think you have to know the back story at least a little, and like comic books, to appreciate it. ****