Book Rec of the Day 9/15-9/24/2008

COMIC ANTIHERO

This is not your father’s comic book. The protagonist is a pathetic antihero, yet Ware’s haunting, evocative art so enlivens the story that we must continue turning the pages. The brilliantly rendered section on the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 alone is worth the price of the book. This is a serious, sad story of heartache and alienation and an extraordinary work of art that shows just how much the graphic novel is capable of.

JIMMY CORRIGAN: THE SMARTEST KID ON EARTH, by Chris Ware (Pantheon, 2003)

CHICK LIT

It’s not about the men, it’s about the power in Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s fourth book. Wendy Healy is the president of Parador Pictures, scheming to get an Oscar while taking care of an unemployed, childish hubby. Victoria Ford is a fashion designer recovering from the poor reception of her spring line while juggling the advances of a billionaire. Nico O’Neilly has saved glamorous Bonfire magazine and is cheating on her professor husband with a male model. Well, maybe it is about the men somewhat: men, women, power, and certainly the city.

LIPSTICK JUNGLE, by Candace Bushnell (Hyperion, 2005)

GREAT JOURNALISM

People have been known to read The Wall Street Journal just for the so-called “middle column,” which since 1941 has delivered a good chuckle, an eye-opener, or a welcome relief from the sobering news of the day. Toad licking, orthodontics for sheep, prudish nudists, reports on unconventional careers such as belly dancing . . . These 67 stories chosen by Wells, a novelist and a senior editor at the paper, represent the best of the best.

FLOATING OFF THE PAGE: THE BEST STORIES FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’S “MIDDLE COLUMN”; edited by Ken Wells (Free Press, 2003)

“Ellroy rips into American culture like a chainsaw in an abattoir. . . . Pick it up if you dare; put it down if you can.”—Time

“This is Plymouth Rock turned over after three centuries to expose the creatures wriggling in the dark beneath the surface of the American Dream.”—Kirkus Reviews

The author of L.A. Confidential takes on the ’60s and its assassinations, cops, J. Edgar Hoover, Cuba, the KKK, the Mob, and EVERYTHING. The book has inspired some of the most thrillingly overwrought review blurbs of the decade.

THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, by James Ellroy (Vintage, 2002)

EAST VS. WEST

Roger Crowley unfolds for us a significant moment in the troubled relations between Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East. The Byzantine Empire had stood as a center of Christian civilization for more than 1,000 years. In 1453, the Ottoman sultan, Mehmet II, brought the empire to its final inglorious end by capturing Constantinople. Constantinople became Istanbul, and a whole new era of European history began. Crowley’s account is thorough and detailed.

1453: THE HOLY WAR FOR CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE CLASH OF ISLAM AND THE WEST, by Roger Crowley (Hyperion, 2005)

In the seventh entry of the Bridgerton series, young Hyacinth, headstrong and too smart for her own good, meets Gareth St. Clair, the man who can finally leave her speechless. A viscount’s second son, Gareth unexpectedly becomes heir to the title, the St. Claire estate, and a mysterious diary written in Italian, which Hyacinth must help him translate. And there is, of course, a kiss. More than one, actually.

IT’S IN HIS KISS, by Julia Quinn (Avon, 2005)

BE A MAN

For 18 months, Norah Vincent passed herself off as Ned, a man who worked as a salesman, played in a men’s bowling league, dated women, and went on an all-male retreat. Her book is a fascinating account of how she did it, what she learned about men and women in the process, and the toll it took on her in dealing with the unexpected complexities of being male in our society, as well as her feelings of guilt in a life of deception.

SELF-MADE MAN: ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY INTO MANHOOD AND BACK, by Norah Vincent (Viking, 2006)

The Baines sisters, Constance and Sophia, were born and raised in the English Midlands. In 1867, Sophia eloped to Paris with a raffish young salesman, while Constance stayed at home and married an assistant in her parents’ drapery shop. They lived completely different lives—Constance was upheld by a Victorian world of stability, while Sophia was abandoned by her husband and had to fend for herself in an unsettled Paris. In their last years they were reunited, changed by their lives, yet in some ways they remained essentially the same. Bennett’s affection for the girls shines through on every page.

THE OLD WIVES’ TALE, by Arnold Bennett (1908; Penguin Classics, 1991)

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Henry Kisor, book editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, lost his hearing at age three. Instead of using sign language, his mother taught him how to read lips. This engaging memoir relates his struggles as a deaf man in a fast-talking, and sometimes word-slurring, world. (The title was Kisor’s interpretation of lips that were actually saying “What’s that big loud noise?”) He observes the cultures of the hearing and the deaf with a keen and witty intelligence.

WHAT’S THAT PIG OUTDOORS? A MEMOIR OF DEAFNESS, by Henry Kisor (Penguin, 1991)

OTHER WORLDS

In Peter Cameron’s fourth novel, graduate student Omar Razaghi has received a grant to write a biography of the not particularly renowned author Jules Gund, and he travels to Uruguay to talk with Gund’s heirs. In a narrative that is largely dialogue, Cameron shows Omar becoming involved with them: Caroline, Gund’s widow; Arden, his mistress; and Adam, his homosexual brother. What results is a sweet, beautiful love story, elegantly written and a pleasure to read.

THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION, by Peter Cameron (Plume, 2003)