Fuzzy's Reading in 2012

I am a little bit late getting started on this year's thread as I have been really busy in the last week. It looks like there are a lot of threads to read. I hope to get caught up on everyone's reading soon.

My wife decided to go with a presidential assassination theme for my Christmas present. She is creative like that. Included were the books Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard and 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Lincoln is my favorite president, so I was excited to begin reading the first book despite some of the negative publicity that it has received. The King book I found equally exciting since I have not read any King since high school, and I graduated 16 years ago. While I loved King as an adolescent, I am intrigued to see if I will enjoy him as much as an adult. Happy reading everyone!

Books read in 2012
1. Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
2. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
3. The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
4. Arcadia by Lauren Groff
5. Strategies for Writing in the Social Studies Classroom by Kathleen Kopp
6. "Then Ozzie Said to Harold. . .": The Best Chicago White Sox Stories Ever Told by Lew Freedman and billy Pierce
7. The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Chicago White Sox: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Chicago White Sox History by Mark Gonzalez and Bill Melton
8. A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman
9. Windeye by Brian Evenson
10. Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
11. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
12. Animal Farm by George Orwell
13. Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
14. Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin
15. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tango, Lichtman, and Dolphin
16. Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut
17. The Ottomans: Dissolving Images by Andrew Wheatcroft
18. Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated: How I Became a Champion by Anthony Robles
19. The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon
20. The Vital Needs of the Dead by Igor Sakhnovsky

Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (4 stars)
While this book has been criticized because of a few historical inaccuracies, I think that misses the overall point that the authors were trying to make, which was that the Lincoln assassination was an intriguing episode that is as exciting as any thriller. As such, they chose to write it as a thriller rather than as historical non-fiction. Because of this, I think we can allow for a little bit of historical error as long as the overall story is accurate and fully intact, which it is.

As a thriller, I found this to be a good page-turner. As a history, it should serve to convince people who are otherwise not interested in history to study this era in more depth, which is an inherently good thing. As such, I very much liked the book. I found it hard to put down despite already knowing the facts behind the assassination well. It is written in a way that allows us to empathize with both sides and consider what is going on in their minds, which I found made these eighteenth century historical actors seem much more real and human. They were not longer two-dimensional characters on the pages of a history textbook and were instead living, breathing human beings that could be identified with. I found that these things made the book very much worth reading despite its historical inaccuracies.

11/22/63 by Stephen King (3 1/2 stars)
In 11/22/63, Jake Epping is a high school English teacher in Lisbon Fall, Maine. A local diner owner, Al, shows him a "rabbit hole" in his pantry. When Jake goes through the "rabbit hole," he arrives in 1958. Through Al he learns that every trip through the hole resets to 1958, but the changes you make there change the future. Al wants Jake to go back to 1958 and live for five years in the past so that he can save President Kennedy's life and change history.

Despite being a lengthy book at over 800 pages, I found it to be a quick read because the author, Stephen King, was constantly introducing new wrinkles to the story that kept me wanting to turn the page and find out what would happen next. King does a good job here in painting a picture of what it would be like to live in the late 1950s and early 1960s so that the events of the story are believable despite the amount of suspension of belief required of the reader to enjoy the story. Likewise, his characters undergo realistic emotions and react realistically enough that the reader cares what happens to them and wants to keep turning pages to find out what happens next.

Unfortunately, these strengths were diminished by a few things that bothered me about the book. One was that King likes to draw things out for pages on end that should be obvious to his audience. As such, I felt like he was insulting my intelligence or perhaps padding his manuscript so the book would have a more impressive length. Another problem that I had was that some of the dialogue rang false. For example, when Epping, as the first person narrator, describes how his 2011 high school students speak, it sounds nothing like real high school students. Trust me! I teach them for a living. This is but one example of poorly written dialogue that was hokey and jarred me into remembering that I was just reading a book and that none of this was real.

Despite these weaknesses, I did enjoy the book. While it wasn't the best novel I have ever read, it certainly wasn't the worst, and it reminded me of my youth when I used to love King's novels. I will say that I loved the premise and most of the plot twists in the book. King is definitely a great story teller if nothing else. He hasn't become so popular by accident.

Today I started reading The Stories of John Cheever as part of the January/ February Club Read 2012 challenge to read a book published or set in your birth year. I was born in 1978, which was when this Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection was published. I am not going to post a review of every short story in the collection, but I will post about the more memorable stories before I post my overall review.

The first story in the collection I found to be very memorable indeed. It is called Goodbye, My Brother, and is told in the first person by a man who goes to his family's island home to stay with his brothers, sister, and mother. I highly recommend this one and would give it five stars, so I don't want to spoil too much in the review. However, I will share that the main emphasis on the story is about one brother who has a bit of a different way of looking at the world from the other brothers, which leads to much consternation within the family. By the end of the story, I found myself identifying more with the outcast brother than with the narrator, which I think was Cheever's intent. Interpreting just what Cheever wanted the reader to get from the story involved interpreting the imagery of the sea, references to Greek mythology, and the costumes that people wore to a dance. This is the kind of story that leaves you thinking about what it all means after you finish reading it, which I am an admitted sucker for anyway, and I loved the story. I found that it really had a lot to say about seeing people beyond their superficial exteriors and seeing the world for what it really is. A great read!

>5 fuzzy_patters:
Reading Cheever for the first time? If so - you are up for very pleasant surprises with his stories :)

Yes, Annie, I am reading Cheever for the first time.

>4 fuzzy_patters: I've always enjoyed King, despite his sometimes stilted dialogue and textual diarrhoea. Thanks for the review!

A quick update on the Cheever book, "The Enormous Radio" is a great short story. It is about a woman whose husband bought her a new radio. When she tries it out, she can hear everythings that happens in their neighbor's apartments. It was very reminiscent of the Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window.

Hi fuzzy, nice to see another 'fuzzi-type' here. :)

I've never read anything by John Cheever.

I have The Stories of John Cheever sitting on my shelf, unread. I am moving it up the list based on your review of the first story.

Thank you for your very nice review of 11/22/63; I won't bother reading it. I haven't read anything by John Cheever; I think I'll read several of his stories that appeared in The New Yorker first.

Linda92007, I think I'll have to add John Cheever to my TBR list. But, which one first?

The Stories of John Cheever :)

Thank you AnnieMod. I'll see if the library has a copy, but it has to wait a little.

Between you and kidzdoc, it seems my copy of John Cheever's stories will finally get read. I read The Swimmer last night and will read The Enormous Radio tonight.

>16 RidgewayGirl: Excellent; I'll probably readThe Enormous Radio sometime next week.

I found my copy of The Stories of John Cheever. Based on the print edition I own, I must have bought it sometime around 1979. Talk about a long TBR list! In the preface, Cheever indicates that the stories are presented in chronological order. I plan to read them that way, as I am interested in seeing how his writing develops over time.

I just finished "The Day the Pig Fell into the Well." What a great short story! I thought that it resonated with me because my own family takes a yearly vacation together each year that results in the same type of longing for years gone by and the hopes and dreams of our youth.

I just read another Cheever short story that I fell in love wing. It was titled "The Golden Age" and was about an American television writer who visits Italy feeling guilty about the impact that his mediocre television program has had on Americans. Unable to live with his own mediocrity, he tells the Italians that he is a poet in the hope of appearing as cultured as he imagines them to be. It is all very sad and remorseful.

I finished The Stories of John Cheever earlier this week, but I am having computer monitor problems so I haven't posted my review yet. I will attempt to post it on my iPad, bu I apologize in advance for any typos.

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (4.5 stars)

This short story collection was published in 1978, contains short stories written between the mid 1940s and its publication date, and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1979. Cheever's short stories mostly take place in the suburban eastern United State, although a few take place in Italy. They deal largely with the emptiness of the lives of suburban adults, and I think that they can best be appreciated by adults who have experienced the American dream of a mortgage, a job, a spouse, and children. I have completely fulfilled this dream, found these stories completely relatable, and I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.

The major downfall of this collection is that so many of the stories were just variations on the same thing and seemed formulaic after awhile. For example, there were many stories about women who resented their husbands because they believed they could have had wonderful careers if they had never married. I enjoyed many of these stories, but they became redundant after a few days of reading the same stories under different titles many times over.

Despite this drawback, this really is a wonderful collection with many stories that are very inventive usually very sad. For those who love great short stories but do not care to read the entire collection, the following are some of my favorites.

Goodbye, My Brother
The Enormous Radio
The Sutton Place Story
Christm Is a Sad Season for the Poor
The Chaste Clarissa
The Day the Pig Fell into the Well
The Housebreaker of Shady Hill
The Golden Age
The Music Teacher
The Chimera
The Geometry of Love
The Swimmer
Artemis, the Honest Well Digger

Nice review of The Stories of John Cheever, fuzzy_patters. I am also working my way through it, but chronologically and interspersed with other reading, so it will probably take me quite awhile.

I've also been reading The Stories of John Cheever, but I'm only reading a few stories a week. I would think they would be repetitive read one after the other.

What I'm coming away with is that unless one was a white, straight, college-educated man, the world was a pretty harsh place a half century ago. And even for those men, they were so trapped in what they had to be. And then in the later stories, like The Ocean, the world is changing and there's a sense of bewilderment. Affluent and melancholy.

What did you think of the husband's reaction in The Enormous Radio?

My thought was that the husband's reaction showed their true relationship. Worrying about the flaws in our neighbors lives enables us go overlook the flaws in our own. It is only after the radio is "fixed" that we get to see the flaws in the husband and the wife with the husband's diatribe laying out his wife's past imperfections set against the husband's current anger and unfairness towards her. What was your impression?

Arcadia by Lauren Groff (early review) ( 2 stars)

Arcadia is a book told in four parts. The first two parts take place in a commune when the protagonist, Bit, was a boy. The second half of the book take place after the commune falls apart and Bit has matured. I found this part to be the stronger half of the book.

I found the first two sections of the book to be too cute by half. The characters were exactly what I would expect to read about in a book about a hippy commune. They almost seemed to be cartoon cut-outs at times instead of real characters. I found this trait to be very off-putting and made it very difficult for me to remain interested in the story.

The second half of the book seemed to be much more real in that the characters began to take on some real depth. It was at this point that I began to actually care what happened to Bit. Yet, even here the book became a bit cliche at times. Some parts were better about this than others.

Overall, I would say that Arcadia was a decent read. I have read better books, but I have certainly read much worse as well. It would probably work better for someone who romanticizes the 1960s and the fall-out from that time period. Personally, I have never believed that the people that came of age during that time period had as unique an experience as they would like to think that they had, which probably influenced my opinion of the book.

Strategies for Writing in the Social Studies Classroom by Kathleen Kopp (1 1/2 stars)

I was disappointed in this book. It didn't really break any new ground for me as a social studies teacher. Pretty much everything in this book would be something that any experienced teacher would already be familiar with. It would be a much more appropriate read for someone new to teaching. The only thing I got from it are some rubrics to steal.

>25 fuzzy_patters: I read your review of Arcadia with interest, as I will be attending a seminar this week where Lauren Groff is speaking. I haven't read the book, but am also put off by "cute". I own but haven't yet read her other book, The Monsters of Templeton.

"Then Ozzie Said to Harold. . .": The Best Chicago White Sox Stories Ever Told by Lew Freedman and Billy Pierce (3 stars)

I read this with the beginning of baseball season looming. While the stories were interesting, more detail would have been nice. It was largely just a cursory summary of White Sox history.

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Chicago White Sox: Heart-Pounding, Jaw-Dropping, and Gut-Wrenching Moments from Chicago White Sox History by Mark Gonzalez and Bill Melton (4 stars)

This book had a lot of what the other White Sox book was lacking. It was enlightening about some of the things that have gone on behind the scenes with the White Sox. I think it helps that Gonzalez is a White Sox beat reporter and likely witnessed a lot that was mentioned in the book.

You know, if Ozzie wrote a book on the Whitesox, I might be interested, even though I don't follow them.

Just stopping by the for the first time. The Cheever comments are very interesting.

Thanks, dchaikin. I agree that Ozzie's take on his tenure with the Sox would be interesting. That man is crazy.

A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman (3.5 stars)

A Mind of Winter is primarily about three main characters, Christine, Marilyn, and Oscar, and their lives in the years after World War II. Over 60 million people died in the war, and death plays an important role in the story. Oscar is haunted by the likely deaths of his family members at the hands of Nazis. Marilyn is haunted by the photo she has taken of a boy in London who has lost his entire family. Christine spends the first part of the book slowly killing herself, unsuccessfully, with opium addiction.

The real story is about the connection between Oscar and Christine and how this story ties them all together. They had been lovers in London after Oscar went there to flee Nazi Germany. A chance discovery by Christine would lead to their separation and Oscar's meeting Marilyn. The nature of this discovery and what happened to Christine after she left Oscar is the ultimate payoff that keeps the reader interested in the novel.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. Most of the characters had some depth and most of the book was compelling enough to keep me reading. The middle section, however, did bog down a bit. The Barnaby character was very superficially drawn. I would have liked to have known more about his back story and how he fit into the lives of the characters outside of simply being someone who knew and loved them all and helped tie them together. Because of this, the middle section that focused almost entirely on Marilyn's relationship with him tended to bog down a bit. I got the sense that Nayman rushed through that section and didn't put as much time into it as the first and third sections of the book. She should have spent more time explaining why Barnaby was the way he was.

Windeye by Brian Evenson (3 stars)

This collection of "literary horror" short stories was hit and miss for me. Many of them were very good and very weird. However, after story after story of things not being as they originally seem and everything ending in horror, the stories became stale and predictable by the end of the book. I would recommend reading a few of these at a time instead of reading the book straight through as I did. I think they would pack more punch that way.

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (5 stars)

In this, Vonnegut's first novel, Dr. Paul Proteus lives in a futuristic dystopia in which everything is automated so that humans no longer have to work or even think except for the engineers and managers who have become the second highest class of society second only to the machines themselves. Meanwhile, a group of revolutionaries are trying to bring down this system in order to bring back pride and human dignity to those who have been replaced by machines. Despite having been written sixty years ago, I found this book to be very timely in an era in which many Americans have lost jobs to either machines or foreign workers. In many ways, Vonnegut's book is a very prescient look at our world today.

This prescience extends beyond the loss of meaningful work for many Americans. Vonnegut also foresees many of the advancements that have been made in the tools we use in our everyday lives. For example, the non-engineering/managing class has been made content in the novel through having 40 inch TVs in every room, and their lives have been made easier through having "radar ranges," which are basically microwave ovens. In the novel, these things are provided for the populace in order to keep them content in the new role that machines play in society. It brings to mind how many Americans today are more interested in American Idol than in current events.

Despite being his first novel, this book also does not lack any of Vonnegut's trademark wit and satire. There are parts that are laugh out loud funny, and Vonnegut is such a good story teller that I found that I could not put the book down for want of finding out what would happen next. This is typical of a Vonnegut novel for me, and it seems that he possessed this trait way back in 1952. While this novel may not be as famous as later novels such as "Slaughterhouse Five" or "Cat's Cradle," I found this novel to be every bit as engaging as those two.

Great review of a classic writer. Too often revisiting futurist books is disappointing at best and awful at worst, but you have made this one sound worth revisiting, or in my case, reading for the first time.

Happy reading, Sassy Lassy! The only caveat that I should have added to my review is that the book had very sexist ideas about men's work vs. women's work and men's role in society vs. women's role in society. However, the portrayals in the book are true to the America of 1952, and I assume they are something that Vonnegut wasn't able to foresee changing.

Interesting about Vonnegut's first book.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (4 stars)

Cannery Row is, if anything, a character study of a diverse group of characters who all live in Cannery Row. Each character's action affects that lives of the other characters, which in turn helps to shape the tenor of Cannery Row itself. In doing so, Cannery Row becomes a living, breathing character that can only be studies through Steinbeck's slow, methodical revelations of the lives of the characters who live there.

The central plot, if there can be said to be one, centers on four men, who would otherwise be drifters if they weren't living in an old warehouse. The men want to throw a party for Doc, the nice man who owns the Western Biological store on Cannery Row. Meanwhile, Lee Chong, who owns the grocery store across the street, and the ladies at the whore house next door also get roped into the plot. Through it all, we learn a little bit about each character, in particular Doc's past, but we never learn quite enough to know their back-stories entirely. This makes the book seem more real in that we rarely know the stories behind all of the people we come in contact with in the world around us.

For what it is, this book works, and I enjoyed reading it. The only thing missing was something that I could take from it that would affect me in some small way after reading the book, which is how I generally judge great literature. While present in the other Steinbeck novels that I have read, I really couldn't find that in this particular novel. Perhaps that is my failing more than the novel's.

Because my wife's students are reading this, I picked it up and read it myself so that I could discuss it with her.

Animal Farm by George Orwell (3 1/2 stars)

I must be about the only person alive who was never assigned this novel in school, but I have finally read it at the age of 33. I can see what it is assigned in schools. It is a political allegory of historical significance that is written in a straight forward enough manner that it would be easy for adolescents to read and study it. For that purpose it works.

For my purpose as an adult hoping to get something more personal out of the novel, it falls a bit shorter. As a history buff, I did enjoy it as a political allegory about the perils of those who would take advantage of an ideology in order to craft out more power for themselves. In this case, this is carried out by the pigs who clearly represent the Communist Party of the Stalinist USSR. However, this is not a particularly novel idea in the twenty-first century, so I felt that it was less powerful to a contemporary reader than it would have been in 1945. It is, however, a good book of great historical importance, I just wouldn't put list it among the best books that I, a twenty-first century reader, have ever read.

Interesting thoughts on Animal farm. I read it at school and I am wondering what I would make of it now. Enjoyed your review of Cannery Row. I recently saw the 1982 film starring Nick Nolte and Deborah Winger, which was great -- I must read the book sometime.

"The only thing missing was something that I could take from it that would affect me in some small way after reading the book,"

I can relate to this comment. It seems more difficult for me to get this from a book lately, but that's another story.

Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut (4 stars)

This is a short story collection by Kurt Vonnegut. These short stories were written in a time when a writer could make a living selling short stories to commercial magazines, and these were Vonnegut's. Other writers who were cranking out short stories for a regular paycheck included William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway,and John Steinbeck, so Vonnegut was in good company in this regard.

The stories in this collection are all very entertaining and all have Vonnegut's typical sardonic wit. None of the stories really stand out as all are quite enjoyable, and Vonnegut does not have the bad habit of repeating the same themes that can lead to a short story collection becoming tedious by the end of the book. Instead, these are all very inventive, and many are quite different from each other. The only thing missing from this collection was that one great short story that the reader will remember long after finishing the book. File these under forgettably fun read.

#42, Ha! Read and forgotten. But I remember being disappointed too. (Accepting that it's forgivable for an author's early writings to be disappointing)

Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins (4.5 stars)

This is a short story collection written by Claire Vaye Watkins, and is her first published book. Being her first book, I wasn't sure what to expect going into it, but I was pleasantly surprised. A major motif throughout the book is the expansiveness of both the Nevada desert and modern urban society how insignificant individuals are within each. Each of her characters strives to find a way to cope with this insignificance, which reveals a great deal of humanity in each of these fictional characters.

One of the best compliments that I can give to Watkins is that I did not feel like I was reading the same short story repeatedly like I have when reading other authors' short story collections. She does return to the same tired story with only the settings and characters changed as happens so often in other collections. Instead, each story is unique and stands on would stand on its own outside of the collection. All were good and worth reading, and I did not regret the time wasted reading any of them.

The highlight for me of the book was the story "The Diggings," which is almost more of a novella than a short story at 61 pages in length in my copy. Its about two brothers who go from Ohio to California during the gold rush in search of their fortune. One brother is crazed with finding gold so that he will be able to convince the love of his life to marry him despite his meager background. The other brother tells the story in the first person, which gives the reader the opportunity to experience the story as it unfolds. The story is reminiscent of Homer's Odyssey and Jason and the Argonauts of Greek Mythology in that is is an epic quest in search of gold. I found it to be a truly outstanding story and the book is well worth reading for this story alone.

Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin (4 stars)

This is a historical fiction about a real life gang called Hell at the Breech that declared war on the nearby towns of Grove Hill and Coffeeville in 1890s Alabama. This took place during a time when the merchants in the towns kept the poor farmers in perpetual debt, and anger over their situation led in part to the war between the two. There are as many questions as there are answers as to what really happened, and Tom Franklin's fictional portrayal imagines the truth behind the events.

Franklin does a very good job of bringing to life the violence and humanity of these characters. The reader comes to love them, fear them, and loathe them over the course of the story. This is a strength of his that is evidenced both in Hell at the Breach and in his subsequent novel Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. The characters in Hell at the Breach are each individuals motivated by a variety of things including financial interests, self-preservation, revenge, justice, and plain-old meanness. The complexities of these characters make for a very exciting reading experience in which the reader genuinely cares who lives and who dies by the end of the story.

What a strange event. Enjoyed your review. I've heard of Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, but not this.

I loved Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Hell at the Breech sounds pretty different, but maybe I'll give it a try. Thanks for the review!

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tango, Lichtmann, and Dolphin (4 stars)

Although a bit dated with most of its research covering the increased run scoring environment of the steroid era, this is an interesting study of baseball strategy that will appeal to most sabrmetrically inclined baseball fans. Many baseball managers claim to manage "by the book" when they make decisions according to what conventional wisdom dictates. Tango, Lichtman and Dolphin have done the research to show what decisions they should actually make and in what percentages.

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut (4 stars)

Jailbird begins as a story about a man who has been jailed for having a very insignificant part in the Watergate scandal. Because of this, he is housed in a jail for white collar criminals near Atlanta, Georgia. The story traces his past beginning with his childhood as the son of two servants for the wealthy McCone family and continues on to tell about his life as a Harvard student and role in the HUAC hearings among other things.

I found the book to be characteristic of Vonnegut in that it is filled with his trademark wit and dark humor. The reader wants to root for the protagonist to find some sort of fulfillment in life in a world that Vonnegut portrays as being very silly and senseless. Through humorous portrayals of the US government and corporations, Vonnegut provides a scathing mockery of the US economic system and how inhuman we all become within it.

I liked this book even though I doubt that Vonnegut and I would agree on a lot of things politically. Regardless of how you feel about the American version of the capitalist system, you have to admit that at many times Vonnegut does point out some of the absurdities of it. Likewise, as I previously mentioned, he does write in such a way as to make you want to root for the protagonist and hope that he gets some sort of justice in his life even though, after comparisons are frequently made to Sacco and Vanzetti, that this isn't likely to happen for him.

Enjoyed your review of Jailbird

Thanks, baswood!

The Ottomans: Dissolving Images by Andrew Wheatcroft (2 stars)

I thought this book was good for getting a general idea about the history of the Ottoman Empire; however, I thought that it could have been improved with better organization. The book follows thematic chapters that are mostly chronological but not always. This made it difficult for me to follow the stream of Ottoman history and to see the overarching themes in their history. Making matters worse was the fact that the book is unclear about which Ottoman images are being dissolved. In some instances, situations in the book seem to reinforce rather than dissolve common images of the Ottomans.

Too bad it doesn't work, the topic sounds quite interesting.

Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated: How I Became a Champion by Anthony Robles (3 stars)

Overall, I liked this autobiography by Anthony Robles. However, there were a few things that bothered me about it. For one, his writing voice is kind of cheesy at times, which I found to be off-putting. Secondly, it bothered me as a former wrestler how much he dismissed other peoples' complaints that having one leg gave him some advantages. For one thing, a shooter isn't going to be able to shoot on him because he isn't standing up to be shot on. For another, a thrower isn't going to be able throw him because they can't get their hips lower than his, which pretty much eliminates every takedown any of his opponents know. Having seen him wrestle before, he also had tremendous grip strength, which his 125 pound opponents could not match up against because they would weigh over 125 pounds if they did since they have two legs.

However, I did find his story to be very inspirational, and I think it's awesome that he won a national championship. While his physical difference gave him a big advantage, it was no different than the God given advantages that many other wrestlers have over each other. For example, a shorter guy can pack more muscle onto his body and weigh the same as a taller guy, and a taller guy has a lot more leverage when wrestling against a smaller guy. I also thought that it was awesome how he took what was a disadvantage, only being able to stand on one leg, and made it an advantage by learning a completely unique wrestling style.

The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon (Early Review) (5 stars)

It's difficult to describe this book without giving too much away to those who have not read it. It is probably best described as a metafiction about the necessity of fiction to describe the human existence. The back cover of the book refers to mapping one's identity, but I do not think that does the book justice. It is about more than that with major themes including the futility of searching for meaning in art and, ironically, the beauty of literature that has meaning within the subtext of the story.

The book is very insightful and has very clever references to art, music, and literature that enhance the story by challenging the reader to see things as they are rather than by the limited descriptions available in the English language. A fair warning should be given to the reader that there may be references made that will require the reader to do some research in order to fully appreciate the work. For example, I was unfamiliar with music of Thelonious Monk and ended up listening to a certain work of his that comes up in the book in order to gain a greater appreciation for the mood of the book. However, it well worth it, and I loved every page of this book. This one will probably require a second reading in the future to enhance my appreciation of it.

Great review of The Polish Boxer.

Interesting review, fuzzy_p. I love fiction which makes or directs me to explore new stuff which I might otherwise give a miss. This book has been receiving fairly good reviews, it certainly seems worth looking up.

How wonderful that The Polish Boxer led you to Thelonious Monk.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (4 stars)

American Tragedy is your typical 1920s story about the folly of chasing the American dream except that it is also a psychological novel about committing murder. It's like Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby except that it is not quite as good as either one. Dreiser reminds me of Dickens in that his prose is excessively wordy and repetitive. This actually turns out to be a good thing. It enables us to really get to know his characters as people and evokes sympathy for them. It becomes easy to put yourself into their shoes and really experience everything that happens in the novel, including what it is like to plans and commit murder.

The story is about Clyde Griffiths, a poor son of two street preachers, and is based on a true crime. Griffiths wants nothing more than to be somebody, a common theme in American literature. In doing so, he comes in contact with a host of characters on his way up. Some of these characters are likable and others are not. Several obstacles stand in his way of overcoming his humble beginnings, but the greatest of which is his own weakness and propensity to make bad decisions.

In the end, I found myself rooting for Clyde to at least gain some sort of redemption despite the fact that I really hated him throughout most of the book. That is probably the greatest compliment that I could pay Dreiser for this novel. His main character was human enough that he really cannot be portrayed as good or evil. He simply was, and that made for a very enjoyable tragedy.

Nice review of An American tragedy. Its been sitting on my shelves for quite some time now. I should give it a try, but am a bit awed by its size: quite a doorstopper, isn't it?

Edwin, it's thick, but I thought it went quickly.

The Vital Needs of the Dead by Igor Sakhnovsky (early review) (2.5 stars)

This book was hit-and-miss for me. I really liked some of the visuals and the way they were described by the author as well as some of the relationships and their dynamics that felt both interesting and real to me. Yet, overall, I found most of the novel to be pointless. There are several themes running concurrently at different times without any real central theme at any one time to give it all meaning. It doesn't work as a coming-of-age story, a story about youth in Soviet Russia, or as a story about dealing with the loss of a loved one, although it does come closest to the latter.

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