mattplozza's 2009 books

The thread title may be ambiguous, but I'm only aiming for 75. Not 2009.

The inspiration for my joining the challenge is my recent realisation that at fifty books a year, the numbers give me 3,000 books to read from now. That's all. This number makes me inexpressibly sad, so I'm upping the ante.

In all honesty, I don't expect to make 75. When I start back at uni I'm going to be glumly plowing my way through textbooks too much to be reading at the rate I'd like.

Better get started then, hadn't I?

Good luck to all.

Welcome to the group mattplozza! Good luck to you, too.

1. The City And The Stars - Arthur C. Clarke

I haven't been a big Sci-Fi reader for many years, and I first read this book back when I was twelve, maybe, or thirteen. It was one of those books that made a profound impression on me because of how young I was when I first read it. Perhaps because of a comparative lack of critical faculties or of cynicism, I've always found that no matter how enjoyable a novel is, or how artistically beautiful it is, it will never be as profoundly affecting as the books I read soon after my age reached double figures. A Wrinkle In Time, Black Hearts In Battersea and, indeed, The City And The Stars all fell in this brief window, and I'm just starting to re-read them now.

To be quite honest, I was slightly disappointed. Partially because I couldn't recapture that elusive magic, but partially because I expected to book to have more depth on a re-reading. Oddly enough, it seems that my twelve-year-old self was quick enough to pick up on and appreciate just about all that was there in the novel. While I very much enjoyed the atmosphere of qualified pessimism - so at odds with most Sci-Fi of the time - and greatly enjoyed the premise of a stagnant mankind fearful of change, I knew it all already. And there weren't any tasty goodies to keep the re-reader hooked.

That said, I liked it. But it was nowhere near as rewarding an experience as re-reading a Foucault's Pendulum or a Lolita or even an American Gods. Unfair, I know, naming my four favourite books. But such is life.

I never read any Arthur C. Clarke but I adored A Wrinkle In Time and Black Hearts in Battersea around the same age and they've both stood up well for rereading for me.

Hi Matt,
I read my first Arthur C. Clarke last year, 2001: A Space Odyssey a very good read, and am currently reading 2010: Odyssey Two.

I wholeheartedly agree about A Wrinkle in Time which is one of my all-time favorite books and one I routinely re-read. I have not read Black Hearts in Battersea or The City and the Stars, but I will put them on Continent TBR.

>3 mattplozza:: mattplozza, I've re-read a number of my Clarke and Aiken books, including both The City and the Stars and Black Hearts in Battersea. I have to say that, almost without exception, the Clarke books have not quite held up to my childhood recollections, while the Aiken books do.

I think that I shall stop rereading Clarke entirely so that I can preserve the good memories I have of them.

On the Aiken front, my daughter has The Wolves of Willoughby Chase queued up to try at some point and I just reread some portions of Nightbirds on Nantucket that I particulary enjoyed.

>6 alcottacre:: Stasia, Black Hearts in Battersea is the #2 book in the Wolves series; you might want to read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase first.

#7: Thanks for letting me know, Tad. I will look for that one, too.

I highly recommend the Rendevous with Rama series by Clarke.

I think I read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase as well as pretty much all of the Battersea series. Those darn books retarded my learning of English history forever. I mean, at that age, I had no idea that they were set in an Alternate timeline. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Mary, Queen of Scots, ruler of England as well in Aiken's universe? And there was a Scottish King James or something?

And thanks for the feedback and the consensus that it's safe to re-read A Wrinkle In Time and the Joan Aiken books. I'll make it a priority to track them down ASAP!

>8 alcottacre: Stasia, you definitely need to read Wolves of Willoughby Chase first, and then the whole series! They are one of my favorite kids' book series of all time. They're alternative Victorian history with a big heaping of the fantastic. Joan Aiken is brilliant.

>10 mattplozza: Yes, there is a Scottish King James. I was very confused when I actually started studying English history! The whole premise of the books is that after (? I'm not sure of the exact time line in Aiken's universe) the English Civil War, the House of Stuart was restored, as if the Jacobite Rebellion were successful. Thus rather than Bonnie Prince Charlie as The Great Pretender, the Hanoverians (ancestors/relatives of the current Windsors) are the nefarious pretenders fighting to overtake Britain.

#11: I have put it and the others mentioned on my Amazon wish list. Thanks!

Ahh that alternative history makes more sense than my garbed memories. If memory serves, it was Bonnie Prince Georgie who was the subject of the rhyme in Aiken's world, wasn't it? Looking back, I can't believe that the Aiken books haven't been made into amazingly fantastic kids' movies. They wold be so perfect!

>5 PiyushC: The Space Odyssey series I remember enjoying very much as well. I never really loved them as much as The City And The Stars, though. I think it was the sense of the unimaginably far future, the loneliness and desolation, that attracted me to The City And The Stars, more than anything.

>9 arubabookwoman: I read the first book in the series, Rendezvous with Rama and enjoyed it in the kind of noncommittal way that I enjoy me re-read of The City and the Stars. Without the added incentive of the nostalgia I have for the The City And the Stars, I never ended up tracking down the sequels.

2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

I read this one because of a hearty recommendation from a friend who generally has good taste in all sorts of things.

I have to say, this was no exception. I really, really liked this book. From the enormous numbers of nerdly references (Dune, Lord of the Rings, Watchmen etc. etc.) to the pathos of the main character, to the narrator's easy arrogance, it was all just brilliant. I generally hate the tug-on-the-heartstrings-oh-poor-immigrants stories because they seem, after a while, to be all cast out of the same mold, which gets bland after a while. This broke the mold. Definitely.

Recommended.

****1/2

I forgot to mention, it also has the best epigraph of any book I've ever read, ever.

" 'Of what import are brief, nameless lives... to Galactus??'
- Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (Vol. 1, No. 49, April 1966)"

I've been wanting to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for a while now. I almost picked it up at the bookstore yesterday but then decided to save money and get it from the library. :/

It's so very worth getting, however you can lay your hands on it.

3. Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser

This book was, again, recommended by the same friend as the last one. He is on a roll, I have to say. It's got a blurb by P.G. Wodehouse on the front and if that isn't enough to sell you on it then I have no idea what will.

This novel is exciting and hilarious in some of the worst ways possible. It is a scathing satire on the far-too-often romanticised Victorian era, and the unapologetically cruel, cowardly and self-interested titular character's rise to the top.

He may not be quite up there with Professor Humbert, but, by God, he's a great antihero.

Rating: ****1/2

#17: I agree with everything you said. The Flashman books are great.

Thanks for the review of Flashman -- seeing as I thoroughly enjoyed Oscar Wao, I'll trust you and your friend on this one and give it a go. :)

4. Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny

I re-read this book mainly because I was curious whether or not it would stand up to a second read better than The City and the Stars.

Short answer is: it does. It really really does. For starters, it's far cleverer and more complex than The City and the Stars, which is big and simple. It's sparseness makes it feel more epic, but it is far less complex than Lord of Light. Secondly, Roger Zelazny clearly has a lot of fun writing. It's fun to read him having fun! The imagining of a sci-fi pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses is absolutely wonderful. A very enjoyable read.

Conclusion: Lord of Light is lush, like an Indian jungle while The City and the Stars is desolate and grand. Like a lunar sunrise.

****1/2

5. Royal Flash - George MacDonald Fraser

Like the first one, but sillier.

I know that doesn't sound like a recommendation, but it is.

****

6. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

I read this one because after seeing the movie 'Capote' I really wanted to read some of Capote's writing. Anyway I watched about the first three-quarters of Breakfast at Tiffany's the movie on a plane once so I started with it.

Verdict: It is very very nice. It is a lovely and well-written book, and Holly is so well-described that I feel like I know her. That might be partly because of the movie and partly because I do know someone quite like her but even so, good novella.

However, it does suffer by comparison to the movie a bit, as it flows less smoothly and naturally.

***1/2

7. Food For The Fishes - David Wishart

David Wishart's novels have been a slightly guilty pleasure of mine for quite a while now and this is why:

Hardboiled, cynical private detective + so much gloriously natural Roman history that I tremble with happiness.

By 'gloriously natural' I mean that instead of a kind of "and here once was THE LOST LEGION" tone, it adopts a really informal register, and the protagonist doesn't have a lot of time for those history-book names we know about, but instead prefers to mix with the plebs in some wineshop or another.

Oh, and the mysteries aren't bad either.

****

I have never seen the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, but when I read the book, I remember thinking that it really wasn't what I was expecting somehow, and I never did warm to the character of Holly Golightly.

Wishart's books sound interesting, so I think I will give them a try. Thanks for the recommendation.

I've never read Breakfast at Tiffany's but I adore the movie, so I will have to give it a try sometime!

I have been very lazy. But here are some titles without reviews:

8. Absolute Sandman Volume 4 - Neil Gaiman

*****

9. The First Crusade: A New History - Thomas Asbridge

10. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

***1/2

#26: The First Crusade looks interesting. I will have to check it out!

I would highly recommend it! I read several books on the Crusades at once (Because one of them might be wrong or lying or skip interesting things or have better maps! This tells you a bit about my psychology, I think.) and it was the only one I read cover-to-cover. Not only is it nicely written, it's balanced without being artificially so, it has awesome maps, and was pretty darned comprehensive.

11. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon

Beautiful. Thoroughly deserved its Pulitzer. In one word: "crafted". The whole time I was reading I got the feeling that Chabon was trying very hard to make the book as lovely as possible. He did well.

****1/2

Hi mattplozza. Have you read any other of Chabon's books? I have just read the Yiddish Policeman's Union which is very much written in the noir genre and am wondering how his non noir books compare?

#28: Thanks for the additional info, matt. I have already added it to the Continent!

12. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

This was not a brilliant book. It was funny and strange, yes, but it was just a little too awkward to be entirely endearing.

That said, Kurt Vonnegut is definitely a wonderful person. I'll have to read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five now.

***1/2

I've been meaning to read Slaughterhouse-Five for awhile now but it seems to be one of those books that always slips my mind when I actually go out to get a book or two.

13. Turning Back The Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism - Umberto Eco

Great cultural and political analysis from one of my favourite writers around today. Repetitious, of course (these are collected newspaper columns and the like), but always thought-provoking.

****

14. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee

One of my favourite books of all time, I would dearly love to see this play live. It's one of the most profoundly moving books that I've ever read. I know it sounds strange considering how brutally dysfunctional the relationships are, but it's one of my favourite love stories ever.

It is beautiful and horrible. I love it very much.

*****

I haven't read Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but I've seen the movie several times and love it. How does it compare to the play?

Two years ago I got to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin in the leads. I had forgotten how funny parts of the play are, and it led me back to the film version which was a bit darker. I've always been annoyed by Sandy Dennis as an actress, but was more receptive to her interpretation because of having just seen it on a live stage again. Both presentations offered something new to the work I read years ago. Then I went back to the play--and really enjoyed the reading this time around. I think Albee did a fabulous job with this work.

#35 The movie is actually almost a filming of the play. It is that similar. Not a word is changed from the play to the movie, the only difference is that in the play every scene takes place in Geaorge and Martha's living room. Which actually creates the perfect claustrophobic atmosphere for the whole thing.

#36 I think how 'dark' it is depends very much on each production, and the specific director's vision for it, not that I've ever seen it staged. I can imagine it being deliciously dark, though...

15. Overqualified - Joey Comeau

I am a longtime fan of Joey Comeau and his online comic (www.asofterworld.com) but I think this novel suffers from its fragmentation. It is presented as a series of cover letters that tell an unfolding story. The story is, however, peripheral to the letters themselves, which are funny and honest and very, very dark. Many of them had been previously published online in slightly altered forms at http://www.asofterworld.com/oqarchive.php

I love the letters and the humour, but I don't know if this is the right format for them.

***

16. The Great Outdoor Fight - Chris Onstad

The greatest story ever starring a rich cat and his nerdy friend. There is violence and hilarity and heroism and funny talkin' and humour and absent fathers and did I mention hilarity?

****1/2

I've considered buying The Great Outdoor Fight, but I'm worried that it will not be as enjoyable without the alt-text and the reader commentary, which is frequently hilarious in its own right. Is the physical copy worth owning?

It's definitely worth owning. I never thought the Great Outdoor Fight arc depended primarily on alt-text humour, anyway. Unlike, say, http://achewood.com/index.php?date=10242007

And while there were a few times when I thought that breaking up the updates into pages made the "timing" sit badly, it's still exceedingly awesome.

Okay so this is why I've been so slow up to now:

17. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

I am so glad that I read this book. It is sprawling and insane and brilliant and deeply, deeply human. I am a better person than before I read it, I am pretty sure.

When I finished it felt like my best friend was moving away.

READ THIS.

*****

18. The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas

This book is about pretty much everything I find cool and interesting: Literature, Philosophy and Weird Physics. Unfortunately, for that very reason, it suffered from a severe case of the over-explainers.

Also, the ending was annoyingly clever and cute. In that it sacrificed sense for a brief "wow" factor.

***

I hope your next read is better for you, matt!

19. Miracles and Idolatry - Voltaire

In the epic Swift vs. Voltaire battle, Voltaire gains ground!

To explain: Last year I read Gulliver's Travels and Candide back-to-back in a kind of battle of the satirists. I was far more impressed by Gulliver's Travels. It's scope was greater, its satire more biting. I felt like Candide was far too long for a book that was really made to refute a specific piece of theodicy/apologism.

Anyway, I loved this (a selection from Voltaire anti-encyclopedist definitions and articles). Very clever and a pleasure to read.

****1/2

I must admit, I have never heard of that one by Voltaire. Thanks for the recommendation. I will have to look for it.

20. Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon

Beautiful and baffling and very human. I've never read a Pynchon novel before, and I am definitely going to be reading more.

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon survey their line for about half of the book, and the other is given over to elaborate and alarming flights of fancy. This is explained as being -presumably- the interpolation of one Rev. Cherrycoke, an eccentric old uncle of a family of Revolutionary Americans who entertains them with the story of Mason and Dixon. Does that make sense?

One aspect of this framing that I found particularly excellent was Rev. Cherrycoke's use of different storytelling styles depending on which members of the family were present at a particular time. When the young twin boys are listening, the story becomes a rollicking tale of adventure, for example.

Anyway, the expected what-is-history-and-what-is-storytelling-and-is-there-even-a-difference questions are raised, (like in another favourite of mine, Baudolino).

*****

21. Perdido Street Station - China Mieville

Like nothing I've ever read before, and in a good way.

The city of New Crobuzon is the main character, and its ugliness is described in loving and beautiful detail. Amazingly good SF. I'll refrain from any more explanation other than: very worth a read.

****1/2

#48: I had that one home from the library last year, but did not get a chance to finish it. I will have to give it another go. Thanks for the reminder.

#49: I would recommend it very highly.

22. Wolf of the Plains - Conn Iggulden

Historical Fiction on Genghis Khan.

Plot kept me reading, but the characters were incredibly wooden. It might have been intentional, but the clunky emotional descriptions ("Temujin's hands clenched in anger. He could not afford to think of what they had done to her..." etc. etc.) suggest otherwise.

***

23. The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

What the hell happened to this book in the last hundred pages? It went from "really very good" to "why dear god why" very quickly.

I can think of many reason why I disliked it so much, in the end, that don't involve saying that the book was bad (e.g. familiarity with postmodern riffing on established mythologies made me uncomfortable with the brazen creation of new mythology etc.) but really I think it was just a bad ending.

The twist with the most potential a reasonably alert reader can work out very early on, and another twist is tacked on later in a weird kind of side-plot...

I don't think keeping on going will improve the quality of this review, so I'll leave it there.

**1/2

24. World War Z - Max Brooks

It is subtitled "An Oral History of the Zombie War" and that is pretty much exactly what you get.

It is alternately incredibly entertaining and disturbingly plausible (okay not so much the zombies themselves but the inept and self-destructive ways world governments respond to it). Thoroughly recommended!

****

#52: I surprised myself in loving that book as much as I did! I am glad to see it has found another fan.

#53: I have to say, I was not hopeful when it was recommended to me. It's nice to be pleasantly surprised.

25. Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace

This collection of essays, articles and book reviews is among the best things that I have read.

They often reach novella-length, but I loved every single moment I spent reading them. Often laugh-out-loud funny, there are nevertheless longish passages of passionate and sincere attempts to decide what the really meaningful and important questions of existence (especially in the Updike and Dostoevsky reviews). Made all the more poignant for DFW's recent suicide, these parts are personal and meaningful enough to me that I feel odd and awkward even writing about them this briefly.

*****

#54: I have never read anything by David Foster Wallace. That looks like a good place to start. Thanks for the recommendation!

26. Medicine in the Crusades - Piers Mitchell

I had a surprising amount of fun reading this scholarly study of medieval surgery. I also managed not to recommend bloodletting at an inopportune time in my exams, which for a time was a very real concern.

#56: I have an interest in the history of medicine, so I will look for that one. Thanks for the recommendation.

Hope the exams went well!

Will add full reviews soon, probably.

27. After Dark - Haruki Murakami

***1/2

28. Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco

*****

29. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

***1/2

30. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

****1/2

Wow, some good books! I really, really like Foucault's Pendulum too.