"Cloud Atlas", David Mitchell: Connections Through Time and the Ether

This novel by David Mitchell was another one of the "recommended by my dad" series while the missus and I lived in that tiny little back-house in our college town. I bought it in 2004 or '05. It is one I recommend to other folks all the time, recommend to kids who are inspired by my informal lectures about the differences between literature and genre fiction. Not all literature is stuffy fights between dysfunctional families. (Why is that what I think other people think literature is?)

So...Cloud Atlas.

This has been called a "nested puzzle-book" before, and I suppose that is an accurate statement. For anybody wanting a good book to get into, this one here is rewarding and exciting.

It starts out in the 1840s, and you're following a doctor on a whaling vessel, and the language in which it's written is just like it would be from that era. At the bottom of page 46, it stops mid-sentence.

The next section starts and it's presented as a series of letters from a musical conductor living in the 1870s Hapsburg Austria. The letters proceed for another 40 or so pages, until they end, and a section starts where a young lady is reading the letters. Her story is a pulpy '70s style detective story.

In the middle of the action that story stops, and we get the story of an older man who feel he's been wrongly committed to an elder care home. While he's plotting his escape, the story stops and we're sent to the future, where an uprising of the android/clones is beginning.

This sections stops abruptly and we get to a future way after the fall of civilization. This section doesn't end abruptly, it is twice the size as the other parts, and ends regularly. The next section wraps up the futuristic uprising plot, then the story about the man stuck in the home ends, and then the detective story ends and the main character goes back to reading the letters. Then we see the end of that Austrian conductor, and, in his last letter, he claims to have found the other half of the whaling ship novel.

The last section is the end of that storyline.

This novel has a direct influence on the novel I'm finishing the first draft of now, and I realized it after I excitedly watched the trailer.

That's right, this book is getting a big Hollywood treatment, and by the Wachowski Brothers (makers of the Matrix) to boot. Here's a link to the extended trailer on Youtube.

This book is just fun.

"Nobody Move", Denis Johnson: Easy Does It?

This is one of Denis Johnson's newest novels, being published in 2009. Johnson's one of my favorite authors, and a guy I try to emulate.

I bought it at the Barnes and Nobles across the way from the Union Square one Wednesday afternoon working for the dairy company.

It seemed like a pair of my authors were publishing books at the same time that were in the same vein. This entry from Johnson, and Inherent Vice from Pynchon, were those specific writers' feelings on genre fiction. Inherent Vice is Pynchon's play at detective novel, and this tiny tome is Johnson playing with a quick pulp crime novel.

This is a quick read. And by "quick", I mean it's like cotton candy and can be sped through in a long afternoon if you so desired. I liked it, but it didn't make me think of Denis Johnson inherently. It was generic for all I could tell.

Inherent Vice, which will be here someday, was at least noticeably Pynchon's work.

The title of this book comes from a line from a song that comes in over the radio during an early scene: "Nobody move--nobody get's hurt." The novel claims it comes from a reggae song, but I know it from somewhere else, an Eazy E song from the album "Eazy Duz It".

"A People's History of the United States", Howard Zinn: The Zinn Master

First, let me say that I know I don't have too many readers for this autobiographical blog about my library. And secondly, I apologize for the lagging...I went away to help my brother's wedding, and then I came back and broke my leg, which has left me laid up and less motivated to work on my peripheral blogs.

But this is one of my favorites, so I couldn't stay away for too long.

And, this book, Howard Zinn's must-read history told from the point-of-view of the losers, A People's History of the United States, is one of my favorite books. I bought this myself in 2004 sometime, and I'm pretty sure I bought a few copies, with the others going to close friends. It's an updated version that has the 2000 election and the War on Terror, going up to 2002.

Any honest history class should have this book, or sections of this book as needed for counter points. See how Columbus slaughtered the Arawak of Cuba, effectively exterminating them. See how the native opposition to the government worked on the ground. See how...well, let's just say this is an angry book.

Conservative pundits decry it as liberal revisionist history, but the facts of history tend to be ugly and wart covered. Sometimes it's just a point of view. Two of my favorite lines in the book are the opening lines from the chapter on the Vietnam conflict:

"From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country---and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won." (Page 469)

That chapter went goes on to discuss how the Vietnamese were a pain in the butthole for the Japanese, who occupied them during WWII, then, after the end of that mega-war, how the Vietnamese were a pain in the butthole for the French (but also from before the Japanese as well as after), and about how they declared independence and had a constitution and were supported by the US. Until they decided to adopt a more socialist government structure.

That whole scenario got me a little obsessed with Vietnam for a while. All they wanted was independence, from the 1880s on, and fought for it that whole time. They fought China, they fought France, they fought Japan, they fought France again, and then they pushed us out.

In any case, if you want to get angry and feel like you're getting the whole story, this is the book for you. If you want a spike in your blood pressure, this is the book for you. Honestly, I can't read it from cover to cover like I would other books...it angers up the blood.

Howard Zinn, late as of 2010, inspired a slew of "People's History" books, written by experts in certain fields, all collaborated with the Zinn master and covering a wide range of topics. An example I have that'll show up here at some point is Dave Zirin's People's History of Sports.

I like Dave Zirin, and another one his other books that I have, Bad Sports, is another tough, blood-angering tome.