Uncovering Writing

The Weekend: A Novel by Bernhard Schlink

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I searched for this book for so long, hoping to score a nice used copy. All I could ever find was his book The Reader. Finally, I found it in Portland, at Powell’s Books. Maybe I should have left it there.

Nevertheless, it is an addition to my collection of stories about the radicalized left in Germany in the post-war years. This novel had an interesting premise but the characters were never fleshed out and the plot was more a theme or feeling, rather than something that moved from start to finish.

If you aren’t familiar with the left in Germany in the 1960s and 70s, you might feel a little confused at points when the greater world breaks through into the weekend. With a background on that era, the book does take on a little more depth but the exploration is purely where the reader’s mind goes, with little to no direction from the author. The book never deeply explores the proposition of what happens and why during a newly-released terrorist’s first weekend with his family, friends and potential exploiters.

On a positive note, the translation by Shaun Whiteside flowed cleanly and quickly.

The Sometime Wife by Carter Brown

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Like the other Carter Brown book I read, this book flowed smoothly and quickly. Or should I say, the writing flowed. The story was awful. It was full of stereotypes, contained no plot and was filled with characters who were 0-dimensional, lacking all development or depth. The only good thing I can say about this is that it was a quick read.

View all my reviews

Clapham Lights by Tom Canty

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read a review of this book while checking Twitter in the British Library, interesting enough, while working on my own novel. I was taking a short break and stumbled across a review. It sounded fun and I had spent quite a bit of time in London over the past few years that I knew a bunch of the locations mentioned in the book. So, I bought the eBook on Amazon and started it after I got home.

It’s a quick read about two flat mates who have horrible jobs and how each of them deals with the peculiarities and demands of the corporate arena in one of the world’s most expensive cities at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis.

The story is a little too neatly packaged and the ending is tied up to perfectly, almost begging for a Hollywood adaptation with the main three characters played by the latest top actors. Worse, the author spends much of the first half of the book providing excessive description of people and scenes. It’s kind of what they taught me in my first writing class and which every person who’s read stuff I wrote tells me to cut out. Let the reader fill in the details, you don’t need to excessively describe each room, person, or situation. But, having said that, by about 1/2 through, the flow accelerates and the description fades into the background. The author hits his pace at this point and it’s a fast dash to the end.

Overall, I liked the book. If I had to be honest, part of my like was knowing where the action was taking place. I felt like I knew each of the areas described, many I’d been to or around. But I wanted to start the book and I wanted to finish it, so that makes it worthwhile for me.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Let me start by noting that my Modern Library hardcover edition (~ 1959) of The Picture of Dorian Gray also includes Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, a letter of sorts he wrote during the last few months he spent in prison. Further included are two outstanding letters from Wilde to the “Daily Chronicle” editor concerning prison reform.

I’m glad I finally read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I’ve seen references to it in many other books as well as movies and television shows. Having worked my way through it, I can say I liked it but it won’t enter my list of favorite books. At times, it moves very slowly, and I needed to climb an almost insurmountable wall of words. This may be due to Wilde’s background as a poet and a playwright, or he might have simply liked to hear the words he wrote. I’m not advocating a Hemingway-esque approach, but simply some editing of much of the earlier part of the novel. The latter part of the novel progresses quickly and fluidly, though the ending is abrupt.

Let me start with some negative thoughts about Dorian Gray. The story is extremely sexist. As I’ve noted in other reviews, it’s not wrong to call a text of this era sexist. H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and others, were able to write about woman-positive issues and could create female characters who were more than simply a sexy lampshade in the corner of the room. Both men were contemporaries of Wilde’s and Wilde knew their work. Wilde dismisses women throughout the novel, that is when he bothers to bring them into the picture in the first place. Second, I thought there was some nasty antisemitic stuff going on in his treatment of the theater manager where his first love, Sibyl Vane, performed. I didn’t think that necessary and Wilde never discussed such things with his other characters, minor or major. This singling out disturbed me.

There are some excellent lines that Wilde writes, illustrating that in the novel format, he remains a master of the epigram. Perhaps the best quote of the book, that should sum up how all books should be regarded once they are put into the public sphere, is: “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame” (p. 241). Simply fantastic. He also touches on artists and how they interact with the public. To paraphrase, Wilde writes that the best artists are the most boring of people. They focus only on their art. The worst artists, on the other hand, are the most fascinating companions to have at a party (p. 62).

Here are three reasons why I think this book should continue to be read today. They resonate as much now as they did in 1890:

• "We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities" (p. 103)
• "Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating" (p. 157)
• "Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour" (p.14)

While the preachiness of De Profundis turned me off, his experiences in jail also led him to write about the conditions in prison. He didn’t focus on himself, but on the plight of all the prisoners. He touched on food, access to exercise, both physical and mental, and being allowed some common dignity. English prisons, he writes in his two letters to the editor, desperately needed reforms. He describes the problem and lists simple solutions to address them. Based on history, it appears many of his recommendations eventually made it into the penal system, both in England and throughout the world. The shift from punitive punishment to attempts at rehabilitation had begun. Sadly, today, we need new individuals to write about the sorry state of prisons, especially in the United States, where both private for-profit prisons and public institutions have been bullied back into implementing some of the sad conditions of the 19th century.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Carmilla was a sensual and erotic horror story. I mean erotic in its most classically Gothic sense. It was thrilling and exciting and I couldn’t stop reading it. This was a superb read and one that I know I will return to again. I loved it so much I’ve added it to my list of old/first editions I’m looking to acquire!

I think this is the type of book that Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori would have been thrilled to read by Lake Geneva. Of course, it wasn’t published for another 56 years, but one can imagine.

Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

H.G. Wells is widely known for his speculative science fiction work, but he also published across a variety of topics, both fiction and nonfiction. I struggled through his expository style in his first novel, The Time Machine (1895). Instead of showing the reader, he told the reader, in long, drawn-out sequences. I liked the ideas he was exploring, but I didn’t enjoy the execution.

By 1909, Wells absolutely excelled at storytelling while still keeping a penetrating eye on the larger issues of the day, especially social relationships. In Ann Veronica, he writes about a young woman who is breaking out of old social norms by getting a postsecondary education and trying to live her life her own way. Her father, aunt and a suitor try to keep her “respectable,” as they would define that term. To them, a respectable woman should be on a pedestal, kept unawares of the larger world about her and be worshiped until she is married and then she must fade back into the shadows. Bohemians, writers and theater people must be avoided at all costs.

Ann Veronica is strong-willed, intelligent and willing to take a stand. But Wells doesn’t idealize or romanticize the situation. Her choices have consequences, both good and bad, throughout the story. She excels, she stumbles, but in the end, she is allowed to make those decisions for herself. She is allowed to become fully human, including having male friends who are not just relatives, suitors or husbands.

To read something like this in 1909 would have pushed so many people’s boundaries. Interestingly, and sadly, you could change the 1 to a 2 (i.e. 1909 to 2009) and the story still works. Political and religious conservatives are still trying to push women back into the shadows and to demote them to living property, possessions not partners. Wells’s words still ring true:

"She was never able to trace the changes her attitude had undergone, from the time when she believed herself to be the pampered Queen of Fortune, the crown of a good man's love..., to the time when she realized she was in fact just a mannequin for her lover's imagination, and that he cared no more for the realities of her being, for the things she felt and desired, for the passions and dreams that might move her, than a child cares for the sawdust in its doll. She was the actress his whim had chosen to play a passive part..." (p. 298)

I also enjoyed this book on a physical level. It is my second oldest book, clocking in at almost 96 years old when I read it (printing from September 1917). It’s also the first time I read one of my Modern Library books that I’ve become addicted to and acquired over the last four months.

Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

No one ever said Melville was a great writer. No wait, yes they did. However I prefer not to say that. This book shows me, a lover of old literature, that not all old books are good. I read this first while in high school in the early 80s, and I liked it. Perhaps because I could overlay whatever analysis I wanted on the one dimensional characters and zero dimensional plot. Reading it again today, I find it verbose and meaningless. And not meaningless in a philosophically waxing way. I certainly don’t see the comparisons in content or craft to Camus or Kafka.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane by Laird Koenig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A really fun book to read, in a dark way. The writing is effortless and I easily read through pages and chapters with nary a cognitive stumble. The author creates a dark and lonely setting that invites the reader to sit closer and listen, almost like Rynn and Mario sitting close to the hearth, illuminated only by the fire.

Rynn’s love of books and bookstores is dear to my heart. Her love of her father’s poetry, especially his published book that she keeps on the mantle is wonderful drawn. Koenig writes “She loved the way he held the book: He made it clear he had respect; he realized it was something precious.” Not just the physical book, but the ideas it contained. A writer and a character after my own heart.

The story is wonderfully dark and makes me want to search put other books from this period to see if the feeling permeated the culture or only the mind of the author. I must admit I saw the film first, starring Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen. I loved the film and recently sought out the book. The film follows the book pretty closely. The book expands certain parts and includes plot threads that were excluded from the film.

My first five star book of 2013!

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A bad Steinbeck. I guess it had to happen. This doesn’t read like a story from the author of In Dubious Battle or The Grapes of Wrath. One-dimensional characters in an piece of blatant propaganda. Written to motivate the resistance movements in Europe during World War II, it doesn’t work on any other level. What’s sad is that in its effort to fight the propaganda and mindlessness of the enemy, it resorts to using the very same tactics.

Reviewers of this story seem to have read a different book than I did. Maybe it was the book they wanted Steinbeck to write. Maybe it was the one Steinbeck himself wanted to write, if he had the time. These reviews talk of the depth of the characters, the strength of the forming resistance, the futility and stupidity of the invaders, etc. But while we might know these ideas from real-life experience, especially one who was reading this book when it was published in 1942, the book itself doesn’t create that world. It’s full of indexicals but nothing generative.

The Harbor by Ernest Poole

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I ran across a review of The Harbor that said it was one of the few accessible novels of protest fiction, up there with the Grapes of Wrath. Tying it to my second favorite Steinbeck novel was a good reason for me to grab this book. [In Dubious Battle is my favorite Steinbeck work.] The Harbor is a long book, coming in at almost 400 pages on my Kindle, but it is worth the effort, and the flow is effortless.

The book chronicles the life of the narrator, Bill, who grew up in Brooklyn, overlooking the New York harbor. His curiosity, fear, love, admiration and hate of the harbor over his lifetime is the main anchor of the novel. His college friend, Joe Kramer, pops in and out of his life, acting almost as his conscience to remind him to look beyond the surface. A socialist message of workers uniting to own their destinies and profit from their own labor is a strong theme. I thought at times the book might be a bit preachy, although the author was preaching to the choir for me. But right after I thought that, I felt the story was good and I wasn’t being beaten over the head with his thoughts. I found Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle” a better strike novel, with characters being more fully developed, but then again, Steinbeck wrote that in 1936, not 1915. Poole captures the mood of the workers, the poor and the environments they live and work in.

While reading The Harbor, you first have to get past the sexist point of view, which was par for the course when this book was published in 1915. The women characters aren’t fully developed and are flighty and impuslive, or simply follow their men. The main character’s wife is a little better, but her strength as a character is mostly from her adopting an assertive yet still traditional female role. After that, you have to get through some racist language about non-white dock workers. However, racist ideology is challenged by the characters themselves, who urge, and succeed, in aligning people by class rather than constructed ideas of race or ethnicity. So while the terms are used, the essence of racism among the working class is vocally called out as a dividing force and not worthy of the workers and their struggle for rights. Having said that, though, I must note that the workers who are on strike get past these racial barriers far too easily and quickly. It would have been the hope of the author that they would, but in reality, it seems like some would transcend the hate but others would need more time to process it.

When Bill talks about his friend Joe Kramer at one point, he says: “And when the term ‘muckraker’ came into use, I remember his deep satisfaction. ‘Now I know my name.'” (p. 63). When Joe talks about the workers in the harbor, he says that they’re not looking for a leader or a vanguard. Bill asks “And you think you can build a new world with them?" to which Joe replies, “No– I think they can do it themselves.” (p. 245).

These workers are the ones who bear the brunt of war and peace, an important theme for the novel as it was written at the start of and during World War I. Joe says, “I know they do all the real work in the world. They’re the ones who get all the rotten deals, the ones who get shot down in wars and worked like dogs in time of peace.” (p. 291). Just as we question our leaders today, Joe questioned them back then: “Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes–or are we sent out by our rulers to die only in order that they in their scramble might take more of the earth for themselves?” (p. 382)

Jim Marsh, the labor figure who comes to town to lead the harbor strike, has a great comment about the flaws of our media and the general population’s attention focus. When speaking of a ship that sunk two miles out in the Atlantic, Marsh says that there was plenty of uproar about the women who died on the ship due to a lack of lifeboats. He goes on, “But we haven’t heard much of the cries for help of the thousands of men who go down every year in rotten old ships upon the seas! Nor have we heard of the millions more who are killed on land– on the railroads, in the mines and mills and stinking slums of cities.” (p. 325)

Just writing this review made me change my rating to five stars. I thought it would be a four star book, but it has great themes and it was a pleasure to read. I heartily recommend picking up this book.

Plays Unpleasant by George Bernard Shaw

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

George Bernard Shaw has done it again. I got to know GBS’s works through performances at the Washington (DC) Stage Guild in the 1990s. What depth of insight. And never a dearth of words. I think he might be one of the world’s greatest playwrights, equaling and at times surpassing, Shakespeare. It doesn’t hurt that Shaw’s take on society, politics and economics meld with many of my own, but I think that he gets to the heart of things quickly and in a way that the reader might not have expected. Drawing the reader (or viewer) in, he sets you up to like one person and dislike the other. Then, the curtain is pulled back and you realize that maybe the one you like isn’t as clean as you thought and maybe the evil one isn’t quite as two-dimensionally villainous as you assumed.

Plays Unpleasant consists of three plays that are “unpleasant” only in that they confront the viewer with a serious social or economic problem yet without a comedic factor to soften the blow. I really loved The Widowers' House. Then I liked Mrs. Warren’s Profession. I wasn’t a huge fan of The Philanderer, but I wonder if that would come across better as a performance rather than a read-through.

Shaw’s prefaces are sometimes difficult to read but they are worth the effort. The one to Mrs Warren’s Profession is just as insightful in 2012 as it was in 1902 (revised 1930). In reference to those who sought to ban performances of that play, he wrote, “No doubt it is equally possible that they were simply stupid men who thought that indecency consists, not in evil, but in mentioning it.”

I highly recommend this book. The only people who might take legitimate umbrage with GBS are those actors who have to memorize the massive amount of words!

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked this novel up in one of my favorite bookstores, Kramerbooks & Afterwards Cafe in Washington, DC. Diane helped me pick it out, thinking it sounded like something I would like. It was a very fast read and I so wish I could give it five stars, but four will have to do.

Tom Rachman is a gifted writer. His prose pulls you through the story rapidly. It’s smooth as silk, deep in texture and wrought with evocative emotions. The novel itself is more a collection of short stories of characters that all intersect in an international newspaper located in Rome, Italy. He writes sage and witty commentary on the newspaper industry, office politics, relationships, and the evolution of media from print to television to the Internet.

I also enjoyed how between each “story,” there was an interlude that followed the history of the family who created the newspaper, moving through time to catch up to the novel’s main time frame.

Having said that, I should be required to give this book the top rating. However, each of the characters and their stories are so utterly depressing. I felt my own life was an utter dream in comparison and that the very worst in real or fictional people’s lives couldn’t compare the absolute depression of the characters inhabiting “the imperfectionists.” Each successive story felt like cars piling at the scene of an accident, each worse than the previous, each sadder or more depressing. I hate Hollywood endings, but at least one happy story out of the 11 or something less sad than all the other entries would have helped me.

So, excellent effort and beautifully executed, but for me, too depressing to rate it a 5. Four stars will have to suffice.

The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve been a huge fan of Japanese crime/mystery fiction ever since I read Out by Natsuo Kirino. I started devouring Japanese noir books, loving Kirino, Kenzo Kitakata and some of Miyuki Miyabe’s novels. I read a so-so review of the Thief in the Washington Post. It said that it wasn’t a thriller or action-packed, but it seemed more of a reflection on the main character, a pickpocket. I thought that that’s exactly what I loved about Japanese fiction I’ve read. The books I’ve read are a social critique of class, culture and regionalism.

Having just finished the book, I was a little disappointed. The book never really took off for me. I was interested in the story. Actually, there were two stories, one involving a criminal activity and one a father-son type relationship the main character develops with a young boy who seems to be a thief in the making. I think the author should have spent more time developing the relationship aspect. He could have moved the criminal part to the background.

Some have said this book is minimalist, but I think it’s more underdeveloped. There was potential and I did want to finish the book and see what happened. For the first third or half of the book, I was thinking that I’d give it four stars. It finished off at three and I think that’s about right for me.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I tried to read Brave New World but it just didn’t work. I didn’t like the style of writing; it almost seemed more like a postmodern novel than one published in 1932. I never felt engaged with the characters or story. It is a piece of satire and thus plot isn’t the main driver, but if it’s not a piece of nonfiction, I feel it should have something (e.g psychology, description, or plot) that pulls me, the reader, through the work. It has some good ideas but they would have worked better for me as an essay rather than a story.

I also think that this work falls into the same pit where I think Neuromancer went. Its critique of utopias, commercialization, and making people not care about larger issues once their base issues are dealt with has been covered over and over again since Brave New World was published. Perhaps if I read this back then or at a very early, formative point of my development, I would have liked it better. But, I’ve read countless fictional and factual pieces on dystopia that this one doesn’t stand out.

I was telling someone that all books have ideas, some of those are good ideas, and an even smaller subset are ideas that are timeless. I find Homer (Fagles translation), Steinbeck, Chandler and Camus to be in that category. Those stories are decades or millennia old but still speak to me today. Brave New World didn’t do that for me. I hope it can for others.

Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I bought this book based on a two-sentence review in an end of year list of best books by the Washington Post. I hadn’t looked up the full review by Ron Charles (25 July 2011). If I had, I would have passed on the book. He gave it a good review, but in doing so, showed me that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

I didn’t like the pacing, the story seemed to drag then lurch without reason. I never felt any attachment to the characters in the present time or in the flashbacks to the 1970s. When I read the author’s info at the end of the book, I found part of my answer. She teaches at an MFA program and she’s a fan of Don DeLillo, one of my least favorite, though widely lauded, authors. The book seemed more of an exercise, in technique, coolness, or whatnot, without really telling a story.

Having said this, I thoroughly enjoy her thoughts on memories. I especially liked when she focused on how photographs and the internet can never replace the way we remember how someone smells, or what a caress feels like, or how we felt seeing a particular sunset or moment. That they are staged, or somewhat removed from the reality of the situation. They serve a purpose, but not the one we often ascribe to them.

Roads Ahead by Catherine O’Flynn

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read a review of Roads Ahead in the print version of the Guardian when I was in London in 2009. It was a little side review that said it was a great collection of new short stories by young authors. I usually enjoy this format so I was excited to check it out. I couldn’t find it in the remaining time we spent in UK, but ordered it once I got back to the States. Interestingly enough, it was shipped from the UK since it wasn’t available in the US at the time. It sat on my shelf for about a year while I worked through my reading queue. I cracked the spine this week.

Sadly, I wasn’t very impressed. There are 22 pieces and an introduction by the editor. Of those 23 selections, I thought five were good, six ok, ten awful and two were “eh”. Of the good ones, the best was the introduction by the editor, Catherine O’Flynn. She did in a few sentences what the other authors couldn’t do in 10-25 pages. I loved her recounting how she worked in a penny candy store as a child and how she would select sweets for people. “At first, I couldn’t understand why customers didn’t select the sweets themselves, but I gradually learned that the thrill of the mix-up was exactly in the handing over of the confectionery reins to someone else – the excitement of letting another choose.” That was a great line, which after looking up the Guardian piece again, was cited by the reviewer as well. Interesting…

However, I would like to highlight some of the stories that I enjoyed. I could totally relate to the interchange between the two women fighting over the discarded item in “The Chest,” by Kathyrn Simmonds. It reminded me of some of my own short stories. The story by Dea Brovig, “Ania’s Wake,” was excellent in setting a mood, exactly what I think is imperative in the short story format. It reminded me of some of my favorite pieces by Japanese noir writer Kenzo Kitikata, e.g. Ashes and Winter Sleep. I also enjoyed the stories by Iain Grant (Six of the Best) and Nick Walker (Old School Entertainment).

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle has moved into my top tier of books. I rate it higher than the Grapes of Wrath, a book that strongly impacted my political and life philosophies. Steinbeck’s novel of an apple pickers' strike in Depression-era California is a deftly written piece on labor relations, capital and how men can work together and against each other. Like the Grapes of Wrath, this book is timeless. If you changed the peoples' names and updated the vernacular, you could easily believe this story was from right here, right now. That is one of Steinbeck’s greatest assets.

One of the main characters, Mac, says “Anybody that wants a living wage is a radical.” He’s talking about doing a strike and how the business owners will say its radicals (i.e. “reds” and “commies”) that want to stir things up and cause problems. These leaders use the fears those words incite instead of addressing the real economic and social problems of the day. They seek to divide those who, if they stood together, could easily overcome the business owners. It’s sad that this sentence from a novel written in 1936 is still an accurate description of right wing politicians and capitalists today.

Once the strike gets started, though, the business leaders turn to another tactic. The first elected leader of the strikers tells the men, “They say we got a right to strike in this country, and then they make laws against picketing'. All it amounts to is that we got a right to quit.” True then, still true today. Perhaps even worse today with the politics we’ve seen in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Another great quote is regarding the vigilante gangs that go after the strikers in the novel. It was a comment on American history then and you can see and hear it today as well. “They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution.” I recently read Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, by Jay Feldman. If you’re interested in some of the background that influenced Steinbeck and is played out throughout the novel, give his book a read.

There’s another important asset that Steinbeck brings to bear in this novel. To quote from the introduction by Warren French, “a secret of Steinbeck’s technique in his greatest work is his ability to avoid telling readers what they should feel and to make them participate in discovering the characters' feelings by collaborating with the author in creating them.” As you read this novel, you come to understand Jim, Mac, London, Al, the doctor and others. You start to see the world through their eyes.

My advice is: Now, take what you have seen and put it into action.

A friend of mine just asked me if I had any recommendations for stuff for her to read.  So, I put together a list of some books that really impacted me, be it philosophically, emotionally, or comedically.  I thought I’d share it with a post on my blog.

Japanese noir

• Out by Natsuo Kirino.  A bit twisted but a fantastic character study by a great Japanese mystery writer.  She's an amazing writer.
• Winter Sleep by Kenzo Kitakata. A neat, "hard-boiled" type psychological study of a former inmate turned solitary artist.

• The Fall by Albert Camus.  Another philosophical/psychological piece that touches on who has the right to judge others.
• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.  Part travel story, part horror, part psychosis, part love story, part Beat.  Great story by a fab author.
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  You've probably read this but if you haven't, check it out for great storytelling mixed in with searing social commentary that could easily be placed in its original time setting or today.

• Generation X by Douglas Coupland.  This is more for my generation, but it might give you some insight.  If not, it's still a fun read.
• Company by Max Barry.  A great satirical novel of corporations told by a funny an incisive writer
• Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips.  This (along with Company) are two novels I wish I'd written.  Phillips, who was an anthropology grad before she turned to writing, gives a cool retelling of the Olympic gods if they lived in a run-down flat in London and no one really cared about them.  Imagine Apollo, the Oracle, as a TV show psychic, Aphrodite, the goddess of love as a phone sex operator, etc.

I had a quick thought about this last night before bed. Which writers made me want to write, both back when I was young and now that I’m actually a writer? Through their books, they’ve energized my passion for writing. They’ve shown me that books can have such an impact on a person, and I want to be in that fellowship. This list is, by definition, incomplete, but they represent some of the works that most touched me.

• Isaac Asimov (The Foundation Trilogy)
• Albert Camus (The Fall)
• Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)
• Natsuo Kirino (Out)
• Kenzo Kitikata (Winter Sleep)
• John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
• Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
• Max Barry (Company)
• Marie Phillips (Gods Behaving Badly)

I picked up Paul Neilan’s Apathy and Other Small Victories a few months back. The title sounded great and a cover snippet tried to compare it to Camus, Bukowski and Office Space. Who wouldn’t love that? The book wasn’t all that, and I cared enough to warn others.

The cooler-than-thou main character never developed much rapport with reader, be it negative or positive. The scattershot style of telling the story that included consecutive sentences contradicting each other was cute at first but grew tiresome after the first twenty pages. It did, to be honest, remind me of conversations I’ve led, but I’ve never carried on such a spiel for the chronological duration of 230+ pages. I also felt the author went a little too far with his jokes about deaf folks. It crossed the line, in my opinion. If apathy is a “lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern” then why even bother to read his words and why did he spend time writing it?