Between Panic & Desire by Dinty W. Moore

211. Between Panic & Desire by Dinty W. Moore

I was disappointed to see this book when it arrived for me at the library. Awful cover. Looked like my fifth grade niece did the artwork. I’d read Moore’s piece, Son of Mr. Green Jeans, for a class this summer and loved it. Raved about it. Masterful. This was the first selection in the book. Oh dear. Is Moore a one-hit wonder?

No. Happily I can say no. Ignore the cover. Moore can write, at least about the sadnesses of his life. It’s a lovely book. Funny. Clever. Glad I read it.

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld

210. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld

A graphic novel told from seven points of view about the events before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. I loved Zeitoun, a recent read about Katrina. I loved A.D., too. I suppose I will always find it jarring to see comic book characters smoke and drink, but hey, I would imagine there was a lot of smoking and drinking in NO after Katrina.

The Royal Ghosts: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay

209. The Royal Ghosts: Stories by Samrat Upadhyay

Two things intrigued me when I saw this book posted at BookCrossing: the Nepal setting and how much the reader loved the book.

Story one left me regretting my decision to join the ring for this book. What? I thought. But then I got into the way the author writes and I liked it. Each story felt like the author had written an entire novel about the characters and then randomly deleted the first fifty and the last hundred and fifty pages.

Abrupt starts and stops. Unfinished narratives. Events, conversations that sounded like they could have been taking place in my small Texas town and then, suddenly, the author throws in a Nepalese festival or food or riot and I realize, Hey, wait, this is not Kansas.

But it turns out that I liked the book a lot. Yes, I’d recommend it.

Beowulf at the Beach by Jack Murnighan

208. Beowulf at the Beach by Jack Murnighan

I do not think there could be a person on earth (1) who obviously loves reading as much as I do, yet (2) who has completely and totally opposite reading tastes.

Let me make one thing clear: Jack is a GUY. He is looking for action in books. Plot. Fighting. Killing. Plunder. You know. That sort of stuff.

I could care less about plot. I want to get inside people’s heads. I want to understand people. A group of intriguing people, sitting around in chairs, talking? Excellent book for me.

So Beowulf at the Beach had nothing for me. Jack looked at fifty classics and showed all the violence and action you didn’t know was there.

The good news is that I think I can safely cross about twenty books off my list of Books to Read Before I Die. I’m just not interested in ever reading Blood Meridian or Lolita or Tropic of Cancer or, really, Faulkner. I can get that on the six o’clock news or the latest blockbuster movie.  So that is a kind of usefulness, Jack. Thank you for that.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

207. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Would this book never come in at the library for me? I finally broke down and used a gift card to buy it while on a Wal-Mart run. (That doesn’t count as really buying a book, does it? No money was actually exchanged.)

I’m glad I did. I don’t often buy fiction, but this was ten dollars well spent. And, of course, like book one, book two left me desperate to read book three.

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz by Michela Wrong

206. In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo by Michela Wrong

Whew. A book you read, thinking, I wish this had never happened….please don’t let this be true. So jarring it leaves you despairing about Africa. Surely there must be happy stories there; not all can be tales of greed and corruption.

The Best Creative Nonfiction edited by Lee Gutkind

205. The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1, edited by Lee Gutkind

The key word is “creative” here. I’d love to pass on a few of these pieces to those who find nonfiction to be boring. No boring here. The styles are all over the place, from authors who appear to sit down quietly at their desks to those authors who seem to be scribbling on bathroom walls.

What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

204. What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

I didn’t know much about this book before I read it, and I want others to go into it without knowing very much. This I will say:  It’s a true story. It’s the story of discovering oneself pregnant very unexpectedly. It’s a ride.

I would strongly urge others to read it if you like personal narratives. It’s thoughtful and emotional. One of my most intense reads this year.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami

Murakami. Short stories.

That should be enough to either send you directly to Barnes and Noble today or to make you run away in horror.

You love him or you don’t.

He is definitely not for all tastes.

If you are still scratching your head, I will add: Twilight Zone. But a deeply thoughtful Twilight Zone. Like it had been written by Dostoevsky.

I am in the love-Murakami group. I never read books this slowly. I started it sometime this summer and here I am, in September, just now finishing it. Sadly. Did not want to finish it.

The Guinea Pig Diaries by A. J. Jacobs

202. The Guinea Pig Diaries by A. J. Jacobs

You know who Jacobs is. You’ve probably heard about him, even if you didn’t read his book. He’s the guy who read all the Encyclopedia Britannica, A to Z. He followed that up in his second book by attempting to live by the precepts of the Bible. I will never forget the chapter where he decides to take up stoning the sinners.

This new book also falls into the genre of what I call Challenge Books. I like these. The woman who visited a different church each Sunday for a year. The couple who traveled around the world and tried different foods every where they stopped.

In The Guinea Pig Diaries, Jacobs tries nine small personal challenges. These are challenges we might have contemplated, but would actually be difficult to take on for a lengthy period of time. And the results are funny, so funny that I should caution you not to read this at home on a Saturday while your spouse is there (as I did) as you will drive your loved one insane reading the really funny parts aloud to him.