Cannonball - Book 8

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

I actually read a big chunk of this book at the same time as I was making my way through The Sound and the Fury.  Up until now in my Cannonball reading I have made it a point not to start a new book until I was 100% finished reading the previous one, mainly stave off the curse of book-abandonment that has plagued most of my reading career, but also because it would complicate my records*.   I was forced to break this rule though because Faulkner's story was so dense, depressing and complex that sometimes I just couldn't deal with it.  Intellectual disability and suicide and racism and reckless promiscuity just don't make great bedtime reading, you know?** 

The School of Essential Ingredients, on the other hand, made excellent bedtime reading  Unlike Faulkner (who I halfway suspect of making his book difficult on purpose, to torment me), Bauermeister required almost no effort or thought from me at all.  Her book is so pleasant, so soothing.  What a relief!  The book is about a cooking class in which the teacher is really sweet and lovely, and so are all of the students.  Everyone is nice to each other all the time.  Two of them fall in love and the rest form lifelong friendships.  At the beginning one of them is really sad and depressed about how becoming a mother has caused her to lose her sense of self, and I know that sounds sad, but don't even worry about it because at the end of the first chapter she eats some crab and then her life is fixed! Never before have I read a book with so little conflict!  Never before have I read a book that so compelled me to use exclamation marks!

I wonder how many reviews there are comparing this book to comfort food.  I bet that it's a lot.  Who wouldn't be comforted by reading about a world where people are all wonderful and eating can solve all your problems?  I certainly was.

William Faulkner is rolling in his grave.



Page count: 256
Up next: The Big Rewind by Nathan Rabin (which I have actually already finished)






*Keeping detailed records has been an infinitely satisfying offshoot of the Cannonball experience so far.  I'll tell you about it sometime.
**Actually, reckless promiscuity sometimes makes for great bedtime reading, just not in this case.  Also, while your all the way down here in the footnotes, I might as well acknowledge the fact that I have discussed the content of The Sound and the Fury more in this review, the one for a completely different novel, than I did in my actual review of The Sound and the Fury.  Sorry.  That's just how it goes sometimes. 

Cannonball - Book 7

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

 

I can't think of anything interesting to say about this book.  This is unfortunate not only because it is going to make writing this post difficult, because it is entirely possible I will have to write about it on my English final as well.  At least the people reading this (all three of you) aren't going to give me a grade.  Unless you are weirdos*.

I normally shy away from reading anything regarded as a classic.  This is partly because I am exceptionally lazy and in my mind classic = difficult, but also, secretly, it is because I am a little bit afraid that I just won't get what is so great about the classic in question and my dull-wittedness will be revealed to the word at last.  Reading The Sound and the Fury** did nothing to assuage these fears.  I'm glad that I had to read this for class.  If it hadn't been for that I don't think I would have gotten through the first two parts (which are kind of incomprehensible), and I did end up... I think "enjoying" might be the wrong word for how I feel about this book, but I found it satisfying and the class discussions have been really interesting.  This is the kind of book you really have to work and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it with a bunch of other people who found it as perplexing as I did at the beginning.


Page count: 328
Up Next: The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

*A possibility that I certainly haven't ruled out.

 **What a great title, huh?  I think it is a line from Macbeth, but I'm not going to check.  See earlier comment re: my laziness.

Cannonball - Book 6

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

 

This is not the book I was planning to read next (I know that I said that is was the book I was planning to read next, but I didn't write that last post until after I had changed my mind.)    I read the first 50 or so pages of The Big Rewind by Nathan Rabin, and liked it, but I was not in a good enough mood this weekend to read a memoir about depression and so I moved on.  This book was the perfect thing to read instead, for several reasons.  The two most important being that: a) it is short and relatively light, and b) it is pretty inspiring, reading-wise.

Short is good, because, even though I like that Bryson book, it was kind of a slog.  And up next is The Sound and the Fury, another slog.  I needed a non-slog in between to gain confidence in my ability to read more than two pages at a time without falling asleep or putting the book down to watch an episode of Deadwood*.  Once, my dad and I were talking about the reasons everyone loves The Time Traveler's Wife so much and dad said he thought it's because Audrey Niffinegger's prose is friendly.  I think friendly might be the perfect way to describe Hornby's style.  It is inviting, and that makes it easy to read.  The knowledge that there are more of Hornby's words on page after page is comforting as opposed to daunting.  Nick Hornby is lovely company.

Hornby's Believer columns have an improbable dual effect:  they inspire me to read more and to read better books, but do so without making me feel guilty about the books I do read or the books that I haven't read. Does that make any sense?  The disparities between Hornby's lists of Books Bought and Books Read make me feel better about all of the un-read books on my bookshelf (or, the book section of my floor, as is the case in my Ottawa bedroom.)  His admission that he finds books boring, even though they are the most reliably satisfying cultural experiences he has, was incredibly comforting also.  Finally someone admits the truth!  Out of all the things that I love, I think I love the books that I love best of all, but reading is hard work.  Hornby remindes me that it is worth it.  He makes me want to put the time in to Dickens and Checkov and Tobias Wolff.  He even makes me think that reading a little poetry now and then would not be unreasonable.  But I have to get through Faulkner first.


Page count: 147
Up next: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner








*I had sort of been putting off watching Deadwood for a long time.  I knew that I would have to watch it eventually, because it is the kind of show that anyone who loves and watches as much television as I do has to read eventually, but I was kind of avoiding it because it seemed so unpleasant.  But I watched the pilot this weekend in a fit of procrastination and I haven't been able to stop.  It is brilliant and hilarious and smart and sad and the swearing in it is inspired.  Sometimes I have to skip the particularly violent parts because I am a wimp but for the most part it Deadwood is exceedingly watchable.

Cannonball - Book 5

Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

I don't really have anything to say about this book.  I liked it, although it didn't include a lot of information I didn't get out of Intro to Linguistics.  It had a lot of jokes based on the idiosyncrasies of the English language, and I like those.  The book is from 1990, so there is not anything having to do with language in the internet era, which is something I have been pondering a lot recently.  I'm sure a lot has been written about it too, I just haven't sought it out.* Are the languages of the world eventually going to meld together to form a super-language because barriers in communication are disappearing?  Is English going to take over?  I hope not.  The art of the trilled 'r' would be lost forever.

In sort of general, reading-related news, I'm a little surprised at how much non-fiction I have read so far, and at how much I have on my to-read list. I've been enjoying it all, but I am beginning to crave a novel.  Unfortuantely, due to academic obligations, that novel is going to be The Sound and the Fury.  I read a few pages of the other day and then put down because I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.  So that's alarming.  I have to have it finished by next week, but I'm just gonna read a little Nick Horby first, kay?

Page count:272
Up next: The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby




*I just had to use Google, because I could not remember what the past tense of 'seek' was.  How apropos.

Cannonball - Book 4

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

 

This is the first book that comes in under the 200 page mark.  I really liked it, but I think I would have liked it better if I read it when I was younger.  When I was thirteen or so (I think, around then) I read almost nothing but Agatha Christie novels.  Eventually I moved on to other mysteries but I always liked the old-fashioned, British ones best.  I am not sure why, but I think it had to do with how stoic the characters were.  To the detectives the murder was never anything but a puzzle, and to everyone else it was a minor inconvenience.  Like, "Oh, how unfortunate I am suspected to be a murderer, it shall interfere with my plans to go riding".

The book is split into two parts.  The first follows Holmes and Watson as they solve the mystery and the second goes back and tells the story of the murderer and his victims.  I was not a fan of this particular structure.  Conan Doyle spent the entire first half of the novel making me curious about Sherlock Holmes and then, in the second half, abandoned Holmes entirely in favor of a couple or Mormans and a vengeful red-faced guy.  Lame.  Especially since Mormon's story didn't really inform the murder solving much.  It's not that I didn't care about them, it's just that the transition was a little too abrupt and clumsy.

All of the Sherlock Holmes parts made it worth it though.  I see why he is such an iconic character.  He's awesome.

Page count: 146
Up next: Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

Cannonball - Book 3

Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

I have mixed feelings about the writing of Chuck Klosterman.  On one hand I feel like much of it is a little self-indulgent and ridiculous.  On the other hand, I think the ridiculous stuff to be the most interesting of it all.  Often when reading Klosterman's work I find my self moving pretty rapidly between boredom and total absorption.  Just when I am on the verge of giving up on the book entirely because he has been going on for several pages about college football (or time travel, or the earnestness of Rivers Cuomo) without saying anything particularly hilarious or interesting Klosterman will make a point so concise and interesting that I cannot believe I ever thought if giving up on him.  For example, one of my favourite parts of the book comes at the end of my least favourite essay*.  The essay was about football, but this is the quote:

Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.

It's an incredibly astute and relatable sentiment, and it makes me glad I spent a little while reading about something I found slightly dull.  Klosterman isn't always able to tie his thoughts together so well, but when he is it is totally worth it.

The book's format is a bit strange; the essays themselves are divided into shorter parts (like chapters, numbered 1, 2, 3, etc.) , and sometimes this parts are divided even further (2, 2A, 2B).  It's an interesting choice, and it took some getting used to, but I think it works.  They make the essays feel a little more focused and organized, his (often bizarre points) become a little easier to follow.  Everything truly tangential is put into footnotes.  I think we all know how I feel about footnotes**.


Of all the Chuck Klosterman books I've read I think this one may be my favourite.  I also have Fargo Rock City and Downtown Owl on my Cannonball list, after which I think I will have read them all.  Did you know that Craig Finn wrote the screenplay for the movie version of Fargo Rock City?  I really hope that movie gets made.

 Page count: 256
Up next: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle




* In all fairness, the reason main I didn't like the essay is that I didn't understand most of it; there were a lot of technical details.  The only reason I didn't skip it entirely is that I felt like to do so would be cheating on Cannonball.  Klosterman defends his inclusion of the football essay by estimating that about 60% of his readers are intensely interested is sports, while the other 40% don't care at all.  He makes up a lot of statistics like this, which I enjoy.
** Love 'em!

Cannonball - The Rules

I should have written this before I started posting reviews, but I was just so gung-ho about doing the reading that I got distracted.

The Rules of Clair's Cannonball Read: January 29th, 2010-January 29th, 2011*

1. There is no requirement for the number of pages, but I'll try not to dip too far below 200 pages per book.  Amanda and I discussed and concluded that, as long as we read at least 20,000 pages overall, it will be fine.
2. Re-reading books you have already read is permissible, as long as you are doing for a good reason (ex: You want to read the next book in a series, but you don't remember what happened in the previous book).  I don't have any re-reading in mind, as of yet, but I don't want to count it out.
3. Plays and books of poetry are allowed, as long as they are of a reasonable length.  The poetry books would likely contain less text than a novel or non-fiction title, but poetry is much more difficult to understand and must be read slowly, so I am calling it a draw.  I rarely read poetry or plays, but I am trying to keep my options open in terms of genre and form because I fear that sometime this year I will begin to despise books that are nothing but paragraph after paragraph of words.  And yes, I do realize how ridiculous that sounds. 
4. There is no requirement for a collection of essays or short stories to include a certain number of works.
5. Graphic novels are allowed, but they must be substantial and I will read no more than 3 of them.

I think that is everything.  Can you think of anything I may have missed?  

These rules are much less strict than the official Pajiba ones (the ones that McKenzie is following).  She made the (very good) point that anything the rules preclude me from reading this year will still be around for me to read after Cannonball is finished.  Even though I know she is right I still worry that I will begin to rebel against the project as a whole if I start to feel too limited in what I am allowed to be reading.  I think I would use it an excuse to quit, frankly.  The reason I am doing this is partly because I want to challenge myself, but also because I just want to read more.  Of everything.  So I've decided that as long as I am reading (and writing about what I'm reading, and actaully thinking about what I'm reading) I will not worry too much about the fine print.



*This, hilariously, implies that I may do another Cannonball at a later date.  At this point that seems insane to me.

Cannonball - Book 2

Open by Andre Agassi

I have been really into tennis lately.  It started because I am living in a household that is into tennis.  I figured I might as well try to enjoy it if it was going to be on the TV all the time anyway.  It is for this reason that I have also started to follow hockey, kind of.  But I have now lived in Ottawa for two Grand Slams (the US Open in September and the Australian Open, which ended today) and large chunk of the NHL season and I like tennis way more than I will ever like hockey.  Hockey is too impersonal, there are a lot of players and you never really see their faces.  You don't get to know the players unless you invest a lot of time and attention in watching the games and in listening to other people talk about the games.  Also, there is a lot of fighting, which I think is stupid.

Tennis is like the opposite of hockey in a lot of ways.  The skill of professional tennis players is astounding, but it is their personalities that make them interesting.  Seeing how the players react in certain situations, knowing which players have long-standing rivalries and watching them form new ones, I find it all completely fascinating.  Whenever I am watching a match I find myself wondering what is going through the players heads.  Unlike in team sports, once the match starts a player is totally on their own and it the idea of being so isolated and while also being under so much pressure is completely terrifying to me.  Agassi talks about that a lot in Open, and his descriptions of his mental state during his matches, and  his relationships with the other players, are my favourite parts of the book.  Matches that take place later in the book, when he is playing people like Federer, Roddick, and Baghdatis, are especially interesting, because those are the players that I have been watching.  My favourite players to watch are the ones who seem to struggle with their emotions a little bit as they play (which is why, as amazing as he is, I find Federer a little bit dull to watch sometimes), so I wish I could have seen Agassi play live.

After I finished reading the book I watched this and it made me cry:



Page count: 400
Up next: Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman