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Books Acquired

• Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote
• Batgirl, Year One, by Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon
• Walking Dead 6: This Sorrowful Life, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn
• Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, by Roald Dahl
• Sleepwalk, by Adrian Tomine
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, by Douglas Adams
• Mouse Guard, by David Petersen
• Daredevil, Volume 5, by Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev

Books Read

• Hench, by Adam Beechen and Manny Bello
• Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote
• Batgirl, Year One, by Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon
• Walking Dead 6: This Sorrowful Life, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn
• The Running Man, by Richard Bachman
• PvP at large, by Scott Kurtz
• The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius, by Judd Winick
• Mouse Guard, by David Petersen
• Thinner, by Richard Bachman

* * *

Here’s the deal with Boston: it’s probably one of the best cities in the world. Los Angeles, close. London, even closer. But Boston’s pretty high up there, at least in my estimation. However, there is one area in which my fair city continues to suck recycled douchewater out of a dirty straw, and that is in the area of used bookstores.

Man, did Boston used to have the market cornered. There were days when my friend Tracey and I would meet up mid-afternoon, have a cuppa at Curious Liquids (also vanished; and yes, I did use the word “cuppa.” I’m British today, ay wot), then head over to Boylston Street for perusal. Avenue Victor Hugo was our prime location, complete with a dusty and plump bookstore cat and an occasionally surly owner who seemed to regret ever including genre sections. Tracey and I would spend hours there, making lame book jokes and trying to convince each other to read outside our comfort zones. After Victor Hugo, invariably laden with novels, we would head on over to Spenser’s Mystery Bookshop and browse more often than purchase, eventually calling it a day and then heading our separate ways.

That experience has been pretty much obliterated as of late. There’s still Brattle Books, which is all right except that it treats fiction (especially genre fiction and pretty much any fiction written after Dickens died) like a second-class citizen. Then there’s the new store, Raven, but it’s more about art and history than anything … and with a curious lack of Poe. And don’t even get me started on McIntyre & Moore in Davis Square. I don’t know why they don’t just install a device that scans for graduate degrees when you walk in the door, immediately booting you out when it learns that you’re looking for something as banal as John Steinbeck.

So it was with apprehension (and restless boredom) that I decided to kill a half-hour at Rodney’s Used Books, in Central Square. I’d been in there a couple of times before, similarly to kill some time, but had never really stuck around and explored. Like the Brattle, Rodney’s focus is not on fiction. They’ve got a wall of Fiction/Classics, and a tiny alcove room for genre stuff. The distinction seems to be this: the people working at Rodney’s seem to actually like books. Believe it … or not!

In the sweltering hour I was trapped in Davis with nothing to do, I allowed myself to meander. At once I jumped to Steinbeck and picked up Cannery Row, which I’d read but was convinced I didn’t own. (I seriously need to make a list, because I totally owned Cannery Row. I think I have a Steinbeck block in my brain. I keep rebuying him for absolutely no reason. The only other author I do this with is Jack London. “Why the hell do I have eight copies of White Fang? I haven’t even read it yet!”)

I wandered upstairs, perusing the new arrivals, and snatched up a pristine copy of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Never read it. See, my whole Douglas Adams deal is as such: years ago, when I was all about audiobooks, I listened to the entirety of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Flash-forward to about three years ago, when they reprinted Hitchhiker’s Guide in an attractive new edition made to look just like the original hardcover printing. (By the by, I’m completely in favor of this new trend in publishing. Browsing through chain bookstores now is like stepping into a time machine, where everything old is new again. Orwell and Rand and my God, when they released In Cold Blood with its original cover, I almost lost it. Okay, retreating back from the bookgasm now.)

(Okay, not quite: see, for me, it’s not just about the stories. It’s about the books themselves, the physical objects. Holding them, collecting them, inhaling the musty scent of a well-worn and well-loved novel. It’s why I love my book cases at home, organizing them just right, adding new books when I get them and watching my individual collections grow. This is why the supposed e-book boom never quite took off; books are tactile in a way music and movies aren’t. It’s not just about the ideas inside the covers. It’s the covers themselves.)

Anyway, since its likely that they won’t be doing reprints of the rest of the Douglas Adams oeuvre, it’s kind of a coup to have found Fish in such good condition, and for less than $15. My new goal is to find books 2 and 3 in the fun, small-hardcover printings, and then buzz through them all in a row. Douglas Adams: destroying my dislike for British comedy since 1995.

One last Rodney’s note: as I was about to head out of the store, I wandered by the kids’ section, trying to find a copy of The Rescuers. What I found instead was a hardcover copy of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, my favorite book when I was ten years old. I had it with me when driving one night with my Aunt Colleen once in Upstate New York. The car broke down and we had to find an all-night repair station. We were stranded for about an hour, so Aunt Colleen found us a couple of seats outside the garage and kept us both calm by reading it to me. Five years later, Colleen would give me my first Kurt Vonnegut book, Hocus Pocus, which I still haven’t read. Back then, Colleen was the only other bookish person in my whole family, and I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Man, I should call her.

* * *

As for the actual reading of books this month: all I have to say is, dang, May is long. How I read ten books this month is beyond me. Granted, over half of them were graphic novels, but still. In previous years, I was lucky to get through two books a month, and that included trades. Whatever else this whole experiment is doing for me, it’s certainly making me read faster.

Let’s talk about those trades for a second: I started this year off reading Walking Dead 5: The Best Defense and being shocked by the depths of violence and madness it had gotten to. There was a lot of backlash for it, in fact, because part of the plot involves a black woman being systematically tortured by a white man, and neither the art nor the words pull punches.

I think this one will quell that backlash. I thought Walking Dead 5 was violent? This Sorrowful Life makes The Best Defense look like a Disney movie, one of those few happy ones where a parent figure isn’t killed. The torture scenes in this don’t just transcend everything else that’s happened in the title so far; I have a feeling it transcends almost every depiction of torture I’ve ever read. (Okay, except maybe for pretty much everything in The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum. I’m still having nightmares about that one.) I’ve waited six months for this one, and the old Klingon proverb holds true: revenge is a dish best served cold.

Graphic novels held sway in Florida, too. Brad handed me his entire Barry Ween collection and told me I’d love it. I wasn’t entirely convinced, which is stupid because out of the thirteen comics Brad has recommended to read, I’ve enjoyed a dozen. I blasted through Barry Ween, which – like a lot of good genre fiction – started off one-note and then evolved into something a lot deeper. And better. At one point near the end, Barry has a bit of a breakdown and explodes into this explanation of what it’s like to be as smart as he is. He starts shouting, “I can’t sleep, I can’t do anything, because I can’t stop thinking!” Beyond anything else, this gave me more of an insight into the way my friend Kenny – who is also a genius, and that’s actually not hyperbole – thinks. In fact, a few months ago he actually told me why he had so much trouble sleeping, and his explanation was eerily similar. It’s not every day you get to be thankful that you’re not a genius. I like to sleep.

Batgirl: Year One and the first PvP collection both turned out to be better than I’d anticipated, which served as a counter to Mouse Guard, which I really, really didn’t like. (This marks the first book all year that I didn’t like. It’s June now, so that’s a good sign.) For months, people have been extolling the virtues of Mouse Guard, and I was chomping at the bit to get my hands on the upcoming collection. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t know why people are so into this. It’s sub-par Tolkien with rodents. It’s not gripping or involving in any way, and the art, while not bad, isn’t really anything to write home about. I found the whole thing beyond dull, which I certainly didn’t expect. (Come to think of it, this sort of happened when I read Redwall, too. Maybe I’m just not into mice in fantasy settings. Except for Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Oh wait, rats, Maybe that’s the difference.)

On the prose side of things: we are approaching the apex of my whole Richard Bachman deal, and I couldn’t be happier. I had forgotten how unrelentingly grim The Running Man is, the Basic Bachman Model in full effect. Let’s run down the basics: (1) a barely sympathetic guy cut off from society, (2) but with good reason, because as it turns out, society sucks, (3) a “countdown” structure in the chapter-titles, (4) a painfully downbeat ending. Check check check, and triple check: any book that ends with Our Hero flying a supersonic plane into a building as he’s trying to fold his intestines back into his body qualifies as pretty damn downbeat.

Reading the Bachmans back-to-back has been interesting, actually. Of the earlier books, only The Long Walk really grabs you and propels you. Rage, Roadwork, and even The Running Man feel static, which is most odd in the latter case: not only is the book about a man who runs, but it was also written over the course of a single weekend. That fact alone should make it feel, at the very least, rushed, but it doesn’t come across that way. The Running Man has long been my least favorite Bachman, partially because I feel it bogs itself down in the sci-fi tenets. It’s a very plotted book, and very concerned with details, which crowds out the character of Ben Richards. Only occasionally do we get a glimpse of who this guy is, so he’s hard to root for, even though he’s doing what he’s doing for all the right reasons.

Thinner, on the other hand, is all about character. Billy Halleck is a guy we shouldn’t root for: he’s unappealingly gluttonous and self-serving, always willing to shift the blame for his deeds and faults onto other people. But the situation – a gypsy revenge curse designed to make overweight Halleck thinner – is compelling enough to keep you reading until, almost against your will, you actually find yourself liking this guy.

The best thing about Thinner is that it works on a number of levels. There’s the horror plot, fun and interesting and scary on the top. Then underneath, we have this whole criticism of society as a whole, but it’s not as blatant as it is in The Running Man or even Roadwork. Because we start inside the world of wealth and privilege, it becomes all the more devastating when Billy starts to fall outside of it, in fact becoming a gypsy himself. All the Bachman tropes are here, plus one that’s been largely absent since The Long Walk: it’s fun. Despite all the creepy grossness of it, and the admittedly upsetting ending, Thinner is actually a really fun read. (This is a trend that continued with The Regulators, but that’ll have to wait until the June wrap-up. I read faster now, not fast.)

Speaking of fun reads: does anyone know, exactly, what happened in Breakfast of Champions? Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but um … what happened? Is what happened even the point? And why, if it barely makes sense at the beginning and makes even less sense at the end, did I like it so much? I have a feeling that part of it had to do with Vonnegut’s illustrations (I took my friend Scott’s advice and bought the original trade printing, which does, in fact, make all the difference when it comes to gags and surprises), and how weird yet fitting they all were. Or maybe it was Vonnegut’s intrusion into the book, far more prominent than he was in Slaughterhouse-Five; his appearance isn’t as effective here (I don’t think anything is going to top “that was me. That was I.” for resonance), but it’s so bizarre that it works. In fact, against all rational thinking, everything in this book works, starting with the title and the first paragraph explaining his non-affiliation with General Mills and going on from there. Maybe I need to read it again.

Then I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Really, I said that. Out loud. I got this weird idea while reading Breakfast of Champions that I wanted to read a bunch of breakfast-oriented books. This is the state of mind Vonnegut puts me in. Also, I’d read In Cold Blood last year and kept meaning to follow up with more Capote, especially since I’d seen the film a few years back.

It’s weird how like the Vonnegut book it is, in a way: Like Champions, Breakfast at Tiffany’s has no discernable plot, not really. It’s a character study more than anything, and thank God it’s got a fascinating character to hang itself on. Holly Golightly is a walking contradiction, sometimes over-wise, sometimes absurdly naïve … but her schizophrenic personality makes her feel oddly real. A lot like Barry Ween, actually, she starts out very one-note and then, through almost no fault of her own, becomes interesting and somewhat deep. At the beginning of the book, all the guys are in love with her, remembering when she was in their lives. And when you first meet her, you’re like, “Um, why?” Only slowly do you learn, falling for her at the same time they do.

Sometimes it’s hard to approach iconic characters in fiction, partially because you bring so much gleaned foreknowledge to the table. But Holly is so fresh and fun that your perceptions vanish at once. What’s more, she – and the narrator, called Fred – seem vital, contemporary, despite the time period of the book. (I also quite enjoyed the around-the-edges allusions to homosexuality; my guess is that it was all Capote could get away with at the time, but it was enough.)

Thus rounds out another month. Join me next month for the final two Bachmans, plus likely more Vonnegut and maybe some Asimov. And will I read some graphic novels? What do you think?

Kev