First, a quick story. It is a brief moment between my sister Jean and I … which has gone on to become O’Malley folklore. She and I were flying to Ireland to visit my sister Siobhan. Now – for whatever reason – I really can’t remember – I hadn’t packed any books (this is shocking) – or maybe I had forgotten the books I wanted to bring. Whatever the case was – I ended up buying 3 or 4 “airport books” at JFK Airport. Being “airport books” they were crap. One was The Notebook which was so bad that I ended up leaving it in a drawer in a Galway hostel with a note: “This book is really bad.”
I had them in a plastic bag. Which I put under my seat on the plane. Or maybe I stuffed them in my backpack.
As we were preparing to land in Dublin, I reached down to re-arrange my bag – and suddenly was confronted with the lunacy of my own behavior. Buying 4 books in the airport BEFORE I LEFT? Also … do other people bring bags of books when they go on a giddy trip with their sisters?
I murmured, into my knapsack, in a flat tired voice, “Toooo many books.”
Well. That’s it. That’s the big story. But Jean lost it. We both did. It struck as insanely funny. We could not stop laughing about it. I was BURDENED by my own books. Also, my idiocy struck us as insanely funny. And now we ALL say it. All the time.
“What’cha reading now?”
“Oh, the usual. Toooo many books.”
When we go on our yearly family trip: “I have to pack my toooooo many books.”
Speaking of tooooo many books, here is what I am reading now.
I am almost done with Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. A lightning-quick read. Very good. I love stories likethis one: Semi-futuristic, where humanity’s human-ness is crushed by some overly mechanical society … and one anti-hero bucks against the system. Sometimes to disastrous results, sometimes to happy results. 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World. The writing is very good in this book too. I’ll finish it today.
I continue to plow through Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. It is one of the best books I have ever read. I read a chapter every morning. The prose is so rich, so layered, you want to savor every moment. I don’t want it to end.
I am also reading Madame Bovary. I seem to recall I read it in high school, but I am giving it another go. So far …. zzzzzzzzz.
Oh, and Bill, I meant to blog about this: On my vacation, one of the “tooooo many books” I brought was the book you gave me for my birthday: a novel called Winner of the National Book Award by a Jincy Willett. I started it on the train-ride home. I had no idea what to expect. I had read a very good review of it in The New York Times. I knew it was a first novel, it took place in Rhode Island – and it had a funny premise. Twin sisters whose ancestor was the only person who went back to England with the Mayflower. He took one look around and said, “Nope. Not for me.”
Anyway. I almost had to stop reading it on the train because I was laughing so loud. I COULD NOT STOP. There were certain images she put in my brain that I could not get out. One of the characters is this “local poet” – and if that conjures up any images for you – great – but they can’t be as hilarious as this character study. He is a vile and despicable character, and I was laughing until the tears rolled down my face.
I love a funny book. A wonderful read!
What are you all into at this moment, in terms of tooooo many books?
One can never have toooo many books, but then again I have an obsessive fear of being stuck somewhere without something to read. Anyhoo, currently reading…
The Black Arrow – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Great Game – Peter Hopkirk
The Screw Tape Letters – C.S. Lewis
…and trying toc atch up on New Yorkers.
Her later stuff I find over-wrought and preachy, and her philosophy is just plain too soulless, but if you like Fahrenheit 451, you’d probably also greatly appreciate Anthem by Ayn Rand.
I’m reading Balkan Wars at the moment.
Next up are:
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
and
Holy War, Inc
I’m on something of a history kick. ;)
I promised my dad I’d read War and Peace the last time he was out for a visit. I get exhausted just looking at the copy of it.
I still haven’t read War & Peace – but I made it through Anna K!! Even the 45 page section in the middle of the action describing farming practices in Odessa.
As has been said already there is no such things as too many books. We I last moved I had so many boxes of books that I had dreams of being surrounded by boxes. Moving sucks but I won’t leave my books.
At bat: “Lost Light,” Michael Connelly
On deck: “The Narrows,” Michael Connelly
In the Hole: “Master and Commander,” Patrick O’Brian
Later in the inning: “Humble Pie: St. Benedict’s Ladder of Humility” by Carol Bonomo; also, my wife is lobbying me to read “The Jane Austen Book Club.” I’ve also ordered “Founding Brothers.”
Did you get to “My Dark Places” during your vacation?
I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed the book.
“Too Many Books”…you’ve seen my reading list.
Two words: Richard Sharpe
Two more: Jack Aubrey
And, when I’m done with them, another two: Horatio Hornblower
But right now, I’m moving through “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal” by David McCullough.
billy bud
Speaking of War and Peace reminds me of my favorite Wodoy Allen joke–“I just finished the Evelyn Wood Speedreading Course. I can read War and Peace in seven minutes…It concerns Russia.” It probably isn’t as funny written as it is said, but it always makes me laugh.
Some people think Wodoy is even funnier than his brother, Woody.
DBW: that reminds me that it’s been too long since I saw “Love and Death,” one of the less-appreciated gems of back when Woody Allen was actually funny.
I can’t second Good Omens enough…now I’ll probably be on you to read it as much as I was with the Sil. ;-)
I can’t third Good Omens enough. Great read and quick!
Also, if Moneyball was my baseball/economics MUST READ, then American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a magical realism MUST READ.
Given that it’s my summer break, I’m reading about 7 books a week. Currently, it’s the 9/11 report, but the others have been more fun.
Jumping on the Good Omens bandwagon here. Great stuff…
“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
Big Dan – I had a hard time getting through American Gods, though. I love Gaiman’s ideas, but I didn’t find his solo work as readable as his collaboration with Pratchett. I got about 140 pages into it and abandoned it, but it’s on my “to be revisited” list.
Getting to the question at hand…Right now I’m addicted to Carl Hiaasen. He’s an excellent complement to my other favorite Florida writer, John MacDonald. Whereas MacDonald anticipated and warned of the downfall of Florida’s natural beauty, Hiaasen captures the tragic consequences of the Florida boom. Plus I just like well-crafted mayhem and Hiaasen in a master at creating that kind of a world…
Allow me to join the Good Omens love train.
As for American Gods: I liked it, but enjoyed the concept more in Sandman. Speaking of Sandman, there’s a must-read if I ever saw one.
For a great quick Gaiman read, I’d recommend Coraline. I liked that better than American Gods. And Sandman could be fill an entire curriculum on storytelling.
Mark,
I still have every first edition “Sandman” comic in mint condition. And all the hardback graphic novels, signed by Gaiman.
Deal with it.
Your comment on laughing out loud on the train brought back some memories of my own. I was traveling on the train from Narita Airport to Tokyo and I appeared to be the only non-Japanese person on the train. I was reading a collection of essays by Mark Twain and this particular essay was about Last of the Mohicans. Now maybe you have to have read James Fenimore Cooper’s book, but I genuinely think that essay was the funniest thing I’ve ever read. I started laughing uncontrollably on a train full of very silent Japanese. I couldn’t stop and had to put the book away. No one looked at me at all, but what they must have been thinking.
This is about the 20th time that “Good Omens” has been recommended to me. I cannot go against the grain – so I will read it. Eventually.
DBW: I love Wodey Allen.
Speaking of comedy – did you end up seeing What’s Up Doc??
Beth: GUFFAWED at your comment. Still laughing.
Jeff:
My Dark Places was an absolutely riveting read. It’s so interesting: his prose, as you know, is this rat-a-tat-tat cold hard style – yet you feel this pain behind it. And not just pain, but a deeply human and compassionate outlook. Why else would he project himself into the Black Dahlia story so insistently? Yes, there was a sexual release element in his fascination – but there was more to it than that.
I LOVE that guy’s writing.
Have you read the book Black Dahlia Avenger? In it, a retired homicide detective believes he has not only solved the Black Dahlia case but also the unsolved case of James Ellroy’s mother. Ellroy gave his stamp of approval to that book as well – so it gave it some credibility.
But I LOVED My Dark Places. I’m jealous of how that guy writes. It seems very masculine, very male – not my style at all. But I would love to write something as readable as that.
Paul: “laughing uncontrollably on a train full of silent Japanese” – what a gorgeous image!!
Good old Mark Twain.
Paul: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences is a classic of smack-down writing. I Googled it and was pleased to discover that it still produces guffaws:
http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html
“A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are — oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.
“Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.”
Ouch…
Mr. Z – You rock!!
Speaking of Twain – he always reminds me of the moment I knew that I was falling in love with who would end up being my first serious boyfriend. He and I were sitting on a couch at his house, reading out loud to each other some of Mark Twain’s short stories – and there was one called, something like: “The Story of a Bad Little Boy” – which was so uproariously funny that this gentleman and I were literally cackling and slapping each other. heh heh. I knew then: “This is the man for me!”
Big Dan wrote:
I still have every first edition “Sandman” comic in mint condition. And all the hardback graphic novels, signed by Gaiman.
As do I. Although the mintness of those issues could be argued, as several of them are signed. They are, however, all safely sealed in mylar. Gnee gnee.
Mr Z
I haven’t read the Twain essay in a long time, but the bit about the Indians jumping on the boat is the part that still makes me laugh.
Tooooo many books!
It’s so true…I feel burdened by the 10 books that are sitting on my end table right now waiting to be read.
I’m still trying to finish Memoirs of Cleopatra which is VERY good but VERY long.
Then on my table is Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, What Your Dreams Can Teach You because I keep having VERY strange dreams lately that I KNOW are very signififcant in some way, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Romantic Movement and Consolations of Philosophy all by Alain de Botton, Anna Kareninay by Tolstoy of course, Birds of America by Lori Morris and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
Whew! I’m tired just thinking about it!
Mark,
Rats! Foiled again in my plans for World Jealousy!
*Tightens black cape around self and tweaks curly mustache*
Sorry Dan. To out-geek me, you have to be pretty damn geeky. In case you tried to top me, I held a few trump cards close to my chest. The best ones were the Sandman Companion puchased at the comic book store in London where Gaiman used to shop, the 1988 pre-Adams-death edition of Don’t Panic, and a hardcover first edition of Good Omens signed by both Gaiman and Pratchett.
Hmm…let’s see…
Macromedia Studio MX, User’s Guide.
“8-Ball” a short script by this genius writer named Ruben
“Homeland” by R.A. Salvatore
“Master of the Five Magics” by Lyndon Hardy.
Honestly, I am determined that THIS is the summer I read “Trinity”. I have planned to do this since the summer my son Conor was born- but that was in 1994, and it still hasn’t happened. Very sad. I move in 46 hours, so I am hoping that I will be able to start the book at the beginning of August!