Lately, I’ve been on a quest to upgrade the quality of my reading material. Sure, I still consume at least three pop fiction novels per week (I buy them by the lot to save money). But at some point last year I began to suspect that, despite my immense enjoyment, a regular literary diet of suspense/thrillers was probably rotting my brain.

After reading somewhere that author William Kennedy praised One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race”, I decided that I shouldn’t miss out.

I could not possibly agree less with Kennedy. It’s not the author’s sense of the absurd which bothered me; I’m actually a fan of “magical realism” in literature. It appeals to my existentialist side.

I even appreciated, to some extent, the circularity within the novel’s structure, the most obvious of which was the getting and begetting of so many characters named Arcadio or Aureliano that I could no longer keep them straight. After all, the author emphasizes this theme through the women in the book who repeatedly observe that time wasn’t really passing, nor were lives really changing: they were merely repeating the same thing, day after day, wearing themselves out.

But, frankly, I found nothing in the book with which to connect. Sentences rambled so tangentially they often never conveyed anything at all. Paragraphs became pages. Words, at times, seemed randomly strung together. And throughout all of it I found all of the characters so dry and inconceivable (in the sense that, due to the naming confusion, I couldn’t picture a single damn one of them) that their births, deaths and tragi-comedies left me completely and utterly unmoved.

When I’d first mentioned that I was reading this book, Craig commented that “the last paragraph… is one of the best in literature”. I agree, but probably not for the same reason.

After having spent 21 nights of misery reading this book (because I’m too stubborn to quit reading any book, no matter how much I despise it), I loved that last paragraph, too… if only because it meant I was finally done with the damned thing.

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Every so often, an author writes a poignant, incisive portrayal that accurately captures the disillusionment of a free-spirited rebel who grows up to find him- or herself living in the suburbs, saddled with a mortgage and trying to navigate the treacherous path of raising children without losing touch with the child within.

Rocket Man, by William Elliot Hazelgrove, is not one of those books.

The opening pages introduce us to our protagonist, Dale Hammer: a dried-up novelist who is a petty, self-absorbed ass tilting at windmills of his own creation to avoid facing the possibility his creative well may have run dry.

While fuming over his own father’s neglect throughout his childhood — an emotional wound reopened when his ne’er-do-well father moves in with him — our “hero” in turn both neglects and humiliates his own wife and child. This, miraculously, comes clear to him in a climactic scene that was predictable from the first third of the book. But is he changed by it? We’ll never know, as the book’s final scenes make clear that Dale continues to take pride in the same misconduct he’d engaged in at the start of the book.

There are, I’ve heard, some authors who possess the talent of making an irritating, ordinarily unlikeable main character somewhat endearing to readers. Unfortunately, Hazelgrove fell far short of that mark with Rocket Man. Rather than finding myself charmed by Dale Hammer, I simply wish he’d blast off.

I love a good story. I particularly love a good story when it’s told by a masterful storyteller, one who knows the precise details to add without robbing me, as a reader, of the chance to bring my own imagination into play. Master storytellers capture all the right nuances: the oddly-timed facial tick, a hard-drinking character’s pause in conversation to take a nip, a liar’s fascination with the patterns of dirt on the toes of his boots. I particularly love an historical novelist who not only tells a story masterfully, but does so while populating his tale with the kinds of characters one ordinarily does not encounter in an historical novel.

For all these reasons and more, I loved David Liss’ latest novel: The Whiskey Rebels. So much so, I might add, that I’ve now read it twice in the short time since it arrived in the mail.

My first go-through was an admittedly hurried one. I was flying down to see my mother in Austin at the time, and due to the stressful nature of my life with two ailing parents these days, my stack of books to review had grown quite large. When that happens, I make it a habit to read first the books I know I’ll have to compel myself to read: the politically-oriented nonfiction and the “memoirs” written by people whose fascination with their own lives I just don’t share. When it’s done well, I savor fiction, and so I’d put Liss’ book off to read on “my time”.

Once seated on the plane, I immediately cracked open Liss’ book. By page two, I was chuckling. By page three, my face had adopted a sardonic smile that stayed in place through a lengthy layover in Memphis and the second leg of my flight from there to Austin. Because, in addition to loving it when an author tells a good tale, I love it when one breathes life into characters who are as fascinating as they are flawed. Having finished his book by the time I finally landed in Austin, I told my brother he simply must read it… then proceeded to keep my copy so I could read it again on the flight home, too. Yeah, it’s that good.

It’s just so rare that I run into one character, much less two that I so wholly enjoy. But that’s precisely how I felt about Ethan Saunders, a former spy for General Washington during the Revolutionary War who undeservedly spent 10 years debasing himself as punishment for a crime he did not commit. In counterpoint, Liss gives us a clever woman who’s not merely an anti-heroine but an anti-historical novel heroine: Joan Maycott, a woman who masterminds her own rise in society despite her own crime.

What’s truly uncanny — and I don’t think even David Liss himself would claim to have foreseen it — is how The Whiskey Rebels is set smack in the middle of a banking crisis very similar to that which we’re reading about in today’s headlines. Through Liss we see Alexander Hamilton struggling to fend off a short run on the newly formed U.S. Bank by unscrupulous and money-hungry traders.

Playing against each other, these Ethan Saunders and Joan Maycott’s are more fascinating than any real life political chess match, though — unbeknown to them — they’re both playing for the same side. But as we all know, the means to an end matter just as much as the end, and Liss delivers a satisfying affirmation of that belief.

Liss’ book will be released September 30. I’d recommend pre-ordering. It’s worth the wait.

Ask two people — one a conservative, one a liberal — what it means to be a Republican and you’re likely to get two different answers.

The conservative will likely mention opposition to big government, a stance against the use of taxation or laws to implement social change, the importance of national security and adherence to traditional values. The liberal is likely to claim being a conservative means supporting war, being both racist and homophobic as well as opposing women’s rights, and promoting the interests of the rich over the needs of the poor.

It’s the liberal’s definition of conservatives that prevails in just about every form of media, from television shows and movies to the self-proclaimed “objective” print newpapers, and it’s these sources to which liberal individuals turn as “proof” to support claims that Republican conservatives are all cut from the same cloth.

Recently I mentioned that I’ve been reading Why You’re Wrong About The Right: Behind the Myths (The Surprising Truth About Conservatives) by by S. E. Cupp and Brett Joshpe, a book which addresses point-by-point many of the misperceptions of conservative thought. Let me just tell you, it’s been illuminating for me, which is surprising since I already consider myself a conservative.

Written by a California-born employee of The New York Times, S.E. Cupp, and a New York native attorney and Met fan, Brett Josphe — both formerly closet conservatives surrounded by some of the nation’s most rabid blue-state liberals — Why You’re Wrong About the Right tackles some of the most pervasive stereotypes of conservatives.

In doing so, the authors shatter many myths about the right in a way that even liberal readers have found informative and a helpful guide to understanding conservative thought without the typical name-calling that marks most such discussions.

The premise of the book, in Cupp’s own words, is simple: “We’d try to convince readers that Republicans are not necessarily what you’d expect them to be.” If there is a common thread among Republicans — and, indeed, among the many leading conservative thinkers and pundits interviewed by the authors — it is this: we favor individual rights over collective ones, and we distrust government policies that don’t mirror this belief.

Conservatives, the authors argue, are not racist and chauvinistic rednecked religious fanatics bent on growing rich at the expense of others while conquering the world. That’s the stereotype which Why You’re Wrong About The Right debunks point by point with well-researched arguments that show Joshpe’s deft legal skills in a humorous and intelligently-written style that bears Cupp’s literary touch.

•On racism - In addition to the first Republican president Abraham Lincoln leading the Union to defeat the slave-owning Confederacy, Republicans also passed the first Civil Rights Act after the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment which granted all persons, regardless of color, due process and equal protection. Every Democrat in Congress at the time opposed it. Moreover, the authors remind us, it was the Democratic party who gave us the Confederate flag-raising George Wallace; former KKK clansman and Supreme Court justice Hugo Black and his senatorial counterpart Robert Byrd.

• On sexism - Until Sarah Palin’s nomination as Vice President — which has ironically been met with cries from the Left that a working woman can’t be a good mother — one of the more common slurs against Republicans painted the party’s support of “traditional family values” as chauvinistic and sexist. In fact, DailyKos.com defines ‘family values’ as oppression of women! Yet, as the authors note, Republican senator Harry Burn was the pivotal vote in passing the Ninteenth Amendment and it was Republicans who first introduced the Equal Rights Act in 1923 — both were met with opposition from Democrats. Likewise, the first female elected to the House of Representatives was Republican, as were the first majority leaders of both the House and Senate and the first female appointed to the Supreme Court.

• On religious fanaticism - No U.S. president (Democrat or Republican) has ever been an atheist, and even though a 2008 Pew Forum poll indicates that 92% of Americans believe (with varying levels of certainty) that there is a God and 72% attend church at least a few times a year. Meanwhile, according to the Pew poll, Democrats and those who lean toward being Democrats constitute 47% of those who consider themselves religious, while Republicans and those leaning that direction amount to ony 36%. Yet it’s Republicans who are regularly portrayed as Bible-thumpers, while Democrats paint themselves as “too enlightened” for such things.

On and on, point by point, the authors don’t just shake but utterly obliterate the stereotypes and slurs against Republicans being elitist WASPs (yet simultaneously also rednecked hicks), anti-Semites (despite George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan being two of the most staunch pro-Israeli presidents in U.S. history), anti-environment (even though Republican president Theodore Roosevelt established the national park system and Republicans established the EPA, introduced the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and Al Gore himself recognized Reagan’s accomplishments in protecting the ozone), and that they’re uncharitable (when, in fact, economic analysts have found that even though Republican-headed households typically make less money than their Democratic counterparts they give nearly 30 percent more to charity).

If you’ve been looking, as I have, for a way to respond to all of those accusations leveled against your conservative beliefs by those of the liberal persuasion, Why You’re Wrong About The Right: Behind the Myths (The Surprising Truth About Conservatives) is the book for you.

Read it, highlight it, and keep it handy. The next time some brainwashed leftie accuses you of being “one of those greedy, racist, war-mongering Republicans responsible for ruining the country” you’ll be prepared to counter their arguments, and maybe even educate them in the process.

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Things here have been so hectic of late that I just haven’t had time to read the books I’ve been sent to review. So tonight’s plan is to sit down with a highlighter, a martini and my copy of Why You’re Wrong About The Right: Behind the Myths (The Surprising Truth About Conservatives) by by S. E. Cupp and Brett Joshpe.

Recently, a long-time friend of mine expressed surprised when I mentioned that I’m a registered Republican. “But you read National Geographic and Smithsonian,” she said. “You have gay friends. You can’t be Republican. You’re nice.”

Cupp and Joshpe’s book arrived the very next day, and I’ve been looking forward to reading it ever since. Unfortunately, stress over my mother and father-in-law’s health has left me a bit too frazzled to crack open the cover. But tonight that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Not that I can read such heavy fare all evening, mind you. I like to curl up with a novel at bedtime, so I’m very glad to have received an advance copy of The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss, a thriller set in the years following the Revolutionary War.

Did I mention that VH is conveniently returning home tonight from a 4-day visit with his family in Minnesota? Four long days during which I’ve been parenting solo and today watching my friend’s two kids as well as my own.

Yeah, I’m definitely having a martini while I unwind with a good book. Or two. Books, that is.

Okay, maybe two martinis, too.

Want to read along with me? Order your copy today. And if you aren’t already a member of Amazon Prime with it’s all-you-can-eat free 2-day shipping, sign up for your 1 month free trial of Amazon Prime today!

Earlier this summer I asked for your list of “must read” books: those which a well-read person should have enjoyed at least once, books which so profoundly affected your thinking that you wouldn’t be the same person if you’d never read them. Many of you answered in the comment section, and not a day has gone by when I haven’t received an email from someone suggesting an addition to the book list.

Rather than keep that list to myself, I’ve decided to share it with you. True, it’s a bit late for those who think of reading as a summer-only past time. But if you’re like me, reading is something you do year-round — heck, I can’t even fall asleep without first spending an hour with a book.

I’ll be posting sections of the list over the next few days, beginning with today’s “Modern Fiction” recommendations. Overall, the list — which Ill post as a series — includes:

- Modern Fiction, part 1 (this entry)
- Modern Fiction, part 2
- Modern Non-Fiction
- Classic Literature
- Classic Non-Fiction
- Mysteries/Thrillers
- Biography/Memoirs
- Sci-Fi/Fantasy
- All the rest

That said, here’s Modern Fiction, part 1 of the best books you’ve ever read.

(more…)

Thank you, thank you, thank you for my birthday present!

This cookbook by Charlie Ayers, a/k/a the Chef who feed Google, is the best addition to my food porn collection in years. Thanks to your gift, Barry, I have no doubt that Chubby Mommy will be sticking around (mostly on my mid-section) for years.

Yours Venomously,
VK

This summer the Big-Eyed Boy, whom I ordinarily spend my days homeschooling, will be attending summer day camp where he’ll get to socialize with other kids his age, go on some remarkable field trips and basically have a blast. That means I’m going to have the entire day to myself, all day long, every day for the first time in eight long years.

I’d thought at first to use that time doing projects around the house: de-cluttering closets, painting a few rooms, shampooing carpets, maybe even replacing the tile in our kitchen. Then I realized I have the Venomous Hubby for those things and, well, I’d probably resent spending the entire summer doing basically the same things I do throughout the rest of the year.

Of course, I still plan on doing some productive work — I have a few clients I’m designing websites for and plan to finish writing that novel of mine finally. But I also plan to spend some guilt-free time every day reading, and not that standard summertime fluff stuff, either. I want to broaden my mind and my self-education.

So, Venomites, what books are on your list of books a well-read, learned person should read at least once in their lifetime? Are there any books — besides the Bible, which I read daily already — that have so profoundly influenced your mind and personality that you wouldn’t have been the same person had you not read them?

Share in the comments, and feel free to explain how the book affected you. I’ll use your suggestions to put together a Sumer Must-Read List for the Well-Read Venomite on June 1.

I’ve been waiting to read the review of Steve Coll’s new book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, which came out in hard cover today. Supposedly, the Pulitzer Prize winning author has done a wonderful job documenting the vast Bin Laden family’s history, including Osama’s life as one of 54 children.

But you’d never know that from looking at Amazon’s page, at least not today. Rather than a review of Coll’s book there’s a lengthy description of Roger Lowenstein’s book on pension debts and the destruction of large U.S. companies, While America Aged.

Mistake? Lousy April Fool’s joke? Computer glitch?

It’s hard to say — which is yet another reason why I hate April Fool’s Day — but if I were Coll I’d be pretty hacked off.

Sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday at his home in Columbo, Sri Lanka after suffering from post-polio syndrome for two decades. He was 90 years old.

Believe it or not, VH and I only recently watched Clarke’s film collaboration with Stanley Kubrik, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which affected us both so differently that it seemed like we’d seen two different films. VH found it monotonous and painfully slow, lacking the booze, boobs and bombs he prefers in movies. Me? I found it the visual equivalent of experimental literature, something I have a fondness for.

Then again, I’ve worshiped Clarke’s literary mastery since the first time I picked up Childhood’s End, a novel about an alien species, the Overlords, that transforms Earth into a “paradise” by supplying humans with everything they could possibly need. In doing so, the Overlords sought to help humans evolve and ready themselves to participate in the larger universe.

But “paradise” is often a label attached by those who’ve never actually experienced it, whereas those who have often find their circumstances considerably less than ideal. Ultimately, one has to wonder whether humans supplied with everything they could desire — and thus freed of the need to struggle, toil and persevere — are actually human anymore.

That book so profoundly affected me that I spent the better part of a year devouring some of his other works, eventually working my way into other masters of the sci-fi genre: Heinlein, Asimov, Zelazny.

Clarke’s imagination drew me into a genre of fiction that never fails to make me think, to dream and to hope. He said of his own life, words now immortalized in his epitaph, that “never grew up; but he never stopped growing.” Thanks to his prolific and profound works, that can also be said of his millions of fans who, like me, are mourning our loss.

My New Year’s Eve festivities were cut short last night when, shortly after VH popped open a bottle of bubbly, my body began shaking with chills that turned into a raging fever in the blink of a runny red eye. Next thing I knew, I was essentially imprisoned in the bathroom for the remainder of the evening by a nasty stomach bug that’s left me shaky, wrung out and otherwise feeling like crap.

Apparently, it’s becoming a tradition for me to be sick on New Year’s Eve and Day. What fun.

Right about the time they dragged out Dick Clark’s corpse for its 15 minutes of fame for the year, I was finally able to crawl to the bed and collapse with a book. I only knew it was midnight because The Big-Eyed Boy insisted on hooting and hollering as he raced through the house, jumping on my bed and knocking over the bowl I’d been keeping on my nightstand “just in case”. (Thank goodness I hadn’t needed it recently.)

Still, I did manage to enjoy the evening, thanks to a very fun, entertaining book: Dead Witch Walking, the first in a series of first-person novels by Kim Harrison featuring saucy redhead Rachel Morgan, witch and hunter of magical bad guys.

Set in an alternate version of Cincinnati where a virus carried in genetically engineered tomatoes wiped out a huge portion of the human race and revealed that there have always been fantastical, and dangerous, creatures living among us: the Inderlanders.

Vampires, werewolves, fairies, pixies, witches and warlocks (the latter two of which shouldn’t be confused) all vie for power now, with many crossing the lines of benign magic to traffic with demons. Rachel’s job, and that of her vampire and pixy roommates, are to stop those who dabble in such devilry, a feat which she performs whilst clad in black leather.

Dead Witch Walking tells how Rachel left Inderland Security to become an independent agent, earning herself a bounty on her head that takes more than one nasty encounter to escape from. Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer must love the way Rachel kicks ass but doesn’t necessarily pause to take names.

A fun, fast-paced read and an absolutely perfect to kill time. No pun intended.

In the old days, I used to love hanging around libraries, skimming the stacks for titles that caught my eye and spending an afternoon reading about whatever topic struck my fancy that day. That was long before I had children, much less such a crammed schedule. Although I’ve never lost my love of libraries, I haven’t set foot in one for over a year. I just don’t have time. Which is not to say that I’ve lost any of my love for them. I’ve simply learned to look online to satisfy my curiosity.

Until now I’d found online libraries to be largely disappointing. Most have sparse selections, poor formatting, and are little more than scanned copies of outdated volumes.

Then there’s Questia, an online academic library that sets the standard for what digitized libraries should be.

Let me tell you now, folks, this is a site I am actually using and know I’ll be a fan of it for some time to come.

As a writer and homeschooling parent, the kind of information I need in any given week is all over the board. One day I might want to read up on children’s learning styles and that night be curious about symbolism in literature. I’ve yet to find Questia lacking on any subject I’ve searched, and with over 70,000 books and 1.6 million articles in just about every category you can imagine, from art to psychology and everything in between, I guess that’s not so surprising.

They make learning about new subjects easy, too. Don’t know precisely what you’re looking for? All you have to do is type in your keywords and search their predefined research topics to retrieve a listing of categories containing your terms.

My search on “child learning styles” led to over 29,000 results… a bit more than I’ve got time to read this week. Fortunately, I don’t have to read them all at one time. Questia’s innovative search engine allows me to narrow my search further, then add titles of interest to my online bookshelf using one click.

The easily accessed bookshelf screen appears as a pop-up box, which means it’s contents are continually accessible. Just keep adding to it as you browse your results then use it when you’re ready to start researching your topic further.

Making research efficient is really where Questia shines.

I’m an avid note-taker, the kind who likes to mark her books up and cross-reference them. I’ve even been known to do this with some of my more beloved works of literature if, say, a Salinger passage reminds me of something Hawthorne once wrote.

That habit is one that’s stood between me and enjoying online research in the past, since I’ve always found it annoying to have to keep a hard-copy notebook (or even a separate computer file) to supplement what I’m doing online. (Librarians, I’ve noticed, tend to get a bit twitchy when I forget the book’s not mine and jot notes in the margin.) I have to take notes for information to really sink in to my brain.

Questia’s innovative research browser lets me do just that. In addition to taking notes on-screen, the browser allows users to bookmark pages, highlight particular passages, and generate citations and a bibliography with one touch. I’m still addicted to maintaining hard copies for my files, and Questia lets me print the page — with my notes and highlights. There’s also a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia built in to the browser, so all the tools I need to research and write about a project are on one screen.

But Questia’s not just for academic research. The online library also contains thousands of classics, with everything from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to The Origin of Species.

At first glance, Questia’s subscription fees might seem a bit steep at $19.95/month ($49.95/quarter), but I easily spend the annual cost of $99.95 every month at the bookstore. With the price of gas what it is these days, that 30-mile round trip really adds up — and so do the double-shot lattes I wind up ordering every time I go, too. (Don’t even ask me what I paid in library fines over the past year. I’m afraid to know the total.)

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Questia is now offering over 5,000 FREE books online. Check it out, and remember there’s no due date on your books when you read them online.