• THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
• by Douglas Adams
• [rated by PBS readers as #39]
• 216 pages

Immediately, this came with an enthusiastic nod from my friend Kim, a Sci Fi fan. I asked her if she had read it. She smiled ruefully (she is very good at smiling ruefully) and said, “the appropriate question is not whether I’ve read it. The question is how many times.”

No faint praise there!

Just started and the immediate comparison is Vonnegut, but I’m sure more will come. Seems fun and absurd. Looking forward to where it will take me. After all, it is twice as high on the list as Vonnegut and Kim has read it multiple times. Here we go…

7/2/19

I hesitated in writing this but then I thought what the hell. If I’m going to keep on track for this little project then I might as well let fly!

I am pretty much not into this book at all.

It reminds me, in inventiveness and sheer absurdity, of the Vonnegut book earlier in the year. Maybe it is one too many of those absurdist yarns for this concrete blond. Wacky characters racing around the Universe – saying dopey things, having three heads – you know, that sort of thing. Hm. Don’t get me wrong! Love it for you! Not so much for me.

Also, in terms of absurdity, I grew up on Tom Robbins – Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume… I loved those books. Equally inventive and absurd to these two wacky titans but Robbins’ books had really cool stories at their core that I still remember years later. His books have it all over these books for me.

This book is clearly loved by millions. It is considered a masterpiece. To each his own.

I had a talk with Kim about it today. I wanted to see it through her eyes. After we talked, I read another 20 pages and I thought it was funnier than before.

But right now, the greatest thing in its favor is that it is short. Thank God. If this book was like…well, like this PLUS 700 pages long, it might be my first abort of the book list. But I will finish it. God.

One note – I know I started a few months early but I’m excited to hit my quota of 10 books a year after this is done – and with almost 6 months to spare! I can’t help planning for the handful in this book pile that could take me a whole year to read – War & Peace, Monte Cristo…

Okay. Enough of me taking a break and thinking happy thoughts. It’s back to planet WhatTheFuck.

7/12/19

Though it started off seeming like I should finish this deal in about 15 minutes!, I’m finally done.

I get the creativity. I get the imagination. Not my thing.

Although I did write to Kim happily, at one point, to tell her that I had finally found a character that I had really taken a shine to – Marvin, the depressed robot. I kind of loved him, especially when he would ask people, “Am I bringing you down?” Or when Marvin is face down in the mud and gets an offer to be helped up, he says something like, “Nah, this is probably where I should be.” That amused me big time. It perplexed Kim, since Marvin was the only character that she didn’t like. Ah well. Different strokes…

I also liked the relentlessly perky control board in the ship that pissed everybody off. And the doors that made a sound of satisfaction whenever they closed.

No doubt about it. Tons of creativity here. I still like Tom Robbins lunacy light years more than this, and I haven’t read one of those for half a life or more.

This was my tenth book! Cool that I’m one tenth of the way through. I will write a little review of the first ten books in a bit. But you know what I gotta do first! I have to hurry. I’m deeply late! Sheer seconds and minutes are flying by!

Gotta pick the next one!

I picked Hatchet, which is a series by Gary Paulsen. When I saw its cover on the PBS list show, I just assumed it was something scary or in the horror genre. But it is another young teens book about survival in the wilderness. I would be a bit skeptical but I loved the last young adult one! So I’m far more open. Plus the reviews on Amazon make it sound like a really good story, which I think I could use after the intergalactic silliness of Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Sorry Kim. And I’ll always have Marvin. Love Marvin.

• GHOST
• by Jason Reynolds
• [rated by PBS readers as #97]
• 180 pages

Forget what I said. I never even looked for the Baldwin book. Didn’t have to. On account of my opening the cover of Ghost (which I already had from my last pick) and reading the first two pages.

Two pages in, I was already in love. This guy’s phrasing, after a month of pouring over arcane Little Women, feels so refreshingly familiar and funny that it feels like you just bumped into your best friend and hunkered down for your best talk in years.

And remember, this is only after two pages, ya’ll.

But I was already thinking – this could be a thing!

6/11/19

Finished it! Already! And all the way through I was and am head over heels.

I had never heard of this book, Ghost, largely due to my ignorance of the young adult book market entirely. But that ended up giving me a special plus. I knew absolutely nothing of this genre, which enabled me to waltz past my fear that I would never have a sense of discovery while I was reading something on this list. Nothing would seem new. But not so with Ghost. New and new again. I felt it. I bathed in it!

In the way that so many masterpieces demonstrate, when an art form is done with greatness, it always feels new.

I loved the voice of the lead character, Ghost. At first, I thought I loved him due to sheer escape from the language of Little Women. But that would be an understatement and would sell him short. I loved Ghost throughout. I became used to him and still loved him!

He was original. He never commented on his life; he lived it. He was funny, he was heartbreaking and he was real. A young kid from a shattered childhood discovers the track team. But in author Reynolds’ hands, it is not what Ghost spends any time thinking about. He is living life, clinging to the small sense of community that he has. And if all of this sounds a bit melodramatic, it truly isn’t. This book made me feel light as a feather.

Ghost is an absolutely beautiful little gem of a tale. Not one extra word in the whole thing. All the elements are introduced as economically and straight forwardly as they can be, yet all the nuance is right there, if the reader only fills it in. I could see how completely easy to read this would be for a kid. It flows. It could teach you flow.

From the beginning of my bigger project, I have asked myself if I would go back later and follow up on any of these writers. Would I read the next Outlander? Maybe, but the 800 page length is a buzz kill for anyone not deeply in love with the whole thing. With other writers, I wouldn’t necessarily read them again just from having read this one book, unless the individual title held something for me.

But Jason Reynolds and Ghost and the series that follows, I may well go back to. I have never read a first person narrative where I enjoyed the character more.

Of course, there is a huge calling coming from this story to young, new readers. Ghost represents so many kids. So. Many. He has seen horror and he deals with it as straight on as he can.

I used to get on my soapbox and say that if I ruled the world, kids would read books that really spoke to them. If you had a kid in high school, for instance, that had a drinking problem, give him Bukowski! Better than hoping he’ll last through Beowulf!

And if I did rule that set world, Ghost would be on that reading list. As would Oscar Wao, to be fair.

This book will stay with me. I really, really loved it. The utter elegance and economy with which it was written so appealed to me.

Now I need to pick a new book – though I’m off to Italy for a week and have promised myself that I could read only fun, trashy things while I was gone.

Still. As I have now realized about myself, there is no choice in it for me. I must pick the next book of this project now, even to have it wait for me till I get back.

But, just before going, thank you again to Jason Reynolds. You are a rock star! You are my kind of writer.

6/28/19 – JUST BACK FROM ITALY

Well, I took my first reading break from this little project. As I mentioned earlier, I promised myself that on my trip to Italy, I could read anything I wanted.

And so I did. First, I read a Jack Reacher thriller. I could swear that every book of Lee Child’s Reacher series is the same book over and over but the pacing is so fast that I will always pick up another one and race through it.

I read Sheila Nevins’ (head of HBO and the most prodigious documentarian of our time) autobiographical series of short essays. Pretty darned forgettable, by the way. All about face lifts and who her son dated and their mother. Uh, kinda would have liked a bit more about what makes her special, like, notably, all her work at HBO and her documentaries? Huh? Maybe a little bit about that? Sheesh.

Then came Antoine Laurin’s Red Notebook, I love his romantic sweet Parisian fables. Loved the President’s Hat and this was sweet too.

Followed that up with one of my favorite mystery writers, Lawrence Block. Block can write absolutely anything but I particularly love his funny series about a burglar named Bernie Rhodenbarr. This one was called Burgler in the Closet and it made me laugh out loud more than once.

Now, I’m a reasonably funny person and when books have quotes on the sleeves saying they are hilarious, I am skeptical. And I’m usually right to feel skeptical. But this delivered the goods and was a fun romp.

Ended up with Death on the Riviera, an older mystery from the 50’s that was rediscovered and repackaged and that I bought a year or two ago in Santa Cruz on my annual writing week. Fun. Not unbelievable but a sweet little slice.

But I don’t want to disappoint you and make you think that I suddenly changed my ways and hadn’t picked the next book from the PBS list yet. Nah. I am a creature of habit. I had it picked out right away, that night.

Though it seemed like an amusing enough title that I picked, I elected to leave it behind. My War & Peace fears allayed with my next pick – for the time being! – this next title seemed like the perfect book to ease back into reading these higher browed books, so I was happy to think about coming home to it.

Besides, I reasoned, if I read it on the trip, then I would have to come home early just to pick the next title. And great honk, I was only gone for a week!