THE OUTSIDERS

• by S.E. Hinton
• [rated by pbs viewers as #32]
• 180 pages

Holy crap, batman. I just read me a masterpiece.

In the many books before this, I had sometimes opened this one up. But I think the reason I put it back was the reason it was great.

You were about to walk into a book and a story that would not let you look away,

I can go on, but not before mentioning something that utterly shocked me throughout the whole experience…

S.E. Hinton wrote this at 16 fucking years old! To read this and to know that it was written by a 16-year old just never computes. As I type this, my mouth is still hanging openl

She achieves a maturity in her writing at that age, that most writers never get close to. She writes an enormous story as simply as possible, narrated by an innocent kid, Ponyboy, who is part of a greaser gang. They fight, they survive and only during this story do they start to ask the deeper questions.

I constantly saw this book as a companion piece to “To Kill A Mockingbird” and yes, it is that good. Ponyboy, like Scout, narrates this shocking tale about love and hate, perspective and isolation, uselessness and forgiveness, all with a honest, innocent, quasi-journalistic feel, as much so as one could attribute to someone that age. There is love, dignity, deep sweetness and a yearning ache that will stay with me long after this.

And she is writing inside the minds of boys and men at that age! Great honk! What I didn’t know about guys at that point, was…everything!

The Outsiders is a marvel. There is a short introduction from Hinton in which she thanks Coppola for asking her a million questions when he was making the movie of this and his dogged determination that it be right in her eyes. I thought that was a nice tribute. But I see now that he knew that any part of this story that didn’t jibe with her

vision would be the worse for it!

At 16, I think I was writing poetry about why some guy I liked didn’t even know I was alive in a lousy stab at iambic pentameter.

Not Hinton. If she was standing here, I would tell her I thank her, like millions of readers before me, for doing her part to save the world. This cautionary tale isn’t for the faint of heart, but every heart could use it.

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

• by Tom Clancy
• [rated by pbs readers as #43]
• 656 pages

THANK GOD FOR PULP FICTION!

I’m totally serious. Two books ago, I got well and truly stuck on Eye of the Wheel or Wheel of Time or whatever the fuck it is. I read 500 pages and was halfway through. I put it down and couldn’t, it seemed, pick it back up.

Months went by and I had to come to grips with the reality that if I didn’t put it aside, I might not finish this project.

So I went first to Frankenstein and slogged through some academic reading. Not a bad book and certainly an important one historically, but let me put it this way. I noticed I had 20 pages left and wondered if that would take me one or two more readings to finish. Not exactly a garden variety barnburner.

All the while, I have no idea why I decided it but I knew I would be following that up with Red October. I’d seen the movie years ago and liked it. And it seemed like a fun story.

Oh man! I feel like I’m on vacation! I started it yesterday and have already read 100 pages of the 600. But most importantly, I AM DRAWN TO READING IT!

It seems like eons since a book in this project has pulled me in like that. I’ll put it down. No, I’ll read another 20 pages. It feels great!

I’ve appreciated a lot of the books. And I will read them all in time, even Eye on the Wheel of Time or whatever the fuck that is.

But there’s a reason why guys like Tom Clancy are gablillionaires. They pull you in!

I love the scope of this. He includes about 1 – 2 dozen worldwide vignettes, all of which will weigh in as it gets going. That feels like very ambitious writing and the excitement builds in a subtle way.

Clancy is known for his extensive military knowledge and I like that he pulls those of us along who have no idea what technical thing he is going on about – not talking down to us but keeping us in the loop at the same time.

Very impressive – and captivating – and interesting – and fun! Praise God!

DONE! Just for giggles, it should be noted that I read this 641 page book faster by weeks than the 140 page

Frankenstein. Isn’t that amazing?

Shows what good writing can do. Sure, this was a huge opus about submarine warfare. Not my usual fare, that’s for sure! But it is a tale told incredibly well. And I just

kept feeling so privileged to be able to be entertained to this extent.

In the interest of fair reporting, I did feel the need to read the second half at a steady clip to get through a bunch of the technical stuff that, with a slower reading, might have slowed me down. But who cares? It was completely entertaining, so the read was great.

Maybe in months from now, I’ll connect to this book with deeper truths. But for now, a great read is a great read. I ate it up and came back every night for seconds. I feel so lucky to have experienced a fun read like this. It makes me feel a little guilty if I read another like it, leaving all the boring books to the end. But maybe that

finish in the end will be full of surprises. I know the rest of this journey certainly has.

FRANKENSTEIN

• by Mary Shelley
• [rated by pbs readers as #43]
• 143 pages

Well, it’s finally happened. I got waylaid on a book for so long that I just had to move on. The book is The Eye of the World, The Eye of the Wheel, something like that – so popular that he wrote dozens more of them.

Clearly, the demographic he was talking to did not include this babe. Oh, I’ll finish it. I’m 500 pages in with as many to go, but light as the plot is, I know I’ll be able to pick back up. But damn! I couldn’t let another month go by, as many already had. So I gently put it to the side.

The book club that I visited with my Ruby book had mentioned Frankenstein and really liking it. So I grabbed it and started in. Even though every page is about 3 normal pages, it’s still shorter than Eye of the World!

What a curious surprise! I had no idea that the book would begin as it did, although the writing carried me right along.

The creation of the Monster was almost anti-climactic.

Frankenstein makes him, hates him and discards him. Huh? Where does he go?

It is then that you see the skeleton for so many plots to come! This is Jaws! You don’t want to see the shark often. You just have to know he’s out there! I suspect this was an extraordinarily fresh approach to horror.

Oddly, as an ex-therapist, I find myself completely unwilling to therapize this – monster as creator’s dark side, etc. It seems that, to do so, would completely obfuscate the horror that is so important here.

Ten extra points down to you Arlene Francis for another salient point. The plot is utterly ridiculous. She doesn’t even explain building the creature very well. Yet, in the properly explained nomenclature of the piece, you sort of

go with it. You gotta give some style points for that. Maybe especially when the creator has a long discussion with the Monster.

“He can talk? In paragraph form?” you almost sputter with an imagined spit take.

I’m half way through. I can’t imagine the monster won’t kill pretty much everybody, but maybe I’ll be surprised!

DONE.

Okay, here’s the thing. This was written in 1818. Great honk!

I think we have taken everything this book introduced and made it into so much more – that I don’t have a feeling for what it introduced, you know what I mean?

Certainly there is the beginning of horror here, no small feat. But in the eyes of this reader, it is so overtalked that I never felt the fear intended. Again, could be a

missed-the-boat on my part. Also, the plot is so clear from the first page that it holds no interest for me. Again, 200 years too late for the rapture.

But there is an omission that I think is glaring. Frankenstein – the creator not the monster – goes wild when he is young and creates the first artificially made man. For reasons that aren’t the least bit explored, he makes him the most hideous looking man possible. Why?

Mary Shelley, the author, doesn’t know a thing about how he could do this so she just skims over it. As a writer, I can dig that. Too much explanation can be icky in my book. But why the most hideous thing to look at of all time?

And then he just dumps it, to survive on its own. Sort of described as his coming out of a trance, he just forgets about it. Huh?

Okay, there is also the strangeness of monster and creator chatting in a cabin, after years. In this talk, the monster says that if he will just make him a companion, all will be well but basically if he doesn’t, he’ll make his life hell.

Not an unreasonable request, seems to me. Creator does nothing for a long time and then finally gets down to making him a Midge doll. But oh, it is just too horrible, so he rips it apart in front of monster and says no way.

Why does it drive him mad? Seems like a solution worth a try to this reader.

By the way, I apologize if I’m giving anything away here. Read the first capture only and you’ll get the gist.

By the way, my choice would have been no one ever saw the monster. This would be way cooler. Does it really exist or is this creator guy just a psychotic freak? There you go! Suspense!

Then, at the very end, the creator absolves himself of any wrong doing. Creating the thing was just boys-will-be- boys. No harm done. Making the score be monster all bad and creator? Way delusional.

I don’t know. I’m glad to have read it. I have a dim feeling of why it is as important as it is. I just think there are – as I write this – at least a dozen books, if not a hundred, that do it better.

BOOK 62

COLDEST WINTER EVER

• by Sister Souljah
• [rated by PBS viewers as #98]
• 384 pages

Wow. The power of a unique voice. All of us who write hope for them, but truly unique?

Here is a book that I picked up, read the first page and found that I just couldn’t look away.

DONE.

From the start, the protagonist’s voice was indeed unique and mesmerizing. Winter is the daughter of a very successful drug kingpin in Brooklyn. She is the envy of all her neighborhood, with virtually every one she knows being obligated to her family and working on her father’s payroll. The money being poured her young way is endless.

Then, in what was a huge multi-yeared sting, the drug ring is taken down, virtually overnight. Her father goes to jail for many years to come, her mother goes crazy and becomes a crackhead on the streets and Winter is forced to figure out her way in life. Unfortunately, that way is fairly devoid of meaning, money being all she cares about. People who try to help her are tools for her to steal from, either money or their boyfriends.

Winter is both fierce and hard not to hope for, as the people who meet her find as well. In fact, what keeps you turning pages is hoping that she will see the error of her ways. But does she?

I wanted to have her realize things but instead, life just happens to her. That is the lesson. And though it isn’t nearly as satisfying, I suppose it is also more realistic.

She is eventually punished by life and all of those she has done wrong to, but with nary the illuminating lesson learned.

If it weren’t for this blog, there were definite moments that I would probably have dropped the book. I didn’t care quite enough about her to root for her. Hey, I can root for just about anybody for just about 15 minutes, but a full book? Harder.

But she is unapologetic about who she is. She is strident and she tosses those she cares about to the curb in search of a higher lifestyle that would allow her to not have to think about any of this. Not exactly noble, but it rings strident and true.

I have to add that, for the first time in ages, I read the second half of the book in one sitting. That says a lot to me, even if I can’t tell you why.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of this novel is that it was written by real life political activist and hip hop artist, Sister Souljah. She shows up in the book, first as someone that Winter hates to hear on the radio, talking about values she can’t really understand. Later, Winter is forced to meet her and then steals from her.

Even though she allows herself to show up as the moral high ground, I have never really seen an author put themselves into a book in a supporting role where she actually ends up as a victim of sorts.

All of my words aside, I have deep respect for Souljah’s writing. When she shows that Winter, with her upbringing and skewed values, doesn’t see a lot of choices for herself, that is an insight that needs to come to our attention.

I found myself thinking of what I would do to get out of the scrapes she was in, but she knows nothing of those choices and was never taught them. She represents a deeply unheard from segment of the population that we would do well not to judge without walking a mile in their shoes. This book takes one that mile.

And also, the writing is like a bat out of hell! One of the reviews in front says that if a rap song could be a novel, it might resemble this. It is a novel of great worth.

Might be interesting to listen to audible for this. The speaker would have to be mighty, cuz with this book, the voice is huge.

• LOOKING FOR ALASKA
• by John Green
• [rated by pbs readers as #92]
• 221 pages

I came upon John Green and this book circuitously. I have no idea how his second book, The Fault is In Our Stars, came to be in my hands. The movie wasn’t made yet and I must have gotten ahold of it a long time back cuz I took a long time to get to it. Make no mistake. I have found some of my best reads that way – buy them for no reason and then just sit on them! It’s a talent I have.

But eventually I opened up the book and a hurricane slipped out! I was dazzled by the force of nature that I found in Green’s writing, storytelling and hugely refreshing dialogue. A masterpiece lay in this small package of a book.

I have to also add that my hat is always off to adults who can find the pacing and the words of youth. Green’s Fault and Meyer’s Twilight have both blown me away with their ability to take me back to high school and thereabouts. I certainly remember living through it but never memorialized it. That is a special talent.

So with a list packed with huge books left to go, I looked at this little book, Looking for Alaska, Green’s first opus, as a little treat to give myself at some point.

Halfway through it, I must say that I am a little bit disappointed. Where Fault is packed with life, as two kids with illnesses contemplate love, life, writing, living, dying, this is, so far at least, about a small group of nerdy friends that hang out at college together, spearheaded by Alaska, the most beautiful girl any of them know. The lead character is in love with her and in service to her as a friend for years, even though she has a boyfriend.

Like I said, I’m halfway done and I hope I’ll change my mind, but so far, this feels like the warm up to Fault. The dialogue is good, but not as good. The life and death angle adds a gravitas to the gaiety in Fault, something that this book has nothing like. And truth be told, I’m bored with the beautiful girl dragging the nerds around angle of things!

DONE.

Wow. For people who have read this book, I wrote all the words above the split second before the book radically changes. Since I can’t imagine I’m ruining it for anybody, I will say that very abruptly someone dies and the second half of the book is dealing with that.

It is a sharp departure and meant to be, but I confess that I found the change weird. If that had happened earlier, I think I would have gotten it. Sure, the set up was just that. A set up to the main course. Or corpse, as it were.

Or if it had happened later, it would have been a book about something else. But half and half? I really can’t remember a book changing that radically – half. way. through.

In the end, you return to John Green and his almost mystical connection to younger minds. This is a book that perhaps people newer to the planet than myself can really synch up with. I can’t imagine adults calling this a stupendous read. Although I’m already wrong because it was adults who picked this.

Adults who read it in their teens, that is.

I didn’t hate this. I love Green’s dialogue. But it didn’t land right for me. I can’t imagine 100 grown ass people reading this and loving it. A discussion group for this book with them would dry up. I’m in the dry up group.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Since it is aimed for teens and teen suicide is sharply on the rise, I also wonder if this book glamorizes suicide at all. It might not. But if you are that age and you love these characters, might you decide that it is okay to take that step? Hope not.

• LONESOME DOVE
• by Larry McMurtry
• [rated by pbs readers as #22]
• 858 pages

I just want to say that I am facing one of my biggest fears upon embarking on this journey. I am reading what I have always referred to as my favorite book.

At 858 pages with print I can’t even see without my reading glasses on, will it hold up? What am I talking

about? Will it hold up? Will I hold up is the bigger question.

But my heart is calm. McMurtry is like coming home for me. I have probably read about 25 of his books. I’m ready for the voyage. It is almost the end of September, so I figure it will take me till the end of the year.

I’m sorta looking forward to it.

DONE. AFTER MONTHS.

So. I needn’t have worried about whether I would like the writing or not. It is so achingly beautiful that I’ll love it till the day I die. And though it took me months…I know I will now revisit it again.

When I moved after college in LA to the Hollywood Hills, there was a B Dalton nearby with relatively easy parking (way more important than you’d think). I would look at their special shelves that employees recommended. Now, every book store is filled with that. But then, it was brand new. As I think about it, I found two lifelong literary loves in that first little shelf – David Ritz and Larry McMurtry.

Picking up a slim volume of McMurtry’s called Desert Rose, I instantly felt like I belonged in this writer’s orbit. Who is to say why? Why do I instantly feel at home with McMurtry as opposed to someone else feeling that with Stephen King? Does anybody know that? Are we even allowed to know?

In the introduction, he mentions that he wrote Desert Rose because he was in the middle of this huge book about a cattle drive and he didn’t know what to do with them so he was taking a break.

I fall in love hard. So I went in search of this 900 page book about a cattle drive. Found it. Lonesome Dove. Earned (and richly deserved) the Pulitzer Prize that year. It became my favorite book. Didn’t want to read it again. Hermetically sealed in my heart and brain.

But that was stupid. It is gorgeous writing and I am instantly home again in the verbiage. I don’t think you can explain why you love, but with this man’s writing, it is majesty. Certainly majestic in that its backdrop is the whole, as yet uncorrupted plains of the nation. But also majestic in quietly revealing a shy man’s heart. In allowing for the innocence of these boys and men, based on few of them having any life experience. Till now, anyway.

McMurtry characters are complex, strong, weak, aimless, funny, achingly alone, yearning without knowing what they are yearning for.

Lest you think this a simple book, it is touching, shocking, and so easy to be with.

When you finish the story, the book ends but the majestic reverberations continue. What a beautiful, perfect read.

One last note – though I can’t imagine any other writer that I would want to go on a 3000 mile cattle drive with, even this one was still that journey and it didn’t fit well enough into my mind and life to go fast. So it put my reading goal behind cuz it took a lot of time. But I’m so glad to visit it once again. Whew.

One more last note. McMurtry writes dialogue like none other. Okay. Done now.

• THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
• by Mark Twain
• [rated by PBS viewers as #17]
• 251 pages

I think that most every one of us has had the feeling of reading, watching or listening to a classic. Something that you know will last forever. That last book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, for instance. Or listening to Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life for the first time. Viewing the

Grand Canyon. Gazing at Monet. Listening to Bob Marley…

I think we have all probably also stared at or witnessed something others call a classic. And we stare and stare. Until we finally have to throw up our hands and admit that we just don’t get it.

It is with regret that I say this about Mark Twain. I know, I know! How could I?

This short book took me a long ass time to get through. Partially because I sort of hate when dialogue is suggested through a million apostrophes. And this book is the king of all that.

I get it. It reads a bit laboriously for me but I get it. The story is still vivid, if not a bit belabored. But hey. It’s a classic.

Of course, this could be solved by a little bit of research. Find out why he is hailed by some as our greatest writer

ever!

Sadly, that is a little bit of research that I’m not willing to do. Getting through the book was enough for me.

I played Aunt Polly in a fifth grade play so I somehow remembered most of the story. Does that make it a classic? Hm. I don’t think so.

My only guess is that he writes this just shy of 150 years ago and that it marked to opening up of writing and story telling to be more casual. To produce anti-heroes. Am I getting close?

No idea.

I know that scholars who revere Mark Twain always  mention Huck Finn as the big ass book. Does that make me anxious to read that one? I think you can guess my answer to that.

Glad I read it, though. Looking forward to moving on to the next one.

• THE GREAT GATSBY
• by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• [rated by PBS viewers as #15]
• 180 pages

So how does my surprise motif come into play with the re-reading of this book? You know? It doesn’t. Unless you count the surprise every day and every page when reading an absolute masterpiece. It isn’t just surprising but actually luxurious to be an adult, sitting at the feet of an exquisite story teller.

Fitzgerald’s language was of such a descriptive depth that I had to go over paragraph after paragraph to take it all in. It was put down perfectly, though. My endlessly re-reading was completely reader error. I had to make myself be worthy of the words, deep enough for the constant imagery.  

Some stories have one or two elements that you remember. Such is the fame and praise deservedly bestowed on this book that virtually every element in it is remembered. If I started to explain the memorable elements here, I would retell the entire story

Fitzgerald is a perfect writer. This was apparently his third book and the one he wrote to prove that he didn’t have to write autobiographically. And yet, its perfection, story and theme wise, ends up feeling deeply personal to all of us.

May this never be removed from shelves. People need to know that someone can write this way. That one person can write this way.

Though I could only read 20 pages at a time, in the space and time between those 20 pages, I still felt bathed in the book.

I love the balance of beautifully descriptive passages with an equal leaning towards brevity. There is nothing extra here. It’s as if he was challenging himself to say worlds in the fewest words necessary. He employs these amazing visual descriptions while storytelling with a bulls eye.

Another great thing. This is a story firmly told but in reality, it is through innuendo. Gatsby, for instance, is a character whose feelings you are called upon at times to unearth through what isn’t said. And just about everything Daisy says is ethereal, not to the point and not even her truth. But the writer is good enough to give us a firm grasp throughout.

I could go on and on, but I wouldn’t be adding one thing to this masterpiece. When the PBS contest happened, I voted for it every day. If you haven’t read it, you haven’t read. And if you have, maybe visit it again.

Of course, I have to end as the book ends, with possibly the greatest last line of a book ever written. It’s certainly the best one I’ve ever read.

“So we beat on, boats against the current,

borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

THE HELP

• by Kathryn Stockett
• [rated by PBS readers as #16]
• 522 pages

Well, in keeping with the surprising theme throughout this little journey, this book, The Help, a tome I had read previously mind you, stopped me cold.

When I first read it, quite a while ago, I vaguely remember really liking it. The varied viewpoints felt fresh and the attack on the subject matter felt unique and approachable.

But not this time.

I don’t know if it is the increase in woke-ness that changed its effect on me this time. But it if caused my sensitivity to these theme to spike, then I’m grateful to it. Reading a 500-page novel about white people being prejudiced, unaware and unfeeling and black people paying with their lives, their hearts, their children and their dignity is no longer sad. It is intolerable.

So walking into that world became something that I quietly just could not face. Weeks went by, months. It was a good thing that I was ahead in books read because

I sat on this long enough to hatch it!

The last third of the story gives you heroes and change in the air and bad people getting their comeuppance. So you know that was easier going on the reading end. By the end of the book, there was great parity in struggles all around.

I particularly liked the relationship between Skeeter and her mom. Though her mom committed some horrible acts that affected Skeeter’s life drastically, she is dying and that brings up the other side of their relationship, that of love and interdependence. Refreshing to see a complex relationship in the middle of what seemed, for two thirds of the book, to be a battle between the good guys and the bad guys.

I would have recommended this to anyone after the first time I read it. I didn’t love it but I admired it. And now? The writing still works but the lives depicted are quite hard to endure.

I’m glad I had another look at it, though. But mostly, I’m glad I’m done with it!

• THINGS FALL APART
• by Chinua Achebe
• [rated by PBS readers as #82]
• 209 pages

I’m not sure why but this book keeps reminding me of The Good Earth. Well, I am sure why, now that I think of it.

Both are unsentimental accounts of life in a completely unknown place to most of the readers. Both are sparsely told but with the perfect detailed storytelling to allow yourself to be in the story.

Both have central characters that you can’t really like. You can occasionally feel for them but in no sense are they lovable.

And then – the dates. The dates they were written are a huge part of why they are so brave. Pearl S. Buck wrote the Good Earth in the 30’s, I think. And Things Fall Apart was written in the year of my birth, 1959. This makes them outrageously ahead of their time.

It also, sadly, adds a lot to my Breathless analogy. By the time I saw Goddard’s Breathless during college, I knew that it was too far away from when it had been made for me to get it. I grasped its originality but I had also seen 30 years worth of knock offs from it’s originality – so much so that I could never get that “my head was blown off” experience that you could only have gotten in the 60s when it came out.

I only started Things Fall Apart and I’m already about half way through. It is sort of a fable, explaining the life of this central character, Okonkwe, his wives, his kids, his excessive beatings given to all of them when he was upset (see what I mean? lovable!)…

It’s possible that this story will turn and become very deep. If not, it will be Breathless. I will end up admiring it but not having it swing me sideways. Time and another hundred pages will tell!

DONE. Well, it got deeper, as the Christians came and the cultures crashed up against each other. I’m not entirely sure that it felt congruent with the rest of the book’s direction, but I guess so.

The last third of the book felt like an enormous painting of life in this part of Nigeria. Every detail mentioned but in the end, life was life.

In the end, I still compare it to The Good Earth but then it becomes comparable to Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. I know no one but me will ever compare these two books except me.

And it is for one reason. They are both remarkable in their skills of writing, description and uniqueness. But then, when you see that they were written in 1959, the year I was born!, they become great a bit more than is contained within.

I won’t know enough to get a chronology but I imagine that Achebe paved the way for thousands of writers inspired by his no nonsense accounting of a community’s sea change. And in that, I’m sure his efforts move into the priceless realm.