Have you ever loved a magical book above all others? Have you ever wished the magic were real? Welcome to The Land of Laughs. A novel about how terrifying that would be.

Schoolteacher Thomas Abbey, unsure son of a film star, doesn’t know who he is or what he wants–in life, in love, or in his relationship with the strange and intense Saxony Gardner. What he knows is that in his whole life nothing has touched him so deeply as the novels of Marshall France, a reclusive author of fabulous children’s tales who died at forty-four.

Now Thomas and Saxony have come to France’s hometown, the dreamy Midwestern town of Galen, Missouri, to write France’s biography. Warned in advance that France’s family may oppose them, they’re surprised to find France’s daughter warmly welcoming instead. But slowly they begin to see that something fantastic and horrible is happening. The magic of Marshall France has extended far beyond the printed page…leaving them with a terrifying task to undertake.

I actually did not like the narrator all that much but I did really enjoy Saxony and Carroll is a really, really talented writer so if you have not yet tried anything by him and are interested in excellent and inventive contemporary fiction you should definitely pick up one of his books.  I struggled with the end of this one although I absolutely adored the 50-75%.  I mean how can I not love it when he writes:

Reading a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else’s world. If it’s a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what’s going to happen to you there, what’ll be around the next corner.

 

Sidenote:  Apparently King recently gave an announcement and short reading from his Shining sequel Dr. Sleep.  Although the internet (aka Fark and Reddit) has had a mixed reaction I am excited for this.

McVries seemed not to have heard.
“These things, they don’t even bear the weight of conversation,” he said, “J.D. Salinger…John Knowles…even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes…they’ve destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you’re a sixteen-year-boy, you can’t discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon.”
McVries laughed a little hysterically.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

‎I have panicked unnecessarily in all four corners of the globe.

When they awoke, they’d head straight to the Dream Group, which consisted of an equal number of psychopaths and schizophrenics. “The problem,” Gary said, “was that the schizophrenics had incredibly vivid dreams—dream after dream after dream—but the psychopaths would be lucky if they even had a dream.”

“Why do schizophrenics dream more than psychopaths?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Gary laughed. “I do remember the schizophrenics usually dreamed in color—the more intense a dream, the more likely it’s going to be in color—but the psychopaths, if they managed to have a dream at all, dreamed in black-and-white.” All this was creating a power imbalance. In regular group meetings, Gary said, the schizophrenics would be subservient to the psychopaths, “but suddenly the poor psychopaths had to sit and listen to the schizophrenics go on about dream one, dream two, dream three . . .” When it was time for the patients to vote on whether to continue the Dream Group, the schizophrenics said yes, but the psychopaths vociferously argued against it and were victorious.

“Just because of the power struggle?” I asked.

“Well, there was that,” said Gary, “plus who wants to listen to some schizophrenic’s boring dream?”

…psychopaths tend to gravitate toward the bright lights. You’ll find lots of them in New York and London and Los Angeles. The psychologist David Cooke, of the Glasgow Centre for the Study of Violence, was once asked in Parliament if psychopaths caused particular problems in Scottish prisons. “Not really,” he replied. “They’re all in London prisons.”

A lot of people are scared they’re going mad. Late at night, after a few drinks, they admit it. One or two of my friends swear they don’t mind. One woman I know says she secretly wills a nervous breakdown on so she can get admitted to a psychiatric hospital, away from the tensions of modern life, where she’ll be able to have long lie-ins and be looked after by nurses. But most of my friends do mind, they say. It scares them. They just want to be normal. I’m one of them, forever unpleasurably convinced my wife is dead because I can’t reach her on the phone, letting out involuntary yelps on claustrophobic Ryanair flights, becoming debilitatingly anxious that psychopaths might want to kill me. And we spend our evenings watching Wife Swap and Come Dine with Me and Supernanny and the early rounds of X Factor and Big Brother. TV is just troubled people being booed these days.

Some fun bits (anyone still want to argue if he is one of our great writers?):

He knew as well as we in our own world do that the road to hell is paved with good intentions–but he also knew that, for human beings, good intentions are sometimes all there are. Angels may be safe from damnation, but human beings are less fortunate things, and for them hell is always close.

I think that friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.

Some selected bits.

Amusing:

Do you know people who insist they like ‘all kinds of music’? That actually means they like no kinds of music.

Interesting:

Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted muderer in the song “Folsom Prison Blues,: Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are “probably drinkin’ coffee.” And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn’t want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee. Within the mind of a killer, complex feeling are eerily simple. This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can’t

Weirdly insightful:

The Sims is an escapist vehicle for people who want to escape to where they already are, which is why I thought this game was made precisely for me.

I tried to read other books and even a few short stories after finishing Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to to the Universe.  I even tried some poetry!  And I am well aware of the fact that I am ridiculously late to this party.  I mean I vaguely remember reading Hitchhiker’s Guide in high school but I just couldn’t yet appreciate its genius.  I just didn’t yet know the joy of British humor.  So coming off what truly feels like my first reading of Adams, I tried to enjoy it and move on but found it impossible.  So I continued on with Restaurant at the End of the Universe.  It was actually, for me, even better than HG.  I think it is safe to say that this will always number amongst my favorite books.  If you are reading this and haven’t read these two books by all means, stop reading me immediately and go find a copy of these books!  Here are some of my favorite moments.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an indispensable companion to all those who are keen to make sense of life in an infinitely complex and confusing Universe, for though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does at least make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it’s always reality that’s got it wrong.

This entire scene just killed me.

“Well,” said the animal, “I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.”
It managed a very slight bow.
“Glass of water please,” said Arthur.
“Look,” said Zaphod, “we want to eat, we don’t want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven’t eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years.”
The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.
“A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,” it said. “I’ll just nip off and shoot myself.”
He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.
“Don’t worry, sir,” he said, “I’ll be very humane.”

A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn’t a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.
Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light-years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.
The band’s manager was profoundly relieved. It meant that for the seventeenth time on this tour the drums would be played by a robot and that therefore the timing of the cymbalistics would be right

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

“We have discovered another continent!”
“When was this?”
“It lies across the sea …” said Number Two, narrowing his eyes significantly, “to the east!”
“Ah.”
Number Two turned to face the crowd. He raised his gun above his head. This is going to be great, thought the crowd.
“We have declared war on it!”
Wild abandoned cheering broke out in all corners of the clearing—this was beyond all expectation.
“Wait a minute,” shouted Ford Prefect. “Wait a minute!”
He leaped to his feet and demanded silence. After a while he got it, or at least the best silence he could hope for under the circumstances: the circumstances were that the bagpiper was spontaneously composing a national anthem.
“Do we have to have the piper?” demanded Ford.
“Oh yes,” said the Captain, “we’ve given him a grant.”
Ford considered opening this idea up for debate but quickly decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged rock at the piper and turned to face Number Two.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/books-with-soundtracks-the-future-of-reading/244344/

It also alerted me to a really amazing blog called Largehearted Boy who has a Book Notes section in which author’s discuss a playlist for one of their books.  It includes my current favorite Paul Murray discussing a playlist for Skippy Dies.  Swoon.

Another Note: I will hopefully keep up with my reviews a little better again. This should be the last in this great flurry of posts and my posting schedule should resume normally now whatever that means.

So in my world “whatever that means” means see you in five months!  I blame Room by Emma Donoghue, that book was so intense that I had to take a half-year break from blogging about books.  No, actually the lazy hit and stuck but have no fear!  I was still reading all that time.  What I have read since I last left you…

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – As expected it was terrific 5/5
2. The Passage by Justin Cronin – So so so good.  Like a bastard child of King & Atwood.  I mean that in the best way possible 5/5
3. Storm Front (Dresden Files #1) by Jim Butcher – Everybody seems to love these.  It was fun. 4/5
4. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire #5) by George R.R. Martin – Winter is still coming (maybe. someday) 4/5
5. The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory – I needed a break. I always enjoy Gregory. 3.5/5
6. Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff – fascinating account 4/5
7. Bossypants by Tina Fey – listened to the audio book as everyone interested in this book should 5/5
8. The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry – brain candy.  I lurv Berry for some beach reading 3.5/5
9. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim – surprising moving and intimate account by one hilarious bitch.  4/5
10. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi – Vivid and disturbing imagery. Not my cup o’ tea but it was really well-written 4/5
11. The Mist by Stephen King – My wife shivers every time she mentions this book and it was in one of my King gaps.  I had to remedy that and it was very fine King fare 4/5
12. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – a classic that I somehow never managed to be assigned in school (at least that I recall).  4/5
13. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – we listened to the BBC audiobook version to this on a roadtrip and my wife was absolutely hooked.  I was engaged but haven;t felt the need, as she has, to continue reading the rest of the series.  Of course I am aware of Card’s real-life asshattery, she is blissfully unaware.  No one tell her. 4/5
14. The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2) by Brandon Sanderson – Great sequel to a highly original fantasy trilogy.  4/5
15. The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3) by Brandon Sanderson – Sanderson finishes the trilogy well.  Not a predictable plot. 4/5

So I have, mostly, kept up my pace to accomplish my book-a-week goal for this year but the blogging fell off right around the time I got a Nook. There is absolutely no connection between the two but I thought I’d mention the Nook because I am actually on my second already as I loved it so much I gave my original Nook to my mom and bought a Nook Touch. I was hesitant to jump into ereaders but this thing is so great! Anyhow, I will definitely try and get back in the habit of blogging after each read.

Currently reading: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Unfortunately, we are all aware of the numerous stories of the real-life stories that this fiction reflects.  My question is, what is the person of telling this story?  I mean what exactly is accomplished.  I suspect it is the same purpose accomplished in the multiple best-sellers of Jodi Picoult.  I will state that Emma Donoghue may be a better quality writer than Picoult and this is reflected in the second half of this tale which deals with Jack’s entry into the outside world and there are some interesting ideas here that are well expressed but it just felt like a weird way to tackle these types of themes.  Maybe seven years hearing, albeit not quite this horrific, stories of trauma and abuse reported by my colleagues at a social service agency, I just don;t want to read this for fun.  I know these horrible crimes occur.  My reading about a fictional account do nothing to address that issue but merely provides a voyeuristic view of what these poor women face while in captivity or upon (hopefully) eventual rescue.

Donaghue has nine other books listed on the “Also By: page of my edition so she clearly has quite a number of fans and quite a bit of success.  I have also tried reading her novel Slammerkin in the past and could not get into it so I think this writer/reader relationship is just not a good fit.  Clearly, by the reviews and sale numbers I am in the minority opinion here but that’s the beauty of an opinion.  Mine is not correct it’s just mine.  I do have some favorites and did actually enjoy the second half of this book quite a bit more than A Visit From the Goon Squad, for what that’s worth.

“Listen. What we see on TV is . . . it’s pictures of real things.”
That’s the most astonishing I ever heard.
Ma’s got her hand over her mouth.
“Dora’s real for real?”
She takes her hand away. “No, sorry. Lots of TV is made-up pictures—like, Dora’s just a drawing—but the other people, the ones with faces that look like you and me,
they’re real.”
“Actual humans?”
She nods. “And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities . . .”
“Nah.” Why is she tricking me? “Where would they fit?”
“Out there,” says Ma. “Outside.” She jerks her head back.
“Outside Bed Wall?” I stare at it.
“Outside Room.”

Ma said we’d be free but this doesn’t feel like free.

“Did you play LEGO with your kids?”
“I don’t have any kids.
“How come?”
Steppa shrugs. “Just never happened.”
I watch his hands, they’re lumpy but clever. “Is there a word for adults when they aren’t parents?”
Steppa laughs. “Folks with other things to do?”

Note: I did really like the character of Steppa (Jack’s step-grandfather).

Another Note: I will hopefully keep up with my reviews a little better again.  This should be the last in this great flurry of posts and my posting schedule should resume normally now whatever that means.

Currently reading: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Currently listening to: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

So, TL/DR: Pathetic people.  Gifted writer.  Check out The Keep.

I was working for the city as a janitor in a neighborhood elementary school and, in summers, collecting litter in the park alongside the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge. I felt no shame whatsoever in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.

Here was the bottom line: if we human beings are information processing machines, reading X’s and O’s and translating that information into what people oh so breathlessly call “experience,” and if I had access to all that same information via cable TV and any number of magazines that I browsed through at Hudson News for four-and five-hour stretches on my free days (my record was eight hours, including the half hour I spent manning the register during the lunch break of one of the younger employees, who thought I worked there)—if I had not only the information but the artistry to shape that information using the computer inside my brain (real computers scared me; if you can find Them, then They can find you, and I didn’t want to be found), then, technically speaking, was I not having all the same experiences those other people were having?…Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out.

Yet each disappointment Ted felt in his wife, each incremental deflation, was accompanied by a seizure of guilt; many years ago, he had taken the passion he felt for Susan and folded it in half, so he no longer had a drowning, helpless feeling when he glimpsed her beside him in bed: her ropey arms and soft, generous ass. Then he’d folded it in half again, so when he felt desire for Susan, it no longer brought with it an edgy terror of never being satisfied. Then in half again, so that feeling desire entailed no immediate need to act. Then in half again, so he hardly felt it. His desire was so small in the end that Ted could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about it, and this gave him a feeling of safety and accomplishment, of having dismantled a perilous apparatus that might have crushed them both. Susan was baffled at first, then distraught; she’d hit him twice across the face; she’d run from the house in a thunderstorm and slept at a motel; she’d wrestled Ted to the bedroom floor in a pair of black crotchless underpants. But eventually a sort of amnesia had overtaken Susan; her rebellion and hurt had melted away, deliquesced into a sweet, eternal sunniness that was terrible in the way that life would be terrible, Ted supposed, without death to give it gravitas and shape. He’d presumed at first that her relentless cheer was mocking, another phase in her rebellion, until it came to him that Susan had forgotten how things were between them before Ted began to fold up his desire; she’d forgotten and was happy—had never not been happy—and while all of this bolstered his awe at the gymnastic adaptability of the human mind, it also made him feel that his wife had been brainwashed. By him.

Currently reading: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Currently listening to: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury