bookish

Following the lead of my previous post, my recent travels have increased my book consumption rate, so here is my version of a book review. Sorry it is not a top ten, but hopefully you may find a book you are interested in. In the last three weeks I finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Grasshopper King by our own Jordan Ellenberg. I read Gatsby and Godot in grade school, but wanted to reread them - a rarity for me. For Godot, I remembered laughing out loud, hard, on the first read. This time not so much. A risk I hadn't thought of when deciding to reread it. I had fond memories of Godot, and I did not like it as much the second time, so now those memories are tainted. With Gatsby I had the opposite experience. I thought it was very boring fifteen years ago (crazy that I read anything that long ago); this time I loved it. I guess in the end the re-reading experiment was a wash.

For the new books I will be a bit more specific and give reviews. I would say criticism, but since both were excellent I have almost nothing negative to say. For BWLOW, I was excited from page 1, which starts with a quote from The Silver Surfer comic books. Right up my alley. Before you judge, this is not your standard fluff fantasy novel - it did win a Pulitzer Prize after all. Diaz tells the story of a family from the Domincan Republic, with a focus on the nerdy son. Dungeons and Dragons and Dictators abound. After reading Marquez and Allende I had basically made up my mind that I dislike multigenerational stories set in Latin America. 100 years of Solitude and The House of Spirits are similar to BWLOW in that the regional history is a backdrop for the story. Unlike the former two, BWLOW does a much better job of character development and is actually fun to read. Although I didn't cry at the end like Kavalier and Clay, I did like that more time was spent developing the characters when they are my age. In general I am a fan of books about me (Coda). Also, because blog posts are boring without pictures, I am going to use the D&D theme of BWLOW as an excuse to include a BLUE DRAGON!
I actually liked The Grasshopper King more than BWLOW, but I think this is because it was set in grad school - a time of my life of which I have fond memories (D.S. al Coda). Ha. Seriously though, I already had my share of awe of Jordan from reading his CV and hearing stories about his tenure review process. His book did nothing to lessen my opinion. The Grasshopper King is about an Eastern European language department, following a student's interactions while he transitions from aimless undergrad to professor. I don't want to summarize more; I won't do it justice. Certainly grad students who have met Jordan should read this, especially if they are studying say ...math or german. wink wink.