Netflix for books Monday, Jun 25 2007

I just signed up with this thing called booksfree.com, which advertises itself as “netflix for books.” Now, their inventory seems fine and I would appreciate a resolution to the twin problems of not being able to fit any more books in myself and not being able to get it together to visit the library during library hours. But their recommendations are very supermarket novel-rific, so I would love any advice as to what to put on my queue. Here’s what I have so far, in no special order:

• Bleak House by Chas. Dickens. We have this already, but it is so old and dusty that I have an allergy attack every time I open it.
• Wifey by Judy Blume. I read one of her other novels for adults, which was all about hot-tub divorcees in 1980s Colorado, and found it vaguely mortifying. Still, I have high hopes for this since it is from the apex of her distinguished career and has such an awesome name.
• Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This was universally panned by book reviewers when it came out, and I suspect it is a reworking of short stories I’ve already read, but I am sure it is at least competitive with the Judy Blume.
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1660. There were funny excerpts from this in the very excellent “84 Charing Cross Road,” a book (like “Taking Care of Terrific!”) that I really enjoyed as a young lady. I bought a copy once that turned out to be abridged in this horrible way so that I could never figure out what was happening in his life.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen. I didn’t like Jane Austen in college, but figure I should give it another chance since I have developed such a taste for boring-ness in the past few years.
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I don’t know, Oprah says it’s good.
• The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I don’t see how I could’ve possibly missed this excellently-titled tome in my flapper and debauchery-obsessed younger years, but I don’t recall reading it.
• Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford. Another wonderful title! I binged on the Mitford sisters earlier this year; I highly recommend Nancy’s “The Pursuit of Love” and “Love in a Cold Climate” and the book of Jessica’s letters that came out earlier this year. I have high hopes for this book, which is apparently a biography of some French aristocrat.

OK, are these going to be any good? What else should I put on the list? Please advise.

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Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard Sunday, Feb 25 2007

I have been sort of weepy recently, so I need to read macho books in order to get it together.  I just finished an Elmore Leonard book and if had any idea how to do this or whether I would get mean ceast-and-desist e-mails from Leonard’s people, I would insert the awesome photograph of craggy, squinty, stubbly, sunglass-wearing Leonard from the back of my copy from the library.  I mean, this is a man who has probably never burst into tears because he smashed his head on the kitchen counter while crutching around his house looking for something to wear.

As far as I can tell (this is the second Leonard book I’ve read; he’s written like 5 million and 3 million of them are hit movies) it actually takes longer to watch one of the moves made out of his books than to read one of them.   The dialogue is snappy and funny and he doesn’t have to waste much time on character development since they are all characters who can be easily summed up in one sentence.  In this book, the villains are two ex-radical hippies who served time for blowing up a federal building, and now are trying to extort money from the two rich ex-hippies who they think turned them in.  There is a hard-boiled, morally ambiguous detective and an ex-black panther who is now a Driving Miss Daisy houseman waiting for his rich simpleminded employer to die so he can inherit lots of money.  There is a sweet little Southern actress who gets mixed up in the whole affair.

It made my train ride go pretty fast, and it was sort of soothing feeling like I already knew all of the characters from their stereotypes in my culture.  Another funny thing about Elmore Leonard: his stories feel like the kind where everything is going to go to hell at the end, or at least be sort of mournful and ambiguous.  But in both books I’ve read (and also in Jackie Brown and Get Shorty, now that I think of it), there is a happy ending.  It’s fun.  It sort of makes you feel like you are getting away with something.

OK, now I am reading two books at once: an extremely trashy Jackie Collins book (appropriate for weepy girls on pain pills, but more boring than it has any right to be) and a semi-scholarly biography of Jesse James (mas macho!).  Clearly, I should focus on the Jesse James in order to keep a stiff upper lip and hopefully it will not turn me into a racist criminal.

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Shakey’s Loose by Renay Jackson Saturday, Feb 10 2007

I am in love with the back story of these books, at least as I have heard it. Renay Jackson, according to his bio, has been a custodian for the Oakland police department for over 25 years; he is also a former rapper and a “street lit author,” whatever that is. I read somewhere that he started writing these books with his kids while they were doing their homework and still sits down and writes for 30 minutes a night after dinner, just like a kid doing his homework. Before he had a publisher, he and his friends would sell the books on the bus in Oakland.

The books are compulsively-readable, pulpy murder mysteries set among drug dealers in East and West Oakland. They sort of remind me of Elmore Leonard; it is that same sort of thing where there are eight million characters and you are following the stories of the murderers and the victims and the police all at the same time. I love all of the local detail of course. I lived in Oakland for years and I am always reading it like, “Yeah, I know that highway exit! I get stuck in traffic there all the time!” Perhaps this would be boring if I did not have so much love for Oakland.

I have a few beefs with the book, like there are so many characters with similar sounding names that I have trouble keeping track of everybody. Maybe if there were a table of characters at the front of the book like in some of the Great Books I remember reading in elementary school. Also, and maybe I am just a prude, but I could do without the long, weird sex scenes including sentences like “He slammed his battering ram into her all night long.” Again, I suppose that is just a personal preference.

But the books are like I say compulsively readable. What have I learned that I should apply to my own meager efforts? I like his fast-paced action combined with lots of little detail about the characters’ lives so you feel like you really know them. Also, I should go easy on long extremely detailed romantic interludes with lots of analogies to power tools in case any of my many readers have delicate sensibilities like mine. Also, maybe readers love lots of references to Oakland geography. Or maybe that’s just me.

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