Packing

I really should be packing up more stuff.

I stopped by Bibo Coffee Company on Mt. Rose Street for the best coffee in Reno. (A side note for those of you who know me as a tea drinker: when I want coffee, I go to Bibos (and they make a great cup of tea, too.)) I know I shouldn't have picked up my book, but I am an incurable book-a-holic. I am reading The Pacific and Other Stories by Mark Helprin and, as some of you may know, Helprin is (in my opinion) one of the best writers ever.

Anyhow, I find that when I read Helprin's stuff, I want to write. But this blog entry will be all I write today. I am back to packing up and throwing away stuff.

More reading!

I don't know why I often avoid certain authors because they get so much buzz. I suppose I am distrustful of some authors who are popular for little reason I can ascertain (like John Grisham or Dan Brown).

I guess it was for this reason I took so long to discover Jonathan Lethem. At first, I avoided his popular books (Motherless Brooklyn was popular when I first decided to try reading his stuff), and picked up a copy of As She Cimbed Across the Table. I loved it.

So Gun, With Occasional Music was my second Lethem book, and I can tell you I'll be reading a lot more.

This book was a wonderful combination of hard-boiled detective fiction (think: Raymond Chandler) and twisted science fiction, set in a bizarre (yet somehow plausible) future where animals have been artificially evolved and your karma levels are kept on a card. The superb writing and the wonderfully crafted plot are almost bonuses.

I won a copy of Eliza Minot's The Brambles from our local paper's book blog a couple months ago. I put off reading it because, frankly, I hadn't heard anything about the book or the author.

I have mixed feelings about the book. The writing is superbly crafted and she really knows how to get inside the moment and the character. In fact, Minot gets a little too much inside. THe details are so combed over that I almost forgot there was a plot in there somewhere. The story is simple: the Bramble family is coming to terms with the death of the mother and a father who is terminally ill. The aging father is brought to the eldest daughter's house to finish out his days and the other two siblings visit.

Minot delves with excruciating detail into the day-to-day lives of the three siblings before finishing up with an odd twist that abruptly ends the book. I won't give away the twist, but I found myself wondering why the book was suddenly done, when there seemed to be so much more to be wrapped up, somehow.

I recommend this book for the lovely character studies and the lovingly painted details, but certainly not for the story that meanders about before stopping suddenly and tipping over.



Finally, I got to spend time with one of my favorite authors in his newest book, Freddy and Fredericka.

Mark Helprin's newest book was a delight to read. I don't quite know where to begin to talk about this book, as I had so many mixed feelings about it, and the book is so varied in plot and direction.

The story concerns the Prince of Wales, Freddy, and his vacuous wife Fredericka. To prove they are worthy of wearing the crown, they are sent on a mission (in the form of a bizarre Merlin-type character) to conquer a barbarian land (read: USA).

After reading Refiner's Fire, I sensed Helprin's love of the American countryside, and this book confirms this. The descriptions of America's land, waterways and characters helped me to fall in love with the country along with Freddy and Fredericka. The story was a bit odd, but the characters were so real and so endearing that I lost myself in the book several times.

This isn't Helprin's finest work (in my opinion, Winter's Tale takes that prize), but it is fun and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. Definitely a good read.

We all had to start somewhere...

I just finished reading Mark Helprin's first novel, Refiner's Fire. As some of you might know, he is one of my favorite authors. (If you asked me my 5 favorite books, Winter's Tale would always be on that list.) His writing is some of the richest and most artistically beautiful that I've ever read.

Having said this, I have yet to read everything he's written. So I picked up a copy of Refiner's Fire and one of Freddy and Fredericka and prepared myself for some escape. (In case you haven't guessed, these are the only two of his novels I haven't read.)

Refiner's Fire starts out with an amazing story of a ship full of illegal immigrants off the coast of Palestine in 1947, where a child is born and orphaned during a battle. Once we start to follow the foundling and his charmed life, however, the story starts to falter. The boy, Marshall Pearl, is brought to America and adopted by a rich couple and raised in the Hudson River Valley. At this point, the character becomes a comic book superhero who, apparently, has no character flaws and always gets the girls.

The entire middle of the book took me several months to get through because I kept putting it down. I really didn't intend to finish it. But something compelled me to pick it up again and again. I think that through Marshall Pearl's story -- one that takes him through Jamaica fighting Rastafarians, to Harvard, to the desert southwest, through the slaughterhouses of the midwest, through a sea-crossing voyage on a British merchant navy ship, to the peaks of the Swiss Alps -- what kept me going was Helprin's amazing writing. He uses the poetry of the English language to paint such amazing scenes and descriptions that the weak characters, the Dickensian coincidences, and lack of compelling plot were almost minor annoyances.

However, the book ends rather dramatically with Marshall Pearl fighting in the Israeli army in the Yom Kippur War. Once I hit the last few chapters, I couldn't put it down.

Again, the reason I couldn't let this book go was because of the writing. And knowing this is Helprin's first novel, I really must applaud this incredible book. It's still definitely a must-read, especially for Helprin fans.

Now... on to Freddy and Fredericka...

Sublime prose

If you asked me to list my five favorite authors, who made it on the list would usually depend on when you asked me. But (aside from Shakespeare) the list would always include Mark Helprin. I've read Winter's Tale five times, and A Soldier of the Great War and Memoir from Antproof Case twice.

Mark Helprin's prose is sublime. He can transport me like no other author can.

Harvard Magazine profiles Helprin:

"The study where Mark Helprin writes his novels and short stories, essays, speeches, letters, and Wall Street Journal columns is a spectacular room. Fifty feet long and nearly 30 feet wide, it holds two desks; there’s a fireplace at one end, and some fishing rods hang aloft on display. Everything is in immaculate order."

I wish I had the time to rave about his writing, but I need to get ready for a trip. Just go out and read his work (his new novel, Freddy and Fredericka is just published). You won't be sorry.