The 1997/1998 Book List

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Title	Author	Date	Rating	Comments
The Living	Annie Dillard	June 30		No one evokes the awe-inspiring grandeur of the Pacific Northwest like Annie Dillard. Just ask her reviewers. There are trees. They are very, very large. And tall. There are people, too, of course -- but don't get too attached to them. You will marvel at sensory descriptions, gorgeous landscapes and deep, interesting characterizations. You'll be a little bitter at the end (I was), but there is also hope.
The Broom Of The System	David Foster Wallace	May 23		I would have adored this book, except for two things. One is the character of Rick Vigorous, and the second is every scene in which he appears. To misquote and mangle Will Rogers, I have metafiction I didn't like! You can see the genius that would produce Infinite Jest in certain scenes and especially in the minor (unfortunately) character of Stonecipher LaVache Beadsman. He's quite good. The book has other glimmers of joy in it, no doubt, but all in all I just didn't want to read it very much. What can you do to suspend your disbelief when you have characters named Judith Prietht and Candy Mandible?
If You Ask Me	Libby Gelman-Waxner	May 18		When I read Libby's review of Jurassic Park in a 1993 issue of Premiere, I thought she was real. When I continued to read her columns, and eventually found out who was really writing them, I saw them for the great, fluffy humor pieces they are, and I looked forward to the occasional one I would get to read. However, I offer the following as sage advice: Libby's work is best ingested one column at a time, and at the time of its publication, not years later. But it can be damn funny.
The Hotel New Hampshire	John Irving	May 6		I am constantly cursed by the habit of reviewing books by my favorite authors by comparing the work in question to his or her others. The Hotel New Hampshire is a fine book on its own merits, really, it is. The fact that it's not as good as A Prayer For Owen Meany just makes it hard to say so. It starts well, and it ends well, and you just can't help but like it, but it is difficult to love.
The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories	Tim Burton	April 29		It speaks to the underlying genius of the design of American society that madmen like Tim Burton are allowed, nay encouraged, not only to walk the streets unsupervised, but to release their strange muses in little sick black books. I love Oyster Boy, and I love Jimmy, the Hideous Penguin Boy, and I am Voodoo Girl. Hopefully the sad and tragic tales of Brie Boy and Junk Girl will give some of us pause. Every once in a while you need to think on and treasure the horrid fates of freak children everywhere, and smile.
M*A*S*H	Richard Hooker	April 26		Not nearly as good as the TV series, which wasn't nearly as good as the movie. Damn, do I ever like that movie. Reading the novel on which it was based gives me a new appreciation for Ring Lardner and Robert Altman for fleshing it out into such great comedy. You can see the beginnings of those scenes, those characters, here, but they would have been helped greatly had they been written by a writer, instead of a doctor.
Death: The Time Of Your Life	Neil Gaiman, et. al.	April 23		I hate when things are over; so much is left undone. The new Hazel is a far, far better Hazel than the old Hazel, and Death, of course, is at her best with these artists. She is perfect. In her introduction, Claire (a bizarre choice after the ideal Tori Amos of the previous volume) comes across like one or two of the younger Ds, and that's not bad.
Polaroids From The Dead	Douglas Coupland	April 20		I'll come right out and say that the piece on Brentwood was far too long and too late to be topical. There. As to the rest: we still love Douglas Coupland, who (this is a non sequitur) knows I exist. I read the bit about the bridge twice. That was beautiful. Have you read Winter's Tale yet? Bridges are good. Oh, and somehow (ironically, I suppose), I think I miss Jerry Garcia less now.
Death: The High Cost Of Living	Neil Gaiman, et. al.	April 17		Let's give her skin tone, and spook the whole thing out completely, and instead of delving a bit into the interesting fruit lady, let's give her a spoiled, shortsighted teenager to look after. But let's make her naive, and we will make her say "Please" right before she has to die, and we will let her buy a new ankh from a street dealer. That'll be great. And she'll be sixteen, or at least we'll say she's sixteen, but she'll still be Endless, and I don't know how anyone could miss that.
Sandman: The Wake	Neil Gaiman, et. al.	April 11		Questions answered. (Wait, Despair died? Oh.) Death with a red dress on. "I was being all fishies." Barnabas regained. And I was there. We all were.
Sandman: The Kindly Ones	Neil Gaiman, et. al.	April 6		So I read it on a plane, which always makes things singular, and I read it coming back from Ocean City, which always makes things memorable, and I'd been thinking about you (no, not you) all day, which always makes things distracted. Plus they told me what was going to happen. But it has the best close-up yet of her eye, and Thessaly eats lamb stew. For that I love it.
The Barrytown Trilogy: The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van	Roddy Doyle	April 3		I love The Commitments. I watched the movie a dozen times; it was the first thing I rented in 1993 when I bought my first VCR that was mine. So I knew the story. But I wasn't prepared for the joy it has on the page. I sang along with it. I sang "What Becomes Of The Broken- Hearted?". Out loud. And The Snapper was just as good. I don't think I'd have quite so much vodka and Coke if I were pregnant, but that's neither here nor there. The Van kind of pissed me off.
Through The Looking-Glass	Lewis Carroll	March 28		All my life I've had a set of the Alice books, a special edition from 1946. With the original Tenniel illustrations. When I left for college they disappeared; I have no idea where they are. I miss them. Last fall, in a used bookstore in Denver, I found them again. Both of them, amazingly. I've always loved this one even more than Alice In Wonderland. Think of it this way: Jabberwocky is a treasure, and that's on the third page.
Primary Colors	Anonymous	March 27		I bought it for my dad two Christmases ago, and he didn't want it. Fine. Be that way. A quick, funny read; not at all bad for pulp fiction. I winced repeatedly at the behavior of Jack Stanton, but I was surprised at the overall tone. The thing is a love letter. "Stanton" is described as a natural politician, an expert on the issues, a near-great man and a devoted public servant. Oh, and a big fan of barbecue. I plan to enjoy the movie.
Tooth Imprints On A Corn Dog	Mark Leyner	March 20		Short stories, my favorite of which was Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown, a brilliant and hilarious play about the Israeli secret service, aliens and Barbie. Also standing out was Eat At Cosmo's, which was the first Mark Leyner piece I ever read, when it was printed in the New Yorker. I do so love this strange little man.
Girl With Curious Hair	David Foster Wallace	March 11		Such a gift for dialogue this man has. One story there is in here which when I tell you, you will not believe it. The old man says to his friend "What news from these children, your children I love like my own, what news could cause such stomach pain?" And to her friend she answers, in the roundabout way she always answers, "This girl, this Bonnie, who who would want to hurt her? Who who would not want to take her feelings into account?" There's also a lovely story about Lyndon Johnson, and the title piece, which is weird but deep, and ends with the line "And here's what I did."
Sandman: World's End	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	March 7		Easily the best one since The Doll's House. The ending just absolutely blew me away. I feel kind of stupid, since I'm not quite sure exactly what happened, but I'm slowly figuring the whole thing out. But this was just excellent. It had the most beautiful pictures yet of Death, and even though the central characters were a little annoying, I loved the inn, and I loved the nested stories. The foreshadowing, however - well, this does not bode well. This does not bode well at all.
Sandman: Brief Lives	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	February 28		This one seems to be many people's favorite; but though it had the advantage of being nice and long, I was just never really all that involved. I like Delirium fine, but I like Death more. Way more, and she was absent. I like Destruction a whole awful lot, but he was too serious, a little stiff and stunted, not at all the way I had imagined him. His dog, however, more than made up for it. That Barnabas is a great dog.
Sandman: A Game Of You	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	February 15		Alright, so Thessaly was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I hope I get to see her again. Man, she was terrific. If Hazel and Foxglove (it was nifty as hell how Foxglove turned out to be Judy's girlfriend from way back in the first few issues; Sandman keeps doing that!) are going to have a baby, then I suppose I shall be seeing them again, too. The characters (and the lettering!) in Barbie's dreams were delightful. But, really, I'm just dying to nail someone's face to the wall ... and to draw down the moon.
Gibbon's Decline And Fall	Sheri S. Tepper	February 14		Grass is still my favorite Tepper book, and there are others of hers that continue to rank above this one (Beauty, for instance, and the last two chapters of Sideshow, and The Gate To Women's Country certainly). I had an argument with a friend of mine once about whether The Gate was a 'feminist' book. She said no, but I think she was raised to think feminism was bad. Laughable. Decline And Fall is a a feminist book, but the laughs are there only when you realize how scared you are, how close you are. It made me mad, and it scared me, but it ends well.
Sandman: Fables And Reflections	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	February 5		By far my favorite part of this collection was Ramadan. I liked it for its looks, which kind of goes against the whole reason I'm reading Sandman in the first place. (Actually, I think at this point I'm reading it so I can move on and read Death. I think I love Death.) Ramadan was colored by computers, and it's gorgeous. It's unlike any of the other issues. Bright and beautiful.
Sandman: Dream Country	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	February 1		How much have I missed by never reading comic books? A Midsummer Night's Dream won a World Fantasy Award, and the committee was so shocked they changed the rules so it couldn't happen again. And A Midsummer Night's Dream was beautiful, and had a really wonderful idea. But I liked A Dream Of A Thousand Cats better. Speaking as prey, I liked it even better.
Yon Ill Wind	Piers Anthony	January 29		I miss Xanth. Books keep coming out with little bursts on the front that say 'An all-new Xanth adventure!' but they're not Xanth. Where's Ivy? Where's Humfrey? Where's the ogres, and the gourds, and the old clever talents? I miss Bink, and Trent, and even Dolph, and I miss the centaurs. I'm sick of these non-characters. I do like the demons, though. X(A/N)th especially.
Sandman: Season Of Mists	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	January 25		After the last one I think anything would have let me down, but I won't dwell on the fact that I didn't really like this one as much. It was kind of cool when all the different gods showed up demanding the key to Hell, and it was really cool when Hell got worse under its new rule, but there could have been so much more. Luckily, there is more. I just have to wait for Amazon.com to send it to me. Hurry.
Sandman: The Doll's House	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	January 24		Better than the first one. Better! I couldn't believe it. I read this mostly at work, between waiting for print jobs and such, and I found myself almost getting in trouble by looking up and noticing five minutes had passed. I just fell into this one. It affected me, and I adored it. And you know what? It scared the hell out of me; towards the end, when there is a picture of the doll's house ... it's my doll house. The Greenleaf Beacon Hill. It's my doll house.
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist	Mark Leyner	January 14		I didn't think it was possible, but this made less sense than Et Tu, Babe. Now that's saying something. Also, the hysterically funny Mr. Leyner has obviously saved so much effort and ink by leaving punctuation and capital letters out of several chapters that his next best-seller will probably consist of nothing else. I can't wait!
A Dove Of The East And Other Stories	Mark Helprin	January 11		You must realize by now that I love everything he writes. Standouts in this short-story collection include Willis Avenue: "When she wiped her brow with her wrist she got ink on her face anyway, and she was always smiling."
Miss America	Howard Stern	January 9		The son of a bitch isn't on in my radio market. Therefore, I cannot say anything nice about him, no matter how many times I laughed out loud (in the airport, and that can get you arrested) while reading his second book. How come I either have to travel to my ancestral home or point my car east on a rainy day to hear him, only to find William Shatner hosting the "Best Of Howard"? That isn't really fair.
Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes	Neil Gaiman,  et. al.	January 3		Someone on the Mark Helprin mailing list recommended Neil Gaiman's work, and when I looked him up at Amazon.com, the words people were using to describe Sandman were just unbelievable. Believe it! I don't think I've ever read a comic book in my life; a college roommate made me buy a copy of the issue where Superman died, but only because there was a one-per-person limit at the store the day it came out. Forget that. Read this.
As Francesca	Martha Baer	January 2		So my sick, evil work friends find this ad in a feminist book club flyer for a piece of smut that just happens to have a main character named Elaine. Of course, I identified with this character (unwisely) before reading the book. One co-worker even made up a list of parallels between the characters and the people we know. It was sick, I tell you. Sick and ... well, sick. But not as bad as I thought it'd be.
Strip Tease	Carl Hiaasen	December 15		Okay, one thing, right off the bat. I did not see the movie. The copy I read did not have Demi Moore on the cover. Having absolutely devoured this funny, action-packed story, I am very, very glad of both of these facts. I think they probably would have scared me away from a pretty damn good book.
Et Tu, Babe	Mark Leyner	December 11		Mark Leyner is one sick, sick man. While I was on vacation, no fewer than three different people recommended him to me, so on that trip I bought all of his books. Et Tu, Babe is a fictional memoir; the story of a man so smart, so rich, so attractive, so impossibly, undeniably cool, he could only be Mark Leyner. I sure did like this.
Penn & Teller's How To Play In Traffic	Penn Jillette and Teller	December 2		They oughta write more stuff like this. Sure, it has its cruel ideas, and it has its card tricks, but it's got lots of deep, opinionated, good writing that I really enjoyed. When it comes right down to it, I've never been more eager to deface a Gideon bible.
She's Come Undone	Wally Lamb	November 29		I read a lot about this before I read it. I was kind of scared to open it; it seemed to be one of those real "love-it-or-hate-it" deals, and the "hate-its" were winning. But I loved it. I did. I read it really fast, almost without stopping. I didn't love her (Dolores), but her story was good. Very good.
Still A Few Bugs In The System	G. B. Trudeau	November 17		The very first Doonesbury book. I thought I'd read every single strip, but apparently some of them (especially early ones) don't make it into the large-format collections. Here's classic stuff: Mark taking over the college president's office, Mike meeting his new lab partner Bernie ... Zonker isn't even in it yet. And man, anyone who says Garry can't draw now...
The Secret House: 24 Hours In The Strange And Unexpected World In Which We Spend Our Nights And Days	David Bodanis	November 15		The Secret House is full of fascinating stuff. About dust mites, bedbugs, grease, smoke, bacteria, sneezing, dead skin; how they make ice cream, hamburger, shampoo, and all kinds of other absolutely disgusting little itty-bitty crap. I've read it three times.
The Gashlycrumb Tinies	Edward Gorey	November 9		Indescribable. Brilliant. Transcribed in its entirety. Lacking without pictures.
The Book Of Jones: A tribute to a mercurial, manic, and utterly seductive cat	Ralph Steadman	November 9		"Jones treated [Hunter S. Thompson, John Belushi] and the rest with similar detente. Everyone was a moving thing to tease his whim with respect and worship at the altar he had made his own. No one meant more than that, for somewhere in his mysterious past, there gnawed a faceless memory; perhaps a thoughtless indiscretion when he had given all his love and trust to such a moving thing as those who surrounded him now. Maybe it was a tragic disappointment and he had learned, as much by instinct as by guile, that where he stood was all he could expect, and thereby laid his claim."
Life After God	Douglas Coupland	November 7		I just got back from vacation, from spending some good time with old friends and not enough time with a new one, and this quick, depressing little book just somehow seemed (and seems) to fit. It's sad, but it ends with some hope, that maybe one of these days, those of us (mainly me) who are 'lost' without really ever having been found in the first place, can make it okay.
My Symphony	Wm. Henry Channing, Mary Engelbreit	November 4		All her stuff is just so indelibly good. What else can I say? She takes words, and draws them, and draws them out. And she does a really amazing night sky sometimes. So blue.
Moo	Jane Smiley	October 13		Moo was enjoyable, and since it takes place at a college around the same time that I started college, it made me a little homesick. I started it at the beginning of a fairly important weekend trip, and finished it at the end, so it will probably stick with me for a while, because it was with me then. Never mind.
The Veil Of Snows	Mark Helprin	October 8		I love Mark Helprin, and I love Chris Van Allsburg, and I love the pictures in this book, but I'm not crazy about the story they chose to tell. I wish I could know more about the young Queen and, say, how she led the revolution as a child, and how her adolescence was, and what happened to the old tutor who raised her, and all that. I want more about the palace (I loved that about A City In Winter, lots of stuff about the palace). But the painting on page 85 of the Queen on her horse, with her bow & arrows, wearing her glasses, is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. This is what a strong woman should look like.
Horses!	Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, eds.	October 7		A collection of fantasy stories featuring (duh) horses. I especially liked the first and last stories in the book, Classical Horses by Judith Tarr and His Coat So Gay by Sterling E. Lanier, and The Circus Horse by Amy Bechtel, which has a twist and a half.
Bridge To Terabithia	Katherine Paterson	October 4		There was a trivia question in a quiz asking "What Newbery Award-winning book starts with a chapter called 'Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.'?" The answer is this book, which I learned the hard way. I went to the children's section of the library and started pulling every single Newbery Award winner ever off the shelves. Needless to say (if you know me at all), I left the library with a stack of books two feet high. I would definitely have enjoyed this one more if it hadn't had a review blurb on the back giving away the whole story. Amazon.com does it too, and so does the card catalog and the Library of Congress. Do you need to know the ending? No! That ticked me off.
Mr. Yowder The Peripatetic Sign Painter	Glen Rounds	October 3		Read last year's books list to find out how I know Mr. Yowder. I discovered during my search in the children's section that he's in a lot of books. How cool. He speaks Snake, did you know that? And I think Glen Rounds must have been the illustrator of a book of tongue twisters I've been looking for for ten years since I lost it. Never mind.
Come Closer, Roger, There's A Mosquito On Your Nose	Bill Amend	October 2		I love FoxTrot. You know I do. That's all there is to it.
The Happy Prince	Oscar Wilde	October 2		Boy, do I ever love this story. The link isn't the one I read; it's not in print. It was illustrated by Gilbert Riswold, and the strange, ethereal paintings add a lot to the story of the gilded statue and the impractical swallow. It's just a little fairy tale, and most people recognize it, even if they don't know Oscar wrote it.
Mr. Yowder And The Train Robbers	Glen Rounds	October 1		The first (so, last, as you're reading this page) of the spoils of that research trip. We discover Mr. Yowder's ability to speak Snake comes in handy again, and we discover that a snake can be taught to tie a square knot, which comes in handy as a plot device.
Now Face To Face	Karleen Koen	September 30		This is the sequel to Through A Glass Darkly, which is one of my favorite books ever, even though it isn't much more than a pulp romance. In 1987, the first time I signed on to CompuServe and played a game called You Guessed It, I chose Lady Devane as my nickname. Now the whole online thing is a giant chunk of my life, and even though I'm not Lady Devane anymore, I still follow her story. Unfortunately this is the story of James III (the Pretender), not really of Barbara. But the Duchess isn't dead, so there'll be another book. Good.
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears	Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds.	September 17		There were stories in this volume of fairy tales that I liked, but none of them have really stuck with me. One of them is practically a novella, and worth rereading: "The Fox Wife."
Microserfs	Douglas Coupland	September 9		Douglas Coupland (who coined the cursed term 'Generation X') suffers from pigeonholing. His writing goes so far beyond inside jokes that appeal to techies (although he's good at those) and characters fond of all-night coding runs and Skittles. He writes about people, and Microserfs made me laugh and made me cry. And it was wonderful.
A Drinking Life	Pete Hamill	August 14		I'm surprising myself by giving this a 5. But Pete Hamill is, for me, one of those people teachers and politicians like to call role models. Except he's not a very good one. What he does do well is write. The man is wonderful. Almost everything he is and has been is something I want to be. Almost. This is an autobiography, but more than that, it's a dissertation on living in New York, growing up in the fifties, and working for a great newspaper. Hey, two outta three, goals-wise. I love this game.
Brain Droppings	George Carlin	August 9		Remember all those mediocre stand-up comedian books I read last year? And remember how I started to wish they would stop? Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: No one does it better than George Carlin. A fitting end to the subgenre (we can hope). This is some funny, funny shit.
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not A Novel	Alain De Botton	August 7		This was an absolutely delightful little book. Before reading it, everything I knew about Marcel Proust came from the Monty Python sketch about The All-England Summarize Proust Competition, which was, to say the least, less than a scholarly endeavour. Now I know more about his life, his writings and his influence than most people, and I'm feeling a very unsettling urge to actually read A la recherche du temps perdu, though it would probably take me ten years and drive me to suicide, like it did for Virginia Woolf. I'll have to give it some more thought. I at least want to find out why some people translate it as In Search Of Lost Time and others as Remembrance Of Things Past. Aren't those two things opposites?
The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror: Fourth Annual Collection	Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds.	July 20		Short stories from 1990; about an average year. Great cover art by Thomas Canty, though. Highlights include "Alice, Falling" by Steven Millhauser, "Coming Home" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and "Coyote v. Acme" by Ian Frazier.