A long time ago someone told me you had to read 20 books a year to qualify as an avid reader. As arbitrary waymarks go, this one has stuck with me, and so I was a little troubled late last year when I realized I would only get to 18 books in 2009. I have some excuses. The number includes two Dickens tomes, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. And it doesn't include the two long-ass graphic novel series I ploughed through as well -- the five-volume Scott Pilgrim series and seven of the nine-volume Bone series by Jeff Smith. Plus there are those two young whippersnappers occupying much of my attention.
But Shulgan, come on. The fact is, now that you're straight edge it's not like you have a social life to keep you from your reading. You've been spending too much time watching television shows like The Wire and Curb Your Enthusiasm. You've been watching too many movies, too. As a writer you have to make books your priority. Alright, enough with the oblique form of address. One of my major resolutions this year is to read more. I hereby resolve to demolish the 20-book waymark and to achieve 30 books this year. At least 30. Do I hear 40? Come on Shulgan, you can do it!
Over the last couple of years I've tracked my reading over at my community page at the Chapters/Indigo web site. I'm going to stop that because too often what I read is out-of-print. Plus, does anyone actually read those community pages? From now on I'll just provide quick reviews on the books I've read at this blog.
Here, then, are capsule reviews of the two books I've read thus far in 2010.
1. Lit by Mary Karr
I didn't know much about Karr before I saw her memoir listed on the New York Times' list of the 10 best books of 2009. "A master-class in memoir writing," they called it, and as someone in the final stages of revising my own memoir (due out October 2010), and as someone also who tends to poach the NY Times 10-best list anyway, I thought, well, why not. I would say I was a little disappointed. The book feels very insidery. It seems as though it was written for those who had read Karr's two earlier memoirs and then wondered how things ended. And because I hadn't read her two earlier memoirs, a lot of the stuff failed to resonate with me. That said, I enjoyed reading about Karr's trip toward sobriety. I quit drinking a while back and I soaked up how important her sobriety group was to her continued, uh, sobriety.
2. Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line by Ben Hamper
This is one of the best-written books I've read in a while. I loved it. Essentially it's just a straight recounting of the decade or so that Hamper spent as a line worker at a GM plant in Flint, Michigan. I read it as research for a project I'm working on about Detroit. What distinguishes this book is Hamper's voice. He uses hyperbole as adroitly as Twain or, more recently, Hunter S. Thompson. And how frequently do you encounter literary merit combined with authenticity? Interestingly, Hamper got his start at Michael Moore's indy paper, the Flint Voice. And Hamper's quest to go bowling with former GM chair Roger Smith predates Moore's own stalking of Smith as chronicled in Moore's first film, Roger and Me. The book was written in 1991; Hamper maintains a web presence here but it's a shame he hasn't produced more verbiage in book form. This decade could use the Rivethead.
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