Knight’s Reading List XV: March 2008

Introduction:

This, my fifteenth reading list on this blog, is evenly divided between works of fiction and non-fiction; there are five books in each category. The most interesting of the works of fiction is The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The most rewarding of the non-fiction books is The Best American Essays 2004. The Elements of Style, a book with which I’ve been familiar since college days, is the most useful to writers – including writers who wish to post to Knight’s Castle. Also on the list is another of David A. Drake’s Lord of the Isles novels, the fifth of that ilk. The seventeenth book featuring Elizabeth Peters’ irritating Egyptologist and sleuth, Amelia Peabody, is here, too, along with another travel book from Bill Bryson, and several Best American books. I have not provided reviews or comments on all ten books.

Reading List:

Bryson, Bill. Notes from a Small Island.
Carroll, James. House of War.
Drake, David. Goddess of the Ice Realm.
Ellroy, James, editor. The Best American Mystery Stories 2002.
Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Menand, Louis, editor. The Best American Essays 2004.
Miller, Sue, editor. The Best American Short Stories 2002.
Mladjenovic, Paul. Stock Investing for Dummies, 2nd edition.
Peters, Elizabeth. The Serpent on the Crown.
Strunk, William, and E. B. White. The Elements of Style.

Non-Fiction:

Bryson, Bill. Notes from a Small Island. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001. Copyright 1995. 324 pages. Glossary.

Bill Bryson worked and lived for twenty years in England. This book was his farewell to the island, chronicling his farewell tour. There are many flashbacks to his earlier encounters with the places and people of his “small island.” Bryson’s tales are humorous, but his affection for England and the English shines through, however irritating he finds some of their incomprehensible habits. For those thinking of a trip to England, this book includes some less well-known corners of that “sceptered isle.”

Carroll, James. House of War. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. xiv + 657 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Carroll was involved with the Pentagon and its doings both personally and politically since his birth at the time the building was dedicated. His father, a former FBI official, was brought in to create the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. Carroll himself was in the anti-war movement, Catholic sub-division, and has much to say about the evils of the building. This ought to have been a fascinating book, but Carroll’s deep personal attachments, and conflicts, get in the way of his writing skills. For one thing, his obvious affection for the Berrigan brothers leads him to exaggerate their importance in American political life. For another, he apparently took those elementary school air raid drills a little too seriously; his terror and abhorrence of nuclear war carries him away into flights of fancy about the cloud of fear looming over America.

Perhaps most damaging to this book is that, due in large part to his conflicted relationship with his father, Carroll takes the whole of American defense policy as a personal affront to him. Reversing the same coin, he imagines that his personal feelings matter because his teen-age angst was about nuclear war, rather than acne. This would have been a better book, and a much shorter one, if Carroll had written a history instead of a memoir.

Menand, Louis, editor. The Best American Essays 2004. New York: Scribners, 2004. xviii + 323 pages.

If you’d like to write better essays, one of your best options is to read some good ones. Even if you don’t want to write, a well-written essay is a real pleasure to read. I’ve enjoyed the essays of Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and others, but The Best American Essays 2004 (or any other year) has the advantage of collecting essays by a number of different authors, published in different markets (though The New Yorker is a popular venue), on widely varied topics. A terrific sampling of good writers writing well.

Mladjenovic, Paul. Stock Investing for Dummies, 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2006. xx + 336 pages. Index.

Now might be a good time to read up on when you might want to start investing again. We might be near the bottom of this market! And we might be near the beginning of a great bear market. At the very least, this book may help you to decide that you don’t know nearly enough to risk your money on Wall Street.

Strunk, William, and E. B. White. The Elements of Style, 3rd edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1979. xvii + 92 pages. Index.

The little book is still going strong! I got my first copy when I was a freshman at Macalester College, and I picked up my current copy at the bookstore at Pikes Peak Community College. For the writer, the aspiring writer, and particularly for the writer whose education has left him unsure of the proper usage of the objective case, The Elements of Style is a great, short guide.


Fiction:

Drake, David. Goddess of the Ice Realm. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2003. A Tor Book. 496 pages. The sequel to Mistress of the Catacombs.

Ellroy, James, editor. The Best American Mystery Stories 2002. New York: Scribner’s, 2002. xv + 405 pages.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 2007. 184 pages.

This is an odd little book, and very affecting. It is in the form of a one-sided conversation between a Pakistani intellectual, who may or may not be a terrorist, and an American, who may or may not be an intelligence agent. That is, we read everything the Pakistani says, but we must surmise the content of the American’s comments and questions that lead our “reluctant fundamentalist” to give the responses he does. This is a portrait of a man who knows America well and feels that America has rejected him because of his religion and his culture. This is not an explanation of anti-Americanism so much as an explanation of why many Muslims find that America reacts to them as an individual might react to a foreign body – a mutual rejection, damaging to both participants.

Miller, Sue, editor. The Best American Short Stories 2002. New York: Scribner’s, 2002. xviii + 375 pages.

Peters, Elizabeth. The Serpent on the Crown. New York: William Morrow, 2005. 350 pages.

My wife really enjoys Elizabeth Peters, whose Amelia Peabody novels are set in Egypt in the days of British domination. The seventeenth in the series brings us up to 1922, but Amelia is still overbearing, opinionated, nosy, and humorless. Oddly enough, I don’t find her a sympathetic narrator, or a trustworthy one.