OS Book Club Pt II

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

It just hit me the other day that October is practically right around the corner. Something about Fall and specifically October makes me really relish a good seasonal book. Starting to try and come up with a list of books for Fall reading:

Hannibal/Red Dragon
The Shining or Carrie
Something Wicked This Way Comes (re-read)
Basketball: Great Writing About America's Game
A Cormac McCarthy book
The Halloween Tree
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Witches (Dahl)
The Woman in Black

Obviously need to whittle it down a bit.

Going to the beach next week so hopefully I can finish up The Hate U Give before Saturday. Plan on taking a couple books, but not sure which I want to read yet:

Conjuring of Light
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Educated
Inherent Vice (re-read)
The Prestige

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Life Will Be the Death of Me by Chelsea Handler

As a freshman in college, I don't know how but I ended up watching Chelsea Lately pretty regularly and it led to me reading her book, The Horizontal Life, about all of her one night stands. It was a fun read, aimless, not really about anything, pretty much the perfect book to match where I was at the time as an 18 year old. Fast forward 8 years, and she's released her 6th book, 5 of which I've read, this one about her dealing with the fallout of the 2016 election, also pretty much the perfect book for me right now. Not sure why I'm on the same life trajectory as this middle aged White woman, but I digress.

Anyway, the book follows her as she gets in touch with a therapist and tries to work through her anger, which she finds out is the driving force behind her personality. Her natural reaction to everything is anger and she wants to be better. As I've realized about a lot of people, the election was the first time many people took the time to look at the country and who we really are. She realized how much privilege she enjoyed in her life and wanted to become more empathetic. On one hand, I applaud the effort of turning a new leaf I suppose. On the other it's hard to understand how people can be so oblivious to the advantages they have...but I guess that's the privilege in the first place. Anyway, I enjoyed it, she's light and doesn't take herself seriously and if you're into her crass, self deprecating sense of humor it's funny. I am so I enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan, as it doesn't give much insight outside of her perspective, but it's her book so what do you expect?

Spoiler

"I’m not into rocks and crystals and chakras and healers…I just think everyone is looking for something, and it seems like some people will settle on the first ray of sun or glimmer of hope they bump into."

"I once walked into our summer house on a rainy day with a six-pack of Heineken that my friend and I stole from her parents’ fridge. “We’re going to try beer,” I told my mom, who just rolled her eyes, and went back to crocheting my father a sweater. I was ten."

"I had to leave my parents to love them again. I had to move across the country to appreciate that I actually had any pull toward them—that I needed them. I had to get away from them in order to come back to them. I’d like to say that they did the best that they could, but that couldn’t have been their best. I wasn’t doing my best either, so the idea that everyone is always doing the best they can is a trope. Some people are just interested in surviving; doing their best doesn’t even occur to them."

"No person is just one thing. People can be filled with light and affection and also be tortured and conniving and dishonest. Happiness can coincide with great pain. One can lead while also following, the same way one can follow while also leading."

"I learned that adventure is never bad, but the alacrity with which you go through life has an impact on the wisdom that life has to offer you. That slowing down doesn’t mean you have to do less. It means you have to pay attention more and catch what the world is throwing at you. That every situation you put yourself in deserves your full attention, and that each of us has a responsibility to be more aware of ourselves and of others."

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Only book I'd read from him before was the Underground Railroad, and I enjoyed it but didn't know what to expect here. It follows 2 Black kids, Elwood and Turner in the mid 1900s South. Elwood is on his way to college, hitchhikes a ride with a guy in a stolen car, and gets scooped up and sent to a "reformatory" school, essentially a juvenile work camp where the kids have to earn enough points to "graduate" (be freed) through their work or sit through whatever sentence they were put away for. Again, in this time they're being put away for things like loitering, being falsely accused of things, or my personal favorite, "bumptious contact", not making way for a White person on the sidewalk.

The book is sad. I don't know what to say other than that. Just imagine how many people lived and died, or were hunted for the crime of existing, and how many people profited off of it, and where we are today, it's just a lot. It's a short, easy read, I would've given it 3 stars but the end turned it on its head a little and reframed the entire story, I appreciated that. And again, it's realistic given the circumstances the kids lived in.

Spoiler

"There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you down, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are. The encyclopedias are empty. There are people who trick you and deliver emptiness with a smile, while others rob you of your self-respect. You need to remember who you are."

“You don’t know what makes him tick,” Turner said. “You don’t know what makes anybody tick. I used to think out there is out there and then once you’re in here, you’re in here. That everybody in Nickel was different because of what being here does to you. Spencer and them, too—maybe out there in the free world, they’re good people. Smiling. Nice to their kids.” His mouth squinched up, like he was sucking on a rotten tooth. “But now that I been out and I been brought back, I know there’s nothing in here that changes people. In here and out there are the same, but in here no one has to act fake anymore.”

"Now he worked on a new theory: There was no higher system guiding Nickel’s brutality, merely an indiscriminate spite, one that had nothing to do with people. A figment from tenth-grade science struck him: a Perpetual Misery Machine, one that operated by itself without human agency. Also, Archimedes, one of his first encyclopedia finds. Violence is the only lever big enough to move the world."

"It was crazy to run and crazy not to run. How could a boy look past the school’s property line, see that free and living world beyond, and not contemplate a dash to freedom? To write one’s own story for once. To forbid the thought of escape, even that slightest butterfly thought of escape, was to murder one’s humanity."

"The world had whispered its rules to him for his whole life and he refused to listen, hearing instead a higher order. The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change. He never listened, never saw what was plainly in front of him, and now he had been plucked from the world altogether. The only voices were those of the boys below, the shouts and laughter and fearful cries, as if he floated in a bitter heaven. A jail within a jail."

Going to read Sula now. I kinda want some Steinbeck, I'm thinking Cannery Row.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

A heads up for any other Shea Serrano fans (Rap Yearbook, Basketball & Other Things). He has a new book coming out in October titled Movies & Other Things. I would expect it will probably include some of the topics from his podcast series on John Wick and movie Villains.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

A question I saw on FB (or maybe Reddit) that I thought would be interesting to ask: What is the first book you remember reading completely for leisure?


The first books I remember reading without any kind of school activity or project were the Goosebumps books. I don't really remember specifics only devouring handfuls of those books. When they started getting into the choose your own ending/path is when I lost interest.


I ordered a bunch of books for September/October:

The Rap Yearbook by Shea Serrano
The Witches by Roald Dahl
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

Combine those with a reread of Something Wicked This Way Comes, the new Ta-Nehisi Coates novel, and finishing up the Darker Shade of Magic series and I should be set into October.

All fairly short so hopefully I can catch up on my goal for the year since I'm 7-8 books behind. I finished up The Hate U Give last week at the beach and I'm halfway through a reread of Inherent Vice which has been great as I'm picking up on a ton of the background narratives and details. It's a bit pulpy at times and can leave you feeling like you have the mind of a perpetually stoned hippie as characters pop in and out that you aren't really sure where they go much less where they come from. Still, it's been a fascinating read the second time around. So many fantastic passages, funny lines, and the politics of the book have really pulled me in.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

There are two things that can manage to bring everybody together: Michael Jordan and Harry Potter. At least in Starr Carter's universe. She is the witness to the murder of her friend by a cop during a traffic stop. She lives in Garden Heights, an inner city project community. She attends school at Williamson Prep, a mostly white private school located in the suburbs. Along with the trauma and subsequent after-math of the shooting she must deal with handling almost two different identities as she maneuvers through two worlds that eventually come together.

Before their culmination by the end Michael Jordan and Harry Potter bring her worlds together. Throughout the book are references to both. Posters of Jordan in a bedroom. Jordan sneakers on half of the kids in the book. Harry Potter analysis. It's fascinating to look at these cultural icons from the perspective of affecting and unifying people from all walks of life. Starr is our guide of sorts as she lives two lives in two separated worlds. We are afforded glimpses into her family life which is peppered throughout with references to 2Pac, Malcom X, and Black Jesus. The latter two of which hangs pictures side by side on their wall. The coming of age conversations that are so prevalent in her community, but would never be discussed, much less thought to, by the families of Starr's classmates. She hides one half of herself from the other at all times because she feels pressured to.

Obviously it's a lot for a teenage girl to deal with. Throughout Angie Thomas does a great job of putting us in the Jordans and head of Starr Carter. The writing style itself is fairly straight forward with an occasionally fantastic turn of phrase. Similar to other young adult novels there's a fair amount of hand holding even going so far as to have Starr break down 2Pac lyrics for the reader or having another character spell things out for Starr. Still, the narrative itself is impacting and the glimpse into Starr's everyday way of life fascinating. It's a book I can easily recommend. Now to decide if I want to watch the movie or not.

Spoiler

Tighter than the inside of Voldemort's nose.

Black Jesus hangs from the cross in a painting on the hallway wall and Malcom X holds a shotgun in a photograph next to him. Nana still complains about those pictures hanging next to each other.

The means flipping the switch in my brain so I'm Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn't use slang - if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her "hood." Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the "angry black girl." Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, side-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.

They can easily grab their guns and leave us like Khalil. All the blood in our bodies pooling on the street for everybody to see. Our mouths wide open. Our eyes staring at the sky, searching for God.

Daddy claims the Hogwarts houses are really gangs. They have their own colors, their own hideouts, and they are always riding for each other, like gangs. Harry, Ron, and Hermione never snitch on one another, just like gangbangers. Death Eaters even have matching tattoos. And look at Voldemort. They're scared to say his name. Really, that "He Who Must Not Be Named" stuff is like giving him a street name. That's some gangbanging **** right there.

Seven and I said we were Slytherins since almost all Slytherins were rich. When you're a kid in a one-bedroom in the projects, rich is the best thing anybody can be.

My brothers and I learned to recite the Black Panthers' Ten-Point Program the same way other kids learn the Pledge of Allegiance.

[JayCutlersCig]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Just finished Bucky F*cking Dent. Highly, highly, highly recommend.

You can get it at B&N for less than $15, I think, but it's well worth the read. It made me appreciate 70s baseball, the Grateful Dead, and life a whole lot more.

[dsallupinyaarea]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I read a bunch over the summer. A lot of it was dry history stuff but I'll drop the hightlights.


Soulless: The case against R. Kelly - Jim DeRogatis (the reporter/music critic that broke the news about the infamous tape basically empties out his notebook from 2 decades of reporting on R. Kelly)


Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright (An exhaustive history of Al Queda and other Middle Eastern events that led to 9/11)


Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain (self explanatory. Bourdain was an amazing writer. That dude painted pictures with words like few others.)


Evicted: Povery and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond. (this is honestly one of the best books I've ever read. A Harvard sociologist writing about the entire eviction process from all angles. He shadows landlords, tenants, court officials, moving companies, etc. He accomplishes this by moving into a trailer park in Milwaukee for 6 months then moving into a row house for 6 months. The stories he is able to tell and the light he shines on the people living in extreme poverty are really moving. I'm talking people that pay 80% of their income in rent. The fact that he actually lived "in the field" and didn't just interview people really is reflected in that you do start to feel like you know the people in the book. Anyways, I can't recommend it enough. Amazing work)


I think next on my list will be a People's History of the United States.

[JayCutlersCig]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

After at least three years of trying to read it, I finally finished "Matterhorn" by Karl Marlantes.

It's soul-crushingly good. When I finished it, I was mad, heartbroken, and entertained by this novel about the Vietnam War. Written by a combat veteran of the war, this book is painfully accurate and realistic. There were several times where I felt my heart sink, my gut twist, and my head spin because of Marlantes' brutally honest truth and depiction of combat.

Seriously. This is the Platoon of Vietnam War literature. It's a bold statement, but "The Things They Carried" pales in comparison.

__________________________________________________ _

Once I finished "Matterhorn", I moved on to "The Cuban Affair" by Nelson DeMille. It's one of those action-adventure novels set in Key West where the people are beautiful and ugly at the same time.

The writing's just flat out ugly. It's sloppy, lazy, and hardly worth reading. DeMille's supposed to be a god in the action-adventure genre, but after reading a handful of chapters, I strongly disagree. It's a good read if you turn your brain off, but I simply can't do that, no matter how hard I've tried.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Evicted: Povery and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond. (this is honestly one of the best books I've ever read. A Harvard sociologist writing about the entire eviction process from all angles. He shadows landlords, tenants, court officials, moving companies, etc. He accomplishes this by moving into a trailer park in Milwaukee for 6 months then moving into a row house for 6 months. The stories he is able to tell and the light he shines on the people living in extreme poverty are really moving. I'm talking people that pay 80% of their income in rent. The fact that he actually lived "in the field" and didn't just interview people really is reflected in that you do start to feel like you know the people in the book. Anyways, I can't recommend it enough. Amazing work)

That sounds really interesting. If you're looking for more Real Estate books I highly recommend The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. It's a fascinating and truly terrible read at times. Systematic demolition of neighborhoods with no plan or offer or re-settlement. Racist lending policies backed by all levels of government. Real Estate Agents raising panic to lower property values and run families out of town. Banks and Lenders raising rates and payments randomly to force families to default or sell back to the bank.

If you look around the current landscape and wonder how things came to be this book will certainly fill in a lot.

[dsallupinyaarea]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

That sounds really interesting. If you're looking for more Real Estate books I highly recommend The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. It's a fascinating and truly terrible read at times. Systematic demolition of neighborhoods with no plan or offer or re-settlement. Racist lending policies backed by all levels of government. Real Estate Agents raising panic to lower property values and run families out of town. Banks and Lenders raising rates and payments randomly to force families to default or sell back to the bank.

If you look around the current landscape and wonder how things came to be this book will certainly fill in a lot.

I've added it to my Kindle list. Appreciate it.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Operation Sports mobile app

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Coincidentally, the last time I read Inherent Vice was also on a family vacation at the beach. Parts of the book still hung vividly on memory's halls, but the majority of the details (and the complete list of characters) were lost to a haze of time and stoner's memory holes. Which, I'm convinced is exactly what Pynchon was going for as part of his experience - to create this haze that rolls in periodically like the fog. Sometimes it burns away in moments and chapters. The sun light bursts through and the reader is treated to clarity. Eventually the haze creeps back through and you're jumping from character to character, new twist, or detail to ride the taillights of before jumping to the next one.

It's the end of an era and the beginning of another one. The good-times and vibes of the free love Hippie circus is fizzling out. The Mason murders have put Normal society, especially the police, on edge. In the police's case, even more so. There's the constant creeping and building of the beginning of the over-policing and systematically oppressive boons. It creates this push and pull of sorts. Like the tide imagery used so much throughout the book. The book is a snapshot of sorts from the beginning of modern American history. Pynchon weaves us through suburban development, urban redevelopment, government espionage and infiltration of civil political groups, and finds the LAPD in a state of paranoid, police state fantasies and rallying cries for militarization of its forces and tactics.

With these events as a backdrop we find Doc Sportello of LSD Investigations (Location, Surveillance, Detection) caught in his own tidal motion. A stoner gum-shoe loafing from lead to lead absorbing everything until it all connects in a cloud of weed and deceit. At first look he's seemingly a piece of dinosaur bone left to be rolled up into time's blunt. Yet, Doc has an ace (or Smith) up his sleeve. He uses his Hippie persona as a blind, as a tool to use to his advantage. Other characters often find him unassuming and trust-worthy. There is a constant stream seeking Doc out for help or to offer information as ally payment. At the center of his smoke-filled head Doc's brain is a sly and clever one. Often times figuring out the picture of the puzzle before piecing together the puzzle itself. Of course, his dumb play is at times legitimate and he is played a patsy like a pawn on a chess board bigger than he realizes. Still, Doc has a way of slipping through the cracks with his good nature. Or is that his good karma?

Personally, this is a favorite of mine. The whole atmosphere of the book is enveloping. When I closed the book for the final time (of this read anyway) on Labor Day there was a tangible void in the air. No more of Doc's gum-shoe loafing or mistimed timed (or perfectly? timed) clever retorts. No more of Bigfoot's Renaissance Cop cover. The meandering through Gordita Beach with a cast of characters that disappear as soon as they appear. All of that haze evaporated. Pynchon puts together a slice of American history that not only feels relevant to today and ongoing events, but also acts as some marker in history like an exit sign in the fog for Lemuria.

The best authors make me feel a palpable sense of nostalgia and Pynchon provided me with a schooner full of high grade nostalgia. Getting that feeling for a time and place I've never experienced first-hand is powerful. What stuck to me most was that while this all happens between two eras there's no bombastic change or milestone to denote the end (or beginning). It's all gradually changing and settling in like fog. Homes are abandoned. Ships change names. Husbands and wives reconcile in the image of America. When the fog burns away the status quo has shifted. Subtle shifts like a changing coastline. Receding and advancing. Having Doc be out there with you in the fog, following the same line from station to station, was comforting.

"Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove's difference and the universe can be on into a whole 'nother song."

Spoiler

Deaf and dumb, part of the job.

Can't say it often enough - change your hair, change your life.

The Man, he just waits for his moment.

Doc noticed a sort of fake chiseled stone frieze above the portrait, which read, Once You Get That First Stake Driven, Nobody Can Stop You - Robert Moses.
"A great American, and Michael's inspiration," said Sloane. "That's always been his motto."
"I thought Dr. Van Helsing said that."

As usual these days, Fritz was back in the computer room, staring at data. He had that ask-me-if-I-give-a-**** look Doc had noted before in newcomers to the groovy world of addictive behavior.

"At least it ain't Mod Squadersers." Doc grumbled.
"What," Fritz innocently. "My favorite show."
"Pro-cop ****ing mind control's more like it. Inform on your friends, kids, get a lollipop from the Captain."

If everything in their dream of prerevolution was in fact deemed to end and the faithless money-driven world to reassert its control over all the lives it felt entitled to touch, fondle, and molest, it would be agents like these, dutiful, and silent, out doing the ****work, who'd make it happen.

Was it possible, that at every gathering - concert, peace-rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back East wherever - those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?

Like Denis, Doc was used to outdoor concerts where thousands of people congregated to listen to music for free, and where it all got sort of blended together into a single public self, because everybody was having the same experience. But here, each person was listening in solitude, confinement and mutual silence, and some of them later at the register would actually be spending money to hear rock n roll. It seemed to Doc like some strange kind of dues or payback. More and more lately he'd been brooding about this great collective dream that everybody was being encouraged to stay tripping around in. Only now and then would you get an unplanned glimpse at the other side.

Denis had some dry-ice enhanced Mexican product, and they went down on the beach to smoke it. They watched the flashing wing lights of a single-engine plane, looking fragile and somehow already lost, taking off into the darkening glow over the water.

"Don't mean to interrupt, but where are we again? and when I can split this place?"
"When you've been neutralized as a threat."
Doc briefly took in the situation. He was handcuffed, and somebody had taken away his Smith. "I'm not sure, but I'd say zero threat potential?"

Side note: Owing to browser and internet crashes, and log-in issues I wrote this post 3 times. Hopefully that conveys how much this book is part of my psyche and one of my absolute favorites.

In the meantime I also watched the movie adaptation. Both as a cap of the book and a pre-cursor to Joker. Joaquin Phoenix is Doc and Josh Brolin is Bigfoot. They both absolutely nail the characters. The humor is there, but at times very dry and subtle. Lots of great stylistic imagery as one would imagine from Paul Thomas Anderson. It's a faithful adaptation and maintains the atmosphere of Pynchon's work. Still, its only an impression of the book. A good companion, but certainly no substitute. Joaquin is certainly fun to watch and worth repeated viewings alone for his fantastic Doc Sportello. Each sarcastic remark delivered with an inward smirk expecting some kind of violent reaction from opposing character. I personally don't like the combination of Doc's love interests into a streamlined Shasta, but Katherine Waterston delivers exceptionally well to fill the void.

[dsallupinyaarea]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance


The author explores the great "nature vs. nurture" debate when it comes to elite athletic performance. He tries to call it right down the middle but it's obvious he leans toward nature (genetics) being a better predictor of athletic success than environment.


Particularly interesting was his deep dive into how Jamaica (an island of around 3 million people) disproportionately produces world class sprinters.


He addresses the elephant in the room (race) in ways I didn't find callous.


Just an overall good, short, well written educational book.


Zach Lowe had him on the podcast a couple weeks ago to discuss his current book 'Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World' and that book sounded interesting so I figured I'd read his first book since Range is a quasi-sequel.

Spoiler

He has a pretty funny quip about Joakim Noah. An athlete whose success is more attributed to nurture by media. Noah is the 6'11" son of a world champion tennis player with a 7' wingspan and a 39" vertical leap. We got it backwards. The skills he didn't develop (shooting, dribbling) are the ones you can learn with practice.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Interesting. Was Jamaica the focus of his nature argument? It would definitely be interesting to read about that topic more in-depth.

[dsallupinyaarea]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Interesting. Was Jamaica the focus of his nature argument? It would definitely be interesting to read about that topic more in-depth.

Like most things, it's somewhere in the middle. I can't do the nature argument justice (it's real science-y with migration patterns, genetics, etc.) but the nurture aspect I can try.


Track and field in Jamaica is akin to football and basketball in the USA. There's a nationwide scouting and utilization infrastructure. University track & field events regularly draw 5 figure crowds and sprinters in Jamaica are rock stars. Usain Bolt (6'4" dude with world class speed) would be Randy Moss or Calvin Johnson in the US. The incentive structures are different here.


Then it becomes a chicken or egg argument. Are the incentive structures different there because the people are genetically predisposed to being really good sprinters?


The answer to all of the questions is: both. But there's interesting discussions in the grey areas.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Thanks! Sounds great. I'll have to check it out.