Julian's best of 2010 [Part II]

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12/28/2010

Julian's best of 2010 [Part II]

Travel

Turkey, for its historical sights and its food: cheese, olives, yoghurt, honey, fruit, nuts and vegetables prepared in a myriad delicious ways. It was my first group tour (Japan Tourist Bureau) and I was mostly satisfied: a hassle-free, economical way to sit back and experience a great deal in a short time.

Adventure

A two-day cycling trip around the Miura Peninsula in the heat of the summer: The joy of exertion, a wild coastline, frequent swims in the warm ocean, and a superb fish dinner.

A two-day hiking trip up Mount Senjogadake in Nagano Prefecture that took us to a Shangri-La above the clouds.

Mount Senjogadake/Shangri-La

Beer

This was the year I grew to love IPA hop-rich beers. Thanks to a beer tasting at the Baird Brewery taproom in Naka Meguro, I found my favorite readily obtainable IPA: Baird’s Suruga Bay. And by serendipity, a craft-beer bar opened here in Chigasaki this year: Hopman has a rotating selection of 21 different Japanese and world beers on tap and good food to go with it. My beer of the year at Hopman? Green Flash West Coast IPA.

Web Shopping

Amazon.com was my online store for books and DVDs. But they axed WikiLeaks from their server, and I value free speech and transparency more than comfort. So I’ve moved – thanks, Blockhead David, for pointing me there – to The Book Depository, and its sister site gam.co for DVDs and music. It’s bare-bones, if efficient, service—no gift wrapping or removing prices from gifts. But it is one better than Amazon in one important respect. If I needed Amazon customer service, it took a lot of work to get through to human help. TBD has a “Contact Us” link right up front that brings a human response.

--Julian

Posted at 09:45 PM in Chigasaki, Food and Drink, Hiking, Japan, Travel | Permalink

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Books David Finished in 2022

Celestin, Ray: Dead Man's Blues: A Novel
Dead Man's Blues is as good, or maybe better, than the first in the series. Author Ray Celestin continues to trace the black diaspora North from New Orleans to Chicago, and uses history effectively (rather than drowning us in fustian). Louis Armstrong, who was, history attests, on good terms with Al Capone, reappears, and the mobster, too, takes a turn. I'm eager to move on with Celestin and his characters, to a new city, New York City, and a decade further on to the place and time where the next novel is set.
Ames, Jonathan: The Wheel of Doll: A Novel (The Doll Series, 2)
Happy Doll, having lost his private eye license after his shenanigans in the previous book is now a "security consultant." His new calling takes him to the Pacific Northwest, but there are still lots of good LA moments, including a bit in Marina del Rey where my parents lived for a while. One understands, somewhat in advance of detective Happy Doll, who the villains are in this book, but that doesn't matter. The fun is watching him find out, and then react. I wonder when book 3 will be out.
Ames, Jonathan: A Man Named Doll: A Novel (The Doll Series, 1)
I'm a sucker for LA noir, so when I heard about Jonathan Ames's Doll series I dove right in. In this, the first of the two Ames has written so far, Doll spends a lot of time close to my old neighborhood, so it was fun to read things like "went up Hillhurst and made a right on Los Feliz." The action is action, and the plots are well-wrought, but the main attraction is the pot-smoking dog-loving detective named Happy Doll. He sometimes uses the name "Hank" in this book, but by book two (spoiler alert) he's decided to own his given name. The implausible enters the book in how Doll manages to commit the many crimes he does in solving the big crime with few or no repercussions. But in this kind of book one waves that sort of thing away and buckles in for the ride. Also implausible was Doll's beloved dog George (spoiler alert) coming back to life after having been poisoned and presumed dead. But I was willing to accept this, because George is one of the book's most compelling characters.
Erskine, John: The Private Life of Helen of Troy
This odd novel, written mostly in the form of conversations between the characters, was published just five years after American women got the vote. One imagines the "radical" women who made this happen were an object of interest at the time, and perhaps that's why Helen, in Erskine's account, seems more like a modern and progressive (circa 1926) woman, and also why the novel seems to be as much about the mid-1920s as it does about the ancient Greeks, who were surely much too different from us to be slotted into the sort of family drama that Erskine has written. Still, it's an interesting retelling of the story of Helen and those around her.
Hartley, L.P.: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics)
This is a lovely novel (for the three works were collected after initially being published separately) and it is lovely largely for the delicacy with which Hartley gives us the lives of the siblings Eustace and Hilda. One is tempted to call Hartley's delicacy Jamesian, but his prose is never as convoluted. The novel is largely about class, and the difficulty people not born to that estate might have negotiating it (without, sometimes, realizing that they are are having difficulties). This sort of thing can be played as slapstick or tragedy, or even used by a lesser author to convey a "message," but Hartley never employs a cudgel. The upper-class folks, like those from less exalted circles, are nice people doing their best. Hartley is genuinely fond of all his characters: It is refreshing to read a book that has no villains.
Celestin, Ray: The Axeman
A novel about a serial killer in which Louis Armstrong is a character seemed a bit too precious. I finally succumbed, though, when I learned that the fourth novel in the quartet of which this is the first is set in Los Angeles, and is reputed to be a tour de force. The good news is that Satchmo (still "Lil Lewis" in this novel) is a minor, albeit well-done, character who doesn't distract from the other denizens of the novel's New Orleans, the well-executed plot, or the exquisite prose of author Ray Celestin. I'm looking forward to continuing through the quartet, each book of which takes place in a different city, each a stop in the migrations of the African diaspora in North America.
Adair, Gilbert: A Closed Book
I nearly closed this book (ahem) halfway through, but just a page or two after the halfway point the penny dropped. Once I got what Adair was doing he had me. One wishes Hitchcock was still around to make a film of this, though so much takes place on the page it wouldn't have been an easy translation.It's the story of a writer who is not only blind but eyeless and the amanuensis he hires to help him complete what he believes will be his last book. But maybe the helper is not only there to help. And maybe he's not the only one recording the writer's words.
Twight, Mark F.: Poison: Sermons on Suffering
I hate self-help books, and really, the whole concept of "self-help" as it seems generally to be understood, so I could try to finesse this by calling Poison a book of essays or philosophy. I wouldn't be lying if I did, but Twight's pieces *are* essays that are intended to help people live better lives, so yeah, self-help, I guess. What enabled me to make my way through more than 400 pages of these sermons? First, I admire the author, Mark Twight, a world-renowned climber. I respect what he did in the mountains, which was, as he boils it down, trying to see how light he could go. He also explored how long he—and by extension, we—could go, climbing continuously for 24, then 40, then 60 hours, breaking records and nabbing first ascents along the way. I find this sort of achievement easier to admire than the qualifications that self-help gurus usually boast (gave a TedX talk, got a YouTube Creator award . . . ). Then there's the fact that Twight is not about offering easy answers—all you have to do is: get rid of a bunch of stuff, quit eating gluten, sit on a cushion and space out for fifteen minutes a day, journal every morning . . . . He says stuff like: "Sometimes I get sick. / Mostly other people make me sick. / They don't give me germs. / They give me poison. / They poison me with their excuses.Their laziness. They want the result without the work. / They believe their desire can change the nature of things. / Just because they want it. / Suddenly." Those last three lines sound a lot like the advise of a lot self-help hucksters, all those Deepak Chopraites and believers in "The Secret." I like that Twight is as disgusted with that sort of guff as I am. I like the way that Twight tells his truths, too: "Style is the man himself," as some Frenchman said. I may have mentioned in my review of Twight's Kiss or Kill that he's very much school of Bukowski as filtered through punk rock (the soundtrack for many of his climbs). Finally, though Twight is much more goal-driven than me, and his goals are not mine, his advice is sensible and bracing in its harshness: Not clean your room or—Lord pickle and preserve me—make your bed, but push yourself harder than you have ever pushed yourself, harder than you ever believed you could push yourself. That's inspiring and maybe helpful advice.
Johnson, Joyce: Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir
This is a much better book about the Beat milieu than On the Road. I'm glad that Johnson never took Kerouac's advice that she shouldn't revise, and that her model as a writer was James (Henry) and not Jack. The memoir does lag a bit when she's recounting the year-and-a-half or so that she was involved with Kerouac. That's how profoundly uninteresting he is. That she never really calls him out for being the shit that he was says a lot for her maturity and balance. It may also speak to Kerouac's charisma: he does seem to have charmed a lot of people.
Kerouac, Jack: On the Road (Penguin Modern Classics)
The great mystery is why this mediocre book is so widely loved by so many people who should know better. The prose, for all Kerouac's blathering on about his technique, or lack thereof, is profoundly uninteresting. (It's telling that fans who quote from this book always quote the same line: "The only people that interest me . . . .") The "minor characters" as Joyce Johnson in her much better book of that title might have called them—women, Mexicans, Blacks, country people—are patronized, and for all the furious trips back and forth across the country, the novel is strangely static. A friend recently remarked that it really belongs in the YA section, but even there it would be outclassed. Beat poetry > Beat prose.

Books Julian Read Recently

Charles Portis: True Grit
In later life, a woman narrates her memories as a 14-year-old improbably setting out to avenge her father’s murder. It’s a glorious telling in a singular voice that immerses us in the bad old days of American West. Here is history and heart-stopping adventure, with plenty of wry comedy mixed in. The Coen Brothers nailed it in their recent movie, but of course, as always, the book is better. Pure pleasure. (*****)
Damon Galgut: The Promise
On the eve of the end of apartheid, an omniscient, smart-ass narrator sweeps us around, through and into the often venal thoughts and lives and deaths of a white South African farming family and diverse characters in their orbit in a way that fuses inhabitants, landscape, and politics to compelling and often humorous effect. (***)
Maggie O'Farrell: Hamnet
An account of the family of an English playwright so revered that His name is not mentioned. It immerses us in a credible recreation, accurate or not, of the everyday life of ordinary people 500 years ago. The conjuring of the gifted wife is particularly compelling... until she become a puppet of the plot, and the whole thing tips over into grief-porn. (**)
Alice Oseman: Heartstopper
Volume 1 of a graphic novel about teens navigating love and sexuality in a British grammar school. It’s a delight, and evidence that, while democracy and the environment appear to be crumbling, we are also making leaps of empathy toward a future where, despite our differences, we can -- as Rodney King hoped for -- “all get along”. (****)
Evan S. Connell: Mrs Bridge
Set between the World Wars, written in the 1950s, a knowing, affectionate look back at the life and thoughts of a Kansas City country-club matron, mother and “office widow” (husband barely home), told through day-to-day vignettes. It reminded me quite a lot of my own childhood and upbringing (UK 1950s). (***)
Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads
Midwest US, early 1970s. A middle-class family--pastor father, enabling mother, kids Clem, Becky, Perry, Judson--navigate the counterculture and the religious beliefs offered as guides to the chaos of life, then as now. Intriguingly labyrinthine construction; penetrating psychological analysis. Funny, empathetic, thought provoking, unpredictable, smoothly and simply readable, Crossroads is a thing of beauty. (*****)
William Trevor: The Collected Stories
Over 1000 pages of nearly 100 short stories about ordinary people written from the 1960s to 1980s and set almost without exception in contemporary times. Characters are drawn with realism and depth. Stories, equally realistic, hold the interest and frequently surprise. Many are set in rural Ireland and I don’t know if they show their age. The very few that include gay male characters exhibit stereotypes, thankfully outdated now but a reflection of their times. I thank Elisabeth Strout for recommending Trevor, and indeed their work shares acuity, veracity, and extraordinary compassion. They are both gifted storytellers, and a great pleasure to read. (***)
Ann Patchett: The Dutch House
A story about an extraordinary house, a brother and sister’s relationship, and the vagaries of family life in postwar, middle-class America. Upon that skeleton, Patchett lays characters and story arcs of great verisimilitude. Gorgeously constructed, mostly engrossing, finally moving, this is a deeply satisfying read. (****)
Anne Tyler: Redhead by the Side of the Road
To me, this slight story of the day-to-day life of a middle-aged man in contemporary suburban US was as one-note and clunky as the main character. Either I missed out, or author not on form. (Great [and misleading] noir-ish title!) (*)
Kate Atkinson: Life After Life
A family lives through and between the World Wars. It’s a loving portrait of middle-class England, and it is pitch-perfect in capturing the arch, entitled, yet entirely benign banter of the middle classes before they found out in the 1960s that they were no longer unchallenged top dog. Most of all, this novel is an extraordinary tour-de-force of structure. It’s wise, wryly funny, and a great pleasure to read. Pleasure as in satisfaction rather than joy--the vivid recreation of the horror of both the WWII London Blitz and the fall of Berlin gives a sense of how it must be for some in Ukraine at this moment. (*****)

Books Mark read recently

Scanlan, Kathryn: The Dominant Animal: Stories
This is a book of super-short fiction. Of the 40 or so stories, most are less than two pages. Nothing in the writing here is beautiful or kind, but somehow I whizzed thought it all. Some stories leave out points that would have made them more accessible. What the heck happened? A lot of the stories end on a sudden whim of observation and leave one wanting to read more. Most of the stories focus on a negative experience with a male, with strange detail, and after finishing a story, I often wanted to take a hot shower to get clean. I did enjoy "Design for a Carpet" and "Mother's Teeth." (**)
Woodrell, Daniel: Woe to Live On: A Novel
Confederate soldiers on a journey to fight Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Woodrell's voice in this novel is similar to Cormac McCarthy's. Lots of brutal killing and torture and the story seems to float along on southern dialog and an internal monologue of fear by the speaker. There are moments of occasional humanity, but for the most part the plot is a thin gruel of spilt blood, wandering, waiting, and revenge. (***)
Munro, Alice: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
There are three standout stories in this very fine collection by Alice Munro. She has a real knack for creating a variety of believable characters. The title story was my favorite: two teenagers pull a sour trick resulting in a surprising ending. In the story "Queenie" we see a young woman scrambling to make her way in the world, using a bad marriage as a way to make some progress. The final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" veers off into occasional long-winded reflection, as one man struggles with the loss of his wife to Alzheimer's. Munro is a master story teller. (*****)
Waters, Sarah: Fingersmith
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith Such a good story: the get rich scheme of a handsome scoundrel twists and turns into... Two women in the story are quite duped into role playing. A lot of playful sex is talked about, but not much happens in the way of happiness or fulfillment. As always, Waters is right on target with the voices and the atmosphere in this London area thriller. (*****)
Barry, Sebastian: The Temporary Gentleman: A Novel
What a sad story. This novel takes place on the Gold Coast in Africa, where an Irish soldier/engineer recounts his life growing up near Galway and Sligo. Back and forth we go between Ireland and Africa. Like an unseen shadow, in Ireland, what slays the characters in this novel is alcohol. Back in Africa, the memories of the homeland, and the attempt at living again are equally daunting foes. Excellent story telling. (****)
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
Donna Tartt's second novel does not disappoint. The story of a young girl, Harriet, who seeks to revenge the death of her brother, Robin. The backdrop is a small town in Mississippi, and the goings on of 4 or 5 sisters, whose lives all changed with the murder of young Robin; hung from a tree. Harriet wants to solve the mystery. Who killed him? She gathers clues, and encounters the wrath of the local druggies. Quite a page-turner, and like Tartts' other two novels almost nothing is left out or glossed over. There were times in the novel where I felt her writing fell short; places where I couldn't actually see what was happening from the writing, as is the case when she encounters the villainous brother, Danny Ratliff on top of the water tower. The writing perspective seemed off (who was where and when?) as a battle ensued. But one is so caught up in the narrative we read on and on. Also, who is the little friend who is suggested in the title? Harriet? Hey? Robin? I don't think it is the best title she could have thought of for such a wonderful and awful story. (****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive, Again: A Novel
A wonderful sequel to an earlier collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge. Clearly, Strout is a masterful writer; each of the characters in her stories I can see clearly in my mind. These stories span Olive's life from middle-age to old-age, with thoughtfulness, kindness, reflection, and regret. In a general way of summing up, this collection tells us that life sends us problems that are most times not of our own making-- and that we do our best with what we have to work with, and what we think is best to do at the time. The prevalence of loneliness that comes with old age is a dominant theme in the later stories here. Read this book. (*****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive Kitteridge
It's been more than a few years since I first read this wonderful collection of stories. As a prelude to reading her next collection, Olive, Again, I read these stories again. Wonderful insight into a community in Crosby, Maine and how they encounter each other. Henry and Olive Kitteridge function as the main characters, and each story includes them if in even a small way. Prior to my second reading, my favorite story was The Piano Player, but this time I enjoyed Incoming Tide most. Her stories can veer into a local gossipy mode, yet there is always tension lurking in the next sentence. (*****)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star: A Novel
Edward Manners goes to Belgium to teach English to two boys who are getting below average marks in high school. When not teaching, he helps out at a museum focused on a Jewish painter who was hidden from the Nazis during WWII. Manners falls in love with one of his students, and a lively adventure ensues as Manners undertakes to seduce him. The narrative is fun, at times cynical of gay life, and there is a lot of sex. One also learns a good deal of personal history of growing up in post-war England and Belgium. Hollinghurst is a brilliant writer, and I learned many new words. (*****)
Alison Moore: The Pre-War House and Other Stories
After reading the Booker Prize nominated The Lighthouse, I was excited to read this earlier collection of 24 short stories from Alison Moore. They are a little underwhelming; as if written by a grad student. Moore is great at creating tension and awkward scenes. She is an artist when painting a picture of place and atmosphere. Some stories are creepy, and one longs for a hot bath. However, I found them to be a bit formulaic. By the third or fourth story, I was keeping my eyes open for the one clue in the narrative that I would return to in climactic ending sentences. I like Moor's sparse style, and I will read more of her work (written after The Lighthouse) in the future. (***)

Films Julian Watched Recently

Drive My Car
A story about characters and relationships in the entertainment world in contemporary Japan. I suspect it went over my head. While it’s mostly conventional in form, I enjoyed how it subverts certain cinematic conventions in refreshing ways (running time; music; credits; language; monolog). I wondered about the fetishization (smoking; vinyl records; classic cars; driving). I need a second look to get more out of it… and maybe understand what the point of the whole long exercise was. (***)
Maggie's Plan
New York intelligentsia tragicomically fall in and out of love. Pithy observation and spicy dialog echoing back-in-the-day Woody Allen, but from the women’s point of view. Julianne Moore is a standout. Sags a little in the middle, but basically a delight. (DVD) (****)
Licorice Pizza
Rambling self-indulgent slice of it’s-funny-‘cos-it’s-true about growing up white and or Jewish in LA in the 1970s, a time when men felt entitled to behave even more shittily than they do now. Unfocused. Overlong. Mostly likeable. (DVD) (**)
Encanto
This Disney animation is a modern fairy tale for all ages set in Colombia, South America, with fun characters and catchy music. I think the moral is “be yourself.” Frenetic enough to require multiple viewings. (DVD) (***)
Top Gun Maverick
Summer 2022’s premier popcorn movie (we noted a lot of popcorn in the audience) works in itself as a nail-biting actioner with an emotional story. It works as a sequel reprise of the story and the action. And IMAX might just pull you in so you actually forget where you are…. For this winning celebration of summer and its movies, we thank ageless Tom Cruise and the 10,000 people the credits tell us worked on this. (*****)

Things NC Consumed Recently

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
More than forty years on since my last reading, this classic novel is remarkable not so much for its romantic longings as for its emphasis on American violence, its depiction of a country in which California hardly matters and its meeting of the Mid West and East Coast. Plus its succinct nine chapters, its elegant prose and its almost noirish tone: Tom breaking Myrtle's nose would seem to foreshadow Lee Marvin throwing hot coffee in Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat - and the use of flashbacks helps too. I'd like to thank the publicity for the recent film version and my current cold for sending me back to the novel (and my young self).
Isabelle Eberhardt
In 1904, Isabelle Eberhardt drowned in the desert, leaving behind, among other things, various writings in French (a novel, travel notes, a journal, short stories), Islam, Lake Geneva, a husband, debauchery in kif, sex and alcohol, and a small collection of male clothing, which she wore habitually, along with her man's name. The lazy say she was an early hippie, because of her nomadic, hedonistic life, and being the first one to die at 27. Lindqvist has her in a line from Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Celine and Genet. Her story can only get stranger and more fascinating. "In The Shadow of Islam", "The Passionate Nomad", "The Oblivion Seekers" and Annette Kobak's biography are one way in. You'll find there an apt fatal romanticism for vast desert spaces and a depiction of Islam to ponder. Among other things.
Listen to Britain - Humphrey Jennings
Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is in part an attempt to define the nation on the eve of its being invaded. But that invasion never came. A little prematurely, Humphrey Jennings's film records what left later, with something messier, less defined usurping through the back door. Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is one of the greatest things these islands have produced.
Patience (After Sebald)
Grant Gee's documentary uses a palette of pale black and white, maps and talking heads to comment on W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, an account of his walk through Suffolk. Unlike the book, where a variety of genres (and photographs) coheres to make a recognisable whole, the film suffers slightly from a lack of direction. It is too specific to serve as an introduction and lacks an overriding arc that might describe a thesis. However, with its archival footage, interviews with the author and shots of the route taken, it is essential viewing for those already in thrall to all things Sebaldian - even if the ending, alas, veers close to Conan Doyle and fairies-in-the-garden territory.