Hello again, friends, and welcome to a very special edition of DFtS! Throughout this series, I have done my best to provide a humorous, or at least mildly amusing, overview of the library profession. I have discussed proper practice for the professional librarian, censorship issues, technology, fuckwits, patrons good and bad, etc, but I have never yet actually reviewed a book for this fine magazine.

Things must change!

So, behold, dear bookworms and bookwormesses, the first in my (intended) series of book reviews: Assam & Darjeeling by T.M. Camp.

Mr. Camp’s novel accompanied me on my recent trip to Cambodia, and it made for a joyful companion indeed! A deceptively simple fantasy that would be of equal interest to adults and teens, Assam & Darjeeling is one of the nicest literary surprises I’ve had in some time.

Well-deserving of comparison to the work of Neil Gaiman, Assam & Darjeeling begins with a terrible accident, which leaves a mother and her two children in a coma. The children are awake outside of their bodies, existing somewhere between life and death. The mother is lost closer to death, and the children decide to descend to the underworld in order to find their mother and bring her back.

Thus begins a story that dances wonderfully from funny to sad, from touching to scary. Along their path, the children come across a collection of characters, many of whom will be familiar to those of you who have read your mythology. There’s even a brief appearance by a certain shaggy-haired songwriter with round glasses.

The author borrows heavily from classical mythology and Dante in his portrayal of the underworld, but the final product is Camp’s and Camp’s alone. This is a modernized view, with pollution and litter, cellphones and cars, in which Charon goes by Charles. This is a world (excuse me, underworld) in which The Darkness has a job washing dishes.

In Camp’s capable hands, the two children come perfectly to life. Of the younger child, the girl, the author says, “She didn’t have a lot of room left over inside for listening, with all her fierceness.” I will gladly read a thousand books in which the boy is the sensitive, intuitive one, and the girl the fighter, before I will read two with the opposite. Assam (not his real name) is a thinker, a boy who is in touch with things that other people are not. Darjeeling (not her real name) is a little badass, who will kick the Ferryman of the Dead in the shin without hesitation.

The depth and literary flesh of the two lead characters is one main draw of the work, but the real star here is Camp’s near-perfect prose. This is a beautifully written book, plain and simple. Few contemporary authors write with such elegance.

All of this is not to say that the book is perfect. It is unfortunately plagued with typos, which is a real shame given the beauty of the writing. I do not understand why Camp chose to refer to the children as “the boy” and “the girl” at first, only to reveal their real names in succession partway into the book. But my complaints are very few, and very minor, when compared to the many truly wonderful aspects of this book.

I highly recommend Assam & Darjeeling, both to libraries and readers. With the charming characters, lovely prose, and two big surprises toward the end, this is a rare book, to be treasured and returned to time and again.

The Lindqvist novel is pretty long, so a lot of compelling characters and narrative arcs never made the movie. One such plotline concerns the true nature of Eli’s guardian, Hakan. (I won’t spoil it for you, in case you plan to read the book, which I highly recommend.)

When I heard about an American remake, my heart sank. Why aren’t these exemplary European movies good enough for the U.S. market? Do we always have to ruin them with our hamfisted cinematography and on-the-nose scripts? (David Fincher‘s upcoming remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo may be an exception.)

Worse still, they changed the name from the enigmatic and evocative Let the Right One In to the more mundane Let Me In (I’ve argued with people about which is the more accurate translation, and my best Swedes tell me it’s the former.)

I wasn’t as bothered by the choice of director, Matt Reeves. Cloverfield was decent pop trash, and from what I’d heard, Reeves is a fan of both Lindqvist’s novel and the Swedish movie. He hasn’t directed much else (does “Felicity” count?), but he clearly wants to make his mark with something. Could it be a sweet-sad-sinister vampire love story from Europe?

I had my doubts.

After reading a glowing New York Times review (and several others), however, I concluded that Let Me In probably didn’t suck. So the missus and I went to see it last night in a theater quarter-full of obnoxious Americans who probably thought they were in for a pederast version of “True Blood.”

The casting was solid. It’s impossible to find an Oscar (now Owen) as sad and lost looking as the kid in the Swedish flick, and it’s even harder to find an Eli (now Abby) who puts across the appropriate mix of eerie beauty and repulsiveness. Keep in mind they need to be child actors! Chloë Grace Moretz (Hit Girl from the odious Kick Ass) is quite good, but a smidge too sweet in the sweet parts and not quite vile enough in vamp mode. Still, I can’t think of any young U.S. actress that could have made it work so well.

Kodi Smit-McPhee plays Owen, giving his gawky pathos a uniquely American twist. (McPhee was last seen in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road — he’s clearly cornered the market for depressing kids’ roles.) Large-eyed and rail-thin, the young actor is a choice vehicle for the character’s defiant piteousness.

Set in a grim and frostbitten Los Alamos New Mexico in 1983, Let Me In proceeds at a down tempo, allowing Reeves to transcend (and in parts improve) upon the gorgeous cinematography of the original. This also lets perennially underappreciated character actor Elias Koteas — who plays a forlorn cop on the hunt for a nonexistent Satanic cult — ooze in and out of scenes like spoiled convenience store creamer.

The great Richard Jenkins (papa Nathaniel from “Six Feet Under”) plays the guardian, and it’s nice to see a bit more development of that character. It’s still nothing like the book, though trust me.

Reeves did a killer job capturing the crippling ennui of Reagan’s America (to all of you Gipper apologists: I lived there, and it was all the more bleak for the relentless jingoism). No matter how many times you spun “Let’s Dance,” 1983 was not a cheerful year. Are vampires really any more frightening than bullies, divorce, latchkeys and Cold War propaganda? Owen doesn’t think so, and neither do I.

There are scary scenes, for sure — perhaps scarier than the Swedish film, which was more unsettling than frightening. If I had to choose, I prefer the stark beauty of the foreign version, but there are things that, as an American, read truer to me here. The bullying, for one. We’re really good at that.

My only real faults with Let Me In is that it missed the chance to incorporate more of the stuff from the book. But again, I can see how that would be difficult from both a rating and runtime perspective.

What’s good about Let Me In is great. What’s just OK is still leaps and bounds above any genre exercise I’ve seen lately (well, besides House of the Devil, which is just that: an exercise).

This film is clearly not for Americans, even the American version. It was very difficult to watch with an adult audience who were far lest sophisticated than the 12 year-olds onscreen. That’s fine, I’ll end up owning it anyway, which will let me compare and contrast to my black heart’s content. For now, I’ll simply recommend that you see it.

One final takeaway: Americans have a far higher tolerance for explicit violence than we do even the hint of sexual deviance. I’ll leave viewers of both films to grok my meaning.

Because I am human, I have my favorites among my students, and I also have my least. I do my best to keep such subjectivity under wraps,  but at times there’s little I can do to conceal my affection for some and my disdain for others. A teacher friend of mine who beat me to the classroom by four years once said, “Remember the people you hated when you were a high school student? The cliques? The douchebags? The little princesses? Yeah, you’re still gonna hate them as a teacher.”

She was right.

Being in school day in and day out sometimes causes me to drift back to my high school years. A student will say something and I’ll think, God, I remember feeling that. Or there will be some drama over high school relationships (I had the distinct honor of watching one of my female students get dumped on the phone in my classroom earlier this year) and I’ll be inclined to drop some cynicism. I’m forced to bite my tongue.

But again, I am human.

Not only do I ponder my high school years, but I also think of college: those long hours of lecture, tedious labs and general disgust with my classmates — it all comes back to me.

There’s nothing worse than a long-winded professor who does little to make class interesting, but instead sits behind the desk rambling monotonously at great length about the historical and contemporary context of literature, different lenses of literary criticism and author intent. Hours and hours of sitting and listening. Your butt starts to itch terribly on the hard, plastic seat.  Eons of emptiness. It’s like wandering through a desert without end.

Dr. Murray Brown at Georgia State University was not one of these professors. If anything, Dr. Brown was the exact opposite. Some people viewed his classes as a joke — an easy A, or a guaranteed little-work class to offset an otherwise challenging semester. I didn’t see it that way. To me, Dr. Brown’s teaching style, along with that of a few other professors I’ve encountered (the knowledge of Dr. Paul Voss, the intensity, rigor and high expectations of Dr. Carol Marsh-Locket), is exactly what I strive to emulate.

I had the pleasure of taking three classes from Dr. Brown:  an European Romanticism course (I think), a Senior Seminar on the art of Satire, and his Gothic Literature class. The Gothic class was my favorite. In it, we dove into the European Gothic Tradition. We swam within its purpose, touched the bottom of its Christian and ethical origin, and played Marco Polo with the text (sorry, I ran out of swimming jargon to continue the metaphor). We read numerous novels, The Monk and The Castles of Otranto being staples of the curriculum. My final paper was an essay deconstructing Otranto and Kubrick’s The Shining (which I will gladly send to anyone interested) as the epicenter of the Gothic tradition.

Dr. Murray Brown was a professor and an entertainer. He told the same stories in all three classes, and at each one of them I laughed even though I knew the punchline before he got to it.  I took some of his stories and adapted them to fit within my own classroom, borrowing the point of the story but substituting my own reality for his — the car crash on I-85 to emphasize sublimity, his story kids, sorry — but I swapped it with my own accident.

Dr. Brown’s class had tremendous value, but only as much as the students were willing to put into it. If you wanted to learn, actually learn something that broadened your insights on literature, life, and history, all you had to do was read the texts assigned, take part in class discussions, gather your thoughts and ideas and put them into your essays.  Simply having the drive to become more learned was the prize. You left more wise in the ways of both the world and literature, and also got that coveted A.

Or, you sat in class, bullshitted the work, and still walked out with an A. The end result was either your personal and intellectual growth, or a simple letter grade — it was up to you.

The reason I can justify mentioning Dr. Brown in my Contrarian column comes down to how he explained the paranormal to me during an after class discussion, which I subsequently have used when teaching American Gothic Romanticism to my own students:  the paranormal is a world that science has yet to touch. It is the world that surrounds us and works in such a complex fashion that it is next to impossible to see. If you take a goldfish and bring it to an amusement park and hold it directly in front of a roller coaster, there is no way possible for that goldfish to understand the roller coaster because it is not designed to see it. You can hold the bag against the steel railings, you can show every inch of the ride, you can even take the goldfish on the ride. It will feel the impact, the inertia of the twists and turns, but it will never make the connection between the roller coaster and the sensation it feels, because it is not designed to do so.

We are the goldfish and the paranormal is the roller coaster.

I left this after class discussion with a spinning head, the clarity of the comment made a huge impact on me. It was one of those off-the-cuff moments with a teacher or professor that finds a special place in your psyche and becomes a part of you; one of those magical moments where you are forever changed though he or she probably had little idea of the transformation.

There is a distinct difference between learning and grades, and a lot more to life than a letter on a report card proving that you can play the role of the student really well. An A does little to reflect the passion you feel for the topic, the same way an F fails at proving you don’t. The world functions at higher intellectual level than a grading system; it is far vaster than a grade can contain or reflect. It’s what you take with you and what you do with it that proves your wisdom, not the letter itself. A teacher is successful when his or her students feel the roller coaster, not when they merely dole out A’s.

As a teacher I can only hope that some of my kids get to take that ride.

Well what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a link to a greasy little tome called Road Hazards. To explain just what kind of literary wonder this is, let me quote here from the excerpt that came up in my search:

Sting moaned, the sound coming from deep in the back of his throat, thick with need. Andy imagined Stewart’s lips closing over Sting’s cock — or was it now his cock, in his mind — yes, he could see those full lips sucking down him, enveloping him in their warm, moist heat.

Yep: it’s a fantasy about Stewart Copeland, um… “googling” Sting, while Andy Summers listens in and has a wank. In fact, it’s a whole short story about the subject. In fact, it’s from whole fucking book about homo-riffic rock fantasies: James Hetfield seducing the singer from Korn! My Chemical Romance fucks The Used! A circle jerk with Iron Maiden! A roadie who blows Iron Maiden! Drunk sex between members of Iron Maiden! And come to think of it, just what is the deal with Iron Maiden anyway?

I can’t put my finger on the certain je ne sais quois that makes a find like this so magical, but here are a few elements I adore:

* There is always a delicious satisfaction to witnessing something that seems so “gay” (heavy metal, Ricky Martin, the Catholic Church) blossoming into something  actually gloriously gay. And while I’ve been rightfully called out for my use of the word gay as a pejorative on this very blog, I think I can safely apply the term here as a way of describing actual homosexual activity. And hooray for that. Hooray for the gayness of rock.

* This satisfaction is made all the sweeter when I think of the homophobic rage-boners this likely induces in the legions of mullet-headed, Camaro-driving fuckwads who made high school so unpleasant for gentle souls such as myself. Suck it, dirtbags.

* There’s a purity to the awkward yearning of these passages, a furtive teenage longing in which desperate white-hot virgin lust struggles against one’s inability to write well. Plus, as an erstwhile touring musician, I’m always entertained by people’s impressions of what life on the road must be like. It’s like watching a 6 year-old play rocket ship in a cardboard box. But come to think of it, once way up in the north of Scotland in the men’s room of the venue I found a condom dispenser that sold inflatable sheep, no joke. That was pretty exciting.

* But I guess most of all, in our porn-soaked age, when you can get into this series of tubes we love so well and be whisked away to any type of sexual wonderland you desire, it’s rather quaint to think that there’s a rare breed of self-diddlers out there who prefer the subtle pleasures of the written word, and that they share their rich imaginings with us.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIjxGKLTADE

Summary:

Jeff is an ordinary guy that is stuck at a dead end job with a boring life, but when a strange old man gives him an Ancient relic and tells him that he is the last bloodline of H.P. Lovecraft, He and his friend Charlie embark on an adventure to protect the relic piece from falling into the hands of the Starspawn and his minions that wish to reunite the relic and release Cthulhu back into the world.

Trailer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOWtgLneeNE

Anyway, like most humans, I read Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey when I was a kid. I recall more strongly identifying with F&Z, and have always wanted to go back to it. Perhaps I’d just find it precocious now.

Salinger’s death isn’t surprising — he was 91. Nor was the passing of Howard Zinn, who was 87. Still, I can’t help but wonder: which Titan of American Letters is next? Frankly, there aren’t many left. If I were a betting man, my money would be on Philip Roth. Not that I’m looking forward to that particular eventuality. Just sayin.’

As with most creative arts, musicians have been known to occasionally dabble in the fields other than performance and composition. For many, this departure is merely a distraction, but while for others it can serve to further inspire the creative mind. Examples of this abound with artists ranging from RISD dropout and Talking Heads founder David Byrne‘s Bicycle Diaries (currently #29 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller list) to The Contrarian’s own, well, The Contrarian with his short story “The Cove.”

This past Monday, on the palindromic 01.11.10, Canadian composer and musician for all seasons, Tobias Tinker, brought us the first chapter of his debut novel entitled Symmetricity. Tinker’s project is an ambitious one, combining the release of serialized chapters with an accompanying soundtrack, videos and audiobook readings in the rendering of his tale of Berlin before the fall of the Wall. The unique sketches of Berlin-via-Vermont artist, Josh Bauman accentuate Mr. Tinker’s work.

If the first chapter is any indication, this project could be quite a coup for both the creative arts scene of the capital, and Tinker himself. Herzlichen Glückwünsche!

We just saw the Guy Ritchie-helmed Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr. as the titular detective. I suppose it was better than I expected, and maybe a bit worse. Better, because it really didn’t alter the Holmes character in any significant ways. Worse, because  — despite revved-up action sequences — it was actually pretty boring.

Although I am a huge Arthur Conan Doyle fan, I haven’t read a Holmes story in at least two decades. But as a kid I devoured every published tale, and took in more than a few cinematic adaptations. I was in a Gifted and Talented program in elementary school, and I still remember with great fondness the PBS-endorsed Sherlock Holmes roleplaying game we got to play in class. I mention all this not to tout my credentials as a Holmesologist, but rather to demonstrate that the character is very dear to my heart.

Which is why I put off watching this adaptation for about as long as I could manage. By the time Bill started tweeting about it, however, I knew I had see the damn thing already.

Like I said, it wasn’t bad. I’m not a Guy Ritchie fan. Like, at all. I mean, he fucking married Madonna, for fuck’s sake. Although, I believe that’s called a “beard.”  And, considering the high level of barely-contained homoeroticism in Sherlock Holmes, I should say he needs one. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The “bromance” is as old as storytelling itself, even if Ritchie does display an above-average understanding of the phenomenon.

The characterization of Holmes was perfectly appropriate. I typically enjoy Robert Downey Jr. (especially in Weird Science and Less than Zero), so when I heard about him being cast as the famous detective, I thought, “OK — he’s a manic ex-cokehead with odd quirks and magnetism… he should do just fine.” And he did, right down to the accent, which is one of the more consistent I’ve heard from a Yank actor. Jude Law‘s Watson was more than serviceable; actually, it was an improvement over the fusty portrayals other actors have offered over the years. The banter was agreeably British and witty, with the two leads trading brainy barbs like a Victorian-era Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. (That’s TV’s classic “Odd Couple” for our younger readers.)

There was one aspect of this new telling that I was particularly keen on observing. You see, Sherlock Holmes evinces behaviors consistent with high-functioning autism, which in more recent years has come to be termed Asperger’s Syndrome. (Though that may be changing again — there’s currently talk of Asperger’s being lumped back into a generic HFA categorization.) I haven’t talked about it here, but I have AS. Which probably explains why I had such a sense of rapport with Holmes as a child. If you want to know more about my adult diagnosis, have a look at Autistic in the District; there’s also these articles I wrote about neurodiversity). There’s been a healthy amount of discussion about whether Holmes has Asperger’s (I know he’s fictional, but diagnosing him is almost as much fun as retroactively applying the label to folks like Nicola Tesla, who definitely had AS.) This recent New York Times article has a lot of cool evidence to support the “Holmes as Prototypical Aspergian” theory:

In Conan Doyle’s portrayal, Sherlock Holmes at times exhibits all of these qualities. His interactions with others are often direct to the point of rudeness. And even when Holmes is speaking to Watson, his closest friend, his compliments are often closer to a rebuke. In “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” when Watson, pleased with his own detective abilities, reports to Holmes the results of his investigation, Holmes tells him that he isn’t a source of light but a conductor of light, a mere aid in solving mysteries only Holmes himself can untangle.

As for his interests, Holmes brags frequently of his detailed knowledge of all kinds of strange phenomena. He is said to have written a monograph on the differences among 140 cigar, pipe and cigarette ashes. He demonstrates what Asperger called “autistic intelligence” — an ability to see the world from a very different perspective than most people, often by focusing on details overlooked by others. Indeed, Sherlock Holmes boasts that he is able to see the significance of trifles and calls this his “method.”

I guess I just outed myself. Oh, well. At least you now understand my affinity for this character. I’m happy to report that RDJ’s performance is in keeping with the idea of Holmes as a high-functioning autistic, particularly during a scene where the detective and Watson are about to dine with Watson’s fiancée. Holmes arrives at the restaurant before the good doctor and his bride-to-be, and there’s a brief shot where he’s overwhelmed by the sounds of the other diners — chatter, glasses clinking, silverware scraping, etc.. This is precisely the same auditory/sensory overload I often experience in public settings. Later in the same scene, Holmes manages to piss off both Watson and his betrothed through what he likely thought was an amusing intellectual exercise. I’ve been there, dude.

It didn’t bother me at all that Holmes wasn’t the staid cerebral detective of previous adaptations. In my reading of Doyle’s works, the character was always a bit dangerous. He’s got a hatred for any kind of hierarchical authority and does not suffer fools gladly. He’s also a cocaine user who’s into pistols and hazardous chemicals. Just your everyday 19th-century Hunter S. Thompson, then. (Or 21st-century me, minus the prodigious gifts. Well, some of them, anyway.)

As far as action goes, let’s not forget that when Conan Doyle attempted to “retire” his character (unsuccessfully, I might add), he did so in a scene where Holmes and his arch-rival, Professor Moriarty, wrestle straight off a waterfall. This is where the term cliffhanger came from, in case you didn’t know.

I didn’t mind the “occult” slant of the film, as Conan Doyle was very much interested in this subject (see the “Hound of the Baskervilles“), and was himself initiated into an esoteric lodge. The plot of Sherlock Holmes centers on a certain Lord Blackwood (perhaps a portmanteau of fantasy novelist Lord Dunsany and horror scribe Algernon Blackwood) — a sinister magus of high breeding who’s trying to usher in a new era of political/theological control. Story-wise, it borrows far more from Alan Moore‘s brilliant comic From Hell than it does the Doyle canon. Still, I was wowed by Ritchie’s attention to detail in terms of the esoteric set pieces. I’d read that the Blackwood character was based on Aleister Crowley (the epitome of loosely), and it does look as though the filmmakers consulted someone from the OTO for tips on what an authentic ritual chamber would look like. I’ve seen a plenty of depictions of this kind of thing, and dare I say this is the first mainstream movie that gets any of it right, straight down to the garish Egyptian/deco frescoes.

Blackwood is deftly portrayed by Mark Strong, who glowers intensely while delivering stock baddie dialogue. (Curiously, Strong looks a like a cross between Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, both of whom played Holmes.) Yet the villain lacks motivation, which in turns undermines the sense of threat. Ultimately, the plot doesn’t amount to much, although it’s unnecessarily confusing. One of Conan Doyle’s gifts was that he could string together a slew of clues that you noticed but failed to put together until Holmes’ connected them in a summarily dazzling and pedantic lecture. In Ritchie’s film, you really have no idea what you’re supposed to be looking out for, other than the next round of fisticuffs.

Worse still is the female lead, played by Rachel McAdams. If you want to get a sense of how little Guy Ritchie understands women characters, here ya go. He seems to go out of his way to make her look unattractive, slathering on garish makeup and costumes and shooting her from the most unflattering angles. Law and Downey Jr., on the other hand, share intimate carriage rides in which they queenily argue over who cuts a trimmer figure in a waistcoat. I mean, why even bother to have a female lead at all? It only gets in the way of the love between a detective and his doctor.

The action was decent, but it would’ve been greatly enhanced if the story was stronger. Or even interesting. I found myself being more drawn to the banter, which was terrific until it had to get back to advancing the paltry plot. Somewhere between the casting and Ritchies’ wonderful depiction of post-industrial London (no, it wasn’t steampunk, just accurate) was a really great Holmes reboot. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it on the screen. But in my mind, it’s awesome.

Maybe the sequel will improve on the formula. Until then, I’ve got my own high-powered mind and baroque obsessions to keep me entertained.

[x-posted at AID]

You may despise me for it, dear readers, but I am here to bring you another cursed list. I know what you’re thinking: these Contrarian characters are supposed to be all up on the current events. I want fresh ideas and a good larf when I come to this page, not another gawdarned list.

Well, tough. We’re tired. We promise real content soon, but right now the Contrarian staff is curled up in the corner of our shared office at Contrarian HQ, taking a much needed catnap. I got up to cover a draft from the window, so I decided to stop by my desk and tell you about books I liked this year.

Now, before I get started I must point out that these books were not all published this year, nor do they represent any attempt at a Best Books of the Year summary. This list comprises the books I read during the last Earth-Sun revolution that I liked the best. This was an odd year of reading for me, as my first calendar year as a professional librarian. I read a lot of stuff this year that I never would have if I did not have this job, most notably mysteries. I had not read a mystery novel since I was 15 or 16, but found myself greatly enjoying certain titles (read on).

Best book I read this year: The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano. I’m not going to go on about who he is, click on the link if you want biographical info. I’m not going to get long-winded about the book either. It’s about poets in Mexico in the ’70s. It’s about sex, travel, innocence and the search for a woman who published a poem once years ago. The funny thing about Bolano is how difficult it is to describe what’s so great about him. Having read only this book and his short novel The Skating Rink, I cannot claim to be an expert, but I knew from the first page that I was about to enjoy something truly spectacular, and there was not a single moment of disappointment.

Most worth the hype: Stieg Larsson‘s Millenium series: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo & The Girl Who Played With Fire. The series everyone was talking about this year was Twilight, but the books that were really uniting adults were these two. I have heard many stories of people being approached on planes and subway cars by other fans commenting on the books. In 2008, Larsson was the second best seller in the world. So it must be another case of overhyping the undertalented, right? Wrong. These books are fantastic. Lisbeth Salander is one of the truly great contemporary characters, a sociopathic badass with a soft side. She’s a girl who has been fucked in every way possible by the system and those who think they’re in charge, and who does her best to show them the error of their ways. Her methods, however, are less kind than that sentence make them sound. Great stories, great writing and well worth the hype.

A few more fiction titles worth mentioning:

-In the Woods and The Likeness by Tana French. Realistic crime fiction, beautifully written. But be warned: if you need everything tightly wrapped up, look elsewhere.

-No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. I have long wanted to read McCarthy, but had yet to do so. This book is not a pleasant or hopeful tale, but it is full of lessons. Most notably: nothing happens to only you.

-A Death in Vienna, by Frank Tallis. An excellent mystery, mixing supernatural elements with detective work in the classic tradition. Intelligently written, with a great climax.

-Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon. Sure, the druggy haze gets a bit old at times, but this is a great novel. Funny, clever and perfectly set, Pynchon proves once again that he is one of the greatest writers alive. If he exists.

-After Dark, by Haruki Murakami. Not my favorite book by Murakami, who I believe I would name as my favorite author, but still that much more inventive and original than any other titles.

As to non-fiction, I didn’t have a clear favorite this year. I enjoyed Arthur I. Miller‘s Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, and also liked David N. Meyer‘s excellent biography of Gram Parsons, Twenty Thousand Roads. I reread Suzuki Roshi‘s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, which is a truly incredible book. Though it is trashy, I am currently enjoying Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz, but it is no match for my recently replaced copy of The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall.

I am far from alone in naming Neil Gaiman‘s The Graveyard Book as the best young adult novel, but I am among a small few granting the honor of best children’s book to his Blueberry Girl, illustrated by the legendary Charles Vess. This is the one book that should be owned and frequently read by every girl on the planet, regardless of age.

Best new children’s book character is clearly Skippyjon Jones. Here I am in my Skippyjon costume, with my friend Death:

(Note: that’s not me. Or my friend Death.)

Alright, patrons. I’m out. But shoot me a line to tell me what you liked this year, wouldja?

Until next time…

For those not privy to cornerstones of Western lit (or suffering from severe amnesia), the book tells the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge — a curmudgeon of a human who mocks the Christmas spirit, and is subsequently visited by four ghosts. The first, his long-time business partner and heartless mentor Jacob Marley, returns from the grave and tells Scrooge to change his ways — displaying his own earthly errors in the form of ghostly chains hanging from his arms and legs. Marley informs Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet-to-Come, in an attempt to persuade the man to mend his manners. Each of these three spirits whisks Scrooge through time to witness his life from several perspectives and see the things to which he had been blind. In the end, Scrooge is reborn again as a lovable man, full of holiday spirit, and thanks the ghosts for showing him his folly.

It is a tale of Christian redemption (a recurring theme in Dickens’ works) — where a man can transcend his uncharitable and self-serving attitudes to become a more sympathetic member of society, harnessing his own largess to a greater purpose. But yet there is more to this tale. Each ghost represents a specific rhetorical persuasion device — Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Fear — twisting and pulling Scrooge’s increasingly fragile psyche, driving him to a climax of redemption. And Scrooge’s journey depicts a higher level of truth-seeking that can only be attained through loosing one’s grip on the “rational” world.

Dickens’ uses the supernatural to bring his protagonist out of darkness and into light; his rite of passage is dependent on the concept that there are things in this world that are beyond his control — beyond his understandings. Scrooge initially passes off his encounter with his old partner as nothing more than undigested plum pudding, but in the end he begs the spirit to leave him be and alter the final reality presented to him: his own gravestone.

A Christmas Carol is an ode to the Romanticist movement of the 19th Century — the Age of Reason, when scientific discovery was ascendant. To be expected, artists and writers fought back with stories of the strange, macabre, unknown and the supernatural. Such creators believed that the Enlightenment use of logic remained integral to human advancement, but logic and reason was limited —  it was only through imagination, spontaneity and the acceptance of the unexplainable that certain “hidden truths” could be ascertained.

Scrooge’s story is immortal; it transcends the Romantic period and has become a part of the Christmas tradition. This story of yuletide redemption has been told and retold through multiple devices, but in each the Romantic truths remain strong: it is the world of the supernatural that seeds our love of the Christmas season, and allows us to suspend our beliefs for a brief moment. Scrooge finds his place in the natural world by listening to the supernatural one.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you. Be merry and joyful.  See you in 2010.