The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is the kind of book where you can hear men’s shoes scuffing across a wood floor in an empty mansion filled with candles and secret passageways. Where some people take long lunches filled with wine and cheese, and when they settle in with a good book, the spine creaks.

David Martin’s mom abandoned him, and his father is the kind of asshole who sees David reading a copy of Great Expectations and goes fist-crazy on him. After his father dies a mafia-style death in the streets of Barcelona, David is given the opportunity to write a serialized set of short stories for the newspaper. He develops a following, and later a book deal for similar-genre novels under an assumed name.

David moves into this fantastic old house that he has admired his whole life. It’s a gloomy place, filled with dust and and a tower overlooking the dregs of the city;  secret passageways and the wardrobes of the long-abandoned house’s former occupants.

David writes until his fingers bleed and his grooming habits become less habitual. His words belong to two stingy publishers straight out of a Neil Gaiman novel, and David becomes fatally ill. Then he meets exactly the kind of man who always walks into this sort of story: A mysterious and wealthy guy, an all-knowing chess master.

Andreas Corelli offers David zillions of dollars and the restoration of his health in exchange for a commissioned piece of writing. David is out of options, and signs on to the project. In the meantime, there is a ton of stuff going on: Something linking David to the previous homeowner, an unflappable student/assistant, a meaningful friendship with a bookstore owner, and of course a woman who ends up married to his best friend.

It is so seamlessly sensory, that I was confused. Is this super good? Is this hokey, a glorified ghost story for children? Most importantly: Is there fog in my hair? On the other hand, parts are so predictable. I knew that hand dangling casually over the arm of the chair would be attached to a dead person.

And it’s funny. Especially the banter between David and his assistant Isabel. It gets a little long, the plot winds a lot, and there is duh-da-duh intrigue, but the story feels like the reason you first opened a book. Not super high-tech, but entertaining.

Book Review Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Fiction, Novel

Three things are clear about Kurt Vonnegut: he loves the work of Mark Twain; he loves the character of Abraham Lincoln; he absolutely, without a doubt, hates our former President George W. Bush. Now that Bush is out of the picture, can this book stand the test of time?

Satire certainly served him well in railing Bush, but Vonnegut also examines how he stumbled upon humor and how he used that humor in his novels. Those literary elements from one of the greatest free-thinking authors in the twentieth century make this book unique and affirm sustainability.

Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country is one big long rant with a little bit of personal history sprinkled in. Fortunately for the reader, the rant is fairly interesting. Just as musicians always have rhythms flowing through them like a heartbeat, Vonnegut has words itching at his fingertips urging him to write. Best known for his works of satire and science fiction, this book gives Vonnegut an excuse to excel in humor and explain his distaste for quite a lot of things.

I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady… And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place. I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
-pg 16-17

The writing of novels like Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle are delightfully expounded on. More important still, the way he wrote, making corrections by hand, and hiring a typist. Even the very essence of walking to the post office to mail a manuscript, eye up the pretty postal worker, and chat with the people in line is what makes Vonnegut’s description of his craft the best part of this book.

In the midst of his rambling, Vonnegut recalls experiences we all can relate to. He talks about growing up in ‘Middle America’, his family, his career, and his circle of literary and artistic friends. Though a realist of life’s tragedies, he was constantly inspired by all forms of art.

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.”
-pg 66

This last essay by Vonnegut is a writing how-to and unlikely memoir; a slightly crass grandpa telling it like it is. If you know anything about Vonnegut or have read any of his novels, you will catch familiar social and political themes. If you’re not a big Vonnegut fan, it still warrants a glance, especially since it comes in at under 150 pages. This is a quick and thoughtful read worthy of a spot on the bookshelf.

Book Review Essays, Kurt Vonnegut, Non-Fiction

Thich Nhat Hanh’s 2003 book No Death, No Fear is another in a long series of spiritual classics by the Buddhist monk. I have nothing negative to say about this book and can only offer four passages that show the essence of this book.

There’s a very funny story in the sutras. A woman left a saucepan of milk with her neighbor, saying: “Please keep it for me; I shall come back in two or three days.” There was no refrigeration, so the milk curdled and became a kind of cheese. When the woman came back she said: “Where’s my milk? I left milk behind, not cheese, so this is not my milk here.” The Buddha said that this person had not understood impermanence. Milk will become yogurt or cheese if you leave it for a few days. The person wanted only the milk of five days ago and refused to take the cheese. Do you think that milk and cheese are the same or different? They are neither the same nor different, but it takes several days for the milk to become cheese. With the insight if impermanence we can see the truth about the universe and all phenomena, the true nature of being neither the same nor different. (76)

The impermanence of all things is a critical understanding on one’s spiritual journey. Once a person learns how to look deeply and see the impermanence in everything, the fear and sorrow often associated with death dissipates. Seeing this impermanence also shows one how everything is both real and not real.

When the Buddha was asked, “What is the cause of everything?” he answered with simple words. He said, “This is, because that is.” It means that everything relies on everything else in order to manifest. A flower has to rely on non-flower elements in order to manifest. If you look deeply into the flower, you can recognize non-flower elements. Looking into the flower, you recognize the element sunshine; that is a non-flower element. Without sunshine, a flower cannot manifest. Other elements are essential, such as minerals, soil, the farmer and so on; a multitude of non-flower elements has come together in order to help the flower manifest. (35-36)

Hanh prefers to use the word manifestation instead of creation. Manifestation implies a transition from one form to another, whereas creation indicates something coming from nothing. Mindfulness involves looking at how everything manifests, including issues in both the physical and psychological realms. For example, people who suffer from a victim mentality can often work through their suffering when they realize how their issues are manifested in part by the decisions and choices they make.

Sooner or later the cloud will change into rain or snow or ice. If you look deeply into the rain, you can see the cloud. The cloud is not lost; it is transformed into rain, and the rain is transformed into grass and the grass into cows and then to milk and then into the ice cream you eat. Today if you eat an ice cream, give yourself time to look at the ice cream and say: “Hello, cloud! I recognize you.” By doing that, you have insight and understanding into the real nature of the ice cream and the cloud. You can also see the ocean, the river, the heat, the sun, the grass and the cow in the ice cream. (25-26)

This is an example of how to look mindfully into something. This practice can be done for anything.

We can use an example that is easy to understand, of a tangerine or a durian fruit. If there is a person who has never eaten a tangerine or durian fruit, however many images or metaphors you give him, you cannot describe to him the reality of those fruits. You can only do one thing: give him a direct experience. You cannot say: “Well, the durian is a little like the jackfruit or like a papaya.” You cannot say anything that will describe the experience of a durian fruit. The durian fruit goes beyond all ideas and notions. The same is true of a tangerine. If you have never eaten a tangerine, however much the other person loves you and wants to help you understand what a tangerine tastes like, they will never succeed by describing it. The reality of the tangerine goes beyond ideas. Nirvana is the same; it is the reality that goes beyond ideas. It is because we have ideas about nirvana that we suffer. Direct experience is the only way. (16)

Those of us that have had spiritual and mystical experiences know how difficult it is to describe them to non-spiritual people. Heck, it is hard for even spiritual people to convey the experience to other spiritual people. Spiritual and mystical encounters go beyond ideas and notions, including logic. This is why arguing about spirituality with a logician is fruitless and is often only an exercise in stroking egos.

However, this talk of direct experience goes beyond religion and spirituality. For example, my son and I can sit next to each other on the couch and look at the same cup sitting on a table and be looking at both the same cup and a different cup. This is because our experiences, although the same regarding the general viewing of a cup, are also different. Not only do we see the cup from different angles, but we also bring different biological, psychological, social, and spiritual frameworks to the cup viewing. We can also consider the properties of the cup itself: how the light hitting the cup is constantly changing, how the material that the cup itself is made from is slowly changing, the changing properties of the table it is sitting on, etc. It is impossible for him to see the cup as I do and vice-versa. It is also impossible for either one of us to see the cup the same as the moment in the time that just passed. Since we are constantly seeing different cups, it is impossible to either prove or disprove our experience or the existence of the cup itself.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s books constantly earn my coveted 5-Star Rating because they cultivate this type of thought and reflection.

Book Review Non-Fiction, Spirituality, Thich Nhat Hanh

By all laws of logic and mathematics, I should love Jeffrey Brown’s graphic memoir Little Things: A memoir in slices. We like the same music, we’re about the same age, we’re both writers, and this is the stuff that fills his book. Seriously, I should have a full-blown crush on this book right now.

And yet, somehow, I don’t.

The problem is, I think, that Brown is too much like me, and most of the 30somethings I know. His stories, while amusing at times, lack the kind of emotional significance and depth I look for when I read. And that’s not to say every story you read has to be a life or death moment of drama-filled importance. However, the onus is on the writer to include in his/her story why exactly the story is being told at all. And that’s what each of the slices is missing, the whyness of them.

Each of the slices or stories in this book have the feel of stories you tell your friends at bars, a “so this happened to me once” aura about them. They are the kind of stories that are entertaining for as long as it takes you to drink a beer, and are forgotten by the time you settle the tab.

While I can appreciate the simplicity of the art, and how it adds to the stories, there are very few of them that really stuck with me. Even now, as I write this, I have to keep flipping through the book to try and remember what exactly he wrote about — that one trip to the mountains, a car accident he saw, a girl he liked. . . I did remember (without any help from looking at the book) the panels where Zak Sally appeared at Big Brain and when Brown picked up some Andrew Bird CDs, but still . . . is that enough?

I don’t think so. If this memoir weren’t accompanied by Brown’s artwork, if it were just a traditional memoir, I am convinced it would have never seen the light of day. There’s just not enough there, and that’s totally disappointing.

Book Review Graphic Novel, Jeffrey Brown, Memoir

In the 1990s, Ruth Reichl was courted by, and eventually became the food critic for the New York Times — albeit reluctantly. On her first tentative trip to the food capital of the world from her home in Los Angeles, she is recognized by her seatmate. There is seemingly a bounty on the potential critic’s head from the NYC restaurateurs who live and die by the NYT’s star-system. Not to mention, the boisterous recognizer wants to see what Reichl is going to do with the crappy airplane food that is set in front of her.

Garlic and Sapphires: The Life of a Critic in Disguise is Reichl’s story of trying to maintain anonymity in a place where her life story is required reading for restaurant employees. They know all about her frizzy hair and perma-grin. With the help of a theatrical friend of her late mother, Reichl dons wigs and costumes in order to do her job without earning the extra attention that a food critic receives when made by the staff. With these looks come personalities: Molly, a cuckolded doctor’s wife, the cab-stoppingly sexy Chloe, the bitchy Emily, who makes one of her old friends extremely uncomfortable. She also dresses as her mother, and is oddly possessed by the woman — a transformation that stuns Reichl into turning to reader to acknowledge that this costume may require professional help.

Reichl meets wrath from the former food critic, organizes a dinner in Flushing, NY, for a hot shot, and spends a painful meal with a man who calls himself a food warrior, when he wins a dinner date through a charity auction.

Garlic and Sapphires, named for a line in a TS Eliot poem, is okay. Sometimes funny, sometimes boring. Sometimes as contrived and hokey as the end of an episode of Scooby Doo, when the bad guy is revealed. It’s a mix of stories and food and conflict and her own recipes. It’s just not meaty enough or something. More of an appetizer than an entree, pardon my cheesiness.

I wish Reichl hadn’t felt compelled to stick to the traditional story format. Of course every story needs a conflict, but this conflict isn’t as interesting as the wig-wearing, personality adopting, and amuse bouche bashing that comes before it.

Reichl also makes some assumptions about what the reader knows going into the book: Namely, the power of the restaurant star-rating and the heavy-handed Francophile who proceeded her as a critic. Otherwise, when Riechl is sashaying to Korean pockets of town and giving noodle based restaurants three stars, the relative audacity of what she is doing is lost.

(On the other hand, Reichl writing about Asian food is about the best possible relationship that can occur between raw fish, her computer, and your eyeballs. This is the richest writing in her book. And it is also her recipe for Thai Noodles that I will be trying first.)

Book Review food memoir, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Ruth Reichl