The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Seven

On the Seventh Day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe Gave to Me

Seven Books for Reading
Six decades of Fairbank
Five bits and bobs
Four reasons to save 68 CDs
Three balls a-rainin'
Two more automotive wormhole websites
And a bald guy and some random hor-seys


Day Six is a tough act to follow-- especially since I'm posting a half-assed list cannibalized from Sentence of Dave-- but Dave Fairbank's post definitely got me thinking about the things I love and appreciate in my life. Some of those things reside close to home (my wife, kids, dog, and friends; playing and coaching sports and my guitar) some of them exist in what now seems like another galaxy, far far away: the mountains of Vermont and Colorado, the desert and badlands of New Mexico and South Dakota; the beaches and jungles of Thailand and Ecuador, the ancient ruins of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. I would love to return to these places and explore them more thoroughly, perhaps even move permanently to one of them, but I don't think that's happening for a number of years (at least not until my kids move out).

Anyway, one of the things I appreciate very much is reading, especially reading a good book. This is different than reading a magazine, which I still do (though it's totally retro) and it is certainly different than reading stuff on the internet. I feel like the sustained attention you give to an entire book is a special event. It's recursive, introspective, slow, and profoundly relaxing. Essentially the opposite of Twitter.

Lately, I've had some extra time to read (and play the guitar) because for the first time in 40 years, I haven't spent three hours a week watching the Giants (or any NFL football). We cut the cable at the end of the summer and our household is relying purely on high speed internet, a Netflix account, and "borrowed" passwords for screen entertainment. But mainly I read, and I'm proud to say that this year, I finished 44 books-- I'll put up the complete list on SoD at the end of the year-- and I'm halfway through Richard White's monstrous tome The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896, which is excellent (and should count as two books because it is so long). I would include it on this list, but this list is books for reading, not books for crawling your way through at a snail's pace. I will give you a quick summary of the story so far: just because you free a bunch of slaves, doesn't mean that the former slave-owners are going to treat them well, and it doesn't mean that these former slaves are going to quickly assimilate into society and the economy. The term reconstruction is something of a euphemism.

Anyway, day six made me realize that reading is also one of those things that I hope I'll be able to count on in retirement (or semi-retirement, which seems more practical and likely). Once I start collecting my pension, I may not be able to move from New Jersey to Colorado or Thailand or even the Outer Banks or Vermont-- that's going to depend on the health of my parents, the financial stability of my kids, and my wife's desires and plans-- but I'm pretty sure libraries will still exist and-- if my eyes get really bad I could always . . .

enlarge the fuck out of the font on the Kindle.

I will begin my list with a fantastic book that I just finished. This book is free on the Kindle, because as Zman pointed out, the the copyright has expired. Public domain! You don't even have to pay for the paper it's printed on. I will definitely be taking advantage of all these public domain freebies when I'm semi-retired and greeting folks at Wal-Mart (because the pension system imploded).

1) The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Though it was published in 1868 and the story is told by an extensive epistolary spiral of narrators, this archetypal detective novel is totally readable. It's not just for English teachers. The book has all the typical classic mystery elements--  the superb but oddly touched detective (Sergeant Cuff) and the ominous historical overtones (the British colonization of India) and a butler (spoiler: he didn't do it) and a spooky setting (moors and tidal quicksand) . . . and it's got a bunch of elements that would fit right into a modern thriller: opioid addiction, Orientalism, secularism (for Gabriel Betteredge, Robinson Crusoe operates as both the I Ching and the Bible) and-- most significantly-- what might be the first instance of a state dependent and context dependent memory encoding and retrieval experiment in literature. I won't spoil the how and why of this, but read the novel-- it's excellent and it's free on the Kindle. Free! Or you could save this one until you move to the beach, as there's some really evocative littoral images.

2) One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

Bryson uses a few months to paint a portrait of an America rolling precipitously into strange, new places, even faster than the America of today: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig invented the home run derby, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, Al Capone reigned, eugenics and involuntary sterilization were all the rage, Hollywood pumped out 800 feature length movies a year . . . and filmed it's first big "talkie," the Jazz Singer, Dempsey fought Tunney, The Federal Reserve cut interest rates which precipitated the stock market crash, Italians were regarded as a dangerous ethnic group, Gutzon Borglum began Mount Rushmore, Calvin Coolidge did nothing, the Mississippi flooded monumentally, Herbert Hoover supervised flood management, a lunatic blew up a school in Michigan and killed forty-four children, Henry Ford stopped production on the Model T Ford and began planning Fordlandia, a doomed model city and rubber plantation in Brazil, Shipwreck Kelly sat on a flagpole in Newark for 12 days, and Charles Lindbergh was adored by zillions, a consequence of his daring solo flight across the Atlantic (this is before his child was kidnapped, before he associated himself with the Nazis, and before it was discovered that he had several secret families).

3) Love Me Do! The Beatles Progress by Michael Braun

Love Me Do! The Beatles Progress is regarded by many credible sources as the best book about the Beatles and while I'm not the one to dispute this-- this is the only book about The Beatles I've read-- I think this is a great book on its own merits, a breakneck real-time gonzo journalism meditation on fame, mania, art, and celebrity. Michael Braun accompanies the Liverpudlians for several weeks of a world tour in 1963, just as Beatlemania is taking hold of the world-- and back in the early '60's, The Beatles presented a telling contrast to the three crooners of that era: Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and Cliff Richard . . . all three were very male and rather sexual. No one over twenty could understand what was going on with The Beatles, meanwhile teenagers, mainly girls, flocked anywhere that a Beatle might turn up, and Braun was there to document it all . . . this is a quick read-- a magical mystery tour that you should experience for yourself, but here are a few moments I highlighted on my Kindle (for the complete list, head over to Sentence of Dave).

Ringo Starr, 23 years old . . . "I don't care about politics . . . just people."

George Harrison, 21 years old: "I wouldn't do anything I didn't want to, would I?" and then explains his ambition is to design a guitar.

Paul McCartney, 22, would like "to be successful" and wants "money to do nothing with, money to have in case you wanted to do something."

John Lennon, 23, explains: "The more people you meet, the more you realize it's all a class thing."

And a harbinger . . . in New York, just before the Ed Sullivan appearance, Cynthia Lennon wanted to go out shopping but was afraid to venture out into the city alone, and she noted "the fans here seem a bit wackier than in England."

4) Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden

This is the book of the year. I'm posting my entire rambling review from SoD. I think I had PTSD when I wrote it.

Mark Bowden's new book Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam recounts the Tet Offensive, the capture of the ancient provincial capital city of Hue by the North Vietnamese, and the ensuing epic 24 day battle waged by the Marines and the ARVN to recapture the city . . . the book is over 500 pages and a monumental day-by-day account of the heroism, atrocities, propaganda, misinformation, strategy, blunders, civilian casualties, destruction of ancient wonders, Communist purges, political failures, and-- amidst great effort and honor-- the futility of top-down command in warfare . . . Bowden interviewed scores of people from both sides, so while he focuses on American perspectives and tells the stories of many, many Marines and reporters who were at Hue and witnessed the bloodiest battle in the war, he also recounts civilian and North Vietnamese perspectives of the tragic month; the sum total of this grueling depiction is the ultimate expression of "I support the troops but not the war," although at times it's even hard to support the troops, who often busy themselves shooting dogs and civilians, prying gold fillings from the teeth of the dead, and committing other acts that could only occur in the moral vacuum of a chaotic, street-to-street, house-to-house plodding assault, where young men watched their friends get shot in the streets, tried to retrieve the wounded, were consequently shot and on and on-- the book graphically describes the many many deaths and injuries-- the Marines were used as fodder and many are still angry about this, none of the people higher up the chain understood the amount of NVA in the Citadel, nor how well entrenched they were, or that their supply chains were intact . . . they didn't understand how well-trained the NVA soldiers were, the generals thought they could be brushed aside with little collateral damage, they didn't understand that the spider-holes, trenches, towers, turrets, snipers, and occupation of the city created a maze of interlocking fire that just devastated our troops, nor did the people calling the shots understand the North Vietnamese strategy, which was simply to hold onto the city as long as possible, cause as many casualties as possible, and-- though the NVA knew they would eventually lose the battle-- they would win the war, because the American people and media (including Walter Cronkite) would finally realize that it wasn't worth the effort . . . so while the Marines heroically took back the Citadel, the generals (Gen. Westmoreland specifically) didn't realize that the death toll, the destruction of the city and its historical wonders, and the civilian casualties would drive Lyndon Johnson to bow out of the presidential race, and completely change the strategy in Vietnam . . . while the capture of Hue did not foment a fervent Communist uprising, and-- in fact-- many of the people in Hue (an educated, upper-middle class city) tried to stay out of the war and not choose sides at all, many of these people, the ones not killed by the initial battle, were killed by the Communists in purges . . . it was horrible and ugly on both sides, the genetically engineered IR8 rice didn't do the trick, nor did the Hanoi government, and while the war would slog on for several more years, as we tried to "seek honorable peace," the lessons were obvious and while we have gotten mired in places we don't belong, we at least know now that we have to "win hearts and minds" in order to achieve any kind of lasting success in a foreign proxy war (not that we're immune to this sort of thing, despite what we learned, we still managed to concoct Abu Ghraib . . . but that's still a far cry from the treatment of the civilian "gooks" in Vietnam, there was very little thought of collateral damage by the soldiers and the generals, despite the fact that we weren't fighting a war against Vietnam, we were supposedly fighting a war for the Vietnamese people . . . what a fucking mess, read the book).

5) The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley

Monty Python and the Holy Grail meets Pillars of the Earth. Fast paced, genuinely funny, and surprisingly educational.

6) Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty

Another great Detective Sean Duffy mystery, set amidst the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 1980's. Musical allusions, murder by crossbow, a Fenian in Belfast . . . what more could you ask for? Mckinty also makes the list because he stopped by Sentence of Dave to explain the origins of a humorous moment in the book. 

7) Time Travel: A History by James Gleick

A strange and indescribable book for Primer fans. Gleick is masterful writer and I recommend all his books. This one is especially strange and philosophically compelling, and it includes Nabokov's version of time-travel: rereading a book. When you reread, you return to a text knowing the framework and then start to observe it as a whole, outside of the timescape of flipping pages and forward progress, and you know it differently . . . so there's another thing to look forward to: rereading all these great books sometime in the future and experiencing them as something new.