I enjoy reading mysteries that take place in other parts of the world. I like being transported to lands where I know absolutely nothing about the people and their customs. When a friend recommended Jar City (A Reykjavik thriller), by Arnaldur Indridason, I couldn’t wait to dive in. Before the story even starts there’s a note explaining why Icelanders always address each other using first names. That’s just what I’m talking about – who woulda thunk? (There’s also a couple of maps, and those usually scare me.)

I always appreciate a protagonist that has some flaws, and Detective Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson has more than his share. He’s long divorced (Indridason only brushes upon it, but the reader gets the message loud and clear that it was a nasty one), he smokes, is overweight, eats mostly take-out, and has stomach pains (I like this guy), and his daughter is a junkie. Erlendur is called to investigate the death of an old man, Holberg, in his home. The side of the victim’s skull had been crushed by what is most probably a heavy ashtray that was left at the scene.

Isn’t this your typical Icelandic murder?” asked Detective Sigurdur Oli . . . “Squalid, pointless and committed without any attempt to hide it, change the clues or conceal the evidence.”
“Yes,” said Erlendur. “A pathetic Icelanic murder.”
p. 7

It turns out to be anything but. Holberg was not just some kindly old man, but back in his day he was quite the thug and sadistic rapist. Thus, the adventure begins, or so I had hoped. The first half of the book is by far best, digging up the man’s past, finding victim’s and trying to interview them. There are some very heavy and touching scenes where the police are trying to interview rape victims who had buried the past and are now forced to relive it. And then there’s Erlendur’s relationship with his daughter (I actually found their relationship more fascinating than the murder investigation). There’s a disgusting little scene when she comes to his home asking for money. When he says no she begs, pleads, then offers to ‘do things’ in which Indridason effectively tells the reader how low she’s sunk.

The second half of the book plods its way through (although hardly in a thrilling manner like the cover suggests). Erlendur makes a couple of leaps that left his team, and me, wondering how did he come up with that? I actually was more looking forward to the chapters containing interaction between Erlendur and his daughter. But my biggest problem with the book were the names of the characters Indridason came up with. Here’s a partial list: Erlendur, Elin, Elinborg, Ellidi, Einer, Eva Lind, Albert, Audur, Katrin, Kolbrun, Holberg, Hilmar. Like many people, I do the vast majority of my reading while on breaks which means I don’t spend a lot of time at one sitting. I constantly found myself confusing one name with another and having to go back and figure out who was who (or is that whom?).

Indridason catches the mood of the Icelandic people, and it was fun reading about how different their lifestyles are, and at the same time how similar. As a thriller – hardly, but as a solid murder mystery – I’ll give it that.

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Finally! Finally one of the High Holys of the graphic novel realm held up to the hype. After abandoning Watchmen and being disappointed by Sandman, I approached Maus with a bit of trepidation. Could it live up to the hype?

Hell yes.

I’ve read Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel. I’ve seen “Schindler’s List,” “Life is Beautiful,” and “The Pianist.” And yet, Maus framed the Holocaust and the people who survived it in a way that was brand new to me.

Art Spiegelman grew up the child of two Holocaust survivors. Once he reached his thirties, Spiegelman decided to record his dad’s experiences during WWII and hoped to learn more about his mom, who killed herself when Spiegelman was twenty-one. He turned the process of recording those conversations with his dad, and his dad’s stories into Maus.

The scenes and stories about the Holocaust are as horrifying, heartbreaking, and mind-blowing as any of the stories told about that time. But what elevates Spiegelman’s book to something new is not the re-telling of his family’s experiences, but rather framing that story within the context of the father-son relationship.

The first of the two books opens with Art having some sort of falling out with some friends and whining about it to his dad. Vladek, Art’s dad, says something to the effect of, “wait until you don’t eat for two weeks and then see who your friends are.”

Wow. Right from the first scene, Spiegelman sets up a Holocaust story unlike any other. Before reading Maus, I never gave any thought to what it would be like growing up the child of a survivor. Or, really, much thought to what it would be like as a survivor in the US. So much is focused on the horror of the Holocaust that not much attention is paid to what happened afterward.

Plus, we have a tendency to deify Holocaust survivors (or survivors of any horrendous tragedy). We forget that even with all that suffering, they are still regular people with the same vices, prejudices, and problems as everybody else. Vladek is not a saint, in fact he comes off as the quintessential Jewish stereotype. . . meddling, cheap, martyr-like. These “Jewish” behaviors bother Art and in the book he discusses the problems he has painting a portrait of his father that doesn’t reinforce that stereotype even though that’s how his father really is. Plus, to make things even worse, Vladek’s a racist — something you wouldn’t expect from someone who was nearly exterminated because of his race (is being Jewish considered a race? I’m not even sure).

Seeing the interaction between Art and Vladek as adults makes you see how hard it would be to grow up the child of a Holocaust survivor. Sure the tragedies of teendom in America pale in comparision, to you know, facing extermination, but still. . . how do you rebel against someone who watched their friends and family die? How do you vent about your teenage angst bullshit to someone whose first son, your brother, was killed as a toddler by a loved one rather than sent to a concentration camp? How do you live in the shadow of that brother?

How do you find meaning in your own life when growing up with all that?

Somehow Speigelman does, and it’s amazing. Amazing! There aren’t enough words to convey what an awesome experience reading Maus was. It’s the kind of book you want everyone to read because you want to talk about all it’s little nuances with someone.

Also, one more thing, because I have to mention it, not doing so would be wrong. Much has been made about Spiegelman drawing the different nationalities and ethnicities as different animals (Poles as pigs, Jews as mice, Germans as cats), and while it adds depth to the story I will leave it to the High School English teachers to suck the living symbolism out of it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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In 2008, I listened to Krista Tippett interview Eckhart Tolle for her radio show Speaking of Faith and became interested in his ideas about living in the present reality. Tolle has also been involved with Oprah Winfrey in both a webinar and a radio show that discussed this very book, A New Earth. The authors, psychologists, physicians, and other guests of Winfrey often become extremely popular after they appear on her show. These same guests also often become lighting rods for criticism. While Tolle has not yet reached a Dr. Phil-like level of popularity, his body of work has certainly earned both generous amounts of praise and criticism.

The New Age label is commonly pasted on Tolle’s work, as well as the work of many spiritual writers that lack a common religious affiliation. As a person who has religious and spiritual beliefs that probably fall into this label, I was comfortable with many of Tolle’s ideas, particularly those concerning being awake in the present reality, the necessity of a shift in world consciousness, detachment to ideas and things, and the role of a person’s ego in suffering (both personally and in the larger world).

However, many are not comfortable with Tolle’s insights in this book because they suffer from clinging to their own ideas and beliefs. Tolle offered this Zen saying:

“Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.” What does this mean? Let go of identification with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself. (121)

Tolle offered many Zen stories and sayings in this book, which brings up an interesting observation about long books on spirituality. Tolle’s message of letting go and living in the present is simple and yet he spends too many pages examining it. I understand how it might make the book relevant to offer many examples and interpretations to help the reader connect with the concept. However, after a time it becomes a bit tedious to read, which may end up doing more harm than good. It is like the person that talks too much about something rather simple. After awhile, it becomes background noise and eventually ignored.

Tolle quoted Krishnamurti’s secret, the essence of his teaching: “I don’t mind what happens” (198). This sentence is essentially the message Tolle is trying to convey in this book. While I understand the practicality of explicating this message, one should not overdo it. Tolle flirted with doing just that in this book.

Despite my beliefs about simplicity, Tolle’s attempts to be relevant were solid. Here is a Zen story about letting go of the past.

The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side.

The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “Why did you carry that girl across the road?” he asked. “We monks are not supposed to do things like that.”

“I put the girl down hours ago,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?” (139)

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Listen Here.

Be sure to check out:
Minnesota Reads’ review of German for Travelers
Norah’s Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay (which mentions both Lucy Michelle & the Velvet Lapelles and Grant Hart)
Norah’s answers to the 6 questions we always ask.

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