Comments (0) Back to school blues or best of summer? We couldn’t decide, so this month’s show is both. Bryan tells us about the best book he read this summer, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. Amanda reviews Pittsburgh’s own dance maniac Girl Talk. Back to back rad, Crystal channels Winona with a reconsideration of Heathers.
Have you ever felt that science is a little dull or just beyond your reach? Reading a Mary Roach book might just change your mind. Nashville Public Library’s Deanna Larson had the opportunity to chat with Mary Roach on August 23, 2010. Watch the interview below and check out one of her books for a whole new perspective on science.
Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void; Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.
Her newest book, Packing for Mars, is a New York Times Editor’s Choice and #1 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Stiff has been translated into 17 languages, and Bonk was chosen as a 2008 best book by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe. Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, The New York Times Book Review, the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, and Outside, among other publications. More at www.maryroach.net.
Watch the interview on YouTube.
[youtubeplaylist 690D11F7009D200E]
The Savage Detectives
by Roberto Bolaño
I am always few a years behind in my fiction reading, so next year around this time, I’ll probably be reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. This summer I did manage to get around to reading Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives, the rambling tale of two poets who forge an avant-garde literary movement in 1970s Mexico. The poets in question, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, might be serious writers or they might be dope dealers. Is their movement, so-called Visceral Realism, a literary front or just a front, period. Besides stirring up trouble, the duo are on a mission to find Ceserea Tinajero, the female poet they consider to be their spiritual founder. It’s a picaresque novel and the poets’ misadventures carry us up and down South America and much of Europe.
Arturo and Ulises are only two in vast cast of characters. The novel starts with Juan Madero, a 17-year-old student, who is asked to join the Visceral Realists after he demonstrates an extensive knowledge of classical forms. Initiated into a beehive bohemian artists, he learns a lot of other forms too. Arturo and Ulises orbit around this circle of literati like to elusive, numinous stars. The novel then shifts radically, jumping around in time, each chapter being a first person reminiscence by a different character before and after the period when the Visceral Realists were lighting things on fire. We meet a cross section of Mexican society: lawyers, architects, publishers, professors, writers, baristas, pushers, pimps and whores. The same sliding scale applies to the sanity of any given character. Through this kaleidoscopic approach we learn more about the Arturo and Ulises than they know about themselves. The final third of the novel flashes back to the glowing center of Visceral Realism. Juan, Arturo, Ulises and whore named Lupe are fleeing from Lupe’s pimp in a stolen American car, and of course, the crew is looking for Ceserea Tinajero.
I’ve used the term diffuse in an effort to describe Bolano’s writing style. Others have described it as centrifugal. The plot begins on the outer edges of binary star system that is Viseral Realism. Then it spirals out across the universe, only to zoom back to the bulls eye of Mexico City. The all over approach perfectly captures bohemian Mexico in the 1970s. Not like I was there, but I feel like I was after reading The Savage Detectives. My favorite chapters take place in a near mystical vineyard in Germany where Arturo shows up in the middle of the night to reunite with one of his lost lovers. Hans the German work boss is eerily similar to Hans the would be killer Bolano’s other sprawling opus 2666. Yes, The Savage Detectives is an opus. What the book really does best is simulate the experience of falling in love with literature, in falling in love period, in falling apart for literature, in falling apart period. What it really does best is simulate the experience of falling.
The best book I read all summer.
The Hunger Games
By Suzanne Collins
So have you read it yet? I’ve been hearing so many good things about this book for the past year that I finally decided to break down and read it.
And once I started I didn’t want to stop. I read up through the first 100 pages in a couple of installments, but when I got past that point it was The End or Bust. I even stayed up until almost 1 am to finish it – and with the schedule I’m running right now that is saying something.
So anyway, the story revolves around this Running Man/Gladiator type of contest and is kinda of a post-apocalyptic, alternative history, young adult novel. Whew! That was a mouthful (and very exciting sounding, huh?).
But seriously, the main character – Katniss – is called on to do some things she’d probably rather not do in order for her family to survive in District 12 (aka The Appalachians). Along the way a love triangle of sorts emerges to rival that of Edward/Bella/Jacob. I can’t decide who I like together better…but I’ll leave it for you to make up your own opinion.
The Hunger Games is just the first book in the super popular triology. The other books include:
So did I peak your interest yet? Come on, you know you want to read these.
Everybody else is doing it…
Amanda
The Mysterious Howling
By Maryrose Wood
A Whole Nother Story
By Dr. Cuthbert Soup
When You Reach Me
By Rebecca Stead
Sometimes you just want to feel like a kid again. If you like gloomy mansions, governesses, orphans, and sly humor, try The Mysterious Howling. If hilarious wordplay, Lemony Snicket, and The Mysterious Benedict Society are more your style, try the madcap romp A Whole Nother Story. And if you want a nostalgic 1970’s-era time travel story, try Newbery-winner When You Reach Me.
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