The Daily Procrastinator

There is a used bookstore near my home, within walking distance. Today, while walking past it, I decided to backtrack and go in. Note that “walked” is the important word in this story.

Just outside the front door was a library cart full of books, the kind that looks like it’s on its way to a reshelving project. And on that cart was the most magical sign: $1 hardcover, $0.50 paperback.

Eleven books later, I had a stack that was a foot and a half tall, and I hadn’t even walked through the door. I had Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ernest Hemingway. I even found two book club selections, The Bookseller of Kabul and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The price: $9.33 including tax. I was giddy. This sort of thing is a bookworm’s dream come true.

Now, how was I going to get them home?

Fortunately for me, the owner was there and offered to let me stash the books in her bottom desk drawer until I returned with the car. Now they stand on my “To Read” shelf, beckoning me every time I pass. I’m only 30 pages from completing my current read, Swimming to Antarctica (a bargain books 2-for-1 steal from Borders), and then I have to make the tough decision about which book I should read next.

Let’s start with a basic fact: I read lots of novels. In the course of my literary wanderings, I encounter dozens of new authors every year, ranging from the talented and interesting to the banal and bound for unemployment. Rarely, though, do I read an author who makes me sit up and truly take notice–the sort of author who I immediately recommend to my friends. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve discovered just such a rare and fantastic writer. Procrastinators, say hello to Jeffrey Lent.

I'm sure he's pleased to meet you.

My experience reading Jeffrey Lent began when a traveling book liquidation company set up shop in my local mall a few months ago. Because all hardcover books were priced at four dollars, I went on a spending spree. (Seriously? Four dollars? I was in heaven.) Since they cost less than a foot-long sub, I bought a huge armload of books by authors I’d never even heard of. Why not? Among them was Lent’s novel Lost Nation.

As soon as I started reading, I felt that Lost Nation was different from anything I’d read in a long time. It’s the story of a mysterious man, known only as Blood, who travels into the Vermont territory during the years when its control was still contested by the United States and Canada. Along with the wagon-load of goods Blood intends to use in setting up a general store, he also brings with him a young woman named Sally, who he recently won while playing poker in a brothel. Lent uses her relationship with Blood to examine issues of lust, love, obligation, rejection, and acceptance. About midway through the novel, some long-lost acquaintances show up in Blood’s life and add further complications to the plot. The backdrop of governmental bickering over Vermont (which materializes as backwoods hit-and-run warfare) establishes an ominous tone that looms over the more personal aspects of Blood’s story. When the interconnected plotlines of the territorial dispute, Blood’s dealings with people from his past, and his relationship with Sally all reach simultaneous crescendo, the novel delivers a conclusion every bit as dramatic and nerve-wracking as The Fall of the House of Usher.

While the plot of Lost Nation, in and of itself, is enough to convince me to recommend the novel to my fellow readers, Lent’s style is every bit as important and impressive. He employs a stark, blunt style that brings echoes of Cormac McCarthy to my ears. Lent neither shies away from nor celebrates novel’s the often dark and tragic developments. The reader is left to come to terms with Blood’s world and its implications. I suspect that some readers may feel uncomfortable with the burden Lent lays upon them, but I found it rewarding.

Since reading Lost Nation, I have also purchased and read A Peculiar Grace, which I enjoyed even more. In a future post, I’ll review it. I promise. I’ve also bought Lent’s first novel, In The Fall, and I intend to buy the recently published After You’ve Gone. I’m literally thrilled with the expectation of reading them both. If they live up to my expections, you’ll hear about them.

In the meantime, track down a copy of Lost Nation. You won’t regret it.

Greetings, procrastinators! I have returned from my foray into The Great White North! I hope all of you have been well in my absence. Now that my vacation is over, I can return to procrastinating, full-time. For starters, I want to tell you about a book I read (sort of) on my trip.

Nineteen hours each way is a LONG time to drive, and staying awake can be a bit of a challenge, since I like to drive straight through rather than lose vacation time by splitting the drive over two days. In the past, I’ve taken big stacks of music CDs, reserving the loudest and angriest ones for the last few hours of the drive. This strategy worked fine, but my mother was starting to get concerned that I always showed up at her house muttering about “Cowboys From Hell” or a “South Texas Deathride.” In an effort to stay awake without getting all hopped up on music that scares children, I decided to make the drive with an audiobook this time. It was a good call.

It just LOOKS good.

The Geographer’s Library by John Fasman is a 384-page tome in its hardcover incarnation, and it’s over 15 hours long as an audiobook. Honestly, this is why I chose it. I needed a book for a long drive. Considering that my selection was simply based on the length of the book, I feel that I got extraordinarily lucky. The Geographer’s Library is a remarkable, interesting, complex historical novel.

The book centers on two main plotlines. The first involves a Spanish Muslim cartographer, historian, and linguist named Al-Idrisi who served King Roger of Sicily in the 1150s. Al-Idrisi devoted considerable time and energy to collect fifteen priceless artifacts from all over the world, each of which was thought to be vital to the art of alchemy. Before he could fully understand their powers, though, the entire collection was stolen, and the individual objects  found their way to all corners of the world over the course of centuries.

Enter Paul Tomm, a journalist working for a small-town newspaper. When he is assigned to write a simple obituary for oddball university professor Jaan Puhapaev, his simple questions about the man’s life soon reveal that Puhapaev may not have been the man everyone thought he was. In fact, it seems he’d been trying to reassemble Al-Idrisi’s collection. But why?

Between these two storylines lie the individual tales of each artifact as they are bought, sold, stolen, and killed for throughout the course of history. Each one is an intriguing plot unto itself. Fasman’s descriptions of exotic settings throughout the Old World make these chapters especially rewarding to read.

Although I’m caught up in praising the book, I will say that The Geographer’s Library is not an easy read. I think that listening to it while I drove, which is far more passive than actually reading the book, probably simplified the process for me. I imagine that reading it might be a bit slow in some passages. Nonetheless, for readers who appreciate a remarkably well-written and researched book, I highly recommend Fasman’s tome. Imagine The DaVinci Code more intelligently written and without inflammatory intentions. I’m going to buy a hardcover copy of The Geographer’s Library for my bookshelf, and you should, too.

A recently revealed 47-million year old fossil of the species Darwinius masillae could be the oldest known ancestor of human beings ever discovered. The specimen, a roughly two-foot long skeleton nicknamed “Ida,” appears to be an ancestor to early anthropoids, from which humans are evolved.

Ida is preserved almost completely, including the contents of her stomach.

The many similarities between Ida and modern humans begin with her fingers and toes, which feature fingernails and toenails. Her hands feature opposable thumbs. Her limbs are proportioned like ours, with her legs considerably longer than her arms. Ida’s eye sockets face forward. Her blunt teeth suggest a diet that consisted mainly of fruit. With the exception of her tail, which she probably used for balance while traveling through the trees, she looks strikingly human.

The truly remarkable thing about Ida is her age. Prior to this discovery, the oldest human ancestor ever discovered was Lucy, a 40% complete skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis. Discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, Lucy is estimated to be 3.2 million years old. Ida is 95% complete and lived a full 40-plus-million years before Lucy.

The nearly perfect preservation of Ida’s remains for such a tremendously long time is due to a very specific set of circumstances. The fossil was discovered in the Messel pit, near Frankfurt, Germany. This pit has been a goldmine for fossil hunters since its discovery. 47 million years ago, the pit was a crater that resulted from an underground steam blast. As this crater filled with water, it created an immensely deep lake. The bottom of the lake was so far removed from sunlight that almost no living thing could exist in the depths, not even the bacteria necessary for decomposition. Because no rivers flowed into or out of the lake, the waters lay very still, making oxygen exchange between the surface and the depths almost nonexistent. Any plant or animal which sank to the bottom of the lake would rest relatively undisturbed until sinking dead algae and sediment covered it. Thus, Ida’s remains were not decomposed before her fossilization began. The fossilization is so complete that the outline of her fur can be seen in the surrounding rock and the contents of her stomach are still visible.

The contributions this discovery could make to modern evolutionary science are staggering. As a paleoanthropology enthusiast, I rushed to the bookstore yesterday and bought The Link, the story of Ida’s discovery and scientific examination. Although I think the title is chosen poorly, since it only reinforces the misconception that there is a “missing link” between monkey and humans and therefore implies that humans evolved from monkes, what I’ve read of the book so far is immensely interesting.

The world is a beautiful and amazing place, procrastinators, and the discovery of Ida proves once again that we are only beginning to understand natural history and the role of our species within it.

Note: While I subscribe to evolutionary theory as the most likely explanation for modern life forms, my fellow Procrastinators may or may not agree. In fact, you yourself may or may not agree. I intend no offense to anyone’s sensibilities.

Let me begin by stating that I’m in my 30s and I hold a degree in English. I read constantly. No genre is safe from my wandering reader’s eye. While I read primarily fiction, I also enjoy biography, essays, poetry, and nonfiction (particularly if it’s scientific). I’m the sort of guy whose friends know that a book is a great gift to give him for pretty much any occasion.

Recently, I read a couple of books that truly surprised me. My surprise was not because of the books’ content; it was because of their genre. Generally, I don’t read “young adult fiction,” mostly because I’m not the target audience. Based on the recommendation of a friend, though, I recently picked up a copy of John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines. I had previously read Green’s other young-adult novel, Looking for Alaska, after receiving it in a Christmas book exchange a couple years ago. I enjoyed Looking for Alaska, but I didn’t love it. Still, I figured that Green’s other novel was probably worth a shot, particularly since most young-adult novels can be read in a matter of a few hours.

As it turns out, An Abundance of Katherines is fantastic! John Green has used the relatively simple guise of young-adult fiction to convey the kinds of themes one might expect from a much more complex and difficult novel. His characters deal with loneliness, wanderlust, betrayal, joy, and even love (which feels surprisingly genuine despite the fact that both the characters and the intended audience are teenagers). I picked up this novel at 11:45 one night, and I finished it about three hours later. It’s that compelling.

The other young-adult novel that blew me away recently was Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I have read a number of Alexie’s “adult” novels, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed each one, particularly Reservation Blues. When I bought Diary, I didn’t realize that it was written for a teen-aged audience, but reading the first few pages made it clear that I had unwittingly stumbled into young-adult fiction once again.

Sherman Alexie is among the nation’s finest Native American authors, and the characters in his books deal with the heartache, the happiness, the loss, and the beauty experienced by Native Americans as they live in both their traditional culture and American culture outside the reservations. Surprisingly, Alexie addresses these same very serious themes in Diary. The novel describes a young man who feels himself divided between his town on the reservation and the nearby white community where he chooses to go to school, partly accepted and partly rejected by each. The book elegantly addresses issues of identity, race, and belonging while remaining hopeful and easy to read.

The world is a heavy place, and we all need a break from it sometimes. Let me recommend finding your next escape in a young-adult novel. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I read.  I’m not just talking about magazines or the daily paper.  I’m talking about books.  Fiction, nonfiction… it doesn’t matter, as long as there are words.  I love the feel of a book in my hand, the musty smell of libraries, the wonderful tactile experience of reading.  My dream vacations usually involve ample time to read.

While buying clearance-rack books at Borders ($3.99, buy one get one free!), I told the bookstore guy that I’ll read anything.  ”God, that’s sexy,” he replied, then blushed a deep shade of crimson and refused to make eye contact with me for the remainder of the transaction.

Sexy or not, it’s nonetheless true.  Looking at our overflowing bookshelves, there are clearly My Books and His Books, things that we’ve purchased for our own reading enjoyment.  The difference is that I will read all of the books, while he sticks to his nonfiction-only repertoire.

This means that in addition to my book club selections like The Time Traveler’s Wife, I’ve also read Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Rigged, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”.  Not to mention my hardcover edition of Anna Karenina, purchased as a souvenir to remind me of my days studying Russian literature in college.  It’s an eclectic collection, to be sure, but that’s what makes it interesting.

I am always looking for suggestions, so feel free to comment and offer up your favorites to add to my nightstand.

It’s real and coming soon to a bookstore near you! Why didn’t I think of this?

From Chronicle Books:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

“Before there was America, there was the Darby Free Library.”

Less than four miles from my childhood home, you will find the Darby Free Library — until the end of the year, anyway.  The oldest continuously operating library in America is facing its demise without outside donations.  

While I’m sure that they hope that someone will write one giant check to cover their expenses, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of a lot of little checks.  So if you would, please, send $5 to the following address:

The Darby Free Library
1001 Main Street
P.O. Box 164
Darby, PA 19023

The Library is a non-profit Pennsylvania Corporation and qualifies as a 501 C-3 Federal tax-deductible organization.  Its story has been profiled in the local media, as well as Boing Boing, The Huffington Post and UPI.

Do it for the history.  Do it for the kids to have a safe place for homework.  Do it so 10,000 local residents will have a place to go for free computer and internet access.  I don’t care what your reason is.  Just do it.

American author John Updike died on the morning of January 27. As soon as I read the headlines announcing his death, my mind immediately transported me to moments in my life when I encountered Updike’s work. As a freshman in college, I was assigned his short story A&P for an entry-level literature course. I distinctly recall sitting in a dimly-lit back corner of the university library and being totally absorbed in the world of the story, cheering for Sammy as he took a stand against his overbearing boss, only to grieve at its futility moments later. The honesty of the characters’ emotions and the depth to which Updike understands human nature made such a distinct impression on me that my reading of A&P stands out in my mind as one of the defining moments of literary life.

Three years and two colleges farther down my road, summer hung heavily upon southern California, and we students hadn’t much to do between classes. We sat inside the air-conditioned Student Union building, mostly, and wiled away the hours in idle chat. Among the most popular topics of these chats was baseball. As I encouraged everyone within earshot to read Malamud’s The Natural, a friend sauntered into the room, recently liberated from a class in Spanish or psychology or some other undergraduate drudgery, and butted into my monologue. “If you want to read good baseball writing,” he told me, “go find Updike’s Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” A few days later, once again enshrined in a university library, while reading Updike’s account of Ted Williams’ career and final game with the Red Sox, I was struck with awe at the grandeur of The Splendid Splinter. Although I’d never seen Williams play and didn’t consider myself a fan, the power of Updike’s words transported me to a time and place that enveloped me as truly and completely as my own memories.

After my years in university libraries finally paid dividends, I found myself in the lucky position of choosing pieces of literature to teach in a 10th-grade English classroom. As I considered characterization, metaphor, and themes to which teenagers could truly relate, I settled upon Updike’s poem Ex-Basketball Player for inclusion in my curriculum. Every year, I watch as students slowly nod their heads, beginning to grasp the metaphor of Pearl Avenue as Flick Webb’s life, the contrast between five “idiot pumps” on each side of the gas station and the five graceful athletes Flick once called his teammates, Flick’s disillusionment as he stares into the tiny, silent bleachers filled with dimestore candies. Even to the teenaged mind, Updike is good.

Those who are familiar with Updike’s work have undoubtedly noticed that I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of his accomplishments, and I confess that I have no intentions of doing so. These three pieces are all I have read of Updike’s voluminous contribution to American letters, but they are enough to convince me that we have lost a master today.