I finished Mark Kurlansky’s The Basque History of the World yesterday and thought I should at least comment on it. I enjoyed the book, even though it took me some time to read it. I seem to have started about 5 books at once, so I had to eventually decide to just finish them in order. Anyway, the book was a nice but brief history of the Basques. I knew very little about them other than what I have read in the paper. Apparently (though I am not surprised), what the Europeans and Americans write about in the papers is mostly biased. They are not the ‘terrorist’ group that we hear about. At least it is not that simple. Kurlansky writes well and clearly likes the subject. He has a tendency to meander so that you forget what the original point was he was trying to make. It would also have been helpful to include a short time line and a short glossary of Euskadi terms that he uses frequently. I liked that he included some of the traditional recipes in several chapters and he seemed to get a good feel for the culture. The Basques now seem like a distinct and intriguing ethnic group to me, whereas before I just lumped them in with the Spanish. But I imagine that is part of the Basque problem. They have a very nice website full of information on the Basque country and culture. I feel a newfound respect for their culture. After all, if it were not for the Basque, we would not have espadrilles.

I came across this piece in the Guardian in which the people behind the women- only Orange prize (which is announced tonight by the way) discover what are the British public’s most favorite books. Every year, people come out with these lists of ‘essential reads’ or ‘things you should have on your bookcase or your an idiot’ type things. Usually I just scan the list, say ‘Huh.’ and move on to the next web page. This one however actually is a good list. Granted they only surveyed 500 people, but they came up with some really good titles:
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
Faith Singer by Rosie Scott
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Fred and Edie by Jill Dawson
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
Hotel World by Ali Smith
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Misery by Stephen King
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Money by Martin Amis
Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Riders by Jilly Cooper
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Rabbit Books by John Updike
The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
Tracey Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Unless by Carol Shields
What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
White Teeth by Zadie Smith

See? Good stuff on this list—Murakami, Welsh, Pullman. I love the His Dark Materials trilogy. Its much better than Harry Potter, though I did enjoy the Potter books as well. Anyway, maybe I will have to read some of the ones on this list I have not gotten to yet, such as Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty (never heard of this actually).

Aloft is set in the bland world of middle class Long Island. The protagonist Jerry Battle seems to be caught in a life crisis. He has coasted through life, much like the plane he loves to fly, but will only take up in perfect weather. Jerry has retired from the family landscaping business and now flies his plane and works part time at a travel agency. His son Jack has taken over the family business. Jerry admits that he is not a great man, being selfish and remote, needing attention so much so that his girlfriend of twenty years has left him months earlier. You learn that his Korean wife Daisy, who may have been manic depressive, died having mixed xanax and beer and swimming.

The plane represents Jerry’s detachment from his life. His relationship with his children Jack and Theresa is pretty shallow. He seems to coast through life as an observer. And it is intertesing to see how events can be interpreted by parent and child. At a dinner party thrown for Theresa and her fiance Paul, they discuss Jerry’s cooking abilities particularly right after the death of Daisy. Someone asks why he didn’t have Jack cook and the Theresa responds that Jerry was afraid it would feminize hm. “The fact of the matter was I didn’t want Jack to have to think of his dead mother every night, at least in a ritualized way, which in my thinking was sure to happen if he had to don an apron and fry up hamburgers. For a year or so after she dies he hardly said a word, he was just a kid with eyes, and as Theresa seemed the sturdier of the two in almost all respects, I made an executive decision to have him do other chores like repainting the back fence and rakingleaves and hosing out the garbarge cans, which he never once complained about, and I like to think it was the bracing physical activity that eventually snapped him out of it, though I probably mistaken on that one.”

Much of the dialogue seems unnatural, but Lee does make some great observations on the world, particularly on the mcmansions and spending habits of the upper middle class. To drive the book, Lee creates some events that are forcing Jerry out of his lifelong stupor. His girlfriend Rita has left him and is poised to marrry someone else. His father is fast slipping into old age. His daughter Theresa simultaneously finds out she is pregnant and has cancer. But they all seem like acts in a play, maybe showing how sterile modern suburban life can be. Some of the book feels forced, and you often find yourself wondering who is going to play certain characters in the movie. But there are some beautiful passages too: “And in the strangely comforting darkness I see not some instant flashign slide show of my finally examined and thus remorseful life but the simply framed picture of Theresa’s suggested grouping not in the least difficult to delimit or define, all our gentle players arrayed, with scant or even nothing of me in mind. I’ll go solo no more, no more.” Chang-Rae Lee’s portrait of the Battle family includes some wry and poignant observations that make rise above a melodramatic plot.

Here is a list of more reviews of this book if you are interested.

I know that a new editor has taken over at the NYT Book Review recently. It was a big deal on all the bookblogs. I did read the whole thing last week and I appreciate some of the new subtle changes he has made. There were several more fiction reviews, a nice piece on new erotic fiction by Emily Nussbaum, a nice take down of David Brooks, and just some good book choices. Included was a review of Kent Haruf’s Eventide, his follow up to . It was a good review in my opinion, agreeing with some of the things I had thought but articulated in a better way. But today, they have another review of Eventide, this time by Michiko Kakutani, everyone’s favorite cranky reviewer. What gives? Why give so much space to a mediocre book, especially one that you know many other newspapers and other Plainsongpublications are going to review? I seriously want an answer, so if anyone has an opinion, go ahead and give it. I personally would rather see them review more books, rather than review the same books twice. I remember they did the same with Joseph Wilson’s book The Politics of Truthas well.