Kevin->Write(thoughts, browser, time)

For those of you who are just joining us LIVE* from ordinary.story, welcome, and please note that the concept for my booklist project was stolen from the best blog in the English-speaking world, IMHO, defective yeti.

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Finished 12/24. Ok, I'm going to go right into predictions for book 7. Dumbledore might be dead; he might not be dead. Snape might be evil; he might be good. A combinatory all up in here Punnet-square style gives us:
a. Dumbledore dead and Snape Evil (slack-jawed pessimist view; most obvious view given events)
b. Dumbledore alive and Snape Good (Rosy-cheeked optimist view; least obvious view given events)
c. Dumbledore alive and Snape Evil (Ultimate Good v. Evil Cage Match Throw-down)
d. Dumbledore dead and Snape Good (My view)

For answers, we look, as we should with most things, to Star Wars, Episodes IV-VI. Dumbledore is Ben Kenobi. If Ben Kenobi lives after IV, then V-VI are about the conflict between Vader and Kenobi, not about Vader and Luke, because Kenobi is still the master. The movie is about Luke, though. The book is about Potter. Dumbledore has to get out of the way.
Snape is, of course, Vader. Kenobi/Dumbledore knew that there was still good in Vader/Snape; he's too powerful to have screwed that up. At the climax of the book, Snape returns to the side of the good and helps Potter throw Voldemort down the conveniently gaping Death Star ventilation shaft. Snape being the Half-Blood Prince is just icing on the cake.

Finished 12/23. Reccommended by E. W. Robbins: "John Corey is my favorite character ever." Strong words. Dectective story on Long Island. I can't stand the sexual objectification of every woman who crosses Mr. Corey's path, but that's standard procedure for this genre. Corey's kind've an asshole; leaking testosterone as he starts verbal battles just to show who's boss. Witty cop banter: not done skillfully enough. Fast read. Plot heavy and character poor; also S.O.P. for your male sex/mystery dollar. All together now? Meh.

Books Ranked Thus Far*
1. The Time Traveller's Wife, Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Clarke
3. The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon
4. The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn
5. The Blind Assassin, Atwood
6. The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq
7. House of Leaves, Danielewski
8. Brideshead Revisted, Waugh
9. Exploring New Ethics For Survival, Hardin
10. Blue Blood, Conlon
11. Gringos, Portis
12. the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, Haddon
13. The Hunt For Red October, Clancy (Umpteenth reading, could easily be higher)
14. Little Children, Perotta
15. Oracle Night, Auster
16. Into Thin Air, Krakauer
17. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Saunders
18. Plum Island, DeMille
19. Oryx and Crake, Atwood
20. Fermata, Baker
21. How To Be Alone, Franzen
22. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Malkiel
23. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark
24. Pattern Recognition, Gibson
25. Sphere, Crichton (fourth reading...could be five to ten spots higher if this were the first time)
26. The Book on Bush, Alterman and Brooks
27. Savage Love, Savage
28. The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Neal Pollack.
29. Design For The Real World, Papanek (technically unfinished)
30. Sports Guy, Pierce

*Rankings to Appear Every Third Book

Finished 12/19. Another Pulitzer prize winner(as was The Blind Assasin), this is, unsurprisingly, another very good book that is sort of about a duo of comic book auteurs. There's a lot to say about this book. The biggest thing about it for me, and I don't think necessarily this would be the case for everyone, is that it is an issue book. The Jews and the Nazis. Freedom versus familial obligation. Homosexuality. Escape; and escape from escape, and escape from escape from escape, and so forth. Chabon winds compelling characters into these themes and each other with a pace that evokes the linear, structured panels of the comic books that are the glue of the book. Read.

On another note, these four reviews have been a real struggle for me to write. I've been analyzing arguments and writing with as much clinical precision as I can muster all quarter, and I'm having a lot of difficulty shifting gears and finding the lighter voice that has been a hallmark throughout this blog. I'm not used to having to smash out my writing, and I'm sorry for the hackery. It's back to the philosophical grind(not derogatory, it's incredible, but it is a grind. I do good work in philosophy, but I have to scrounge for it) in two weeks, so not much time to get on track. I'll try.

Finished 12/12. This is an excellent book; apparently I started out with the wrong Atwood work. It's a between-the-wars tale of two debutante sisters, as the old money of their family slowly crumbles through the depression and they are forced to make their way in the world, but it's more than this and less. One of them writes the book within the book, The Blind Assasin, which is written in compellingly spare first personese. Extremely vivid characters and functional dialogue. A real storytellers story, more so than any book on the list so far. Recommended.

Finished 12/10 or thereabouts. I love The Corrections. Love love love it. Annie recommended it to me back in the day; that girl knows books(Hi Annie! Hope you're alive and well!). Mr. Franzen also published a piece, entitled "Kevinwrites Doesn't Precisely Remember the Title But It Had Something To Do With Birds, Though the Essay Itself Had To Do More With Other Things," in an October 05 New Yorker. I enjoyed this very much also. So, with my brand spanking new Columbus Library card(since lost, along with the rest of my wallet, in St. Louis), I checked out this bad boy and just read the fuck out of it. And it was disappointing. Whiny personal essays. Well crafted. Not funny enough. Slightly annoying liberal yammering. Possibly I am just burned out on his style. Meh.

Books Ranked Thus Far*
1. The Time Traveller's Wife, Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Clarke
3. The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn
4. The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq
5. House of Leaves, Danielewski
6. Brideshead Revisted, Waugh
7. Exploring New Ethics For Survival, Hardin
8. Blue Blood, Conlon
9. Gringos, Portis
10. the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, Haddon
11. The Hunt For Red October, Clancy (Umpteenth reading, could easily be higher)
12. Little Children, Perotta
13. Oracle Night, Auster
14. Into Thin Air, Krakauer
15. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Saunders
16. Oryx and Crake, Atwood
17. Fermata, Baker
18. How To Be Alone, Franzen
19. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Malkiel
20. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark
21. Pattern Recognition, Gibson
22. Sphere, Crichton (fourth reading...could be five to ten spots higher if this were the first time)
23. The Book on Bush, Alterman and Brooks
24. Savage Love, Savage
25. The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Neal Pollack.
26. Design For The Real World, Papanek (technically unfinished)
27. Sports Guy, Pierce

*Rankings to Appear Every Third Book

Um, the quarter ended. Fiction time!
This book is published by McSweeneys, and is living proof that not everything Dave Eggers touches turns to gold. A send-up of pompous assholian first-person travel writing, the one joke wears thin from page six. Mr. Eggers might argue that it's supposed to be bad, you see, but I'm not riding that train. Pass.