Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen

Why I read it: Carl Hiaasen is my one nod to genre fiction.

Podcasts: Surprisingly, there were no podcasts about this book.

Brow: The 'a bunch of wackos go on a crime spree in South Florida' genre cannot possibly rank above low brow by its very nature.

Summary: Well, there are wackos. And they go on a crime spree. Specifically, a tourist on a fishing expedition reels in a severed arm, setting off a chain of events that will eventually involve murder, Medicare fraud, and a monkey that starred in the Pirates of the Caribbean.

What I liked about it: I first discovered Carl Hiaasen's works in Thailand, where the worst thing that could ever happen to me happened: I ran out of reading material. This is also how I ended up reading all the Harry Potter books in four sleepless days. The first of his books that I picked up was Striptease, which is probably also the best of his books. Either that or I liked it best because I was new to the genre. Nonetheless, I kept reading his books because they're the one form of printed material that I can pick up and consume without thinking too hard.

What I didn't like about it: Alas, even though Hiassen has been writing books about the destruction of Florida by corrupt politicians and rich people and the few brave souls who try to stand up for them since 1986, his books are not nearly as good as Dave Barry's on the subject. Unfortunately, Barry has only written 3, and there was a 10 year gap in between two of them.

The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri

Why I chose it: Western Canon, numerous other book lists

Podcasts: Sidney Greats Lecture Series, but there are tons of others, especially if you focus only on the Inferno.

Brow: The highest of high. The only way you could get higher-brow than this is if you read it in 14th-century Tuscan.

Summary: Dante gets lost in the woods the night before Good Friday. While he's wandering, he's assailed by beasts and unable to find the trail back to Florence. Eventually he's rescued by the poet Virgil, who takes him through the underworld, starting at the top, where people who didn't do anything in life are stuck in hell's waiting room, to the very bottom, where Satan is torturing Judas Iscariot. Along the way, he happens to notice quite a few of his and his clan's enemies also being punished for their various transgressions. After climbing down Satan's fur, our heroes emerge in Purgatory, which the Catholic church had to invent so that little babies who never had a chance to be baptised wouldn't be roasting alive in hellfire and brimstone for all eternity. Here he finds excommunicated people and those who committed the seven deadly sins, a surprising number of whom are still his enemies. Finally, he's handed over to his ex, Beatrice, who died young. She escorts him into heaven, where he finds exemplars of the seven virtues, oddly including many of his friends. At the very end, he sees god and finally works out how Jesus can be human and divine, and learns to align his soul with god's love. Then on the Wednesday after Easter he gets sent back to earth to write his poem.

What I liked about it: The Inferno is fun, with lots of imagery of the punishments various sinners, including a pope who was involved in an incident in which various nobles couldn't decide who the next pope should be and ended up appointing three, each of whom immediately excommunicated the others. In the Inferno, he's face-down in a hole with his feet being burnt. But just like the bible, it's much more fun to dream up tortures for people than it is to think about how awesome paradise would be. Also, after a few cantos of torture, you've kind of got it. It's hard to imagine anyone who isn't a serious book nerd or a literary historian getting much pleasure out of Purgatory or Paradiso.

What I didn't like about it: I had been led to believe that this is one of THE great works of western literature and if you're serious about reading, you must put this on your list. As a consequence, I expected it to be good, like Faust. Instead, it's a mostly boring list of what happens to Dante's friends and enemies in the afterlife. Unless you're up to date about 14th century Florentine politics or you have a superhuman ability to remember who is a Guelph and who is a Ghibelline and which one Dante is, it's very hard to see why anyone would be interested in vast sections of this book.

The Dark Room, Rachel Seiffert

Why I chose it: Shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize

Podcasts: None

Brow: with the probable exception of the Amises, I'd say that just about every book that makes it onto a Booker list is in the Upper Middle range at the least.

Summary: Three novellas all set in Germany, all dealing with World War II. In the first story, Helmut is a young patriot photographer in Berlin in the 1930s. He uses his art to document the city up to the end of the war. In the second story, Lore is a 14 year old girl living in Bavaria. Her Nazi parents have been arrested and placed in internment camps and it is up to her to get her four younger siblings all the way across Germany to her grandmother's house in Hamburg. Along the way the children are assisted by Thomas, a mysterious stranger. In the final story, set in the 1990s, Micha becomes obsessed with finding out about his grandfather's role in the war, to the detriment of his family life.


What I liked about it: I quite like this exploration of political and economic upheaval on ordinary lives and its lasting effects even unto the third generation. I was particularly affected by the story of young Lore and her desperate quest to find food and shelter as she moves her siblings through occupied Germany.

What I didn't like about it: The main character in the final story, Micha, is incredibly, hopefully deliberately frustrating. As he dithers about asking a Belorussian collaborator about the extent of his grandfather's role in the country's devastation during the war, you just want to reach onto the page and strangle him.

Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock

Why I read it: Western Canon

Podcasts: None

Brow: Middle to Upper, depending how many of the references you get.

Summary: This is the book about nothing. If Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George had been a bunch of unlikeable narcissistic Romantic poets instead of unlikeable narcissistic New Yorkers, they would have fit right in. Sir Christopher Glowry and his son Scythorpe spend most of the plot either sitting in their dining room or sitting in their living room having absurd conversations with their friends about various Gothic tropes: suicide, ghosts, regeneration and secret societies. There's also a subplot about Scythorpe being in love with two women and having to hide one in the closet, then getting dumped by both. Your basic-cable sitcom, but written in the 19th century.

What I liked about it: I'm a sucker for satire and the Romantics are ripe for it. It's also really fun to see how many of the references you get, à la The Simpsons.

What I didn't like about it: Alas, it's an epic failure of the Bechdel Test.

Le rouge et le noir, George Stendhal

Pourquoi je l'ai lu: Harold Bloom's Western Canon, Philip Ward's A Lifetime's Reading

Baladodiffusions: Collège de France

Brow: High. Smug if you read it in French. High-brow and low-brow don't translate, which is why this is in English.

Résumé: Julien est un jeune homme pauvre qui veut réussir pendant la Restauration. Contrairement à l'époque napoléonien, il ne peut pas trouver le succès dans l'armée, donc il essaie l'eglise catholique, malgré son manque de religiosité. Donc le titre: le rouge pour la guerre, le noir pour la robe d'un prêtre. Partout, Julien découvre l'hypocrisie de la bourgeoisie: qu'ils mentent pour gagner l'approbation des autres. Julien adopte leurs moyens progressivement. Enfin, il séduit une jeune femme, Mathilde de la Mole, la fille d'un marquis. Mais son première amour, Mme de Renal, la seul femme qu'il adore, écrit une lettre qui détruit sa vie. Il tire sur Mme de Renal dans une eglise et il est imprisonné, où il retrouve le bonheur.

Ce que j'ai aimé: Julien est un personnage sympathique: un jeune homme qui ne peut pas réussir avec son talent et travail, mais seulement par s'adopter à sa culture.

Ce que je n'ai pas aimé: Même que la prose de Stendhal est assez claire pour un locuteur non-natif, comprendre le contexte française est difficile.

Carry Me Down, MJ Hyland

Why I read it: It was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2006


Podcasts: None

Brow: Upper middle

Summary: John is an 11 year old Irish boy living in some unspecified time before the advent of the internet or mobile phones in the 20th century. When the book starts, he's happily reading in the kitchen with his mum and dad during Christmas break. As the daylight wanes, his father stands up to drown some kittens and we learn that John and his parents are living tensely with John's grandmother, who is returning from the horse races later that day. As John watches his father kill the kittens, he comes to the striking realisation that he is psychic and can tell when people are lying. He spends the rest of the book trying to demonstrate his powers to the people around them and to contact the Guiness Book of World Records to get himself included. Meanwhile, the world around him collapses, which may be partially his fault.

What I liked about it: It's a very tense family drama about an odd 11 year old who doesn't quite understand what's going on around him, but whose actions nevertheless have an enormous impact on those around him.

What I didn't like about it: I was frustrated by the lack of information about the characters' motivations. For example, is John actually an 11 year old sociopath? The book doesn't answer the question. Maybe I'm too literal-minded, but I prefer my books to end unambiguously.

The Dinner, by Herman Koch

Reason for reading: Salon review

Podcasts: None

Brow: Low to middle in Europe, middle to high outside Europe

Summary: Paul Lohman and his wife Claire have met for dinner with his brother Serge, a politician likely to be elected Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and his wife Babette. The ostensible reason for the dinner is to discuss the heinous crime their sons have committed and how to deal with the potential aftermath if it is discovered.

What I liked about it: I love a good unreliable narrator, and Paul is a shining exemplar. When we first meet him, he appears to be a normal, middle-class Dutchman, which is to say very normal indeed. But as the evening progresses and we're privy to his cynical thoughts and revelations about the restaurant his brother has chosen, Dutch people who love rural France, his own past, and what he discovered on his son's phone just before he left that evening, we find out just how far he's prepared to go to keep his family's secrets hidden.

Also, because I live in the Netherlands and therefore among the Dutch, it's always fun to hear them being self-critical.

What I didn't like about it: There is very little to dislike about this book if you're a fan of dark parodies like me.