Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

To try to summarize this book would be nearly impossible. Much like one of my other favorites, John Irving, Wallace employs the use of sub-plot to the extreme. The majority of the action takes place in the span of merely a month, and focuses on Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman.

Lenore, by birthright, is of privilege. She chooses to distance herself from her father's business by working as a switchboard operator. Her boss is also her lover (whom she obviously doesn't love), Ric Vigorous (who's firm is aptly named Frequent & Vigorous), and they both seek the counsel of Dr. Jay. Jay is a strict adherent to the fictitious Norman Bombardini, and we get to see the transcripts of the couples' individual sessions.

Contributing to the insanity of Lenore's life (as well as the story of this book) are her roommate, Candy Mandible, her bird Vlad the Impaler, her drug dealing brother (who keeps his stash in his prosthetic leg), and her great-grandmother whom has gone missing from her nursing home with 24 other residents. A veritable smorgasbord of supporting players also take on larger parts throughout. Wallace's ability to weave so many secondary characters into people the reader cares about is a gift.

Much like this review, Wallace's first novel is uneven...just when I caught myself dancing with the story, the story started walking, trotting, then running, sometimes even eclipsing itself. But with "purple fists of longing" and "shadows of licorice," I will most likely find myself dancing with Wallace again and again.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

I recently finished working on a show, and have started auditioning again, which found me digging through old stuff in search of new monologues. In my pile of scripts, there is Virginia Woolf.

I served as assistant director on this show back in the 90s, with an uber-talented group. We were tight-knit and virtually lived and breathed this script for the requisite 2 months...and then some. I'd challenge that anyone who's worked on this show has found themselves transformed. It's the kind of haunting material that seeps into your being.

Disturbing, lyrical, and filled with the stream-of-consciousness that Woolf is famously known for, I found myself hearing the voices and being wrapped up in the movement of the story. Albee created a world that is absolutely a tribute to Woolf (so much so that the screenplay for the 1966 film changed only two lines-and that purely for the sake of location). This is art.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

(another read-inside-of-one-day, it's a book that perhaps speaks for itself...these are some things underlined in my copy. and i feel compelled to italicize almost all of it.)

"What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream."

"We know what we want to do, but our afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey."

"The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times."

"Once we have overcome the defeats -- and we always do -- we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life."

"Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day."

"If you believe yourself worthy...you understand why you are here."

"And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering."

"Here I am, between my flock and my treasure, the boy thought. He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have."

"For her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises."

"Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else."

"This wasn't a strange place; it was a new one."

"And maybe it wasn't that they were teaching me, but that I was learning from them."

"Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure...the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn't matter."

"When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision."

"When something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well."

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

When I read this as an elementary school kid, it made me cry. That's all I really remember. So when I saw it used for $1, I had to pick it up again. While reading it, no less than 3 people noticed and commented that they loved this book, too. This time I read it basically unaffected. (Although, thinking of it now, I realize that this Newberry winner is one that makes me wish I still had a fifth grade reading group...those kids would certainly make some connections that would make me beam.)

Sara is fourteen. And awkward. Obvious, right? Although, unlike most teenagers, Sara confronts her lack of dexterity head-on. Her ungainly feet cause her as much discomfort as her dysfunctional family. Her older sister, Wanda, is beautiful and unsympathetic. Her parents are both absent, leaving Aunt Willie to care for the sisters and Charlie, their mentally impaired brother.

Used to routine and amorous of his older sisters, Charlie is intrigued when the swans migrate to a nearby lake. One night, Charlie wanders off in the wee hours seeking the comfort of the peaceful figures. The community's search for the missing boy teaches Sara many things she thought she already knew.

Phantoms by Chad Simpson

Last night I was exhausted. I'd finished a book earlier in the day, and was (am) in the middle of another two. But what I really wanted was sleep. So I put on Miles Davis Kind of Blue and started my nightly routine. Sure to be asleep within minutes, I picked up these very short stories-hoping to make it through one. The first paragraph caught me thinking about how short story writing is a specific talent. Next thing I know, Kind of Blue is over. And I'd read all nine of the stories.

Chad Simpson is one of these specific talents. I found him through my friend Ben's bookstore. In Galesburg. Simpson teaches at Knox, lives in Monmouth. Oh, and as been published in Esquire and McSweeney's. Bingo.

Huh. The last few weeks have found my tastes changing. Poems and short stories. Who knew?

The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb answered 10 questions for TIME magazine, and I found myself intrigued. This seemed to be a jumping point for me to try to expand my reading horizons, so to speak, and I immediately went to the bookstore and read this. I was disappointed that there wasn't a history of Procrustes. I was also disappointed that the chapter entitled "Matters Ontological" was only one page. Here are some of the aphorisms that struck a chord with me....and I think this would be a fantastic book for discussion. If you've read it, let me know.

"Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry."

"Conscious ignorance, if you practice it, expands your world; it can make things infinite."

"Love without sacrifice is like theft."

"Corollary to Moore's Law: every ten years, collective wisdom degrades by half."

"You exist in full if and only if your conversation (or writing) cannot easily be reconstructed with clips from other conversations."

"People are so prone to overcausation that you can make the reticent turn loquacious by dropping an occassional 'Why?' in the conversation."

Sylvia and Ted by Emma Tennant

Being that Plath is one of my favorite authors, I picked this for our book club. Being that I've read all of Sylvia's journals, I borderline detested this book.

Always seeming to try too hard, making too many metaphors by using too many symbols....always an octave above or below what I know Plath would do herself.

Therefore, this will be short: If you're attempting to account for the lives of two of the most beloved writers on either side of the pond, make sure it'll be worthy of the tastes you know your audience will have.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Borroughs and Jack Kerouac

Burroughs and Keroauc? Written in 1945? Sign me up. And then let me down. It should be said that I have never been a big fan of On the Road; it didn't inspire me.

I was expecting to be awed by the exploration these two put forth of New York City and the early culture they experienced at the dawn of the Beats...alas, this was choppy and mundane. "We went here. We did this. Then we walked over here and did some of that." Seriously? Apparently these burgeoning kings of culture literally walked from bar to bar, drank a lot of beer on other peoples' dimes and then staggered from apartment to apartment. All this while being disenchanted with their company and not being impressed by their closest friends.

My biggest disappointment came from the expectations set from the back cover. Touted as a murder mystery (based on real events witnessed by WLB and JK) that questions bigger issues, I found neither very riveting. Especially since the questions posed were so vague they didn't even elicit a second thought, let alone deeper ones. Bah.

My one compliment does speak to the writing. The chapters alternate voices, and the two characters were fully formed with distinct characteristics that also blended seamlessly with one another, flowing from one to the other.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

If you know Sarah Vowell, then you know why I picked this up when I saw it at the thrift store. If you don't, then I'll explain a bit: Vowell is a NPR contributor that is obsessed with historical pop cultural. For this book, she travels all across America exploring virtually every spot associated with the assassinations of three American Presidents. Take away the superlative aspect of this book, and the history is not something that I would normally be drawn to read. I thought Sarah would ease me into the uncomfortable endeavor I'm starting-attempting to read outside of my basic genres.

From the preface: "The egomania required to be president or a presidential assassin makes the two types brothers of sorts. Presidents and presidential assassins are like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City that way. Even though one city is all about sin and the other is all about salvation, they are identical one-dimensional company towns built up out of the desert by the sheer will of true believers." Basically, Vowell's humor and enchantment with the mundane takes her (and the reader) on enough tangents to make 258 pages of history palatable for me.

The assassinations she investigates are those of LIncoln, Garfield and McKinley. Lest you think it's an in-and-out visit to the murder sites, be warned that she travels to the Mutter Museum simply to view a piece of John Wilkes Booth's flesh that has been kept for posterity (along with a piece of LBJ's gallbladder and a cancerous growth from the cheek of Grover Cleveland). She's nuts. But her fascination is fascinating.

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

Like Williams and Eliot earlier this season, I'm cheating by going to Angelou. Or rather, I'm cheating you by posting a "review" here. Maya Angelou doesn't pop up early on my list of favorites, or sometimes even at all. Which is ridiculous, as I was reminded one night as I grabbed this from the living room.

Whether swallowed whole and digested in one sitting or taken in slowly and ruminated upon for days, this volume has a profound effect on me. Angelou's words point out who I once was, who I am now....and how those two people have grown together and apart over the years. These words quickly revive the brazen fire of my youth, applaud the confidence of my character and encourage the quiet strength that I've let lie dormant for too long.