This weeks issue of the Wilamette Week has an article about the thriving Pirate Industry globally as well as in the local Portland, Ore. area.

We also have our Portland Pirate Festival coming up in Sept. 20th and 21st. I still have enough time to fine a decent outfit.

The Book Pirate’s Musings on…

Audiobooks

I have recently found myself in a weird place: Klamath Falls, Ore. According to Wikipedia KF has a population on 20,720 and was originally called Linkville. It’s really boring here. When I first arrived I went looking for a used bookstore that according to Google was along Main street. The only thing I found when I located the address was a giant sign in the window that read “For Lease”. I took this 5 1/2 hour drive down from Portland to visit my family. Since a drive that long could be considered “5 1/2 hours of doing nothing” I opted for the audiobook route that most people take on road trips.

I remember when I was younger driving down to southern California with my parents and siblings and packed inside a minivan. This was back in the day when cassette tapes were still pretty nifty. To make the 8 hour drive go by faster, and to prevent an all out backseat battle between us kids, we listened to audiobooks. At the time my reading selections mainly focused on Goosebumps or Choose Your Own Adventure books, so it was a rare treat that I would get exposed to adult novels. One in particular that stood out was Peter Benchley’s The Beast or maybe just Beast . Basically it was about a giant squid that ate people or something. Benchley seemed to have been stuck in a writing rut and wrote solely about animals eating people. He also wrote Jaws .

During my 5 1/2 hour drive down to KF, I decided to listen to Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency . The only other Adams’ books that I have read are the required Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series which I am still waiting to be turned in to a college credit class. I think now that I have transitioned from 8 year old in the back seat wish I had a GameBoy to a 23 year old driving while trying not to fall asleep, something about the allure of an audiobook has changed. I have become a more avid reader in those short 15 years. When I read I am actively looking at sentence structure, noting the word usage, and the gaps in between paragraphs. Needless to say, the audiobook loses something in the transition from paper to cassette (or in my most resent case, iPod).

However, I have listened to Augusten Burroughs’ Possible Side Effects (before reading the book) and Magical Thinking (after reading the book). I enjoyed both of these very much mainly because they were read by the author and didn’t deal with the constant switch from character to character. Burroughs’ books felt more like someone was telling me a story instead of being read one which I think is a pretty important aspect of audiobooks. With audiobooks you can’t easily go back a few sentences and reread something you may have missed. It’s important to listen carefully to the words being spoken to you. Because of this, I have concluded that audiobooks are horrible is you are the driver but pretty damn okay if you are the passenger.

Blurb for the back cover:
"a satirical look at QVC type networks and consumerism in America"

Sellevision is the only attempt at fiction that Augusten Burroughs , of Running With Scissors and Dry fame, has sadly made. I say this because I really enjoyed this book. Having read all of his memoir books (with the exception of his newest A Wolf at the Table ), I had put off reading this one because all his other books were so interesting how could a fiction possible hold up in comparison I thought. Luckily it holds up very well.

This is the story about Max Andrews who after a freak spilled coffee accident exposes himself to America’s children while hosting a live shopping special on the fiction Sellevision TV network. Then there is fellow Sellevision host Peggy Jean Smythe who is too wrapped up trying to deal with her internet stalker that she doesn’t notice the amount of time her husband is spending with their children’s babysitter. Plus the head of Sellevision is having an affair with its up-and-coming host Leigh who is tired of waiting for him to divorce his wife to being with her. And Bebe who finds the man of her drinks on the internet.

This is really four different stories the weave in and out of each other and occasionally overlap each other. Each plot is very funny and the drama never gets boring. It almost feels like a daytime television soap opera. But when it gets down to it this is a satirical look at QVC type networks and consumerism in America.

I kind of hope Augusten Burroughs’ life stops being interesting so he can stop writing memoirs and return to writing fiction. Sellevision reminded me of Christopher Moore’s earlier work which is not a bad thing.

Entertainment Weekly has taken up the task of selecting the best “new classic” books of the last 25 years. While I’m hesitant of the reliablity of a periodical that names Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as #2 (please, Prisoner of Azkaban was far surperior) and one that considers The Da Vinci Code (please, Angels and Demons was far surperior) as a classic. I’d rather get my “new classics” from a source that doesn’t use book reviews to fill up the space between advertisments for TV shows.

Either way, check it out here.

Blurb for the back cover:
“I really wanted to bitch slap the protagonist across the face”

Candy Everybody Wants is Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s first attempt as fiction following his memoir with I Am Not Myself These Days. It’s a coming of age story that follows Jayson as he is forced to leave home and live with his mysterious father in New York. Once there he falls in love and tries to make in big in Hollywood, a dream that he believes is his destiny. But as he rises to fame, he will have to deal with the family that casted him out, a boy from his past, and as always the ups and downs of love.

This story takes place in the 80′s which everybody seems to mention when talking about this book. Personally I didn’t really get the 80′s vibe from it. Maybe I am too young to catch the nuances of that particular decade. After all I was only alive for half of it. This made me realize that in a few years we’re going to be flooded with books that take place in the 90′s and I’ll finally be able to understand books that are filled with cultural references. Slap bracelets. Pogs. Neon. I welcome their return.

I had a fun time reading this book. It was my first post-school term book and I was aching for something fun to read. This was a book that I found enjoyable until the later half of the book when Jayson the main character started to piss me off and I really wanted to bitch slap the protagonist across the face and talk some common sense in to him. I guess that’s a good thing. You know, feeling connected to the characters and whatnot.

I tried really hard while reading this book to not compare it to IANMTD. They are different books I kept telling myself but the plots seemed similar and with a couple of subtle changes CEW could easily be changed in to a prequel of IANMTD. But speaking of sequels, this book ended in such a fashion that I felt that there was still a lot more story to tell about Jayson and now, as much as I hate to encourage sequels, I want a follow up to this book. Maybe Jayson in his early 20′s. Please?

JKP also raises goats on a farm in his spare time. His Myspace has pictures so go check those out.

Blurb for the back cover:
"Part pulp fiction, part mystery"

Motherless Brooklyn is the heartwarming tale about a little orphan who is forced to come to terms with the sudden death of the only man he considered a father figure.

Sorta.

Lionel Essrog is in fact an orphan. His father figured has passed himself away in the form of being stabbed and left in a dumpster. And if by “come to terms” I meant “hunts down the men responsible”, then I wouldn’t have been far off in my description.

And so begins the tale of Motherless Brooklyn. Part pulp fiction, part mystery. This book was one of the books I was required to read this past school term (and that I finished). It was refreshing and interesting which was a pleasant surprise for school reading. While not quite as gritty and other pulp fiction books I have read, it does lend itself well to that genre. The story takes place in the 1950′s (if I recall correctly) and lends itself well to being timeless. Mystery books these days tend to clutter up the fun detective work with CSI like technology. This book takes place in a time before fingerprints were invented.

The characters in this book really stand out. Lionel, for example, has tourettes syndrome. The reader is often strung along with his thoughts, a series of nonsensical words or various tics, which make Lionel a really interesting protagonist because he stands out from everybody else. But all the other characters who share this novel are all distinct and are worth companions to Lionel.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this book and I am interesting in checking out more of Jonathan Lethem ‘s books.

Blurb for the back cover:
“quite ordinary”

I’ve read a lot of modern memoirs in my day. They tend to be tales about people living an unusual life. However, I quiet figure out Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life. It’s quite ordinary compared to other memoirs.

Tobias Wolff I know is considered in high regard around the literary circuit. He’s written short stories, won awards, and recently put out the book Our Story Begins. What I don’t get is why we should care about his childhood. Why did his story need to be a memoir?

Now, in contrast and here is where I get confused, I liked This Boy’s Life. The story may not have been anything special but it was fun to read. Tobias explores his childhood as he deals with his mom’s boyfriends and later husband. Not a perfect child by any means, he precedes to get in to trouble that is stereotypical of any teenager: drinking, sneaking out, etc. To me this book never takes itself seriously and has no drastic conflict other than Tobias versus other people who see him as a trouble maker.

The book ends abruptly and seems rushed towards the end. There is a follow-up memoir, In Pharaoh’s Army, which from what I gather picks up where this book leaves off.

In the end, I don’t understand the purpose of this book, but once I got over that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So far this is my summer reading pile:

I know that there are one of two more books yet to be published that will be added to this pile. Originally this pile contained fewer books, then I made the mistake of taking a shortcut through Powells and came out the other end with two new books in my hands.