So I realize I missed the boat on this one by about 6 years, but I was sick, in Kyoto, and had nothing else to read, so I picked it up as “theme reading.” It’s just great (I know, that’s what everyone was saying 6 years ago). Well-told story, melancholy but not really depressing, interesting insight into Japan’s development in the 20th century. After finishing it, I dragged Sam to the geisha district in Kyoto and found the theater and teahouses mentioned in the book.

I have an unhealthy obsession with this book, and read parts of it every day. I have memorized large sections. I want to do almost everything in it, including the things I’ve already done. What if I die before I see all 1,000? I get mad at the book for omitting certain things, or for including too many English manors, or because the entry on San Francisco should be longer. Am I wasting my time if I travel to a place that isn’t in the book? And why isn’t Taipei mentioned at all?

(completed May 9) I probably would have better feelings about this book if it wasn’t written by Don DeLillo (I still resent him for making me read the 1,000+ pages of crap that was Underworld). Certain scenes, especially the warped conversations among the children, make it a worthwhile read but at the end it left me feeling empty and depressed… but I think that was the point. The main problem with reading it now is that his dissections of modern consumer culture and of fear (of death, being alone, the unknown, weird chemical attacks, etc.) seem very dated and obvious – I think it was written in 1985. So DeLillo’s attempts to be thought-provoking kind of don’t work anymore (such as one major plot point turning on an imagined mystical pill that eliminates fear of death – I bet that probably exists now – did they have Prozac in 1985?)... but some of the set pieces are pretty hilarious. Don DeLillo still sucks though.

do camels with two humps really use one for food and the other one for water?

A prototype for the modern disaster movie. Though the authors are sci-fi guys (I think?), this really isn’t science fiction, but more a straight “what would happen if a comet hit earth” disaster story with a little bit of Lord of the Flies added in. Takes a long time to set everything up but the payoff is pretty entertaining. The writing is as bad as can be expected, but it is not always distractingly bad. I would say that it is more entertaining than Armageddon, but less entertainining than Deep Impact. It would have been better if the authors had gone more sci-fi and used cool machines to save earth, or had aliens ride to earth on the comet.

This book is outstanding. Comparison to Everything Is Illuminated – they have some basic similarities in the structure and plot outline, and the same blend of the comic and the deeply felt, and both tackle incredibly traumatic events without being either trite or brutal. This book is more complex but nothing gets lost in the complexity. After finishing this I went out and got A Brief History of Time. Does that make me a dork?

If you think of this book as a straight mystery/suspense novel, it is great. But Tartt hints at so much more and then ends up leaving the reader with an interesting promise of a story and then not much else. I think she wishes it was Crime and Punishment meets A Separate Peace, but it just isn’t. I was also disappointed by her failure to really do anything with the study of Greek that was clearly (at least to me) the novel’s most intruiging element. Also the character development is pretty pathetic. The characters are all the same except they each get to have one distinguishing attribute, so they are all basically caricatures. If none of this sounds too bad, then you will probably like this book. Incidentally, I read this in one sitting, so despite my criticisms, I was thoroughly entertained.

I hate when I buy books without really examining them, and then realize they are just a bunch of essays that I have already read! I think there should be a giant disclaimer on the cover. It’s fun to read all the essays together, and some include extra material that was cut from the magazine versions. I would recommended Backstory, but not if you subscribe to the New Yorker.

Hitchens is a great writer on a wealth of topics. I love him so so much and I want him to be my boyfriend, and we could go to Vanity Fair parties together. The only criticism is that I have already read so many of these pieces. Not just obvious articles, but things like the intro to Brave New World? I think it should be illegal to write an introduction to someone else’s book and then publish that yourself in a collection. That is okay only when you are dead and the essay is out of print anywhere else.