Book Review: Sleepwalk With Me by Mike Birbiglia

Author:Mike Birbiglia
Title: Sleepwalk With Me 
Publication Info: New York : Simon & Schuster, c2010.
ISBN: 9781439157992
Summary/Review:  Stand-up comedian,  monologist, and This American Life regular Mike Birbiglia writes about his life and sleepwalking issues in this collection of autobiographical essays.  In the early going, I was disappointed because these were the same exact stories I’ve heard before but lacking the same resonance they have when you hear Birbilia’s voice.  Later on, the book improves as the written form of his storytelling gets better for less familiar stories.  If you like Birbiglia’s work in stand-up, storytelling, or even his upcoming movie you might like this book.  On the other hand, he may just work better in those other media and this book is extraneous.

Favorite Passages:

p. 102 – “Data entry is a fascinating job where you .. type … in … data….that’s been…written on something else. You can press tab and jump from field to field, and you need to remember to capitalize proper nouns like people’s names and their streets. The first ten minutes of data entry fly by, because you’re really getting the hang of it. The remaining seven hours and fifty minutes go a lot more slowly, because you glance at the clock after you finish every entry. Data entry is the white-collar equivalent of potato peeling.”

Recommended books: Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg and Bossypants by Tina Fey.
Rating: **1/2

Book Review: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

Author:  Brandon Sanderson
Title:  Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
Publication Info:  Scholastic Paperbacks (2008)
ISBN: 9780545024938
Summary/Review: Another audiobook I downloaded based on title alone from the public library and one that shows that Young Adult literature is far ahead of grown up fiction for imagination and creativity.  Alcatraz Smedry is a teenage orphan with a talent for breaking things who learns that he is from a heroic lineage and must rescue his inheritance – a band of sand – from the hands of the evil librarians who secretly control the world.  The deadpan delivery of Alcatraz’s satirical narrative is greatly enhanced by reader Charlie McWade.  I found it a hilarious send-up of fantasy/sci-fi conventions yet at the same time sneakily getting a few messages in as well.  If you don’t like at first, at least stick around for the dinosaurs.

(Looking at Library Thing, I’m amused that many of the reviews are by librarians.  Most of us like it.  Don’t tell the evil librarian in charge.)

Recommended Books: A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer and Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins.
Rating:  ****

Book Review: Selected Shorts: Lots of Laughs! by Symphony Space

Author: Symphony Space
Title: Selected Shorts: Lots of Laughs!
Publication Info:  Symphony Space (2005), Edition: Unabridged, Audio CD
ISBN:  0971921822
Summary/Review:  This collection is something I downloaded randomly from Overdrive and it was suitably entertaining.  There are seven stories and they are all read – or performed – in front of a live audience reminiscent of the storytelling on the Moth Podcast.  Stories include:

 1. Subsoil by Nicholson Baker Read by Thomas Gibson

2. Farrell’s Caddie by John Updike Read by Charles Keating

3. Jamaica by David Schickler Read by Isaiah Sheffer

4. Chivalry by Neil Gaiman Read by Christina Pickles

5. Nachman from Los Angeles by Jhumpa Lahiri Read by David Rakoff

6. On the U.S.S. Fortitude by Ron Carlson Read by Laura Esterman

7. Fatso by Etgar Keret Read by John Guare

My favorites include “Jamaica” where a man gets his head stuck in the banister and has to sit in on his wife’s book club and “On the U.S.S. Fortitude” about a doting mother raising children on an aircraft carrier (Esterman’s reading of the story probably improves the story concept a hundredfold).

Recommended Books: Best of Modern Humor by Mordecai Richler and The John Cheever Audio Collection by John Cheever.
Rating:

This comic is brought to you by the letters E, A, and D (via Derangement and Description)

I love the Count. I love archives humor.

That’s two, two great things I love about this comic!

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!

via Derangement and Description

The Real Sesame Street

I have a brilliant idea for a new reality show.

1. Find some of the people who made appearances as kids on Sesame Street back in the 60′s & 70′s.
2. Have them move into a set of real row houses on a real street in New York.  They can bring along any family members or companions they chose.
3. Film them going about their daily routines, work, etc.
4. At random intervals Muppets will appear to interact with the cast members.

PBS, make it happen!

Rules for Moving in Massachusetts

After helping a friend move from Waltham to Arlington yesterday, it occurred to me that there are certain things that happen every time somebody moves around here.

1. The person moving provides a Box O’ Joe and Munchkins for the people helping out.
2. The weather will be hot and humid (don’t try to outsmart this rule by trying to move in the winter as you will encounter ice and snow instead).
3. At one point a large piece of furniture will end up stuck in a doorway or stairwell.  Neither brilliant logistical analysis nor brute force will make the furniture budge.
4. The furniture will eventually become unstuck by someone trying a mind-numbingly simple movement on a whim.
5. One of the helpers will have incredible spatial relations skills the s/he will use to pack boxes into the “Mom’s attic” of the moving van like a game of Tetris.
6. Someone will get hurt
7. Unloading will go ten times faster than loading.
8. When the truck is unloaded the person moving will provide pizza and beer.

Book Review: The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Title: The Inimitable Jeeves
Publication Info: Blackstone Audiobooks (2000), Edition: Unabridged, Audio CD
ISBN: 0786199032

Summary/Review:

Two things marred my enjoyment of this otherwise fine collection of Wodehouse stories.  First, the audiobook narrator employed an obnoxiously high-pitched voice in his characterizations of Wooster and Jeeves and with little nuance or finesse at that.  Second, I’d seen many of these stories performed by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in the TV series, and for some reason the first way I hear a story always feels like “the right way.”  Silly thing, I know.

This book collects together several short stories and weaves them into a single narrative to create a pseudo-novel.  Almost all of the stories focus on Bertie’s friend Bingo who is constantly falling in love serving as a satire for the overly-romantic.  All of the stories capture the foibles of the decadent leisure class of aristocratic England and gambling is frequent.  My favorite part is when a contest is established to bet on which of the local pastors will preach the longest and most boring sermon.

All an all, an entertaining if not great work, probably better read than listened to.

Rating: **1/2

Book Review: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Author: Nick Hornby
Title: Juliet, Naked
Publication Info: Riverhead Hardcover (2009)
ISBN: 1594488878

Summary/Review:

This novel is about three people: Duncan an English man-child obsessed with an American singer/songwriter who abruptly quit show business in the 1980s, his long-suffering girlfriend Annie who is realizing that she may never have children, and the retired musician himself Tucker Crowe who is trying to raise his six-year old son after failing to be a good father to four other children.  Annie & Duncan break up after Duncan’s infidelity and at the same time a review Annie posts on Duncan’s internet message board attracts the attention of Tucker.  Annie & Tucker develop an online correspondence and soon – surprise – he has reason to visit England.

This novel has a lot of the same themes of Hornby’s other works – music, geeky obsessions, muddled relationships, parenting, and recognizing one’s own mortality.  I really couldn’t get into to at first because the characters were annoying me especially since they kept talking about a fictional musician.  80 pages in, when Tucker finally appears, I started to warm up to it.  For all his flaws, I like Tucker for his relationship with his young son (albeit if that son doesn’t seem to act 6 years old).  But then the book just falls apart with far too many unlikely happenings and the characters not responding in a real way but more like sitcom characters.

Yes, I’m harsh on this book.  It is an entertaining, quality brain candy read.  On the other hand I know Hornby is capable of much better.

Rating: **

Previously:

• Slam by Nick Hornby

Two More Bits of Video Awesomeness

1. Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

via No Mas.

2. The Cast of Spongebob Squarepants Dubs Classic Films

via Steve.
Previously: Two Bits of Video Awesomeness

Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

Book Review: The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell is an acquired taste and it’s taken me some to appreciate her, especially her nasal voice and deadpan delivery.  Which makes it all the more odd why I chose to listen to The Wordy Shipmates (2008) as an audiobook read by the author, but I did.  And it was great!

Vowell and I share in common a fascination with colonial history, especially that which took place between the big events like Plymouth Rock and the Salem Witch Trials.  As Vowell details early on in this book the typical American’s understanding of the Puritans is informed by television sitcoms (and before that popular culture such as the poems of Longfellow).  The referencing of popular culture and topical events by way of analogy is a rhetorical device Vowell uses throughout the book which can be irritating but is often illuminating.  Make no mistake, while The Wordy Shipmates is often humorous is also thoroughly researched of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century and a serious effort of seperating Puritan myth from fact.

For one thing, people like to describe contemporary America as a Puritan nation, primarily due to our squeamishness when it comes to sexuality or the popularity of fundamentalist religion.  Vowell points out that there are commonalities with our Puritan forebearers in the idea of American exceptionalism or the nation’s many misguided attempts to spread the American way around the world in the spirit of the Massachusetts Bay Seal with the Indian pleading “Come over and help us!”  On the other hand Vowell contends that contemporary Americans do not see the need for the intellectual rigor to write diaries, speeches, sermons, pamphlets and books – the wordiness of the title – the way the ordinary Puritan did in the 17th century or their New England descendants continued to practice into the 1900′s.  I do believe I’ve read that there are more bloggers in New England than any other region, so  perhaps I’m part of keeping this wordy tradition alive.

One fascinating essay examines Massachusetts Bay Colony’s leader and early governor John Winthrop’s A Modell of Christian Charity which includes the oft-quoted phrase a “citty upon a hill.” Vowell explicates the sermon and discusses how it’s been misunderstood and misappropriated ever since.  Ronald Reagan frequently cited it, always as a “shining city on the hill” in speeches such as his farewell address, while Mario Cuomo countered with a 1984 DNC keynote speech “A Tale of Two Cities.” From Vowell’s reading of Winthrop’s sermon she explains how Reagan, Cuomo, and many others all get it wrong by missing the central message of community that were it proposed today would be seen by some as socialism.

Much of the book focuses on Winthrop, the upstart Roger Williams, and the positively rebellious Anne Hutchinson.  Through them and other stories the reader learns of the differences between Seperatist and Puritan, theological pamphlet wars, and more bloody wars with the Pequot.  I’m going to say that this book is not for everyone as I’d expect both the experienced historian and the novice will be put off by Vowell’s approach, but to those of us in-between I think this is a worthwhile read for understanding the complexity of the Puritans and their legacy.

A couple of other reviews:

• Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates: The Problem with Popularization by Kathryn Lofton
• Review by Meredith Neuman: Puritan History in the Present Tense

Title The Wordy Shipmates
Author Sarah Vowell
Publication Riverhead Hardcover (2008), Hardcover, 272 pages
Publication date 2008
ISBN 1594489998 / 9781594489990