Zadie Smith

White Teeth had several strikes against it.

1. It’s found in every airport bookstore.
2. It’s always on display tables with Bridget Jones.
3. The back cover had a big picture of the author.
4. The author is too pretty.

None of those disqualify a book for me. I enjoyed Bridget Jones, and Nick Hornby’s in every airport, and Steinbeck made sure readers knew what he looked like, and there’s plenty of room in the world for pretty people. When you put them all together, though, it sets a certain expectation.

Zadie Smith far surpassed that expectation!

Although the book could be lumped in with the recent wave of immigrant-lit, Smith’s story swells in breadth and depth beyond the usual nobody-loves-me themes. She creates on a multi-generational tale with major political and religious themes, and she juggles it masterfully with wit and compassion. She restored my hope that Britain may still produce great authors.

If there’s no “Writing the Opposite Sex” award, there should be, and it should go to her. The only woman I’ve read who manages it as well is Pearl S. Buck-but Buck’s job is easier since she doesn’t bother with humor. Unfortunately, her female characters don’t seem nearly so alive. All of them play one-trait roles and seem merely to propel the story of the male protagonists even when the story switches to their point of view.

The only other weakness in the book comes from her lack of empathy for those with strong religious views. Jehovah’s Witnesses are fairly easy targets, but she spends a lot of energy knocking them down. I appreciate her depiction of Euro-Muslim extremists as wanna-be gangsters without business sense, but the comedy seems like a veneer over a general inability to appreciate faith. Regardless of her faith or lack thereof, this is a weakness that I hope she overcomes in future books.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

What can I say about Dostoevsky that hasn’t been said better, in dissertations and studies and monuments? Only this: he lives up to the hype; he changed my life.

I started with The Brothers Karamazov, went on to The House of the Dead, and then Crime and Punishment, and Notes from the Underground.

The Brothers was recommended by an older cousin. He was in college, and I was 13, but he was my hero, so… I finished it 5 years later. The second reading, a few years after that, only took a month. It’s one of those great novels designed to last through nine months of television-less winter, so it has it all: philosophy, religion, sex, murder, poverty, mental disorders, and courtroom drama. If big Russian novels scare you, you’d be better off starting with Anna Karenina.

I haven’t re-read The House of the Dead. It’s not bad-in fact, it’s probably as good as it gets in the genre of prison memoirs, topped only by Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Illych. But how many times do you want to read a prison memoir?

If all of the monuments and dissertations were to somehow disappear, I can imagine scholars thousands of years from now arguing convincingly that Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground were written in the late 1900s instead of the mid-1800s. The word angst comes to mind, but it’s insufficient. We’re talking antiheroes with attitudes so bad they’d see the Fight Club guys as optimists.

Dostoevsky isn’t an author who will make you happy. His comedy scenes can bring a smile, but the smiles are tinged with tragedy. No, happiness isn’t his thing. Joy, on the other hand… maybe. As the ranting drunkard who pimps his daughter asks in Crime and Punishment, what if grace can reach even me?

Kate DeCamillo

The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DeCamillo, is… it’s just beautiful. My daughter brought it to me one night and said she thought I’d like it. I’ve liked her recommendations before–she has great taste for a seven-year-old—but I was in the middle of a Steinbeck book, so I set it aside. The next night, she asked again. The next night, she was visibly disappointed that I hadn’t begun. So I set aside, The Winter of our Discontent, and found out that, in this case, she was right.

For elegant prose that brings unusual and desperate characters to life, draws you into their struggles, and leaves you marveling in the beauty of perseverance, I’d recommend DeCamillo’s tale of a mouse who falls in love with a princess over Steinbeck’s take on middle-class angst.

Despereaux reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events in the way it treats young readers with respect, recognizing that they are aware of problems and capable of courage. Both series bring out strength in children, but Despereaux probably brings out more grace.

Augustine

I can’t think of certain books apart from the place in which I read them. The City of God, an attempt to see the hand of God in the destruction of a Christianized Rome at what was thought to be nearly the end of history… I associate that with a gas station coffee shop in a Minnesotan prairie town.

My wife had been stationed there for a few months for her medical work, and I’d just returned from a stint abroad and had a few weeks off. The gas station was the town’s only coffee shop.

And the book was amazing.

Augustine’s wordy and cumbersome, but the ideas hit me as amazingly relevant, even there. The gas station attendant gossiped with a farmer about the rape of a girl in their church as I read Augustine’s consolation to men and boys who had been raped in the sacking of Rome.

A couple farmers and the owner of the egg-processing plant (the town’s only industry) met every Tuesday and Thursday to discuss the inevitable fall of the U.S. due to its godlessness as evidenced by Hollywood, while I read Augustine’s critique of the theater and the way in which God may have saved the Romans by destroying the Coliseum.

I found myself arguing with a lot of the book, but it seemed far more insightful an analysis of late-20^th-century society than any of the modern religious pundits.

I wouldn’t have said the same the first time I read The Confessions. It struck me as pretentious. But I’ve re-read it twice since reading The City of God, and I’ve liked it more each time.

Mark Bowden

As I was in the process of reading Blackhawk Down, I gave a simple writing assignment to my immigrant students: “Describe the house you grew up in.”

            The next day, with Blackhawk sitting on my shelf, a bookmark only 50 pages into it, I picked up the first of the essays. The young man described the orange trees, and the tan wall, and the bright dresses of the women who walked in front of his house, across the street from the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu, before “all of it” happened.

            For those who have not read Blackhawk Down, “all of it” refers to the killing of hundreds of Somali men, women, and children, during an ill-conceived attempt to remove a warlord from the Olympic Hotel neighborhood of Mogadishu.

            There is no way I can describe how intensely that book moved me. Granted, I had a more personal link to the text than most of the readers, but most other readers I’ve met have liked it as well.

            Out of respect for my students, I didn’t see the film, which they described as an attempt to make the deaths of hundreds of their friends and family into the story of a few white Americans who made some bad choices. The book, though, does an exceptional job of presenting all of the people as real—and Bowden did excellent work in capturing the point of view of many of the Somalis involved.

            I’d love to read more of his books.

Arthur Miller

I’m so glad I read Death of a Salesman first!

            The Crucible is standard. It fits right in with the standard American English 10^th-grade curriculum that is pitifully trying to make 16-year-olds interested in things that happened before America had many good novelists. May it live long on the high-school bookshelves. I have nothing against it. But it didn’t move me.

            Death of a Salesman, though… The first time I read it, I told my high school teacher that I couldn’t read anything else for at least three days. She understood. I’ve read it half a dozen times, seen it performed live, and own the movie version that Arthur Miller consulted on. Every character is pitiful, but so alive! Every line rings true.

            I won’t be surprised if history shows that more people read The Crucible—but Death of a Salesman may change, and save, more lives.

Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, left me in awe.

It had sat on my shelf for years, in a cheap paperback edition with a nondescript cover. Its title and the brief author bio on the back gave me the impression that it was some sort of early blaxploitation version of H.G. Wells.

It is by a black man.

It is about a black man.

And it reached me, a white man, more deeply than almost any book I’ve read. Dazzling language. Complex, intriguing characters. It was, in fact, the first book by a black author I’d ever read that I thought was trying to reach beyond themes of pigment and prejudice. It’s been too long since I re-read it.

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Oliver Twist

A Child’s History of England

A Christmas Carol and other stories

The list is so short that I can’t stop staring at it. Only five titles! And only three of them major works! I can’t believe that’s all I’ve read of one of the most influential authors in my life!

I’ll enter into a flashback, partly to explain my astonishment and partly to break away from exclamations.

9^th Grade: The first class I ever had that made us read books by long-dead authors. The year began with A Tale of Two Cities. Until that time, I’d never thought there was any reason for reading slowly. Almost from the first paragraph, though, I knew I’d found something altogether different from the Sci-Fi, Westerns, and “recommended books for middle schoolers” that I’d been given up to that point in my life.

I think I read A Tale three times before 10^th grade began. I read it seven times before finishing high school.

For some reason, none of my other high-school teachers liked Dickens, so I couldn’t even get good recommendations from them. I came across Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, and enjoyed them as well, but not through multiple reads. Later in high school, I came across A Child’s History of England, and thought that it was one of the most inappropriately-titled books I’d read (Do children really need to learn about death by anal skewering with hot irons?), but I liked it.

Word got out that I liked Dickens, and that was a strange and noteworthy thing in my family. I got two copies of A Christmas Carol and two copies of Great Expectations one year for Christmas.

By that time, my reading list had expanded. I could still sense Dickens’ influence in other authors I read, and I still remember that chill of amazement when I first tasted great literature in those opening lines. But I haven’t returned to him. I don’t know why.

Soren Kierkegaard

I knew Kierkegaard was a 19^th-century northern-European philosopher. I’d heard that he was a depressive and that his ideas started the movement from rationalism toward Nietzsche.

All of that is true.

Unfortunately, I drew the conclusion from this that I wouldn’t like him. The conclusion doesn’t follow.

It started when, a few weeks before moving away from the U.S., my wife gave me a copy of Provocations, a selected reader of his works. I usually prefer to see authors explain themselves; not just read over “best of” selections from other readers who happen to know publishers. In this case, though, the book left me stunned. It showed the Dane as witty, sarcastic, biting, devout, passionate, disconnected, and in all much more human and likeable than most writers I’d associated with words like “19^th-century northern-European philosopher”.

Before we left the U.S., I picked up Fear and Trembling, Sickness Unto Death, and Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.

Fear and Trembling changed my life. It ranks among a handful of books that I’d recommend unhesitatingly to anyone asking… well, anyone who’d ask anything. I’d work it into more conversations, but saying the names of certain authors sounds snobby.

Sickness Unto Death convinced me that I’d found not only a favorite author, but a Master and mentor who understood things about me that I was only starting to discover.

Purity of Heart… Well, by the time I finished, I felt increasing confidence that I’d be willing to argue for his position as a founder of Christian Hedonism as much as for existentialism.

Either/Or came in a package several months later. It’s by far the most difficult of his works for me. I don’t think I understand half of it, and I’m not sure which half. It almost lost me. (A point of interest for those rare people who read Kierkegaard and John Piper: Either/Or contains an illustration of the precedence of joy over duty in determining ethics that is almost identical to Piper’s illustration of a man giving flowers to his beloved.)

But almost a year later, I found myself in an English-language book store again, and the used book shelf held This Present Age, Practice in Christianity, and Works of Love.

This Present Age was shorter, so I started there. It’s witty, but it’s the only one of his books that feels dated. My present age is not like his.

Practice in Christianity and Works of Love present the same basic ideas, but in very different styles. I’m glad I read them both, but if I were to do it again, I’d probably only choose one. The problem is, I’m not sure which one.

The Concept of Anxiety was the only book other than Either/Or that lost me. I could follow the general thread of his argument through the book, but I lost a lot along the way.

For Self-Examination, and Judge for Yourself are among his easiest to understand. They introduce many of the key concepts for his other works, and include some of his best parables. I wish I hadn’t read them last.

I’ve read several translations of some of these books now, and I’ll strongly recommend the Princeton editions—especially those edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. They run twice the price of some of the anthologies or popular versions of his more famous titles, but the notes and translation style are worth it.

He wrote a lot, and I’m looking forward to adding to this list. Or maybe just re-reading the ones already included. I know I have more to learn from him.

Neil Gaiman

With Neil Gaiman, I’ve been procrastinating; partly because I don’t want it to be a year since I’ve read him, and partly because he’s just too big to review.

The novels aren’t as good, so I’ll start there.

American Gods is an epic in length, and could be in scope if it had epic-quality characters. The characters are straight-from-stock, though, down to the sexy free-spirit wise-beyond-years thinks-she’s-lesbian. I’ve been to the “House on the Rock”, though. And Wisconsin. And the set works: the Midwest could very well be the place where old gods go to die.

Stardust was of even lower caliber. It’s just a fairy tale, like you’d find in the 19^th-century genre, but with just enough extra sexuality to justify a post-modernist author.

Caroline and Wolves at the Door are brilliant! Caroline is still too scary for my six-year-old, but I think she’ll read it soon. She loved Wolves and explained it carefully to her four-year-old brother.

And with those two as examples, you’ll get a hint of Gaiman’s genius: image, symbol, concept, and as few words as possible.

And that description transitions us nicely to The Sandman. The Sandman is an epic of huge impact. The fact that nearly every line is illustrated and it looks like a comic book will turn off a lot of readers, but it shouldn’t. Alan Moore convinced me that comics, as a genre, were worth another look. The Sandman was the prize for taking that second look.

If you buy or borrow any of the bound sets, you’ll find introductions far better than this. I’ll skip the general stuff, except to say The Sandman is a post-modernist epic on the nature of story as art and truth, with the protagonist as one of the unchanging anthropomorphic gods.

It would be easy to pick The Sandman apart from a Christian worldview. After all, it depicts, and almost seems to advocate many types of witchcraft. But the point is that it’s not about people and magic; it’s about creativity.

Preludes and Noctures, vol. 1 of the series starts slowly, and several of the episodes, especially the ones incorporating other DC Comics, are painfully shallow. The last few, though, including the gruesome “24 hours” are near brilliant. I can’t say strongly enough that “24 hours” is brutal, and horrible. But it’s how it is sometimes.

The Doll’s House, vol. 2, was the first that I read, and it hooked me. The dark comedy (a mass-murderer convention with intervention by G.K. Chesterton) almost turned me off, but I kept reading and was glad I did.

Dream Country, vol. 3, containts tales of the cats, a near-immortal seeking death, the kidnapped muse, and Midsummer Night’s Dream are the best stand-alone stories in the series. This volume contributes little to the overall mythology, but is one of the best to read and ponder.

Seasons of Mists, vol. 4, begins the mid-series slump. So, who’s stronger: Dream or Hell? This is one of the few volumes that follows a linear storyline start to finish, with a collection of minor characters instead of a truly ensemble cast of equals. It’s occasionally gruesome, but amusing. The attempt to fit the Endless into a Judeo-Christian ontology is necessary for the series (given Dream’s repeated claims to be part of all religions and beliefs, and Gaiman’s well-founded choice to avoid trying to incorporate Jesus) sort of succeeds, but it’s probably not worth the time spent on it. I’d recommend skimming this one, and jumping to Fables and Reflections.

A Season of You, vol. 5, is extremely gruesome, and easily the most twisted of the Sandman series. I don’t recommend it. The story is essential for understanding the mythology of the series, but isn’t in itself compelling, and it pushes the boundaries both in theme (gender identity) characters (lesbians, witches, transsexuals, and sluts), and visuals (zombie baby cannibals and degloved faces that talk). I tried reading it a second time for insights in the female or better, non-male psyche, but the insights weren’t worth the experience.

Fables and Reflections, vol. 6. Page for page, this is the most enjoyable volume of the series because in it, Gaiman seems to simply let himself excel at what he’s best at: amazing stories in new mythology, as opposed to a cohesive mythology without a plot. Many of the stories (the prologue of the aspiring actor, the Emperor of America, Robespierre, The Family, Caesar Augustus, and Ramadan) are among the most optimistic of the epic. The introduction of Orpheus isn’t especially intriguing, but it’s necessary to understand the rest of the series.

Brief Lives, vol. 7: As part of the overall myth, this volume is essential, and more accessible than The Kindly Ones or A Game of You. The horror still rises at points, but doesnt’ get out of hand, as it did in Game. The basic story–Dream and Delirium look for Destruction, and can only find him through a death pact Dream makes with his son, Orpheus–isn’t as intriguing as the short stories in the series, but there’s more intentional humor and development of the Endless as characters than available in the other volumes. In fact, this is one of the few volumes which overtly treats The Sandman as a protagonist.

World’s End, vol. 8, is where Gaiman finally reaches his stride in a delightful Chaucerian collection of stories told by characters at an inn where worlds meet and end. Each story stands well by itself, and they’re woven smoothly into the larger Sandman mythology.

The Kindly Ones, vol. 9: Like some of the other Sandman volumes that tell a single story instead of intertwined short stories, this one falls short of the every-page dazzle I’d come to expect. The mythology angle comes on strong, but it gets to be such a self-referential mess that I started to wonder if it was worth it.

The Wake, vol. 10: The Sandman’s clearly not the same once he’s dead, but this one picks up well, revivifying some of the most ingenuous minor characters and bringing back Shakespeare himself for some of the best analyses of writing and art in the series. The first few chapters don’t stand alone well, as they simply wrap up the myth. The return of Hobs, the never-dying man, on a visit to a Renaissance Festival, though, is one of the most optimistic of the stories in the series, and the reworking of The Tempest is self-referential symbology at its finest.

Endless Nights, vol. 11, probably would have scored two numbers higher if it had been my first Sandman book. As a sequel, though, this collection of stories (one per “endless” character) lacks the depth and general motivation of the original series.

So I guess the summary is that’s it’s usually bizarre, often confusing, and frequently grotesque, but somehow I think he’s worth it.