Presidential Reading

Yesterday being President's Day, I went out of my way not to do anything. I did eat apple pie for breakfast because I'm an American. I do my part for the country. I don't really like that Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays have been reduced to one Monday day off. I was a bit obsessed with the Presidents when I was a kid, which led to a lot of useless trivia; we probably shouldn't elect another Quaker (Hoover, Nixon), for example. Also, let's face it, I was a weirdo. I named the toenails on my right foot after less well known or more notorious Presidents. I hesitated to include this information here, but Gianna's freaked out by feet and this paragraph is payback for her inability to actually deliver cookies to my house when she says she's going to bring them right over. The piggy with the pointy cornered nail was Franklin Pierce. Millard Fillmore was the big toe; that name just screams "plus sized," right? Warren Harding and Chester Arthur filled in the middle and Nixon was the little piggy who went wee wee wee all the way home.

I digress.

Shall we talk about books and the Presidency?

President #26: Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy is the subject of many books including Edmund Morris's excellent biographies, but my personal favorite of the ones I've read is Candice Millard's The River of Doubt. After Roosevelt lost an attempt to be reelected as President a decade after he left office, and facing a crisis of age and confidence, Roosevelt and his son Kermit decided to become Amazon explorers. They set off on an expedition down a previously uncharted river that almost cost the President his life. Tropical plants and critters, fish that swim up your urethra, die, and lead to penectomies (we don't use that word often enough on this blog), and savage territory only made Roosevelt's lack of experience and preparation all the more obvious. Who doesn't love arrogant white guys brought to their knees by nature?

President #37: Richard Nixon. Yeah, there's plenty to say about Nixon. All the President's Men is the classic text. We recommend the fictionalized take on Nixon's downfall, Watergate by Thomas Mallon. Nixon is both sympathetic and delusional, and Mallon's book is a psychological exploration of a great man, a well-crafted epic, and a chilling account of hubris.

President #20: James A. Garfield. True story--at the Republican National Convention in 1880, Garfield was there to nominate another guy. Toward the end of his  passionate speech, though, he rhetorically asked "Who do we want?" and someone in the crowd yelled "We want Garfield!" A few months later, Garfield was officially elected President. During the height of Gilded Age corruption, Garfield promised to be one of the great Presidents of all time. And then he was assassinated (spoiler?). Once again we are recommending a Candice Millard book, this one called The Destiny of the Republic.

President #43: Al Gore. Just kidding. George W. Bush. Maybe this pick is a bit of a cheat, but American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld is loosely based on Laura Bush. It's probably more fun to read about the fictionalized party goer and favored son Bush than any of the books coming out about the W years these days.

President #36: Lyndon B. Johnson. Robert Caro's masterful biographical series, the most recent of which is The Passage of Power, are the definitive books written about LBJ. I also want to give a shout out to Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place, though. Brammer was an LBJ staffer and wrote a classic novel about Texas politics centered around a LBJ-esque governor.

President #33: Harry S. Truman. I admit it; I love Truman. He was given an impossible task--serving as President after more than a decade of FDR and at the end of major war, tasked with negotiating surrenders, war trials, and the emergent Soviet Union. Truman was the guy who decided to drop atomic bombs. For better or worse, the guy had balls of steel. David McCullough knows how to write a Presidential biography, and Truman is my favorite of his books.

President #3: Thomas Jefferson. We love Jon Meacham. We aren't the only ones. Meacham's latest, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power takes on Jefferson's life and also looks at his political philosophy. Even though Meacham's book was a big hit during the holiday season, I'm sure that a few people out there haven't yet picked up copies. An aside, Meacham is charming and funny in person (on top of being wickedly smart).

President #44: Barack Obama. Before he was President, Obama was a writer. His memoir, Dreams from My Father, is the story of the American dream. It's the story of a man who's lived his entire life in between worlds, the mixed race son of an African father and American mother, who knows his father more from stories than as an actual person. Obama traces his family's past, from his mother's journey from Kansas to Hawaii, her relationship with the Kenyan man who left the family when Barack was two, and Obama's rise to the top of his Harvard class and work as a community organizer in Chicago. He goes back to Kenya after his father's death, finding his place in the world and as his own man.

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 27

Day 27: Favorite Book Cover

Gianna:

We have attacked this question before so we’ve decided to limit ourselves to our favorite book cover of the past twelve months. It wasn’t long before we realized we would have to change that to favorite book covers; there was no way we could decide on just one.

Full disclosure; there are a few books on my list that I haven’t read, a couple that I probably won't read, and I have included a culinary book so you can gather pretty quickly I will never read it.  In fact, let's start with that book because it sure is pretty, and it’s the best book treatment I have seen in quite a while. 

Polpo: A Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts) – cover design by Praline Studios. I came across this book when I was in New York for work a couple of weeks ago, and the cover image here doesn’t come close to giving you an idea of how gorgeous this book is. Go to the Praline website and check out the detail, especially the spine. It’s a complete work of art; how Bloomsbury did this for $50 I will never understand. 

Next up for me is a sentimental favorite which has already won a couple of small press jacket design awards.  We had lots of discussions about this jacket for Let the People In at work, lots of back and forth, but in the end our designer (Lindsay S.) did an absolutely fantastic job. [I totally agree. It's iconic.]

As usual, any time we do a list of any sort, I like to include a story collection; annoying ain't it?  I Am An Exectuioner: Love Stories by Rajesh Parameswaran (call me if you would like me to mispronounce that for ya) [Email me if you want Gianna's phone number] is a book I was drawn to by because of this really cool, really perfect cover design. Oh, I have been burned before, purchased a real stinker that looked pretty (still talking books), but this book was really fantastic. I can't remember if it made my top ten or not (I don't actually read our blog because I've heard it's quite bad), but I did like this book a lot. 

My next book has sat unread on my bookshelf for a year. I quickly became so tired of hearing my blog-partner-in-life go on and on about how good of a read it was, that I decided to put it on the back burner.  Like any life partnership, it's very difficult, and certainly a mistake, to acknowledge the other is right in any situation (I used to be a couples therapist), so while I really want to read Watergate by Thomas Mallon, I think it's best I don't for fear Liz will be right. [First, this is a lifetime gig? Shit. Second, I'm always right.]

This next book is as handsome to look at as Tom Cruise in Risky Business! 

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright. Some subjects are hard to capture for a book cover. It leads to many different designs, many arguments, and often times one has to just sit down to with a couple of empty soup cans on a string--also known as an e-meter--and process it with your auditor to figure out what's really bothering you (that will be my only crack about Scientology...if you don't include the Tom Cruise comment. Seriously, I am done now). Anyway, my point is that sometimes typography is the way to go and this jacket is an absolute home run. Its thetan-tastic!  [I'm sorry, but this blog, though crappy, remains a pun-free zone.]

I was only going to do five books, but I want to give an honorable mention to The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin. Actually, this author has hit the jackpot when it comes to book covers; her past three books have had really great looks, hardcover and paperback versions. I think historical fiction is a touch genre to cover--it has to be clear that it's a historical novel--but it also has to look modern enough for us to be interested.  I will let you look up her previous books but here is a look at her latest. [A quick shout out for Melanie Benjamin, who was kind--foolish?--enough to answer our horrible questions once. She's made the New York Times extended bestseller list and success couldn't come to a nicer person.]

Liz:

Yes, I do judge a book by its cover on a regular basis. I don't claim to know anything about good cover design, but like porn, I know it when I see it. It's simple: great covers lure customers into picking up the book. Less simple: nailing hundreds of pages worth of text with a single image. If Gianna hadn't already picked them, both Let the People In and Watergate would appear here. Consider them part of my list, but for the sake of variety, and since you just looked at them, I'll spare you.

Let's start with what I consider possibly the best book cover I've ever seen. Seriously. Peter Mendelsund, the designer, is the genius behind the covers of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the gorgeous new translation of Doctor Zhivago, the Jo Nesbo books like The Snowman. His cover for The Flame Alphabet, though, literally made the reps gasp when we saw it as sales conference. That day I wrote a note to a colleague that said "They better not change that one. It's perfect." (Covers often change between sales conference and on sale.) I wanted to own this book for the cover alone. I would frame this cover.

I love the look of The Beautiful Ruins, from the image to the script. It evokes a time and place and draws in readers. Don't you want to know the story that matches this setting? Me too. It's on my to-be-read pile right now.

For shear badassery, it's hard to beat Angelmaker's cover. It captures the clockwork mechanics that play a central role in the novel, it's has a code hidden in the design that's waiting to be cracked, and it's shiny.

My Random House Children's division colleagues loved Wonder, a book about a boy who can't hide his facial deformity from classmates. It's a book that passionately advocates for compassion and crusades against bullying. The cover conveys a message of fragility and surprise without beating you over the head with, like, Eric Stoltz's made-up face from the movie Mask. That would have been too much. This is not.

I was totally charmed by Where'd You Go Bernadette, and I'm totally charmed by this cover. It captures Bernadette's quirky nature and missteps--she's a world class architect trapped in suburban hell that's partially of her own making. It's just cool.


Speaking of cool, this reissue of Invisible Man is very, very cool. I already own Invisible Man, I've already read Invisible Man (it's great and a must read, by the way), so I really don't need this copy. But I want it. 

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 15

Hey! We're halfway through!

Day 15: Favorite Male Character

Gianna:

Plainsong by Kent Haruf.  Raymond and Harold are brothers living on their family ranch in a small town in Colorado. These bachelors have a quiet life and know very little other than their small town. What I love about these men is that they made a decision to upend their lives, to change their world in order to help someone. In a world terrified of change, these two old geezers prove it’s worth doing.  I wish these guys were real because I would like to marry Liz off to one or the other. Sure, they are elderly, but they are homeowners. [Eh, I could do worse.]

  

The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin.  I have loved Steve Martin for as long as I can remember. I loved him for The Jerk, Roxanne, and L.A. Story. More importantly, I loved him in spite of Housesitter and Bringing Down the House. Turns out though, that I really love Steve Martin’s writing. Cruel Shoes was one of the first books I ever bought with my own money. I think I was twelve, too young to really get the nuance of these stories, but I still treasure this book.

 

Anyway, Daniel Cambridge is the main character of The Pleasure of My Company, he’s brilliant (he’ll tell you so), but he’s extraordinarily introverted and has a bad case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. How bad is his OCD? Well it takes him hours to get anywhere because he can’t walk over curbs.  Daniel has other ‘quirks’ but sees himself as pretty normal; in fact he enters a “Most Normal Person in America” essay contest. He does not win. Daniel is really sweet and smart, and madly in love with a woman he’s never met. You can’t help but love him. I know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t this guy another possible marriage contender for Liz?” Yes. [I think there are many, many people who are madly in love with me but have yet to enjoy the pleasure of my company.]

Liz:

I feel like I could go two ways here. I love a villain or flawed character, and to that end, I really don't think you could top Iago from Shakespeare's Othello.  Along that line, I also loved the Richard Nixon character in Thomas Mallon's novel Watergate. He's a villain, but he's also a man who's caught in a shit storm he can't escape.

On the other hand, if I were to follow Gianna's model of finding potential mates, I think Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird could be the ideal fictional marriage bait.  He's moral, strong, patient, courageous, wise. He's a man who can shoot a rabid dog and he can stand up against an entire town and defend the defenseless.  Also, he's Gregory Peck. Mmm. 

Hey, Boo.

Of course, I could never live up to the Atticus Finch standard of perfection.  I need kind, but quirky, so I'd ultimately opt for Boo Radley.  He's quiet and reclusive (which I certainly would appreciate), but he's willing to risk his life for children he only really knows from a distance. Boo could leave me little chocolates on my pillow and we'd live down the street from each other, and occasionally he'd come to my rescue when Zorro was feeling particularly blood thirsty. Also, we're both really pale.  It could work.

Best of 2012: Day 1

You know you've been waiting for us to add to the zillions of end of the year lists floating around the internet.  We can't disappoint our dozens of loyal readers (plus Gianna hates lists and making her compile them is my delight).  Today and the rest of the week we'll be highlighting our ten favorite books published in 2012.  These aren't in countdown order; we're not playing Sophie's Choice here.  If it's on the list, we loved it.  Ready?


Gianna:

One non-fiction and one fiction

Last Launch by Dan Winters (University of Texas Press, October 2012) 

This book really won me over. I am not a NASA or space geek by any stretch of the imagination, but this book really made me a convert. While Winters is probably best known for his celebrity photographs, the space program is his passion. His knowledge of the subject is inspiring and never ceases to be interesting, but the details of these photographs (from the description of the camera set-ups to the surprising results after a lift off he never thought would happen) is jaw dropping. 

 

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu (Random House, September 2012) 

This novel had been sitting in my 'to read' pile for about six months, and I passed it over several times for other books. That was a mistake; this turned out to not only be the best book in that stack, it easily makes my fiction top ten list.  I feel very comfortable comparing this to Tea Obreht's National Book Award finalist,  The Tiger's Wife. It's not only because it's an astonishing debut novel, but because these young women are writing about things that matter (refreshing, no?).  I suppose if I had to categorize this book, I would say it's a coming of age novel because it is about three young Israeli girls, bored with their teenage lives, not unlike teenagers in many places. However, after high school they are conscripted into the army, where their lives change instantly (somewhat inspired by the author's mandatory service).  While it seems as though so many coming of age books published today are frivolous, throw away novels, Boianjiu's book is incredibly thoughtful and serious. It will live with you for years.

Liz:

Also a non-fiction and a fiction pick.

The Oath by Jeffrey Toobin (Doubleday, September 2012)

Jeffrey Toobin...
Liz is single.  Call me?

It's an epic drama.  Two young men, both ambitious leaders with brains out the wazoo, set on a collision course testing ideologies.  The fate of the nation hangs in the balance.  One is a conservative, one is a liberal seeking radical, unprecedented changes.  The polarized masses watch in anticipation and trepidation.  And it's a battle occurring right now.  If the Supreme Court is my crack addition, Jeffrey Toobin is my crack pipe.  He makes complex legal matters fascinating and never loses sight of the real people who both make these historic decisions and those impacted by them.  At the center of The Oath are Barack Obama, the conservative trying to preserve legal precedent, and John Roberts, the legal liberal pushing for major policy shifts.  With a supporting cast that includes Ruth Bader Ginsberg (my favorite Justice), Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Sonia Sotomayor (and the other Justices), here's the legal showdown unrolling every day that the Supreme Court is in session.

Watergate by Thomas Mallon (Pantheon, February 2012)

One of my favorite novels of the year is this historical fiction account of the Watergate scandal.  Thomas Mallon has done his homework--even as a history major I struggled to piece together all of the machinations and players that contributed to Watergate.  Here are all of the major figures, and the book is told from the points of view of seven of them, and here are all of the major moments.  On top of that, Mallon offers motivations and humanity to these people (except for Gordon Liddy, who's generally a weirdo nutball).  Pat Nixon is a bad ass, for example.  What we get is a Paradise Lost for the 20th Century, and Richard Nixon a sympathetic Satan who falls from grace.  I think this novel is fine, first class fiction.