NOVEMBER READINGS

...started with more about Gregory Berns's research into animal cognition. And the more I learn, the more I move towards veganism. I'm not there yet, but I'm close.

And Jordan Harper's crime fiction is always both entertaining & disturbing in all the right ways, as is anything by Jason Pargin, whose latest novel is also hilarious, with a plot that does not disappoint. And Pargin writes absolutely hilarious dialogue.

I always return to my patron saint Vonnegut, whose aesthetic & worldview is endlessly rejuvenating in a way that the delusions of religion are not. And God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is Vonnegut's most direct indictment of those who would put property over people.

Finding out there's a streaming series based on it drove me back to Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, which is a satirical novel disguised as a screenplay that also manages to be heartfelt reckoning of generational difference. It’s a masterpiece that deserved the National Book Award.

Then someone told me about the audio version of Hawking's Theory of Everything, which is supposed to be in the author's own voice. But, of course, that voice is actually the computer-generated one developed for Hawking. It's both eerie and appropriate. I'll get into my thoughts on audio versus text at another time. Suffice it to say that I recognize that they are very different ways to experience a text, with very different results. And, yeah, more people need to develop at least an appreciation for cosmology, the real stuff backed by math & observation, not the make-believe stuff.

Eruption is a bit of candy with a cool backstory of one consummate entertainer finishing the work of another. I'm sure there will be a movie adaptation.

Proof is an important exploration of all the different ways we consider something to be proven: scientifically, legalistically, rhetorically and politically. That it was written by a mathematician is only fitting. I learned a lot.

Jill Lepore's book-length investigation into one of the weirdest literary figures of the 20th century is itself exceedingly weird. How could it be otherwise? Joe Gould was a deeply-troubled and troubling man who somehow managed to convince a lot of very accomplished people that he had a secret, unrealized gift. Or did he?

I rounded out November with some classic hardboiled fiction from Dashiell Hammett. It posits a jaded antihero manipulating his way through a dog-eat-dog city, as crimes and bodies start to pile up from the very first page.