Rejected Title: December For August

By Barrister Shaw

For The Gentlemen’s latest book, we tackled the beach- (or airport, in the case of this reviewer) friendly read Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen. By all accounts, this was a quick and compelling read full of lively and memorable characters, probably a large part of why it’s a recent bestseller.

We follow the story of Jacob Jankowski, a Cornell Veterinary student in his final semester of school. Jacob is just cruising along, hanging out at college and hoping to get in his hot classmate’s pants when tragedy strikes. His parents are killed in a car accident, leaving behind nothing but debt. Devastated, Jacob skips out on his final exams and hops the nearest train to three months of adventure, life lessons, romance and drama with the nation’s umpteenth-rated fleabag circus. His veterinary skills come in handy to the ragtag tribe, and he soon finds himself at odds with his patron, head trainer of the animal show, August. Largely this conflict stems from Jacobs refusal to accept August’s abuse of the animals in his care, but rapidly expands to Jacob’s designs on his wife, Marlena. Not surprisingly, the story ends in chaos and murder, though how it plays out may surprise you.

Told in parallel to this story, is the recounting of this story by an elderly Jacob Jankowski, whiling his days away in a shitty nursing home, waiting for his shitty kids to come and take him to the circus nearby and enduring the shitty behavior of his nurses and would-be Casanova of the blue hairs, Joseph McGuinty, who claims to have carried water for the elephants. Jacob could blow this guy out of the water for being a liar since apparently nobody carries water for elephants, but he chooses to sit and stew about it. To be fair, there’s one nurse who takes a shine to Jacob and makes his days somewhat more tolerable.

Honestly, you can probably read the book yourself faster than it would take me to tell the whole thing. And it’s worth it. For expediency, through these combined stories, we are reminded of a few long-standing truths.

• The 1930’s were tough.
• Circus folk are one big, grimy, dysfunctional family.
• Moonshine will fuck you up. Like puking-on-two-prostitutes-who-are-about-to-give-you-the-trump-all-others-best-virginity-losing-story-before-waking-up-in-a-trunk-naked-slathered-in-clown-makeup fucked up.
• You can’t fight true love, but you can kill for it.
• Hurting animals is bad.
• Getting old sucks.

Barrister Lichtenauer, while he enjoyed the book, made a rather compelling argument for looking at the story from a different perspective.

Here’s a story for you. A gruff but loving animal trainer makes his living on a 1930’s traveling circus with his beautiful wife, the lead performer in his show. When a brainy young vet school dropout on the run from his demons hops the train, he takes the troubled boy under his wing, inviting him into his heart and home. But before he knows it, the kid is making goo-goo eyes at his wife, turning his coworkers against him and leaving knives on his pillow in the middle of the night. Soon enough, his wife is sleeping with the kid and he has a homicidal elephant ready to give him the old Kentucky dirt nap. And all because he disciplined some of his animals here and there. Ok, and his wife. But it was the 30’s. Society didn’t have its shit together, just ask black people. It wasn’t right, but at the time it was perfectly acceptable. Plus, apparently the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic, undiagnosed in that time.

Short recap: College dropout steals wife from mentally ill man.

Just think about it from August’s side. Now doesn’t that sound like a damn tragedy? But history is written by the winners, even in fiction, and Jacob the cuckolding dropout is our hero. And he gets a very compelling sendoff, even if he was a bit of a prick at times. Yeah, yeah, who isn’t? Just remember that every antagonist isn’t necessarily a full-blown black-hatted moustache-twirling villain either.

As always, dear reader, we’ll let you decide for yourself.

Overall rating: 2.5625 Beaver Pelt Hats

Barrister Lichtenauer: +2.25
Barrister Russell: +2.0
Barrister Shaw: +3.0
Barrister Wells: +3.0

Meeting Place: The Gentlemen convened at Rosedale Barbecue both to honor the titular elephant and enjoy hanging out by the railroad tracks in hopes of a circus train passing by. But all we found was horsemeat.

Next Up: Three Dollars by Elliot Perlman

At Least Four Trees of Smoke Were Used to Publish This Book

By Barrister Lichtenauer

This was a long and hard literary battle. This was 700 + pages of thin paper and lots of words. This will always be remembered as the book that almost killed the Gentlemen Bookreader's Club of America. But we muddled through it and, for the most part, are glad we did.

Dennis Johnson’s epic Tree of Smoke follows what feels like 41,234 characters as they work to understand Vietnam while trying to stay alive (spoiler – a lot of them die, but its not what you’d expect).

• There’s the CIA operatives who drink bourbon and talk about stuff they want to do but never actually do
• The on-the-ground grunts trying to bone Vietnamese whores and get shot at once or twice
• There’s the Vietnamese people who sit around sweating and not trusting anyone
• There’s the aid worker who bones the CIA operatives and looks gross
• There’s the assassin who complains a lot

Don’t get me wrong. It was a good book, Johnson can write – he’s eloquent and brilliant when he wants to be. When he doesn’t want to be, you get clunky dialogue and really confusing descriptions. Make no mistake, this was a classic “stick-with-it” book. If you could get through the first 150-200 pages, it starts moving at a good pace and gets pretty interesting. But it’s tough. The first seventh of this book is a real chore.

I'd love to give you a well-written synopsis of everything that happened, but this book was full of storylines and sub plots and sub sub plots and characters who get killed or not... its a huge mess. But I think that's the point. When it comes down to it, reading a book about Vietnam probably shouldn't be easy. It probably shouldn't be a simple, straight-up story. Because isn't that the point? Things out there were a huge, bloody mess. No one knew what was going on. And it's reflected in Johnson's sprawling narrative.

So. What is a Tree of Smoke? It'll only take you 700+ pages to find out.

Overall rating: Whale Oil Lamp

Barrister Lichtenauer: +1.75
Barrister Russell: +.25
Barrister Shaw: +1.5
Barrister Wells: -3.5

Meeting Place: Jack Stack Barbeque - it wasn't really related to the book. It was more of convenience. Yes, we should have eaten Vietnamese food or something like that.

Next Up: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

Frey not Joyce. And that's just fine.

By Barrister Russell

The incomparable James Joyce once claimed that if Dublin were to disappear, it could be reconstructed to every last detail just by reading his Ulysses. Quite a statement. But then again, Ulysses is widely considered the greatest piece of English literature ever written. So I guess you could say, quite a novel. But to say that James Frey tried to do for LA what Joyce did for Dublin, as Washington Post critic Steven Moore claims, is just too much of a stretch for the GBCOA.

Our guess is that Moore has never read, and will never read Ulysses, (probably has other things to read to keep him busy) and simply made his offhanded comment on reputation alone. But for those of you that have read this masterpiece, you know how ridiculous Moore's remarks actually are. Frey's book was good. It was really good. He stayed true to his staccato, machine-gun thoughts and created characters that kept us emotionally invested and turning the pages. But at no time could we recreate LA for you based solely on Frey's prose. And at no time did we think he was reinventing the perception this fantasy city already has in the eyes of millions. In these ways, Frey didn't fail. He just came up short.

That is, if those were his intentions at all.

The book itself is really no more than a snapshot of various characters' lives. You've got the secretly gay movie star, the overweight immigrant, the wary travelers searching for better fortunes and the homeless wanderer still searching for meaning in his life. Pretty typical stuff. But similar to his previous works, Frey has the uncanny ability to make us care for the characters more than we should. We've all read about drug addicts before, but we'll challenge anyone who says they've met a character more engrossing and relatable than Frey himself in A Million Little Pieces.

Bright Shiny Morning was no different. These characters have been written before. The stories that follow each of them have been told. But we cared nonetheless, and did long after the book had finished. That is the mark of a great writer. And Frey has established himself as just that - especially now.

So does the GBCOA think Frey went out on a limb here? No. Did he redefine the LA story? No. Did he do the impossible and mimic Joyce's greatest work? Not even close. But what he did do was illustrate the American dream - the path to LA that millions seek each year and the varying levels of success they all find. BSM knows dreams are different for everyone, and that finding success in LA means something different depending on your perspective. But that's why it's great. Because depending on your perspective, BSM was successful for many different reasons. If only for the simple fact that it tells all of us to continue to dream for something better. Because in the end, that's what LA is all about.

Overall Rating: 2.875 Beaver Pelt Hats

Barrister Lichtenauer: +3.5
Barrister Russell: +3.75
Barrister Shaw: +1
Barrister Wells: +3.25

Meeting Place: Jack Stack Barbeque - Don't try and figure it out. Just know that it was delicious and we don't regret it for a second.

Next Up: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

An Open Letter to Anyone Who Actually Reads this Blog

The Gentlemen Bookreader's would like to take a moment to apologize for our little break. We know there are hundreds of thousands of you out there who depend on this blog for book suggestions and incredible, ground-breaking insight.

We will be updating shortly with reviews for James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning and Dennis Johnson's Tree of Smoke and, so you can get a head start catching up to us in reading, we will be finishing Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union by the end of March then starting on Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants.

So hold on tight dear readers and get your monocles dusted.

Swedish Mystery Debut Fails to Leave a Lasting Impression

By Barrister Shaw

Stieg Larsson is many things, journalist, magazine editor, communist, novelist and sadly, a corpse. It turns out the man died in 2004 leaving three complete novels unpublished. The first of these books found its way to translation and release in the US under the title The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, GBCOA’s ninth selection.

Girl’s plot introduces Mikael Blomkvist (pronounced Bloomquist) a respected financial journalist and Millenium Magazine editor facing a losing battle in a libel court case against a shady industrialist as the novel opens. While he’s trying to figure out how to cope with the threat to the loss of his journalistic good name and jail time (or gaol, stubbornly un-translated in the text), a wealthy benefactor in the form of Henrik Vanger makes him a job offer he can’t refuse: Spend a year on a secluded island writing a Vanger family history for a huge cash payout and hard evidence of guilt on the aforementioned shady industrialist. The catch: Blomkvist is actually there to solve the long cold mystery of the disappearance of Vanger’s favorite niece 30-odd years ago. Tall order, since the best of Sweden’s police and Vanger’s own extensive resources have failed to produce any results over that time.

Over the course of the novel, we also get to meet Lisbeth Salander (the titular girl with the dragon tattoo), a highly intelligent and capable intelligence and research expert with major antisocial and anti-authoritarian tendencies. Lisbeth is the most compelling character in this book, smart, wily, tough as nails yet sympathetic. From the outside, she appears to be just another troubled adolescent, even diagnosed as retarded by a state system with no clue as to how to recognize her abilities. Blomkvist and Salander eventually join forces to solve the mysteries of the Vanger family in the most compelling section of the book.

Yes, for about 150 pages, you get a cracking murder mystery, cat and mouse chases, revelations and resolutions. Too bad this book is 450 pages. I get that this is the first book in the series and there’s a lot of character groundwork to be laid. I get that. And the book is well written, no issue there. Clear, concise language that Saramago* could take a page from. But this is the GBCOA, and we have some gripes.

• Get to the story already. Jesus Christ, do we need 250 pages of Blomkvist sitting on his ass reading reports? I’ve had to read reports before, and the only thing more boring than doing the reading is reading a description of someone reading excruciating reports. If he’s not doing that, he’s farting around the island, bemoaning the cold and carrying on inappropriate affairs with Cecilia Vanger (described by Zach as Glenn Close). Speaking of which:

• Apparently Blomkvist is a machine with the ladies. Young women, old women, married women, they can’t get enough of the Stieg, oh wait, I’m sorry, Blomkvist. His partner at his magazine is a married woman who frequently just bangs away at him like a screen door in a hurricane. You see they’re old friends, so it’s all good. Besides her husband is cool with it. Then there’s Cecilia, who’s like 60 and knew from the first moment she saw Blomkvist move in the cabin next door that she wanted to get some of that pickled herring. And of course there’s Lisbeth, who is so thrown off by his cool, capable demeanor she has to figure him out, naked of course. All fine if you have some dashing lead character in mind but all I could picture was some doughy pale Swede resembling the author himself.

• The mystery all of a sudden just starts unraveling at a breakneck pace, which would be fine if the trigger behind it wasn’t just “I saw something in this picture and it hit me.” When it’s a mystery, we want to play along. We want to be able to make educated guesses with the scraps of evidence presented. When the pieces start falling into place we want to smack our foreheads and wonder why we hadn’t seen the clues in that light before. Here you’re just hanging on to the bumper of the car as it blazes down the road.

• An ending that drags on longer than the Lord of the Rings. Especially when it wraps up with corporate subterfuge. People drama = interesting. Business drama = zzzz.

• Spoiler Alert: Larsson really went for it in his first book. Evil-wise you’re dealing with misogyny, rape, kidnapping, torture, incest, murder and Nazis. That’s the Grand Slam Special of novel villainy. Save a little for the sequels, Steig. At this point I think you only have aliens and zombies left in the omnibus of evil.

The Gentlemen agreed there were good and bad parts to the book, but were left underwhelmed, and amid some allegations of voter fraud, came to rest on the first ever combined neutral rating. Only Zach and I had interest in possibly reading Larsson’s follow-up novels. Wells said he’d read a synopsis. Lichtenauer wants no part. Much like a temporary tattoo, it’s amusing for a bit, then washes away with little effort or longstanding effects.

*Yes I know Saramago’s style is unique, wonderful and artistic, but I swear sometimes it was like trying to read broken glass.

Overall rating: Whale Oil Lamp

Barrister Lichtenauer: -2.5
Barrister Russell: +0.5
Barrister Shaw: +2.0
Barrister Wells: 0.0

Meeting Place: To honor both the Dragon in the title as well as Larsson’s status as a godless Communist, the Gentlemen convened over Chinese food at The Red Dragon House.

Next Up: Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

Hyperbole: I Know About That

By Barrister Wells

Jonathan Safran Foer’s second journey into the world of literature drops the reader into the life of Oskar Schnell, a precocious nine-year old that possesses above average intelligence and a seemingly endless line of questions. Dealing with the pain of losing his father in the attacks of September 11, Oskar embarks on a journey through New York City to solve the final puzzle left to him by his father – a key, in an envelope, in a vase, in a closet. Intrigued? Read on.

Seriously though, I’m not going to bore you with the details of the story. I enjoyed the book and highly recommend you read it. In all honesty, this book was well received by the GBCoA and for the most part negative comments were kept to a minimum. After all, it got the bad taste of Lullaby out of our mouths. But, in the spirit of the holiday season, I’d like to share with you one of my favorite Festivus traditions, you guessed it – the airing of grievances:

1. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Oskar. He was an extremely good protagonist whose plight is incredibly identifiable to those grieving the loss of a loved one. That being said, his shenanigans were extremely hard to stomach at times. I can count at least five times that I wanted to punch him square in the mouth*. I mean, talk about an incredibly trusting youth willing to jump into the nearest van that promises candy and puppies. Oskar wanders about New York City, often unaccompanied, venturing into strangers' houses, handing out his apartment key and sharing details of his life that would have any pedophile twirling their mustache with anticipation. Which brings me to my next point;
2. Where the hell was his mom? It’s infuriating how a small child can be allowed to be-bop through Brooklyn, the Bronx and Central Park, at night no less, with no sign of worry from his extremely distant mother. Well, come to find out, his mom knew what he was up to the entire time. She wasn’t an absentee mom, she was just an incredibly horrible one.
3. Nowhere Zones: Don’t even get me started on these. If you ever want to intentionally piss me off, just mention nowhere zones in my vicinity. I’ll come at you like a tornado of teeth and fingernails.
4. Spoiler Alert: I don’t mean to tell any tales out of school here, but Oskar’s grandfather really chapped my ass. I mean, say a goddamn word for crying-out-loud. Yeah, I know, the horrors of war, tragic love-loss, blah, blah, blah. You know who else experienced the horrors of war and tragic love-loss? Everybody else from your generation! Get on with your life and grow a pair. You’re acting extremely childish and incredibly selfish.
5. The pictures. Actually I liked the pictures. I have no problem with the pictures. They made me feel like I was reading an extreme amount of pages at an incredible rate. Pictures are good. Other authors should steal a page or two from Foer’s playbook.

Now that that’s out of my system, I have to say Foer’s follow-up to Everything is Illuminated is an extremely interesting read and at times incredibly poignant. The unique style of Foer’s writing (although not all GBCoA members would agree) was very much appreciated and welcomed. In conclusion, if you only read one book in 2009 chronicling a nine-year old boy dealing with the loss of his father in the September 11 attacks, make it this one.

*Note: The Gentlemen’s Bookreader’s Club of America in no way endorses or supports the use of physical violence against children. But seriously, someone needed to smack a little sense into that kid.

Overall rating: 1.25 Beaver Pelt Hats

Barrister Lichtenauer: +1
Barrister Russell: -2
Barrister Shaw: +2
Barrister Wells: +4

Meeting Place: In honor of Oskar's search for the lock that fit his key, we had planned to meet at the Keyhole Tavern, however, inclimate weather forced us to change plans and meet at a bar that was both extremely loud and incredibly close - McFadden's.

Next Up: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

An Open Letter to Chuck Palahniuk - or - How Lullaby Made Me Want to Put Myself To Sleep

By Barrister Lichtenauer

We get it. You’re subversive. We get it. You hate people and society. We get it. You like to imagine different and creative ways to undermine pop culture. We. Get. It.

Can we move on? Please? It’s the same in all your books. Listen, I realize that I’m probably being too hard on you. But here’s the thing, I was the one who recommended this book for the book club and you made me look like an asshole.

It started off really well:

• Cool style
• Unique subject matter
• Great foreshadowing

Then it fell off a cliff. I had to look my fellow bookreaders in the eye and tell them, “No, I didn’t know it was about magic and spells” and “Yes, I hated all the characters too.”

Seriously man. We all actually had a debate about if were you trying too hard or if you had just given up. I said you were trying too hard. I figured that you had exhausted your whole society-hating routine and were grasping at straws so you pulled out magic. MAGIC. However, we came to the consensus that you, in fact, could have cared less about this book. Your publisher probably signed you for like 6 books and this was number 5. Just struggling to get through the contract.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to regret reading this book, it’s about some stupid poem that kills people. Some stupid journalist gets hold of it and kills a bunch of people. He meets up with a stupid real estate broker and her gross assistant and they try to destroy it all. They also find some other book full of stupid magic spells that let them do things like have middle-age sex floating in a ballroom. Unfortunately, it was a lot more detailed than that – but I didn’t really leave anything out. Oh! Except that the hero of the story accidentally has sex with his dead wife… talk about a cold fish! Hahaha! Get it? That was terrible and I apologize.

Overall, The Gentlemen Bookreader’s Club of America felt that the book was an easy read. Engaging. Flowing. Interesting. It’s just the subject matter that really disappointed everyone. The character’s were universally annoying. The book involved a few twists but they weren’t surprising or gut-wrenching or emotion-evoking at all. Thanks but no thanks Mr. Palahniuk.

Shout out to Barrister Russell for his headline suggestion of "Palahniuk Introduces New Suicide Method for Readers". Nice try.

Overall rating: .625 Clubbed Baby Seals

Barrister Lichtenauer: -1
Barrister Russell: +.5
Barrister Shaw: -1
Barrister Wells: -1

Meeting Place: This book was about contradictions between nature and man. How man moved west and tried to improve upon nature but ended up irreparably harming it. That's why we chose Ted's Montana Grill in the Power & Light District. A place that that claims to be eco-friendly but serves huge helpings of American Bison. You know, because there's a ton of those around nowadays.

Next Up: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer