Last summer we proposed that readers and customers join us on an odyssey through the bountiful selection of great short fiction we'd been reading. Short stories were making a triumphant comeback thanks to a flurry of releases, including collections by Wells Tower, Skip Horack and even John Grisham — all among our favorites last year.
This summer we find ourselves drawn to longer works. Much longer. Maybe it's to escape the ungodly television feed. Maybe writers have more to say or maybe publishers aren't editing them as much. At any rate, it seems like every other book we pick up these days is a project. Some of our favorite books this year have topped off around 600 pages. And here we thought the world was speeding up, that brevity reigned.
Recently we came across an old article by Newsweek's Malcolm Jones, reviewing a 900-page Vikram Chandra novel and confessing that he stopped 100 pages in. The first 100 pages were good, not great, Jones wrote. So why go on when there were a hundred other things he could be reading, seeing, doing? "If you're going to write 900-plus-page novels, you'd better be as good as Dickens, or I … or I'm going to read Dickens."
Good point. But if you're addicted to the rush of plowing through a mound of pages, summer vacation is the time. There's something to be said for eschewing the toss-away thriller for something meatier over a modest to lengthy vacation. One staff member swears by long beach-reads, from his rain-soaked, condo-bound vacation with Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides to his daiquiri-fueled, seaside reading of Michel Faber's 850-page novel about Victorian-era prostitution, The Crimson Petal and the White. And we'll never forget our friend David Hicks calling from a Miami swimming pool, immersed in Dostoevsky as curious onlookers bought him beers.
The It-Book of this summer appears to be The Passage by Justin Cronin. Our own champions of this book have admitted inhaling the book in huge gasps, while customers who have finished the book in days reveal a similar compulsion. "It didn't feel like an 800-page book," said one reader, "but I can't imagine reading two more that size if this is truly the first in a trilogy." Hey don't forget about Harry Potter.
We've been amazed at the reception to Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn, a 592-page book about combat soldiers in Vietnam. It's one of the more unlikely successes of the year. There's no switching back and forth between men of war and civilians dealing with their own domestic battles, told over many years, recalling previous generations. This is all about the thrills and lulls and first-hand specifics of war, told almost in real-time. One reader went in full-bore over a weekend and came out wild-eyed. "Unforgettable," he said. "Dude spent 30 years writing it, I read it in 30 hours. Just couldn't put it down." Other survivors have admitted that same rare feeling that only comes from finishing long, heavy books — a sense of accomplishment.
There is also Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist, a 600-plus page novel from the spring we loved and have not praised near enough on the blog. (Hey, we've been busy reading.) Udall is a first-rate storyteller who chronicles the modern polygamist family in this beefy, story-driven novel about a man, his four wives and their 28 children. Big laughs and brisk storytelling keep this book moving. Udall is also one of the best writers of child characters we've read in ages. We still have signed copies.
And we just finished Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, his next Corrections-sized family saga due out at the end of summer. Again, Franzen explores the zeitgeist through the individual lives of an eccentric family coping with modern travails, destined toward an explosive reunion. Any good reader will find a character he or she can identify with in this well-told modern saga.
Even though we're on the backside of summer, it's not too late to start a project. We've adorned Turnrow's display wall at the foot of the stairs with some of our favorite hefty tomes, testing the integrity of our shelves and the mettle of our customers. No surprise, they've been flying off the shelf ... and not always due to gravity. Come in and choose, have us hoist one for you, then go make a long weekend for yourself.
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