Books Read in 2012

Posted on 2012/12/282012/12/30 by Jason Hensel

Another year and another list of the books I read during the past 12 months. While I enjoyed many of the books, not many of them excited me, causing me to buy extra copies so I could force them into friends’ hands.

If was to do that, though, here are the ones that were my favorites:

Fiction: Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, The People Who Watched Her Pass By by Scott Bradfield, and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Non-Fiction: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Long for This World by Jonathan Weiner, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Steve J. Martin, and Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
Play: In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Poetry: Happy Life by David Budbill

Here’s the full list:

House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
The People Who Watched Her Pass By by Scott Bradfield
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
Long for This World by Jonathan Weiner
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993 by Dennis Cooper
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy
The Hot L Baltimore by Lanford Wilson
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Marquise of O by Heinrich von Kleist
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness
Aura by Carlos Fuentes
After Claude by Iris Owens
Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
Oranges by John McPhee
Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
This is How it Goes by Neil LaBute
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
Happy Life by David Budbill
Old Times by Harold Pinter
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Marriage of Bette & Boo by Christopher Durang
Cloud Atlas by David MItchell
The Drunk in the Furnace by W.S. Merwin
A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neill
Time’s Power by Adrienne Rich
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
How to Improvise a Full-Lenght Play by Kenn Adams
Guest of Reality by Par Lagerkvist
Far Away by Caryl Churchill
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Steve J. Martin
In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Desolation by Yasmina Reza
Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
Bhagavad Gita translated by Stephen Mitchell
Art by Committee: A Guide to Advanced Improvisation by Charna Halpern
Seascape by Edward Albee
Busy Monsters by William Giraldi
Adult Head by Jeff Tweedy

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Review: Busy Monsters

Posted on 2012/12/242013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

I will admit that a great first line is all that is needed to cause me to continue reading a book. Surely, I’m not the only one that’s been drawn into, for example, Fahrenheit 451 or A Prayer for Owen Meany based solely on their first lines. Busy Monsters by William Giraldi is another book that kicks you in a kidney with its first line: “Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man.” If you’re not grabbed by the lapels after that first line, then you’re suffering from a deep state of depression that Hallmark wouldn’t even be able to help.

Busy Monsters is the story of Charles Homar and his quest to win back a woman who left him. Homar is writer for a periodical that publishes his over-the-top, true-life stories. Yes, Giraldi makes Homar similar in name to Homer, another writer who wrote over-the-top stories full of monsters. And if you didn’t catch that in-your-face similarity, then let me drive you back to school for your first day of high school freshman English.

Homar’s fiancee leaves because she wants to discover a living giant squid. In his quest to win back his lover, Homar tries to prove himself a man by shooting down a ship, capturing Bigfoot, and confronting UFO enthusiasts. Homar, of course, has his own odyssey on his way to reunite with his Penelope.

Giraldi’s narrative reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. I’m okay with that; however, it took me a couple of pages to get into the swing of things if I put the book down for a day. The style’s over-the-topness took me aback for a bit, but once I got into the groove, I was happy to ride this rocket to its destination.

Along the way, Giraldi wrote some great lines that encapsulate the book’s theme.

“We human monsters make choices with the minds of worms; good sense lies east, we veer west; trouble sends an invitation, we RSVP the very same day.” Also, “…all I mean to say is that a human being is an oblivious ape in the grip of nonsense…” Those are two that come to mind and really struck me enough to memorize the page numbers they’re on.

If you’re a fan of Vonnegut or Robbins, then I believe you’ll love Busy Monsters. It’s a fun read, and it will cause you to contemplate what kind of monsters, real or imaginary, you’d battle to win what’s important to you.

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Review: The Architect of Flowers by William Lychack

Posted on 2011/06/042011/09/27 by Jason Hensel

My friend Danny introduced me to William Lychack’s writing a few years ago. The story he had me read was “A Stand of Fables,” which is about a woman who yearns for the sea, to return to what she was once before. The story is beautifully written with a vein of sadness streaming through it, like a red line of clay in limestone. And even though there was that sadness in it, there was also hope and redemption.

This duality of sadness and hopefulness is Lychack’s bailiwick in his collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers. Opening with “Stolpestad,” a story about an animal mercy killing gone wrong, Lychack bats the reader back and forth between grief and discovery. He doesn’t let up for the whole collection, and if you were to read this book straight through, you too may need to go for a walk in the dark woods to find yourself.

Lychack’s prose is lyrical and often sparse. It reminds me of Raymond Carver’s writing (or maybe I should say Carver’s writing heavily diced and sliced by Gordon Lish). There were several times I ended a story and had to pause, contemplating Lychack’s overall meaning, much like one does after reading a poem.

And much like great poets, Lychack knows how to construct a line that causes you to do exactly what he wants you to do. Here’s the beginning of the first line of “Stolpestad”: “Was toward the end of your shift, a Saturday, another one of those long slow lazy afternoons of summer…” Just try reading “long slow lazy” fast. I dare you. It’s impossible without sounding like half your tongue is cut off. Those three words slow the reader down, immediately putting you in the story’s time location.

Lychack’s syntax in these stories is like a short earthquake, often throwing you off balance, but never to the ground. This goes along with his major themes of grief and redemption, forcing you to re-examine the world, to re-evaluate what is important to you, what you can live with and without.

There are 13 stories in the collection. A lot of the stories feature birds. You’ll come away knowing more about flowers and gardening. You’ll learn where to properly kill an animal on its body. You’ll often pause and think and daydream a bit, much like most of the characters. Lychack sets his fabulistic stories in a world of truth to help secure your footing. And then he tells you that the world you know isn’t what you expected or hoped for. It’s up to you to imagine a new one, maybe even something better than was once here before.

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