Books

You may have noticed that I have two books on the side bar thing of my blog, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," and "The Nazi Seizure of Power." They've been there for awhile: I guess I'm taking my time for a change.

I started reading "The Nazi Seizure of Power" one night in the booth at City Garage (before the show started, I swear). For some reason it was packed in with all the sound effects CDs and collections of slides from shows past. Actually it makes a lot of sense for that book to be at City Garage, but more on that another time. Anyway, it's a scholarly book - not a novel, but rather a collection of facts and reportage on one town (in this copy of the book, the town's real name is still concealed and called, therefore, the fictitious "Thalberg," located "somewhere in Germany," however, I believe future editions of the book named the actual town. I'm not sure, though. This is an old edition I've been reading) during the very early years of the Third Reich; I think it started out as the author's dissertation. It's not exactly compelling reading... I mean, it's interesting, but the guy uses many, many acronyms (I despise acronyms), and to make it worse, they're acronyms of German words, so I have no idea what he's talking about sometimes. It's not good that I've been reading it in bits and pieces (I hate reading like this... I prefer to start a book on Monday and read, pretty much nonstop, through Tuesday or Wednesday... until I'm done. Yes, stopping once in a while to sleep, go to work, whatever, but to get great chunks of reading in all at once. What I've been doing with this book is read for five minutes, put it down, go to sleep, wait a few days, and pick it up again: it's not helping my understanding, but I've not yet decided if I should just give up or start all over).

That's the way I feel about the other book I'm reading, by Michael Chabon.

Michael Chabon is one of my favorite authors; I've been reading him since I found a copy of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" in the remainder section at Crown way back in 1990 or so. (By the way, I read on Wikipedia {where most of the "facts" for this posting came from} that they've made a movie out it, which should be interesting and problematic for fans, considering that Sienna Miller is in it. Plus, I already have some pretty high resolution internal ideas of what things look like... Also? I've heard some of the news stories about Ms. Miller's misbehavior while filming this movie, but I never made the connection that the movie she was filming was this movie. OK. I'm slow. Also, I don't really care for Sienna Miller; her news stories didn't stick with me.)

OK, so either I'm not very smart, or Michael Chabon is a fucking genius, because I kind of thought that some of things in this book were real. I've been reading it as if the history behind the story had actually happened. Granted, history is my worst subject (remember, I slept through it in high school and/or drew pictures of the back of Sean Leys' head...), and I haven't done much since high school or that one community college class I took to improve my knowledge, but still: I had no idea that this Jewish community in Alaska didn't actually exist.

I mean, the main problem I've been having with the book is all the Yiddish terminology; now I have to rethink a lot of what I've been considering to be the "real world" hidden in with all the fictional stuff... Argh. Ultimately, though, in spite of all the trouble I've been having, Michael Chabon is making me love his characters. The guy has such a wonderful way of writing, and I wish I had done a little thinking ahead and marked the sentences in particular that I've fallen in love with... but I didn't. I do think that I'm going to have to re-read this book, with a notepad and a Yiddish/English dictionary, because I know I'm missing out a lot on some pretty important meaning, and mood. There's a certain amount of playfulness in his writing that helps me to understand even when the actual words aren't familiar to me, but still: I would like to know what it is I'm reading. It's not so much to make it totally unreadable, and of course there are some things you can pick up based on context, but still. Re-reading isn't a problem for me - usually I read a book so fast through the first time that I know I will have to re-read it just to catch things that I missed in the first pass through. I'm okay with that - the first reading, I'm usually so excited (if it's a good book) that I know I'm skimming things that will turn out to be vitally important later. I like re-reading, so it's not a problem. I'm ready to find out what ends up happening to Meyer Landsman, one of my new favorite characters; and then I'll be ready to read it all again.

Now, see, I have a problem: my friend Bo put a copy of the new Harry Potter (I don't even know the full title of it... I've been avoiding it, actually, because I want no pre-conceived notions until I can hold the damn thing in my own hands) on hold for me, and I have to go pick it up. I considered hitting the midnight sale at Borders myself, but no, that seemed like a totally nerdalicious thing to do. At my age! So, the question is, will I finish these two books first? or will I put them slyly away? Should I wait until Patrick and I go to Catalina and cart Harry with me out to the beach or pool or wherever we're going to be whiling away our lives for a couple of days?

In the past, as each new Harry Potter came out, I would break out the previous books, and read them, one by one. This time I didn't do that, and I'm feeling a tiny bit weird about it. Will I even remember what the hell happened in the last book? Because you know what? I totally don't. I just walked over the bookshelf where they're stored (ok, actually? They're "stored" on top of a speaker, not on a bookshelf), and it looks as if the sixth one is missing, which is a problem, because I don't remember who I loaned it to. I remember buying it: I remember reading it (I finished it on Bo's couch, when I was birdsitting while he was out of town with his wife)... but who has it? If you have my copy of "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" (it's a hardcover), would you do me a favor and drop it off on the front porch tonight? Seriously: no questions asked.

While I'm at it, whoever has my DVD of "A Concert For George," you can drop that one off, too. I miss it.

...

Thanks, Wikipedia, for the facts*!

Michael Chabon
Nazi Germany
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (film)
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Sitka, Alaska
Peter Saarsgard

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