It’s hard to right a ~900 page book that can keep a reader’s interest throughout the entire book. Robert Jordan lost this ability about five books ago in the Wheel of Time series. Neal Stephenson managed it with Cryptonomicon, but not with the Baroque Cycle. Susanna Clarke manages it admirably with her debut brick novel.

I seem to have a soft spot for amusing books set in victorian England with sci-fi/fantasy leanings (I’m a huge fan of To Say Nothing of the Dog), so I was an easy sell. Still, I was impressed that I was up reading a 2:00 am two nights in a row trying to finish this thing before it consumed my every waking moment.

Jonathan Strange is one of my new favorite literary characters, and I wanted to reach into the book and throttle Mr. Norrell on more than one occasion, so I have to say the characters were well done. The plot doesn’t get bogged down in details, though there are some more descriptive passages that I found myself skimming.

Highly recommended.

I Know This Much Is True has been sitting in my pile for a few months now — my mom sent it to me to read after she got it from my aunt. My expectations weren’t particulalrly high, though I’m not sure why — but once I started reading I found it increasingly hard to put this book down (considering that the book is about 900 pages long, I had to force myself to put it down or I wouldn’t have gotten any work done).

The book is very much about schizophrenia, though mostly about the effect the disease can have on the family and friends of those who suffer from it. It’s also a really compelling story about two brothers growing up together in a home filled with anger and abuse. I highly reccomend this book (if you have some free time, or just happen to read very quickly). I’m a sucker for big sweeping novels that tell a character’s story from beginning to end (this is why I love John Irving), and I Know This Much Is True not only tells the story of Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, but even has a book-within-a-book telling the life story of their maternal grandfather, Dominick Tempesta.

I don’t have much experience with people who suffer schizophrenia, though I probably have more experience than most people, but I know in some small part the frustration that can come when dealing with someone whose reality isn’t quite aligned with your own. I don’t know if Wally Lamb wrote this book from personal experience or if he relied on research, but I wonder how it resonates with those who do live with, or care for, someone with schizophrenia.

Better written than The DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons (a book which I read in one night only because I disliked it so much and wanted to finish the damn thing), to which it will certainly be compared. Really they don’t have much in common, The Dante Club is fairly straight literary historical fiction whereas The DaVinci Code is fiction about history (which is a lousy label, but I’m not good at naming things).

Anyways, I enjoyed the book quite a bit, thought the dialog can get a little thick at times (the author tries to kep speech set in a period appropriate manner which complicates things) and the ending of the book is rather unfocused. I’m very proud to say I was able to identify the killer a little more than half-way through the book, something I don’t do very often when reading mysteries. It’s interesting that this book centers around the desire to bring Dante’s writing to the American public, something which this book will certainly accomplish if it gains any popularity (also worth noting is that Longfellow’s translation of Dante was re-released along with this book — the publisher was thinking ahead). I’m certainly intrigued now, if only by the level gruesome detail that seems to be part of Inferno.

Living in North Carolina has given me a new perspective on hurricanes (I was waiting for the bus when out first hit), which probably made this book all the more engrossing. When I first started reading Isaac’s Storm, I was mostly annoyed by the author’s constant recriminations against the hubris of the era (ca. 1900) and heavy handed foreshadowing (this seems to be a common failing in books about natural disasters). As I progressed, I began to realize that this was a fascinating look at an age when radar didn’t make tracking hurricanes as easy as it is now, and when our understanding of the weather seemed so close to perfections but was in truth deeply flawed. The story of Isaac Cline is tragic, but he is largely a product of his age. The real story here is about the US Weather Bureau and late 19th century meteorology. My major complaint at the end is that there are only two graphics to help illustrate the hurricane, and none to help us understand much of the hurricane science discussed in detail throughout the book.

Interestingly, as I write this tropical storm Arlene is heading towards Florida (the first named storm of the 2005 season). Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Santorum is trying to stop the National Weather from issuing public forecasts and thereby stop “competing” with commercial forecasters.

I avoided temptation once, but eventually I had to give in. It took me quite a while to finish, but I really enjoyed it in the end. Well, actually I didn’t quite like the end but I really enjoyed the rest of the book. I’m afraid that having completed this book has weakened my anti-McSweeney power.

A fascinating history of the Lincoln assasination. The only real problem is that the author’s ego gets in the way a few times. He doesn’t hesitate to criticize past histories and to congratulate himself for his ground breaking work. I don’t know enough about the subject to know one way or the other, but the vook does seem exhaustively researched. If nothing else, the book presents a more accurate version of the event than is ever taught in classrooms.

• McSweeney’s Really Interesting Books
• Lots of Peanuts
• The League

A note on McSweeney’s: The whole line of McSweeney’s products (and pretty much everything else that relates to David Eggers) smacks of literary self-indulgence and elitism, yet somehow remains utterly captivating instead of irritating (even when I don’t get it).