My favorite reads of 2019

I read 31 books in 2019. These were my favorites:

1. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

2. "True Grit," Charles Portis

3. "Conversations with Friends," Sally Rooney

4. "The Last Picture Show," Larry McMurtry

5. "The Book Thief," Markus Zusak

Here's to a year of great reading in 2020!

From good to great: Donald Maass' 'The Emotional Craft of Fiction'

In his masterful book "On Writing," Stephen King says that "while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one."

Most writing books, including King's, are geared toward just that: turning competent writers into good ones.

But Donald Maass, in "The Emotional Craft of Fiction," aims to do what King deemed impossible: take good writers and make them great.

It's easy to see why King considers the task so unlikely. When reading the true masters, it can sometimes seem like what separates good from great is a matter of wizardry, of metaphysics, like what separates men from gods.

The miracle of Maass' book is that he succeeds in deconstructing greatness in a way that makes it accessible to us mere mortals.

What he reveals is that great writing is not about the order of the words on the page, although strong craft certainly helps. Instead, great writing is about the experience it stirs in readers--the feelings it provokes.

"Classics have enduring appeal mostly because we remember the experience we had while reading them," Maass explains. "We remember not the art but the impact."

Maass, who runs one of the most successful literary agencies in New York, offers specific techniques for "creating a powerful emotional experience for readers as they read." These include the use of subtext, digging beyond a character's obvious emotions, playing against expected feelings, and allowing characters to "get real."

I can't recommend this book highly enough for anyone looking to take their writing from good to great -- something Maass proves is not only possible, but a rewarding emotional journey in and of itself.

Hat tip to K.M. Weiland's "Helping Writers Become Authors" podcast, which is where I first heard of Maass' book.

The best paragraph (p. 205):

It is time for all novelists to own the mandate, get beyond their fears, and write with force. What is holding them back? What is holding you back? The ultimate in emotional craft is nothing more than trusting your own feelings. Having faith. Confidence. I don’t mean just the faith that you will be published. I don’t mean only the confidence that you can master the craft. No, I mean faith in your mandate as a storyteller and your fearless surrender to the heroes and monsters inside you.

Terry Alford's 'Fortune's Fool'

What can we learn from reading about the villains of history?

Terry Alford offers an extraordinarily entertaining and well-researched account of the life of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth in his book "Fortune's Fool," which took a quarter-century to research and write.

The biography presents a plethora of reasons for Booth's crime:

Despite growing up in Maryland, Booth identified with the culture of the South, where actors enjoyed a much higher social status than in the North. He internalized the "death-to-tyrants" motif embodied by many of the Shakespearean martyrs he depicted onstage. He was a racist who despised abolitionists and was "particularly unsettled" by the prospect of blacks achieving citizenship. He was an alcoholic who occasionally showed signs of mental illness. And he was an attention-seeker who had an unhealthy obsession with fame.

Even taken together, these explanations don't feel quite satisfactory in explaining an act of terror that robbed our nation of its greatest leader, that ended all hopes for reconciliation between North and South, plunging our nation into a century of continued racial strife.

Despite Alford's commendable efforts, Booth remains a mystery.

The best paragraph (p. 175):

Free of the stage, he could now atone. Did he do so from a simple sense of duty? Or was it more complex - a sort of self-conscious performance with himself as star? These opposing viewpoints will be endlessly debated. One thing will not. John Wilkes Booth had reached a turning point. He would stop playing history. From now on he would make it.

Larry McMurtry's 'The Last Picture Show'

In his 2012 book "The Righteous Mind," social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes that within every human brain is "a full-time public relations firm."

I was reminded of this quote when reading Larry McMurtry's 1966 novel "The Last Picture Show," which was his third novel and which was written--amazingly--when he was just in his late twenties.

The novel offers moving psychological portraits of the residents of Thalia, Texas, focusing on the sexual awakening of several high school seniors.

The book is uproariously funny, occasionally disturbing, and always on point in its portrayals of lovesick high schoolers plotting to gain advantage over one another in the social (and sexual) pecking order.

The novel is at its best when it demonstrates the stark divide between the characters' outward actions and their inner motivations -- the public-relations firm at work.

This is best exemplified by Jacy, the most sought-after girl in school who juggles relationships with three boys -- and is determined, if nothing else, to be noticed.

"Courting with Duane when all the kids on the school bus could watch gave Jacy a real thrill, and made her feel a little like a movie star," McMurtry writes, explaining that Jacy rejects all of Duane's attempts to move their "courting" to a spot on the bus less visible than the back seat directly under a light. "She could bring beauty and passion into the poor kids' lives."

Here's my selection for the best (two) paragraphs (p. 40-41), which paint such a vivid picture of what happens when boys and basketballs are left alone together in an unsupervised gym:

All but two or three of the boys ignored the ten-lap command and began shooting whatever kind of shots came into their heads. The only one who actually ran all ten laps was Bobby Logan, the most conscientious athlete in school. Bobby liked to stay in shape and always trained hard; he was smart, too, but he was such a nice kid that nobody held it against him. He was the coach's special favorite.

When the coach came back he had Joe Bob at his heels. By that time all the boys were throwing three-quarter peg shots, like Ozark Ike in the comics. Balls were bouncing everywhere. Once in a game Sonny had seen an Indian boy from Durant, Oklahoma actually make a three-quarter court peg shot in the last five seconds of play. It didn't really win the game for Durant, because they were already leading Thalia by about sixty-five points, but it impressed Sonny, and he resolved to start trying a few himself.

A quarter century later, Marion Dane Bauer's 'Am I Blue' dream has been realized

The acclaimed young adult author dreamed 'that gay and lesbian characters will be as integrated into juvenile literature as they are in life'

It’s been 25 years since the publication of the groundbreaking young adult short story collection, “Am I Blue?”

The collection, edited by Marion Dane Bauer, was “the first-ever anthology of YA fiction devoted to lesbian and gay themes,” as Publishers Weekly declared in its review.

In her 1994 introduction, Bauer wrote: “It is my dream that ten years from now such an anthology will not be needed, that gay and lesbian characters will be as integrated into juvenile literature as they are in life.”

I recently contacted Bauer, now 80 years old and the author of dozens of acclaimed novels for young adults, to ask if she believes her dream has been realized, a quarter-century later.

“Yes and yes and yes,” she responded in an email. “Those of us who are gay and lesbian have truly come into a new world!

“I have published many books in my long career,” she added, “but this is the one of which I am most proud and the one, I am confident, that has done the most good.”

I read “Am I Blue?” as research for a novel I’m writing with a lesbian character, as the collection continues to be cited as one of the best works of literature for young adults dealing with gay and lesbian issues. It features stories by well-known young adult authors including Lois Lowry, Francesca Lia Block, and C. S. Adler.

I found the stories extremely compelling and believe they are still relevant today, especially for teenagers struggling with their own sexuality—and the loneliness and isolation that often accompany such struggles. Particularly poignant is the title story, Bruce Coville’s “Am I Blue?” in which a gay man expresses an unusual fantasy: He wishes all gay people could turn blue for a day.

“All the straights would have to stop imagining that they didn’t know any gay people,” the man explains. “They would find out that they had been surrounded by gays all the time, and survived the experience just fine, thank you. They’d have to face the fact that there are gay cops and gay farmers, gay teachers and gay soldiers, gay parents and gay kids. The hiding would have to stop.”

This has proven to be a prescient allegory for the very dream that Bauer believes has now been realized, with public opinion shifting dramatically on the issue of gay rights since the publication of “Am I Blue?” As parts of our society have reached a critical mass of people feeling comfortable coming out as LGBTQ, support for gay marriage among Americans—now the law of the land—has risen from 31% in 2004 to 61% today, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Am I Blue?” and other representations of gay identity in popular culture almost certainly played a role in making this shift possible.

Marion Dane Bauer

In her email, Bauer said she never could have predicted the impact “Am I Blue?” would have on the publishing industry.

“Apart from all the readers it touched across a wide range of ages, it became the first commercially successful young adult book dealing with gay and lesbian themes,” she wrote. “The importance of that, commercial success, is that it opened the door for other publishers to risk taking on many, many more books delving into or touching on this theme.

“To my immense gratitude, Harper Collins has kept ‘Am I Blue?’ in print these many years, but I am even more grateful that the book is no longer needed in the same way,” Bauer continued. “Many fine ‘gay and lesbian’ books have come onto the scene. Of equal importance from my view, more and more books for young people include a gay or lesbian character for whom the fact of their sexuality isn't the central problem of the story . . . or any problem at all. Imagine that!”

For my selection as best paragraph, I have chosen an excerpt from the story “The Honorary Shepherds,” by Gregory Maguire (p. 65-66):

Sex sells everything, even sex you might disapprove of. That’s why the image of the boys abed starts this story. It used to be stories could work up to such a development. But in the current day there’s no time for the slow buildup. Notice how movie musicals are passé? Now we make do with three-minute music videos. Notice how often the trailers they show at Cineplex 1-12 are more interesting than the ninety-eight minute feature film you’ve paid good money to see? In the future there will be no movies, only coming attractions. No symphonies, only advertising jingles. No novels, only short stories. Maybe only postcards. Vignettes.

Francesca Lia Block's 'Weetzie Bat'

Francesca Lia Block's "Weetzie Bat" isn't so much a story as a collection of moments, strung together into something profound.

The main character, Weetzie, is a "bleach-blonde punk pixie" who prances through a fairy-tale version of Los Angeles without a care in the world, accompanied by a motley crew of friends and lovers: Duck, Dirk, My Secret Agent Lover Man, and Slinkster Dog.

The strength of this trippy novel, published in 1989, is its surrealist descriptions of Hollywood -- the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Especially tastes. A sampling (p. 44):

He kissed her. 

A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs.

In the end, the AIDS epidemic is introduced into Weetzie's carefree world, leading to the profound revelation that puts a beautiful thematic bow around the individual moments that make up this unforgettable fairy tale.

Before there was Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," there was "Weetzie Bat."

The best paragraph (p. 92):

Charlie said: "Weetzie, I love you and Cherokee and ... Well, I love you more than everything. But I can't be in that city. Everything's an illusion; that's the whole thing about it -- illusion, imitation, a mirage. Pagodas and palaces and skies, blondes and stars. It makes me too sad. It's like having a good dream. You know you are going to wake up. 

The 'Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant'

Early in his “Personal Memoirs,” Ulysses S. Grant compares the fashion preferences of two generals under whom he served in the Mexican-American War: Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.

Taylor “never wore uniform, but dressed himself entirely for comfort. He moved about the field in which he was operating to see through his own eyes the situation.” Meanwhile, Scott “always wore all the uniform prescribed or allowed by law when he inspected his lines,” including his “dress uniform, cocked hat, aiguillettes, sabre and spurs.” While Grant respects both men, he expresses a clear preference for Taylor: “Both were pleasant to serve under—Taylor was pleasant to serve with.” Old Rough and Ready, as Taylor was known, “saw for himself, and gave orders to meet the emergency without reference to how they would read in history.”

Near the end of his memoirs, Grant offers another fashion comparison—this time between himself and Robert E. Lee.

When he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Lee “was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value.” Grant, on the other hand, was in “rough garb” and “must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed.”

“I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was,” Grant writes.

These contrasts in fashion are emblematic of Grant’s defining characteristic: a no-frills obsession with accomplishing the mission at hand, with little regard for optics or the trappings of power. Grant eschewed the pomp of the military elite in favor of a results-oriented approach to warfare in which he was always on the attack, always keeping the enemy on its heels.

Grant’s memoirs are a national treasure, a window into the mind of a man whose importance to our nation cannot be overstated: He was chief architect (along with William Tecumseh Sherman) of the military strategy that saved the Union and, by laying waste to the cotton-based Southern economy, created the conditions that allowed for an end to slavery.

Writing his memoirs as he was dying of cancer, the strong-and-silent Grant proves to be a skilled storyteller, chronicling his military career with the same straightforward, candid approach that served him so well as a warfighter. Still, there are long sections that all but the most dedicated historian will have to skim—detailed accounts of battlefield tactics and logistics. But the final hundred pages are worth reading in full. These offer a front-row seat to the last year of the Civil War, when Grant and Sherman oversaw the military campaign that, at long last, defeated Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, bringing a de facto end to the Confederacy.

Why did Grant succeed against Lee when all previous Union commanders had failed? The difference was that Grant’s predecessors, most notably George McClellan, had been fighting not to lose. They believed they could use high-minded tactics, gleaned from West Point textbooks, to back Lee into a corner while minimizing casualties on both sides. But Grant saw the truth: that there was no way to subdue the rebellion without accepting the hellish realities of war. He fought to win: "I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest."

The best (partial) paragraph (p. 101):

The natural disposition of most people is to clothe a commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of the press of the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities, but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was just as well that I felt this.

Michael Moorcock's "Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl"

Michael Moorcock's "Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl" opens with a promising premise. Moorcock places interesting constraints on Elric, including that he's tricked into drinking a powerfully addictive elixir that, in effect, makes him a slave to an evil aspiring politician named Lord Gho. Also, I found the initial setting of book, Quarzhasaat, extremely compelling: It's a once-prosperous city now devouring itself from within to maintain the superficial trappings of wealth.

Unfortunately, the novel falls apart in its second and third acts. As Elric navigates the seven layers of the so-called Dream Realm, the story feels monotonous, like Moorcock is throwing obstacles at Elric just for the sake of prolonging the conclusion. The characters are flat, the dialogue stilted. This feels like a second draft in need of several more rounds of revision.

One thing I did like about the novel was its elevation of female characters to major players in the story -- heroic figures with ambitions beyond just being supportive of Elric. This is a step forward from the previous novel (chronologically) in the series, the otherwise flawless "Elric of Melniboné," which had one major female character who was a stereotypical damsel-in-distress.

Despite my negative review of "Fortress of the Pearl," I still plan to continue on in the Elric series, because I've heard such great things about it. I'm reading the Gollancz editions in chronological order, so the next book on my Elric list is "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate."

The best paragraph (p. 29):

"Indeed." Elric realised that so thoroughly had Quarzhasaat explained away her defeat and provided herself with a reason for taking no action, she had consigned his entire people to oblivion in her legends. He could not therefore be a Melnibonéan, for Melniboné no longer existed. On that score, at least, he could know some peace of mind. Moreover, so uninterested were these people in the rest of the world and its denizens that Lord Gho Fhaazi had no further curiosity about him. The Quarzhasaatim had decided who and what Elric was and were satisfied. The albino reflected on the power of the human mind to build a fantasy and then defend it with complete determination as reality.

James Baldwin’s "Go Tell It On The Mountain"

In James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” religion is not a matter of faith, for God’s presence is apparent in the rapturous outpouring of joy from a church choir that has lost itself in song and dance.

“Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord,” Baldwin writes about his central character, 14-year-old John Grimes. “Indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.”

Baldwin's debut novel washed over me like a wave, completely absorbing me with its fiery intensity, its poetry, its dialogue so pitch-perfect that I felt like I was in the room with the characters, listening. It’s a transcendent novel, with long stretches that transported me from my physical self, fully immersing me in the story. It’s the kind of reading experience I hope for every time I open a new book, a hope rarely fulfilled.

Like Baldwin, I’m an atheist. But as I lost myself in his masterpiece, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was witnessing the divine, for Baldwin makes that presence real.

The best paragraph (p. 7):

They sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, and wonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy they felt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life—could not doubt it, that is, until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm of their bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became the upper room, and the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. His father’s face, always awful, became more awful now; his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her eyes raised to heaven, hands arced before her, moving, made real for John that patience, that endurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine.

Markus Zusak’s "The Book Thief"

As I read Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief,” I kept wondering why the narrator—Death—was so determined to tell the story of a little girl named Liesel Meminger who has a penchant for stealing books.

The novel is set during World War II, a time when Death was extremely busy. The novel portrays him not as a Grim Reaper but as an overworked cynic, pushed to his limits by the endless backlog of souls he must extract from lifeless bodies. When we meet Death—I ascribed male features to him though I can’t remember whether the book does—he’s zipping back and forth from concentration camps to battlefields to bombed-out cities. “In 1943,” he tells us, “I was just about everywhere.”

Day and night, Death is a firsthand witness to the worst of humanity. He has every reason to forsake humankind, to dismiss us as a vile species not worth his time or attention. And yet even Death is moved by the courage and convictions of Liesel and her adoptive family. He is moved to tell her story.

And maybe that’s the point—that even amid genocide, small acts of love and kindness matter. There’s something fascinating about a species with such enormous capacity for both good and evil.

Overall, “The Book Thief” is sad, beautiful, poetic, and riveting. Its first fifty pages and last fifty pages rise to the level of masterpiece.

The best paragraph (p. 243):

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.

Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné

Michael Moorcock came to my attention not for his fiction but for his essays, as he is a well-known critic of J.R.R. Tolkien who champions a more expansive and imaginative -- and less moralistic -- form of fantasy.

Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné," the origin story for Moorcock's famed albino anti-hero, is a fast-paced, highly entertaining novel that succeeds in subverting many conventions of the genre.

Most notably, the novel offers an antidote to the simplistic, good-versus-evil paradigm embraced by Tolkien and his imitators, for whom the actions of antagonists need no further explanation than a desire to inflict evil for evil's sake.

Elric is a bookish misfit who has been reluctantly thrust, by the line of succession, into the emperorship of the powerful island nation of Melniboné. Through his extensive reading and scholarship, Elric has developed a strong sense of morality and justice that would have served him well if he were, say, a hobbit at the center of a World War I allegory.

But in Moorcock's universe, Elric's morality proves to be an extraordinary liability, for the people he leads have little interest in academic forms of justice. As Elric's love interest, the princess Cymoril, tells him, "Melniboné has never stood for good and evil, but for herself and the satisfaction of her desires."

Every time Elric takes an action he believes is morally right, such as showing mercy to his traitorous cousin Yyrkoon, it later haunts him. The people Elric leads don't want an emperor obsessed with right vs. wrong; they want an emperor who demonstrates strength, who protects the kingdom's riches and shows no mercy to would-be foreign invaders. They want a conqueror.

To me, Moorcock's morally ambiguous universe more closely mirrors our own world than the universe popularized by Tolkien.

I'm excited to read the next book in the Elric series.

The best paragraph (p. 184):

If the young emperor has found any advantage in his lifelong weakness it must be in that, perforce, he has read much. Before he was fifteen he had read every book in his father's library, some more than once. His sorcerous powers, learned initially from Sadric, are now greater than any possessed by his ancestors for many a generation. His knowledge of the world beyond the shores of Melniboné is profound, though he has as yet had little direct experience of it. If he wished he could resurrect the Dragon Isle's former might and rule both his own land and the Young Kingdoms as an invulnerable tyrant. But his reading has also taught him to question the uses to which power is put, to question his motives, to question whether his own power should be used at all, in any cause. His reading has led him to this 'morality,' which, still, he barely understands. Thus, to his subjects, he is an enigma and, to some, he is a threat, for he neither thinks nor acts in accordance with their conception of how a true Melnibonéan (and a Melnibonéan emperor, at that) should think and act. His cousin Yyrkoon, for instance, has been heard more than once to voice strong doubts concerning the emperor's right to rule the people of Melniboné. 'This feeble scholar will bring doom to us all,' he said one night to Dyvim Tvar, Lord of the Dragon Caves.

China Miéville's Perdido Street Station

China Miéville's "Perdido Street Station" is a towering achievement of creative vision that lacks compelling characters and restraint.

Miéville constructs an absorbing alternate world, Bas-Lag, that lives and breathes in all its gritty, steampunk glory. This novel places Miéville among fiction's greatest world-builders, offering a wide-angle view of humanity that depicts our species not so much as a collection of individuals but as a collective organism, one element of larger ecosystem, the city-state. Miéville's panorama is not pretty: Collectively, we are a nasty, stinking, destructive beast, excreting our waste and pollutants into the arteries of an otherwise-beautiful planet.

For the world-building alone, this novel is worth reading -- and offers a welcome reprieve from conventional fantasy.

The novel, though, is much too long, as I was bored throughout much of the middle section. The plot simply doesn't support 700+ pages. In addition, I was unable to get into the characters, whom I found to be paper-thin.

The best paragraph (p. 307):

At first, I felt sick to be around them, all these men, their rushing, heavy, stinking breaths, their anxiety pouring through their skin like vinegar. I wanted the cold again, the darkness below the railways, where ruder forms of life struggle and fight and die and are eaten. There is a comfort in that brute simplicity.

Charles Portis' True Grit

After reading Charles Portis' "True Grit," I think the film adaptations got it wrong.

The films, both the 1969 John Wayne and 2010 Coen Brothers versions, did it as traditional Westerns that just happen to be funny.

But the novel is a comedy that just happens to be a Western.

It's one of the funniest books I've ever read, an American classic. I enjoyed it more than any book I've ever read by Cormac McCarthy and believe it belongs in the same pantheon as "Huckleberry Finn."

The novel's driving force is its unforgettable narration, the first-person perspective of a plainspoken spinster describing a quest she embarked on as a 14-year-old girl to avenge her father's murder. Mattie Ross is one of the quirkiest, most unique voices I've come across in fiction -- earnest, blunt, and very much not PC. She is a bold, fearless woman who lives life on her own terms.

The humor is mostly the result of Mattie's naivety -- her dry, deadpan, matter-of-fact descriptions of absurd people and events. You can't help but cheer for Mattie, for she has such an ironclad ethical compass amid the moral ambiguity all around her. Many Westerns embrace the moral ambiguity of the frontier; this novel cuts straight through it.

The irony of the story -- and a point the film versions somewhat disregarded -- is that the John Wayne character, Rooster Cogburn, is not the one with true grit. He is mostly a drunken loser, despite moments of great courage. The one with true grit is Mattie.

The best paragraph(s):

• p. 25:

"I will inform them myself," said I. "Who is the best marshal they have?"

The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, "I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for a sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L. T. Quinn, he brings prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have."

I said, "Where can I find this Rooster?"

• p. 203:

Now the prisoner has an advantage over his keeper in this respect, that he is always thinking of escape and watching for opportunities, while the keeper does not constantly think of keeping him. Once his man is subdued, so the guard believes, little else is needed but the presence and threat of superior force. He thinks of happy things and allows his mind to wander. It is only natural. Were it otherwise, the keeper would be a prisoner of the prisoner.

John Le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John Le Carré's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is mostly a slog, punctuated occasionally by insightful passages about a work-addicted man's quest for meaning in retirement.

I read the book because I enjoyed the 2011 movie adaptation and because I'm a huge fan of Le Carré's brilliant first novel, "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold."

But "Tinker Tailor" is, for the most part, a disappointment.

The story is hard to follow, largely told through conversations -- long stretches of dialog that reference characters and events with little context. I don't mind novels that require focus, but this one just doesn't have enough payoff to make it worth the trouble.

What I do like about the novel is that it sometimes ventures into the realm of parody, bringing an almost "Office Space" approach to Cold War spycraft. This is a world where men agonize over their positioning on organizational charts, where the most mundane social interactions can have enormous geo-political implications.

The best paragraph (p. 27):

He would sell his London house: He had decided. Back there under the awning, crouching beside the cigarette machine, waiting for the cloudburst to end, he had taken this grave decision. Property values in London had risen out of proportion; he had heard it from every side. Good. He would sell and with a part of the proceeds buy a cottage in the Cotswolds. Burford? Too much traffic. Steeple Aston -- that was a place. He would set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to himself as he bumbled along pavements. Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation. And if Ann wanted to return -- well, he would show her the door.

John M. Hull's 'Touching the Rock'

John M. Hull's "Touching the Rock" is a masterpiece, a treatise on human perception itself.

The book details Hull's journey into total blindness after his eyes were destroyed by a long battle with cataracts and retina detachment.

What makes the book so remarkable isn't just that Hull provides such an honest, immersive understanding of what it's like to go blind -- but that his observations transcend blindness. His poetic observations offer piercing insight into what it means to be a sentient being, conscious only of that which we can sense.

There are too many extraordinary paragraphs in this novel to pick just one; here's a selection:

Page 13-14: For me, the wind has taken the place of the sun, and a nice day is a day when there is a mild breeze. This brings into life all the sounds in my environment. The leaves are rustling; bits of paper are blowing along the pavement, the walls and corners of the large buildings stand out under the impact of the wind, which I feel in my hair and on my face, in my clothes. A day on which it was merely warm would, I suppose, be quite a nice day but thunder makes it more exciting, because it suddenly gives a sense of space and distance. Thunder puts a roof over my head, a very high, vaulted ceiling of rumbling sound. I realize that I am in a big place, whereas before there was nothing there at all. The sighted person always has a roof overhead, in the form of the blue sky or the clouds, or the stars at night. The same is true for the blind person of the sound of the wind in the trees. It creates trees; one is surrounded by trees whereas before there was nothing.

Page 21: I am finding it more and more difficult to realize that people look like anything, to put any meaning to the idea that they have an appearance.

Page 47: Blindness takes away one’s territorial rights. One loses territory. The span of attention, of knowledge, retracts so that one lives in a little world. Almost all territory becomes potentially hostile. Only the area which can be touched with the body or tapped with the stick becomes a space in which one can live. The rest is unknown.

Page 50: The blind person has to remind himself all the time, when tempted to scratch his bum, that he is visible.

Page 84: For the blind person, people are in motion, they are temporal, they come and go. They come out of thing; they disappear.