Young Romantics by Daisy Hay

Meanwhile, the goings-on at Diodati were a fertile topic for gossip and speculation. The local hotelier did a brisk trade in sailing trips on the lake during which shocked English visitors could inspect the washing drying outside Byron's villa for evidence of female inhabitants--telescopes were thoughtfully included in the ticket price.

-Young Romantics

I'd fully intended to read Young Romantics some time ago--in April, even, for National Poetry Month. I checked it out of the library after reading of Age of Wonder and realizing that, despite my love of Keats, my knowledge of poetry from that era was still pretty lacking. But then I discovered Inspector Lynley, and I wanted to read Blue Latitudes while Age of Wonder was still fresh in my mind...and well, here we are. Better late than never.

I picked out Young Romantics because I thought it would give me a nice overview of Shelley, Byron, and Keats and further my understanding of the relationships they had with one another and with others in their circle. I discovered as I began to read, though, that Daisy Hay's focus was clearly on Shelley and Leigh Hunt, the poet and critic.* If I'd read the book jacket a bit more carefully, I would have already known this, but it turned out to be fine. I missed Keats, who was absent for long sections of the book, but I did already read a comprehensive account of his life. Byron figured somewhat more prominently. He also came off like a big ole jerk.

I had kind of a sketchy idea of Byron as a ladies' (and gents', to be fair) man; someone talented and charismatic and a bit of a rogue. I did not, however, know that he spent some time fumbling toward ecstasy with his own half-sister. Nor was I aware of his cruel streak--the way he treated Claire Clairmont (Mary Shelley's stepsister), the mother of his illegitimate child, was pretty terrible. 

And while Shelley comes off better than Byron, he still could be remarkably callous, especially in his treatment of women. I did enjoy getting to learn more about his relationship with Mary, which had more scandalous origins than I had realized, and I liked Mary quite a lot in general. It was because of that, I think, that I still found the account of Shelley's death quite moving, even though I hadn't particularly warmed to him. It was just so sudden, and so senseless, and he was just so young.

It can be difficult to learn about artists--once you've discovered something negative about someone, be it merely unpleasant or truly awful, it can be hard to divorce that from your appreciation of an artist's work. Perhaps I'm judging Byron unfairly, even.For the moment, I will say that Young Romantics has definitely influenced my opinion of him as a person, but I can't deny that he wrote beautifully.  As for Shelley, I now know more of his life than I do of his works, so I shall have to remedy that at some point in the future. Neither seems likely to replace Keats as my favorite Romantic poet--and not just because Keats seems by far the pleasantest of the bunch (though it doesn't hurt).

I feel as though I'm giving short shrift to the women in the book, which is unfortunate. The treatment of Mary Shelley and Claire Claremont, in particular, is a great credit to Daisy Hay. I feel as though I got a true sense of the place of these women in the literary circle of their day--they often weren't considered equals of the poets whose company they kept, but they certainly had their smarts and a fair degree of influence on the men. I don't know that I ever would have thought to explore the further works of Mary Shelley before, but I have to say I'm now intrigued. Much like Age of Wonder, I have a feeling Young Romantics will be leading me to more books before long.

Up next: Already finished Coraline, so I just need to come back to write it up.

*Hay mentions in passing that Hunt was the basis for the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. It makes so much sense--oh, that elderly child.

Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

He was not the first person to ask me that. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, that I hadn't felt the need to rush over to Monroe to watch guys take off their clothes.

"No. I've seen Claude naked. I've never come over to watch him do his thing professionally. I hear he's good."

"He's naked? At your house?"

"Modesty is not one of Claude's priorities," I said.

-Dead Reckoning 


I forgot to remark upon it in my last post, but I've now been writing this blog for 2 years. It's been such a pleasant exercise for me--my only regret is that I didn't start it sooner. Some 150 posts later, one character in particular has writ herself large on this blog: Sookie Stackhouse.

Dead Reckoning is the 12th book in Charlaine Harris's series* and thus the 12th Sookie Stackhouse book I've read in the last two years. I'm pleased to say that it is yet another great installment. As always, Sookie has quite a lot on her plate. She's troubled by a mysterious strain in the relationship between Eric and Pam, which she knows bodes ill. She's still being pursued by the decidedly murderous Sandra Pelt. Even her decision to clean out her attic has ramifications that could dramatically change her life. She deals with vampires, werewolves, shifters, witches, faeries, demons, and, oh yeah, an elf. Just another day in the life of Sookie Stackhouse.

While the plot overall is pretty enjoyable, I'm particularly pleased with the developments in Sookie's romantic life. (Not to mention terribly curious to see how it continues!) Between that and the rumblings in the world of the fae (which I imagine will figure largely in the next book), Harris leaves us in quite a bit of suspense at the end of the story. As usual, I can't wait for more, but I guess for now I'll have to content myself with waiting for the next season of True Blood.

Up next: Back to Young Romantics--you just have to drop everything for a new Sookie Stackhouse, am I right?

*including the book of short stories

Furious Love by Sam Kashner and Nancy Shoenberger

And finally, no interview could be complete until it touched on Le Scandale. "Well, I must say that everyone seems to have quieted down," Richard said. "Good lord, the reputations we had! I mean, I was a bestial wife-stealer, and Elizabeth was a scheming home-breaker...We've been through a lot of fire together, Elizabeth and I. You'd think we were out to destroy Western Civilization or something."

-Furious Love

Where to start with Furious Love? I'm finding that it's hard to review a book about the epic romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton because it's just so, well, big*. Both Taylor and Burton were brilliant and complicated--when they came together, their relationship marked the beginning of celebrity culture as we know it today (much to their own dismay). After all, Federico Fellini coined the term paparazzi after watching the press swarm the pair while they were filming Cleopatra. Today the tabloid culture loves to build up a celebrity couple of the moment and document the (oft-imagined) highs and lows of their relationship, but Brangelina can't hold a candle to the phenomenon that was Lizandick**.

Although I love classic movies, I've only seen a handful of films starring Taylor and/or Burton. I had a vague idea that their relationship had been dramatic, but until reading Furious Love I had no idea how turbulent it actually was. They were quite the match. Elizabeth had virtually grown up in the spotlight, making her screen debut at the age of 10. When she encountered Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra--actually their second meeting--she was already on her fourth marriage. Richard, the son of a coal miner, was considered the next great stage actor; although married, he was also well known as an inveterate womanizer. Sparks flew.

They lived a life of extravagance that is hard for most of us to imagine: they made millions of dollars and spent it accordingly (jewels were a particular passion of Elizabeth's), drank to excess, and jetted around the world with a coterie of family, pets, and hangers-on. Despite this, the couple come off as surprisingly sympathetic in Furious Love. Elizabeth shows an endearing adoration for the ordinary life, and it's hard not to admire her moxie. Richard comes across as an often tragic character: talented beyond measure, but ultimately consumed by his demons. Kashner and Shoenberger had access to his journals--the entries they've included, particularly those in which he tries to understand his own worst behavior, are often heartbreaking.

Furious Love is absorbing from the start--I read 100 pages within a day of picking it up. I would definitely enjoy reading more Hollywood biographies with a similar tone, as it was juicy without seeming lowbrow. It's also clear that I need to bone up on the Taylor/Burton filmography, which I hope to get started on soon.

Up next: Daisy Hay's Young Romantics, a nonfiction book about the circle that included Keats, Shelley, and Byron.

* Though I allow that it would be much more difficult to write the book itself.

**Turns out celebrity portmanteaus are nothing new either. 

Payment in Blood by Elizabeth George

They were at the table, with the items from Joy Sinclair's shoulder bag spread out before them. The tape recorder was playing yet another time, Joy's voice rising and falling with the broken messages that Barbara had long ago memorised. Hearing it now, she realised that the recording had begun to take on the quality of a recurring nightmare, and Lynley the quality of a man obsessed. His were not quantum leaps of intuition in which the misty image of crime-motive-perpetrator took recognizable shape. Rather, they bore the appearance of contrivance, of an attempt to find and assess guilt where only by the wildest stretching of the imagination could it possibly exist. For the first time in that endless harrowing day, Barbara began to feel uneasy. In the long months of their partnership, she had come to realise that, for all his exterior gloss and sophistication, for all his trappings of upper-class splendour that she so mightily despised, Lynley was still the finest DI she had ever worked with. Yet Barbara knew intuitively that the case he was building now was wrong, founded on sand. She sat down and reached restlessly for the book of matches from Joy Sinclair's bag, brooding upon it.

-Payment in Blood 

It's interesting reading the Lynley books having already made my way through a substantial part of the television series. I've been enjoying the show quite a lot, which means that I've come into the books with fairly high expectations. In the case of Payment in Blood, the story wasn't quite as engaging as I would have hoped.

In Payment in Blood, Lynley and Havers are assigned to a case in Scotland, quite a bit outside the usual purview of the Metropolitan Police.  A playwright has been murdered while on retreat with the cast about to stage a production of her latest work; circumstances indicate that she was almost certainly killed by one of them. Among the guests of the house, to Lynley's dismay, is his great friend Lady Helen Clyde, invited to stay by the play's director. While Helen is never a suspect, her presence wreaks havoc on Lynley's detective work, as his newly awoken jealousy provokes him to narrow his field of suspects far too hastily. As Havers notes in the excerpt above, he's not seeing the case clearly, but unfortunately her objections to his line of inquiry fall on deaf ears.

As George tells the story, it becomes more and more convoluted, involving a large pool of suspects that even I, having already seen the televised adaptation, had trouble keeping track of. The story goes on to encompass a 15-year-old case of suicide and involvement from MI-5--one of which, perhaps, would have been enough to keep the reader guessing, as there were already plenty of motives to pick from. (The television adaptation streamlined the case substantially, and neither subplot was used.) 

The trouble with having so much plot and so many characters, I found, was that I felt I didn't get to spend much time getting to know either Lynley or Havers any better. I like both characters enough that I felt rather disappointed to be taken away from their inner thoughts so often. I'm still interested in continuing to read the series, so I'm hoping this was more of an aberration than a trend for future stories.

Up next: Already pretty far into Furious Love, a juicy account of the love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

The warriors taunted and threatened the English, but only rarely did they follow the haka with a sustained attack. Before long, the crewmen responded in kind. When a warrior waved his naked backside at the English, which William Monkhouse termed "the usual sign of contempt" among fishmongers in London, the surgeon decided to "retort the compliment" by baring his ass as well. This so enraged a warrior that he hurled a lance. The English replied with small shot, frightening the Maori--but only for a moment. "They felt the sting of our laughing at them," Monkhouse wrote, and resumed shouting and waving spears and paddles. Thus ended a fairly typical encounter, which reads today rather like a skirmish between soccer hooligans in Europe. 

-Blue Latitudes 

Blue Latitudes had been on my maybe-read list for a while. I knew Tony Horwitz was a gifted writer, since I'd thoroughly enjoyed two of his other books, Confederates in the Attic and A Voyage Long and Strange. Even so, I wasn't hooked by the premise of Blue Latitudes initially. I'd never had any particular interest in Captain Cook, so I had trouble mustering up a lot of enthusiasm for the idea of Horwitz retracing his voyages around the world.

Then, of course, I read Age of Wonder and became familiar with Joseph Banks, the scientist (and ladykiller) who accompanied Cook on his first voyage. Banks was quite a character, and he sparked my interest to the extent that I found myself considering Blue Latitudes with new enthusiasm. I'm glad I did.

In Blue Latitudes, Horwitz travels around the world just as Cook did, although he does have the advantages of airplanes and GPS, not to mention Dramamine when he does take to a boat. He journeys to everywhere from Alaska to New Zealand, and not a few places in between, ending his trip as Cook did in Hawaii, although his own journey comes to a close on a decidedly less bloody note.  Everywhere he goes, Horwitz investigates how Cook is remembered. Today Cook has become a complicated figure. Depending on whom you talk to, you might hear Cook described as an intrepid adventurer or a harbinger of doom. As someone who didn't know much about Cook, I found it interesting to see the many sides of the man. I also appreciated Horwitz's forays into other aspects of history I was wholly unfamiliar with. To wit:

The Aleutian Islands became American territory following William Seward's famous purchase of Alaska in 1867, and for seventy-five years the remote Aleuts survived in a state of benign neglect. Then came World War II, when the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and seized several islands farther out along the Aleutian chain, the first occupation of American soil by a foreign army since the War of 1812. The inhabitants of the occupied islands were taken to camps in Japan, where only twenty-five survived. The United States evacuated the rest of the Aleuts, ostensibly for their own protection, interning them at wretched camps in southeastern Alaska, where many of them also died. Because of wartime censorship, the Aleuts' plight remained unknown to the American public. Not until 1988 did the U.S. government formally apologize to the Aleuts and pay compensation of $12,000 to each of the camps' few hundred survivors.

I certainly don't remember that ever coming up in any of my history classes. It's amazing how much is still left unsaid when it comes to recent history.

Horwitz is a smart, compelling writer, and I certainly feel better informed for having read this book. That said, I still prefer the other books of his I've read. I'm also quite excited for his next book, which is about the abolitionist John Brown and his famous raid on Harper's Ferry.

Up next: Back to Inspector Lynley with Payment in Blood.

A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

She left the room and stalked down the corridor towards the lift. Was there anyone in all of New Scotland Yard whom she hated more than she hated Lynley? He was a miraculous combination of every single thing she thoroughly despised: educated at Eton, a first in history at Oxford, a public school voice, and a bloody family tree that had its roots somewhere just this side of the Battle of Hastings. Upper class. Bright. And so damnably charming that she couldn't understand why every criminal in the city simply didn't surrender to accommodate him.

-A Great Deliverance 

These are the thoughts of DS Barbara Havers, of late a uniformed cop working for the Metropolitan Police. Havers has the chops to make it as a detective, but her difficult personality has won her few friends in the department. When her superior officer assigns her to a thorny murder case in Yorkshire, she might have been pleased to have another shot--except for the fact that he partners her up with DI Thomas Lynley. Havers, as you may have gleaned from the passage above, has no love lost for Lynley. She considers the assignment to be a form of punishment, a cruel joke--why else would you pair up the working-class Havers with Lynley, better known in some circles as the eighth earl of Asherford?

Yes, Havers has a wee bit of a chip on her shoulder when it comes to class. And while everything she thinks about Lynley in the passage I quoted is true enough, it quickly becomes clear that there's much more to him than meets the eye. A Great Deliverance is as much a story of the two detectives groping toward a working relationship as it is the story of the (rather lurid) case that they've joined forces to investigate.

I first became acquainted with Lynley and Havers by watching the Masterpiece Mystery adaptations of Elizabeth George's stories starring Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small--I'm currently in the middle of the third season. I was immediately charmed by Lynley--as Havers notes, it's difficult not to be--and I was quite fond of his prickly partner from the outset as well.  I feel as though the television adaptation honed this story well--I could have done without some of the more histrionic moments in the book, or the oddly two-dimensional ugly American character*. Still, I read the book in two days, which certainly reflects how caught up I became in the story. One thing I particularly enjoyed was the chance to get a window into the thoughts of both Lynley and Havers, which gave me some new insight into how they viewed one another at the start of their partnership. I would be lying if I pretended I was anything else but hugely invested in seeing how that relationship develops on the page, as it certainly has been pretty engrossing on screen.

On the whole, it was a good read, and it was refreshing to have a book that I became so absorbed in after a pretty uneven run of books in the last few months. I'll definitely be seeking out the next book in the series.

Up next: Getting back to Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, which I'm about halfway through.

*Particularly considering that George herself is American.

Poem: "Stanzas Written In Passing The Ambracian Gulf"

Cleopatra (Lyndsey Marshal) and Antony (James Purefoy) on HBO's Rome*

 It's April once again (I note belatedly), which means that it's also National Poetry Month. Last year at this time I was on a Keats kick and, after having read The Age of Wonder, I thought it would be good to revisit the Romantics. This time I selected Byron. 

I've long been familiar with Byron's libertine reputation, but I don't think I'd ever read any of his poetry until recently. I was pleasantly surprised with how readable it was, and how witty. I was charmed from the first poem I read, which I've decided to highlight in this post.  

Stanzas Written In Passing The Ambracian Gulf

Through cloudless skies, in silvery sheen,

Full beams the moon on Actium's coast:

And on these waves for Egypt's queen

The ancient world was won and lost.

And now upon the scene I look,

The azure grave of many a Roman;

Where stern Ambition once forsook

His wavering crown to follow woman.

Florence! whom I will love as well

As ever yet was said or sung

(Since Orpheus sang his spouse from hell),

Whilst thou art fair and I am young;

Sweet Florence! those were pleasant times,

When worlds were staked for ladies' eyes:

Had bards as many realms as rhymes,

Thy charms might rise new Antonies.

Though Fate forbids such things to be,

Yet, by thine eyes and ringlets curl'd!

I cannot lose a world for thee,

But I would not lose thee for a world.

That last couplet, am I right? Also, I'm a sucker for Roman history: he had me at Actium.

*I suppose I could have used any number of pictures to illustrate this post, but James Purefoy's performance as Antony is brilliant. Love him; love the crazy, twisted soap opera that was Rome.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

At all events, Coleridge treasured the memory of his father's eager demonstration of the stars and planets overhead, and the possibility of other worlds: 'I remember, that at eight years old I walked with him one evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery -- & he told me the names of the stars -- and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world -- and that the other twinkling stars were Suns that had world rolling round them -- & when I came home, he showed me how they rolled round. I heard him with profound delight & admiration; but without the least mixture of Wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii etc etc -- my mind had been habituated to the Vast.'

-The Age of Wonder 

I find it pretty remarkable to think that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, some 200 years ago, thought his mind "habituated to the Vast." What hope, then, do we in the 21st century have to experience wonder, when so much more of the world has been discovered and analyzed and explained? Luckily for us, we also have books like The Age of Wonder to help us to consider the world around us in a new light.

If I were to try to sum up The Age of Wonder in one sentence, I might say something like, "It's about the monumental discoveries that were made in every scientific discipline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries." Even with that "monumental" in there, though, I suspect that that sounds rather dry. (Also, passive voice. Badly done.) Imagine this instead: A Scotsman exploring an area of Africa that cartographers have left blank. A German immigrant building the largest telescope in England...and promptly discovering a new planet. A wealthy young English botanist going native in Tahiti. A 20-year-old who spent considerable time experimenting with the effects of nitrous oxide, to which he became addicted, before going on to discover elements like calcium. The Age of Wonder covers all of these stories and many more. If you've guessed that it's ambitious in scope, you would be correct.

It's amazing how much we know of science dates from this time-- even the word scientist itself didn't come into usage until the 1820s. Richard Holmes has quite a lot of territory to cover. He juggles his stories in a way that makes it look quite easy, but I can't imagine how much time must have gone into researching this book. His voice is clear and he sometimes manages to work in some very clever asides--I would definitely be interested in looking into other books of his. (He seems to have primarily written about the Romantic poets, who flit in and out of The Age of Wonder.)

It did take me a little while to get into the book, but before long I was utterly absorbed in the Tahitian adventures of Joseph Banks. On the whole, it's a very interesting book. I particularly loved the parts about astronomy (because if anything can inspire wonder, I really think it's the stars) and the dramatic tale of the adventurer Mungo Park, the first European to find the Niger River. I was less enchanted with the story of Humphry Davy, but that may have been in part because he just didn't come across as a particularly likable fellow. Overall, I feel much better informed about this era than I did prior to reading this book, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Up next: Using Joseph Banks as a jumping off point, I'm on to Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, in which he retraces the travels of Captain Cook. I loved the other two Horwitz books I read, so I have high hopes. 

The Infinities by John Banville

Of the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally. It is a spectacle we immortals enjoy, this minor daily resurrection, often we will gather at the ramparts of the clouds and gaze down upon them, our little ones, as they bestir themselves to welcome the new day. What a silence falls upon us then, the sad silence of our envy. Many of them sleep on, of course, careless of our cousin Aurora's charming matutinal trick, but there are always the insomniacs, the restless ill, the lovelorn tossing on their solitary beds, or just the early-risers, the busy ones, with their knee-bends and their cold showers and their fussy little cups of black ambrosia. Yes, all who witness it greet the dawn with joy, more or less, except of course the condemned man, for whom first light will be the last, on earth.

-The Infinities 

When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I read it cover to cover, over and over again. I didn't grow up with organized religion, so while other children learned Bible stories, I knew the tale of Persephone by heart. Even though the Greek gods seemed both formidable and alarmingly capricious, I was secretly disappointed that they went unworshipped in modern times.

All that is to say, I have a particular affection for Greek mythology, so when I heard about John Banville's The Infinities, I was intrigued.  A story about Greek gods meddling in the affairs of an Irish family--what could be better? I had been watching Battlestar Galactica, in which Greek mythology plays an important part, so I was especially ready to enjoy some Zeus & Hermes action. Unfortunately, while I found the prose of The Infinities to be beautiful, its story left me cold.

The Infinities is a fairly short novel--less than 300 pages--so I anticipated that I would finish it quite quickly. The story, which takes place over the course of a single day, never really drew me in, though. Patriarch Adam Godley is in a coma, and his family has gathered around him to ready themselves for his presumably incipient death.  The day's events are narrated (for the most part) by Hermes, who makes note of his father's lusty advances (shock!) toward a woman in the house, as well as his own mischievous interference. The story is short on plot and long on description, unsurprisingly given the parameters of the novel, with Banville particularly seeming to relish a certain earthiness that I could have done without. I was intrigued by some of his characters (fragile daughter Petra and her would-be beau Roddy, to name two), but I found the gods themselves to be surprisingly...human. And while, as I noted above, the Greek gods have always had human traits writ large, never before have I found that that made them common or boring, as unfortunately I did here.

The Infinities is quite an admired book--made a number of top book lists last year, as I recall--and it does seem like the kind of book that would benefit from a deeper reading. (Maybe then I would better understand the ending, which seemed to come out of nowhere.) I believe, though, that the best books are those that can be enjoyed purely from a story standpoint. You might want to find the deeper meanings if the story is good, but you shouldn't have to do so to enjoy the book. That is probably essentially why I was not an English major, right there.

Up next: Another critically-acclaimed book, The Age of Wonder, which thankfully I'm enjoying much more so far!

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

The distinctive thing about so many nerds I've met is their willingness to pursue a dream version of their lives even when that dream isn't a plausible aspiration. Playing Sir Guillaume doesn't have anything to do with reinventing yourself through ambition. It has no careerist or pragmatic component. It's imitating the thing you most want to be, and that only, with no hope of the world outside your own head and your own group of friends coming round to accept it as the truest version of who you are. 

-American Nerd

In American Nerd, Benjamin Nugent sets out to investigate the origins of the idea of a nerd and to explore how nerdiness manifests in culture today. He also establishes his own nerd cred quickly, and returns to ruminate over his transition out of nerdiness in the strongest parts of the book.

I found aspects of the evolution of the concept of a nerd (or, as it was once spelled, nurd) interesting, but the early part of the book was not quite as absorbing as I had hoped. Although American Nerd is a short book, I didn't read it as quickly as I anticipated, simply because I found it a little dry at first. I did appreciate Nugent's explaining the relation between anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic sentiment at the turn of century and the low rung nerds still occupy on the social ladder, which I'd never considered before. Still, I found myself eager to move on to Nugent's exploration of modern nerd culture.

I was slightly disappointed that Nugent mostly looks at aspects of nerd culture that I don't really have any interest in, like video games and anime. Still, it can be fascinating to see how people can be obsessed with something that I wouldn't give two seconds' thought to. After all, I have plenty of my own geeky obsessions (currently Battlestar Galactica, which ought to get me plenty of nerd cred). I think I would have liked this section of the book to be a bit more substantial--more nerdy subcultures profiled, and more depth in each one.

Throughout the book, Nugent references his own childhood nerdiness, which included plenty of Dungeons and Dragons and video games. At some point he consciously decided to leave behind childish things, breaking ties with his former roleplaying buddies and finding a home in any group that would have him--any group but the nerds, that is. American Nerd gave him the opportunity to consider this decision, and he talks with several of his childhood friends about what nerd culture meant to them. It turns out to be a lot deeper than you might expect, a true safe haven for friends who were doing their best to survive in very unstable households.  It's emotionally affecting, and I wouldn't have minded seeing more reflections from men (and women, who are pretty underrepresented in the book) on how their nerdy habits affected their lives.

So overall, American Nerd has some interesting parts, but it wasn't quite as compelling as I had hoped. No worries.

Up next: The Infinities by John Banville. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, what what.