DAMNATION ALLEY -- Roger Zelazny

Gregg Press -- hc
Boston -- ©1969;1979 -- 157pp
ISBN: 0-8398-2505-6

In a post-holocaust world where the United States is divided into different nations, and the sky is filled with solid materials that rain down unexpectedly, a convicted criminal is enlisted to drive across the country from the nation of California to Boston to deliver an antiserum to fight the plague.

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Zelazny knows how to tell a story and keep the reader interested.

It's been at least two decades since I first read this book, so decided that I really ought to read it again. I enjoyed the read, but upon reflection, decided that it really isn't much of a book. It's an adventure story, and we're pretty certain from the beginning that the "hero" will make it to the end, and so it becomes a story in which we read to see what is around each corner. It's rather fun to put the pieces together (Zelazny, more than any other writer that I can think of, starts a story in the middle and let's the reader make discoveries along the way) and to find new challeneges along with the main character. Still, nothing really "happens." A man drives across a devasted country.

Fun to read this Zelazny work again, but wouldn't recommend it as a first foray into reading Zelazny.

THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2005 -- Dave Eggers, editor

Houghton Mifflin Company -- tpb
Boston -- ©2005 -- 325pp
ISBN-10: 0-618-57048-9
Introduction: Beck

Another book in "The Best American Series." This is a collection of material that doesn't smoothly fit into any of their other categories.

Foreward by Dave Eggers
Introduction by Beck
"Passing Periods" -- Joe Sayers
"The Mediocrity Principle" -- Anders Nilsen
"Florida" -- Daniel Alarcon
"The Death of Mustango Salvaje" -- Jessica Anthony
"Tiger Mending" -- Aimee Bender
"Free Burgers for Life" -- Ryan Boudinot
"Five Forgotten Instincts" -- Dan Chaon
"Lundon" -- Amber Dermont
"A Lynching in Stereoscope" -- Stephanie Dickinson
"Heavy Metal Mercenary" -- Tish Durkin
"My Little Brother Ruined My Life" -- Stephen Elliott
"Tearaway Burkas and Tinplate Menorahs" -- Al Franken
"The Lost Boys" -- Jeff Gordinier
"Roadkill" -- Kate Krautkramer
"Hell-Heaven" -- Jhumpa Lahiri
"At the Cafe Lovely" -- Rattawut Lapcharoensap
"Catalogue Sales" -- Molly McNett
"Bohemians" -- George Saunders
"Manifesto" -- George Saunders
"The Joke" -- J. David Stevens
"The Myth of the Frequent Flier" -- Jonathan Tel
"Girls I Know" -- Douglas Trevor
"They Came Out Like Ants!" -- William T. Vollmann
"Diary of a Journal Reader" -- Lauren Weedman
Contributors' Notes
Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2004

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I'm not likely to return to the series any time soon. Absolutely NONE of the stories stand out favorably as I look back at the titles. I do recall laughing aloud at the Al Franken piece, but I'm hard-pressed to recall any of the details (ah...yes...a USO tour, I believe).

"Free Burgers for Life" reminded me of something I might have written 20+ years ago ("The Girl in the Lime-Green Bikini Bathing Suit"), and look back upon wondering what the hell I was thinking to ever think it was worth publishing. But because I could "relate" it is one of the only pieces that I can recall fairly clearly.

Of course I recall those that I just finished reading, but I don't understand the purpose of "They Came Out Like Ants!" and I thought "Diary of a Journal Reader" was just plain horrible in every possible way.

Don't bother with this collection.

THE GHOST WRITER -- Philip Roth

A Fawcett Crest Book -- pb
New York -- ©1979 -- 222pp
ISBN: 0-449-20009-4

A young writer, excited by the prospect but wary of making the wrong impression, is granted the opportunity to meet his "idol," a famous author, where the young man's imagination take over, creating wild, yet slightly plausible possibilities.

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I wasn't sure where this book was going to go when I started it, and now that I'm done, I'm quite certain that I don't know where it's been.

Who is the "ghost writer"? Is it the young man, Nathan Zuckerman, who's own work is still so new that it hasn't it's own body? Is it the old author, E.I. Lonoff, who isn't the embodiment of the writer that Zuckerman was expecting; who freely admits that all he does is "turn sentences around." Is it the girl, who Nathan imagines to be Anne Frank, living her life under an assumed name, and only Lonoff knows her true identity? Is it Hope, Lonoff's wife, who creates the only drama in Lonoff's life by leaving and accusing Lonoff of having an affair with the young girl? Is it all of them? Is it none of them?

This is the sort of book that one needs to read in school to be able to discuss in order to pick out what's going on. To be read, solo; digested only by the reader, leaves the book remarkably empty, and yet I feel there's so much more there to it.

Not recommended at this time, but to be shelved and read again.

THE DANTE CLUB -- Matthew Pearl

Random House Trade Paperbacks -- tpb
New York -- ©2004 --380pp
ISBN: 0-8129-7104-3

In Boston, 1865, America's first Dante Alighieri scholars (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J.T. Fields) work to translate The Divine Comedy, while a murderer terrorizes Boston by methods that only the Dante Club can decipher.

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I had picked this book up a number of times in the bookstores, seriously considering buying it, but each time I would put it back, uncertain as to why it both attracted me and yet I couldn't come to actually purchase it.

When I saw it on the "new books" shelf at my library I was eager to give it its chance.

It seems that my first instincts of maybe/maybe not were right on.

This was an interesting book, and a cleverly plotted mystery, and the historical aspects were fun to explore.

On the other hand, it was dry and slow-moving, and the historical figures of Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell and Fields were about as bland as any character could possibly be.

I'm glad I read it, but I cannot recommend this.