Cardinal Column #12: Long-Running Series

(Editor’s note: A bit more fanciful at the beginning to begin with with my invocation of H.P. Lovecraft, but one I like particularly because it allowed me to rant about a topic rather than opening it up for discussion. This expanded Star Wars universe past the Timothy Zahn second novels makes my blood boil and spit into the eyes of authors like a blood magus. I support many of the old Star Wars novels – despite having sent all of my collection with Zahn and Aaron Allston the exceptions to Half Price Books – and those New Jedi Order ones were worse than expanded universe comic books [a topic for another rant].

A couple style issues here were too similar to some of my other columns, but I think this one makes some geniunely good points and an argument that I will continue to defend even now. However, reading some of Parker’s work since this was published makes me more willing to cut him some slack since his later work is better than before.)

Les wishes authors knew how to quit you, bad series

Originally published in The Daily Cardinal, March 22, 2006

For most vacations, I tend not to leave Wisconsin—my poverty from buying books and a natural laziness tend to keep me from hitting up exotic locales. I prefer to recharge my batteries by hanging around my old haunts, the bookstores and reading areas I occupied during my slightly more awkward high school years.

Unfortunately for my peace of mind this break, I made a discovery on par with learning that cephalopods of an H.P. Lovecraft-scale had crawled into my basement and established colonies with underfunded schools. (Now that was a weekend.)

What was this horror? The paperback release of “The Unseen Queen” by Troy Denning, one of the latest books in the expanded Star Wars universe. Apparently, no sooner had the Yuuzhan Vong been defeated (an act that took 21 increasingly long-winded books) then a new alien race appears to burn the galaxy for the umpteenth time.

The reason that this bothered me was not so much its defiling Star Wars—George “Let’s Photoshop Hayden Christensen into old movies!” Lucas has already done that—but that it taints some of my earliest memories. While other students were playing soccer in grade school I was finding a quiet corner under the slide to read Timothy Zahn’s “Heir to the Empire” Star Wars novel series, a saga which was a huge influence in my youth.

Much like long-running television shows, literary series have a tendency to jump the shark, going on for so long and changing style so much they’re no longer worth reading. Robert Parker’s once tense and witty mystery novels are just going through the motions (frame-ups and psychological conflict has been replaced by white-collar crime) and Robert Jordan has been writing the Wheel of Time saga so long even he admits the books are getting worse.

For me, the best book series are those with a set time frame to wrap things up in, or series authors develop so long that they have an end in sight at the very beginning. “The Lord of the Rings” worked well because its main story was contained to a trilogy, and with J.K. Rowling limiting herself to seven “Harry Potter” books there’s a lot less room for weird experiments (when main characters are dead, the odds are favorable we won’t see them again).

An author with a long-running series of books tends to lose their focus—I sometimes lose track during columns so I sympathize—but epic authors like Jordan or Terry Goodkind eventually wind up struggling for plots. When there’s no end in sight, even after dozens of books and endless impossible situations, it looks more like the authors will retire before their characters can win.

Killing off characters isn’t a good solution either, since many are so popular that removing them provokes a huge backlash (witness the death threats thrown against R.A. Salvatore for blowing up Chewbacca). More often then not, authors will have the character cheat a death that would kill most action film stars, then have them reintroduced so many times that most other characters stop caring.

It disheartens me to no end that Star Wars novels have fallen so far from their original nature, going from inventive novels to published fan fiction. In my personal opinion, those authors—and other authors who have trapped their own work in a death spiral—need to be forced into new universes, turning their talents to books that aren’t doomed for the shelves of Goodwill stores.

Yes, it’s always sad to bid a saga that gave us such distraction farewell, but in the end authors need to learn the lesson Lucas ignored: at some point, you’re doing readers a favor by stopping.

Cardinal Column #11: Interactive Fiction

(Editor’s note: Madly scrawled in a library computer a few hours before it was due, this column ranks as one of my favorites if not my favorite column I ever did for the Cardinal. Between real-world research and speculation on what I’d previously read, it was a joy to put together and see published – and also see reprinted on one or two websites. Definitely the head of the style I was putting together, and what I’d like to replicate in my future works.)

Literature and Internet collide, with interactive results

Originally published in The Daily Cardinal, March 3, 2006

While I’d be the last person to say there is a problem with reading books, I will admit the activity can grow a little monotonous. Not in terms of excitement or detail, no—more in terms of the fact that reading is a generally passive activity, where you follow along on a given path and draw the same conclusions.

However, it doesn’t always have to be that way, thanks to a recent rediscovery of an old classic: interactive fiction. A synthesis of books and technology better known as text-based games, interactive fiction was hidden for years under the shadow of computer graphics but has enjoyed a revival in the depths of cyberspace.

For an example of interactive fiction, I’m sure we all remember “Choose Your Own Adventure,” those wonderful little paperbacks which are probably the only books left to use second-person voice. The plots were laughable with titles like “Space Vampire,” “War with the Mutant Spider Ants” and “You are Microscopic,” but the sheer volume of books written meant that there was always some new absurdity. You could experiment with multiple escape routes, move to different planets or send yourself on courses you knew were cheesy and suicidal.

Most of us have moved past those simple books, but that doesn’t mean that we should have outgrown interactive fiction—in fact, at this highpoint of personal creativity we call college we should be getting back into it. With all the time we waste on procrastination or on actual studying, we could be writing our own alternative story.

While interactive fiction hasn’t been commercially noteworthy since the days of “Myst” and other adventure games, it’s still alive and well on the Internet. Companies like Malinche offer a wide variety of in-depth adventures ranging from going undercover in a mental hospital, captain of a U.S. naval cruiser or stranded at a gas station being shot at by a maniac.

Every one of these stories is not only accurate but exquisitely detailed—Malinche’s grandmaster Howard Sherman researches every story firsthand, including travels to Central and South America for first-hand information on Aztec ruins. The titles are also accessible in all media, usable on personal computers, PDA’s, cell phones and even iPods.

Thanks to the Internet, there’s even the chance to create your own games. Programs such as Inform, Hugo and Olitext offer software that can put together text-based adventures with varying degrees of difficulty, and there are also online wikis that allow you to either progress through the story or add your own chapters. (One unusual twist: some wikis, when you lead your character into death, require you to come up with two new plot trails. Gives you a little incentive to watch your step.)

The Internet could even reawaken the concept of interactive fiction done by established authors, such as Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” text game which contradicts the original and confuses readers in true Adams spirit. Who’s to say that Terry Goodkind couldn’t pen a massive interactive “Sword of Truth” story, or Dan Brown couldn’t write a piece with enough plot twists to offend every religion out there?

And why should established authors have all the fun? If you get a dozen or talented people together online, each of them writing down different settings and amusing ways to die, the odds are in favor of one of those paths turning into something truly unique. If one chain of events receives enough feedback, editing and dedication from its users, there could be a fully published novel hiding behind text commands.

A lot of speculation, I know—but that speculation is the beauty of interactive fiction. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure about ninjas and/or Mardi Gras, you can take it anywhere you want to go.

Book Review: Jade Phoenix

Jade Phoenix

By Syd Goldsmith

Published February 2006

iUniverse

326 pp.

ISBN 0-595-37549-9

Reviewed January 4, 2008

Originally reviewed in: BookReview.com

Syd Goldsmith’s “Jade Phoenix,” is an exemplar of the historical novel: a book that portrays its era with the same detail and sensitivity as the characters that live in it. Its era is that of 1960s-1970s Taiwan, and its characters are two Chinese and an American forced to make a living in a country where one remark can kill and one week creates a decade-long infatuation.

Goldsmith’s characters learn fast what it takes to survive in Taiwan. Ko-sa Ong, once a poor orphan, grows up to be the island’s largest car dealer but is shackled with fear he dishonored his ancestors. Nick Malter, a failed graduate student, moves from studying to reporting in an attempt to understand the inscrutable Chinese mind. Both men are united by doubts, but even more by Jade Phoenix – prostitute daughter of a disgraced general, gifted with unconcealable beauty.

Meeting randomly, the trio finds their lives entwined by a series of commitments that Goldsmith renders with ample detail and emotion. Nick and Ko-sa form a friendship in the suspension of scuba diving – where language and race is irrelevant – and Nick falls helplessly in love with Jade after a week’s tour through the temples and landmarks of Tainan. When financial problems entangle Ko-sa and Jade, Nick extends help without any expectations and shows them his culture with experienced understanding of their outsiders’ dilemma.

The fact that these characters are deep in the fallout of China’s Cultural Revolution only makes it more interesting. Goldsmith’s Taiwan is far less optimistic than American history books would show: not an outpost of freedom but as socially restricted as China, desperately believing their little island can conquer the mainland. When President Nixon breaks the stand-off with China, Ko-sa and Nick experience no joy at a Cold War victory but spite that he also broke decades of United States-Taiwan relations.

And by the time that event comes around, the reader will share their disdain for a political move that ruined the independence hopes of 12 million Taiwanese. They’ll already share Nick’s desire to get deeper into Chinese culture, balanced with Ko-sa’s tension at being born into it. Goldsmith doesn’t bludgeon a reader with these views but lets them develop, clearly familiar with his subject and subtly furthering the connection.

Connection is unquestionably the right word for the feeling “Jade Phoenix” provides, for there is so much information and emotion that a reader will have to see just what happiness Nick, Ko-sa or Jade will find in this life – or the next if Ko-sa’s religious beliefs are correct. Elaborate and emotional, “Jade Phoenix” is as rare and valued as the peace they seek.

Cardinal Column #10: Chick Lit

(Editor’s note: This particular column was actually conceived many months before it was written, on suggestion of my old editor Emily who now maintains an amusingly insightful blog of her own. She’d wanted me to spend a week reading nothing but these types of books, and I kept the idea on my back burner until Valentine’s Day rolled around, making it a timely topic for that week’s column.

Beyond being a column that got praise from almost everyone in the office when I walked in after it was published – and also giving rise to a title phrase my editor had been saving almost as long as I’d been saving the idea itself – I think this one is genuinely funny in places and also continues my trend of discovering my own style. Were I to do it again I may swap romance novels into it as well and also try writing the column in more of a chick-lit format, but it stands as one of my personal favorites regardless.)

Valentine’s Day lesson: chick-lit is not a free ride to the Chappell of love

Originally published in The Daily Cardinal, February 15, 2006

By the excess of red discount candy Valentine’s Day has come and gone – and in the immortal words of “Futurama’s” Philip J. Fry, “I forgot to get a girlfriend again.”

Yes, like Jay Gatsby sitting at the end of the pier watching the green light or Sherlock Holmes shooting morphine inside his den, there was no romance in this literature columnist’s life on the one day where everyone is pressured to have some. I had no plans for a movie date, no quiet candlelight dinner or even a random hookup – just another night among my classic texts.

I’ve considered why I always wind up single on this day – my awkward twitching and short attention span usually comes to mind – but the main reason appears to be that I just don’t know how to seriously communicate with women. When I run out of small talk I tend to get into my favorite books, and unfortunately most women I meet don’t find Burroughs and Thompson a turn-on.

So this year, I decided to make my literary passions work for me by spending a few days exclusively reading “chick lit,” books targeted toward young hip women offering advice and exciting life stories. I hoped that by going through books – a very personal form of communication – I could get a look at how the other half lives and use that perspective to my dating advantage.

I decided to stick with the basics for my research: Candace Bushnell’s quintessential “Sex and the City,” Greg Behrendt’s dumping textbook “He’s Just Not That Into You” and Lauren Weisberger’s scathingly fashionable “The Devil Wears Prada.” Swallowing back my embarrassment at publicly reading books with pink and pastel covers, I dove in with gusto.

Unfortunately, I emerged from this text-induced estrogen haze more confused than I was when I first entered. Rather than provide me with some compelling secret as to how to win a women’s heart, I found characters that were sharply written but shallow, a high-velocity cast who were hardly the sort of people I’d share a cosmopolitan at the Plaza with.

“Sex and the City” has been talked up as the single woman’s Bible and “The Devil Wears Prada” is the first chick lit book that comes to most minds, but I hope readers don’t take on those characters as their role models. They seem to be more concerned with appearance than heart, models on how to be secure and happy with heartless exteriors and the mindset “better alone than badly accompanied.”

“He’s Just Not That Into You” was a bit more help since it offered advice over anecdotes, but unfortunately the advice only heaped more pressure onto my fragile relationship skills. I can buy cheating as a sign to dump them, but apparently if I’m not the one calling her all the time and the one making all the first moves it’s a sign to throw me to the curb. Whatever happened to being adorably inexperienced, or panic at being in love?

I will say this for the book, however: it did supplement its criticism with various motivational sayings. I felt fairly fragile after being told any little misstep would get me canned, but being told “There’s someone out there that does want to have sex with you, hot stuff” and “You, the superfox reading this book, are worth asking out” is a definite morale boost.

If reading chick lit did anything it made things worse for me – the books girls enjoy aren’t a textbook to their hearts, and are every bit as complicated as they are. It’s also done little to improve my dating confidence, as my paranoia at being judged has increased dramatically and my ideas on the right thing have been thrown into chaos.

I did get one good thing out of it, however: I intend to add “superfox” onto my resume the next time I head down to the bar.

Book Review: Emerald Passage

Emerald Passage

By Christopher Murphy

Published October 2007

iUniverse

318 pp.

ISBN 0-595-46116-6

Reviewed January 4, 2008

Originally reviewed in: BookReview.com

Emeralds are rarely the first choice in valuable gemstones: they don’t have the cultural import of diamonds and have less history than rubies and sapphires. There’s also no political intrigue behind them, unlike the blood diamonds African warlords use to fund violent uprisings or Burmese rubies which fund a notoriously authoritarian government.

So, with these alternatives, is it possible to make these verdant minerals remarkable? As Christopher Murphy proves in his convoluted yet utterly entertaining novel “Emerald Passage,” the answer is yes. Emeralds can motivate a journey spanning from Belgium to Brazil, lead a gem smuggler to cross paths with three beautiful women and unite a sailing team in a search for peaceful understanding.

Emeralds are the book’s plot device, but the narrative belongs to main character Rollo Runyan – a quick-witted romantic who could be easily portrayed by Errol Flynn. Cheated out of a diamond cache after his release from a South African prison, Runyan begins tracking emeralds purchased with those diamonds to collect his fair share. These new gems, however, are connected to KGB agents involved in a Middle East conspiracy he can’t help but be interested in.

Murphy puts Runyan through a dizzying amount of tests and trials en route to get the emeralds. He writes a financially successful short story and song, foils an airplane hijacking, infiltrates a Rio de Janeiro masquerade dressed as dynamite and joins a sailing team for a race around the world. These scenes are well-rendered, if overly complex: Runyan’s blueprint for the hunt is a jumble of multilingual papers, and it takes some flipping back to decipher the exact plan.

More interesting than where Runyan goes is what Runyan says, either musing on his current plight or coming up with a new story for one of the women he meets in transit. Comments range from the humorous – disappointment is “discovering you can’t swim from a sinking ship with gold in your pockets, your so-called ‘life savings’” – to longer conversations on romance and worldly connections. Murphy may be voicing his personal beliefs, but does so in a manner engaging rather than preachy.

By the final scene of “Emerald Passage,” a tense showdown with Arab sheiks and Israeli commandos, it’s possible you’ll have lost the reason why Rollo’s there but even more likely you’ll be too occupied to be upset. Like an actual emerald, the book has countless facets – so many its distracting – but it’s cut from a solid crystal of an idea and illuminated by Murphy’s wordplay.

Cardinal Column #9: Falsified Memoirs

(Editor’s note: My first column of 2006, this saw the start of a much preferred direction in my columns as I finally started to come across something that could pass as my own style. Drawing on the books I’d read and combining it with the seldom viewed world of literature news, I’d hit upon a solid formula to make it work. This one was written more as a reaction to real events than a personal literary reflection, though it did lead me to what I feel is a solid conclusion at the end of the column.

The column did take a little flak from my editor Dan, who wanted to see me doing more vivid creative things, but I think the real damage to the article came from his headline. The headline actually generated me my first real negative feedback – or any feedback at all – as one or two representatives of Native American groups lashed out at me claiming that they cared if it was true, and that Nasdijj was an affront to their culture.

Beyond being pleased that anyone actually read my columns at the time, I felt an urge to have this corrected. What I was trying to say with the column was not that they should be excused completely for lying about this, but that what they were doing in some ways grew out of an unfriendly print culture that tends to swallow up novels in favor of books they can shout from the pinnacle of cathedrals as signs that real life can be triumphed over.

With a few more examples of this popping up in the more recent news – David Sedaris’ novels are always a target of those who suspect fiction in truth, Misha Defonseca’s book “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” where she said she was adopted by wolves is a lie, Margaret Seltzer wrote a falsified memoir “Love and Consequences” as Margaret B. Jones growing up on gangbanging L.A. streets,  Ishmael Beah’s best-selling “A Long Way Gone” was under fire for a butchered timeline – I think this argument still holds water and I will continue to defend my claim that a memoir sells while a novel fades. Expect a new column on this in the future.)

If it’s good, who cares if it’s true?

Originally published in The Daily Cardinal, February 1, 2006

Last year, there were a lot of articles from my peers in literary journalism, bemoaning the fact that there has yet to be something outstanding in recent fiction. The best seller lists are dominated by sharp yet formulaic detective novels from James Patterson and John Grisham, and really innovative fiction is confined to journals that don’t have the readership they deserve.

Well, now it seems like that innovative fiction and best sellers have finally come together – unfortunately, the world that combination thrives in is nonfiction.

James Frey, an author made famous by his rehab memoir “A Million Little Pieces” and the gushing praise of Oprah Winfrey, has fallen from grace thanks to investigations by the Smoking Gun Web site. According to a six-page report, Frey falsified large parts of his autobiography, exaggerating a five-hour jail visit into a three-month incarceration and reinventing his root canal to exclude painkillers.

Since the report became public Frey has been in the sniper scope of the media, accusations leveled against him faster than most authors get rejections. He was expelled from Oprah’s book club and forced to admit his lies to her housewife congregation, in an interview that made him look like he was not only a liar but illiterate. A more serious charge was leveled against Frey last week, claiming “A Million Little Pieces” plagarized work from fellow drug-addicted writer Eddie Little.

Frey is not the only author to have been recently exposed as a sham. Yinishye Nasdijj, a Navajo author who chronicled his troubled childhood, was exposed as a sympathetic (and unpronounceable) mask for Tim Barrus, an author whose writing is typically designed for the gay sadomasochistic community. Apparently, similarities between their work have been exposed – I hate to consider what the overlap is.

Author JT LeRoy also joined the ranks of literary hoaxes, the former prostitute and transgender AIDS victim actually an image concocted by artist Laura Albert. For public appearances, Albert apparently slapped a wig and sunglasses on her sister-in-law.

What’s surprising about this isn’t that everyone lied about their personal lives – you can’t be a writer unless you expand on the truth – but the fact that they have gone to such extremes to do so. Clutching tennis balls until nails crack during surgery, being pimped out by your mother at truck stops, raising adopted children with fetal alcohol syndrome – all stories so passionate and vivid they seem to be a recipe for successful fiction.

But thriving in the world of fiction isn’t easy to do, with publishers more interested in the next round of bestsellers than original prose. Frey’s story was rejected by 17 publishers when he tried to publish it as fiction, and Nasdijj likely would have seen a gap in sales if a gay porn anthology wound up on the author history. Readers aren’t interested in edgy, well-written fiction – they want to hear about real people who survive against horrible odds.

And lying does seem to profit these writers. Although Nasdijj was pulled by publishers, “A Million Little Pieces” is still No. 2 on the “USA Today” best-seller list (still as nonfiction) and according to Facebook 270 UW-Madison students call it a favorite. With the exception of Oprah, who seems more concerned about her own image’s damage than Frey’s, readers still seem to find his work fascinating – except now focus has gone from skill to scandal.

I’m personally depressed that talented writers have to fall back on tabloid tricks to get their books into circulation, and that it takes personal tragedy to get noticed in the literature world. What happened to the days when authors like Kerouac and Fitzgerald were not only real alcoholics, but used it as inspiration to create classic fiction?

In the end, I hope these books are eventually judged on how good they are, rather than if the writer was telling the truth on their book jacket. After all, what should really matter for an author is the ability to tell a good story – even if that story never really happened.

Book Review: Bagels and Grits

Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou

By Jennifer Anne Moses

Published July 2007

University of Wisconsin Press

184 pp.

ISBN 0-299-22440-6

Reviewed November 13, 2007

Originally reviewed in: BookReview.com

How do you deal with your life when you’re gripped with anxiety, professionally stalled and involved in a family that seems more dramatic than an Augusten Burroughs novel? Apparently, as Jennifer Anne Moses writes in her expressive memoir “Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou,” the solution is to go so far out of your comfort zone you completely renovate yourself.

Having spent all her life in a comfortable East Coast existence, Moses and her family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana after her husband accepted a job at LSU. Looking to form a connection in the state’s humid, diverse environment, she began volunteering at an AIDS hospice and threw herself into studying her Jewish history. These influences lead her to think about faith, and ask the major question of what she truly believes.

Moses’ fervent desire is to find a sense of belonging through Judaism – not only belonging in the close-knit synagogue, but with a family whose history she has never fully experienced. The reader gets taken along on this journey, learning quite a bit of Jewish faith and lifestyle as Moses picks it up herself. We also get a great picture of growing up in her household, with parents who inflict equal measures of drama and humor.

The struggle with faith is the main part of the book, and the rest of it is the struggle with the self. Moses is entirely honest with the reader about her neuroses, be it obsessing over the perfect throw rugs or compulsively checking herself for cancer. Her hang-ups do get repetitive as the book goes on, but she counters this by managing to be funny about it, particularly when acknowledging how her problems pale next to others: “I don’t have any villains in my childhood baggage. The best I can come up with a bunch of tattered, ill-fitting underwear.”

Neurotic or not, Moses is an excellent writer. The stories she tells of the people in the hospice are the book’s strongest part, ranging from the gregarious to the delusional yet united in how “their T-cells disappear with each commercial break.” The setting, be it Baton Rouge, Virginia or Glasgow, is described subtly but in every case conveys her exact perceptions.

“Bagels and Grits” is a purely human story – be it the suffering of the AIDS patients, the complicated relationships with her parents or Moses simply saying what’s “in her own imperfect heart.” You can feel a rush to get through some of the more uncomfortable times in her life, but they still come through with a flash of enlightenment.

Cardinal Column #8: Holiday Book Shopping

(Editor’s note: Last column of the semester. Not a whole lot to say here, except that I wish I’d pushed harder for Avol’s Bookstore. It’s easily the best store on State Street and I’ve found some excellent books there, particularly the gem “Novel with Cocaine.” A further write-up of the store is coming for the future, as are my second half of columns [which I admittedly have a preference for].)

Search Madison’s bookstores to find perfect literary gifts

Originally published in The Daily Cardinal, December 14, 2005

As those wonderfully dedicated and frostbitten Salvation Army representatives remind us every day, Christmas is the season of giving. With two weeks before the big day, I’m rushing to fill the stockings of my friends and family with books.

While I won’t try to give tips on what books should be gifts – it’s too personal of a gift to make individual recommendations – after two and a half years of college, I’ve entered almost every bookstore around town and know where the best are. So in the spirit of giving (and in hopes of getting a book in return) here are some tips for finding the best book for the holiday season.

For the student who is too deep in finals for a serious shopping trip, the best place to go is the University Bookstore. I’ve said this before, but its collection of used books is perfect for a one-stop shopping trip – you can get some Philip K. Dick for the sci-fi fan, Jack Kerouac for the hipster and Michael Moore for the family’s angry liberal. Shopping there is also convenient, as you can sell back your textbooks for more holiday money.

But if you’d like to spend more time picking out a gift, try one of Madison’s older, independent bookstores such as Paul’s Books, 607 State St., or Shakespeare’s Books, 18 N. Carroll St. With tight hallways and overstocked shelves to the ceiling, these stores are made for browsing. Additionally, the battered covers and yellowed pages of a used book make an impact and are far more unique than a paperback from the grocery store.

There are also plenty of specialty stores to pick up books around campus. Shakti, 320 State St., has an interesting selection of New Age theories and books on witchcraft, A Room of One’s Own, 307 W. Johnson St., provides feminist and lesbian literature and Rainbow Bookstore, 426 W. Gilman St., offers titles on liberal and activist beliefs.

If you really want to make an impact on someone significant – or can’t find the time to leave the apartment – I recommend making the ultimate sacrifice and giving them something from your personal library. It suggests you care enough to entrust them with something dear to you, and since you’ve read it yourself you know exactly what they’ll appreciate about it.

Two notes on that tactic though: do not use it as an excuse to clean bad books off your shelf. When you give them a personal book they’ll ask what you liked about it, and any hesitation will be noticed and remembered when they realize the book sucks.

Also, do not give away books you yourself got as gifts. The odds are good that someone will remember you getting it earlier. If you’re like me, the odds are even better you’ll wind up giving it to the person who gave it to you in the first place, and that makes Christmas dinner very awkward.

I hope these tips help you get just the right literary gift and I hope you all enjoy a restful holiday season. Me, I’ve got 20 pounds of books that have been ignored in favor of that studying thing, and it’s time to catch up.

Book Review: I Am America (And So Can You!)

I Am America (And So Can You!)

By Stephen Colbert

Published October 2007

Grand Central Publishing

240 pp.

ISBN 0-446-58050-3

Date reviewed: November 7, 2007

Originally reviewed at: BookReview.com

On Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” Stephen Colbert has done something few actors do so well, or at least so visibly: he has created a character whose theater is the real world. His alter ego – an arrogant pundit set in his beliefs – is a joke the entire world plays along with, a character that can get eagles and planes named after him and even mount a presidential campaign.

Now, Colbert has added to the character mythos with the wonderfully titled “I Am America (And So Can You!),” a satire of the memoir/advice books published by Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. In the book, Colbert offers his advice for keeping America great: believing everything he says, no matter what the reality is.

Each chapter has the Colbert character expounding his opinions on varied topics: the family, homosexuality, immigrants, religion, Hollywood and the media. These opinions range from intolerant (senior citizen look like lizards) to simply idiotic (baby carrots turn people gay) and in every case are defended with a zealot’s fervor. Colbert is clearly wrong every time, but the joke is in how he defends it – building his argument up to total absurdity, yet coming out “right” in the end.

“I Am America” is written with the same cunning spirit that drives “The Colbert Report,” and it’s clearly targeted for that audience – almost too much. Anyone who isn’t a fan of the show or hasn’t seen at least a week of episodes will miss a lot of the jokes, and will likely get offended as Colbert claims non-Christian religions are wrong and anger is important against “the gays.” This book belongs to the self-proclaimed Colbert Nation, the network of fans who proudly wear WristStrong armbands and feel America’s greatest threat is bears.

Members of that network though, will find some excellent gems of satire. Emulating 2004’s brilliant “America: The Book,” “I Am America” contains features such as a mad lib for family counseling, a flow chart for deciding if someone is gay, corporate sponsors for the sports chapter and Colbert’s summary of science (“It attacks our cherished opinions”). Plus, the book is filled with marginal comments reminiscent of the show’s “Wørd” routine, offering a second joke that’s frequently funnier than the first.

Colbert’s shtick may not make a seamless transaction – a lot’s lost without his performance – but it’s still put together by one of the greatest writing staffs in today’s entertainment and that effort shows. “I Am America (And So Can You!)” is a fine addition to the political satire first developed by “The Daily Show,” and is yet another prop to keep the Colbert joke going.

Cardinal Column #7: Harry Potter

(Editor’s note: This is probably my least favorite of the columns I’ve ever done, mainly because the topic is – I don’t think – all that interesting. I was trying to build off my topics from my third column with a target at a broader audience, and I do think that I got the point across in that regard. As a whole though, it’s too much of a mainstream topic and relies on more speculation than actual knowledge of the series. Honestly, my main views on Harry Potter are probably best summed up by this OOTS comic.

Oh, and I also have only read the first one of the series since this column was published – not out of any dislike of the series, in fact I thought the first one was pretty damn good – but that I haven’t found the series interesting enough to seek out the others. I mean, I’m sure I’d enjoy them if they came into my possession and I’m also sure that they’re well done, they’re just very low on the pecking order. I suppose this comes from being so deeply rooted in the Tolkien camp of fantasy writing I may as well be entwined in Fangorn forest.)

At last, Chappell and Potter meet

Originally published in The Daily Cardinal, November 30, 2005

If there’s one thing the world of literature suffers from, it’s a lack of excitement when something happens. Unlike movie previews for “Star Wars” which are often more exciting than the actual film when released or video games like “Halo 2” ordered weeks in advance, books just don’t command public interest when they come out.

There is an exception that proves the rule however, and that exception takes the form of a teenage wizard in round glasses. In only a few years, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become the most entrancing and anticipated series of books in the world, commanding more attention than some elections and profits authors can barely dream of.

Just this year, the sixth book “Half-Blood Prince” beat the Hollywood box office with over $100 million of sales in 24 hours after its release, and the film adaptation of “Goblet of Fire” racked up $400 million worldwide in two weeks. And it’s not just Mrs. Rowling making a profit off this attention: according to the publishing research company Simba International, fantasy and sci-fi books have seen an 8.5 percent sales increase in the last five years, nearly twice what all other consumer books have seen.

I admit I’ve never been a large Harry Potter fan, partially because my allegiance has belonged to “Lord of the Rings” for years and I just can’t bring myself to trade my beloved Shire for Hogwarts. Also, I do the bulk of my reading when I can catch a spare minute during the day and my overcoat pockets weren’t designed with a 700-page hardcover book in mind.

However, with some time on my hands over the Thanksgiving break I decided it was finally time to see what all the fuss was about, so I paged through a few of the books and viewed a few of the films. Sadly, I didn’t have time to read through all of them (Thanksgiving is never long enough for anything past eating) but what I saw convinced me that my earlier excuses have only kept me from getting into some fantastic books.

For starters, while Harry Potter is written as a children’s book it is in no way intended just for children – the atmosphere of dragons, spiders, unicorns and werewolves is familiar to any fan of horror and fantasy, and can easily be appreciated by those fans as well. The books also get darker as the years progress, displaying that Rowling understands her audience is growing up in between books and is ready to experience adult fear and death.

Rowling’s work also has a lighter side with that classic British sense of humor that makes authors like Douglas Adams so enjoyable, a sardonic wit that can go over your head the first time and leave you cackling the second. Her characters – the gentle giant Hagrid, the prankster Weasley twins – all have unique traits and actions that make them stand out, and leave readers disappointed when they don’t show up after a few chapters.

But Rowling’s greatest strength in the Harry Potter series is the fact that she has made it an actual series, with characters that actually develop from book to book. By tracking a single group of characters over seven years moving through years of school, Rowling isn’t just writing a series – she’s showing readers how a group of people grow up, and illustrating that even when they have to deal with basilisks and wands their growing pains are very real.

It’s that blend of humanity and fiction that have made Harry Potter books so beloved all over the world – and have helped expand the world of fantasy to heights “Lord of the Rings” gave it in the 1960’s. While I haven’t yet had a chance to crack into the books seriously I applaud Rowling for all her work has contributed to the field of literature, and have hopped on the bandwagon of those curious to see how her saga ends.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have at least 4,200 pages to start reading and little motivation to stop. I hope my professors understand good literature takes precedence over finals.