I am a dog person.

As mentioned in my review of Marley & Me, being a dog person and a book person, I am methodically reading every book on the topic.

Ted Kerasote’s Merle’s Door was the next dog book that managed to bark loud enough for me to pet it. There’s more to this metaphor. Much as I like the smell of books, I too enjoy the sweet, nutty aroma of my pooch.

Near the end of Merle’s Door, Kerasote quotes philosopher Raymond Gaita: “ ‘we do not write biographies of animals’ because they do not have ‘distinctive identities’ and cannot make or fail ‘to make something of their lives.’ Consequently, they are unable to find in their lives a ‘reason for joy and gratitude.’”

Kerasote mentions this of course to contradict it, which he has been doing, quite entertainingly, for 341 pages. Because Merle’s Door stands as a great biography. Of a dog.

Though filled with cutting-edge canine research and expertise and charming doggy anecdotes, Merle’s Door focuses on the inherently symbiotic dog-human relationship that rebukes the philosophy of popular television personalities and dog trainers who preach an entirely unilateral mandate of “pack leader” dominance over dogs.

Guilty of his own innocent anthropomorphizing, Kerasote’s books stands as a testament to the enormously positive condition of the human-canine relationship at a time when such companionship has been perverted by an ever-changing world that is dominated by man’s technology over the natural world order.

And it stands as a testament to the sheer power, eloquence, and persuasion that can be achieved by writing simply and passionately about what one observes, learns, and feels.

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I read this book for two reasons:

1.    Sophie Dahl is hot.
2.    Sophie Dahl is the hot granddaughter of Roald Dahl.

Were it not for her hotness and literary lineage, I would not have read, much less even heard about, Playing with the Grown-ups, Sophie’s first novel.

But despite these irrelevant, verging on sexist, and recklessly inappropriate reasons for reading a book, I enjoyed Playing with the Grown-ups immensely.

Unlike Special Topics in Calamity Physics, whose author is also very hot, Playing with the Grown-ups is actually good.

Sophie Dahl writes with a stylized, imprecise prose where limousines cruise like sharks, people chat like mongooses, the sky is moody, and feet are defenceless piglets. Out of context, such constructed flourishes would drive me up the wall, but Playing with the Grown-ups is tender, warm, girly, and very British (as if you didn’t notice how defenseless was spelled).

British: there are estates, tea, boarding school, and precocious well-to-do characters.

Girly: a large majority of the characters are female, first periods, chastising for small boobs and small butt, armpit hair, clothes, shoes, agonizing over what outfit to wear, agonizing over which boy, adolescence, puberty, shopping, and designer labels.

It’s a coming of age tale with a tragicomic, rock star, art twist. And even though the primary narrative is interrupted with flash-forwards that tease the reader with tiny glimpses of the protagonist’s future, I managed to find it a fresh and charming read.

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Whiskey Knows How to Live

How to Live by Henry Alford is subtitled “A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth).”

Though a noble, worthy pursuit, a quest for wisdom encapsulated in book form by one particular individual is a preposterous and inherently flawed hunt. A quest for wisdom is what an individual would consider life. A writer’s quest for wisdom for the sake of an idea or treatment or assignment or ultimately, to warrant an advance, is destined to fail as singularly biased, limited and deficient.

And so it is for Mr. Henry Alford, who is, from what I can discern from this book, a caring and totally decent, well-meaning person. But How to Live provides in no way an answer to “how to live.” As it shouldn’t. But following the inherent flaws mentioned above, Alford’s work ends with no more significance or poignancy than it begins.

How to Live is simply Alford’s menial and insignificant “quest” for “wisdom.” It is a deeply personal story that reads like a person’s diary: boring. How to Live suffers from unfocused rambling, over-sharing and emerges as a too personal, self-absorbed, indulgent memoir-cum-amateur quest for wisdom. There is too much of the author and the author’s mother; two people I was really sick of hearing way before page 262. And it reminded me WAY too much of The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll be Dead, a far more engaging and redeeming book.

Alford’s two other books are titled “Big Kiss: One Actor’s Desperate Attempt to Claw His Way to the Top,” and “Municipal Bondage: One Man’s Anxiety-Producing Adventures in the Big City.” Following my consumption of How to Live, I have absolutely no desire to read these other two chronicles. You are writing about life, Mr. Alford, and if you fail to offer anything remotely significant about your foibles, we have no need to read your work. We are too busy living our own eccentric adventures. Except WE are not harassing others with mediocre details chronicling such mundane and normal goings-on.

How to Lives does provide a smattering of truly fascinating sections featuring such luminaries as Albee, Burroughs, Mailer, and Bloom, but such oases are quickly interrupted by the barren imagination of the author, the author’s dry mother, or, more often, both.

Kubrick said it best: “Real is good, interesting is better.”

My favorite aphorism gleamed from this book comes from a 90-year-old named Peg Franks, a volunteer at a senior center:

“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

I will not be so cruel as to suggest that you should not read this book, or to quickly finish it for fear of being found dead with it.

Because the irony alone would make it worth it.

So by all means, read How to Live.

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I have always sarcastically insisted that in order to achieve any degree of satisfaction, one must lower their standards.

Ignorance is the shortest path to enlightenment.

That is why I did not like The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. My expectations were too high.

The White Tiger won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.

It has been extolled with words like “blistering,” “arresting,” “compelling,” “riveting,” “coruscating,” “Chuck Palahniuk-style,” “Nanny Diaries ironic insider’s look,” and “dazzling.” In fact, the first 7½ pages of the paperback edition I borrowed from the local library were smeared with blurbs.

Am I the only one who hates books prefaced with masturbatory quotes? Who reads book reviews anyway? Losers. Not to mention that The White Tiger comes with a Reading Group Guide and Author Q&A. Blah.

Because of all the acclaim, my standards had been raised. I was expecting to like The White Tiger too.

But I didn’t.

It seems to me that one who would laud this book with all the praise that it has received would need to be significantly naïve and unimaginative.

Individuals, government and businesses are corrupt in India? No way! You mean India is not actually like our conception of it colored by stereotypes of Bollywood, saffron, saris, and yogis?

(When someone says “Indian,” am I the only one who clarifies, “Dot or feather?”)

Who thought India was a magic happy land in the first place? Who actually thought that other countries didn’t also struggle with issues of race and class and family and love and resentment and money and greed? How is The White Tiger groundbreaking? How can we praise this as fresh and bold? Are we really all that clueless?

Not to mention that The White Tiger is written at an eighth grade reading level.

The White Tiger does, however, redeem itself by successfully illuminating a sentiment I can get behind:

“Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans.”

Reading is Sexy.

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Why did I read this book?

We’ve all heard of it. But none of us have ever really read it.

And I know why. It was originally published in 1936. How can it possibly be relevant in 2009?

Plus these types of advice, self-help, new-agey textbooks reek of banal, trite, clichéd, stereotypical drivel. We’re too good for that. They seem a little cheesy at least. They’re all like The Secret, right?

We don’t want to sip on watered down hotel iced tea and listen to Zig Ziglar. We want to take a toke of a high-grade sativa strain and listen to some Creedence tapes!

Regardless of my skepticism and cynicism, I found How to Win Friends and Influence People to be extremely applicable and relevant.

First of all, a note on the title: “How to Win Friends” is not accurate. It’s not at all about winning friends in the sense that we modern youths would consider a friend. Carnegie seems “how to win friends” to mean the “accumulation of calculated, beneficial relationships.”

I feel very strongly that “friends” are the people we can be dicks to, the people we can get drunk with, yell at, act stupid, and not have to worry about the third of six ways to make people like you (remember their name). Everyone else? Everyone else you’re actually nice to (bosses, co-workers, certain family members, people you pass on the street) are not friends. Friends are the people you can tell to fuck off and they’ll still drive you to the airport at 6am the next day. This book is how to deal with everyone else with seemingly-obvious principles such as smile, be a good listener, talk in terms of other people’s interests, and make the other person feel important.

So friends, not so much. But how to influence people, yes.

Carnegie’s seminal work is packed full of anecdotal evidence illuminating the principle of each chapter and reinforced with a healthy peppering of Emerson quotes:

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”

Though written in 1936, HTWFAIF is refreshingly relevant in a modern age marked by the dichotomy between incredible scientific accomplishments, brilliant discoveries, understanding, knowledge, curiosity, but yet a stunted ability to talk and peacefully coexist with those we disagree.

Take, for instance, Carnegie’s encouragement to dramatize your intentions in order for them to be recognized and accepted:

“This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention.”

And on the eighth day, God created cable news.

Carnegie thwarts our skepticism about the nobility of his intentions and promises that he is no self-help scammer; a Kevin Trudeau, Carnegie promises, he is not:

“The principles taught in this book will work only when they come from the heart. I am not advocating a bag of tricks. I am talking about a new way of life.”

And for the most part, I have to agree with Carnegie. I like this book. Its advice and suggestions are totally useful and effective. We tend to consider ourselves living in grim times, what with the wars, crumbling economy, job losses, and uncertain future, why not have a little possitivity and engaged enthusiasm for our fellow man?

And Carnegie even foretold a danger in our current time. He warns us of Obama:

“The ability to speak is a shortcut to distinction. It puts a person in the limelight, raises one head and shoulders above the crowd. And the person who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he or she really possesses.”

Uh oh.

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Did you hear the one about the joke book?

Is it funny?

Not really. It’s not a book of jokes. Rather a book about jokes. History and Philosophy. Well, there are a few jokes in it. But that’s not the point.

I don’t get it.

The most obvious criticism one could make about Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt is that it is too short. In the preface, Holt admits that, “Some readers will consider it exiguous, but to me it is much of a muchness, and that is more than enough.”

(How does an author decide between writing a preface, introduction, or prologue? Jim Holt went for a preface with this book, but I think I would have preferred an introduction.)

The second most obvious criticism one could make about Stop Me if You’ve Heard This is that it makes no mention of The Aristocrats, that bizarrely delightful documentary consisting of nothing more than comedians telling the same joke. It’s a glaring omission in a book about jokes. The Aristocrats stands as a hilarious deconstruction and love song to the Modern Joke, an ever-changing art that has evolved to a state in which how has taken precedence over what. (Thus The Aristocrats Executive Producer Penn Jillette’s comparison of stand-up comedy to jazz music.) Holt was handed a case study in his topic and for whatever reason, decided it did not apply.

I know jokes are the forest and stand-up is a prominent thicket of trees. And Jim, I know you work for The New Yorker and I’m just a blogger and your author photo has you looking very professorial and writerly, and my WordPress profile pic has me looking like a Hunter S. Thompson wannabe, but I really was expecting a bit more. Despite your much muchness.

Jokes, those splinters that build comedy, deserve much more. I wanted more Bruce, more Pryor, more Carlin. You could go back to Twain. Gimme gimme gimme. And yes, you went back to the ancients and what not. But gimme gimme gimme!

Ultimately, there’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t pick up and read Stop Me If You’ve Heard This. Grab it from the library. Borrow a copy from a friend. Read it on your iPhone. Download it to your Kindle. Pick it up in a few months from the bargain bin. Ah hell, buy it.

But whatever you do, pay special close attention if some Holt guy publishes a big book about jokes. It’ll be good. He’s on to something. It’s a worthy, fascinating story.

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I just finished a 474-page book about rabbits.

Rabbits!

This is why I love books. I am absolutely giddy just thinking about the fact that there is a book, a 474-page book, about rabbits.

And it’s goddamn good!

I once read a 116-page book about farm animals, a 1008-page book about hobbits, and I even once managed to complete a 1,418-page book about airplanes (but that was a coloring book).

But this was my first 474 pages of rabbits. Watership Down is extraordinarily imaginative, well written with a steady, suspenseful plot, and a cast of furry, cabbage-loving bunnies. It is epic in scale and contains some of the best descriptions of nature that I have ever read. It’s Lord of the Rings and Dickens. With rabbits.

My family had a pet rabbit for a very brief period of my early childhood. My sister was found to be deathly allergic to all things lapin. So when Tea Taffy inadvertently pissed in my father’s mouth during a routine cage cleaning, the bunny was quickly liberated. My sister and I were led to believe that Tea Taffy ran away.

Watership Down. Have you heard of this book? Read it? High School was supposed to be the time for that, white rabbits or other. But who are we kidding? You and I spent high school at marching band practice or sucking up to the English teacher.

Who doesn’t love bunnies?

Though I am personally a little more partial to that sweater!

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I have a passing interest in writers and writing.

Someday, I aspire to be an aspiring novelist.

And some days, the good days, my vanity and stubbornness subside enough so that I am open to advice and instruction.

So recently, on one of these rare days of clarity and calm, I picked up a copy of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.

While  not as practical and straightforward as Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, nor Kundera’s Art of the Novel, nor even Wood’s How Fiction Works, Bird by Bird is far more enjoyable to read. It’s the writing guide for the budding scribbler looking for their writing advice to be translated to them by a moody, pessimistic Sarah Vowell who is absolutely hilarious and kind.

Lamott proves to be frankly blunt and honest about writing, limiting none of her acerbic sarcasm. She relates a story about a friend’s imaginary company whose business was having cats put to sleep; the slogan being “The pussy must pay.” Lamott encourages writers to let someone do this with their manuscripts.

Inbetween parables relating the act of writing to the act of executing family pets, Lamott peppers her memoir on writing with straightforward advice:

“To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care.”

“Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”

At the very most, I will eventually write something. At the very least, I will have a few Lamott quotes up on my walls. Like this one:

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

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My, my.

Exploring the themes manifested from 9/11, marital strain, and cricket (yes cricket), Joseph O’Neill has written a damn fine story.

Of course, isolating these basic elements is obtuse and uninformative. What makes Netherland great, which it is, is what makes every great novel great: the writing.

The writing is simple and elegant. Not simple in a choppy Hemingway way, but simple and elegant in an elegant Kundera way. The diction of Netherland is pitch perfect. Every single word hums with the same tone, as if each letter were vibrations from the same tuning fork banged against O’Neil’s big brainy head.

But speaking of Hemingway, though Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, assessed Netherland as having “echoes of the The Great Gatsby,” I found Netherland to be highly reminiscent of the The Sun Also Rises. Post-WWI disillusionment gives way to post-9/11 malaise and bafflement.

But back to the writing. O’Neill gives us weather, mere frozen precipitation, as this: “I was torn between a ridiculous loathing of this obdurate wintry ectoplasm and an equally ridiculous tenderness stimulated by a solid’s battle against the forces of liquefaction.”

Now, I read passages such as that and let it roll around in my frontal lobe like a piece of caramel. Don’t you read something like that in a novel and just think, “There is something going on here?”

Netherland is also full of great characters. By great I do not mean that they seem real. They don’t. If you want “real” people, make friends and talk to your family, don’t read a novel. But the characters in Netherland are fully realized, highly imagined, interesting people. But because they’re in a novel they are doing things and serving functions and reinforcing themes, so that’s not real real. That’s novel real. But man, is it good.

Netherland also contains one of the funniest, most telling and adage-worthy non sequiters that I’ve heard in a while:

“There’s a limit to what Americans understand. The limit is cricket.”

Jolly good.

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This.

This book is something else.

This is my kind of Pleasure Reading.

Not in recent memory can I recall a book that enthralled and engaged me more. And it’s about plants.

Plants!

Not just any plants, of course, but Sequoia sempervirens, coast redwoods, the largest and tallest organisms ever. Ever.

As excited as I got about these gigantic beasts and the lichens, cyanobacteria, fungus, plants, and animals they support within their dense, unexplored canopies, what was really captivating about The Wild Trees was the crazy fucks who climb them. Now, these trees are 360-370 feet tall with branches not extending from them until 150 or 200 feet above the ground.

“I’ve been skateboarding practically all my life. But I can’t do it forever. So I decided to study epiphytes in trees,” is how one such crazy climber puts it.

An epiphyte is of course a plant that grows on another plant, typically on the branches of a tree, without parasitizing it. The roots of an epiphyte do not touch the ground.

And if epiphytes don’t tickle your pickle, the thought of climbing and exploring these incredible trees will; living in them, knowing them, making love in them.

It’s quite a story. A story told by Richard Preston with clear, affectionate prose. It’s a marvelous story, one that reminds me of tales such as The Happiest Man in the World.

Because though Thoreau said that the majority of man lead lives of quiet desperation, again and again I read books like The Wild Trees that illuminate a thriving and fascinating world of “normal” people participating in magnificent feats of passionate, daring adventure.

Thoreau be damned.

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