When Teen Lit Geeks Grow Up

I had a wonderful couple of days visiting a dear old friend with whom I share a special love of reading. We go way back, back 20 years ago to the high school where we met. We were what I would now call Lit Geeks, using Geek in the tech sense of an astute, obsessive expert. There was nothing nerdish about us. We were COOL. Really. Our school was just that kind of place.
Anyway, she blogged so well about our old exploits that I'm going to let her post speak for itself, at least for the time being.
So if you want to read about the crashing of the faculty Christmas party, or guess which Romantic poet served as my alter ego, or even see a photo of one of our special T-shirts, check out her post here.

Martin Luther King Jr. and "Strength to Love"

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is tomorrow. I truly love a book of his sermons called "Strength to Love."

My favorite is the first one, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart." King talks about the need for us to combine disparate qualities, in this case using the Bible verse from Matthew where Jesus sends the Apostles out to preach, telling them, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." Whenever I turn back to this essay, I find it very difficult to put it down because the words flow along so well, building up to King's advocacy of nonviolence.

In this this passage, though, King talks about science and religion, a theme I've been thinking about this weekend. He says there may be conflicts between "softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion." He goes on:

"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."

You can read the whole essay online here.

Bobby Fischer, R.I.P

Bobby Fischer died today (read the obit here), and it brought back a lot of memories about how much I love the game of chess. Not that I'm very good at it, but I used to spend a lot of time playing chess and particularly reading about the lives of the grandmasters. They were always these strange characters with interesting backgrounds, and I found something heroic about chess players who used their wits to triumph over those who would destroy them.

My favorite was Paul Morphy (1837-1884), the champion from my home state of Louisiana. Chess was his hobby; he was a lawyer by profession. He was supposed to have a formidable intellect; I read once that he could recite significant portions of the Louisiana civil code from memory. Apparently he became very eccentric toward the end, not unlike Bobby Fischer and Fischer's lamentable anti-Semitism.

Two books I want to read about chess:

• Searching for Bobby Fischer: The contemporary memoir of a father who discovers his son is a chess prodigy. Contains funny bits about parents who seem to take the competition more seriously than the kids do. The movie was good, too.
• The Kings of New York, subtitled A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Genuises Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team: Sports reporter Michael Weinreb looks at the world of competitive scholastic chess. Apparently it's about to be released in paperback under the new title "Game of Kings."

My Best Books of 2007

I've been sitting on this post for over a week now because I wanted to craft the most perfect words of praise for my favorite books of 2007. Well, it's Jan. 9, so it is what it is.

In previous years, I've done "Best Of" lists for the year. This year, there's only three books that reached the level of excellence to my way of thinking.

• The Best Fiction of 2007 goes to ...Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. A comedic but serious novel of life-at-work: what happens when layoffs come to a Chicago advertising agency. The title is too hard to remember, but it's great. This book deserves a wider audience; I'm quite fond of it.
• Best Nonfiction of 2007 goes to ... The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders. Essays on life, politics, and the media, all keenly observed with a sharp sense of humor and an abiding spirit of compassion. Saunders is known for his off-beat short stories; this was his first work of nonfiction, published at a nice price in paperback.
• Special Commendation for a book I read in 2007 that published previously ...The Road by Cormac McCarthy. OK, nothing funny about this one. I was an emotionally spent wreck after reading it. One of the rare books that changed the way I see the world. It's about a father and son trying to survive a post-Apocolyptic dystopian landscape; they have to head south before winter hits. Many of us look at the world and wonder why evil exists; I suspect McCarthy looks at the world and wonders just as seriously why there's good. His book shows a world of evil with a tiny speck of luminescent good that somehow, miraculously endures.

Book Buying and the Budget

For a New Year's Resolution, the spouse and I have decided that we are going to strictly budget in 2008 -- that is, keep an record by month of what we plan to spend, and then record what we actually do spend. I'm interested to how this affects my book buying. I do buy a lot of books, but in all honesty, a significant percentage of them are impulse buys -- not really considered and planned choices. I was thinking of instituting a personal rule that I have to check books out of the library or at least see if the library has them before I buy them.
I buy most of my books at my local bookstore. They're not as cheap as Amazon, but I think it's valuable to support a local business, and I value the staff's recommendations and expertise.
Now -- oh joy, oh happy day -- it's my turn to pick the book for my book group this month. We rotate pics. There are two conditions: First, you can't get input from other people in the group. This is so we get a good variety of books without any picks "by committee." Second, no one can have read the book. We all come to the book fresh as new readers.
So with the budget in mind, I'm going to pick a book that I own but that I haven't read. Here are some of the possible contenders.:

• The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke: Burke writes mystery novels set in Louisiana. This is his latest, set in post-Katrina New Orleans. It is supposed to be excellent with a literary bent, and I've never read him before.
  
• Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin. Short stories set in contemporary Ireland; Toibin has superb reputation as a serious fiction writer. He recently wrote a fictional life of Henry James ("The Master") that got great reviews. The only thing holding me back from picking this one is that my last pick was a contemporary Irish novel -- The Sea by John Banville. I may pick Toibin anyway.
• The Ha Ha by Dave King. This is American fiction from 2005, about a brain-damaged Vietnam vet who befriends a little boy. The man doesn't speak, yet he narrates the novel. It's supposed to be a really good and has gotten great word of mouth.

I also have the following unread titles to consider:

• Generation X by Douglas Coupland: I've never read this novel released in 1991 that gave the name to my age cohort;
• Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell: Pre-Katrina nonfiction about Louisiana's vanishing coast line;
• A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia by Victor Pelevin: Short stories from one of Russia's best contemporary writers;
• New Stories from the South 2007 edited by Edward P. Jones: an anthology of last year's writing from Southerners.

So you can see I have quite a few choices. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think, excluding current book group members. I think I'm going to narrow it down to three books, then read the first chapters of all three, then pick one.
Update: This post has been amended. It originally said "The Ha Ha" was "about an autistic man who befriends a little boy." See comments for details.