Book group on The Ha-Ha

My book group met last night and we had a good discussion on The Ha-Ha. This novel begins when we meet Howard, a Vietnam vet who hasn't been able to speak since the war due to a brain injury. His addict ex-girlfriend Sylvia is being forced into rehab, and she asks him to take care of her nine-year-old son Ryan.
Lots of different reactions to Howard. When we meet him in the novel, he's basically given up on communicating with other people. Some of our group sympathized with this reaction while others felt he should have tried harder. We compared Howard's reaction to his injury to the guy who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Howard just gives up on communication, while the paralyzed author of DB&B writes a memoir by blinking out letters. So there's a tremendous range there, to say the least.
We all agreed that we hated Sylvia, though I thought she was a well-rendered, realistic portrayal of a selfish, whiny addict. J opined that Sylvia might be the biggest bitch in all of literature, but then I reminded her of Cathy from East of Eden, and she conceded the point.
The main topic of discussion was how believable were the character motivations. The novel is told from Howard's point of view, so it's interesting to try to fill in the blanks on the other characters, especially Howard's friend Laurel.
One thing I really loved about this novel was how beautiful some of the scenes between Howard and Ryan are. They are really just everyday father-and-son type interactions, but author Dave King imbues them with this really lovely tenderness. You couldn't write a whole novel just about a father who loves spending time with his son, so the plot for "The Ha-Ha" works well to reveal these same types of interactions.
This concludes my report on our book group and The Ha-Ha. Our next book is Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. More on that later.

What I read during our recent trip

A certain someone (Ryan F.) has compared me unfavorably with my pal over at Sunny Southwest, saying that I don't post as often as she does. Sad but true. In that spirit, I'm going to concentrate in April on posting and not worrying so much about links or multimedia.

We got back from a trip to Pittsburgh this week. The spouse raised his eyebrows because I brought four books on a five-day trip, but I'm glad I did.

I finished Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin on the plane. This is the memoir (it became a movie) of a chess dad and how his little son became national champion. Lots of interesting stuff on where a parent's ambition ends and a child's begins. The father and son also go to Russia for an exhibition -- this is the 1980s, the Soviet era -- and there are fascinating examinations of how the Russian government viewed chess players as important symbols for the promotion of communism and thereby corrupted the game.

I finished The Web Library for my library science class "Digital Libraries." It's a guide to free, high-quality information sources on the Web. My biggest gripe about this book is that it was published in 2002 and some of it is out of date. But it had interviews with information professionals that I found useful and have blogged about previously.

I also finished The Ha-Ha on this trip, which I will blog about later as our book group is meeting tonight to discuss it. (It was very good.)

I did not get to read my fourth book, Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages, by Alex Wright. It's good and I'm about halfway through it. It starts at the beginning of human history, and I'm in the Dark Ages right about now.

So reading three out of four books is not a bad record for this trip.

More on keeping books

I'm still thinking about hoarding books versus letting them go. I ran across this interview with Michael S. Hart, founder of the very cool Project Gutenberg, where you can find many, many free e-books. If it's no longer under copyright and a volunteer entered the text, it's on Project Gutenberg.
Here's what Hart said in an interview with Nick Tomaiuolo in the book The Web Library:

Under "ye olde" system, versus under the new system, if you've got a library of 1,000 books, you're pretty cool. A personal library of 1,000 books in a room is impressive. Now you can fit 10,000 books on a DVD, and nobody knows how cool you are because the collection looks small. ... Under the "olde" system you can look cool just by displaying the books. Under the new system you actually have to read them to look cool. It's a big difference. In "ye olde" system you are defining yourself by what you own as property; in the new way you are investing in yourself by reading, not simply in possessing the physical books.

I really liked this sentiment. It's both democratic and meritocratic. It also made me feel better about purging some of the physical copies of books I've already read.
Though I do have to mention that last week author Samantha Power came up in the news, for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." (Power is an Obama supporter; she apologized for the comment and left the campaign.) It was pretty nice to be able to stroll over to my book shelf and pull down her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. The book is still under copyright and not available as an e-book in the resources to which I have access.

Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston

Here's a recent book review I wrote.

It begins:

Corporations and the rich are taking this country for a ride, sucking tax breaks and subsidies from the public trough in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to avoid public outcry. That's what New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston argues in his new book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).

Whether it's jobs moved overseas, the health care system, utility deregulation or taxpayer-subsidized sports stadiums, Johnston's book documents the many ways that the middle and lower classes are supporting big business and the wealthy.

Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, uses real-life examples and everyday people to make his case. He addresses familiar topics and obscure ones, and he presents sophisticated economic transactions in layman's terms.