Elvis is Titanic

Here's a link to my review of Elvis is Titanic by Ian Klaus. It begins:

Ian Klaus' slim memoir of his time in Iraq, Elvis Is Titanic, stands out as one of the few civilian memoirs to come out of the Iraq War thus far. Klaus decided to swim against the tide by going to Iraq in 2005, at age 26, to try to make a difference by teaching English. Klaus also happens to be the former boyfriend of Chelsea Clinton, a fact that is neither here nor there - or even mentioned - until the end of the book.

Read more here.

Dark but funny childhood memoirs

I wasn't going to read Angela's Ashes for the Irish reading project, because we're not going to Limerick, where much of it is set. But I decided to get the audio book read by the author Frank McCourt from the library, to liven up my commute. It's a pretty humorous memoir of a truly disturbing childhood. Maybe someone should write a doctoral thesis comparing it with similar memoirs The Glass Castle and Running with Scissors.

So here's my favorite part so far. A school master is chastising his students for making fun of the narrator Frank, who has to wear shoddily patched shoes to school, because he's so poor:

He says, There are boys here who have to mend their shoes whatever way they can. There are boys in this class with no shoes at all. It's not their fault and it's no shame. Our Lord had no shoes. Our Lord died shoeless. Do you see Him hanging on the cross sporting shoes? Do you, boys?
No, sir.
What don't you see him doing?
Hanging on the cross sporting shoes, sir.

Then the teacher threatens to wallop them all with a switch.

What I'm Reading Now

I'm reading The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, annotated by David M. Shapard. P&P is a classic, but I read it for the first time only a year or two ago. Now I love it, this is maybe my fourth time reading it. The annotated edition has lots of interesting insights about how Jane Austen moves her plot along almost entirely through dialogue -- very interesting. It also explains nuances of vocabulary that might slip by the modern reader, i.e. amiable: "a common term of praise. It had a broader meaning then, signifying general kindness and friendliness."
I'm also reading The Untouched Minutes by Donald Morrill. It's a fascinating memoir by an English professor about how he and his wife were victims of a home invasion. It's kind of a slim book, I would describe it as a literary essay. The home invasion happened around the same time as 9/11 and the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop, two professors at Dartmouth. Morrill weaves those events into his narrative to create a meditation on violence and experience. So far, it's excellent.

'80s Books and Food

I read a poignant, fun memoir of growing up Vietnamese in the '80s in Michigigan, and eating lots of junk food: Stealing Buddha's Dinner, by Bich Minh Nguyen. (Check out the short interview and excerpt I wrote here.) I have a real weakness for '80s culture, since that's the decade I grew up in. This memoir reminded me a lot of a Judy Blume book. In fact, Judy Blume wrote a blurb for the back of the book: "Only a truly gifted writer could make me long for the Kool-Aid, Rice-A-Roni, and Kit Kats celebrated in Stealing Buddha's Dinnner. In this charming, funny, original memoir about growing up as an outsider in America, Bich Nguyen takes you on a journey you won't forget. I can hardly wait for what comes next."
Just in case you possibly don't know who Judy Blume is: She wrote '80s teen classics such as "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" (which actually was published in 1970).
Nguyen's working on a novel called "Short Girls" that I'll be interested in reading.