Best I Love Horses? I Love Horses!!

Because I really dig John Jeremiah Sullivan (right now I realize I might not have ever blogged about his essay collection Pulphead), I read his first book.  It's called Blood Horses and it's about horse racing (I link to Amazon so you can learn about it, but hey, buy it from a real store?  Even if it's a Barnes and Noble.  Those are going away, too).  It also tells the history of horses.  And is a lot about Sullivan's relationship with his father.

At first I figured I'd read the book because I'm down with Sullivan but wasn't so crazy to be learning about horses.  But predictably, just like Infinite Jest made me love tennis, Blood Horses has made me love horses.  I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes learning and likes things that are well-written, but I leant it to my Grandma (a former Rodeo Queen, for real) because she already loves horses.

This would be a good time for me to throw in something I learned about horses from the book.  But I'm first-thing in the morning blogging right now.  My brain can't think of anything.  Plus, Grandma has my copy of the book.  But let me just say: Boy, horses have had it rough.  And they're so obedient.

I absolutely don't want to give away the ending, but this nonfiction book has one of the best endings I've ever ever read.  Another similarity to Infinite Jest, I guess, up until the second it ends you're not sure how it's going to end (like, literally, you wonder if the book could actually stop) and then you get to the end and say "Perfect."

Also, I read this book while I had no internet access in Utah.  But it made me want to watch Secretariat YouTubes so bad.  You'll see!

Best Cookbook of the Month

If I had my own Downton Abbey I would definitely want April Bloomfield running the kitchen downstairs.  In her first cookbook, "A Girl and Her Pig", Bloomfield doles out loads of enthusiasm for her downhome English cooking and makes everything—from oatmeal or chili pepper pancakes to roast lamb's head—sound (and look, as the food photography is great) delicious and worth at least trying, if not perfecting.

But let me be straight with you:  In a way this cookbook let me down a bit, and perhaps I was (definitely) spoiled by the Momofuku cookbook, but I was hoping to learn a lot more about Bloomfeld's career and the history of her three (but kind of four) restaurants.  Reading the book, one must take it as a given that Bloomfeld went from being offered the head chef position to running two more restaurants.  Along those same lines, the book seems short on dishes her restaurants are known for--there's no Spotted Pig blue cheese cheeseburger or Breslin lamburger, for example.  (But yes, the super popular, super awesome Sheep's milk ricotta gnudi from the Spotted Pig are included).  Maybe it's because those two burgers are too big, trade-secretwise, to release into the world.  But I'd at least like a hint, or a tip, for them and other things I remember from her menus.

Still, great book.

And what did I learn from reading it?  Just as I felt that Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything could have used the subtitle "with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon", Bloomfeld has shown me that just about every dish could use, or needs, a pinch of red pepper flakes--or a few pequin peppers, whatever those might be.

And what do I plan on cooking?  For now, definitely the Carrot, Avocado and Orange Salad and the Skirt Steak with Watercress and Chilies and one of the lentil or chickpea dishes.  Very safe, I know.  But give me time.  I'll eventually fry my own pig ear.

Best I Read This. And These.

Last week I finished Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, a fictionalized account of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon and the line they made.  And by finishing Mason & Dixon, I've now read all of Pynchon's novels.  And that, to me, is a cool thing to be able to say.

Here's my briefest possible review of Pynchon's works with links to longer reviews:

The Ones I Love (Against the Day is my absolute favorite, the other three are tied for second):

• Against the Day - First Read, Second Read
• Crying of Lot 49 
• Mason & Dixon 
• V. - Second Read

The One I Easily Forget, but it was Fun:

• Vineland

The One I Cannot Recommend, No Matter How Famous it Is:

• Gravity's Rainbow

The One I Just Did Not Care For, But I Still Hope Paul Thomas Anderson Adapts into a Movie:

• Inherent Vice

But what else can I say about Mason & Dixon?  Let me say that it was good, that I did not read it as closely as I could have or should have, that if ever a book could have used hyperlinks it was this one—so much fictional data mixed with factual, a little extra research or knowledge would have gone a long way.  Thematically, I was struck by how just about all of Pynchon's novels take place before, or in the wake of, something historically significant.  Although Mason & Dixon is very much the story of the friendship of the two men, from their first assignment to track the Transit of Venus to the years after they made their line, it is also filled with anticipation for the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.  It's interesting to me that Pynchon's novels never take place during the time of the action—even Gravity's Rainbow, taking place during World War II, hardly takes place in World War II.  I think there's some way to connect this with the Crying of Lot 49, which ends right before the titular auction, the moment where the mysterious agents of Tristero might finally be revealed.  In the very seconds before the solution to a mystery is revealed, can't we say this is when we least know what the solution is?  Confidence exists in distance from the answer, never is it more probable that you might be wrong than in the instant before the answer is revealed.

Also, if you're going to read Mason & Dixon yourself, you really should have this page-by-page summary handy.  I read it every night before bed, like checking the answers to math homework, to make sure I didn't miss anything from that day's reading.

Best Narrative of a Life

Maybe you remember that I visited Frederick Douglass's home when I was in DC for Memorial Day weekend?  It made quite the impression on me and I was left thinking I'd like to know more about Mr. Douglass.  Fast forward (and rewind) to last week when I find myself looking the Narrative of His Life (by him) square in the eye at the bookstore.  That's all it took.

Here are my chief impressions, having just finished the book tonight:

• The book began with ample Forward and Preface materials, all of which I dutifully read.  One of those two, the Forward or the Preface, basically summed up all the interesting stories from the slavery portion of the book (meaning 90% of the book).  If I could do it all over, I wouldn't have read the Preface.  Or Forward.  I'd have had Frederick tell me the stories for the first time.
• Listen, how do I say this . . . I'll say it like this: I thought I knew everything about slavery, which is a ridiculous thing to think you know, but I at least thought I wouldn't learn anything new about slavery from the book.  Wrong.  I was constantly surprised by the things slaves were allowed to do (such as learn a trade and earn a wage, or travel to visit friends and family) that I didn't think they could do as well as the things slaves weren't allowed to do that I thought they could do (that list is long).
• I didn't realize Douglass wrote the narrative when he was so young and just getting started on his career as an abolitionist.  As far as he's concerned, and the book is concerned, slavery is still happening.  Douglass's voice is strong, it is quite something to hear him reaching out across time to you, speaking from not-terribly old first-hand experience.
• The book ends with a fellow by the last name of Coffin encouraging him to speak at a meeting of Abolitionists.  If I can lay claim to being related to the semi-fictional Coffins of Moby Dick, then I shall also lay claim to relation to the very non-fictional Coffin of this history.
• Douglass follows the Narrative with an Appendix dedicated to distinguishing between Christianity and the professed Christianity of slave owners.  It's a good and insightful additional read and several of his statements/examples had me recalling Kierkegaard's Training in Christianity, which Kierkegaard wrote approximately three years after Douglass's Appendix.   

In sum, a good little book and it leaves you wanting to know more.  Because there's a lot more to the story of Frederick Douglass.  That's what I learned at his house.

Best Stick a Harpoon in Me, I'm Done

So I'd been reading Moby Dick and Sunday night I finished Moby Dick and now I can't stop thinking about Moby Dick.  First, the book has the strangest narrative shift from the first section of the book, which is all about Melville and Queequeg in Nantucket and is really funny and quite entertaining, to the second, where Melville and Queequeg nearly disappear from the story altogether (nearly) except for a handful of key scenes.  I thought of it at first as a very literal literary representation of their assimilation into the machinations of sea life and their duties aboard the Pequod . . . but now I've been thinking about the contrast in the book between land and sea, land as a knowable, finite, bounded space and sea as mysterious, unknowable, and infinite—what better way to impress the unknowable nature of the sea upon the reader than to snatch away his two key points of reference?  

And also, what to make of Melville's encyclopedic descriptions of sperm whales, the detailing and describing of nearly every part of their bodies?  Especially after Melville has established that the faceless sperm whale is as inexplicable and unknowable as the sea?  Well, what do we work to explain more than that which we can't explain?  What do we try to know better than that which we can't know?  You know? 

Man, Melville.  You did a number on me!

And also, how exciting is the final chase of Moby Dick?  After so much build up it's almost a horror story and finally Dracula arrives.  When Melville is describing Moby swimming up from under the water towards the little boat, growing bigger and bigger, mouth open?  So much inescapable power!  So little the little humans can do about their fate coming straight at them!

Sheesh, I wish I knew how much I liked this book while I was reading it.

For a more artful assessment of the novel, consider Jeff's thoughts.