Kindle

I guess at this point a Kindle is about as fresh as a walkman, but they no longer cost $400, so I just got one for my birthday. I was hesitant at first (Would I use it? Would I miss the tactile joys of turning the pages of a book?), but as it happens the Kindle and I are perfectly suited to one another. Here's why:

• My Brain. I am pathetically forgetful. I can go into a library or bookstore, determined to leave with a particular novel, and the moment I step over the threshold, I've completely forgotten it. In fact, I can't remember the title or author of any book I have ever wanted to read. Plus, library and bookstores are something of a laxative for me. I think it is a trauma reaction to the time I pooped in my pants at the library as a kid. I must devote all my powers to locating the restroom, often riding three or four escalators, and by the time all that is finished, I have no idea what I came in for. I wander around for a while, investigate my sign in the astrology section, and leave, with slumped shoulders and a frowny-face. Even if I go in with the title written on my hand, I will have sweated it into a blurry mess by the time I hunt down the restroom. With the Kindle, I can download a book as soon as I decide I want to read it. I can even download from the bathroom, in case the Amazon.com website makes me uncomfortable!
• Book Paranoia. I am shy about reading in public because I am either embarrassed by the Y.A. novel I'm reading, or because I worry people will think I'm being pretentious and trying to look smart with my copy of Lolita. Instead of dealing with my paranoia, I can now hide what I'm reading from the public. From The Baby-Sitters Club to Balzac, my literary choices stay between me and my Kindle. This secret bond has brought us closer than ever.
• Fat Books. It's a real pain in the ass to try and carry around a fat book, especially a hard cover. The Kindle is nice and svelte. This also helps if you are trying to read while you eat. You can lay the Kindle flat on the table or in your lap and use both hands to stuff your face, as you were meant to. 
• No One Is Losing. The sad, honest truth is that I wasn't patronizing independent bookstores to begin with (or many bookstores at all. Because of, you know, the pooping), so they're not losing a customer. Wow, that sounds awful. But it's the truth, and at least this way I am reading, instead of hovering outside the window of a bookstore, feeling my bowels clench, and running away.
• I Am Reading! And reading and reading and reading! That's what it's all about, right? I don't think I've read like this since I was a kid and it makes me so happy.
• It Asked for My Hand in Marriage. You guys! I can finally reveal that the Kindle and I are getting married! We're planning an autumn wedding. You guys!!!!!

So buy a Kindle! Or don't. But it's about time you started thinking about settling down, and look what it did for me!

BOOK REVIEW: Streets of Laredo

SPOILER WARNING FOR ALIENS AND ALIENS 3 AND I GUESS LONESOME DOVE AND ALSO STREETS OF LAREDO


It was difficult for me to enjoy Streets of Laredo, the sequel to Lonesome Dove, because Larry McMurtry seemed to be suffering from what I call Aliens 3 syndrome.
Basically what happens is the storyteller takes the survivors from the previous movie or book, and the good feeling when you were like "Ughhh, they killed Bill Paxton but at least the little girl got out safely," and they KILL THEM. IMMEDIATELY. No, no, that's not right. THEY ARE ALREADY DEAD when the story picks up.
I'd like to punch David Fincher and Larry McMurtry in the balls. You know what? Everybody gets punched in the balls today. BALL PUNCHES FOR EVERYONE!


In all seriousness you should read Lonesome Dove immediately.

You mean... they ate each other up?

I just finished The Man Who Ate His Boots, by Anthony Brandt. I think you should get this now. Right now.  Even if you're not usually into history/nonfiction stuff, this book is the opposite of trying to sail a wooden boat through pack ice. Meaning it is FAST and EASY, even at almost 400 pages.
The man who ate his boots is Sir John Franklin, one of the "Arctic Knights" searching for the Northwest Passage in the 1800's. It's the obsession of one idiot, John Barrow, that sends these men into the ice again and again and again, never learning a fucking thing. They freeze to death because they want to wear their wool clothes, because they don't learn how to build igloos for shelter, because they don't think for one second savage people who have lived in sub-zero temperatures for hundreds of years could possibly teach them, ENGLISHMEN, anything about survival.
And so they die. Horribly.

I first heard about the final expedition, the Franklin Expedition, while watching a NOVA special on mummies. 30 parties went in search of Franklin and his men after they disappeared in 1846, and the first graves they found were of three sailors on Beechy Island. The bodies were preserved by the ice and in the 1980's anthropologist Owen Beattie exhumed (and defrosted--the guys were ice cubes) the remains to figure out why they died. Lead poisoning, from their canned food, had something to do with it. Lead poisoning will kill you, but it will make you crazy first. Beattie's discovery enlightens the terrifying behavior of the other 120-some men. 
They had two ships: The Terror and The Erebus. And they sat, entrenched in ice, for two years. One of the ships was crushed and sank. Franklin died (possibly of a heart attack). The remaining officers and crew abandoned the ships and went in search of food. What did they bring with them, you ask? Oh, not much. Just a fourteen-hundred pound life boat full of arctic necessities, like silk scarves and scented soaps and slippers and, oh yes, a writing desk.
A. FUCKING. WRITING. DESK.
That's what stuck with me. These men were dying, weak with scurvy and hunger and fear, and they decided it would be a good idea to drag a giant desk across the arctic? I remember watching the tape in the dark, my legs shrinking up to my chest as I imagined them saying "Oh yes, well we must bring the writing desk!" like that was normal and smart and not crazy at all. That kind of crazy, when everyone has caught it, when the most idiotic decision seems like a fantastic idea and how logical! that scares the bejezus out of me. That's probably not how that scene played out in real life, but it's how it played out in my head, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The men on Beechy Island were the only ones to be buried. Some were found face-down in the snow, fully clothed (why oh why weren't they wearing fur?) and still carrying their papers. The remains of others told a gruesome tale. The men, starving and probably mad, turned to cannibalism. As if this story wasn't scary enough. It's something you don't want to think about for too long, but maybe you can't help it.

It is a fearful thing to imagine what must go through the mind of a man reduced to eating the body of another,  someone he has known personally, has broken ship's biscuit  with... How is it even possible to saw hands off arms, or to  break into a skull for the brains inside? Very few of us have ever been hungry enough to know. (Brandt)

The Franklin Expedition (his third, by the way. He was 59 when he left England forever) makes up only a small part of The Man Who Ate His Boots. It is all fascinating. Brandt is a great writer. You will also never want to make a joke about scurvy again. That shit is nasty.