Matt Margolis

I read Joshua Ferris’s debut novel, Then We Came To The End, after reading praise from the book by Nick Hornby, my favorite contemporary author. I really enjoyed that novel, and found its first-person-plural narrative to be an effective device for telling the story. Since I finished that one, I have been anxiously awaiting Ferris’s follow up novel, The Unnamed, which came out last month.

Fans of Ferris’s first novel will certainly find this novel to be very different. While Then We Came To The End was a workplace satire, The Unnamed is dark, as it deals with the mysterious affliction of a lawyer named Tim Farnsworth. Tim suffers from an unexplainable condition tha causes him to get up and walk… and just keep going and going until he collapses in exhaustion. This problem has doctors baffled, and causes incredible strain on his family and career.

Ferris effectively captures the struggle of the main character, who not only struggles with symptoms of the disease but with the lack of a diagnosis or explanation. Tim is not much different from Captain Ahab, in Moby Dick, obsessed with catching the white whale, or Dr. Frankenstein who obsesses over killing the monster he created.  The disease is slowley destroying the comfortable life he worked hard for. and that struggle certainly leaves the reader as anxious for the answer as Tim Farnsworth is. In that sense, the book is a hard one to get through in the same way that such classics as Moby Dick and Frankenstein were hard to get through.

Fans of Ferris certainly should not be expecting the same kind of dark comedy they got from Then We Came To The End, Though different, The Unnamed still has the mark of Ferris which should be recogzinable to those familiar with his work.

The Unnamed is an enjoyable read, perhaps not as fun as his first novel, but worth reading whether you are a fan of Ferris or haven’t read him yet.

I get books at a much faster rate than I read them. I am hoping to play catch up  this year on books I got last year but never started, as well as start and finish new books published this year. So, here’s what’s on my list to read this year.

THE UNNAMED, Joshua Ferris – I read Ferris’s debut novel THEN WE CAME TO THE END a couple years ago and enjoyed it, and have been looking forward to reading his second, which comes out in January 2010.

THE FINANCIAL LIVES OP POETS, Jess Walter - This book is highly recommended by Nick Hornby, my favorite author, and I actually purchased it before learning about that because I was

EMPIRE FALLS, Richard Russo - My boss recommended this book, and I bought it.

PLAN B, jonathan Tropper - Last year I read three of Tropper’s novels, and have two more. This one is his debut novel (the first one I read was his new one, THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU) which I started, but didn’t finish. After this one is done, I move onto EVERYTHING CHANGES.

HOW WE ARE HUNGRY, Dave Eggers - I’ve been looking to read Dave Eggers for a while, and figure this collection of short fiction is a god place to start.

IT FEELS SO GOOD WHEN I STOP,  Joe Pernice - Another book with high marks from Nick Hornby. I plan to get a copy at some point this year and read it.

There are other books on my shelf I hope to read this year as well, but the aforementioned books are higher priority reads. Of course, there are bound to be new releases that I am not aware of that I’ll want to read and give high priority to, but for now, this is my short list of must reads for 2010… in actuality, I’ll read more.

Not on the list is James Patterson, whose novels used to be absolute must-reads, but have now became When-I-Can-Get-To-Them books. Once a devoted fan of his Alex Cross series, I’ve felt his recent books of that series to be lazy and less developed as the early books of the series. The Maximum Ride series started off great, but after the second one, they took a horrible turn for the worst. A new book of the Alex Cross series (which i haven’t read yet) came out last year and a new one of  the Women’s Murder Club series coming out this year, so I’ll probably take a chance on them.

Saw someone do this on Facebook, so I thought I’d give it a whirl…

According to the rules of this exercise,

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose.

(To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note – upper right hand side).

In no particular order…

1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
2. A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
3. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
4. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
5. High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
6. Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle
7. Visions of the Anointed, by Thomas Sowell
8. 1984, by George Orwell
9. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
10. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
11. Slam. by Nick Hornby
12. The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick
13. Kiss The Girls, by James Patterson
14. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
15. Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen

To be honest, I don’t entirely understand what a book that “will always stick with you” means… Is it a book that if you grab if you ran out of your burning house? Is it a book that just left an impression on you? Whatever it means, I did the best I could to come up with books that “stick with me.” though I imagine there are some that may not always appear on this list if I was asked to do this exercise on a different occasion. Kiss The Girls by James Patterson for instance, may not be my favorite of his novels, but it was the first one I read, and began many years of reading and collecting his books. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley may not be a favorite book either, mut boy did it leave an impression on me.

As readers of my blog know, I am a big fan of Nick Hornby. My enjoyment of his work has put me on a mission to find comparable authors that I might enjoy. This search ultimately lead me to discover Jonathan Tropper. Not long ago I acquired an advanced copy of his new novel This Is Where I Leave You. This novel is the story of Judd Foxman, who recently caught his wife cheating on him with his shock jock boss, and soon after returns home upon the death of his father and must spend a week sitting shiva with his dysfunctional family — in accordance to his father’s wishes. Dysfunctional might even be an understatement. Judd’s problems are juxtaposed with the dramas in the lives of his siblings.

I found the plot to be intriguing, and thus decided to take chance on starting with Tropper’s newest, rather than going chronologically. I must say that not only did I find the book enjoyable, but I have since got audiobooks of two other Tropper novels (The Book of Joe, and How to Talk To A Widower) which I vill listen to while I am flying to and from Hawaii for my honeymoon in two weeks. If all goes well (and I have every reason to believe it will) I will read his other two novels when I return.

I am not too worried. I believe Jonathan Tropper will be another author permanently on my radar.

I didn’t become a hardcore Nick Hornby fan until I read A Long Way Down back in 2005. Since then, I have been hungry for new material. When I first heard about the release of Slam and that it would be a young adult novel, I was honestly disappointed, but I actually enjoyed it a lot. Still, Hornby’s latest Juliet, Naked (to be published late September) is a novel I have been waiting for since I finished A Long Way Down.

It was ironic to read a book about superfandom, considering my enthusiasm for Hornby’s writing — which some might perceive as superfandom, though by no means to the degree of the character Duncan in the novel, who gets an advance copy of a yet to be released album of solo acoustic demos of a reclusive 80’s rock star’s last & most famous album. I, unable (or unwilling) to wait until the end of September for the book to be published, got my hands on an advance readers copy (ARC) and read the book in one evening. I rather impressive feat for me. The last book I read in one evening was James Patterson’s Cat & Mouse, back in 1997. I started Juliet, Naked around 6 pm. I finished it around 1 am.

It is hard to say how the book ranks if I were to generate a top 5 list of hornby’s novels. It usually takes me a while to fully absorb a Hornby novel. I didn’t fully appreciate Slam (another book I got prior to publication) until months after I read an advance copy. So, perhaps anything I say about Juliet, Naked now, within 48 hours if finishing it, would be premature. It is hard, after years of built up anticipation, to give a novel proper, objective assessment. The two extreme responses are (a) built up anticipation results in extreme disappointment or (b) extreme desire to love something I have waited so long for ruins any objectivity, in favor of convincing myself that Hornby met or exceeded expectation. Such a problem isn’t present when you’re not dealing with your favorite contemporary author.

Perhaps both extremes are present and are canceling each other out. Nevertheless, this review today with most certainly need to be supplemented by a follow up review closer to the books publication, when I’ll also be more comfortable referencing details of the book. In a sense, this review won’t be so much a review, but a primer for a review, with some of my initial thoughts.

There are lots of Nick Hornby fans waiting for Juliet, Naked to be released. I can safely assure them that the book won’t disappoint them. It’s classic Nick Hornby, delving into obsession, loneliness in a way that Hornby’s fans love and new Hornby readers will appreciate.

How does Juliet, Naked rank compared to other Hornby novels. If I were to create a Top 5 list (which excludes Slam, with the understanding that Siam is technically a different genre) than here is where my list stands.

1. A Long Way Down
2. High Fidelity
3. Juliet, Naked
4. About A Boy
5. How To Be Good

There is a lot a Hornby fan can read into this list. For one thing, High Fidelity is not #1, but A Long Way Down is. High Fidelity is a common favorite of Hornby fans (and especially the one’s who think of the novel before they think of the movie) and, from what I’ve seen, A Long Way Down is one the least favored. For reasons hard to explain, A Long Way Down is slightly more favored than High Fidelity, (an indecisive me would have given them shared first place status) and thus, when I met Nick Hornby at a book signing a couple years ago, I chose A Long Way Down for him to sign. These two books, nevertheless, are hard to beat, so, Juliet’s third place showing is actually nothing to scoff at. It is hard to compete with novels that, for years, have grown to mean a lot more to me than they did even after I first finished them.

That said, it is important to note that Juliet, Naked has all the qualities I love about Hornby’s writing, There are many levels one can appreciate Juliet, Naked… I’ve only just begun.

Until September…

The other evening I finally finished Sideways by Rex Pickett and have now started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. I have been wanting to read this for a while, but hadn’t ever bought the book. I am still working on his collected short stories, but I felt it was time to try out a something by PKD that was a bit longer than a short stories that run a couple dozen pages each.

Science fiction isn’t my preferred genre, but I was introduced to a few of PKD’s short stories about a year and a half ago, and have since been reading his work more and more, starting with his short stories.

Nick Hornby’s Top 40 Books is an interesting list. I will have to consider reading selections from it… and eventually make my own list.

Nick Hornby gives us a update of what he’s up to these days on his blog… some exciting stuff:..