Alexander Nachaj

Category: Books

  • Books I Read in 2015

    Gibson – Count Zero
    Bram Stoker – Lair of the White Worm
    Crichton – Pirate Latitudes
    Demello – Body Studies
    Bradbury – Farenheit 451
    Jeffrey Archer – A Prisoner of Birth
    Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel
    Orsi – Thank you St Jude
    Acker – Empire of the Senseless
    Durham – Bible Adventures
    Rugoff – Marco Polo
    Thomas Fleming – Siege of Yorktown
    Anne Archer – Henry VIII
    Andrist – Jackson
    Bell – Baldur’s Gate II
    Landsdale – Drive in
    Landsdale – Cold in July
    Landsdale – Bubba Hotep
    Martin – Clash of Kings
    Martin – Dance with Dragons
    Martin – The Hedge Knight
    Martin – The Sworn Sword
    Martin – The Mystery Knight
    Kimmel – Manhood in America
    Arnold – What is Masculinity
    Connell – Masculinities
    Mankell – Before the Frost
    Wilson – Unmanley Men
    Sakuraza – All you Need is Kill
    King – Salem’s Lot
    King – It
    Gilbert – Men in the Middle
    Moss – Media and the Modes of Masculinity
    Brunner – The Stardroppers
    Murakami – South of the Border, West of the Sun
    Blatty – The Exorcist

    This year I read 36 book – a dip down from previous years, and just a few tomes short of my personal goal to complete 40 books each year.

    I did end up reading several much longer books than anticipated (such as It), which slowed my pace down, but probably balanced out by all the non-fiction I read and could tear through in under a week without breaking a sweat.

    As well, for the first time, I spent a good deal of my reading energy focusing on my studies and research interests (every title on the list that has to do with America, media and masculinities).

    Several books were re-reads from previous years (such as Gibson and Bradbury). I also revisited two of Martin’s ASOIAF books, an inevitable aftermath after each season of Game of Thrones ends and my hunger for fan theories returns in full force. I also completed the Hedge Knight trilogy, which I had previously written off in the back of my head as some form of spin-off nonsense. In the end, I really enjoyed them for their simplicity and more conventional story telling.

    If I had to consider a “best of” and worst of” list for this year, Lair of the White Worm easily takes the bottom. An uninspired, meandering sloth of suspicious bromance, penis jokes and some silly plot about a giant evil worm. It put a whole new spin on the concept of a “Bram Stoker fan” – if indeed there actually are any. After reading this, it almost seemed a fluke that Dracula became so influential.

    On the best of, I would have to put both Archer and Landsdale up on there. This was the first time I had read works by either of them, and greatly enjoyed both. Archer (Jeffrey) writes in such a simple, straightforward yet captivating manner. His prose are neat and minimal, allowing the tension and confrontations between characters to be the main focus of his novels. Landsdale’s sarcastic, darkly humorous prose also reeled me in.

  • Let’s stir up some memories: it’s moving season

    Moving is an interesting experience.

    In all the things we do, it’s fairly unique. The feeling it instills in us – or myself, at least – is also fairly different in that it’s a bit of a blending of emotions.

    Moving is somehow depressing, joyful and nostalgic all at once. Maybe catharsis could be the closest single emotion it builds up in you and then lets out.

    It’s like we take a big stick and stir up all those memories which have lain dormant on our shelves, in boxes, at the back of drawers all this time. Most of them we had forgotten about, others recollected but only from time to time. Then, suddenly, when we find ourselves moving they all come briefly back to life.

    Some of them are that hoarder in all of us, finally being confronted, dragged out from under the bed and tossed into the light. Do I really need three pairs of old jeans I can safely work outdoors in? Why are there so many opened boxes of pens lying around? Did I really buy a Lily Allen album for $3? There are more shoes than I know what to do with.

    Jars of tea, with the price tag still on them. The tea gone stale and more faded than the labels. I haven’t drank more than a few cups in five years. Coffee converted me long ago.

    Books I read many summers ago bring back memories of front porches and sunny days. The smell of cut grass and a cool breeze signaling an early autumn creeping in. The feeling of the pages beneath my fingers as I turn them and fight the wind to keep my place.

    That cookie jar that currently holds my spare change, silver pieces worth no more than 25 cents, though usually less, take up the space where once cookies sat cluttered, given to me one holiday season some thousand years ago. I don’t remember if I enjoyed the cookies, but I remember the name of the baker.

    Notebooks, notebooks and notebooks – those are the most common. I seem to own more notebooks that I do undershirts. Most of them half-filled with my sprawling chicken scratch.

    Rules for board games, memos and lists, words that once lined up in a phrase sounded next-to-words.

    There were notes from school, notes from courses I took on my own, sheet music I had written for guitar, story ideas, plot points, red pen notations that I took while over the phone with some client or another.

    So many words, so much written that I hardly recall the half of it, even when reading it. Most of it could have been written in another life for all I know, by some other person with a similar shorthand, at some other place in their studies or career.

    Sometimes I know the man behind the words, other times it’s simply a mystery.

  • Books I Read in 2014

    Back at the start of 2014, I challenged myself to read 40 books over the course of the year. In the end, I completed 42. For a while, I was overconfident, thinking I could push it to 60 or so (I was power reading on the bus every morning), but once my PhD started, my novel reading prowess had to take a back seat to speed reading course materials.

    A couple of thoughts came to mind about a few of the books I read this year:

    Michael Adams and his quest for the worst movie ever made reminds me of my average Sunday afternoon as I peruse youtube with my brother, looking for shit to watch, while eating Indian food and drinking copious amounts of Black Label beer. I wasn’t all that surprised to learn that I had already seen most of the movies he writes about.

    I read a solid 10 novels from Henning Mankell this year. I had previously read Faceless Killers and enjoyed it, but something about rereading it got me hooked on that man’s prose and the ridiculous, tragic, realistic events in the life of Detective Wallander. The final novel in the series, The Troubled Man, might have been the most heart-wrenching novel I have ever read, particularly because certain elements of Wallander’s of aging, and losses, struck a little close to home.

    Times without Number by Brunner definitely gets the prize for “most difficult book to find”. I had somehow discovered it’s existence on a Wikipedia article about time travel in fiction, and was intrigued by the premise. Unfortunately, the bastard’s been out of print for a while so finding a second hand shop that sold it (over Amazon, no less) was an ongoing challenge. In the end, it’s story was less interesting than it’s ambitious themes, but the themes and thoughts alone were worth the treasure hunt.

    The book that challenged and moved me the most was definitely Althaus-Reid’s The Queer God. A well-read, bixesual, latino woman, who was also a liberation theologian, applying Queer theory to Christianity and given no fucks about typical academic methodology? Talk about a wild time. I don’t think I will ever be able to write an academic paper the same way.

    Worst book I read might have to go to Stephen King with The Wind through the Keyhole. I love most of this work, but talk about an unfortunately long-winded wreck of a book. The prose were smooth, but fluffly, the plot and structure ambitious in concept, but made pointless through their execution. Oh well, one can’t be expected to write killer fiction for 40 years without a few bags of crap along the way.

    Anyways, here’s the list of books I read in 2014:

    Kafka – The Trial
    John Fante – Ask the Dust
    Leo Brent Robillard – Leaving Wyoming
    Don Delillo – White Noise
    King – The Langoliers
    Vonnegut – Gold Bless you Mr Rosewater
    Henning Mankell – Faceless Killers
    King – Secret Garden Secret Window
    Camus – L’etranger
    Michael Adams – Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies
    King – The Mist
    P.D. James – Talking about detective fiction
    Mankell – The Dogs of Riga
    Mankell – The White Lioness
    King – The Library Policeman
    King – The Sun Dog
    Chester Himes – A Rage in Harlem
    Steinbeck – Cannery Row
    Mankell – The Man who Smiled
    Heinlein – The Puppet Masters
    Mankell – Sidetracked
    Mankell – The Fifth Woman
    Wells – The Isle of Doctor Moreau
    Mill – Utilitarianism
    Vonnegut – Breakfast of Champions
    King – The Wind through the Keyhole
    Mankell – One Step Behind
    Mankell – Firewall
    Mankell – The Pyramid
    Mankell – The Troubled Man
    John Brunner – Times without Number
    Marcella Althaus-Reid – The Queer God
    Abbie Reese – Dedicated to God
    Pierre Boulle – Planet of the Apes
    Orwell – 1984
    Fleming – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
    Burrus – Sex Lives of the Saints
    Jay Johnson – Peculiar Faith
    Hammett – The Thin Man
    Fulton J. Sheen – The World’s First Love
    David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas
    Gibson – Neuromancer