A  month or two ago, Heidi from Bunbury in the Stacks and Alyssa from Books Take You Places convinced me to try the Fables graphic novel series by Bill Willingham. Boy, am I ever glad they did. I usually trust those two with fantasy recommendations, but with this one they just hit it out of the park. I put the first few on hold at the library and as of last month, I’ve read all eighteen trade paperbacks to catch up with the series. Honestly, I was a complete newbie when it came to graphic novels so I did not know where to go after I found out how much I liked them. I am a bit embarrassed to say that I basically thought my brother and several of my guy friends from college were pretty lame for reading comic books. I chuckled at my younger sister for watching Sailor Moon and reading some manga. This post is basically me doing an intervention on myself:

Dear Flannery, 

You were a complete idiot. Comics and graphic novels are amazing, or at least they can be. You were stupid to ever think people who read them were not really reading and anyone else who still thinks something along those lines is also an idiot. There might not be as much text going on but when done right, there is just as much story, the characters have just as much (if not more) personality, and you get the absolute bonus of seeing a visualization of so many aspects of a book.  

Sincerely,
Flannery

But I’ll head back to Fables for now, so you can see if this series might also work for you.

Bill Willingham has imagined a world inside of our world, where characters from fables and folklore exist alongside us. The “Mundies” (us) are unaware that a section of New York City is actually Fabletown, with (at the beginning of the series) Old King Cole as mayor, Bigby (the Big Bad) Wolf as sheriff, and Snow White as head administrator. There is a farm in upstate New York where all the non-human Fables or those who are unable to blend into normal society live, from the three blind mice to Baloo and Sheer Kahn from Kipling’s The Jungle Book to Orwell’s maniacal pigs from Animal Farm. Willingham writes the entire series so the voices remain constant and for the most part, the artistry is consistent. Because each of the trade paperbacks compiles several of the issues, there are usually several smaller story arcs and one or more larger arcs going on in the 250-odd pages in each installment. The first edition, Legends in Exile, opens with Jack (of all the Tales—Jack Horner, Jack Be Nimble, Jack Frost, etc.) alerting Bigby that Rose Red, Snow White’s sister, has disappeared. Her apartment is completely ransacked and covered in blood. We are introduced to several characters as the mystery unfolds and I actually found the mystery to be far less predictable than some so-called mystery novels I have read in the past.  But in the larger scheme of the series, the first installment is probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of quality, in my opinion. It must be hard to introduce a rather bottomless cast of characters while solving a crime in such a contained amount of space and text so I just went with it, but I can see how it might be a challenge to keep up with everyone and always know what's going on. In addition, the sense of humor and occasional swearing and sexual content might not appeal to some fairy tale fans. (One of the library copies I read had the sex scenes ripped out, bahaha. I hope there is a tween boy somewhere with them folded up under his pillow.) As the series went on, I was more and more invested in the characters, their backstories, and their interconnections to the point that I was giddy when I saw issues devoted to certain characters and audibly groaned when I saw others pop up. (If you're wondering, I love the cubs, Bigby, Flycatcher, and Rose Red and I don't really care about Pinocchio, Gepetto, Jack, Beauty and the Beast, or Bluebeard.)

It is hard to review an entire series, as I do not want to give any spoilers away, but I will say that my favorite installments of the eighteen have been March of the Wooden Soldiers (#4), which deals with an impending war in the Fable Homelands, The Good Prince (#10), which deals with the Frog Prince, and Rose Red (#15), which tells about a lot of said character’s background. The only total miss for me was in Volume 16, The Great Fables Crossover, when Willingham attempted to bring Jack’s offshoot series (unsurprisingly called Jack of Fables) and the regular Fables together. Jack’s character is a womanizer, a schmoozing con-man and oftentimes a total jackass. A lot of readers seem to dislike him or love him. I  am generally apathetic  but I would rather read about no less than thirty other Fables before I read about him so I have only read the first Jack of Fables installment. (The (Nearly) Great Escape) The crossover edition was hard to enjoy as readers unfamiliar with the storylines in Jack’s series (read: me) have no idea what was going on. Characters in that series made less sense to me even after I read one installment—there seems to be another hidden Fable community containing the usual fairy tale-ish characters, but also Literals, characters who are part of the writing process—the Pathetic Fallacy, Revise,  Genres etc. I had/have a harder time getting my head around the idea of those characters existing alongside the Fables in the real world. As in a few other books I’ve read in the past, most notably Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, Fables are kept alive by their popularity. A popular Fable is harder to kill and more likely to come back to life, whereas a lesser known Fable might disappear forever. It is confusing to me where characters like Revise and the Genres come from and who, if anyone, is perpetuating their existence. 

At its worst, Fables volumes are three star reads, but it is very consistently four star (and even five star) fun reading for me. I cannot wait for the next trade paperback to come out. Or, perhaps I should just suck it up and venture into a comic book store for the first time in my life. If you are looking for an entry point to read graphic novels, this was mine and it absolutely got me hooked. I do not recommend just picking up any later installment as you will miss character and story development and I imagine you would be pretty lost. Start at the beginning and give it two editions before you decide on whether to continue. In other news, stay tuned for several posts about the eighty or ninety graphic novels I've read so far this year since starting this series. No joke. 

Here's my roundup of ratings for each installment (and a few offshoot books):

There's a certain excitement in discovering something hidden, even if that something was only hidden from you. A new favorite restaurant, store, view, a movie. Book blogs are a relatively new phenomenon and most of the blogs I've seen concentrate on new and recent releases, or if not that then primarily well-known books, classics, or prize winners. (of course there are outliers) In an effort to highlight different books here at The Readventurer and to help me/us out of my/our current reading/blogging/reviewing slumps, I think it might be fun to explore more random reads. I know of a few features on other blogs that celebrate older books -- Retro Fridays at Angieville comes to mind first--but I don't want to just go old-school, I just want to go lesser known. So here's how Library Quest works: a person goes into a library. She walks through the shelves and picks up a book she's never heard of, not even one iota of information. She can read the back and look at the cover but that is it. No looking up book information, ratings, or reviews online. No checking Goodreads to see if anyone she knows has read it. Give the book an honest go and then report back on the book and the experience. Together, we can read and review a larger cross-section of books and uncover some hidden gems, don't you think? I can only imagine how much buried (or semi-buried, or at-least-more-buried-than-well-known-newer-releases) treasure is out there. Let's get started uncovering some!

A few notes: We'd love to have other bloggers participate in these quests so just contact us (on Twitter (@ our blog name) or email (our blog name @ gmail))  if you'd like to give it a go. And if you can't finish the book you pick out, you can still post on the experience and what it was like having no clue whether it was going to be "good" or not, and cross-post on your own blog, if you'd like to.

Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan 
Publication Date: 11/22/11 (US)
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (US)
[Goodreads | Amazon]

Value Estimation: 
I definitely think this is a hidden gem. As it turns out, the author who wrote this also wrote a book Catie reviewed (and really enjoyed) recently, No and Me. I didn't realize this when I picked it up, but it still qualifies for this feature as it turns out it is much less popular than that novel. (side note: I suppose even mega bestsellers would qualify, as long as the quest-goer can honestly say they haven' heard anything about them...*raises eyebrows*)

Review:
If there's one thing this author knows how to do, it is capture hopelessness. I think going into this having no clue what other people thought of it or really anything about the author made for a really exciting experience for me. However, I'm going to spoil something for you. The blurb for this book made me feel a bit optimistic about what could happen:

Every day, Mathilde takes the Metro to her job at a large multinational, where she has felt miserable and isolated ever since getting on the wrong side of her bullying boss. Every day, Thibault, a paramedic, drives where his dispatcher directs him, fighting traffic to attend to disasters. For many of the people he rushes to treat, he represents the only human connection in their day. Mathilde and Thibault are just two figures being pushed and shoved in a lonesome, crowded city. But what might happen if these two souls, traveling their separate paths, could meet?

Two miserable people find each other and make a go of it, right? And live happily ever after? You sly, sly jacket copy writer. That is not what this book is about--actually, it is is one of the most depressing books I have read lately. Almost the entire book is devoted to descriptions of Mathilde being undermined and under-appreciated at work. She is a widow and can't even bring herself to spend time with her friends because they will ask her about work. Thibault, the male lead, is an equally miserable doctor who once dreamed of being a surgeon, a dream that was crushed when he lost several fingers in a bar fight. He is in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable woman and he is unhappy with his job traveling all around the city, visiting patients. The narrative alternates between Mathilde and Thibault, and while I enjoyed Mathilde's portions more, I don't think the story would be complete without Thibault's voice thrown in. The descriptions  of Mathilde's work life provided for more instances of pure rage from me as a reader than perhaps any book I've ever read. If it was possible, I'd write myself into this story and I'd have no qualms about torturing her boss in tiny, obnoxious ways until he broke into a million pieces. But both narratives really evoke the loneliness so many of us feel, even when we're surrounded by people. 

Today, when I was driving downtown, I saw a young woman about my age who had crutches and a walking boot on her leg. It was raining, she was going very slowly up a hill, and she looked miserable. I asked if I could drive her to wherever she was going. While we went around the block to her bus stop, we figured out that her ultimate destination was on the other side of Lake Washington, right near my house, so I told her I'd take her the whole way. We chatted about our lives, our families, her injury, African safaris, and I'll never see her again. Or perhaps I will, but I'd have a hard time recollecting where I knew her from. It was just a moment, like any other moment, when I made a choice. In Underground Time, the entire book builds up to just one of those moments, and I'm confident in saying that the ending will not satisfy a majority of readers, but it satisfied me. Then again, I'm someone who quite enjoys when a book punches me in the stomach. 

I wish I knew French so I could read this novel in its original language. Even so, the translation is wonderfully descript. Though not overly flowery, the book is filled with metaphors and turns of phrase just so perfectly apt that I found myself repeatedly impressed:

This was 4/5 stars for me. I think it will appeal to anyone who likes to read about the bleaker aspects of life, people who enjoy French literature, anyone who may or may not daydream about murdering their horrible boss, and people who like imagining what would happen if you stopped to talk to that person on the subway. All in all, it was the perfect first random pick for our Library Quest feature. Coincidentally, I'm very happy to note that another blogger, Keertana over at Ivy Book Bindings, also read this wonderful book recently and reviewed it. If you ask me, you should just skip my review and head over there to read hers.

Please let us know if you'd like to go questing at the library. Remember, it has to be something you know nothing about. And no cheating! 

Once again, I find myself unable and unwilling to read full-length novels. Sometimes, it is much easier for me to process book after book, upping my Goodreads challenge numbers and patting myself on the back as I put each one in my “read and to return to the library” pile. As such, I read six books in two days last week and altogether they probably equal out to be the length of one regular book.  I wandered through the shelves of two branches of my library system and only picked out books that looked like they were children’s books hidden amongst the proper adult books. Books that could possibly be short stories published on their own. Plays. Picture books. It surprised me how many classics are extremely short and I aim to keep going on my short book quest for another week or two…but who knows how that will go, considering I haven’t been very good at sticking to any of my readerly promises of late. 

I think that’s just it: to show the effort of purchasing someone a gift book like the ones I am speaking of is to show no effort at all—pick one heartfelt recommendation, not 45 meaningless ones. Or pick a short story that packs a huge punch like, say, The Yellow Wallpaper (or many other shorts by masters like Graham Greene, Ray Bradbury, and newer yet similarly amazing people like Ken Liu) To that end, I enjoyed the idea behind Petrie’s book: she wrote it as a story of empowerment to a friend of hers who was, I hope, only vaguely if at all as vapid as the protagonist of this story. The princess in this fairy tale is entitled and frivolous. She bemoans her singleton lifestyle and her lack of suitors and treats her fairy godmother with the kindness of a rattlesnake that hasn’t eaten for months. I had no sympathy for the princess for much of the story, and even at the end, I’d probably rather eat my own hand than be friends with this woman, despite her epiphany that self-reliance and confidence are more important than finding someone to sweep you off your feet. If you want a single woman to feel empowered, give her role models of strong women, give her stories of women who became confident through hard work and who learned lessons that made them better people. Don’t give them 35-page stories about people who sound like characters on Real Housewives of (Some City) and that are so weighted down in adjectives that the book feels like an anvil to the face. Because the princess is meant to be a touchstone for every whiny, single woman, the author thinks up a few other ways to describe the woman instead of giving her a name. Here are some examples: 

“The pampered imperial”
“The anxious aristocrat”
“The frantic girl”
“The ingénue”
“The novice regal”
“The fledgling monarch”
“The fair-haired regal”
“The lovely young lady”
“The fair maiden”
“Our redolent regal”
“The lanky lass”
“The pensive imperial”
“The spirited scion”
“The novice royal”

And let’s not forget the fairy godmother, or should I say:

“The pastel pixie” 
“The magical visitor”
“The rosy winged woman”
 “The glowing guest”
“The bedazzled tutor”
 “The zealous zenith”
 “The luminous visitor”
“Her bubbly benefactor”
“The sweet-faced winged woman”
“Her charmed advisor”
 “Her mini-mentor”
 “Our effervescent sidekick”
 “The powerful pixie”
“The stewardly sprite”

For all the great intentions behind this book, I would not give it to any reader I know—there is no finesse to the writing and it read like a fairy tale someone might make up on the spot before putting the kids to bed. Or in this case, an attempt in telling your friend that she’s miserable and needs to believe in herself as a strong, independent woman instead of waiting for her Prince Charming. 

My adventures in short books are not even close to complete. Since beginning this draft, I've finished about 4 or 5 more so I'll wrap those up soon. 

For anyone skipping the text or wondering about how I ended up rating these books, here's the rundown:
The Yellow Wallpaper: 5/5
The Enchanted Truth: 1-2/5 (though I can see why some people would love it)
The Willowdale Handcar: 4/5
The Soul Bird: 3/5
Twelve Angry Men: 5/5
And Everything Nice: 3/5

Hopefully we'll be back to posting more regularly soon. And be sure to let me know if you have any recommendations for short books in the comments. (preferably adult, to satisfy my tastes of late)

Bossypants
Author: Tina Fey
Publication Date: 4/5/11
Publisher: Hachette Audio
[Goodreads | Amazon | Audible]

Blurb (GR):  Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.

She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

Review:
I was hesitant to start listening to Bossypants because, like seemingly every other person on this planet, Liz Lemon is one of my favorite television characters of all time. My subconscious (and let's be honest here, also my conscious) mind just wanted to listen to a book about Liz Lemon being Liz Lemon. The audiobook would use  C & C Music Factory's "Everybody Dance Now" as the intro and outro music (instead of original music by Fey's husband and 30 Rock composer Jeff Richmond, which was lovely, but I digress...) and Hachette Audio could distribute a bag of Sabor de Soledad with each audiobook purchase. (I don't think Cheesy Blasters would hold up well en route to consumers) Seriously, I am practically lizzing about the hypothetical possibilities of a never-going-to-happen audio production here. I still loved the actual Bossypants audiobook, though. Tina Fey is one kickass and hilarious woman. 

Fey narrates the book herself and her voice is easy to listen to in terms of pitch and pacing and she is entertaining as all get-out because I could actually envision the facial expressions she was making while telling stories about a girl in college who was too feminine to handle an entire piece of Trident gum, Sarah Palin offering her daughter as a babysitter to Fey's daughter at an SNL taping, and the faces she made while she was dictating fake responses to online trolls who wrote inane online comments about her talent, body, and sense of humor. I found the last section of the book to be particularly entertaining because I often write out responses to people on the internet and then just delete them without posting anything.

Dear Condescending Idiot,

Thanks for telling me I have no one to blame but myself for not seeing the clues that the killer was an actual demon rather than a human being. I definitely care about your opinion. I actually went to see the author speak last week and he said that he purposefully left out ALL clues so the reader would be surprised and specifically asked any person who thinks they saw it coming to email him about it. So I'm just answering your comment to tell you that you should probably email him and I truly hope this author you love tells you you're wrong and crushes your soul. I wish I could surgically remove you from Goodreads. But in the wild west of the internet (and according to the Terms of Service on Goodreads), you can post whatever you want. I can also delete it in this instance. So I will. Also, you suck.

F*ck off,
Flann

Backspace backspace backspace backspace. The comments Fey responds to are much more caustic than those directed at my intelligence and obviously Fey is approximately 7856.43% funnier than I am so you can only imagine how entertaining her responses are. I was/am insanely curious whether anyone will ever recognize one of the usernames mentioned and pass Fey's responses along to them. That would be seriously classic. Besides that chapter, Fey muses on smug mothers who tell other women how to raise their kids, people say "women aren't funny," what the ideal body is, and why "Bravo Bravo Bravo" is something you never, ever want to hear on a cruise ship. She never dwells too long on any one subject and the memoir proceeds in a generally linear fashion from her childhood years to the present day.

The sections I was most looking forward to did not let me down one bit: the Second City, SNL , and 30 Rock stories are filled with the details of how sketches/shows are developed and the writing process, background stories of how jokes and story arcs in 30 Rock came out of the life stories of the writers, and descriptions of how different personalities interact on SNL. (both the regulars and the guests) Throughout the entirety of the audiobook, it became clear to me that I enjoy Fey so much for a quality I always look for in people: their appreciation of the talents and work of others. While I have no doubt that she works hard, that is readily apparent, she is very quick to mention how many other people around her worked just as hard and brought so much to the table.  And while there is a lot of feminist girl power-type stuff going on in Fey's book, it never felt totally obnoxious, but instead came off as more of an anecdotal, "It really bites to be a woman in this business at times but coincidentally (and luckily) I'm a flipping badass with mad writing and improv skillz so I killed it in almost everything I did and will continue to do so,and I don't care what you think."  Her advice, inspired by her friend Amy Poehler and paraphrased by me in order to not have to type out the entire contextual story, is to just not give a crap what other people think is funny. Just do your thing.* 

There was really only one negative to the audio production--on disc four, several sentences were repeated twice, which led me to believe I was going insane for not noticing if they were chapter headings or something. (I don't think they were as they had the exact same intonation both times and there was no natural pause between header and body text) I mention this because I often do Google searches for things like, "Am I crazy or did everyone's copy of the Bossypants audiobook have double sentences?" and now this review will confirm to that one listener in 2036 that they aren't crazy. You're welcome, future person. The full-length audio of the Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin sketch is embedded in the audiobook and it is almost as funny without the video aspect. PDF versions of all the photographs from the book are also included on the final audiobook disc. Definitely, DEFINITELY, check those out if you listen to Bossypants. 

I recommend this audiobook to anyone who enjoys comedic memoirs, people who are curious what SNL and 30 Rock are like behind the scenes, and quite obviously anyone who enjoys Tina Fey's sense of humor. As usual, I find comedic memoirs to be best experienced in audio format with the reminiscing author as narrator. 

4/5 stars

*I kind of wished during one portion of this audiobook that some parties involved in the book blogging/reviewing world would listen to Fey's thoughts on responding to reviews (or not responding, as it were) and about online presence.  

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection
Author: Carol Burnett (narrated by the author)
Publication Date: 4/6/10
Publisher: Random House Audio 
[Goodreads | Amazon | Audible]

Blurb (GR):  THIS TIME TOGETHER is 100 percent Carol Burnett – funny, irreverent, and irresistible. 
 
Carol Burnett is one of the most beloved and revered actresses and performers in America. The Carol Burnett Show was seen each week by millions of adoring fans and won twenty-five Emmys in its remarkable eleven-year run. Now, in This Time Together, Carol really lets her hair down and tells one funny or touching or memorable story after another – reading it feels like sitting down with an old friend who has wonderful tales to tell. 
 
In engaging anecdotes, Carol discusses her remarkable friendships with stars such at Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, and Julie Andrews; the background behind famous scenes, like the moment she swept down the stairs in her curtain-rod dress in the legendary “Went With the Wind” skit; and things that would happen only to Carol – the prank with Julie Andrews that went wrong in front of the First Lady; the famous Tarzan Yell that saved her during a mugging; and the time she faked a wooden leg to get served in a famous ice cream emporium. This poignant look back allows us to cry with the actress during her sorrows, rejoice in her successes, and finally, always, to laugh.

Review:

At the end of each episode of her eponymous show, Carol Burnett would sing "I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together," a short tune written by her then-husband and executive producer Joe Hamilton, and then tug her ear as a reminder to her gran that she was thinking of her. The lyrics are, in part, as follows:

I'm so glad we had this time together,

Just to have a laugh, or sing a song.

Seems we just got started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, 'So long.'



There's a time you put aside for dreamin',

And a time for things you have to do.

The time I love the best is in the evening
I can spend a moment here with you.



When the time comes that I'm feelin lonely,

And I'm feelin' ohooooo - so blue,

I just sit back and think of you, only,

And the happiness still comes through.

Though The Carol Burnett Show was before my time, my mother was is a huge fan of Ms. Burnett so I've been familiar with her since childhood. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that she played Miss Hannigan in one of my childhood movie addictions, Annie. I knew of Burnett's humor but I was in the dark about most of her work and her personal life, so when I saw my sister rate This Time Together highly and sing its praises, I moved it higher on my to-read list. I plowed through this audiobook, listening to Burnett tell short anecdotes about her life. The time she was on her favorite soap opera, All My Children, and Elizabeth Taylor dressed up as a cleaning woman for a scene and surprised Burnett, who had no idea and had to play it off.  The time she and Julie Andrews pretended to make out in a hotel hallway to surprise their friend, only to have Lady Bird Johnson be the one to catch them. The time she had to do her infamous Tarzan yell to confirm her identity in order to buy stockings at Bergdorf's when she forgot her ID. The otherworldly bond she had with a young girl dying of cancer. I listened to her tell her own stories over the last few days and then I watched some of the corresponding clips from her show and her television specials that I could readily find online. The last one I watched was the final ten minutes or so of The Carol Burnett Show, in which she gets autographs from her costars, talks about why she was bowing out when the show had been renewed for a twelfth season, and then she sings the closing song. Cue the silent tears running down my face.  I know how much those years and those people meant to her after spending about five or six hours with her through her audiobook so it made me, an absolute bystander, imagine what she  must've been feeling at that moment. 

This Time Together isn't a memoir, rather it is a collection of what I imagine must be 2-4 page stories. They generally follow a linear timeline and it often one person will be lifted from a prior story and then an offshoot will occur, creating a natural flow. 

Carol Burnett is a class act. She was ( is?) somewhat shy and awkward and oh-so starstruck by many celebrities who I'd consider her equals in the fame department. She blubbered and forgot her husband's name when she met John Steinbeck. She stepped in paint and ran away when she was introduced to Jimmy Stewart. It is apparent from her stories (and in her voice) that she has genuine respect for the work people do but probably even moreso, for what they are like as a person. At one point in the book, she tells of meeting a young girl who is dying of cancer and the special bond the two of them formed in a very short period of time, after which Burnett discusses her feelings about the universe. As the book goes forward, passing through time, the stories become less hilariously entertaining and more a reminder that Burnett is a real person in her late seventies. Several times during This Time Together, pivotal life events are glossed over or relegated to a one sentence mention--her two divorces come to mind. However, when it comes to the death of her daughter, an entire story is included.  I felt a bit of a disconnect in the flow at that point but it would've been impossible to not include  such an earth-shattering experience in a book of reflections. She ponders whether she'd like to be young again and thinks about how great a shake at it she's had. I can't help but agree. On the scales, the happy memories seem to far outweigh the sad ones and that's really all we can ask for.

This book, specifically this audiobook, is for the people who love hearing people tell stories, for those curious about the personalities of many movie and television stars, and especially for people who realize the importance of preserving memories and life experiences for friends, family, and posterity's sake. It was an absolute pleasure to listen to, so for that, I'm giving it 5/5 stars. I can only aspire to be the lovely person Carol Burnett is. 

I am on a total genre kick recently. Does anyone know of any other books like this one and Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life? I guess "memoirs by lovely celebrities" is the niche genre. "Contemplative memoirs that are 4-6 discs long on audio"? 

Review:

I loved this book so much because it was everything I subconsciously wanted it to be and nothing that I expected it to be. I thought it would be mostly about Martin's career as a primarily comedic actor and it basically ends at the onset of his film career. I thought it would be hilarious and filled with jokes and I think I actually laughed out loud about five times.  And a part of me harbored some sort of belief that every person who saw Steve Martin do stand up comedy must have known they were seeing something amazing. Surely someone so hilarious never experienced the silence of an unappreciative audience, and he could not possibly have crashed and burned with some of his bits. Of course, I know that is never the case but it will never cease to amaze me how some people worked so hard for their success when their talent is worthy of an unimpeded rise to the top. I've seen some fabulous stand up comedy and some absolute abysmal stand up. This is the first book I've read about what life as a stand up comic is like but it certainly won't be the last and it definitely has me wondering about Martin's fiction works.

Steve Martin knew he wanted to be a performer from a very young age. Martin narrators the audiobook of Standing Up himself in his contemplative, matter-of-fact voice. He talks about working at Disneyland, learning magic and rope tricks, selling park maps, and every minuscule step that brought him closer to his ultimate goal.  Woven through the entire book are Martin's ruminations on the strained relationship he had with his father and they provided a sturdy backbone upon which the rest of his story could rest. I want to say that that aspect of the book ended satisfactorily for me but this is someone's life and these are real people. I suppose I can say that I was very disappointed about several choices Steve Martin's father made but I'm glad Martin is a strong enough person to achieve everything he has despite a lack of paternal support when it might (nay, probably would) have provided validation. 

I was extremely surprised and entertained by the number of celebrities who peppered Martin's path to success. He was/is friends with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Allman Brothers, played at the same clubs at the same time as people like Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell, and even played a small gig where the other act that night was a pair of unknowns, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. He knew Dalton Trumbo, author of Johnny Got His Gun, and actually had a conversation with Elvis Presley in which Elvis commented on the fact that he and Martin shared an oblique sense of humor.  I knew how talented Martin is at playing banjo, but just in case you are in the dark on that one, check this out:

I was aware of several of Martin's famous bits before listening to his memoir, including "Wild and Crazy Guys", "Well, ex-cuuuuse me," "King Tut," the arrow through the head bit. It was immensely entertaining to hear how these bits came about and about other lesser-known (to me, of course) jokes he used to use. He is an admittedly private person and I can't remember ever learning too much about his personal life from the surprising amount of (arguably useless) information I've garnered from entertainment websites over the years, so I was very interested to learn about Martin's philosophical studies, how he acquired the skills he has, and about the private life I'm glad the media mostly seems to allow him to keep to himself. Though there were many memorable moments for me in this memoir, my favorite quote of his was this one: “Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.”  

I am such a believer in the idea that every random skill, story, or piece of information you gain in your life will come to some use later in life. For that reason, I was so excited to hear Johnny Carson tell basically that exact thing to Martin, who used random rope tricks on The Tonight Show that he'd learned from a childhood coworker of his. One of the highlights of listening to the audio production of Born Standing Up is how apparent Steve Martin's appreciation is for all the people who were a part of his comedic journey. His voice is flat in a realistic way--there's no pretension or fakeness to his storytelling. This is four hours (yes, it is only four hours long) well spent if you enjoy Steve Martin's comedy or are curious about a life doing stand up.

4/5 stars

Review:
 
I was browsing Goodreads the other day and a short review came through my feed. I'd never heard of the book before but Elizabeth rarely gives books five stars so I was intrigued. I immediately put it on hold at my library and read it as soon as I got home today. I was skeptical about the claims made about the book, including the front cover quote from the New York Times Review:

"This modern story is perfection itself. It is the most effective indictment of Nazism to appear in fiction."

Address Unknown was first published in 1938 by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, who wrote as Kressmann Taylor at the suggestion of her publisher, who thought the topic too intense to publish under a female's name. Story magazine's entire printing that contained the 54-page short story sold out quickly. Though several accounts I've read online argue that the book came back into the public light in 1999 when a French publisher put out a French translation which sold 600,000 copies (BBC), I honestly cannot believe that this book isn't used in schools and that I've somehow made it 28 years without ever hearing one word about it. When asked why she wrote this book, Kressmann Taylor tells a firsthand story about German friends of hers who'd lived in the US but were only visiting after moving back to Nazi Germany. They encountered a Jewish man, with whom they'd been intimate friends, and turned their back to his offered embrace and would not speak to him. (foreword) She said that after seeing this she could not help but wonder how seemingly normal people could become so warped and that she "began researching Hitler and reading his speeches and the writings of his advisors. What I discovered was terrifying. What worried me most was that no one in America was aware of what was happening in Germany and they also did not care."  (foreword) Look how short this book is: 

Barely bigger than a postcard yet it packs more of a punch than most books three, four, even five times its length. The story, about which I will speak very little because this is a book that would absolutely be ruined by spoilers, is that of two friends, one Jewish, one German. Address Unknown is a series of fictional letters between Max Eisenstein, a San Francisco art gallery owner and his German business partner, Martin Schulse, written after Schulse moves with his family back to Germany in the early 1930s. Epistolary format in this particular case created so much unease for me as I kept wondering what was going on for these people during all of the interim periods between letters. It also reminded me how powerful words can be, though it sounds absolutely cliche to say so, and how frustrating it can be when you are trying to get the full story from someone and your pleas are chained to a format which allows for pondering, revisions, and omissions with basically no guarantee of a satisfactory answer. 

The ending took me by surprise and that's all I'll say about that--the story went somewhere I had no idea it was going to go and I had to sit back and wonder whether what I was feeling was valid or disgusting. How often does that happen? 

I found out after reading about Kathrine Kressmann Taylor online that there was a movie made in 1944 and the ending is changed up a bit. I can't wait to see this film. There was also a dramatization done by the BBC for their Afternoon Drama series. I recommend that everyone read this. It will take you about half an hour. Come back and tell me what you think of it. I hope you can find a copy. I know I'm buying one.

5/5 stars