It was better when ... wait, it's still pretty damn cool

My review of Mile Marker Zero: The Moveable Feast of Key West ran in the Miami Herald today . The book chronicles a very interesting moment in the cultural history of the island and, to some extent, the nation. For another, longer and in some ways more positive review, check out this one from The Wall Street Journal. The book made me think a lot about some of my longtime obsessions -- in ways that weren't really down to the merits of the book so I didn't address them in the review. That's why I have a blog, right? First, there's the nostalgia thing, specifically the baby boomer nostalgia thing. If you're a Gen X-er, as I am, you grew up with -- and are still dealing with -- the overwhelming, overbearing weight of the giant generation before you that set the cultural norms and insists, to this day, that their music/writers/political opinions/lifestyle choices are superior to yours and should continue their culturally dominant positions for ... well, apparently forever. My college newspaper had a reunion in the early 1990s, drawing people who had been staffers from throughout the paper's recent history -- someone brilliant made up coffee mugs with the slogan "It was better when we were there." Exactly. I am not arguing that the 1970s in Key West were not a remarkable moment for many reasons, not least the cultural convergence that saw Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison and I guess Jimmy Buffett drawn to the same small island at the same time. But it's the notion that this was some paradise that has been lost, that there was a golden age when everything was better -- and the conclusion that everything happening now just sucks that irritates me.

Related to which is the question of Key West's authenticity, something with which anyone who chooses to live here longterm must wrestle. In Mile Marker Zero, McKeen describes present-day Key West  as having been "embalmed as an alcoholic theme park" and his main character, Tom Corcoran, finds that "the quaintness and weirdness that Corcoran found when he stepped off the plane in 1968 had largely been institutionalized." I can see why you'd think that. Key West can appear as a theme park with a strong alcoholic bent, as a hippie version of an Amish community, as a tacky cruise ship stop. But that's only if you see the place at its most superficial, namely Lower Duval Street. Key West has tons of authenticity and it's not that hard to find -- it's at Sandy's Cafe and Five Brothers. It's at the bocce courts and the high school baseball field and and Lucky Street Gallery and the Green Parrot. It's at the library and the Holiday Parade and the Porch and the MARC Christmas tree sale and Bad Boy Burrito and the Burlesque. True, it has a high tolerance for alcohol and other behaviors that get people into trouble -- but that stems from a culture that is remarkably nonjudgmental and open to new things and unconventional lifestyles. People are constantly coming and going. Lots of them are short-timers, some of them are scammers, some have ridiculously unrealistic ideas of what they can do here. But a few stay on and add interesting new layers to the place. If you're from here, you can draw on a tightknit community of surviving natives who have learned to adapt to the constant changes and know things about the island that we newcomers will never figure out, no matter how long we're here. If you're from elsewhere, you get to reinvent yourself as you choose, as an adult. Despite what McKeen says, it is not "millionaires and the homeless and hardly anyone in between" -- most of the interesting stuff is in between and there's plenty of it. And despite what Mrs. Buffett and Mrs. McGuane and Tom Corcoran may think/have thought, it is a fine place to raise children. Some of the coolest people I know grew up here -- and kids regularly go off the rails in affluent suburbs, wholesome rural communities and elite private schools. People sometimes ask me if I plan to stay in Key West forever (I don't plan that long-term but have no plans to leave at the moment) or why I've stayed. My answer is always the same: It's a small town that's never boring. I'm sure this exists elsewhere and I imagine it might be nice to live somewhere with a lower level of drunken idiocy. I might find another community with as many smart, funny, interesting people where I can ride my bike to my job, the movies, my friends' homes and any number of interesting restaurants. But I kind of doubt it.

My top 100

I wonder what it is about lists? Is it staving off death by making sure there's always something left to do? Is it trying to bring order to chaos? Whatever it is, I'm obsessed with them, both with the "best of" types compiled by various publications and organizations and with my own, books to be read, books I have read, etc. So I was intrigued to see on Pages of Julia, one of my favorite new blogs, a list of 100 books people most like to read, give and share compiled by a British organization called World Book Night. It's an interesting list. Julia, a Houston librarian and book reviewer, also has a page on her blog with her own list of 100 "most important/should read/best books". So as with all excellent ideas, I decided to steal it.

My list of 100 consists of books I've read and that have stayed with me, some for decades. When I was a kid I was a big re-reader; I would read some books (the Little House books, the Chronicles of Narnia, Caddie Woodlawn) over and over.  The first 31 of these titles I came up off the top of my head; after that I had to consult my LibraryThing catalog.

I had thought a lot of my personal "best books" were nonfiction so I was surprised to find fiction winning the race here -- especially impressive since fiction in series were limited to one entry. I hope anyone who finds their way to this list might come up with some titles of interest -- and it may change over time. The last entry is a book I finished reading last night -- Susan Orlean's new book about Rin Tin Tin -- which I think is her best book yet.

I hope this list also helps me, and anyone who comes across it, in providing book recommendations. A friend asked me awhile back to name my favorite book -- and i blanked. After compiling all of these ... I still can't name a single favorite book. But all of these are books I would recommend to others and would not mind re-reading.

Addendum: Time magazine provides its list of 100 best nonfiction books of all Time. Hmph. I think the only one we share is Mystery Train by Greil Marcus -- though it has me considering switching from The White Album to Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. My list will change, by the way. Just yesterday I took out one of the three Jane Smiley titles and replaced it with A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. And I'm always reading!

Dissing Obedience -- and calling for recommendations

I need to read more contemporary crime fiction. I especially need to read more by Americans. It's a hugely popular genre and a lot of people I respect read a lot of it. But for some reason it has never reached me. I have, in recent years, been edging closer. Through my extended historical fiction kick I've started reading quite a few historical mysteries -- particularly those set in Tudor and medieval England but with a foray or two into the ancient Roman world. There are a couple contemporary crime writers I adore, snapping up their new releases as soon as they come out. But they're both Brits: Kate Atkinson and P.D. James. I've tentatively explored the white-hot area of Scandinavian crime fiction: Stieg Larsson, Asa Larsson, Kjell Erickson. I like it but not enough so I obsess about when the next installment is arriving (good thing in the case of Stieg Larsson, right?).

But I want to know what's happening around here so recently I've assigned myself some reading in current crime fiction. Unfortunately my assignment was a disappointment. I was intrigued enough by Will Lavender's Obedience to suggest we order it when I worked at the FKCC Library (we did). Then I recently saw Lavender's piece on Salon about coming to terms with writing genre, rather than literary, fiction -- I like the contrarian, anti-elitist position as a rule and I agree that a lot of fiction that gets relegated to the genre ghetto is better crafted than a lot of the productions coming out of the MFA factories. Atkinson and James are prime examples, and I enjoy and admire the historical series written by C.J. Sansom (Matthew Shardlake), P.F. Chisholm (who is actually Patricia Finney, writing about Sir Robert Carey), Ruth Downie (Medicus) and Sharon Kay Penman (who when she's not writing massive tomes about the Plantagenets has a mystery series set in the same period featuring a character named Justin de Quincy who serves Eleanor of Acquitaine).

I wanted to like Obedience. A young guy, an American, carrying the crime fiction banner into literay territory -- it all sounded good. Unfortunately, I didn't like it. The premise was just too contrived, even for the kind of book where one is prepared to suspend some measure of disbelief. Even the college campus set-up didn't seem to make sense, though my direct experience of elite midwestern colleges is, admittedly, nil. I know the Stanley Milgram experiments were famous and all, but would mere association with them give an academic such immense prestige that they would name a library after him? The characters certainly didn't make a whole lot of sense, internally. The twist at the end was admittedly pretty good and I didn't see it coming though I certainly should have. A shame.

So the question is: Who should I read if I want to read the best of contemporary American crime fiction? Michael Connelly's already on my list; I'm intrigued by the guys tapped by The Wire -- George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Richard Price. I either read or listened to James Lee Burke years back and I don't remember it wowing me but I keep reading stellar reviews. Lee Child? Harlan Coben? I'm wary of the macho hardboiled thing. And I'd really like some women in there. Laura Lippman? Tana French? Lisa Scottoline? Sara Paretsky? I read Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series back in the day but gave up somewhere around J. I'd particularly like to hear suggestions for people who aren't the usual suspects. Tom Franklin? Daniel Woodrell? Is there an American equivalent to Kate Atkinson out there? If not why not?????

My only condition: Please please PLEASE do not suggest Dan Brown or James Patterson. When The Da Vinci Code was breaking big I decided to try the guy out and read Angels & Demons. Still waiting for the International Court of Literary Justice to award me those four hours of my life back. And I'll admit I haven't actually read Patterson but my husband and I once got an audiotape for a trip to the Everglades -- with Chris Noth narrating, no less! -- but had to turn it off in hilarity and disgust when the narrator started intoning "Tick ... cock ... tick ... cock ..." I wish I were making that up.

Falling in love again: the nonfiction tome

Just the other day, I was complaining to a friend about how so many works of nonfiction are obese, topping the 500-page mark, when they would be so much more appealing at, say, 250 to 300 pages. Yet for the last couple weeks I have been happily ensconced in just such a work -- Robert K. Massie's new biography of Catherine the Great, which weighs in at 579 pages before the bibliography and end notes. I used to read these kinds of tomes all the time. This was a time when I lived in a city far from where I'd grown up where I had no friends outside of the workplace -- and I lived two blocks from an excellent independent bookstore and about five blocks from the library. I had a studio apartment that didn't require much upkeep. There was no Internet. So basically I'd do nothing all weekend but read. I'll even admit that this studio apartment and all this free time happened to be on South Beach circa 1989-1991 -- but hey, I'm a dork. I read lots and lots, current fiction and classics, and lots of giant biographical tomes like Carlos Baker on Hemingway and William Manchester on Churchill and whoever was writing about Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth I. I loved diving into a big nonfiction tome. This might be the fault of David Halberstam, whose doorstop about journalism dynasties, The Powers That Be, was one of my favorite books when I was a young and impressionable college journalist.

But in recent years, not so much. Over my journalism career, my nonfiction reading turned more toward works of current narrative nonfiction -- the New Yorker School, I guess you'd call it (Trillin, Frazier, Horwitz, Orlean). And in most recent years, I've been on a sustained run of fiction, mainly genre fiction -- historical for the most part, especially historical mysteries. I can only blame the Key West Literary Seminar's session on historical fiction for jumpstarting that.

But I was surprised and delighted when I saw that Massie, who is in his 80s, has produced another giant tome on a Russian monarch. A little guilty, too -- like almost everyone I know, I had a copy of his Peter the Great on my shelf for years; finally gave in and donated it to the library for the book sale. But I have read him and liked him a lot -- I first read his book The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, which used DNA findings and the post-Soviet Russian thaw to tell the story about what really happened to the royal family (hint: Anastasia did not make it out). From there, I read his Nicholas and Alexandra and found it to be well-written absorbing history, perfect for the lay reader who doesn't know much about the subjects, the place or the time. And the same, I'm happy to say, goes for Catherine. I've long had a thing for Elizabeth I and Catherine is a similar figure in being a woman ruling in her own right, despite all kinds of odds against her ever reaching, or keeping the throne.

The only problem with inhabiting these giant tomes is that post-book letdown is all the more severe for having lived with the characters for weeks. My mom, after finishing Bob Richardson's biography of William James, said she felt sad and that she'd miss James -- I knew just what she meant.

These are some titles of giant nonfiction tomes I highly recommend if you're looking to dive into the deep end:

Catherine The Great by Peter Massie -- For all the reasons described above. And no, there's nothing about horses at least not of an intimate nature. Turns out the Potemkin Village thing isn't true, either.

The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen -- You may think island biogeography would be a boring subject. In Quammen's hands, you would be very very wrong

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop -- Her letters, edited by her longtime publisher Robert Giroux. The closest thing we'll ever get to a memoir; they are heartbreaking in many ways but an amazing insight into the mind of a great poet

Up In the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell -- Early New Yorker writing at its finest. Yeah, I know, we can argue about the "nonfiction" qualifications of this one.

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee -- A compendium of the modern New Yorker master's books about geology. You know who was surprised to find herself reading 657 pages about geology ... and enjoying it? Me!

Titan by Ron Chernow -- Biography of John D. Rockefeller -- Great book on the influential mogul behind Standard Oil.

Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith -- Biography of Victoria Woodhull, who was a medium, a suffragette, a financial adviser and all around force of nature -- fascinating look at the nation in the late 19th century, through the lens of a mostly forgotten figure

To be appreciated

I am so negligent a book blogger that I hadn't even realized it was Book Blogger Appreciation Week -- but it is! At least for another day. The website has links to lots of interesting blogs, almost all of which are new to me. But I thought I'd use the occasion to point out some links to some blogs that I particularly appreciate. They're all in my blogroll on the right, but these few are the ones I find myself turning to most often. In no particular order, they are: Citizen Reader -- Written by a librarian and avid reader of (mostly) nonfiction, I appreciate how it is always smart and both sincere and snarky, when appropriate.

Philobiblos -- Written by a librarian with a historical bent; I particularly appreciate the reviews and the links to stories about manuscript and rare book shenanigans.

Smart Bitches Trashy Books -- I appreciate Sarah Wendell bringing romance out of the closet and celebrating (or ridiculing) its many and varied forms. I particularly enjoy the HaBO (for Help A Bitch Out) feature, in which readers describe in hilarious terms some romance they read long ago and the commenters invariably figure out which book it is.

Between the Covers -- Written by Miami Herald Books Editor Connie Ogle, I appreciate the reviews, the South Florida literary news and, most of all, Connie's and the Herald's perseverance in providing book coverage in a time when newspaper journalism is in dire straits indeed.

Book Slut Blog -- I appreciate its relentless literariness and its links to interesting literary journalism, especially when I don't have keep up with Arts & Letters Daily -- which I don't know if that qualifies as a book blog but it's definitely worth checking when you have time.

And all of these, along with the nominees and winners from Book Blogger Appreciation Week, I appreciate for supporting my belief that the Internet is not, in fact, the Grim Reaper of Reading and in many ways serves to connect, facilitate and otherwise celebrate people who live for the written word.