The Cats with Knives Book Club

I love to read. Which is why God, in all of his wisdom, has blessed me with a son who has actually said to me, more than once, “Reading isn’t my thing.” He isn’t completely accurate in that statement - when that child has a major project due, he will skim the first two paragraphs of a Wikipedia article on the subject like a champion!

But anyway, there’s only so much promising of a world of riches contained within the covers of a book that I can make to the kid. There are only so many reminders that I can give him that his middle name was very close to being Vonnegut. There are only so many times I can sing the Reading Rainbow theme as I force him to sit on a couch, TV-and-cell-phone-less for a half hour and read something. So really, you guys are my last hope. I’m hoping that some of you still read, and that some of you are looking for some good books to read over the summer. Also, I am totally exploiting the hole left by Oprah, by starting the Cats With Knives Book club. Here are my top five reads of all time*:

5. Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – Although Slaughterhouse Five is Vonnegut’s most influential work, I think this one is his most pointed, most thoughtful, blackest, and most human. If you have a hard time getting into Vonnegut because of the science-fictiony aspect of it, please plow through. The themes are timeless and relevant, and Vonnegut was funny and sad and amazing.

4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – I know, there was a movie about this, starring any manner of Oscar-winning actors. The movie is excellent. The book will astound you. Superficially, it is about the inner workings of a house full of upper-echelon servants, but ultimately, it is about an exquisite balance of love, duty, and regret. Each word in this novel is a work of art.

3. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – I can’t believe this is only number three on my list, because I have read it more than any other book in my library. If you think GWTW is the work of an apologist southern, romanticizing the world of slavery, you could not be more wrong. At the end of the day, this book says that war is hell, and surviving war is hell, too. The characters in this book are magnificently rendered, and Scarlett O’Hara is possibly the most fascinating, complex, frustrating, inspiring, relatable woman in all of fiction. And, by the way, guys dig this book, too, no matter what they tell you in person.

2. The Risk Pool by Richard Russo – I recommend this book to more people than any other, and people rarely take me up on it right away, but then when they finally do, they are so sad that they didn’t get to it earlier. And they’re a little sad that it’s over and they can’t experience again. In essence, this is a novel about the ties that bind us, the myriad of concealed, destructive, insane ways that we try to love each other, and the ceaseless march of time. This is a beautiful, beautiful (and funny) novel.

1. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – You know how people say that, when you get a really good oyster, you can taste the ocean? In Steinbeck’s novels, you can taste Monterey, California, before all the fancy California people moved in. Steinbeck’s writing, always so elegantly unadorned, focuses its strength, like magic, on one run-down neighborhood, over a period of days. It opens like this: “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” The characters in this novel are so flawed, and real, and so memorable, you’ll find yourself wondering, years after you read this book, whatever happened to them.

There you have it, the top five. Just barely missing the cut: Let the Great World Spin, The Shipping News, The Good Thief, Cold Mountain, A Fine Balance, Pride and Prejudice and Watership Down. Happy reading!

* “All time” = since 1936. Screw you, William Shakespeare!