The Likeness by Tana French

This is the follow-up to French's In the Woods, and features one of the same characters, Detective Cassie Maddox. The body of a woman is found in an old stone cottage outside of Dublin, and the dead woman and Cassie are identical. Even more bizarre, the name on her college I.D. is the same as one of the fake names that Cassie went by as an undercover cop several years back. The police report the victim to be injured but alive, allowing Cassie to go undercover once again, to step into the life of her doppelganger, into the lives of her four housemates, in an attempt to uncover the truth.

The book was totally engrossing. I can't remember the last time I was so rapt up in a book that I didn't want to put it down, and more importantly, that I didn't want it to end.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

In this psychiatric mystery by Richard Powers, a man slips into a coma after getting into an accident with his truck, emerging with a disorder called Capgras syndrome, a kind of amnesia in which the sufferer remembers everything about his life but cannot make emotional connections. He does not recognize his sister, accusing her as being an impostor, part of some grand conspiracy.

The book touches on some interesting concepts about the brain, consciousness, and identity, but overall I was a bit disappointed with it. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting--maybe a different book altogether. I found myself annoyed with the characters, bored of hearing more of the same "tell me where my sister is!" routine, not much caring about what happened after awhile. But I'm not totally deterred from checking out more of Richard Powers' works.

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott

This 1884 novella was written as a satire on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture. The noteworthy part is that it takes place in a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, line segments, and regular polygons.
The narrator, a "humble Square" is visited by a three-dimensional Sphere who introduces him to the world of Spaceland. Once his mind is opened to the possibility of new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical existence of a fourth spatial dimension. Offended, the Sphere returns him to Flatland in disgrace.


I really wanted to like this book. The concept is so nerdy that it's awesome, and there are all these great mathematical line drawings throughout. But when you come down to it, I'm really just not a math person.

Fucked Up & Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement by Bryan Ray Turcotte and Christopher T. Miller

This is the--dare I say--definitive collection of late 70s/early 80s US punk flyers and posters. Organized geographically, every page is filled, right to the edges, with (mostly) black and white cut and paste art set against colorful background graphics and photographs. It's an overall great-looking book, with a mix of both classic, well known imagery and less-seen flyers.

The Quitter by Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel

Here Harvey Pekar tells the story of his early years as a child of Jewish immigrants: his sense of alienation in his own neighborhood, his struggle to find his place in the world. The title refers to Pekar's not uncommon tendency, as an adolescent, to give up when things didn't go exactly as planned.

Though R. Crumb is certainly my favorite artist to illustrate Pekar's stories, Dean Haspiel's style complements the story rather well.

At the back of the book, a great spread of photos of the real-life quitter.

The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante

One of my favorite books by the oft-overlooked writer John Fante, in which the last days of an Italian stonemason, domineering father, alcoholic, and womanizer, are chronicled by one of his sons. This was the last novel Fante wrote before going blind, a complication of diabetes (the very last one, Dreams from Bunker Hill, was written via dictation). It was optioned for film shortly after publication in the late 70s, to be directed by Francis Ford Coppola, but that never came to fruition. One wonders what might have been had it actually been made--would it have become a classic, exposing a wider audience to Fante's work?

I love the simple grapes against the brown weave of the cloth cover.

Snowmen by David Lynch

In honor of this snowy New Year's Day, this is a small book of photographs by David Lynch, better known for such films as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and so on.

As you can tell from his decidedly minimalist introduction, it is a series of black and white photos Lynch took of his old neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, of snowmen in various stages of melting, exploring the strange and alien quality these fairly commonplace sights take on.

This one, limbless and with torso severed from its lower extremities, is a great specimen. Misshapen, almost deformed-looking, and yet still smiling--something a bit unsettling about it.


And this one, faceless, and yet with well-defined shoulders (almost stump-like) and legs.

In all, it's a pretty short book and most of the text is in French, but it's worth getting if you like David Lynch, or weird photographs of snowmen. Or better yet, both.