July / August Books

Underboss: Gerard ONeill
This book traces the history of the Boston mafia through the early 80’s when Gerry Anguilo is brought down. Its terribly written, though admittedly entertaining. That said, can anyone recommend a really good definitive book on the history of the Mafia in the US? By the way, I’m amazed that Bill O’Brien has actually also read this!

Lonesome Dove: Larry McMurtry
I kept felling like the book was about to pick up, at 200 pages in, 400 pages in, but I don’t think it did really pick up until about 600 pages in. People love this book, it also won the Pulitzer. I liked it, but didn’t quite see all the hype. I got very attached to the characters by the end, but that also might have been a little bit of Stockholm syndrome after 946 pages. The historical details were excellent and well researched, and I thought a lot about the roots of American culture and individualism that continues today, and the book had some interesting ideas of masculinity as well. Still, the plot was a little stale, and frankly the parts with Indians were pretty racist- I’m quite certain that white Americans were at least as brutal as the natives in the ongoing genocides and settler wars.

Motorcycle Diaries: Che Guevarra
This was definitely a fun and apropos read while traveling through Peru and Bolivia. Basically a series of vignettes from his travels as a young medical student, there are some wonderful political observations, some hilarious adventure parts and some really dull sections about medicine and leprosy. Probably would have blown my mind a lot more if I'd read this in, say, college, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly. Very different from the movie, which I'm embarrassed that I saw first.

1968: Mark Kurlansky
This was a great popular history book about, well, the year 1968 as a watershed year. Not super sophisticated in its history as a popular book, it still managed some real complexity and detail as it described events around the world in that year, from the King and Kennedy assassinations through Vietnam, the radicalizing of the civil rights movement, the Columbia and Chicago riots, and even including student movements in Mexico, Poland, Prague and France. I love Cold War history and 1960’s/70’s in particular, so really enjoyed this book. It was also nearly impossible to put down with gripping and fast paced writing throughout.

Master and the Margarita – Anton Bulgarov
Surrealist Russian fiction, and apparently the partial inspiration for the Rolling Stones’s Sympathy for the Devil. A very cool book, with a fascinating plot about sort of about the devil come to earth. Reminded me a lot of Murakami’s work, who I’m sure read this. Still, the ideas of the book, the concept of the book was more interesting than actually reading the book, not sure if that was the slightly antiquated early/midcentury writing, a so-so translation or what, but I never quite enjoyed it as much as I liked it.