I recently read Number9Dream by David Mitchell.  Number9Dream was Mitchell’s second book, and it is the fourth book of his that I’ve read (I read Black Swan Green first, Ghostwritten second, and Cloud Atlas third…the only book of his that I haven’t yet read is his newest, The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet).

Number9Dream follows Eiji Miyake, a young man from rural Japan who comes to Tokyo in search of his father.  The story is a coming-of-age tale and Eiji’s search takes many twists and turns.  As with all of Mitchell’s books (at least the ones that I’ve read), the narrative is constructed in an interesting way…each chapter has the main story and a side story of some kind woven into the main story.  The side stories range from Eiji’s daydreams, to his interactions with video games, to World War 2 journal entries of a long-dead relative of his.

Number9Dream would be a good place to start reading Mitchell (I think any of his books would be), but I think I would still recommend Black Swan Green first, although I have really loved all of his books.  Once I read The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet, I’m planning to reread all of them at some point.

Last week, I went on vacation to Ocean City, Maryland with my girlfriend and her parents.  We had a real nice time relaxing on the beach, and other than Hurricane Earl cutting our week a day short, it was a really nice vacation.

This was the first time that I’d ever been to Ocean City.  I have been to Dewey Beach, Delaware a number of times.  Ocean City was a much bigger place and much busier, although the area that we stayed in was rather calm.  Other than hanging out on the beach, we went to the boardwalk one evening and we went mini-golfing on another.  The mini-golf course was dinosaur themed and Jess became obsessed with what she named “Aqua-dino”…part dinosaur and part ocean creature (you can see the picture above).  While we were leaving town to avoid Hurricane Earl, Jess feared for Aqua-dino’s safety, but I’m confident that it survived unscathed.

At the beach, I read 2 books: Under The Banner Of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and Boom! by Mark Haddon.  The Krakauer book is about a double-murder that took place in 1984 and how the crime was rooted in Mormonism.  I’m sure that some people would see the book as a critique of Mormonism, and while that particular religion certainly has some peculiarities, I thought it was much more a look at faith in general.  The Haddon book was short and fun.  If you are familiar with his work, Boom! is certainly worth reading, but if you aren’t, I would recommend reading A Spot Of Bother and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime first.

After leaving Ocean City, we drove back to Jess’s parents’ home in Harrisburg and stayed there for a day.  On the 3+ hour drive back to Pittsburgh the following day, Jess and I started to notice a lot of license plates from other states, so we started a list.  We ended up seeing 24 different states, as well as Washington D.C. and Ontario.  This also inspired us to attempt the 50 state challenge along the way (the 50 state challenge is where you just try to list all 50 states).  We got stuck on 49 for an hour or so and had to look up the missing state back in Pittsburgh.  (Damn you Wyoming!)

All in all, it was a nice trip, but it is nice to be back in Pittsburgh just in time for football season.

I finished reading the latest book by Chuck Klosterman last week.  It is a book of essays entitled Eating The Dinosaur.  I read his book Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs sometime last year.  While I enjoyed both books, I think I liked the new book more.  There were really interesting essays about Kurt Cobain, ABBA, voyeurism, and the Unabomber.  I’m not all that interested in pop culture, but Klosterman has a way of making things interesting and making an analysis of the Weezer discography somehow quite thought provoking.  I’d recommend checking it out.

Several nights ago, I read the graphic novel The Man Who Grew Young, written by Daniel Quinn.  With that, I have now read all of his books: Ishmael, The Story Of B, My Ishmael, Providence, Beyond Civilization, A Newcomer’s Guide To The Afterlife, After Dachau, The Holy, Tales Of Adam, If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways, Work Work Work, The Book Of The Damned, and The Man Who Grew Young.

I first read Ishmael when I was in high school.  I find it hard to summarize what the book is about (because it’s about so many things to me), but at its core, it is a book about humanity’s place in the world.  Even though I didn’t fully understand the book at the time, I had never read anything like it and it had a profound effect on me.  That book challenged me to think critically, which I had never really done.  It took me years to circle back to Ishmael, but when I reread it about a year and a half ago, I got a lot more out of it and I continued on to read all of Quinn’s other books.  I would recommend Ishmael to anyone and everyone.  And while I found all of the other books to be thought provoking on some level, I think the best of the rest would consist of The Story Of B, My Ishmael, Beyond Civilization, The Book Of The Damned and If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways.

I recently finished reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  It was a really good book.  I’ve really enjoyed all three of his books that I’ve read (Black Swan Green, Ghostwritten, and Cloud Atlas).

In all of the David Mitchell books that I’ve read, the sections/chapters are written like short stories.  Ghostwritten is essentially a collection of 10 short stories where each story connects to one of the others via some small detail.  Black Swan Green is essentially 13 short stories about the same main character that take place over the course of one year.  As interesting as those formats are, the format for Cloud Atlas is even more elaborate.  There are 6 stories in Cloud Atlas that are all related, but the stories are all nested inside of each other.  So the first story begins and gets interrupted by the second story, which gets interrupted by the third story, etc.  The sixth story runs uninterrupted in the middle of the book and after its conclusion, the fifth story is finished, and then the fourth story is finished and so on until the book finishes with the conclusion of the first story.  It’s really amazing how the book unfolds.

The other cool thing about David Mitchell’s books is that not only do stories overlap within the books, but the stories are also connected between books.  For instance, a character that appears in Cloud Atlas also appears in Ghostwritten and another character from Cloud Atlas appears in Black Swan Green.

At this point, I think David Mitchell is probably my favorite writer.  Daniel Quinn is still my favorite author (because his books have been so influential on me), but where Quinn’s books are written in a straight-forward manner (which makes them very effective), Mitchell’s books are written in a very complex way.  He writes in so many different styles and he does them all so well.  I would recommend any of the David Mitchell books I’ve read, but I think the easiest place to start is with Black Swan Green.

I spent the last week on vacation with my girlfriend and some friends at Dewey Beach in Delaware.  It was the second year in a row that I’ve been there.  Here are the highlights:

* We met Dave Grohl.  I saw him walk by us and we later found him further down the beach.  We said hello, told him we were fans, and asked if we could get a picture with him.  He was very friendly and he posed for a picture with us.  I’ve now met Dave Matthews and Dave Grohl this summer, which is pretty cool.

* I read the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  It was a fascinating book not only from a baseball perspective, but also from the perspective that in our society, we cling to accepted knowledge even when the facts clearly don’t mesh with what we think we know.  I also read the first half of the book Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  It is really good so far, but I’ll wait to say more until I finish it.

* We ate at the trio of my favorite Delaware beach restaurants: Grotto Pizza (a Delaware pizza chain), Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop (a Delaware sub shop chain), and Dos Locos (a great Mexican restaurant).

It was really nice to relax at the beach for a week, reading and sitting under an umbrella, but now I’m back and I’m ready to blog!

My girlfriend and I just finished reading the book Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.  We decided to read something together and I thought she would enjoy this book that I first read about a year ago.  The story takes place over the course of a year and is told from the point of view of a 13 year old boy named Jason Taylor.  Each chapter takes place in one month of the year, so there is often little connection between chapters (making them feel like short stories).  Jason goes through a lot of things throughout the year, but the experiences are very relatable.  David Mitchell is definitely one of my favorite current authors (along with Daniel Quinn, Mark Haddon, and Jonathan Safran Foer).  This is a fantastic book and I would absolutely recommend it.