The Johnny Bingo Awards - 2024

 My Favorite Books of this Reading Year

Once again, it is time for the least-anticipated literary awards of the year…The Johnny Bingo Awards!

These prestigious awards are awarded annually in a variety of categories that change constantly.  There is only one constant, one rule, which I've been using for nearly 20 years:

Eligible books are those I read this year (see below for full list). It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BCE or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe.  As long as I read the last paragraph before the ball drops in Times Square, it can be a winner.

The literarily literate among you understand that “the blind Greek poet in the 8th century BCE” refers to Homer, author of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  This week it was announced that the acclaimed director Christopher Nolan’s next project will be a movie version of The Odyssey, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya.  The social media reaction to this was filled with so much literary ignorance it made me want to strap myself to the mast…

On to this year’s awards!

Best Historian at Capturing BIG Subjects in a Single Volume

Andrew Roberts 

When it was announced that Ridley Scott would be making a film about Napoleon Bonaparte, I was nervously excited.  I knew from Gladiator that historical accuracy wasn’t exactly Scott’s strong suit, but still – the chance to see a master filmmaker put things like Austerlitz and the invasion of Russia on screen…

The film was awful but its release inspired me to brush up on my Napoleon and that’s how I came across Andrew Roberts.  His Napolean: A Life is a masterpiece.  Scott couldn’t skillfully fit 22 action-packed years into 3 hours of celluloid, but Roberts splendidly tells the entire story of Napoleon’s life and era in fewer than a thousand pages.  

It was so good I read his single-volume history of WWII, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, and I can say with confidence it is the best single-volume history of this enormous subject I’d ever read.  It might be subtitled “Hitler Could Have Won the War if He Wasn’t Such an Ideological Idiot.”

I intend to work my way through Baron Roberts’ (yes, he is a Baron) entire bibliography over the next few years.  

Best Book by Someone I Hadn’t Read Yet

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Gabrielle Zevin

It seems much of the book-loving world has read Zevin’s Tommorow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – but I went back a few years and sampled one of her earlier works.  An absolutely charming book written by, about, and for book lovers.  

Best Old-Fashioned Novel by an Underrated Novelist

The Ocean and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin has had a curious literary career.  Early on, he took the expected steps of the Next Great Writer: acclaimed short story collections, regularly published in The New Yorker, the breathlessly reviewed debut novel (A Winter’s Tale), and the breakthrough novel (A Soldier of a Great War).

Then he seemed to fade from cultural view.  Partly it’s because he had politics well out of step with the literary gatekeepers – he is a passionate supporter of Israel’s right to existence (even served in the IDF) and was revealed to be a speechwriter for Bob Dole.  But it’s also because the next few novels didn’t live up to the promise of his earlier works. Often it seemed like a powerful literary gift was being wielded in the service of unworthy plots.

The Ocean and The Stars was, for me, a return to form.  It is  an old-fashioned novel about honor and courage and love, and a welcome respite from the cynical solipsism of the modern literary novel.

Best History Book About a Subject of Which I was Shockingly Ignorant

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Michael Korda

Current historical events often influence my history reading.  For example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 inspired me to finally pluck that unread biography of Peter the Great from the shelf (and it won a Johnny Bingo that year!).

The Israel-Hamas war had me brushing up on the origins of the Middle East’s manufactured map, and made my realize how little I knew of T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia.

I don’t know if Korda’s 2011 work is the best biography, but it is thorough, well-written, and has the advantage of being written late enough to capture some recent history.  (and, unlike earlier biographies, late enough to be frank about Lawrence's, oh what's the right word, unusual sex life).

There is so much to Lawrence's life.  He was a critical figure - for better and worse - in the making of the modern Middle East.  And you'll learn much about the unique situation the passing of the Ottoman Empire created, and how it led to the creation of problems that plague the world today.

But it is also one of the great adventure stories of all time, and perhaps a story about the first truly global celebrity.  At the heart of it is the endlessly fascinating figure of T.E. Lawrence.  If I ever get to host one of those ‘if you could invite anyone’ dinner parties, I’d be hard-pressed to not offer a seat to Lawrence of Arabia.

Best Book by the Best Writer

The Passenger

Cormac McCarthy

As I age, and my heroes pass, this blog runs the risk of turning into an Obituaries pages.  Two of my last three posts have been tributes to Pete Rose and Dickey Betts.  And yet, I never quite got around to writing an homage to my favorite writer, Cormac McCarthy, who passed in June of 2023.

In some ways, his career arc was the opposite of Helprin’s.  His first 5 novels were praised in obscure literary journals, but found no readers.  His fifth novel, the much-acclaimed Blood Meridian, had a small press run of 5000 copies.  

But then he went on a run.  His Border trilogy found a much larger audience, and the first book (All the Pretty Horses) was turned into a Matt Damon movie.  In 2005, No Country for Old Men became an Oscar-winning Coen Brothers movie, and 2006 The Road was picked for Oprah’s book club and won The Pulitzer.  This notoriously difficult writer had, against all literary odds, become a mainstream success story.

And that was it.  Or so it seemed.  For the next decade and a half Cormac fans waited.  And then, in late 2022, McCarthy published not one, but two linked novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.  Six months later he was dead.

One night, not long after McCarthy's death, I sat on my deck with a bottle of Basil Hayden, a Montecristo cigar, and Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece album - and contemplated the career of Cormac McCarthy.  As the bottle emptied and the ashtray filled, my thoughts got more profound, and I was struck with an epiphany about the role of the artist, and how The Passenger and Veedon Fleece were sister works of art that encapsulated both of the careers of these Great Artists, and perhaps even explained Art.   I jotted a bunch of notes down in my phone, stream-of-consciousness style,  bursting with intellectual energy.

Apparently I didn’t save it.  Oh well.  

Hopefully my kids will remember that I have a first edition of Blood Meridian, and while I hope they pass it down through the generations, if they ever get in a tight financial bind, it might be worth something some day.

 Honorable Mention

Here’s the full list of books I read this year, along with some quick comments on other favorites…

Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts

The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy

Two Nights in Lisbon, Chris Pavone

The 39 Steps, John Buchan

Running Blind (Jack Reacher #4), Lee Child

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle,Stuart Turton

Without Fail (Jack Reacher #6), Lee Child

Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy

Dave Barry Turns 50, Dave Barry

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, & Happiness, Morgan Housel

Sometimes I give out an award titled "The Book Most Likely to Make My Wife Kick My Shin Under the Table", because I go on and on about lessons learned.  This is one of those books.

The Power of the Dog: Power of the Dog Book 1, Don Winslow

The only reason I didn't honor Winslow again this year is that I gave his book The Force an award last year, and wrote about him with some length.  But this is even better than The Force.

The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton

Red Sparrow: Book 1 of Red Sparrow Trilogy, Jason Matthews

The Summer Game, Roger Angell

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting, William Goldman

A great read about screenwriting and moviemaking - or at least, screenwriting and moviemaking in the 70s and 80s.  Particularly recommended if you loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell

The 6:20 Man (6:20 Man #1), David Baldacci

The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton

The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, Andrew Roberts

Dress Her in Indigo: (Travis McGee #12), John D. MacDonald

The It Girl, Ruth Ware

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

A fictional oral history of a Fleetwood Mac-like band.  Excellent book, I should have given it a JB!

Swordpoint: The WWII Collection, Max Hennessey

Samuel Adams: The Revolutionary, Stacy Schiff

Adams is on the short list of Underrated Americans, and Schiff is on the short list of underrated historians.  For more on Schiff, see my previous post about the Benjamin Franklin series on Apple TV.

A Discovery of Witches (All Souls #1), Deborah Harkness

I'm two books into this series and I haven't experienced this kind of thrill around vampires since Anne Rice's heyday.

The Edge (6:20 Man #2), David Baldacci

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

The Resurrection Walk (Lincoln Lawyer #7), Michael Connelly

The Ocean and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story, Mark Helprin

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, Noa Tishby

The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, Keith Law

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, Michael Korda

Flashman (The Flashman Papers 1), George MacDonald Fraser

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle #1), Ursula K. Le Guin

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

Case Histories: Jackson Brodie 1, Kate Atkinson

In Sunlight and in Shadow, Mark Helprin

Think Twice: Myron Bolintar #12, Harlan Coben

The Lion's Game: John Corey #2 , Nelson DeMille

Not DeMille's best - it should be a few hundred pages shorter and perhaps have a more wrapped up ending.  But DeMille passed this year, and he gave me many hours of reading pleasure.  The outpouring of support on social media from the giants of thriller writers suggest he was also a beloved and generous man.  Long Island really produces some winners.

Shadow of Night (All Souls #2), Debora Harkness

The Collector (Gabriel Allon #23), Daniel Silva

The Coffee Klatsch

Way back in, oh, 1993 or so, my company, a San Francisco based magazine publisher, installed an email system. This brought a wonderful improvement to workplace communication – and a new way to gossip and b.s. with co-workers. It was the first truly valuable cyberslacking tool.

Soon, I and three other guys – Cormie, JShin & Stod - began an email conversation, one that that has continued to this day. Early on, we gave ourselves the not-particularly original name of The Coffee Klatsch, and it stuck. By the end of our collective time at this company, we were geographically scattered – to New York, Western Massachussets, San Francisco, and San Mateo, CA. Today, none of us work there. But the email conversation goes on.

(Like the Beatles, we had a fifth member in the early days – two of them, in fact. Snowman was the first, JPoth the second. A few guest players – Billy Prestons, if you will – joined in the occasional thread, but it was mostly the four of us.)

What did we talk about? Well, let’s see…

Baseball – Mets, Giants, and Red Sox; the usage and value of statistics; pre-season predictions; the morality of some kinds of cheating (steroids) vs. others (spitballs); and more

Football – Giants and 49ers mostly, with a bit of Raider love

Women – our co-workers, and in one memorable moment, Jennifer Aniston

Music – all over the board, from Townes Van Zandt to Steely Dan to Billy Joel to the San Jose Symphony

Fiction – a heavy emphasis on Cormac McCarthy, but with many many other authors from Thomas Pynchon to JK Rowling

History – a lot of Lincoln, a strong dose of John Adams, a dash of the Federal Road, and much more

Kids – we have 9 between us

Politics -

Ah, politics. The damn thing nearly cracked up over politics. Politics was always a core issue in the conversation, with our worldviews ranging from Far Left to Center Right. In the 90's, when the country's primary political argument was about the biological nature of that damned stain, we had a lot of fun with political conversation. But the Bush years brought a level of passion and acrimony to politics that hadn’t been seen in this country since the Vietnam War. And as our disagreements heightened over the overall Bush response to terrorism, well, things got tense, and we retreated to the sanctuary of sports and music.

But now it is the dawning of the Age of Obama, the man who promised us a post-partisan world. And I wondered if, perhaps, we could start talking politics again. So we started an email conversation that I thought I’d share with you.

But first, here are the four contributors (I wrote Stod's and my bio; JShin and Cormie wrote their own):

Keatang : Well, this is my blog, so maybe you know me already. Click here for a link to a post that I wrote on the anniversary of FreeTime which gives you an idea of who I am and what I write.

JShin: Cathy to Cormie's Patty, if you go back far enough to remember the Patty Duke Show, i.e., "one pair of matching bookends, different as night and day," ideologically fairly closely planted on the spectrum, but stylistically large lakes -- if not oceans -- apart. Good cop to Stod's crazy cop. I love these guys, but I also love to hate 'em, which I guess makes us good blog fodder.

Cormie: Born comfortable on the left coast, Cormie got angry in the mid 80s and never quite recovered. He left a middle middle finger dangling from a tree on the bank of the Yaquina river in the hopes that George W. Bush would someday take up rafting

Stod: Stod is a writer/editor with one foot firmly planted in the future (he writes about advanced technology from Silicon Valley) and one in the past (he does so in an office piled high with old newspapers). He believes Glenallen Hill is the most underrated outfielder of the 1990’s, and still blames Robbie Robertson for the breakup of The Band.

So anyway, in the next couple of day or so I’ll post the first Klatsch Convo on the exciting topic of: The Federal Deficit! Betcha can’t wait…

A Soldier's Reading List

In her review of William Styron's memoir Havanas in Camelot, the New York Times' Michiko Kakutani slipped in the following parenthetical aside:

"How many Marines today, one wonders, turn to Keats,
Housman and Emily Dickinson in stressful moments?"

Kakutani's question was rhetorical, and the implication was that today's jarheads are immune to the wonders of literature.

As it happens, I'm involved with an organization called Operation Paperback, that collects "gently used books" and sends them to troops abroad. Most soldiers involved in the program ask for certain genres of books, like history, technology, and crime fiction. But some ask for very specific titles. This morning I received an email from the the good folks at Operation Paperback with some specific requests, including this one from a soldier I'll call Jim Domenico (I've changed his name to protect his privacy):

"Outer Dark", by Cormac McCarthy
"Hero with a Thousand Faces", by Joseph Campbell
"Catch-22", by Joseph Heller
"The Cement Garden", by Ian McEwen
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", by Robert Pirsig

McCarthy and McEwen are two of the finest writers in the English language today. Interestingly, both of Domenico's choices are of earlier, more obscure works. "Catch-22" is arguably the best novel of the Second World War. "Hero with a Thousand Faces" is a classic book about the psychological roots of mythology. (I don't know much about "Zen...", except that it is a cult classic.)

Domenico's choices aren't common, but not unique either. I've had requests for Shakespeare, Russian literature and philosophy, along with more popular works. It seems to me that the reading choices aren't widely different from the rest of us.

Tom Wolfe has long argued that the American novel has suffered because too many writers lead cloistered, writerly lives. They graduate college, go off to some bucolic campus to get their M.F.A., then move to Brooklyn or Berkeley and spend their lives surrounded by other writers. Wolfe argues that they should, like Hemingway and Steinbeck, go live in the real world, where their fiction will be informed and strengthened by living a non-writerly existence.

So too for readers. I've read much of Ms. Kakutani's work, and she is intelligent, well-read, and able to appreciate literature in a way that most of us can't. But I suspect Mr. Domenico, who is stationed in Baghdad, has seen things that she hasn't, and will understand the sacred violence of Cormac McCarthy's fiction, the madness of war in "Catch-22", and the heroic journeys of Campebell's mythic figures in ways that Kakutani can only imagine.