1. The Jungle Book
I started David Grann's The Lost City of Z thinking it was a work of fiction and was pleasantly surprised and intrigued to find it was historical non-fiction. The book follows renowned jungle explorer Percy Fawcett on his ill-fated Amazon expeditions in the early 1900s, when the age of traditional exploration was coming to a close. Similar to the Oliver Sacks book from earlier, I kept pausing to check Wikipedia because ... REALLY? That REALLY happened? Way more entertaining than anticipated and full of disgusting tidbits about the effects of Amazonian insects and climate. Even more exciting than the book (published in 2010) is that the storyline has since advanced in real life (spoiler alert: Amazon's Lost World).
Bottom line: Highly recommend! A fast, fascinating read. David Grann is a cool dude and a talented journalist; I would totally read more of his work.
2. Hideous Men
Yes, yes, another David Foster Wallace entry. Unlike the previous short essay collections I've read (Consider the Lobster & A Supposedly Fun Thing), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was all semi-related short stories. It was also my least favorite, sadly. I thought the tone was depressing and dark, lacking all the YES! moments and hilarity of the other two collections, and while the writing was inventive, it just didn't do it for me. I also kept falling into the author biography trap, where I'd be reading a story thinking, "Is this what the author thought of himself? Is this a transcript of his inner monologue? Because he was depressed? And on meds? And maybe this is how he felt and what he thought about?" It was impossible to read the collection without going through that filter, and I wonder how I would've felt about the book had I NOT known the author's back-story.
Bottom line: Mostly I agree with this article, The Last Book I Loved:
"... you might add that the word “joy” is not one you would necessarily use
to describe the book. Try explaining all this while wondering to
yourself if you give David Foster Wallace a pass because it’s such,
like, a thing to discuss his books and be seen reading them on the bus."
