My Top Ten Surprisingly Enjoyable Reads of 2009 -- Part 2

One week later (there goes that resolution), here are the rest of the ten surprisingly enjoyable reads I had had the good fortune to stumble upon. As I noted in the previous installment, just because I stumbled upon the works mentioned in this list, doesn’t mean that they were released over the past year. In fact, I think my number five pick is the only item on the list that actually did come out in 2009. The purpose of this list is merely to document ten favorite bits of literary gold that I managed to pan over the previous year. So, without further ado, here are items five through one.

5. Batgirl by Bryan Q. Miller – The guys at my local comic book shop are always trying to smuggle new stuff into my weekly comic book pull file. They tend to exploit my weakness; for instance, I read “Batman” and “Detective Comics.” Therefore any time there are any new Batman-related titles or miniseries, there’s a good chance that copies will innocently end up in my file. Ninety-five percent of the time it’s utter shit (like Kevin Smith’s Hindenburg-esque failure “Batman: Cacophony,” for example). But every once in a blue moon they’ll hook me up with a gem. Enter Batgirl. Stephanie Brown (daughter of old Batman villain the Cluemaster; formerly the vigilante Spoiler, Tim Drake’s girlfriend, and the fourth Robin; formerly dead, then not dead, then boring) is the new Batgirl, a stark contrast to the previous incarnation (Cassandra Cain; rehabilitated child assassin, badass martial artist, not that great with talking/people, full-body costume). I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed to hear that Cassandra was being replaced as Batgirl. That disappointment lasted precisely one half issue. Turning a mediocre punching bag like Stephanie Brown into an interesting and compelling character is a testament to writer Bryan Q. Miller’s abilities. The stories are light, fast-paced, compelling and colorful. They’re like the dinner salad of comics. Miller has breathed new life into second-string characters with witty dialogue and narration that reminds me a little of Joss Whedon. Best of all, I’m pretty sure this is Miller’s first whack at comics (I think he came to DC from an extended stint as a writer for “Smallville”). Thus far, “Batgirl” is shaping up to be one hell of a freshman debut.

4. “Pop Candy: Unwrapping Pop Culture’s Hip and Hidden Treasures” by Whitney Matheson – This one’s a little different from the rest of my picks, in that it’s not a book, an audio book, or even a comic book. It’s a blog. The best way to describe “USA Today” culture writer Matheson’s blog is to pull a quote from her welcome page: “Cult movies, comic books, indie rock, sci-fi, '80s greats, sweet links, general weirdness -- this is all the stuff of Pop Candy.” Thanks to my friend Ryan for pointing this blog out to me, it’s quickly become one of my most regularly-visited stops while spending far too many long and lonely hours on the World Wide Web. And the more time I spend on Matheson’s site (she writes a LOT; just today she’s made seven long-ish posts), the more I realize that she’s into pretty much every single thing I’m into, and sooooo much more. If I want to know what will be coming out on the Criterion Collection this month, she’ll have a link to it. If I want to read about the latest rumors concerning the final season of “Lost,” she’ll have a link to the story. If I want to read cool stories about seeing Morrisey in concert, she’ll have ‘em waiting. Whitney Matheson is amazing. Over the past year I’ve added her to my very exclusive list of unobtainable women that I pine for, a list formerly comprised only of Rachel Maddow, Sophia Coppola, Naomi Wolfe and Betsy Braddock. Make of that what you will.

3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes – I’ll start this one by saying that I wasn’t pleasantly surprised to find I’d enjoyed this book. I’d read the first 100 or so pages in college, and really enjoyed what I’d read. But life as an English major being what it is, it’s sadly all to common an occurrence to start a book and have to put it down in favor of several others (simultaneously). This was the case with Quixote and me. So it was no surprise to me that I’d greatly enjoy reading this enormous history of the Gentleman from La Mancha. That was a given. No, the surprising joy I took in Cervantes’ masterpiece came in realizing how unbelievable similar the madness of Don Quixote is to that of the modern Neo-Conservative movement. Consider: Quixote is a character living in a romanticized world of his own creation, whose goal in life is to restore a “golden age” of chivalry and virtue onto a land which it never actually existed in the first place. He relies on the aid of an ignorant simpleton who doesn’t know better and who agrees to serve in exchange for possibly being named governor of an island some time in the future (even though he doesn’t actually know what an island is). During the course of his misadventures, Quixote regularly rearranges reality to suit his every whim, often reinterpreting actual people/places/events to better suit his own worldview. He’s routinely mocked and belittled by those who know better, but is very often dangerous because of the fanatical conviction and abandon he asserts in his beliefs. I’m telling you, there’s one hell of a thesis in here!  Quixote could accidentally be the accidetal hero of the Tea Bagger!

2. Buddha by Osamu Tezuka – Early on in Tezuka’s eight-volume saga, there’s a parable about a group of animals who find a dying monk lost in the mountains and resolve to help him. Some of the animals gather wood and start a fire. Some bring the monk water. Some build the monk shelter, some lay beside him and share their warmth. After the animals pitch in to help the monk, they turn to Rabbit and ask how he’s contributed. He was too small to gather wood or build shelter or try and keep the monk warm. How would Rabbit help the monk, they wonder. Rabbit saw this and understood that there was only one way in which he could help; Rabbit threw himself into the fire so that the monk might eat him and survive. I remember being pretty disturbed by this story when I read it in volume one. “Couldn’t the rabbit have just gone and gathered some berries or bugs or something?” I thought. “Wasn’t it kind of silly of him to kill himself instead of just going to find food?” But by the time the parable was related again in volume eight, my reaction was totally different. This time I marveled at the beauty of the story, and at the resolve and kindness of the rabbit, of the courage it took to perform such a selfless act and the great fear which the tiny creature had mastered. That’s kind of the best way I can sum up the experience which is reading Tezuka’s Buddha. It’s weird at first. Like an overdramatic cartoon with too much death and nudity. But by the time you reach the end it’s something totally different. This is the story of the life and death of Siddhartha Gautama, his pursuit and employment of enlightenment, and all the beauty and tragedy that are his legacy. Written and drawn over the course of ten years by the godfather of Japanese comics (try to picture a complete and thorough graphic novelization of the Torah by Will Eisner and you’ll have an idea of how truly amazing this is), Buddha is easily one of the most influential and amazing stories I’ve ever read. I can’t recommend this work enough. It’s not an easy read, especially if you’re not familiar with or a fan of manga. But it’s worth it.

1. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – Thanks again to my friend Ryan, this time for planting the Ender’s Game seed in my head years ago when I worked for him at Hastings. “It has one of the best endings ever,” he said, giving me a stripped paperback copy. Of course, I didn’t read it. But the name and the enthusiastic recommendation stuck with me. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the first issue of the comic book adaption of Ender’s, only to realize that the story revolves around a little boy. The actual novel confirmed it. Ender was the name of a six-year old boy, a nickname conceived by his sister when she had trouble pronouncing her brother’s actual name, Andrew. Ender’s Game is a story about children, training to be the last line of defense against an unstoppable force. The concept is ingenious; adults are too slow, too cautious to be super-soldiers. Only children, trained practically from infancy, could possess the speed and recklessness necessary to repel an alien invasion. I don’t want to expound on the plot too much, because letting it unfold gradually is one of the joys of the novel. Suffice to say, the book’s about children learning to be soldiers, and the toll it takes on them. This was my first exposure to Orson Scott Card as a science fiction novelist, and I’ve gotta say I’m very impressed. Since reading Ender’s, I’ve gone through the sequel (Speaker for the Dead) and enjoyed it just as thoroughly. It’s a totally different kind of book, but just as riveting. My hat goes off to Mr. Card. I haven’t enjoyed reading science fiction this much since wandering around on Mars in middle school with Ray Bradbury.