Read some pretty interesting news yesterday.  I guess that during his lifetime, Mark Twain wrote a giant mass of an autobiography… something like 5,000 pages.  He instructed that they be sealed in a box for 100 years following his death and then released to the public.  It’s crazy to me that they’ve been sitting there since 1910.  Wild, right?

People kind of think that the reason that he had them sealed that long was to avoid scandal- so he could talk openly about his friends and family, about politics, about religion, about whatever he wanted without fearing any repercussions for himself or his decedents.

I think he probably just wanted to be difficult…. or do some National Treasure style stuff.

I hope that there’s some crazy stuff in there.  It doesn’t come out until November, but I’m a sucker for biographies in general, but especially of authors.  I will be sure to get my hands on this one.

Here’s the link to the article that I read on CBS News.

The Book: The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

The Story: In the course of the book, Tim O’Brien says several times that the “truth” of things that happened in Vietnam and the “stories” that people tell, while they may contradict, are both still true.  On the first page of this book, he calls it a work of fiction although it feels very autobiographical from the get-go.  All this to say that the truth and the fiction are hard to tell apart.

This is the story of these guys who all belong to the same company and are in Vietnam during the Vietnam war.  A lot of the book is told in past tense, these older guys looking back on what happened when they were eighteen years old.  They develop a real bond for each other- a real love- because they are all each other has for the time being.  They know pretty much everything about each other and help each other cope with the crazy stuff that’s happening in front of them every day.

The title of the book comes from the “story” (the book is almost set up in short story format, but not quite) at the very start of the book.  The author describes what is normal for the guys to carry in their bags and how much everything weighs.  Then he goes further to talk about how they are all carrying aggression, love, memories, and so on.  This is a powerful piece that makes the characters in the book just seem incredibly human and incredibly young.

What I Thought: I think that so often the Vietnam war gets overlooked.  We never learned about it in school.  For every hundred books written about WWII, there is probably one book written on Vietnam.  I’d never read one that I can remember.  All that to say, I went into this mostly blind.  What little I knew was mostly from the couple movies made about this time (I’m lookin’ at you, Forest Gump) and just little tidbits I’d picked up here and there.  My husband, who was a big military history geek for awhile, helped me through this one and answered about 7,000 questions for me.

I had been wanting to read this because I heard that it was powerful and important.  I hadn’t heard that it was written beautifully.  I wasn’t expecting the tenderness that came through.  A tender war book? Huh? It was amazing. The part where he takes his young daughter back to these places where he had seen friends die, where he had camped in the mud, that touched me deep down.

I do have to say, about 3/4ths of the way through, I started kind of zoning.  Everything started to sound pretty much the same and I had to take a break to avoid just skimming.  I was glad that I did because this part of the book wasn’t any less powerful, it was just a lot to take at once.  Even though this is a shorter book, it isn’t really a quick read.  I mean, I suppose you could read it quickly but I really don’t think you’d get as much out of it.

Conclusion: For people who lived through the Vietnam War, I know that this would be touching, but even for people who weren’t born yet this is a powerful and moving look at the US’s history.

The Book: Cash: The Autobiography of Johnny Cash, by Johnny Cash

The Story: This is the story of Johnny Cash told by the man himself.  While it isn’t exactly set up chronologically, he still includes stories from his childhood right up through 1997 when this book was originally published.

In this book, Johnny Cash tells the truth behind playing with Elvis, how Blue Suede Shoes came to be, his boyhood, his first marriage and then his later one to June Carter, and the robbery of his house while his whole family was present.  He talks about his friendships with a lot of famous people: Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Graham, and seriously about a dozen others.  There were so many “cameos” in this book I cannot even count.

Johnny Cash just used this book to talk honestly about his life’s ups and downs and how he feels about them as an older man, looking back.

What I Thought: Johnny Cash was a staple at my house while I was growing up.  My mom is one of those people that always has music playing, and ol’ Johnny Cash has always been one of her favorites.  I’ve been a fan my whole life.  When he got popular again right before his death, I was thrilled.  I also loved the movie Walk the Line.  So I went into this book really excited to hear the stories told by Johnny Cash himself.

I really loved that he didn’t just write this boring, dry play-by-play of what happened in his life.  I loved the reflective tone that he took and just his view on things after getting cleaned up and putting years between himself and that younger, rebellious guy he used to be.  If nothing else in the book impressed me (and it did), I was blown away by his truthful tone and how he just got to the heart of so many big issues.

I was also kind of in love with how “down home” Johnny Cash remained through the whole of his life.  Being a big star, he could have totally gone off the reservation.  He still loved fishing, knew the nitty gritty of picking cotton, and all these other earthy, real things.  This touched me.

The end of the book wasn’t as engrossing, for me, as the beginning.  The last few chapters get into his “thanks” to all these people that have had a real effect on his life.  I’m sure that this was a great mediation for him while writing it and means a lot to the people who were listed, but for me (who, sadly, wasn’t listed), I found myself just kinda looking over some of these shout-outs.  This was the only part of the story that fell flat for me.

Conclusion: I was in a book rut when I started this one and it broke it entirely.  Really good stuff.

The Book: The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

The Story: This is an autobiographical graphic novel of a teenage girl growing up in Iran during the revolution of ‘79.  There was a lot about death and war and the veil, and tough stuff, but there were also big chunks about crushes, normal teenage rebellion, secret parties and American pop culture.

While she was still in high school,  Marjane’s parents send her to Austria to continue her schooling in a safer environment.  She met semi-crazy anarchist friends and kind of accidentally joined the punk scene.  While she was in Austria, she sort of lied about her heritage and morphed into a new person.  There is a section of the book that covers a visit from her mom while Marjane is still living in Austria.  This is one of the only times that her “two worlds” meet, and it was one of the more powerful parts of the book.

The book continues up through Iran’s war with Iraq, and goes as far as the early 1990’s.  There is a lot of political history going on, side by side with Marjane growing up.

What I Thought: I promise: last graphic novel for awhile!  I had just picked this up on my graphic novel binge because I’ve heard such good things about it and decided to read it before my books were due back to the library.

I’m oh, so glad that I did.

I have read a handful of books about this time period, most notably Reading Lolita in Tehran , that have really touched my heart.  It is just hard for me to believe that these things are not ancient history.  They happened (are happening) within our lifetime.  That is shocking to me.

This novel works for a couple reasons.  One is the pure curiosity that we, as westerners, share regarding stuff that is happening in that part of the world.  It is in our faces every day but the truth of it is just unimaginable to us.  But, on the other hand, this is a universal “coming of age” story.  I found myself relating with a lot of what the main character was going through.  I loved her obsession with pop culture, and her thoughts on boys, and her anger at her parents.  She is in this war-torn country but what she wants (freedom, a boyfriend, love, to look cute) are just the exact things that American teenagers experience, and for me that made this book very powerful.

Conclusion: Read this.  If you have never read a graphic novel, I do not hesitate to say make this your first one.