Trust the Rooster

Clearly, I am new to this whole blogging thing, and I am sure that I am doing it all wrong, but it is fun to come here and write about what I read even if no one reads it.  Basically, it provides me with an odd form of adult talk.  Anyway, since I started writing the blog I also started reading others and that is how I discovered the Tournament of Books.  March Madness for nerds, folks!  It exists, it is awesome, and I can’t wait until next year.

Every year, nearing those Ides of March, I am subjected to "The Bracket."  My husband hands me a sheet of paper, tells me to fill it out, and then proceeds to get mad at me when I do better than him, even though my general strategy is to pick the superior mascot (thus, Ohio State never wins!) But now I have this Tournament, in which 16 books are pitted against one another and fight for the championship. 

Here are the deets of the 2012 event:

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• In December, 16 book titles were announced along with the names of 16 judges; a veritable who’s who of authors, bloggers, editors, and, this year, one Wil Wheaton. The books were then seeded into a bracket to be played out in March. Each judge selects a winner in one round, and then all select in the final round.

• There is also a “Zombie” round, in which two books knocked out in previous rounds are brought back by popular vote to rise again and take on the front runners in the second to last round.  This years zombies were The Sisters Brothers (which went on to win) and The Art of Fielding (which is sitting on my shelf).

• The winner of the 2012 tournament was The Sisters Brothers, and past winners include: Wolf Hall (which I loved!), A Mercy, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Road (which is devastating, but amazing), The Accidental, and Cloud Atlas (also, on my shelf). 

What I am saying here is that, while reading is a deeply personal thing, there are certain crowds you can hang with and not be disappointed, and this is my crowd for sure!  I can’t wait until next December when they announce the next contenders; I hope to read them before the tournament starts and fill out a bracket with all my nerdy enthusiasm!  Maybe I will make Chris fill one out too...

Now, back to my reading! As my favorite book of last year, Moondogs, also featured an amazing rooster, I took it as a sign and bought The Sisters Brothers the day it won the tourney (opting to find it in hardback since the paperback cover SUCKS!!!) And is it everything I thought and hoped it would be… Well, yes ma’am!

19.12

 

"Our blood is the same, we just use it differently." Truth.

The truth about family is that blood is powerful, blindingly powerful, and in many cases not blinding at all.  We see the truth of one another better than anyone and we let each other get away with it.  We tend to support each other without fail, but rarely do we trust each other wholly.

This is the truth for Eli, our narrator, as he works with his brother Charlie.  They are paid assassins, and very well known.  We watch them travel from Oregon City to San Fransisco to complete a job for the Commodore.  They are violent men, yet Eli is very sentimental.  He is very effected by what they do but he doesn't stop.  He wants to settle down, and love someone; he wants to be loved by someone.  But he doesn't stop.  This felt so human to me; to get bogged down by what you do and never having the strength to drag yourself out of it and start over.  I found myself liking Eli very much, even ignoring his violence and making excuses for it, as if he were family.  I do wish I had learned more about Charlie though.

A lot of reviews say this book is funny, but I think I a lot of that was overshadowed by sadness.  It is an easy, fast-paced read, that is a western through and through.  As Wil Wheaton put it during judging, "The Sisters Brothers made me feel like I was sitting in a movie house in Red Dead Redemption, watching an episode of Deadwood that was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by the Coen Brothers."