Per Petterson’s “Out Stealing Horses” is currently the bestselling book at Powell’s. Which makes me feel not so bad about saying it just didn’t do it for me. Initially, I found it both too quiet/cold (man walks dog by frozen lake, appreciates remote wilderness) while also being too halcyon (he remembers his teenage youth in golden fields — literally, at one point, harvesting hay). But then there was some blood, and some sexual intrigue, but the drama dribbled along without ever heating up much. The narrator is the classic passive observer — he observes his friend, his father, his own memories, the Norway/Swedish border — and it felt like he sat in the passenger seat of the story when I wanted him to jump behind the wheel and rev up the gas. As for action, he chops up a tree and feels achy afterward. Pretty darn low key, right? It felt like one of those movies I’m supposed to like, with long takes and quiet contemplation of the landscape; I get itchy, wishing something would please please happen.
But so what? How valuable are the opinions of book critics? This morning, that’s what Minnesota Public Radio asked agent/former book review editor Steve Wasserman, Chris Lavin from the San Diego Tribune and litblogger C. Max Magee, proprietor of The Millions. Audio is online (Wasserman namechecks Sarvas).
Litblogger Ed Champion performs a little book criticism today, reviewing The Reel Stuff, a book that returns to the science fiction origins of scifi films, in today’s LA Times.
On Monday, Salman Rushdie will be at Town Hall Los Angles in conversation with — Carrie Fisher. If that’s not the most fabulous literary mashup of 2008, I don’t know what is. And yes, I’ve got tickets.
