#1: Assassination Vacation

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.

I've seen Sarah Vowell on the Daily Show quite a few times, and I've always been impressed with her. She has that certain self-awareness of smart people that suppresses her brand of dry humor and she always seems to get comfortable with the format just as the segment ends. With her book, you get a fully comfortable Sarah Vowell and she is funny as hell. I would get up and find some excerpts, but I have a fat cat on my lap and I'm too comfortable to move. Just trust me.

I love authors with individual voices. It's why I obsessively read Deus Ex Malcontent and One Good Thing. Vowell's writing has that same unique edge that's not only recognizable but personable. Faulkner's voice is recognizable, but you never really get a sense of the author behind the endless stretch of words. Although, to be fair, that's probably more a function of the time and the medium he was writing in than anything else. If your nonfiction piece doesn't have a unique voice, who's going to read it?

Sorry, got distracted there. Vowell's book is about her obsession with the four assassinated presidents: Lincoln, Kennedy, McKinley and Garfield. The thing that makes this more than a morbid historical exercise is that Vowell is just as interested in John Wilkes Booth's childhood as the day he killed Lincoln, just as interested in Garfield's (lack of) policies as in his death. She details dragging her family, her friends and any acquaintance with a working automobile on her odd quest to visit every assassination related site in the US.

Vowell really focuses on Lincoln and Garfield, both on their lives and deaths and their historical significance (or insignificance in the case of Garfield). I felt she skimped a bit on Kennedy, but seeing as the Kennedy clan is still active in the headlines, I don't really mind that she focused more on the other three.

My idea for this blog is to sort of sum up anything I've learned from each book I read during this next year. But really, there isn't any deep, overarching lesson to be learned from these deaths. Sometimes people are crazy and they do horrible, crazy things. Other than better mental health assessment and treatment, there's not much to be learned from the facts of these stories. But, dude. Vowell took a lifelong creepy obsession with assassinated presidents and turned it into a wry, witty and eminently readable book. I'll take that over a parable any day.

Introduction

I'm starting this to blog about books. Sorry, not much more interesting than that.