Phoenix Review: December Edition

December's Phoenix Feature: The Annotated Nose, by Marc Estrin

In The Annotated Nose, "Marc Estrin" discovers that another writer's novel - The Nose - not only has spawned a bizarre cult among the nation's youth, but is based on the extraordinary life of a real person - an outcast named Alexei Pigov. "Estrin" searches Alexei out and asks him to provide annotations to The Nose. Alexei says that - although the events of the novel might, for the most part, be real - the purported reasons for them are all damnable lies. On the left-hand page of The Annotated Nose we read The Nose itself, and take in its beautifully unsettling illustrations. On the right-hand page we follow Alexei's complaints - always surprising and often far-reaching. The layers in Estrin's remarkable comic book are as multiple, eclectic, and outrageous as the sequence of masks Alexei wears to hide his face from the world over the caroming trajectory of his most unlikely life. Want to meet the author? Come to our December 5th event!

Staff Picks:
Nora Recommends...

Two humorous, irreverent books about somber topics are my picks for curious readers. Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates introduces you to the Massachusetts Bay Colony Pilgrims. Now, you may be saying, "geez, like I want to read about those folks." But trust me, this is a fascinating look into the backbone of what shapes our society today. From the struggle to separate church and state, to the early roots of our countries interventionist policies, Deer Hunting with Jesus

her keen insight and tremendous humor make history enjoyably readable and relevant to our lives today.
In Deer Hunting With Jesus, the book with the best title ever, author Joe Bageant takes us to his small home town in the South and introduces us to his friends and neighbors, mostly hard working Scots-Irish poor. If you want to understand why the working poor vote conservative, this is the book for you. Bageant is funny, wise, kind yet ruthless when it comes to dissecting the politics that divide our country.

Heather Recommends...
Snow

Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow tells the tale of an exiled poet, Ka, who returns to the remote town of Kars to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head scarves. Ka is also driven to return to Kars, as he has heard of the recent divorce of Ipek, a woman he once loved. Arriving in snowfall in his former hometown, Ka is pursued by a number of characters, including Ipek's ex-husband and a charismatic terrorist. In this novel, the modern Western world is at a crossroads with the Eastern world of Islam. Pamuk has the ability to make readers understand the politics of the region and to view issues from a perspective different from our own. Orhan Pamuk was winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.