Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey **

I really like the idea of a book consisting of "alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions" of Homer's Odyssey, apocrypha if you will. But I was disappointed with Mason's execution of the idea.

First of all, the stories all have a modern feel to them with their meta-textual tricks and character psychology. At best they are contemporary understandings of the original, not alternative versions of the story. Mason also travels freely beyond the Odyssey, with some stories relating to the Illiad, the Agamemmon stories, and even Greek myths more generally. Finally, and most damaging, the stories just weren't that interesting. They reminded me of the book Sum: Forty Tales from the afterlives: very short vignettes, intriguing subject matter, only intermittently enjoyable.

Norman Rush, Mortals *****

Mortals tells the story of Ray Finch, a Milton scholar teaching at a secondary school in Botswana. His secondary job as a contract CIA agent puts him in touch with African politics, and his uxorious relationship with his possibly unfaithful wife Iris has him obsessing about love and marriage.

The things I love about this book are the things that many people would hate about it:

• The hero is an insecure, self-involved academic who overthinks and filters his experiences through a gauze of literary references.
• His mind keeps returning to his suspicions about his wife even during the life-threatening action in the second half of the book.

These two aspects of Ray's personality can make him an unpleasant character to be around, and they make the story move slowly even when bullets are flying. But the quality of the writing and Rush's psychological insights kept me engrossed and feeling painful empathy with Ray. (I've admitted before that I tend to like obsessed and overly analytical narrators.)

Probably my favorite section of the book comes when the political and intimate story lines collide. Ray has been taken prisoner by a band of mercenaries. After he has been tortured for several days, his captors toss another prisoner into his cell: the man he suspects his wife of sleeping with. Despite the urgency of their situation, Ray feels that he has to confront the man and get him to admit to the adultery. But he can't manage to come right out and ask; he spends pages trying a variety of circumlocutions while the other man tries to focus on the situation at hand. As a reader you want them to get on with the story, but I felt the building suspense as Ray circled ever closer to getting his answer.

R.J. Smith, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown ** 1/2

I was slightly disappointed with this biography of the Godfather of Soul. It touches on the many facets of James Brown -- music, dancing, bandleader, cultural icon, womanizer -- but it failed to make him into a solid three-dimensional character. I often felt like I was reading a collection of anecdotes about Brown, or the fleshed-out notes for a biography, rather than a "definitive" biography.

Smith gives especially short shrift to Brown's relationships with women. Several times we learn that Brown gets married, but his wives disappear from the story soon afterword. The same comment applies to many of his band members; they never develop the personalities they surely had.