Let’s get this out of the way from the get-go: I have never seen the movie version based on About a Boy by Nick Hornby. And now, having read the book, I feel a minor tinge of disgust at the idea of Hugh Grant playing Will’s character.

It’s not so much that I have anything against Hugh Grant; he has a typecasted character and he plays it well. It’s just that I got an image of someone else in my head for this role. Someone manlier. Maybe Jason Statham with a little more slob and a little less “I’m going to shoot you in the face.”

Anyway. This was a pretty standard Nick Hornby book. That means it was full of well-written, self-loathing, quirky characters who all learned something from each other. And it means it was good.

I love Nick Hornby, precisely because it’s always a complex story, with no obvious endings, but no real twists either, and yet somehow it’s the easiest book in the world to fly through in a weekend. Case in point: I’d made it almost halfway through the book between getting to my gate at the airport and arriving at my destination a few hours later.

About a Boy is about a very boyish man becoming less boyish, with the help of a very mature twelve-year-old named Marcus. Marcus’s mom has some major issues, Will stumbles into it with all the irresponsibility of a trust fund kid and Marcus latches on. Hilarity, epiphany and growing up ensue (for both parties, of course).

It’s not a particularly deep book, nor is it one trying to make any particular point, but it feels realistic, and somewhere within it lessons are learned. Like I said, the beauty of Nick Hornby’s work is that it effortlessly slides life lessons at you. And I get the feeling even he doesn’t mean for them to happen.

I’ve heard that many authors end up discovering that the characters, plot lines and ideas write themselves, whether or not the author himself meant for things to go the direction they did. It’s an odd form of chaos that ends with everyone involved learning something from it, the author included — rather unlike some pithy morality tale where the theme is decided ahead of time.

It is sometimes said that a PhD (short for “doctor of philosophy”) is a sign that one has learned to relate his or her subject of study to the world at large on a philosophical level, hence the name. The more of David Dark’s writing I read, the more I realize that he, perhaps more than most, understands the potential impact of his level of education in English and literature. Rather than devoting himself to insular research, he’s focused his energy on addressing a questioning subculture of the American religious and political tradition through thoughtful analysis of that culture, reflected back by its own literature, music, film, television and political icons.

In The Gospel According to America, Dark’s analyzes the intricacies of America’s politics and its “Christ-haunted idea” through the eyes of George Washington, Herman Melville, Bob Dylan, Flannery O’Connor, Elvis, Thomas Pynchon and others who have found inspiration in the freedom, culture, history and possibility of the American Way.

Unsurprisingly, Dark digs even further than just America’s past, by challenging its widely-held theories and practices concerning faith, salvation and the person of Jesus. He puts forward ideas of faith that both emphasize and support the underlying goals of America’s founders and challenge us to question the way those goals are put into practice. He warns us of the dangers of media pundits and believing we are administers of Truth:

When the church is the blind, uncritical endorser or “spiritual” chaplain of whatever the nation decides to do, it has largely renounced its vocation as the body of Christ.

But he also praises the art of being weird, exploring uncharted ideas and the practice of digging deeper than the sound bite culture to which most of us unknowingly subscribe to:

When we’re no longer willing (or able) to exercise the attention span required to hear, read, or listen to any version of history that can’t be contained in a sound bite or a put-down, our capacity for worship and for contribution to a stable democracy is compromised.

Potential readers of any of Dark’s work only need be warned that his explorations are not a quick read. While his ideas are clearly put forth, he doesn’t waste words for the sake of easy skimming. (Perhaps this is his own way of combating sound bite culture.) It’s more of a “take your time and take notes” kind of book than the more commonly enjoyed pop philosophy/sociology examinations that make it into the New York Times bestsellers list.

It’s not often I read a work of fiction within a year or two of its release. Aside from the Harry Potter series, it usually takes me at least five or ten years — if not fifty — to get around to reading a well-known story. The reasoning is mostly that stories are often more timeless, while nonfiction has a tendency to be more relevant if read closer to its publication time.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. The point is that I read a new piece of critically-lauded fiction: Flight, by Sherman Alexie. Mostly because my girlfriend said, “Here, read this. It’s a quick, easy read and a great story.” And she was right.

Flight is about a fifteen-year-old half Native American foster kid named Zits. He has low self esteem, due to his zits and his revolving-door stays with foster families all throughout the Seattle area. He channels his low self worth into violent acts and disrespect for his foster parents, which is hardly surprising.

And then Zits meets Justice in a jail cell. Justice tells him how everything is wrong, how Native Americans deserve to do whatever it takes to take back their land from white people, how to shoot a gun. And after weeks and weeks of this righteous indoctrination, Zits walks into a bank with a pistol and a paintball gun.

The story really takes off, though, before he sees the consequences of his violent act, when he wakes up from what he presumed to be his own death to find himself in the body of an FBI agent in the 70s that was fighting against the Native Americans. And, from there, into the bodies of several historical figures fighting either for or against the freedom of the Native American people.

Flight is a unique take on the all-too-common coming of age story. While the whole idea revolves around time travel (or reincarnation, in a weird way), it still seemed the most appropriate way for the universe to help a lost boy find his way, realize the consequences of his violent tendencies and break away from that cycle.

All in all, it was a beautiful and enjoyable read that I highly recommend for any teen or twentysomething.

Conversation #1 and Conversation #2 are two short comic books that discuss the philosophy of art, what it means to live and whether creating art is necessary for life to be worth living.

The style of each book is that James Kochalka, creator of American Elf, personal favorite comic, collaborates with one other comic artist. They write the dialog and guide the direction of the art together, and interfere with each other so that both the dialog and the art are a conversation of styles and philosophies. In the first book, Kochalka collaborates with Craig Thompson; in the second he works with Jeffrey Brown

Both comic books were highly enjoyable, especially as someone who enjoys comics, philosophy and the analysis of art. Both were right up my alley, so being $5 each it was a bit of a no-brainer to invest in a copy of each. Kochalka’s mindset on free expression and open honesty — both things I love about American Elf — come through well, and getting to appreciate the work of two other comic artists I wasn’t familiar with was great.

My only complaints about the books would be that, for one, they were both really short, and also that the conversation meandered in and out of topic a bit much at times, which occasionally made the ideas hard to follow. I wouldn’t say this interfered with my enjoying them, but were the only things that held them back from being a perfect read.

It’s not too often that a widely popular book ends up being even better than imagined. At least for me. Call me picky, but it rarely happens. So when I picked up a cheap copy of Chuck Klosterman’s self-described “low culture manifesto” Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs that I know to be highly popular with the uber-hipster crowd, I figured it’d be entertaining at best.

It turns out that Klosterman uses pop culture to reflect on a lot of deep sociological and philosophical ideas that are relevant for most subscribers to western life. He brings up Marilyn Monroe and Pamela Anderson in crass detail to explain the sexual evolution of America over the last 50 years. He uses the video game The Sims to rant about how we are slaves to the process of living. He states his opinion that MTV’s The Real World and other early reality TV has shaped every young American into one of a handful of prototypical personality types. And he talks about how fascinating serial killers are. Just because.

I suppose I was expecting some massive collection of cultural references that tie together in a clever way that strikes upon valuable insights haphazardly and unintentionally at best, meant more for ironic amusement than anything else. I’m assuming I came to this notion based on my perception of his “average reader.”

But Klosterman truly does have a grasp on a lot of bigger-picture ideas that he very directly discusses at every turn. He just happens to use “low culture” like MTV and video games to help ease into those ideas, making it an ideal introduction to sociology and modern philosophy for the young unaccustomed.

I already have another Chuck Klosterman book waiting in the wings to be read. I bought it quietly on a recent trip to Urban Outfitters, which might say more about me than I originally thought.

Keeping up on your pile of unread books while moving is, to no one’s surprise, a slow process. Lucky for me, I have a backup of Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies, which I’ve read a few of before. Since each story is usually five to ten pages long, I was able to pick it up any time I had a spare moment along the road or between boxes of things I probably don’t need.

This time around, it’s the 2005 version.

Dave Eggers must have quite a team of kids there to be picking the stories they do. Everything from stories about secret tunnels full of Chinese people in Mexico to getting free hamburgers every day or hunting down a mythical figure who chooses to live nowhere but in airplanes and airports, eternally on the go and anchored nowhere.

Also, the nice thing about short stories is that you can find a lot of them online anyway, either for free or cheap. Instead of continuing to pretend like I know what I’m talking about, maybe the stories should speak for themselves:

• Tiger Mending, by Aimee Bender
• Lyndon, by Amber Dermont
• Tearaway Burkas and Tinplate Menorahs, by Al Franken
• Hell-Heaven, by Jhumpa Lahiri
• At the Cafe Lovely, by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
• Manifesto, by George Saunders

If you liked any of those, the whole book is great, as is the entire series.

It’s rare that someone is able to find an underlying idea that ties together so much of what it means for a piece of art, culture or life to be “good” to another person, but in Everyday Apocalypse, David Dark has efficiently described a common thread in much of that which I love that points to my continual searching for the “something more” of life. Dark calls this idea “apocalyptic.”

It should be made clear that when Dark talks about “apocalypse,” he’s not talking about some end-times event where the world explodes and all those who “accepted Jesus into their hearts” go to some other-place called Heaven. He’s talking about the actual meaning of the word “apocalypse:” lifting of the veil. To explain more explicitly, Dark is looking for threads of capital-T Truth in our art and culture that speak to the idea of the human conditions of suffering and imperfection, the necessary inclusion of eternal grace and love in our lives, the beauty of admitting to not knowing it all, and the ability of one person to “get” another even if, and especially if, that “getting” is something we can’t seem to quite put in words.

In short, apocalyptic is that which lifts the veil shrouding what life really is, has been, will be and is meant to be.

In Everyday Apocalypse, Dark runs through examples from Radiohead to The Simpsons to Flannery O’Connor, expressing how each has a way of subverting mere entertainment or pop cultural art and hinting at a deeply-rooted issue of what it is to participate in life on earth and, often, a part of the truly Christian ideology (not just what the culture of market-driven, Western evangelical Christianity has put forth as an example).

One part theology, one part philosophy, and one part art appreciation, the book was a perfect match for me, despite occasionally feeling a bit over my head. After truly grasping upon his idea of apocalyptic, though, the feeling of something going over my head didn’t seem as frustrating as it might’ve been before reading.

I’m excited to explore what apocalyptic lifestyle really is. I feel that, through my explorations of food, art, music and what it means to live faith every day, I’m already on my way, but I know I’ve hardly stepped a foot in the door.

Finally, it’s refreshing and relieving to see someone speaking to a more Catholic idea of living a Christian faith, in the sense that Christianity is hardly about “accepting Jesus into my heart so I don’t go to Hell.” It’s hardly that, if that at all, and if we are truly living the faith fully, such ideas should be the last thing on our minds as we seek to restore, renew and reveal the world we live in today in preparation for eternity.

Another book about the craft of writing. That’s two in a row, sort of. This one’s a bit more explicit than the last and, coincidentally, recommended by the author of the last.

This one is called The War of Art, and if you consider yourself a creator of anything — writing, painting, websites, photographs, businesses — and want to hone your skill to the highest form, this should be on your must-read list. In fact, it should probably be on your must-read-once-a-year list.

The War of Art is a short and easy-to-read book by Steven Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance. Departing from his normal territory of fiction, he wrote this one as an expository piece by an artist for other artists. He expresses the idea that, to be a professional writer (or painter, or programmer), we have to fight resistance every day and continue pushing through and creating, whether we feel “inspired” or not.

It comes across as a bit of a self-help book at first, but it really does feel empowering. It was a quick encouragement that, if I’m serious about becoming a pro at anything, it’s something I have to do daily. Writer’s block does not exist in the world of the pro. They write, no matter what. If it sucks, that’s okay. At least they wrote. You can always throw it out and try again tomorrow. It’s breaking through the daily resistance that matters.

This book is too short for me to really want to say much else (I read it start to finish in a couple hours), so I’ll repeat myself: if you are someone who creates, or wants to create, anything on a professional level, at the highest quality, and not once but repeatedly, this is a book you should have in your own library. Go get yourself a copy right now.

As someone who, from time to time, considers himself a writer, it’s nice sometimes to hear someone I respect a great deal address the ins and outs the details of the writing trade.

I’ve read all but one of Donald Miller’s books in the past few years, but A Million Miles in a Thousand Years was a bit of a different journey than the others. Miller’s normal style is to meander through a loosely-related collection of thoughts and ideas as a way to talk about a few epiphanies he’s had about how to live life fully. In Million Miles, he does this, but through a different lens: how to write a good story.

The book starts out with Don meeting with a couple guys who want to turn his biggest seller, Blue Like Jazz, into a movie. So he goes off to, in essence, edit his own life from a disorganized series of thoughts into a story that’s worth putting on the screen.

In this process, he realizes that, in his 30s, single, childless and without many accomplishments aside from writing a couple books, he has not been writing his own story well. Not the one for the movie, but his actual life.

So, as he is explaining to us, the reader, how to tell a good story, we see him growing and evolving into a person who writes a good story of a life. I won’t spoil it, even though it’s only sort of a story, but I will say that the place that Miller came to by the end of this book were an impressive array of accomplishments that are the mini-stories that make up a good story, from start to finish.

As always, Miller is a quick and easy read, but that makes books like his all the more enjoyable. It’s effortless to get right into the ideas he’s expressing without the language or headiness getting in the way. I sped through A Million Miles, soaking up what it means to live a good story: learning to see obstacles as turning points that shouldn’t be shied away from; seeking out and creating challenging goals to push yourself forward when life becomes monotonous; learning the value of taking risks; realizing that the joy of life is found in trials and journeys, not where those trials and journeys end.

I wouldn’t say this is a book about writers for writers, but it does open up to the basic ideas of story, while reminding us that, in order to enjoy life, we need to engage ourselves in it and actually live.

Sometimes books are not at all about what they seem to be about. Sometimes a book about animals is actually about politics. Sometimes a book about war is actually about the trouble of bureaucracy. And sometimes a book about a boy shipwrecked on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger has less to do with surviving at sea than about faith, religion and humanity.

The only setup I had for Life of Pi — thanks to my girlfriend — was that it was a beautiful story about an Indian zookeeper’s boy caught in a “faith triangle” between Hinduism, Islam and Christianity and his exploration of their relationship. I thought that would be it: an analysis of the three in story form, with all the awkward, funny and beautiful moments that are inevitable to the life of any human exploring the practice of faith.

So you can imagine I was caught a bit off guard when I got a quarter of the way through the book and realized that Pi Patel would be stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger for the majority of the story. And, even when I got comfortable with that, the setup of Pi’s growing up as a practitioner of three faiths seemed all but abandoned in favor of a Yet Another Shipwrecked Story.

As captivating as the story was (I highly recommend it for that alone), I was disappointed at the lack of religious exploration, what with it being a recurring topic for me these days. But I could hardly say it was a disappointing read, just not what I had expected.

And then, with a stroke of genius, Yann Martel closes his story with a quick almost-one-liner that ties up Life of Pi in the most beautiful of packages. I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you, of course. But I will say that you won’t be disappointed.

This is one of those rare books that can be enjoyed on many levels. Everyone will appreciate reading about animals and about a boy’s ability to survive at sea. And the bookworm philosopher will enjoy it for that and its subtle subtext.