Mambo!

So my new system for figuring out which book to read is to head over to my Library Thing page, click on my profile (or look at my random library bot on the side bar of Spacebeer), and get a random listing of my books. The first book listed that I haven't already read, I'm going to take off the shelf and read. This system isn't perfect, as I haven't put all of Josh's books into my Library Thing library, so they won't ever show up. And, honestly, if its a book I really don't feel like reading, I'll probably skip it.

Luckily, the first book that came up in this new system was one that I did actually want to read, even though I must have bought it ten years ago and haven't ever picked it up: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. I had seen the 1992 movie Mambo Kings with Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante, and remembered thinking it was okay but not super great. I liked all the music stuff in it, and I liked that Desi Arnaz, Jr. played his dad, but the story didn't really stick with me. Maybe that was one of the reasons that I resisted picking up the book. This is, however, another case where the book is awesome and the movie is so-so.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, but structure of the book has us sitting up in a cheap hotel room with Cesar, the older of the two Castillo brothers who came to New York from Cuba to make it as musicians in the 1940s. It is the 1980s now, and he is getting old, in poor health, and the doctors said he would die if he continues to drink. Rather than waste away, he decides to get really drunk until he dies while listening to the old mambo records that he recorded with his brother and the rest of his band, The Mambo Kings, in the 1950s and 60s. I generally don't know that much about Cuba, Mambo or New York in the 1950s, but this book really took me into that world. The structure of the book was well defined into this last night of Cesar's life, but his memories take you back and forth from his childhood to the present. Not in a corny way, though, in a flowing sort of thoughtful way.

It kind of makes me want to watch the movie again, more to see the bandleaders and the mambo greats and kind of flesh out the sound of the book than for the actual plot.

I'm trying to remember where I bought this book, and I can't figure it out from the markings. It apparantly cost $1.19. The front page is incribed "To Shirl from L" and on the very back page someone wrote "avuncular" and "internecine (strife)." I guess Shirl didn't know what avuncular meant....

Random book generator choice number one: A success!