Books Thirty Five, Thirty Six, and Thirty Seven - The Red Queen, Fear and Trembling, and Everything is Illuminated

It's been a long time since I updated, mostly since I've spent the last two months of my life in a whirlwind of traveling and haven't had a lot of time to sit down and devour a good book. Since the next three months of my life are shaping up in much the same way, I doubt I'll be updating frequently. I'm planning on reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy while backpacking (appropriate after leaving New Zealand, I think), so hopefully I finish and I'll post about that after it's done. Unfortunately, a lot of these books I read a while ago, so there will be short thoughts on each of them, but I really did want to get caught up. Here we go!


The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble

This was an interesting book with an interesting premise, and I read most of it on a roof (yeahhh!). The first half of the story are the memories of a Korean crown princess during her reign in a time of great change and uncertainty for her country, and the second half is about a modern scholar discovering this memoir, being absorbed it it, and how it affects her life at a conference she happens to be attending in Korea. This is a smashing idea for a novel, but I don't think it quite gets pulled off. I was way more interested in the story of the princess and thought that could have stood alone as a novel - there were many really fascinating aspects of her story, including the role of women in the society and the insanity of class and social warfare among the elite, but really her story ended up being one of strength and perseverance, if not for the most traditional of reasons. The story of Babs, the scholar, was way less interesting to me and kind of clouded over the power of the first half of the novel. Way to much academic posturing, role of the single important women in the twenty-first century, blah blah...I'm just sick of reading the same things over and over again about the role of women in academia, or academia in general. Blame that on me recently finishing my degree, but I was not into it, and the end of the novel is just downright strange - I guess you could find a thread of continuity if you really looked, but overall I thought the novel just didn't fit together.

In summary: First part excellent historical narrative, downhill from there....also, I do not want to be a crown princess in Korea.

Book Thirty Six - Fear and Trembling, Amelie Nothomb

This is the book I read right after the Red Queen, and I was interested to find the role of women in cultural oppression being discussed again. Unfortunately, that's the only thing I was interested in in this strange, strange book. Maybe it's a cultural barrier or maybe I just ain't that type of girl, but reading about the female narrator being forced to perform menial labor over and over (cleaning bathrooms, sleeping in garbage, sharpening pencils) just to say she worked at a Japanese company for a year is completely unrelatable for me. I guess the novel is trying to say that there's a passive and active kind of standing up for yourself, but I thought the things the narrator and her female boss were subjugated to were humiliating, not character building. The most interesting part of the novel by far for me was the brief discussion of the role of women in Japanese society, and how full of contradictions it is. The author concludes, in quite a blase matter, that is is a miracle that more Japanese women don't kill themselves. Strange, strange book....I really hope the culture of Japan is not as terrible as it is portrayed here.

In summary: Thank god I'm American?

Book Thirty-Seven: Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

This book has been a cult classic for years, and now I can see why. It's just deliciously weird enough, real enough, funny enough, and strange enough to appeal to a lot of my generation, and I'm not gonna lie - I enjoyed it a lot as well. My friend and I traded off reading this while we were on a seven day backcountry hike, and after reading some of the stuff in this novel, missing friends and wet socks didn't seem like such important issues. I thought the novel got a little too clever and a little too out there for its own good in some places - for instances, most of the sequences with Brod were way too melodramatic for me - but there were some scenes that took my breath away. For instance, when the Slouchers are reading the Book of Dreams....I think I just sat there stunned after reading some of them. Such short, brilliant pieces of writing - I think they were my favorite parts of the novel. I also loved Alex's broken English and his entire story, which starts off just being comical and light and without you really realizing it ends up being about the humanity in all of us, and the heartbreak. There are a lot of intersecting pieces of this book, and while I'm not sure they quite fit together perfectly, it does leave you with a huge, huge emotional impact, which for me is the mark of a great book. My friend and I both finished the book on different nights (in two different backcountry huts in the middle of the woods) and we were both just floored with emotion, especially since my friend happens to be Jewish. I'm pretty sure I just sat in a meditative funk for the rest of the night after reading the ending, which wasn't too fun for the other four people I was sharing the hut with. Either way, a chilling book, a strange book, and well worth the read.

In summary: Not exactly a feel-good book, but cuts right to the soul, and will leave you feeling like you just got a cold bucket of water dumped over your head. Pretty great, overall.

Book Thirty Four- The Mysteries of Udolpho

This book was written in 1794, is 672 pages long, and features a heroine that cries a lot and faints even more. That being said, wanna hear something shocking? I really, really liked this book.

Okay, to be sure, it started out a bit slow. The book begins with the very picture of a tranquil family - Monsieur St. Aubert, his demure wife, and his blushing, innocent daughter Emily. This is a family that enjoys the music of the lute, long strolls in the woods, and sudden bursts of poetry composition. They are, of course, as happy as can be, and it's really quite boring. But luckily the plot begins to zip right along - Emily loses not one, but two parents, goes on a journey through France, meets a dashing young Chevalier, dodges a couple marriage proposals, gets kidnapped to Italy, is held in a mysterious, haunted castle with a band of ruffians, and discovers the secrets of her family's past. Oh, and did I mention she faints a lot? She also really loves to repose. I've started saying repose after reading this book, and now my flatmates think I'm crazy. Blame the eighteenth century fiction, I say!

I took me awhile to get past the language in this book, first off, and it is a bit off-putting to have a heroine that's constantly bursting into tears at the mere thought of her lost love. But all that being said, Emily really is a brave girl, especially for the time period, and she ends up learning how to handle herself quite well. I think one of the points Radcliff was trying to make with this book was "Control your passions, be levelheaded, act demurely," but what I got out of it was, "No one's gonna stick up for you, so it's time to grow up and make the hard decisions the best you can." Not a bad theme, I'd say. I mean, most of the book is about the epic romance between Emily and Valancourt, and of the two of them, he's more of the hysterical princess, always babbling about running off and forever parting and the shade of love being pulled over his eyes....the reversal of gender roles is kind of refreshing. I may have started off scoffing at Emily, but after we had traveled almost seven hundred pages together, I started to feel almost like we were....friends, I guess? Don't judge me, I know I'm a book nerd. It's just that the book is so focused on Emily's trials and inner conflicts that I ended up feeling like I really got to know her, and liked her better for it. I think that's the mark of a good author, which Radcliff has certainly proven herself to be.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this book was the beautiful descriptions of nature. You'd think that after the seventh time she had described a sunset sinking into the distant Pyrenees, it would start to get old. Maybe I'm just a hopeless nature lover, but it didn't feel stale to me, and her language was so evocative and lovely - people just don't write like that anymore. It reminds me of when we were all in English class in like middle school and first learned what imagery was, and had to write all sorts of nonsense about the "shimmery, sparkling blue water" and such. Well, that's bad imagery. This is good imagery - a passage where Emily is on the ramparts of Udolpho watching a lightning storm.

"Sometimes, a cloud opened its light upon a distant mountain, and, while the sudden splendour illumined all its recesses of rock and wood, the rest of the scene remained in deep shadow; at others, partial features of the castle were revealed by the glimpse -- the ancient arch leading to the east rampart, the turrent above, or the fortifications beyond, and then, perhaps, the whole edifice with all its towers, its dark massy walls and pointed casements would appear, and vanish in an instant."

There is a very small moment that I also really connected with. Near the end of the book, the Lady Blanche is looking out the window of her chateau at the first ocean sunset she's ever seen. Blanche had spent the better part of the past few years locked in a convent, but as she gazes out at the sun over the water, she feels closer to God than any time she spent with the nuns, and wonders how people could think to find Him in anything other than nature. Quite pantheistic for the eighteenth century.

I've got one last thing to address - the spooky parts of the story, of course! The back cover of the copy I have explains that Radcliff was an inspiration to everyone from Poe to Sade, and all the creepy hauntings and inexplicable events she has included within the book were some of the precursors to modern horror stories. I love a ghost story as much as anyone, so I was a little disappointed when Radcliff appeared to be frantically tying up loose ends in the last thirty pages or so, including logical explanations for all the hauntings and disappearances within the castles. I would have loved for a few unsolved mysteries to stay in there to keep on puzzling the readers, but you can't have everything, and given that this book was probably intended for young ladies, it wouldn't do to frighten them.

In summary: A surprisingly engaging and beautiful book about fortitude and perseverance. I would love to read this my children, if my children could understand words like "tempest" and "lamentation". I can dream, right?

Books Thirty-Two and Thirty-Three: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Oh WOW I definitely read both of these books at the cabin a few months ago, totally forgot about them, and remembered only when my genetics professor mentioned Alice in class today. So I'm two books further along than I though! Unfortunately I have two essays due and I don't really remember what I wanted to say about these books, only that they were

1) beautifully illustrated
2) something I would read to my children
3) extremely freaking strange.

Also, Alice comes off way snarkier in the books than in the movies. Okay, I realize this was a wimpy post, so have a clip from the movie to make up for it. I just love the part where the Walrus just strolls into the water with the cigar. Although I'm pretty sure this used to make me cry as a child, which might explain my vegetarianism now...though I do still eat shellfish. Hmmm.

Book Thirty-One: The War of the Worlds

My, that is a pretty cover. Alright, The War of the Worlds! I read the majority of this book while eating french fries in a lodge on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Since this is kind of an apocalyptic  book, I spent a lot of my time wondering what I would do if there was to be some sort of alien invasion right then and there. Would I stay on top of the mountain? Climb down? Steal all the french fries?

I didn't really know what to expect going into this book. I, like pretty much everyone of my generation, have seen the Tom Cruise version of this story and been kind of traumatized by it, but this didn't feel quite as scary. Probably all the quaint old-timey British language and sheer politeness of the narrator. Instead of, "Oh, god, those aliens just totally massacred a bunch of people and there's bodies everywhere HOLY SHIT," it was kind of like, "Oh, dear, the aliens seem to be causing quite a lot of destruction and I do feel most concerned about it."

What was also confusing about this book was the fact that my new university's library only had the critical edition with commentary by some kind of crazy philosophy dude, who kept inserting really long footnotes deconstructing the dichotomy of the everday-ism with the relative socialistic outcome of the alien invasion and just hating on the narrator all over the place for wanting things like a cup of tea and his wife. Kind of made reading distracting, mostly because I didn't give two hoots about apparently the deep social commentary on the futility of our pretense of civilization. I hate when they take books and rattle them around so thoroughly that the whole original story falls through. Yes, I'm sure Wells was trying to make some sort of commentary about how much we take for granted and how civilized we think we are, and I am positive he was making a not-so-subtle commentary about colonialism, but it's still a story about Martians invading earth with giant stilt machines. I don't think we should lose sight of that bit, because that's pretty awesome. 

Overall, I was pretty impressed by the scientific knowledge Wells showed throughout the book, given that it was written hundreds of years ago, and I thought that above-mentioned colonialism themes were really well done and thoughtful- especially when the narrator was putting himself in the Martian's shoes and realizing that they probably weren't being intentionally cruel, they just didn't even consider that the beings they were destroying were intelligent in their own way and perhaps wanted to keep on living. I kind of saw the ending coming due the Tom Cruise movie, but despite Snooty Footnoter saying that it was a "terribly weak ending", I think it's realistic. I mean, it's sci-fi. At least he got his science right.

In summary: A really entertaining little story that is guaranteed to scar the children, with some strong underlying messages. Just don't get the critical commentary. 

Book Thirty - Everything You Need

I have one thing to say to the main characters of this book, and I feel that it can best be expressed through interpretive song and dance:

Jesus Christ. You could drown in the self-pity in this book. There are entire chapters - MANY of those chapters - where the characters do nothing but sit and think about how miserable they are, how terrible their lives are, where they went wrong, when it will all be over, all the mistakes they've made, etc. etc. I am recently arrived in New Zealand and having a blast, but every time I picked up this book it killed any happy feeling I had going and then gave me another thirty pages of sad, dripping prose. This is book thirty on the list, and while I have honestly suffered during some of these, I've always been able to finish the novel. This one, I couldn't. I stopped at around 300 pages in when Nathan and his secret daughter have (yet another) stupid, silly argument which I thought would be resolved quickly. Then I turned the page and found out that the author had decided to skip a year in the narrative, a year in which the two main characters hadn't spoken a word to each other. And they live on an island together. An island which has a total population of nine people. For a year. I hate to put down books halfway, but I literally could not go on with this one. 

Brief plot rundown before I dive in here: The book centers on two characters, Nathan Staples, a successful author, and a young writer named Mary Lamb. Little known to Mary, Nathan is actually her secret father who hasn't seen her since she was a child, but they are thrown back together when Mary is accepted into the Lighthouse, a reclusive community of writers who live in a tiny, stormy island. Of course, Nathan also lives there and is her mentor, but is too chicken to tell her that he's her dad, so they just akwardly dance around each other and mope about the depression that is life. For hundreds of pages.

Some positive stuff: I actually started off really liking this one. I loved the character of Mary pre-island, the struggles of growing up, leaving home, the cute boy who wants to lick your ear, etc. I liked Mary pre-island a lot. Of course, that all got ruined when she moved there and about 90% of her dialogue became some form of "Fuck you, Nathan!". Although I don't think this particular author can string together a plotline to save her life, she does know her prose, and she had some beautiful turns of phrase that reminded me of the last book I read, the Sea. This is a weird thing to say, but her descriptions of Nathan's dog were particularly spot on and lovely, probably just because I miss my own dog so much right now. 

Onto the bad: This book went nowhere. There was no narrative thread. There was just endless misery without any chink of bright light to pull it together. And it was so melodramatic. Random indecent exposure from elderly woman and child murders and cheap plot devices that took us nowhere...it never ended. Every single gesture or careless word warranted an entire paragraph about life and mortality and God and sex, which believe me, got kind of monotonous after awhile. Also, I found the whole premise of the book kind of ridiculous; why would any girl in the prime of her life willingly go spend nine years on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere to try to write better? Girl, I don't know who forgot to tell you, but writing and living kind of go hand in hand, and being miserable on an island all day isn't living.

Oh, man, I could go on forever. I literally wanted to reach into the pages and strangle Nathan at some points, and Mary as well. I cannot believe that this book was so well received. Don't get me wrong, I don't think books should be all sunshine and rainbows all the time - I mean, I love Steppenwolf, and poor Harry is just about the most miserable son of a bitch on the planet. But even though you can't really say Steppenwolf has a happy ending, at least it has a hint of joie de vivre, a light at the end of the tunnel, a point. This book? Nada.

In Summary: If you're looking for a novel that will convince you that life is an endless misery, a torment that cannot be escaped, without a hint of bravery or love or hope involved, look no further, my friend - this is the book for you.

Book Twenty Nine - The Sea

Jesus, what is it with me and picking all the books about elderly men confronting their mortality? Seriously! Is it the List's fault? Was the List compiled by an elderly man confronting his mortality? If I have to read about someone's legacy one more time I am going to throw the book across the room.

That being said, this book wasn't as terrible as the other two. Banville sure knows his way around words; his prose is beautiful and at times caused me to re-read sentences and passages over and over again, just to appreciate the language. The parts about the main character's wife dying are really poignant and struck a true chord for me. Dying, after all, isn't all about the moment of death - sometime it's a long, slow process where you don't know quite how to behave. As Banville nicely points out, death can be tragic and terrible, but death can also be awkward, and that's something the book deals with quite deftly. However, the whole story with the Graces feels way of place for me. It makes sense that the main character should be reminiscing about them, given that he's returned to the scene of the crime, as it were, but I wasn't sure what the reader was supposed to get out of his memories. Wasted life? The suddenness of death? I thought pretty early on that he was building to some kind of crazy twist with that story, and when it came, I was disappointed. The conclusion felt simultaneous contrived and underdone, and I gotta say, if I was supposed to feel a shred of emotion about it, Banville's gonna have to be a bit more original.

A couple other things: I don't know if it's deliberate on Banville's part of a reflection of his own sensibilities, but the main character does not understand women in the slightest. His treatment and thoughts about his own daughter, Chloe Grace, and Rose are all full of errors in judgement and gross mischaracterizations, and the fact that any of them will even associate with him is kind of remarkable. I think it has to be on purpose - otherwise, I'd be really concerned for Banville as a human being. Secondly, I did really like the undertone of malice throughout the book, especially when the Graces were concerned. The picnic scene especially hit that home for me; I mean, what could be more innocent than a family picnic by the seaside? But the way he writes it, every the most innocent of actions are full of hidden intent and foreshadowing, and in the end, it's a sense of uneasiness that prevails, not a sense of joy. 

In Summary: A hit and miss book that manages to be almost painfully evocative at some points and pointless in others, but I would say it's worth a read for the prose alone.

Book Twenty Eight - Cloud Atlas

I've read this book about a million times, but it was on the list and I needed something to comfort me on a thirteen hour plane ride to New Zealand, so this seemed the obvious choice. This book is definitely in my top three - I can't pinpoint the exact ranking, it's way too hard. This novel is just transcendent. David Mitchell must have made a deal with the devil or something, because no one should be this good. I love all his other books almost as much, but this was my first introduction to him, and in my opinion, it's still his masterpiece. 

Cloud Atlas is a novel told by six different people in in six different places, spanning from the 1700's to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. If this sounds like a cheap plot trick to you, it is most definitely not. Every single character he writes is unique and interesting and deserves their own freaking novel, but it's enough just to get the taste. The stylistic differences between sections are so pronounced that the story might suffer from disconnect if it was in the hands of a lesser author, but Mitchell ties them all together masterfully. Each novella deals with the themes of human cruelty and human freedom, and way history repeats itself endlessly through the centuries. The scope of this book aims really high, but luckily, Mitchell hits the mark. Some of the parts are hard to read (Timothy Cavendish, jesus, I felt like I was trying to read egyptian at some points), and some seem to drag on (Zachry, for example) but in the end you will put down this book and feel like you've pulled aside the veil of history and gotten a glimpse of a staggering pattern that stretches across the centuries. It really is a beautiful book, and I can't speak more highly of it. My biggest complaint is that I want entire novels - series of novels, even - about Robert Frobisher and Somni, but alas, this book will have to do. 

One last thing about the book: This is one of those books that is so varied and rich that you can't help but notice new things with every re-reading, or be struck by different passages. This time, the passage where Robert is trying to find his brother's grave and thinking about the young soldiers under the earth hit me like a punch to the gut. "Another war is always coming, Robert." 

In other news, apparently they are making a movie of this book?! I am cautiously optimistic...I just don't see how they can do all six stories justice in under two hours, but I'll reserve judgement until I see it. My opinions are split on books-to-movies...Lord of the Rings improved the books, I think (but of course, I'm only talking about the extended editions) but I was forever saddened to see the mess they made of the Golden Compass. Tom Hanks is already in it, so that's promising! I can't wait to see how this goes. 

In Summary: "'He who must do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!'

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"