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?"

Book Twenty-Seven: The Turn of the Screw

Short one today, because I don't have a lot to say about this book. It's so popular I expected a lot more from it, but frankly I was totally underwhelmed. Perhaps a twenty-first century reader who has access to CGI, movies, and the internet as a source of ghost stories can't really appreciate the subtitles of a good old fashioned novel, but I don't think that's the case here. I've read stories that have truly scared me (see House of Leaves) but this sure as hell isn't one of them.

The story is simple: A governess is hired to care for two children at a gloomy old country estate by the children's uncle, who resides in London. The children, Flora and Miles, appear to be perfect angels and everyone gets along famously, but the governess is troubled by a letter from Mile's school which expels him without explanation. Since the boy is so perfect, the governess can't see any reason why this would be, and starts having long, semi-hysterical trains of thought about this disquieting fact. Then she starts to see two ghostly figures appearing around the grounds - those of Quint and Mrs. Jessel, two of the former caretakers for the children who are now dead. Both appear to the governess to be quite evil, and have taken the children under their spell, though neither will admit it. Then comes a very tense battle of wills between the children and the governess, both of who are aware of the ghosts and both of whom are determined to pretend like nothing is happening.

This 1001 book madness has done a lot to alleviate the hatred of "old books" I had, and so far I've read some pretty great books from around this time period. Unfortunately, this book brought that all right back. Almost nothing happens, and the most dramatic and evocative parts of the novel are masked by weird, lengthy, overly explained narratives by the governess. The language in this book was so fussy it was almost foreign, and it took me a much longer time to read than it should have because I though it was so weird - not just old fashioned, but constructed strangely. A few sentences of strange description would happen, and then some action that would be completely skipped over, and then more sentences of the governess completely losing her head about some innocent remark Miles had said and inwardly obsessing over it for twenty pages. The creepy children motif has a lot of potential, and that's the most eerie part of the book, but it never becomes scary. I'm not ashamed to admit that probably the only TV show I watch is Supernatural, and even though they've done the creepy/evil child thing to death, it's still scarier than this book. Oh, well. I think this one's a pass for me.


In summary: Not scared, not entertained, and definitely not satisfied.

Book Twenty Six- Cryptonomicon

The first thing I noticed about this book was that it was 920 pages long. The second was that the description on the inside flap strongly evoked a cheap thriller novel. Blah blah Nazis. Blah blah super secret code. Blah blah heroic but misunderstood protagonist. Great, I thought. Now I have to blunder through 920 pages of this psudeo-science, gun-toting, history-abusing nightmare.

And so I did. And you know what? It was PHENOMENAL.

Oh my GOD. This book. This book! I say that a lot, but I mean it this time. I had dreams about this book. I tore through that last 500 pages like the house was burning down. It was just so new and fresh and exciting and hilarious and the characters are brilliant. Everything is brilliant. You, Mr. Stephenson, are brilliant.

Okay, guess I'd better take a breath here and talk about what actually goes on, huh? This is a book about cryptology, the science of codebreaking, but it also manage to be a book about WWII, math theory, the Internet, and modern Asian economies all once. There are approximately four main characters who all are related/meet/have tried to kill the others in some way.

The first is a man named Lawrence Waterhouse, a brilliant but rather hapless young American. After his glockenspiel catches on fire at Pearl Harbor, he is transferred to a cryptology position, and when he starts to effortlessly decode everything they put in front of him, they move him to Bletchly Park in England to assist the code-breaking effort there. His main job is to keep it a secret from the Nazis that their unbreakable Enigma code is not so unbreakable. His other job seems to be going on long rants about cryptology as applicable to bike wheels and masturbation.

The second is Lawrence's grandson, Randy Waterhouse, who is a brilliant computer engineer running out of a failed relationship and right into a somewhat shady business venture in Southeast Asia that entails creating a data haven. He likes Captain Crunch and beards, and is often very confused about everything that is not a computer, including females.

The third is Goto Dengo, a Nipponese (Japanese) solider in WWII who escapes from death in several remarkable ways, teaches judo to our fourth major character, and eventually ends up in the middle of the jungle digging a very mysterious, very intricate structure for the Nipponese government that becomes quite important later.

The fourth character, Bobby Shaftoe, is a raging badass and about a million different kinds of awesome. He's a Sergeant in the Marines during WWII, but after he's put on special assignment to Detachment 2072, he spends a lot of time crashing planes in the North African desert, skiing across Norway, befriending German U-boat pilots, drinking, sleeping around, and killing people left and right. I want to marry this man.

This book is intense. Stephenson is prone to giving five or six page long descriptions of the mathematical formulas he's employing, which I can only understand half of, and lots of other descriptions of computer/Internet technology, which I understand almost none of. Still, this book is incredibly informative and thought-provoking, never mind being entertaining as hell. I gotta say, at some points I got really bored of Randy's storyline and wanted to go back to the giant hilarious tragic mess that was WWII, but it all worked out alright at the end (except for the conclusion to the Andrew Loeb storyline, what the fuck?). I don't think I'll be re-reading this for about fifteen years, but it's got everything. I actually had an intelligent conversation about code breaking with my cousin who has a joint major in math and physics after reading this book. I feel powerful. And these characters, my god; if you don't have a burning desire to meet some or all of them by the end of this book, something is seriously wrong with you.

Okay, I'll leave you with one last thing, since it made me laugh so hard I cried. It's a conversation between a major and one of my new favorite characters of all time, Bobby Motherfucking Shaftoe:

"The major goes back to the report. 'This Reagan fellow says that you also repeatedly made disparaging comments about General MacArthur.'

'Sir, yes, sir! He is a son of a bitch who hates the Corps, sir! He is trying to get us all killed, sir!'"

Read the book, then you will get why this is hilarious.

In Summary: This has been called the ultimate math/computer science nerd book. I am a literary/religion/plant nerd, and I still found it unspeakably incredibly. I now want to read everything Neal Stephenson has ever written, and I probably will.

Books Twenty-Four and Twenty-Five: The Monk and Slow Man

Book Twenty Four: The Monk, Matthew Lewis

First off, I just really gotta say I love the cover art for both of these books, the Monk especially. If you'll notice, it looks a lot like a devil mask with some crazy eyebrows. I like Slow Man's too - so simple and powerful - but I think this blog is about books, not their covers. So let's talk about this batty historical religious romance!

I actually started this book last time I was home, but this is not a slender volume and I only got about a third of the way through, at which point all the complicated romances were just getting started. There are essentially three different storylines in this novel, which constantly intersect.

The first deals with Ambrosio, a perfectly devout and pious monk whose fiery speeches about damnation have all of Spain trembling in their britches. Ambrosio, prideful and cocky, is stunned to discover that one of his favorite fellow monks, Rosario, is actually a woman named Matilda! Obviously, having a women in the abbey was a big no-no in the 18th century, but Matilda convinces Ambrosio to let her stay through a lot of crying and pleading and then, eventually,  her womanly wiles. Ambrosio, after putting up barely a fight at all, becomes inflamed by her golden hair and body (the word bosom gets thrown around a lot in this book) and, forgetting his vows, sinks into passion.

The second deals with Don Raymond, a man of very high rank in his native Spain. Deciding that Spain is too boring for his tastes, he decides to travel to Germany, where he encounters bandits, sleeping powder, bleeding nun ghosts, and the wandering Jew. Most importantly, he meets a young girl called Agnes and falls head over heels in love with her. Unfortunately for Raymond, Agnes is destined to take the veil, and is forced into the nunnery of St. Clare before Raymond can interfere. However, a little bribery and a willing gardener later, Agnes and Raymond manage to meet each other and whoops! - things get a little out of hand. So Agnes is now a pregnant nun and Raymond is still trying to get her out, and then this particular plotline becomes very complicated.

The third (and final) romance deals with Lorezno, sister to the unfortunate Agnes and buddy to Don Raymond. Lorezno has his heart fixed another young, nubile teenager- Antonia, whom he ironically meets at one of Ambrosio's masses.  However, there's all sorts of dither about money and politics that are preventing them from getting married, and in the meantime, the newly sinful Ambrosio happens to run across Antonia and immediately wants to sully her innocence, so to speak. Since he's still a monk, this is a bit difficult to achieve, but that's when Lucifer comes in (I'm not even kidding).

This book! I'm kind of madly fascinated by it. The beginning started off a bit dry and slow for me but the ending was SPECTACULAR and I'm kind of getting into this historical drama stuff! I just want to know what it was about monasteries and nunneries that was getting these novelists all charged up. The last two books I've read about religious orders have been full of illicit sex, torture, and murder. Maybe what actually was going on in a nunnery was so boring it was fun to imagine them becoming undone? I think politicians are kind of like the modern day monks - we like to imagine they're all pure and boring, but when it turns out there is a scandal we all start frothing at the mouths to hear about it (this being written during the whole debacle with Anthony Weiner).

Anyway, I really liked this story in the end. There were a lot of fun mishaps and misunderstandings and religious overtones and scandals to keep me interested, plus some pretty fun characters to boot. Don Raymond I could take or leave (he seems to spend a lot of time in bed crying), but Elvira is a pretty great example of a single mom kicking ass and taking names, and Agnes doesn't just dissolve into pieces when she's put in a hard situation. Even Matilda, evil schemer that she is, was fascinating to read about - it's remarkable how quickly and easily she could undo years of religious training with only a few choice words (and some bare skin).

 In the end, the story that stuck with me most was that of Ambrosio. The reader is very aware that he's going down the wrong path for most of the both, and the longer he listens to Matilda the worse acts he's ready to commit. I'm going to spoil everyone here, but proceeding from innocence to sex to assault to rape to murder is kind of a downward spiral. What I love best about the ending and his story is that Lucifer actually gives him a chance to repent, a chance to be right with God, but in the end he's too afraid to die and is damned eternally. Typically for an 18th century novel, it's got to have a moral message, and the message is this; secret evils don't stay secret for long, and only through repentance - not further evil - can salvation be found.

In Summary: Wikipedia tells me this book was written before Lewis was 20 years old and in 10 weeks. That's freaking incredible. This book is a messy, sexy, emotional ride, and though it might take you a little while to finish it, it's worth it for the ending.

Book Twenty Five: Slow Man, J.M Coetzee

This book starts out with a bang - Paul Rayment, a 60-something riding his bike down a busy street, is suddenly hit by a car and ends up losing the lower part of his leg. Unfortunately, that's the most action we're gonna get for the remaining 250 pages. Paul spends the next few weeks moping around his apartment, but with the introduction of Marijana, his new Croatian day nurse, his days start looking up. Paul falls in love with Marijana, and by extension her son Drago (awesome, awesome name), but it's a strange kind of love. He's got almost no desire to act upon it and nowhere to put it, so he lives with it circling around in his chest, driving him quietly insane. A final twist to the story is the introduction of the novelist Elizabeth Costello, who follows Paul around and seems to know everything about him. It finally comes out that Paul is being used as a character in Elizabeth's latest book, though he seems to be a very uncooperative one and won't proceed with the correct story arc, or the correct love.

This is a classic example of a book I think I am still too young for. Every character in this book, Marijana's children excepted, is over the age of 40, and a lot of the novel has to do with growing older, coming to terms with your legacy, and deciding in what manner to live out the rest of your days. This is not something I can really relate to, and after Paul's third internal monologue about his old age and his uselessness, I started to get a little bored. I was intrigued by the romance between Paul and Marijana, but it never really got off the ground (which was realistic, I guess), and in the end I didn't really feel like anything had significantly changed. The introduction of Elizabeth Costello put a new twist on the novel - I love it when authors break down the fourth wall and confront their characters - but what she was accusing Paul of was being boring, undriven, and overall slow, and I can't say I disagree with her. This book reminds me a lot of Saturday, which was also about a sixty something reminiscing about his life, and I have the same problem with both books - less internal dialogue, more action, please.

That being said, I love Coetzee's writing - he has these turns of phrase that are just beautiful and imagery that just sings off the pages. I remember once in the hospital scene he describes Paul as waking up in a "cocoon of dead air" and his descriptions of Drago as "angel-touched" and slightly other-wordly are just beautiful, really. There's no denying that Coetzee is a brilliant writer, but this novel just didn't really do it for me in the end.

In Summary: This is not Coetzee's best novel, but maybe I'll give it another go forty years from now and see if anything changes. Who knows - by then I could be ready to ruminate slowly on my life and my quiet loves, and have no itch for further passion. But somehow, I doubt it.

Book Twenty-Three - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I'm just gonna throw out the bullet points today since I'm moving back home tomorrow and I need to go steal boxes out of a dumpster! So excited. My room is very bare and dusty. Also, I have reached the conclusion that I have too many books. (But I always feel this way when I have to carry them down stairs, hahah)

OKAY!

-I read this book in school, like every other American teenager ever. I remember it being a lot more boring then.

-The beginning when he's being civilized and they form the gang of bandits? My roommate ran into the kitchen all confused because I was laughing hysterically. She tells me I sounded like a crazy person.

-The descriptions of nature and the river and the night are so, so beautiful. Mark Twain really manages to put you right in the middle of the scene without being heavyhanded or cliched. Another thing I liked is that throughout everything there is still a very strong sense of Huck - the book never forget that its narrator is still a kid, clever as that kid may be.

-I have such a strong desire to punch Tom Sawyer in the face. No, I won't apologize, even if he is hilarious.

-This is the perfect book to read right before summer. There's such a sense of freedom to it, of unexplored possibilities and just the easiness of walking away from everything and drifting....not the best book to read when you're trying to finish up your undergraduate career, and that's all I'm gonna say about that.

-I don't wanna talk about the racism thing too much cause that's practically ALL we talked about when we read this in high school, but I will say that Huck deciding to go to hell to save Jim? That was pretty great.

-Not gonna lie, I started researching canoe trips down the Mississippi after this. Maybe one day...

Overall: In my mind, classic usually means boring. But this book is clever and sharp-edged and thoughtful in a way the you don't usually see. Also, I'm sort of in love with Huck.

Book Twenty Two: House of Leaves

Well, it took me almost three months to re-read this book, and anyone who's read it will understand why. This is about the farthest thing from a beach read I can imagine. House of Leaves is a story within a story within a story, but the stories are all kind of the same, and in the end you can't pick out the fact from the fiction. I'm having a really hard time even thinking of what to say about it. This is more than a book - it's a slice of something bigger and darker then just a story you can shelve in the fiction section of your local library.

The primary story in this book is a retelling and academic analysis of a film that doesn't exist; The Navidson Record. This film, made by the Navidson family to record their "settling down" in domestic life, instead begins to capture eerie misalignments within the space of their house. For instance, the first major clue that something is amiss is when the interior length of the house is measured to be 1/4" longer than the exterior length. Like the stirrings of a sleeping beast, the house gradually shifts and settles around the perplexed family, culminating in the appearance of a door in the living room which leads to a strange, black hallway. As the family explores the vast darkness that lies at the center of the house, we see a similar darkness overtaking our narrator and star of the second story, a man named Johnny Truant. Johnny, who has come across the documents detailing the Navidson Record, finds himself consumed by the lure of the house, and eventually loses everything it pursuit of it. But this is far more than just a simple horror story, and everything is much more than it seems.

This is, hands down, the most complicated and fascinating book I've ever read. I hesitate to even call it a book - more like a collection, or a collage. If you're read any of my previous reviews, you know that I have a major love affair with stories that don't have easy solutions, that leave you with more questions than answers. I feel like they're more true to life, somehow - I mean, nothing gets wrapped up in a neat little ball. Real stories are messy - they don't have proper plot progression and carefully planned themes and appropriate endings for everyone involved. Real stories have a thinly veiled chaos to them, and you see that in this book. Despite all the footnotes, the academic posturing, the fake interviews with "professionals" and "critics" who seek to hide the meaning of the story behind citations and terminology, what stays with you after the final page is the sense of deep uneasiness within the book - the sense of fear it leaves within you. It's that fear the pulls Navy and Johnny both down, and it's the same darkness that can't be explained away. It's there, even if we don't see it just yet.

Aside from making me afraid to walk home in the dark, this book also doesn't hesitate to play around with it's own appearance. There are at least five different fonts, entire pages taken up by one word, diagrams, diagonal writing, boxes leading to other pages - the book itself is kind a maze. There's a twenty or so page section where you have to rotate the entire book at least 90 degrees for every page, which got me a lot of funny stares when I was reading. There's also languages aplenty, even ancient Greek and Hebrew, and since some of the quotes remain untranslated, I even got to wipe the dust off my latin dictionary and start translating. It's a fun book to read, when it's not being completely terrifying.

Anyway, please read this book. I can't even begin to talk about it; it defies explanation. You'll just to have to experience it for yourself. It will take you a long time, you will be confused, you will become frustrated when footnotes go on for three pages, you will want to club Johnny over the head, you will desperately wish the Navidson Report was a real movie, and you will wonder if it's all true.

In summary:

"Don't be scared.

Don't be.

(I am.)"

Books Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty One

HEY! I'm alive! I will spare you the diatribe about how my life is constantly madness and just say that I managed to read four books over my recent study break, and then managed to finish Steppenwolf to boot (even though I was reading it in like five page intervals at one point, whoops). So let's jump right in here, shall we....?

Book Seventeen: On Beauty, Zadie Smith

Let me begin by saying I was very skeptical about this book. A few years ago I had started White Teeth, Smith's first book, and had to put it down after the first chapter because I just found it utterly incomprehensible, so full of slang and references and its own cleverness that I could barely make out a story lurking behind all the mess. Well, maybe I'll have to give White Teeth another shot (and I'll have to, it's on THE LIST), because this book blew me away. It was by far one of the most engrossing and straight up interesting novels I've read in a long time; one of those that you literally cannot stop reading. I was at a cabin on the lake with a bunch of my friends and they were bouncing off the walls wanting to ski and ice climb and other assorted awesome things, and even with the prospect of all of that, the thing I wanted to do most was sit on the couch and devour this book. 

Overall, the premise of this book is pretty simple: it's a story about a family. Howard Besley is a British professor of art history now living in suburban Massachusetts with his big-hearted wife Kiki and his three children, Jermone, Zora, and Levi. This is a book that deals with a lot of thorny issues simultaneously - race, sexism, infidelity, identity, privilege, academia, lust (just to name a few) but somehow, the writing doesn't come off heavy handed or preachy. It's a completely believable, human account of these issues with a seamless plot that is original, engaging, and overall, interesting. Even with everything else crammed in there, at the end of the book the thing you remember most is the characters, in all their triumph and weakness.

So I have to write about four other books after this, so I'm only gonna pick my favorite of the themes running throughout the book; academia. Throughout the novel we see Howard, a professor, and Kiki, a nurse, struggling to mesh their two worlds. Kiki is a woman of the world, all about the body and the spirit and feeling, while Howard lives completely in his head and subjects his every thought to a slew of rationalizations and deconstructions. A great example of this essential argument here is about art itself. In the Besley's house, Howard, the professor of art history, gets to choose the art, and one hard and fast rule prevails; no portraits. The explanation for this is long and wordy, full of allusions to historians and theories and other crazy academic posturing. Kiki puts up with this, but we see the inherent differences between her and her husband when she goes over a friend's house and falls in love with a portrait the other woman owns. I can't remember the exact dialogue, but when she's asked about why she likes it, she says she just thinks it's beautiful. For Howard, you can't just "like" art because it's "beautiful" - you need a thirty page paper throughly deconstructing everything, and in the end you need to conclude that's it's imperfect and blah blah blah. I thought that interaction and everything else written in a similar vein about the utter insanity that is academia was spot on (though this may be heavily influenced by the current frustration I'm feeling after being trapped in it for so goddam long). I think the very best passage in the book dealing with this is a very short account told from the point of view of a young student of Howard's who loves art in a "childish" manner, and commits the great offense of "liking" a piece of art the class is going to discuss. She comes up with a whole list of explanations for why the painting is wonderful, most having to do with the simple human emotion it evokes, and goes to class confident that she'll finally have something to contribute. But when she gets there, she's drowned out in class discussion by roundabout and wordy discussions on this theory and that theory which serve to make everyone sound very smart indeed, but don't even approach the simple and beautiful opinions secretly held by this poor girl. And, in my opinion, therein lies the simplest conflict of the book: which should prevail: thought or emotion?

In summary: I can't even come close to telling you all the reasons this book is BRILLIANT, so you'll just have to read it for yourself. Deep and insightful and utterly, utterly believable, this is one of my new favorite books, and I promise you won't be disappointed. 

Book Eighteen: The Romantics, Pankaj Mishra

When I was writing down the list of books I read over break, I actually forgot I had read this one. Mind you, this is about two weeks later, so if I've already forgotten a book, you know it's not that spectacular. My problem with this book is the same one I've been having with many other books, most recently Never Let Me Go - I'm just bored. Again, the plot has the possibility for great force and drive - there's a young Indian scholar setting off on his own for the first time, dealing with a myriad of adventurous ex-pats, in the middle of tumultuous student unrest, and falling into a passionate affair with a beautiful and troubled Frenchwoman to boot - I mean, that sounds like a plot right out of the new Angelia Jolie movie. But there's just no heat here. From the beginning the main driver of the book is the sexual tension between the main character, Samar, and Catherine, the Frenchwomen, but other than that it's just a lot of talk about books and the heat and the day to day boredom of Samar's life. And guess what? Writing about boredom is boring. Even when the affair takes off, it's just a brief flash of flame in this book and then a lot more pining, reflection, and running off to become a schoolteacher for about eight years. And then, boom! Story over.

There were some good parts of this book - the descriptions of Benaras, for instance, were lovely, and I've always been fascinated by that city, so it was kind of great to read about someone actually living  where ancient and modern India collide. Diana West was a fascinating character - the scene after the party when's she's crying on the stairwell is very powerful - and the commentary on the Westerners trying to "find themselves" in India is thought-provoking indeed. But in the end this story is just too gentle and light for it's own good, and left me with nothing deep enough to stick.

In summary: Again, amazon.com is rife with praises for this books "simplicity and quiet narrative", but I'm a firm believer in the old quote by Kafka - "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." 


Sorry, Mishra - I'm just not feeling the axe this time.


Book Nineteen - The Awakening

I was so worried about this one because it seemed like a fussy old timey romance with a lot of flouncing and petticoats and tea parties and general awfulness, but you know what, I'm just gonna go out and say it. This book is badass. Why, you ask? Let me list the reasons.


1) Book about a female protagonist written by a woman (!!) pre-1900, always a win.


2) Main character Edna is so many kinds of awesome. She's not gonna take any nonsense from anybody. If she wants to go out swimming naked and befriend the antisocial pianist and have grand parties and buy a house, well you better believe she's gonna go right ahead and do that shit, no matter what her boring husband says. And if she wants to engage in the sheer lunacy of going on walks by herself and canceling her social calling hour, well then by Jeeves, she's gonna shock society while she's at it. As one of my good friends would say, in terms of 19th century Southern culture, she is a total baller.


3) Now my allergy to old books has caused me not to be too well versed on the subject, but my roommate who studied this book in school assures me it's one of the earliest and frankest portrayals of female sexuality in literature. As in, girls wanna get it on too, and not always with their misogynistic husbands. Shocking. 


4) Did I mention that Edna was a badass?


Only con: the ending. If you don't want to be spoiled don't read on, but my impression of Edna's character did not see her as the kind of woman to metaphorically throw herself off the cliff once her beau rejects her. Girl should have just cried a little, straightened out her skirts and marched on, if you ask me, but I guess I can't have it all with this book.


Summary: You go, girl.


Book Twenty: The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

Ah, this book has a special place in my heart. I read pretty prolifically even when I was a kid, but I until I was about sixteen I had a general hatred for any book I was forced to read for school. This was pretty understandable, I think, given that the stuff they were making us read were "classics" like Othello and the Odyssey (don't even get me STARTED on my deep and abiding hatred for the Odyssey. I once wrote an entire essay about how big of a dick Odysseus was and Virgil did the grand epic about a thousand times better. End of story.) Anyways, I was generally pretty sick about talking about "coming of age" and "historical narratives" and then, thank blessed God, a miracle occurred. The first good English teacher I had had in about five years assigned us to read this book. 

This book manages to hit a whole list of things I love in modern literature: it's short and packed with visceral imagery and hits you like a boot to the chest. It's gory without trying to shock and thoughtful without being preachy and funny without losing any of its seriousness. I just love O'Brien's writing style so much; it's just so matter-of-fact and accessible, while still packing quite the emotional punch. My little brother, who can count on one hand the number of books he's bothered to read and not just spark-noted, actually liked this book. That right there says something about the genius of O'Brien's writing style. 

Ah, there are so many parts of this book that I love; the part when he's thinking about escaping to Canada, the coed in the jungle, the endless circles in the pickup truck around the lake. I've obviously never been in a war but I feel like I gained some understanding of it by reading this book. I mean, what do all soldiers coming back from war say? It's terrible, too terrible for words, but it's not like that all the time. Sometimes it's boring and sometimes it's funny and sometimes it approaches a high and dreamy kind of beauty that few can understand. The Things They Carried captures all of this and more and brings it to us in book that you can read in a day. 

One last thing: the book is written as if it's a memoir of O'Brien's own time in the war, and only at the end does he reveal that most of what's been recalled there is made up. People in my English class went absolutely apeshit over this. They felt betrayed that the stories they had been reading hadn't actually happened, that O'Brien didn't shoot that young Vietnamese man and that he didn't even have a daughter. I, for one, could not understand what the problem was. I mean, we read fiction all the time and it's not any less powerful because it's made up, because all really good literature, fiction or non-fiction, manages to do the same thing: evoke real emotion in the reader. Does a story lose that power if it's not, technically, "true?" I don't think so. Maybe I didn't mind because at that point I already considered myself a writer and I knew that even if the story you were telling wasn't true, it still could help you understand and could still help you heal. By setting something down in a story you give it order, give it sense, give it meaning. As O'Brien himself says at the end of the book, "I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story."

      

In summary: At times hilarious, terrifying, sad and reflective, this is the book about war that has nothing to do with politics and grand heroic gestures- it's about the humans down there in the mud trying to make sense of it all. Read it, read it, read it. 

Book Twenty One: Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse

THIS BOOK! I LOVE IT SO. I first read this book when I was in high school and a lot of it, pretty much the entire story, got past me. It's remarkable how a few years can change your impression of a story like this. When I first read it I was going through my angsty teenage "fuck society and its pretensions" kind of phrase- you know, writing a lot of very incendiary poetry and disapproving of the cars my parents drove and reading Beat literature and generally feeling superior to everyone in existence. Ah, the teenage years.

Anyways, what I thought was very interesting is that my version of the book contains a short intro by Herman Hesse himself, which he had apparently written to clear up some misconceptions about the message. He was shocked by how many readers- young readers, especially - saw his book as nothing more than an attack on modern society and a depressing tale about its toll on poor old Harry, the troubled saint. I found this hilarious, because that was exactly the read I got on it the first time. Rereading it now, I wonder how I could have ever mistaken the story for any of those things. And you know what? I bet I'll read this a few years down the line and change my opinion again. That's the great thing about re-reading, I guess....we all get older and (supposedly) wiser.

Anyways, Steppenwolf starts as a book about a wretched old man, Harry Haller, generally being miserable. Poor Harry is under the impression that happiness will always elude him because his soul is split in two - the man, Harry, who loves company and society and high-minded ideas, and the wolf of the Steppes, a beast who bares its teeth at all modern comforts and pleasures and would prefer to roam about in the wilds and howl at the moon. Because of the warring nature of his two spirits, Harry is always in torment. Lots of torment. In fact, the whole first half of the book is torment, but don't give up in the face of the endless onslaught of woe, because the book gets so, so much better with the introduction of the lovely Hermine. Hermine is everything Harry is not- young and pretty and full of life and romance, free with herself and not afraid to engage in common pleasure like (gasp) dancing the foxtrot. Harry, who had always thought himself above such things, finds himself drawn into her mysterious world despite himself, and a chink of sunshine manages to enter his dreary life. But Hermine has a secret of her own, and this all culminates in the wildest party you've ever seen or heard about, where all the pieces fall into place.

One of my first new relevations about this book is that it's (not so secretly) Buddhist! Given that I couldn't tell Buddhism from Judaism when I first read that book I guess it's not so surprising that I missed it the first go round, but I'm didn't pay a bunch of money for all those university religious classes for nothing and you can't sneak it by me this time, Hesse. When they mock Harry for mistakenly believing his soul is one, unchanging individual - well, that's pretty much straight out of an intro Buddhism class. Eventually, Harry sees himself for what he really is - an ever changing conglomerate of countless versions of himself which flash in and out of existence and are at their heart no different from the souls of anyone else he knows. Even Hermine and Paulo and Maria are a part of him, the same as him. Escaping of suffering also figures keenly in this book, and as Harry finds out, suffering cannot be escaped by sinking further into it, but only by realizing that everything is transient, and that both earthly suffering and earthly joy pale in comparison to the "laughter of the immortals." I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that Hesse wrote every Westerner's favorite Buddhist text, Siddhartha, but it was kind of fun to discover all of that lurking just out of sight!

Anyways, I love this book. The Magic Theatre sequences are among the most brilliant and wonderful passages of any novel I've ever read. The scenes in All The Girls Are Yours, especially, stick with me long after reading. Harry looks back over his entire life and sees that if he had taken himself a little less seriously and let a little spontaneity and risk enter into his solemn world, he could have experienced hundreds and thousands of joys which he had only dreamt of (plus, had a lot more sex). Harry realizes he has spent his whole life clinging onto glimmers of what he perceived to be deeper meaning, but the immortals and Hermine teach him that even the worst, basest, cheapest parts of life are worth experiencing, and that by always being afraid of living incorrectly, one never lives. As Mozart chides Harry, "...enough of the pathos and death-dealing. It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you."

In summary: Wild and twisted and sensual, this book will start out making you want to never get out of bed. But if you're not laughing at life at the end, then give it a few years and try again. Maybe you'll learn what Harry learns: Life's a bitch, so learn how to dance.

DONE. Off to make some food and study. Next I'm gonna read House of Leaves, which always makes me a little more afraid of the dark. Until next time!

BOOKS FIFTEEN AND SIXTEEN- 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE AND NEVER LET ME GO

So I went on vacation recently and managed to read like four books, but only two that were on THE LIST, and had pretty opposite reactions to them, even though I've read them both once before (I know, I know, I keep re-reading, but I owe the vengeful people at the university library late fees and I would prefer to graduate without them knowing about it,  and yes, this does make me a bad person).

So Book Fifteen: 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I love this book. The only word I can think to sum it up in one word is "rich". You get everything in here, every emotion, tragedy, wonder that life can offer you,  passion and despair and ruin and rebirth and magic carpets and crazy ants and a whole lotta incest. What I love about this book is how most novels only follow one main character for a short time in his or her life - anywhere from one day (like Saturday, ugh) and rarely for an entire lifetime. But here we don't just get to see one lifetime, we get to see generations upon generations of them, how past events influence the present and will continue to influence the future, and how wrapped up families are with each other. You get to see how people change, how destiny changes, but everything still comes circling back to the beginning again. It's a wonderful, wonderful study of what it means to be human in this crazy world.

After reading a good book sometimes I have this burning desire to go online and research everything about it, so that's what I did here. Turns out that the town of Macondo is meant to be a representation of the history of Columbia, starting with it's innocent, idyllic time of independence (founding of the town) and detailing it's eventual corruption (the banana company) and demise (the ants, the storm.) This made the story a hell of a lot more interesting to think back on, and I wish I had been more clear on Columbian history when reading it. I'm beginning to sense that Marquez is another one of those clever bastard writers I like so much.

There's nothing I could say that could sum up everything I loved in this book - I could write for page and pages and still wouldn't come close. The depth of emotion and the variety of events will leave you aching and the final pages feel like a hammer coming down on your head. It's one of those book that you feel robbed when you're done with it. I just had to sit there for a few moments and process everything before I could do anything else.

Few impressions:

-The edition of the book that I got my hands on didn't have a family tree in the front. That, as you might imagine, made reading rather interesting.

-The magic realism! Usually it bothers the hell out of me. I get annoyed when all of a sudden these magical events start popping out of nowhere and nobody says a word. But it works here- it's all a part of the initial innocence of the town, how isolated and unreal and beautiful it is, and when Marquez started whipping out the magic carpets and self-navigating blood trails, I didn't even blink.

-Favorite character by far: Ursula. If I am anything like that woman when I get older, then I will be a happy grandma indeed.

-I didn't get how chilling the massacre was the first time around - I think I was too young to fully understand what Marquez was implying. "Always remember that there were more than three thousand and they were thrown in the sea."

-Mauricio Babilonia's butterflies. I don't know why, but that detail always lingers with me long after the book is done. It's just such a quietly powerful image- this man with rough hands haloed in butterflies.

-He puts himself in his book! YOU ARE SO SNEAKY, GABRIEL. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

In summary: If I can ever, ever in my life write half as powerfully as Marquez, I will consider myself more than accomplished. This book is a masterpiece.

Book Sixteen: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Ah, Never Let Me Go. I remember having such high hopes for you. When I first heard the summary of this book, it was hitting all the right buttons for me. Semi-dystopian alternate universe? Check. Ethically gray area of science? Check. Boarding school shenanigans? Check. Man Booker Prize finalist? Check. I love all those things, and I was ready for a powerhouse of a book, and instead I got this....I don't even know what to call it. It starts off well, and then the story just wilts in front of your eyes.

Now, if you haven't read this book, I'm going to be spoiling you here, so look away. These kids are clones. They are destined to die young as their organs are harvested in forced "donations". They are aware of this and are also fully intelligent, emotional human beings. The idea is great: this story could have easily been an incredibly powerful treatise on human freedom and the struggle for life against forces that want you to lie down on the operating table like a nice little clone while the doctor helps himself to a lung or two. But nothing like that happens. The drama behind this book, the main emotional driver of the story, is a love triangle that can hardly be called passionate, exciting, or even interesting. Our protagonist, Kathy H., is a limp noodle of a person who hardly protests when her (insanely controlling) best friend steals "the love of her life" out from under her nose, and continues to not make a peep about this for oh, about eight years or so. Meanwhile, everyone is happily chatting about art and frolicking in the woods, seemingly very nonplussed about the fact that they have a death sentence above their heads. Yes, yes, they were conditioned to believe there must be no other way, but there are several scenes where Kathy or other characters wonder about the fairness of it all, but there's no fire, there's no sense of self-preservation, except in the one memorable scene with Tommy (who I liked most out of all of them) which Kathy is completely bewildered by. They're like cattle being led to the slaughter. Maybe Ishiguro's trying to make a point about quiet desperation here, but it's very, very quiet indeed.

Anyways, the book started to get a little interesting at the end, with Madame and Miss Emily's speeches. I would like a whole book about those women; they at least seem to have been doing something to stop human beings from being treated like organ farms. Even the end, when Kathy and Tommy finally consummate their age-old love - which, I remind you, was the focus of the entire book - they just have some passionless sex, chat, play some checkers, and then Tommy is killed without a lot of fuss from anyone, especially Kathy. Oh well, these things happen? What?!


In summary: This book is well written and engrossing, but in the end leaves you with nothing worthwhile, no sense of struggle, and no sympathy for characters that should seem very sympathetic indeed. All the books I love best make me feel, but this book only made me feel one thing: frustration.

Edit: Just read some of the amazon.com reviews of this book, which all speak to its mesmerizing "story between the lines" and narrative about "wasted lives." When I read a book, I want a story, not a story that lurks so far between the lines it becomes almost invisible. Sorry, guys - I get what you mean about the wasted lives, but did we really have to read an entire book about Hailsham rumors and silly misunderstandings to get there?

Book Fourteen - Breakfast of Champions

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So I had started this book, gotten almost through with it, and then it apparently fell under my bed and got covered in dust bunnies for about two months. So I picked it up, dusted it off, and finished it on this quiet Sunday night. If you've been reading my previous posts, you know my deep and abiding love for Kurt Vonnegut is as great as my deep and abiding love for Haruki Murakami, and this book just makes me ache for him. He is one of those authors that infuse themselves into their books, and it's impossible to untangle the fictitious story and the reality Vonnegut was grappling with. In my opinion, this is his saddest book, his most personal book, a book written in a crisis. I don't think there's another modern author who can draw back the curtain on modern life and make you feel it's loneliness and absurdity more keenly. After all, who hasn't felt like Lancer, the wretched greyhound, who, "had a very small brain, but...must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made."

I don't really want to say much more about this book. It would kind of feel wrong to dissect it apart, and like Vonnegut says, it's not your normal kind of book, with plots and story arcs and personal triumphs. It's hilarious and terrible and bizarre: no one else, no one would think to describe the word schizophrenia as being like a human sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes, and it DOES sound like that. How does he come up with this stuff? But Vonnegut was the master of dark humor, and this book got an extra shot of darkness.

'"This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself behind my leaks.
"I know," I said.
"You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said.
"I know," I said.'

That's all I got, folks.

In summary: This book is like a kick to the chest, but when you put it down you realize some hope managed to sneak in along with the pain. Resquiat in pace, KV.