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.