2013 Book #14: Eric

03. April 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

ericEric was exactly what I needed after the torture that was Kafka‘s Amerika. A Terry Pratchett novel is always funny and enjoyable – and in this case, a relief. I had no idea where to go after Amerika. I wanted to take a break from books. I knew that if I did that, though, my goal of reading 50 this year would crumble. And there was the next Discworld novel waiting patiently on my Kindle. Eric is the 9th of 40 (so far), and it’s (also so far) my favorite. I loved Eric. I even had a Neverending Story-style lunch in my office to finish it. PB&J and the works! Oh, it was so good.

It’s the third Rincewind novel, meaning that it stars a mischievous wizard of that name. After the last one, he ended up in the realm of the demons, and he wanted to get back to the (more) real world of Ankh-Morpork. Turns out, though, that his ticket in is a demon circle opened by a 13-year-old kid named Eric, who has Faustian dreams. He is convinced that Rincewind is a demon and, if Eric signs his soul over, that supposed demon will grant him three wishes: live forever, meet the most beautiful woman in the world, rule the world. Except when Rincewind snaps his fingers, it works, and they visit the Mayans, the Trojan War, and Dante’s version of Hell. And it’s so much fun!

I can always rely on Discworld novel for a chuckle or twelve, and Eric certainly didn’t disappoint. This is an especially short one, too, so I finished it within 24 hours, which is an exception for me. One good thing about the Discworld novels is that you don’t have to start at the beginning and work your way through: though they’re all interconnected, you can pick any one of them up and enjoy it. If you haven’t read any of them yet, I’d say Eric is a good starting place.

2013 Book #13: Amerika

31. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

amerikaI haven’t hated a novel so hard in a long time. Amerika is quite possibly the most frustrating that I’ve ever read – even more than Kafka‘s other novels. It’s considered one of his three principal novels - The Trial, The Castle, and this one (The Metamorphosis evidently doesn’t count because it’s a novella) – and it’s not even finished. I bet I can tell you why, too: Kafka knew it sucks, and he knew the plot couldn’t go anywhere worthwhile. It would just have to be an endless loop, so he gave up. Which is kind of what his novels are, anyway. They’re certainly frustrating. I’m beginning to wonder why I like the other two (and The Metamorphosis) so much. Maybe it depends on my mood. But I hated this one almost from the beginning. I’m not even sure why I finished it.

And what made it worse: I was done when I realized that it’s unfinished. I dislike unfinished novels, and I rarely read them. Not only am I predisposed to dislike it on that basis, but it sucks. MEH.

It’s about Karl Rossman, who is sent to America by his parents because he got a girl pregnant, and they don’t want to have to pay. And Karl trusts everyone, even if they’re obviously out to get him, so he ends up in trouble pretty quickly. He takes the side of one of the ship’s employees who thinks he’s being treated unfairly even though he (Karl) has just met the employee. As things go south, a businessman asks Karl to repeat his name then claims to be his long-lost American uncle, there to rescue him. Thus ensues lots of creepiness, and trusting ol’ Karl gets into trouble again, though he doesn’t mean to, and his uncle is entirely unreasonable. I really don’t understand the situation. It’s a ridiculous situation that only Kafka could pull off, and this time he does it badly. Then Karl ends up on his own and works in a hotel for a while, then becomes a kind of slave, and then on and on and on.

I seriously wanted to throw this book across the room when I finished it. I hated it that much. The last book I hated that much was Chinua Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart, but I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that because he just died. Except I did.

ANYWAY, Amerika is, as I said, Kafka’s first novel. And it’s not good. And I almost wish I hadn’t bothered to finish reading it just to find out that even Kafka couldn’t finish it. On to greener pastures.

2013 Book #12: Anne of Green Gables

26. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

anneOkay, here’s yet another book I should have read a long time ago. Anne of Green Gables was a big part of my childhood, but, surprisingly, not in book form: I watched the TV series.

How that didn’t result in my reading the book, I don’t know. I’m not even sure I knew that there was a book, though I had a dim recollection of the illustrations. That series remains one of my Very Favorite Ever.

And visions of it are why I picked up the book. I needed to see something beautiful. It was the very end of winter, and I couldn’t wait for fresh green and flowers. (What’s funny, is that’s exactly what I got after reading the novel.) Since spring was just barely out of my grasp, I figured visions of Prince Edward Island might do. I needed something beautiful!

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Anyway. In case you haven’t read it (or your kids haven’t filled you in): Anne of Green Gables is about a young orphaned girl, Anne Shirley, who is adopted by middle aged siblings, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, who live on Prince Edward Island in Canada. Matthew and Marilla wanted to adopt a little boy who could help them on the farm, but Anne appeared with a vast surplus of imagination and won them over. The book chronicles Anne’s adventures through childhood.

I really loved this book, and I’m almost wishing the series wasn’t so ingrained in my memory. I saw the characters from the series so clearly while I was reading. Which isn’t really bad because they were perfect choices. The series sticks really closely to the book.

Anne of Green Gables is, most of all, refreshing. It’s generally a happy book, and it feels fresh and clean like Spring. If everything is still dark and gray where you are, this is the one to pick up. Luckily, there are hints of green all over Shreveport, and the azaleas have started blooming. Anne of Green Gables got me through that last bit of winter blues: it was exactly what I needed.

2013 Book #10: A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

04. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: , ,

wrinkleintimeAs soon as I got into this book, I said to myself, ”Have I ever even read A Wrinkle in Time?” I remember the act of reading it, but this graphic novel isn’t what I remember. I guess I just pictured it differently in my head. I enjoyed it, anyway. For me, graphic novels are like watching TV when I don’t want to watch TV – giving me the pictures along with the words takes all of the work out of reading. And there’s the fewer words to read, allowing me to get through these quickly. That said, I don’t read many graphic novels at all. I went through my manga phase (do those count?) several years ago, and since then, I’ve generally stuck to relatively picture-free books. There are, of course, exceptions. And hey, this one’s even a kids’ book. I don’t read too many of those, either.

I’m not going through the whole story because I assume you’re over the age of 10, and I’m pretty sure the gods don’t let you pass that age without reading A Wrinkle in Time. Or maybe they do these days: book literacy seems secondary to computer literacy. So it goes. Anyway, a guy who works on some secret project for the government disappears, and two of his kids and one of their friends search for him, befriending three old, time-traveling ladies on the way.  They end up in a dystopian world where everyone is exactly the same and there’s no free will. Then Things Happen.

I’d forgotten so much about this book. Like how super-Christian it is, Bible quotes and all. I guess that’s a product of the time in which it was written? I thought it was a little much. And I remembered them getting to the dystopian city where everyone is the same, but I didn’t remember what came after that at all like Hope Larson depicted it. That’s not to say it wasn’t well done or that I didn’t like it, because I did. The artwork is really nicely done:

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If you haven’t read the actual novel, pick up a copy because it’s totally worth it. If you have, take a look at this graphic novel version. It’s fun and fast, and I, at least, was entertained the whole time. (It also got me about a week ahead in my 50, which is one of the reasons I chose it. I thought I was going to tackle Mark Danielewski‘s behemoth, House of Leaves, but when I realized how long it would take to get through it, I tl;dr-ed it for now. If I get a month ahead, or so, it’s on.)

2013 Book #9: Love in the Time of Cholera

28. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

cholera.jpgI’m not usually one to write a blog post immediately after I finish a book, but here goes. (Okay, I’m not writing immediately after. It was Litter Box Time, and it couldn’t be avoided without a mutiny.) I’ve been meaning to read Love in the Time of Cholera for a couple of years, ever since I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and declared it my Favorite Book Ever (or at least my favorite book of 2011). It’s my third completed Gabriel Garcia Marquez book of four attempts. I’ll somehow get through Autumn of the Patriarch one day and explain. Or you can try reading it. Believe me, you’ll understand.

So. Here we were with One Hundred Years of Solitude (have I mentioned it’s quite possibly my Favorite Book Ever?) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, both of which I’ve written about in this blog. The former is better than the latter and the latter reminds me of the former and so on. I’ve talked about it before. Both are good and certainly worth a read. What all that means is that I had high expectations for Love in the Time of Cholera.

I’d put off reading it for a long time for various stupid reasons. First, when I’m trying to hit a goal of 50 books per year (as in 2011, the first, pre-diabeetus part of 2012, and this year, I’ve tl;dr-ed most longer books. (Okay, there are huge examples of that being a lie, like Suttree, The Satanic Verses, and Crime and Punishment to name only a few. I didn’t say that my tl;dr-ing wasn’t arbitrary). And Love in the Time of Cholera isn’t as long as any of those or as long as One Hundred Years of Solitude. But I digress. Anyway, Marquez isn’t exactly a fast, easy read – but he flows so smoothly.

Love in the Time of Cholera is about long-unrequited love. Florentino Ariza sees Fermina Daza when both of them are young, and he instantly falls in hopeless love. They exchange love letters for years, but she ends up marrying Juvenal Urbino, a more attractive, wealthy doctor from a “better” family. They live their separate lives, Florentino Ariza never giving up hope of winning Fermina Daza, until they meet again after Juvenal Urbino’s death. (I promise I’m not ruining everything – we learn about this at the beginning.) The point of view fluctuates (remaining third-person) from character to character throughout the novel, so we learned about the past and the present in very personal bits.

And now, the more I write about it, the more I like it. Though it’s not my favorite of Marquez’s novels, it’s very well-written. The way the perspectives interweave is amazing, and the language flows oh so smoothly (that is, of course, thanks, in part, to the translator, but hey). It’s not a fast read – no Marquez I’ve encountered is – but it’s a lovely one.

But here’s why I don’t like it as much as One Hundred Years of Solitude – or one of the reasons: I got annoyed with Florentino Ariza, his incessant romanticism of Fermina Daza, and his (sometimes gross) affairs with other women throughout his lifetime. I found him tiresome after a while. And I think I mentioned gross (you’ll know what I mean when you get to that part).

Go and read it. Curl up somewhere comfortable, and expect to spend several hours glued to this book. You won’t be sorry you did.

2013 Book #8: Guards! Guards!

21. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

Guards-Guards2Terry Pratchett‘s novels can be pretty unpredictable, but they are predictably good. I’ve read eight of them now, and I’ve liked them all. (Okay, both of those things are lies, kind of. I’ve actually read eight-and-a-half of his novels, if you count Good Omens, which he wrote with Neil Gaiman, and which I did not like, though I think both authors are awesome.) Guards! Guards! is the eighth novel in Pratchett’s Discworld series (of just under 40 novels), and it’s definitely one of my favorites. I’ve been reading the series in the order they were published (and very slowly), though that’s not necessary at all. If you like high fantasy, especially funny, tongue-in-cheek high fantasy, you should give these a try.

Guards! Guards! is set in Ankh-Morpork, the biggest city on the Disc(world). It’s governed by a Patrician, and various guilds, including the Thieves, Wizards, and Assassins, keep each other in line. An order of thieves decides that they’d do the city good to use magic and bring in a dragon because that would mean the true heir to the throne would emerge to kill it. Things, of course, go wrong, and the Night Watch, a bunch of not-too-bright city guards, gets involved. And so on.

This one seems to be the best known of the Discworld novels, though a movie was made of the first, The Color of Magic, in the 1990s, starring the actor who played Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings. I watched the first few minutes and turned it off because it looked so stupid, but I’ve said before that I’m generally not a movie person, so you might have more patience with it than I did. Anyway, Guards! Guards! is a super-fun book of the easy-to-read, mass market paperback type. I know, it’s generally not my thing, but I guess I’m not always entirely predictable.

I had a really hard time not jumping straight into the next Discworld novel, Eric, but that was mostly because I never know what to read after fantasy novels. Instead, I chose Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which has exactly nothing in common with Discworld (unless you count the modicum of magical realism, but hey). I like to spread out books in a series, but there are so many in this one that I don’t think I need to be too careful – and Pratchett is still writing, even with early-stage alzheimer’s, which makes me very sad (the alzheimer’s, not the writing, of course. And he has help).

2013 Book #7: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

13. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: , ,

breakfastattiffanysBreakfast at Tiffany’s isn’t anything like what I expected. For that matter, Truman Capote isn’t, either. I guess I didn’t know what to expect. I haven’t seen the movie, and, even though I know exactly nothing about Capote, I’ve always kind of arbitrarily lumped him in with Albert Camus. Maybe because they both have such serious names? But it’s funny because they aren’t alike at all.

The novella (it’s really short) is about a girl named Holly Golightly. She lives in New York, has parties, and goes to parties. From the outside, her life seems simple and happy. Except our narrator, Fred, gets to know her about as well as anyone can, and things aren’t that simple. Turns out she ran away from home at 14, and her brother, who she adores, is fighting in the war – among other things: I’m not going to spoil it for you, though you’ve probably seen the movie anyway.

I really enjoyed Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s one of those books (I’ve run into a lot of them lately!) that are simply fun to read. It went by really quickly, and I was intrigued the whole time. I might even have to see the movie now. (I especially liked that Holly had a big orange cat. I have one of those, too, you know.)

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2013 Book #6: Player Piano

09. February 2013 · 2 comments · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

Player Piano is Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, and it's not my favorite. I lump it in with novels like Slaughterhouse Five (my least favorite), the more serious, less ridiculous ones. My favorites are The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle, if that says anything.

Player Piano is a dystopian novel, possibly set not too far in the future, though a date is never given. I think of it more as an alternate history. It was published in the early 1950s, and it feels like it's set then, even though the world is so different. After a major war, which I assume was World War II, those in power decided that the general public was inefficient at work and that machines could do a better job. As most people's jobs were taken over by machines, they were given houses with up-to-date technology, menial jobs in the army or civic jobs, like asphalting roads, and were expected to live comfortably and quietly. While most people exist in that world, called Homestead, only engineers with graduate degrees have high-paying jobs keeping up the machinery (everyone's a doctor!). They make lots of money and are also expected to live happily and quietly. But, of course, there are discontents on both sides, and they finally decide to do something about it. Then Things Happen.

I don't dislike this novel. I really enjoyed reading it, in fact. The end left me unsatisfied, though. It was too predictable and, for a dystopian novel, pretty stereotypical. Player Piano was published about three years after 1984, and I assume Vonnegut had read both that novel and We, among others, and as awesome as Vonnegut usually is, I'm surprised that he didn't come up with something more creative. In the end, I was disappointed.

2013 Book #5: Robinson Crusoe

03. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

Here's another classic novel I didn't know enough about. Or, at least, not as much as I should – I have an English degree, you know. I knew it was about a guy who was trapped on a deserted island, and that was about it. Wait. that is about it. Most of it, anyway.

Robinson Crusoe is about a young man in his twenties (and later in his fifties) who wants to go adventuring at sea. His father tells him it's a dumb idea and that he'll be cursed if he does. So Crusoe goes anyway, of course, and meets with seafaring disaster after seafaring disaster. He finally ends up with his own plantation in Brazil, but he and the other landowners get greedy and decide to make a journey to Africa for some slaves. Since Crusoe has experience with boats, he's to head the mission. Except that he doesn't get too far away before a great storm tears his boat to pieces, and he ends up the only survivor on a deserted island. So begins the bulk of the book: he learns to live there. He doesn't know how to do much, but he figures it out. And there's a lot about God and how Crusoe ends up thankful that he is there rather than with the rest of society. And there are cannibals.

Meh.

I really didn't think I'd finish this novel on time (I'm going for fifty again!), if at all. I was bored for the vast majority of it. How people think middle schoolers will love this one is beyond me. It seems like an argument in favor of abridged novels. Here's an example. Crusoe tells his story of landing on the island and getting what he can off the ship in first person. The whole story, in detail. Then, he's like, Oh yeah, I kept a journal until I ran out of ink. Here it is. So then you get to read the whole story again. Sigh. Granted, that's the only time it's that ridiculous, but Daniel Defoe definitely qualifies as long-winded. Yesterday, I was around 60% (I read it on my Kindle, and I have no concept of how long that book is), and, determined to finish it today, I said I'd read 20% a day. I got near 80%, and it finally got interesting, so I finished it last night. I won't spoil it for you if you don't know how it ends, though (hint, hint) Crusoe is pretty obvious about it with all the direct references to after, and there's the writing about it in first person past tense, and all.

Oh! Remember that stupid, unnecessary wolves scene in The Day after Tomorrow? Where they were on the ship and attacking everyone and bad CGI and such? Yeah, well if you liked that, Robinson Crusoe has its own stupid, unnecessary wolves scene you can look forward to!

Wait. Why did I give this thing three stars on Goodreads? I guess it's because it didn't suck that badly, and it didn't make me mad like Madame Bovary did. After the last few novels, I think I'll go with something more recent. Vonnegut, maybe?

 

2013 Book #4: Madame Bovary

27. January 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Books 2013 · Tags: ,

Oh, Madame Bovary, I dislike you. I dislike you in so many ways. You are not a good person, and you don’t even try to be. You take advantage of everyone around you and think of no one but yourself. Not even your child. Or your husband, who is wildly in love with you and entirely devoted, no matter what you do. (Of course, he doesn’t find out about your…um…indiscretions until it’s too late. But we won’t ruin things for people who haven’t read the book, will we? No, not entirely, anyway. Or maybe we will.

Okay, so Madame Bovary is a very famous novel, and I probably should have read it by now. Or at least I should have been assigned it at some point in college. Neither of these things happened, and here’s all I know about the novel (I’m probably not spoiling it because you probably already know the gist, too): Emma Bovary has an affair. Oh, you say, that’s not all that interesting. Well, I reply, maybe it was in France in the 1850s? Evidently, this stuff went on with women a lot and was generally a problem. Flaubert is considered an expert realist, and he was exposing societal issues. Yeah, whatever.

Emma Bovary is incredibly selfish, and I don’t like her. Which is probably why I didn’t like most of this novel: I couldn’t identify with any of the characters. I liked one part of it because I could identify with her situation. She has an affair with a guy named Rodolphe who just wants to…use her. It seemed to me that she deserved it, but I’ve been in a relationship like that (though I wasn’t cheating on anyone!), and it was terrible. Horrible. Still, her fault for cheating on her husband. He’s also selfish with money. Right after she and Charles are married (still at the beginning of the book), they to to a party the Viscount is holding, and it’s spectacular, ball and all. She’s really impressed and feels entitled to live like he does, so she starts buying things, and once she goes through her husband’s money, she starts taking out loans there’s no way she can pay back. Years later, everything goes to hell.

And that’s Madame Bovary. I didn’t hate all of it – just some of it. I struggled with putting it down permanently several times, but I was determined to finish it, and I did. Hopefully my next book won’t annoy me so much.

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