So closed a year of reading and writing. A year of no school to speak of. A year of figuring myself out. When I found the Eclectic Reader's challenge last January, hosted by Book'd Out, it seemed like the perfect way to help myself transition into life and learning on my own. I've always loved to read, it was always my favorite part of school, so this challenge presented me with a framework for continuing that love while trying to move it into a new phase. And it worked wonders. I read so many books this year, so many different types of books, books that I bought just or this purpose, but also books that had once appealed to me into purchase and then languished on my shelf for "free time" to come around and remind me to read something just for me--a rare occurrence. Others were recommendations from friends, some were chosen purely for their blurb and an impulse at a new bookstore. I tried to find something that fit each of my assigned categories but also would give something back to me as well. I learned a lot this year, and here I'm gonna try to figure out what.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
January - fiction into film
I didn't read this in middle school like the rest of the world, and I think coming to it through older eyes changed the way I related to Charlie. I saw him through the eyes of someone who had already been through high school and left those friend behind, made those choices and loved those people. I think it was helpful for me to read about his transition as I was going through my own, leaving a different sort of school and striking out on my own; even though I still had my friends around me, I felt alone a lot. Charlie being able to find Sam again when she came back helped me realize that it isn't the end of an era, just a widening out.
Zorro by Isabel Allende
February - translated fiction
I have loved Isabel Allende since I first read House of the Spirits when I was twelve years old. The mysticism in her voice and the idea of magical realism captured my attention from the very first pages, and she has also strengthened my love for Spanish. Zorro was an opportunity for me to read a different kind of book by her, a story that came with baggage she did not create but used expertly all the same. It was a chance for me to revisit an old friend and experience it a different way, something I love to do and have done for many of my favorite stories like hansel & gretel and beauty and the beast.
Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein
March - romantic suspense
This book caught my eye because it was about Israel, a country I know and love. It was interesting--if a little jarring--to see her through the eyes of a Christian woman, and I was surprised at myself for being surprised that I could relate. I saw my religion from the outside for the first time in a long time, and it was still beautiful to me.
John Dies At The End by David Wong
April - urban fantasy
This was my first official recommendation. My boyfriend's best friend Cam had me watch the new movie version of this weird-ass story and told me that they only tell about a third of it on screen, I was intrigued. These people felt real, raw, ridiculous in the best sense of the word, and I loved every weird, disjointed page of this book. So much so that I bought the sequel IN HARDCOVER, something I rarely do, but I couldn't wait to read it.
The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
May - published in 2013
I love Degas. He has been my favorite artist since I was little, and I have always been unspeakably moved by his paintings, though I can't remember what exactly brought me to him. So reading about the girl who was a model for his famous statue was like bringing history to life for me. For a long time I wanted to write historical fiction like this, to find stories untold in the pages of a textbook and give them voices. This book reawakened that desire in me.
Suck It, Wonder Woman! by Olivia Munn
June - memoir
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I just had too many problems with Olivia Munn by the end of it. I didn't like some of her choices of anecdotes and how she didn't take her examination or her anger far enough, just putting it out there to bake under the heat of the public's invited rage. Maybe if she had written it more recently, during her stint as the amazing Sloan Sabbith on The Newsroom her voice would've changed a little bit. But I needed more from her, and I didn't get it.
Dracula, the Undead by Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker
July - action adventure
I fucking love Dracula. I have read countless vampire books and watched so many movie iterations and seen the lore translated in so many ways, so getting something by an actual Stoker sounded amazing. I think my favorite part, though, was the analysis at the end, where the coauthors explained their intent ad plan for the story.
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Reverte
August - historical mystery
Ahh historical mystery. I love this genre. I also love books like this that delve into real authors and their stories, like The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. I love seeing parts of history in a different way, and this book had so many opportunities for that. So many mysteries, my only problem was that sometimes I wouldn't catch on and the chapter would end with a cryptic revelation that I didn't quite get and it frustrated me. There was so much going on that I didn't know what my brain was supposed to latch into.
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
September - dystopia
This book was an impulse buy. I had been considering reading Ender's Game for this month's book, but decided to do some research and find a new world of my own. I was drawn to this book because it is written by a 22 year old woman, and I wanted it to serve as a sort of inspiration to me, that I should keep writing and get my story out there like this girl did. Plus she made up a lot of words and had a glossary in the back and I'm a sucker for that shit.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
October - LGBTQ
This book was recommended to me by one of my favorite literary critics and beautiful minds: my friend Olivia. We were tipsily walking to a bar one night to meet our friends, talking about literature (like you do) and she was asking about my challenge and if I had the next book picked out. I told her I had some ideas for this month but wasn't sure and she pretty much shot all of them down and told me I had to read this. That it is one of her favorite books of all time and it will mean so much to me because we're so similar. I'm so glad I did. It was inspirational in that it was an amazing author's first attempt at writing, and the story itself was also about first attempts, about the transition that I'm going through, from college to the new world, and even though the specifics are different, the feelings of recklessness and dislocation rang true.
How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
November - humor
I'm gonna be honest, I really liked her name (spelled the same as mine, *ahem*) and the title and every blurb I read said it sounded funny, and I am in fact figuring out how to be a woman, so this book was a pretty easy decision. Caitlin Moran took me with her as she remembered her process of How To Be A Woman, and every anecdote held some kernel of reassurance for me, and her incredible candor allowed me to delve into topics I haven't quite allowed myself to think about deeply before.
Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
December - new adult
Critics have called this chick lit and berated it for its vagueness and flat characters, but I did enjoy this book. It's not really that surprising how many of the books I chose this year were about some great change in an individual's life, most mirroring the changes I am going through right now, but what is surprising is the incredible range of decisions those individuals made, most specifically in this book. The four protagonists in Commencement almost spoke to four different parts of me, as a woman, as a feminist, as a new adult making her way in the world, as one half of a serious relationship. No matter the vagueness or the flat characters (and I'm not denying those claims their validity), this book was a perfect way for me to round out a year of eclectic reading because it gave me a backdrop to think about what I really want to do--what I really could do--with this new life that has presented itself to me.
Throughout the course of this year, I have also learned a lot about writing. Forcing myself to reflect on something and write about it every month made me look at how I form my own opinions about things. For example, I read a lot of other reviews when I was writing about each book, and it took a while for me to realize that that wasn't always productive. Sure, getting ideas from other sources' opinions is fine, but I need to be confident enough in my own to not shrink back from opposition or think that what I originally felt about a book was wrong. Because feelings aren't wrong. Responses to the way a certain text talks to you are instinct and speak to your personal emotional makeup at the time. I suppose this translates to pretty much anything anyone could have an opinion about in the entire world, but as with a lot of things in my life, it took reading to bring it out. So this year, I plan to give myself more time. More time alone with a feeling before posting about it or discussing it or analyzing it. I want to know in detail what something means to me, how it fits into my personal worldview, before I put it out on the chopping block to get ripped apart. Because there's nothing worse than turning around and beating yourself up for your own opinions, rather than allowing them to be strong for you. So thanks, 2013, for helping me remember how to think for myself, and here's to 2014 for showing me the strength to do so.
Showing posts with label Eclectic Reader 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eclectic Reader 2013. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Saturday, December 21, 2013
DEC - Commencement
December review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, 2009. [New Adult category]
Commencement by J Courtney Sullivan is just that: a commencement. A beginning that, like life, once begun cannot be paused or made to wait for you. It picks you up and wraps you into the lives of four young women during their days at Smith College, and the intricacies of each story keep the pages turning. Sally, Celia, Bree, and April are very different in their first days at Smith, but we follow as they move toward each other, learning about themselves and about life as a woman along the way. Sullivan deals with dark topics such as rape, child prostitution and nascent feminism as the girls make their way through their years in Smith's bubble and then ripple out into their own worlds. For all its vague character development and surface-scratching of aforementioned issues, I couldn't stop reading. It was one of two possible titles for my "new adult" category, the one I started reading second, but the first very soon fell by the wayside as I stayed up later and later in my hotel room over Thanksgiving to read Commencement, while College Girl languished with a bookmark barely past the first chapter and the meeting of the strangely friendly boy who will obviously bring eponymous heroine out of her young adult shell. (Boring.) I enjoyed my final decision much more.
As a word nerd, the very first thing I loved about this book was the play on the title; the word "commencement" as a reference to the college graduation ceremony, but also to the start of a new life, a new chapter. This novel perfectly straddled that double meaning, especially through the use of memories dislocated in time. We are never quite sure if what we are experiencing is in the present until the end of the book, when the old memories get fewer and farther between. Sullivan pulled off a book about four girls' realigning relationships that also comments on the absurdity of some of life's vicissitudes, especially those facing young women. Sure her characters are white women from varying degrees of the upper-middle class, and there are times when Sullivan presents their feminism as if it is the only brand that exists, but I think that she did a good job for what this book was trying to be. And that's the thing about feminist endeavors lately: it seems to me that we as a culture have become so hypercritical and obsessed with a political correctness that ends in sanitization of anything real that whenever anyone tries to make a dent, however small, in such a complex topic, if they don't pull it off perfectly and without anything that could possibly be construed as offensive to someone else, we attack them. When really we should be applauding their attempt to do something about anything, to keep the ball rolling even if it gets picked up and hurled back in their face (read: Lily Allen and her "Hard Out Here" video).
In terms of the category of the month, I originally wasn't positive this book would fit. I mean, it fit by my understanding of the definition (New Adult is a category with protagonists age 18-25 learning about their world and how to transition in it), but this particular book wasn't on any "delineated "New Adult" list per se, so I took a few liberties. When I was searching, most of the "new adult" category seemed to be sexed-up half-naked 19 year olds on the covers going to college and (possibly) being magical and just generally angsting about things for sequels on sequels on sequels. (Aside--Hell yeah I'm judging books by their covers, and I'm super glad I did so. Fight about it.) As a young twentysomething moving through the commencement of my own strange life, I felt that this second wave of "New Adult" (the college/post-college subjects) was more fitted to my sensibilities. I mentioned Commencement wasn't on any Goodreads lists or the New Adult fiction wikipedia page et cetera, I used my literary discretion to find a book that I thought fit the category but would also give me something in return, a practice I have tried to use all year. There is talk amongst The Critics, that amorphous blob of humanity that makes up most of my knowledge about new books, that this category is purely a fad, a marketing technique to differentiate Skyler Gray from Percy Jackson, and while this is a valid point, I think this category will last. I think people will always be looking to find books that mirror their own life, and having more and more specific subcategories (teen paranormal romance, anyone?) will help people on their quest. I enjoyed Commencement even though I didn't go to a womens college or go undercover to bring awareness to child prostitution rings or have an affair with my professor, and it was because it was about girls in the same mindset as me, trying to figure out what a big ticket education and all the possibility in the world is going to get me.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
NOV - How To Be a Woman
November review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, 2011. [Humor category]
How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran has been on my radar for a while, and not only because she spells her name like I do (but pronounces it differently. cuz she's british). I have been interested in her comparison to Tina Fey, her cavalier and funny choice of title, and just her general super-coolness that I really really want to find the secret recipe for. I mean, she's worked as a writer basically since she could legally collect her own paycheck, and that is something I have sort of always been afraid of--even though it's the thing I want most in this world. So when I had the idea to pick her first book for the humor category in my year-long romp through literature, I jumped at the chance.
This memoir-slash-manifesto was everything I thought it was going to be and more. Every self-deprecating chapter ("Chapter 3: I Don't Know What to Call My Breasts!" or "Chapter 7: I Encounter Some Sexism!") is a mixture of funny anecdotes from Moran's childhood which effortlessly transition into greater musings about the chapter's relation to feminism or the female place in the world at large. While her tone is pretty flippant at times, with LOTS OF CAPS LOCK, she manages to sound incredibly down-to-earth and friendly at the same time. She has this new idea about not a new way to think about feminism, not as another wave but rather as an incoming tide--because around the fifth wave of anything it doesn't appear to be individual anything anymore, and that's when things get interesting. She talks about sweating the small stuff, making a big deal about the minuscule things because one broken window going unfixed will lead to more and more vandals and squatters and all kinds of ill-mannered folk wreaking havoc on what was once just a nice building quietly minding its own business. A lot of things she says I agree with, a lot of the gray areas she points out. I read an article recently about women dealing with misogynist culture and being told to just lighten up' and smiling but inside feeling like "if you lighten up anymore you're going to float the fuck away." Caitlin Moran has a lot of the same feelings as the author of said article, Roxane Gay, does, and this sort of call to arms for women, this assurance that fighting against this shit doesn't make you a militant freak or a social outcast, is what really drew me home into this book.
At one point, Moran talks about strong female role models (Chapter 14), mostly recording artists--because that is where she got her start--and mentions a whole slew of them, including Lily Allen ("a gobby ingénue!"). Now, I was reading this book at about the time the whole "Hard Out Here"/Lily Allen-is-a-racist fiasco. 2013 was a really weird year for women, what with the vomit-inducing Robin Thicke and the parodies and the backlash, and the backlash on the backlash, women yelling at other women for speaking their mind even if they fuck up in the way that they do so, and so I was interested in reading a wonderfully belligerent feminist's attempt to make sense of it, and I continued to read Moran's writings after the book was over. I've always thought the idea of intent was a very tricky one, and we talked about it a lot in my lit classes, but I've never really tried to apply it to pop culture or artists making their waves in the present. I think one of the obsessions with authorial intent is that most of the time, the author can't be reached for comment and it allows for endless debate without actually reaching any meaningful conclusion. The thing about intent with living artists is that it gets messy, with revisions and anger and takesie-backsies and she-said-she-said. But that is the difference between the study of the past and the study of the present. And even though it hurts my head (and my OCD) a little bit to be a part of it, I love immersing myself in the mess. I read every article about Lily Allen and her anthem, trying to figure out how I felt versus how I should feel or am allowed to feel. The easiest way for me to line everything up, I felt, was to find something that took a few steps back and spend a moment reflecting upon the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
And that brings me to speak in terms of the category this month, humor. In all honesty, this book fits "memoir" much more than Olivia Munn's book did, and I think that is mostly because Moran bared more of her soul and allowed us to be more vulnerable with her. But I read it for "humor," why? No bookstore or website I saw ever put it under a "humor" banner, not technically, but she's so funny and these are my rules so whatever. It might be because she's not afraid to denigrate herself, to address her own flaws. She admits freely that humans are inherently imperfect and once you can look back on that without shame, you can see the humor in life.
I loved this book. I found a lot of things Caitlin Moran writes about resonate with me. As a writer, as a woman, as someone with a brain. I wasn't being preached at, I was a co-conspirator, almost. And that's all anyone really wants, I think. To be taught alongside someone else, rather than at the expense of someone else. If this year has taught me anything, it has taught me that.
Other reviews I enjoyed:
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
OCT - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
October review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, 1988. [LGBTQ category]
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was written by Michael Chabon for his MFA program after he finished undergrad in the 80s. Right off the bat I am intrigued because, as a woman recently deluged with wave after tidal wave of First Time, I am curious about his first; I want to feel those first feelings from another creature any time I can, to see how they translate theirs and put it out into the world. There is a familiar sense of "wait, I could do this. . ." as the novel progresses, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It keeps the reader grounded and aware of the raw, uncut beauty of this author's first try. Sure it could be better, more polished, more insightful, but these are once again the shortcomings of a newcomer, and they should be acknowledged but made to sit in the back of the room. But I digress.
The Mysteries of Pittsburg is a book of firsts, both in story and in circumstance. It story of a summer after, a new beginning, a reinvention. Art Bechstein, son of a mobster, returns to the library one last time after graduation and there his summer (and subsequently his life) is changed forever. Sounds like the log line of pretty much every summer blockbuster ever, huh? It is exactly this touchstone that situates the reader in comfort, letting them come to the discoveries that crop up alongside Art, gathering as he gathers, feeling as he feels. Chabon's prose is unparalleled, even this early in his career, and I have loved his handling of language ever since I read Summerland when I was 13. Phrases like "solace is in the fabric of sweatshirts" (219) and "I was watching the clock slowly fold up my last ten minutes like the pleats of a fan" (61) drew me in with their simplicity, and I felt at home in the words.
As for a general summary of the book, it is really the story of Art and a few other players, most of whom we don't get to know very well in the short space we're allowed between the covers of the book. There is Phlox, the Girl Behind Bars who entrances him then entraps him with every insistence and arrogance. She is introduced to Art by Arthur, a gay man Art runs into at the library that fateful day, the strong forearm behind the crank of the story. Arthur becomes Art's link to the rest of the major players, Jane and Cleveland, a couple the most defining of whose characteristics seems to be that they are in a relationship and it is dysfunctional. On the fringes are Cleveland's mobster father and other members of the Pittsburgh elite who intersect with either Art or Cleveland in the latter's dabblings with the seedy side toward the end of the book. I am going to say straight out that I hate Phlox. I do not understand her. I realize that it is 1988 and views on gays are radically different from my own in 2013, but I almost cannot reconcile her thinking gay men are disgusting or cowardly (95) with then her apparent embrace of her own sexuality--"But do you know what those Christians told me? They told me I would have to learn to live without sex. I can't live without sex, Art. It's ridiculous. If Jesus really loves me, then He wants me to sleep with boys" (101). On the other hand, Cleveland's outlook on all things gay seems much more in line with the humanistic view I've come to adopt--"So why don't you just let me do what I want, and I'll let you boys do what you want, and maybe that way we can all stay friends" (238). It was nods to these themes that made me pick this book for the LGBTQ genre.
In terms of LGBTQ, Michael Chabon is a singular entity. With the publishing of Mysteries, Chabon was almost rebranded as a gay writer by the critics due to his straightforward, almost playful treatment of gayness and bisexuality. In his P.S. section in a newer edition of the book, Chabon voiced some concerns about how he was labeled, also putting forward his marriage to a woman as a lens to interpret his writing through. I chose this book rather than any of the other popular (read: token) LGBTQ books floating around my environs (read: Middlesex. (No really, everyone I know on this campus has read Middlesex)) because it wasn't proclaiming to be anything, and that ambiguity, that process of discovery, makes this in my view a perfect introduction to a genre/topic that I myself am not particularly familiar with. A fact of which I am very glad because I was able to stumble across this beautiful beautiful line that encapsulates everything I've ever thought about sexuality ever: "you're just clowning around with your sexual chemistry set" (237). Not only does Chabon deal with a single boy developing his possible bisexuality, he almost nonchalantly calls into question the idea of what is feminine as Art observes Arthur's body one day at the pool (164). How do you describe a man's body? What words are charged and why? How can words be so "erotically feminine" without being gendered at any semantic level? I love books that make me ask questions, even if the questions are not themselves present in the text, and Chabon does a brilliant job of just setting something on the table for readers to engage or not, depending on their will.
And speaking of will (pardon my insufferably heavy-handed segue, please), one of the recurring ideas of this book that stuck out to me was the "will to bigness." Art wants it from the first 50 pages, Cleveland gets it in the end, the whole novel is peppered with the desire to be something more than what you are, and I think that it is a phrase that encapsulates the ideas behind this story; a boy's first summer in the real world, an author's first novel, the desire to be something MORE. As a grad almost a year out of school, I can appreciate the will-to-bigness that is so intoxicating: life is hard without the desire to be something bigger, the desire to move forward and toward some new thing. I've spent the past few months trying to figure out the bigness I am striving for, and this monthly book blog has definitely helped me along. So thank you, minuscule number of readers, for sharing this journey with me. Books like this make me feel like my time has been well spent. (p271)
{Like a nerd, one of my favorite things to do is read literary criticism by authors, both about their own works and others floating around in the aether, so here's a link to an article Chabon wrote about his book in The New York Review of Books. So check it out! Maybe we can be nerdfriends.}
Monday, September 30, 2013
SEPT - The Bone Season
September review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, 2013. [Dystopia category]
Wiling away the hours in our newest hip bookstore last month, I was trying desperately to find a book that would fit my dystopia category. I went through classics lists on the internet, debated H.G. Wells and Isaac Asimov, but ultimately went outside to sit on the curb, anxious and tomeless, redoubling my internet efforts on my tiny phone screen. On a whim, I had picked up the IndiePicks! newsletter for the month as I was leaving Literati, and I thumbed through it looking for catchwords that might possibly mean "containing post-apocalyptic oppressive society." The stark blue cover of The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon struck me, even in thumbnail form, and as I read through the blurb I became more and more excited about it. Luckily, I hadn't gone but four steps from Literati, so I turned around and walked back inside and on whim, bought a $26-hardcover-new-realease from a 22-year-old British author and walked back out. (There aren't words to explain how rarely I do such a thing. I suffer from a double dose of inherited Jewish stinginess and buyer's anxiety, so such a splurge really spoke to me.) Immediately I sat down and started to read in the sun, hoping for anything to make my soul thrum with excitement again. It had been a while.
At first glance The Bone Season seems to be a typical sci-fi concept, the story of a singular individual built into an oppressive world whose skills make it dangerous for her to be there at all. (One girl in all the world, anyone?) Add some clairvoyance and a little bit of 1984 cross-bred with V For Vendetta and you've pretty much got The Bone Season. Paige Mahoney is a teenage clairvoyant living in 2059 London, a city that is now taken over by the terrifyingly closed-minded Scion (haha clairvoyance pun...sorry guys). Paige is a special kind of clairvoyant called a dreamwalker which essentially allows her spirit to leave her body to interact with the aether around her and even the minds of other people. This rare talent makes her a hot commodity in the rebel underground where she is employed by a rather pompous clairvoyant named Jaxon Hall. Her talent is untrained, though, and when forced into a corner Paige accidentally uses her power and kills two underguards, making her even more Most Wanted than usual. Her attempts to fly under the radar fail and she is captured and taken to what is essentially a concentration camp for her kind, called Sheol 1, built in the ruins of what used to be Oxford, and it is ruled by alien creatures called the Rephaim. Paige, being a special someone, is taken under the command of Warden, the blood consort and one who rarely consorts with humans. Isolated and confused, Paige has to learn to either adapt to this crushing new lifestyle or own her abilities enough to break herself and her newfound friends of the compound, all the while being tormented with gossip of faceless monsters, the Emim, who prowl just outside Sheol 1, snacking on a human limb here and some Rephaim blood there. Most of the story takes place within Sheol 1 and follows Paige's day-to-day traversal of her new life. Though the phraseology at times seemed a little too quaint and the final battle came rather quickly after so many pages of painstakingly detailed mind-jaunts, the novel as a whole was more than satisfying to me, due largely to the snarky female protagonist.
Paige is strong and bullheaded and ultimately very flawed, but her imperfections possibly make it easier for the reader to take her story as something to be heeded. The budding interest between Paige and her captor is interesting but also takes a backseat: it is not the point of the whole frame, as it would be in Twilight or some such work. Some critics have disparaged Paige as too self-absorbed and inconsiderate of others, obsessed with her gift but unwilling to push her limits, but I think the very fact that she has all these problems allow her to be a real human being, not a one-track-mind cyborg (*ahem* Bella) who can do nothing except chase a horribly toxic relationship with a horribly unavailable and dangerous individual. Our Paige is young and she messes up (a lot). She gets angry at Warden (not that he doesn't entirely deserve it) and gets into fights and spins out of control as she flails against the huge dystopian force that is Scion London.
Trying to find a book to read for dystopia was really interesting because it brought up a lot of questions and observations about the genre. Originally, I thought about doing Ender's Game for this month's category, but when I read the internet's thoughts on the matter, it seemed as if Ender was widely not considered dystopic because it takes place during the end of the world as the characters know it, rather than after. I feel that this is an unfairly specific restriction on dystopia because one could argue that it is never really the end of THE world but rather the end of A world. In this respect, I think Ender's Game could've worked nicely but I'm glad I chose The Bone Season because there's something about near-future radical regime shift stories that speaks to me lately. The Bone Season is at its core about exclusion. Parallels can be drawn to Holocaust tropes ("a humane means of removing clairvoyants from ordinary society" p402) or anti-gay propaganda (the pamphlet Jaxon writes is called On The Merits of Unnaturalness) or even vampire stories (at one point Warden drinks Paige's blood to restore him after he rebelliously gets his ass shredded by an Emim, not to mention that the Rephaim sleep during the day). But Shannon does not pedestal any of these threads, does not allow any singular one to become a watchword for her story. In this way, as well, I think it is derivative and silly to compare her to "the next J.K. Rowling." Allow her to be her own phenomenon, should her work deserve it. I myself am looking forward to seeing that it does.
The Bone Season is being hailed as everything from the next J.K. Rowling to the next Stephanie Meyer, and the reader reviews are just as varied. I truly enjoyed this book, thought it was new and full and a good first start. There were of course some failings, it being Shannon's first time out of the gate and all, but I don't think any of the comparisons both critics and publishers are making are fair to her--or anyone's--nascent talent. Being compared to such publishing powerhouses could automatically stunt Shannon's growth under all the pressure such completely different stories unfairly place upon her. To me, there were many things that were inspiring about this book, first and foremost that Samantha Shannon is 22 and published, an beacon of hope to me as an aspiring 22 year old writer who still only writes on her lunch break at the coffee shop. Her main character is a strong young woman who claws her way out of the world that was forced upon her. And her imagination is to die for. Being a lover of words, I was so excited to have a glossary in the back and a hierarchy of (vaguely defined) types of clairvoyants in the front. While many critics raked Shannon across the coals for "info-dumping" and unintelligible language, my heart leapt at the challenge of understanding not only this new world but the way it describes itself. I have been looking for a new world to jump into lately, and I think Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season just might do the trick.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
AUG - The Club Dumas
August review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, 1996. [Historical Mystery category]
The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a an interesting novel. The main players all have shadows from great literature wound into their characters, and the main plot line hinges on the authentication of an old chapter of a Dumas manuscript, the line between reality and fiction ever blurring. Our protagonist--though not our narrator--is middle-aged cynic Lucas Corso, book detective, and we follow him on two seemingly intertwined errands: one for a fellow mercenary of the book industry in authenticating a lost manuscript chapter from The Three Musketeers; the other a mysterious side project for which he is being paid handsomely, researching a satanic book called The Book of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows, a book that only has three known copies. As he follows the trails of clues from Spain to Sintra to Paris, his life becomes dangerously entwined with fiction in a way that he cannot get ahead of. The narrative power lies with a seemingly inconsequential character who fades into the background after a few acknowledgements, Boris Balkan, and this subtle omniscience helps to set the stage for the way the book is going to deal with its themes. His presence in the background almost causes the reader to not realize that Pérez-Reverte is constantly changing the rules of the story, leaving us as much in the dark as our dispassionate "hero" is. There are always characters around Corso that know more than he does, and as hard as he tries to gain their knowledge, he can never quite get there. Case in point is the mysterious girl Corso falls into line with, the girl with the striking green eyes who introduces herself as Irene Adler and gives no explanation to her part in the narrative. All the women especially have this one-step-ahead quality.
Speaking of young Irene, allow to indulge my favorite intellectual pastime and look at the lady characters! The three major players are Liana Taillefer, the Girl, and Baroness Frieda Ungern, each compared to an incredibly competent fictional figures: Milady de Winter from Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Irene Adler from the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Miss Marple of Agatha Christie's mystery novels, respectively. These characters are surprising in all their respective stories, always self-confident and knowledgeable and ultimately capable of fulfilling their own agendas. It translates nicely to the three women in Corso's new whirlwind adventure.
The first one we meet is Liana Taillefer, widow of the publisher whose untimely death snarled all this business up. Liana is very obviously sexualized from the start, from our distant narrator taking advantage of her while she thought she was making a trade, to her apparent seduction of Corso's friend La Ponte (who hired Corso for the Dumas project in the first place). And then she is increasingly compared to Milady, a character from the very story she is trying to authenticate. Toward the end of the tale, the narrator brings up an interesting debate about the character of Milady,
Second is the Girl, the one with the striking green eyes who keeps showing up in Corso's line of sight, the one who unsmilingly deems herself Irene Adler. She is the young one, she represents youth, dispassionate knowledge, some sort of baffling protection. Corso ends up sleeping with her as well, but it isn't as easy as taking Liana Taillefer. The Girl speaks to Corso on a level that is lower than consciousness, than logical thought, but all the same a level that he needs as much as his constant imbibing of Bols gin.
Third but possibly most important is Baroness Frieda Ungern, the last stop on Corso's Nine Doors treasure hunt. Linked to brilliant and crafty Miss Marple, f all the owners of The Nine Doors, the Baroness is the most forthcoming, the most knowledgeable, most down-to-earth. She engages Corso more than any of the other owners of the Nine Doors, and her cult status as a witch intrigues him. She got the book from Madame de Montespan--another powerful, outspoken woman. There is history here out in the open, and Corso doesn't have to equivocate or break back in at night to absorb it. It was a meeting of the minds on an equal plane, and even though Corso held some things back, Baroness is no fool. She helped him more than the other two owners combined, and her wisdom helped Corso to solve the case eventually.
Not only did Pérez-Reverte take historical characters and events for his literary thriller, but he also mimicked the style of the very stories he used as his backdrop. I say this in terms of the format and tone Pérez-Reverte employs: The Club Dumas looks at serials like that of Dumas, including some substantial historical information about the rise of serials and the tendencies of Alexandre Dumas, père, and each chapter sort of feels like a chapter in a serial, ending with the sword looming ominously above the neck, an untold secret just come to light, a near-death experience. Sure it is a little disconnected, and you have to wait until the next page to realize what the characters have already pieced together, but I think it adds to the playfulness with which Pérez-Reverte deals with the idea of a serial. It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek appropriation of the style that lends itself nicely to the "historical mystery" category.
As for my overall opinion of the book? I enjoyed it, it was a nice change of pace. The last third of the book hit me almost at a jumble, with the coalescence of two different stories, and I was as confused as Corso when they didn't all fit together, but somehow it worked better for me. It reinforced the line between reality and fiction that had become so blurred throughout the novel. Apparently Roman Polanski fudged up that ending in his lifted The Ninth Gate (1999) starring Johnny Depp, but that's a different story.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
JULY - Dracula the Undead
July review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Dracula the Undead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, 2009. [Action Adventure category]
I had bought Dracula the Undead when my beloved Borders was going out of business early last year (fun fact, that is also where/when I bought Drawing in the Dust, my March book!), but it has sat on my shelf ever since. Reading 'Salem's Lot jolted me back into my love of the vampire and I remembered I had this legitimate-looking sequel lying around, waiting for me to sink my fangs into once again. (To be clear, I don't really have fangs, I am not a vampire--though I have inherited some particularly pointy incisors from daddy dearest.) These are my thoughts!
The GIST. Dracula the Undead is the "true" sequel to the Bram Stoker's original Dracula, cowritten by Stoker's great-grandnephew and a Dracula documentarian/historian/screenwriter. According to the Author's note in the back, its intent was to reclaim the Dracula that Bram Stoker envisioned in his 1897 novel that has been co-opted, bastardized, and generally stolen by the popular media. The plotline fallows Quincey Harker, son of Mina and Jonathan Harker of Dracula fame, as he tries to follow his dreams of the theater--instead of his father's dreams for him of the Sorbonne--and how those dreams lead him back to the ancient evil his parents have been guarding from him his entire life. I liked the idea of a sort of next-generation attempt to reclaim the past, both in the fictional characters and the authors themselves, and it seemed to me a good, honest attempt at continuing Bram Stoker's legacy.
The CHARACTERS. Reprising their roles in Dracula the Undead are the brave band of heroes: Mina and Jonathan Harker, Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming), Abraham Van Helsing, and Jack Seward. (Get used to the phrase "brave band of heroes," because it comes up A LOT.) They are in various stages of denial and/or conflict about their involvement with Dracula in the past, and they have fallen away from each other--even Mina and Jonathan. Or should I say especially? New to the tale is our quasi-hero, next-gen Quincey Harker who is as-yet unaware of his dark parentage. He is the quintessential angry teen, hating his parents for forcing his life away from where he'd like it to go, and his relationships with said parents are very black-and-white: for a general but hugely plot-hole-y example, he quickly turns against his mother and judges her without the full story, all the while taking her word about his father and completely absolving said drunkard of any aforementioned misdeeds. Of course, the tale wouldn't come to fruition if Quincey was on his mother's side at the end. On the other side of the table is Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the new "absolute evil" come to London. She is our new Big Bad, but within the first 40 pages, we get her backstory of a loveless, abusive marriage and subsequent imprisonment. There is a feminine sympathy I found in the way she presents her tale, her own history in her own words--and this quality of allowing everyone their own voice is what pulls the characters in this novel up from the flatness of their ever-recycled prototypes. So often is Count Dracula portrayed as an infuriatingly black, evil character with no wiggle room. The original Dracula in Stoker's mind was an eloquent and complex antihero, and his apparent reincarnation here allows him his own voice again. This grey area the coauthors allow for the two vampires in order to examine the idea of "pure evil" is not extended to the human characters who, like Quincey as I mentioned before, are violently convinced one way or the other about what they think is right and wrong, which I think does a discredit to the characters Bram brought to life in his original.
One thing that has always intrigued me about the vampire was the incredibly sexualized nature these metaphysical beings seem to have taken on throughout the years, and this overt sexuality is very apparent here. Bathory is abused and then shunned for realizing her homosexuality and escaping her marriage, and that preference is continued on a wildly bloody scale to her actions as a vampire. Countess Elizabeth Bathory was said to have killed thousands and bathed in their blood orgiastically. True as that may be, its incorporation here offers a distinct dichotomy between her actions and the actions of the only other real female lead in the novel, Mina Harker. Their decisiveness and confidence is upsettingly linked to the vampire, the dark, which Mina eventually succumbs to under the guise of joining her one true lover. Ultimately the female characteristics of docile flirtatiousness are kept alive in the memory of pure Lucy Westenra while other, more self-actualized female traits are condemned with Bathory and Mina. Something that as a 21st century woman of higher education and relative broad-mindedness, I found hard to internalize.
In terms of ACTION ADVENTURE, the category I chose for this novel, I was not disappointed. It is most certainly an updated vampire tale, building off of the amalgamation of lore that has stacked up over the years while still trying to bring to light only the attributes Bram originally put forth in his novel. I didn't feel myself particularly tied to one character as my adventurer protagonist, though; granted Quincey is the newcomer whose understanding spurs on the climax, but all the characters seemed spread thin, and I didn't necessarily like any particular one of them (I hated Inspector Cotford though. So infuriatingly blind). In this respect, I think the "action adventure" trope falls short.
The RESEARCH. In retrospect, it could've also very well fit into historical mystery, mostly due to the real-life events and people the coauthors decided to lay their story over, like the Jack the Ripper murders and the Titanic maiden voyage. also in terms of the historical accuracy, the legacy being reclaimed, etc. (afterword by the coauthors). To get the full effect of this brilliant sequel, you need to read the afterword and the author's note. Something geeks like me love to do ;] I would love to be a historical fiction writer like this. The way these two men went about writing this book is so fascinating to me; it's one of the things that pushed me toward being a history major, an endeavor I ended up leaving due to the intensely factual nature of most history courses. Not that I don't like facts, but I learn better through stories, I've found. This story is an interesting confluence of research, fusing literature and the historical past to try to explain the unexplainable. It was more or less a fun read--except for wanting to skip over everything Cotford said ever--and I believe Dracula the Undead has deserved a place under the Stoker umbrella.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
JUNE - Suck It, Wonder Woman
June review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek by Olivia Munn (with Mac Montandon), 2010. [Memoir category]
(Fuck you, Olivia Munn, you do NOT have thick thighs.)
Okay, now that I got that out of the way. I can attempt to talk about this book in a civilized manner. Sort of. Apologies if this review becomes somewhat more of a tangential examination than a straight book review. I have a lot of feelings. Also if it folds back and forth on itself--I'm really just trying to figure out said feelings about the book.Overall, I had middling feelings toward it, but the things that made me angry are pretty big eyesores in my opinion and I wanted to give them their due, push against the things that made me uncomfortable coming from a woman I so admired. Here we go.
The gist of Olivia Munn's 2010 memoir-slash-funny-stories-about-her-life-collection Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek seems to be a brash declaration of Munn's status as a Geek Sex Symbol, mostly stemming from her run as a host on G4's Attack Of The Show. When I first picked up the book at Motor City Comic Con a few months ago, drawn by the intriguing title and funny cover posing, I was excited. I like Olivia Munn, especially on HBO's summer blockbuster The Newsroom (returning for its second season in a few days!!!). I admire her disregard for stereotypes and her brazen ownership of a traditionally under-the-rug epithet. I was looking forward to loving every word of her sardonic take on the ridiculously sex-crazed society that has become our Mount Olympus of sorts, excited to take it almost as a gospel for a geek girl like myself, but I felt myself getting a little more angry, a little more annoyed, as the book went on. the sex-positive geek girl is a concept that seems to come under much contention lately. As another reviewer on GoodReads said, I decided at the end that I still like Olivia Munn, but I did not like this book.
It makes me unspeakably sad to not like a book by someone who seems to be trying in earnest to cast a positive image for women in comedy and film, and this was no exception. I didn't enjoy reading Suck It, Wonder Woman! as much as I thought I was going to: Munn contradicts herself (as I have been doing for days trying to write this review and figure out how I feel about it), she uses the same jokes over and over again, her candor is illuminating at times but abrasive most of of the time--the flickers of actual personality sprinkled throughout the book are what kept me holding on. I mentioned before that the book seems to be proclaiming Olivia's Geek status although there exist within the text few substantial examples of such. I really want to believe that she is the geek she says she is, and not trying to capitalize on the sexy geek girl facade, to which she is dangerously close. She seems to have some connection to geeky stuff and mentions a lot of videogames that she played as an army brat outcast growing up being bounced from school to school, but there doesn't seem to be anything substantive to the claim other than running Attack Of The Show! Now, I'm not saying that Geekdom is a club for which you need to have references and a resume and a look-what-I've-done-to-prove-myself compendium, but I was disheartened by her continual use of pejorative language and suggestions for guys to "Totally Help You Score!" (title of chapter 17), adding the qualifier that geeky girls are somehow special and take certain XP to get with, maybe? Her language is almost intentionally abrasive--the opening anecdote about her first boyfriend ends with a revelation that he had Tourette's, and her response was that it was some kind of shitty karma, an almost "why me?" feeling. Not cool. Plus, incorrect use of the concept of “karma,” as I was informed by my Buddhist coworker. Double not cool.
While some of those suggestions were good and thought-provoking (like WHAT), many of them still seemed to fall under the typical "pretend to listen to girls because thats how you get what you want" heading. And I was angry. It appeared to me like Olivia was trying to be funny and appealing to all, but in a sort of angry way. Almost condescending?. She tells countless grotesque stories about other people in the industry--only one of whom actually has a name, almost like she's hiding behind her hilarity to ignore the fact that she's still relatively small-time and maybe isn’t Hollywood enough to be saying these steamy tell-all tales she’s telling. The one nameless story I actually enjoyed was chapter 9, "My Dinner with Harvard's Finest" (p76). It is one of the only times Olivia comes out as actively almost-feminist (though at one point in the books she denies the title), staring down a Hollywood bigwig's date and asking her why she lets him talk to her like that, calling her a whore and asking the others if they thought she was a whore. Although, at the end of the chapter, Munn does jump to conclusions and judge the girl as she pulls away with a community college bumper sticker on her car. Less than stellar.
On that note, I'd like to examine the sexuality and body-image aspects of the text. In the bottom corner of the book there is a teensy flip-book of Olivia in a long shirt/short dress type outfit waving and doing sexy things. Inside the cover is a poster of her in a frilly bikini and sailor hat kissing up at the camera. A whole chapter is devoted to her in revealing costumes of "Great Women" who inspired her--without any such meditations as to why or how they can inspire other girls. (Granted, they are each famous for certain things and no doubt those famous things contribute to their inspiration, but still.) While talking about her Playboy cover shoot--which she specifically got contracted to do sans nudity, which is impressive--she perpetuates the image of obsessive dieting and nigh-on-unhealthy eating habits that girls are force-fed every day. EVEN THOUGH later she says "I think it's great for young women to see a real woman, with real breasts and thick thighs considered sexy. I hope that changes the insanely narrow definition of sexy we generally see in the press and on television. Young girls should be proud of their imperfections and curves" (216). These two parts of her image were the most upsetting to me as a less-fit-than-most-twenty-something-girl who has lived with those pressures. I found myself being sucked into the stories, being like “yeah okay I can see why she wouldn’t want to eat if she has to pose--wait WHAT AM I SAYING.”
I found myself pondering the difference between her and say, Felicia Day. Do I respect Felicia a lot more? Why? Felicia still has sexy poses and a healthy knowledge of her body, but most of her time on Twitter is spent geeking out about the new Borderlands 2 patches and who’s going to stay up for the Persona release. Is it because Olivia seems to be selling some sort of sexualized version of the geek girl and because I don't look like her I automatically become angry and distanced from her? That isn’t a feeling I want to internalize. Both of these ladies are funny in their own way, and while both are skinnier than me (which I’m totally ok with, most of the time) I admire their devotion to being real, even if sometimes one or the other falls short. I guess the question I most asked myself is if there’s a world where two such geek girl personalities can exist without completely erasing each other's merits? How do we get there?
Ok, I know i’ve spent a lot of time arguing, against myself and this book and society. But like I said in the first paragraph, I do still like Olivia Munn. Actual glimpses of her personality shone through, and those moments were the ones that tried to hook their not-quite fully-formed fingers into the Memoir category while the rest of the book goes off on a stream-of-consciousness jaunt of its own with little regard for intent, and those moments were the quietest for me, the ones where I really felt connected to this woman, rather than sort of appalled (masturbating with shrimp in one hand story, anyone?). All in all, I admire Olivia for her attempt. This book came out in 2010, before she did Newsroom or her stint on New Girl, two characters that I really felt helped cement her into someone I’d like to get to know. I wonder what she’d have to say now.
Things I actually really enjoyed:
Friday, May 31, 2013
MAY - The Painted Girls
May review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan, 2013. [Published in 2013 category]
Using three historical events from the 1880s as the framework for her novel, Buchanan takes these events and embellishes her two protagonists lives to create spider-thin connections between them, yet somehow they feel organic, though they are "little more than imagination and ink" (Author's Note, 353). Each historical prong has been thoroughly researched and documented in the novel, providing actual newspaper clippings in addition to some of her own imagination, and each element seems designated to a particular sister or their relationship to one another. Historical fiction such as this has always intrigued me, watching an author ask herself questions to delve into a part of a historical world, wondering what questions those characters asked themselves to move through their lives. Degas and his paintings are the realm of middle child Marie, trying to succeed in the Opéra where her elder sister failed, perhaps taking the path that Antoinette would not, with her sharp tongue and lack of filter. L'Assommoir by Emile Zola is Antoinette's domain; It is where she discovers a different sort of performance life, as well as the darker parts of the world. It is where she meets the man who is to bring her into womanhood and farther away from her little sisters. And finally, the famous criminal trial of Émile Abadie and Michael Knobloch. By making Abadie the lover of Antoinette, this trial deepens the rift between Antoinette and Marie, each trying to keep the family afload, yet not understanding how the other means to do so. The connection comes full circle with Edgar Degas's studies of the two criminals at their trial, as seen below.
Degas's Criminal Physiognomies, from the trial of Émile Abadie and Michael Knobloch, ca. 1880-81.
One of my favorite things about this particular book was the existence of real-life objects that correlated to Buchanan's striking prose. (A shortcut to all the paintings mentioned in the book accompanied by their quotes can be found on the author's site here). I have long been in love with the brushstrokes of Edgar Degas, and my small, square book of Degas paintings helped me enjoy this novel so much more. Having such a tangible connection to the past allowed Buchanan the ability to focus not so much on the paintings themselves--because they existed, and readers could check them out in reference for themselves--but more on what the paintings meant in this insular little world she was creating, allowing her to go deeper into the characters and their motivations, all the while leading us by the hand beneath the strokes.
Another seemingly small point of reference is Buchanan's seamless inclusion of untranslated ballet terms. She threw around petit rat and ronds de jambe as if they were nothing, and although it would've been nice to have a glossary on hand for the uncultured observer, at the same time it almost added to the completeness of the Paris world by its omission. These girls know the words that will get them out of the slums and into the Opéra, they know the body positions that they translate to, and the words are simply part of the atmosphere.
The famed statue, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.
Part of the beauty of Buchanan's newest novel is that it isn't about the pretty people, the lifestyles of Paris, so to speak. It is about the hardened ones. The girls who try and try and fall down again and again, to the point where sometimes it seems, like Marie says in her interpretation of Zola's play, "it is about being born downtrodden and staying that way. Hard work makes no difference" (98). As Marie's story goes on, she begins to identify more and more with that sentiment, against her will, as she tries to make the right decisions but keeps getting stuck with the wrong ones. Buchanan allows us inside Marie's head for shorter stretches of time as the novel reaches its climax, the shorter structure seemingly mimicking the young girl's downward spiral. "A life, unfolding the only way it can," it is said of L'Assomoir throughout the text, and the reader wants to fight for Marie as much as she can to make sure Marie gets what she wants in the end (99).
Published in early 2013, The Painted Girls marks only the second novel under author Buchanan's belt, and already she is quickly becoming regarded as a new force to be reckoned with.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
APR - John Dies At The End
April review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: John Dies At The End by David Wong, 2009. [Urban Fantasy category]
This book is difficult to review without giving everything away. It is not a typical book where I can start at the beginning and muddle through the middle but stop before giving away the ending: the title alone makes that impossible. A rising cult classic for sure, John Dies at the End by David Wong is a beast of its own class. David, both the protagonist and a pseudonym for Jason Pargin, senior editor at Cracked.com, invites us into a horror-comedy about two twenty-something fuck-ups who somehow stumble their way into being a sort of Ghostbuster/Clerks/Supernatural type of mash-up. A friend had suggested the book to me and made me watch the Coscarelli film (2011), which I thoroughly enjoyed, and since this friend doesn't read too much but raved about this particular volume, I decided to give it a shot. I'm not sure exactly what I expected going in, but it certainly wasn't that.
Needless to say, I heartily enjoyed it. The characters, while neither particularly heroic or even likable in the traditional sense of the word, are real, their thoughts raw and unpolished coming directly from David's internal POV. The storyline(s) are so far-fetched yet intriguing that we as readers desperately want to believe in them. The major thrust is that of a wrathful alien invasion of which most of the populace is unaware, but the book is broken up temporally by a frame story, one that involves Dave and a bumbling reporter meeting at a back-alley Chinese restaurant for Dave to convince said reporter of his story--and subsequently, his (relative) sanity. The reporter, Arnie Blondestone, acts on behalf of the reader, calling Dave on his inconsistencies and asking the very obvious questions, all the while sitting back in a state of half disbelief, half intrigue. Some reviewers have pointed to the books original status as web serials that might allow for the contradictions, and while I see that is a valid point, I also like to think that it's something Dave has woven in of his own accord. This is a book trying to show "actual, soul-sucking lunacy," as one reviewer said, and the mind of the lunatic we get is rife with the unimaginable; it is only logical that his brain might fail in the description of it.
That being said, some parts of the story are actually acknowledged as possibly ill-reported, mostly because they come secondhand from John, the other half of this monster-fighting duo. Though John claims the title and most of the spotlight, his story is still told through Dave's intimacy with the reader, his raw point of view. Dave sees himself as a sort of shadow of John, but in that humility lies an honesty that is both endearing and grounded, and while neither of the characters is particularly heroic or even likable in the traditional sense of the word, as David is quick to point out--but then, nothing about this book makes sense in the traditional sense of the word.
In any elaborate created world, there is always a "set piece," a sort of touchstone that defines the rules of the universe: the One Ring in Lord of the Rings, the TARDIS in Doctor Who, In this case, it is the Soy Sauce. It is almost sentient, and it seems to be an adequate metaphor for the story itself. Wong started publishing his story that would become John Dies serially online where it took on a cult force of its own and has eventually made it into the hands of horror-comedy filmmaker genius Dan Coscarelli, the mind responsible for works like Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)--you know, the one about Elvis in a senior home fighting demons. A certain brand of crazy has taken seed in this genre, a hyperabsurdity that breathes itself into every aspect of the story and makes it somehow more real, like Amy's phantom hand syndrome that can open the ghost door because neither of them is actually there.
The ghost door(s) is a good example of how John Dies fits under the umbrella of Urban Fantasy. Some parts of the internet define urban fantasy as "sub-genre of fantasy defined by its place...a prerequisite is it must take place in a city." The world of the boys' hometown, Undisclosed, is just enough like the reader's reality to make us comfortable, but with minor differences like the ghost doors and talking bratwursts. Also the fact that the differences are unseen by many--like typical fantasy--contributes more to the hyperabsurdity of the whole deal and the outsider's view of David's crumpling sanity. Because Dave keeps so much under his hat, changing things or only saying them in his head--like calling his hometown "Undisclosed" so much that it becomes a place in and of itself--he gives a power not only to his own world but to the world he is laying out for Arnie Blondestone. The "undisclosed" nature of Undisclosed. how it sort of circumvents the typical definition of "urban fantasy" by circumventing the typical definition of "city," and like many aspects of this book, therefore becomes more tantalizing.
I am severely looking forward to reading the sequel and keeping up with David Wong's future endeavors. The man is funny, and he makes me laugh in a way that I haven't experienced in a long time. Like this article on Cracked that includes not one, but two tongue-in-cheek, quasi-hysterical reviews of his very own book. But somehow, it doesn't make him seem like a huge tool.
some of my favorite (and more colorful) blurbs about John Dies At The End:
"John Dies at the End...[is] a case of the author trying to depict actual, soul-sucking lunacy, and succeeding with flying colors." --Fangoria
"Reads as if Bill Murray's world-weary Ghosbuster and sassy Buffy the Vampire Slayer spawned a slacker child--like Clerks with monsters. . . . Surprising, disturbing, and inventive." --Herald Sun (Australia)
other reviews I enjoyed:
"The Designer's Drugs" at Second Supper
Friday, March 29, 2013
MAR Review: Drawing in the Dust
March review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Drawing in the Dust by Zoë Klein, 2009. [Romantic Suspense category]
Drawing in the Dust is the story of Page Brookstone, a brilliant Biblical archaeologist who seems to have hit a wall in both her career and her personal life when an Arab couple shows up to her dig at Har Meggido, claiming he souls of two lovers are trapped beneath their home; they beg Page as they begged countless other archaeologists before her to come investigate, and at first Page brushes it off. But her curiosity gets the better of her, and she ends up on the Barakats' porch, and what she finds beneath their home--namely two skeletons buried in an anachronistic embrace--will not only change her personal life but the world she is working in as well.
What Page and her team find in her cistern can be interpreted many different ways, depending on which angle one reads the book from. Is it confidence? Happiness? Love? Acceptance? I was drawn to Page because her self-sabotage seems all to familiar to me, especially at this age of transition in my life. It was interesting to me, however, to see that same self-sabotage in someone who had already ostensibly found and followed her dreams. I was also really drawn to the idea of Anatiya, of a woman who rose up and told her story in a world where she was both physically and metaphorically mute. Strong female characters usually cement me into a book's hold, and this one had not one but two--although technically one spoke through the other. The parallel stories of Page and Anatiya make this book work in a way that is hard to pinpoint. It points to the transcultural/historical/time confederacy of women, one fighting to let the other be heard. Page and her team didn't find the scrolls until nearly 200 pages in. To me, this is important. It allows the reader to focus on Page as the locus of the story instead of the scrolls and Anatiya. By letting Page go that far telling the story before making her discovery, Klein allows Anatiya and her voice to be an echo of Page herself.
One of the first things I notice about a book is its writing. I notice the language, the efficacy of a character's communication, the way the author brings her world off the page and into the space around me. This was the first book in a good while where, while I was reading, I totally let the world around me fall away and became engrossed. Although at times it seemed a little overdone, a little too florid, as the novel progressed Zoë Klein's style became more and more fitting to her story. In order to tell a story about a woman who lives digging up the Biblical past and waxing poetic about what it might've been, the author has to create a language that allows for that sort of talk, and Klein delivered. In fact, Klein used her magic to create an entire scripture off of which this book is based: The Scroll of Anatiya by Zoe Klein is available for the public eye as a sort of companion to this text, as well as to Jeremiah's. The excerpts from her scroll at the beginning of each chapter tell of the love story between Jeremiah and Anatiya, and they seem to echo the present-day (love?) story between Mortichai and Page.
I chose this book for the Romantic Suspense category of the book challenge, and it paid off. The story of two forbidden loves, one modern and one ancient, and the connections between the two push the story along, keeping the pages turning. The idea of these two parallel loves subverts traditional gender roles by allowing Anatiya to exist in her own respect and challenges traditional relationship paradigms by painting Page and Mortichai opposite each other, so different in almost every respect but the love they share for the past. Rabbi Klein's novel has created a whole new kind of Da Vinci Code, one that digs not only into the past but also into the hearts of its very readers.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
FEB Review: Zorro
February review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Zorro: A Novel by Isabel Allende. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden, 2005.
Zorro: A Novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende reimagines the youth of Diego de la Vega, the boy who would become El Zorro. She takes a well-known figure with a lot of baggage--from Johnston McCulley's first pulp novels in the 1920's to Antonio Banderas's film incarnation in 1998, the figure of Zorro has definitely been played out--and does something new with him. By stripping the masked crusader of his amalgamated trappings, she returns him to human form and asks the most important question we can ask of ourselves or of any larger-than-life figure: how did he get to be this way? Diego is a boy of two worlds, born of a Spanish conquistador and a Shoshone warrior, destined to spend his life bouncing back and forth between these two most fundamental parts of himself. Aided by his "milk-brother" Bernardo, he finds his way through Native American vision quests, journeys across the ocean, and aristocratic Spanish society.
Allende is a wonderful crafter of relationships--they are my favorite part of her stories. With a magical means of description characteristic of many Latin American writers, Allende's every line speaks not only of the wide overarching qualities of the character, but also of the day-to-day, the magic in the ordinary. For example, Allende's idea behind the mask is that Diego de la Vega has been unfortunately blessed with large ears and the mask serves as a way to strip that embarrassment from his world--in addition to hiding his face and becoming something else. The smallest details come to light in the most beautiful ways in this novel, with Allende as the master of all.
Zorro is a novel about the creation of an identity, and, as with most identities, it doesn't start with the eponymous hero. Instead, the narrator takes us back to the foundation of that hero: namely, his parents. From the very first page, the narrator is a large part of the story and makes no effort to separate herself, but it is not until the very last chapter that she reveals herself to the reader. The idea of placing this story within the frame of a personal recounting lends no air of mystery to this mysterious figure of Zorro. On the contrary, it breaks him down and makes him human, getting at the kernel of Truth with a capital "T" that Allende seems to be trying to find with her tale.
"Zorro is not a magical character. He is not like Superman, Spiderman, or so many other fantastic action heroes. He is a human being, a man who loves life, who is willing to take risks to defend the underdog, and who is brave, funny, and romantic. Maybe his appeal is that we can all become Zorro given the right circumstances. We can all have courage and live life to its fullest. Just give us a mask, a cape, and a sword!" -Isabel Allende, in her About the Book interview at the end of Zorro.
Monday, February 25, 2013
UPDATE - Eclectic Reader Challenge
This is where I'll update my list for the 2013 Eclectic Reader Challenge! Here's my March pick, y'all.
JAN--Made into a movie: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
FEB--Translated Fiction: Zorro by Isabel Allende
MAR--Romantic Suspense: Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein
APR--
MAY--
JUN--
JUL--
AUG--
SEPT--
OCT--
NOV--
DEC--Translated fiction
Historical mystery
Romantic suspense
Made into a movie
New Adult
Urban Fantasy
Dystopian
Memoir
LGBT
Action Adventure
Humour
Published in 2013
JAN--Made into a movie: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
FEB--Translated Fiction: Zorro by Isabel Allende
MAR--Romantic Suspense: Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein
APR--
MAY--
JUN--
JUL--
AUG--
SEPT--
OCT--
NOV--
DEC--
Categories
Thursday, January 24, 2013
JAN Review: Perks of Being a Wallflower
January review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, 1999. Translated to screen by Stephen Chbosky, 2012.
SUMMARY: Charlie is a shy, incoming freshman who has had some problems in his life. In a series of letters to an unnamed recipient, he details his first year of high school and his quest to "participate" more, balancing his natural strangeness with a desire to fit in and make friends. Alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking, Charlie's words take us through his first year, through reading extra books from Bill, his Advanced English teacher; through his first foray into dating, even though it isn't the girl he's in love with; through his family problems, including his sister's abusive boyfriend and his father's quiet reticence. He watches, and he understands, but there are some pains that you cannot narrate, and these are the ones Charlie skirts around, the ones that we as readers have to piece together through his narration.
Perks is a small beautiful book. Written in short letters from a high school freshman, the prose is simple and raw and unsure of itself, but in its simplicity lies its incredible capacity to convince. Charlie, the protagonist, tells us from the very first page that the names and places and things we will come to love may not be the real names--but the entire book makes us question the difference between what is real and what is true.
I watched the movie adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower before I borrowed the book from a friend, and I was intrigued that the author both wrote the screenplay and directed the film. The thing I praised the most was that the feel of the movie perfectly matched the feel of the book. Some flashbacks or hints we received in the book were beautifully translated into faded montage cuts and voiceover narration, still allowing Charlie control over his world. It was a quick read, but a coming-of-age novel that still spoke to me as a nearly 22-year-old college graduate. I was especially struck by the epilogue, where Charlie gets to stand up in the truck bed for the first time as they drive through the tunnel. He starts crying because he is "suddenly very aware...because I was standing in the tunnel. And I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite" (213). In my situation, trying to write and make money and figure out what I want to do with myself, the reminder that we can just exist and be happy is something that comes well-appreciated.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
The 2013 Eclectic Reader's Challenge
I've decided to do the Eclectic Reader 2013 Challenge, hosted by Book'd Out. I feel like this challenge will give me some desperately needed structure and help me start to write again. Adjusting to life sans college has been difficult, and I need something to keep me on track. I fancy this challenge especially because it requires different genres, expanding my horizons and talents, so to speak. If I ever want to be a critic, this is something I'm going to have to learn how to do and do well. I might start up something with the TV shows I watch, but I'm not sure. One step at a time. Anyway, here goes.
Translated fiction
Historical mystery
Romantic suspense
Made into a movie
New Adult
Urban Fantasy
Dystopian
Memoir
LGBT
Action Adventure
Humour
Published in 2013"
The aim of The Eclectic Reader 2013 Challenge is to push you outside your comfort zone by reading up to 12 books during the year from 12 different categories.
"Join in:
The challenge will run from January 1st to December 31st 2013. Participants may join at any time up until December 1st 2013
Create a blog post committing to your participation in this challenge.
Select, read and review a book from each genre listed below during the year for a total of 12 books. A book may be in print, electronic or audio format.
* You can choose your books as you go or create a list in advance. You may combine this challenge with others if you wish.
* Where a book is identified by more than one genre eg historical romance, it may only count for either the historical fiction or romantic fiction genres – not both.
* You can read your chosen titles in any order, at any pace, just complete the challenge by December 21st 2013 to be eligible for the prize drawing.
Categories
I haven't decided which order I'll be reading them in, but I'll keep you all posted! If anyone reads this, that is. My tentative ideas are as follows--
JAN--Made into a movie: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
FEB--Translated Fiction: Zorro by Isabel Allende
MAR--Romantic Suspense: Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein
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