They Are a Rotten Crowd

“Americans, while willing, even eager, to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.” Truth.

14.13 Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby

I am usually not a fan of film adaptations of books, especially those I taught at school, but I have always have a soft spot for Redford and Farrow as Gatsby and Daisy; the foggy lenses, and over acting.  Showing it in class was always hilarious.  The kids eagerly anticipating the gruesome ending and instead laughing out loud at the almost comedic scene.  It isn’t a perfect movie, but it was pretty perfect for what it was supposed to be.  The Great Gatsby is all about what we see instead of who we are, what we imagine instead of what we have, so the over acting was just right because these people were always pretending about everything.  And now we have a remake coming, and I am sad that this original version will be relegated to the classics section.  The remake is being directed by Baz Luhrmann of Moulin Rouge fame so is destined to be gaudy as all get out, but will that take away from the story, from the truth of the book – that in America it isn’t about who we are, but instead about who other people think we are.  I really wasn’t sure, the casting seemed off to me and rumors of the soundtrack sounded crazy but…

Then I saw this:

The pink suit, the pool, the car.  The back-story, the pearls, the green light. All the pretty, and yes, all the gaudy.  But, oh my gosh, I am in – like totally in (except maybe not the 3-D part, can we just kill the 3-D part please.)  And this Tom Buchanan is the perfect Tom Buchanan – am I right? 

So I wasn’t excited about the movie and now I can’t wait and because of this I found out about Trimalchio.  It is an early version of Gatsby that was written in 1924 but published in 2000, along with some of the letters Fitzgerald’s editor sent him in regards to revisions.  For me, it is also the superior book.  It seems to me it is a lot more messy than the original. It feels more obvious to the reader and the characters that Gatsby and Daisy will never have the future they both have imagined, in fact, none of the them will.  All I could think about while reading was how much I wish I had had this edition when I was teaching Gatsby years ago because it seemed a bit more realistic in the end, and maybe this movie will be the same.

The Write Thing

"That the main lesson of literature is courage…"  Truth.

8.13 Woes of the True Policeman

 

For the past few weeks I have watched the neighbors across the street pack up the many belongings from their home.  After 40 years, it is time to move somewhere smaller;  somewhere safer, with only one level.  She is 86 and he is 89.  I knew that they needed to move, especially after he broke his arm last year falling down the stairs backwards, but it breaks my heart to see them dismantle the life they lived in that house.  I wish I knew them better and longer.  It is heart wrenching on one hand and on the other so clearly the right thing to do, but watching them decide what to take and what to leave at this stage in their loves feels sad.

Some people don’t get the chance to make these types of decisions.  Roberto Bolano died at age 50, he had been ill but was still very young.  Much of his popularity as an author came after his death and three books have been published posthumously, most recently Woes.  It was marketed as an addition to 2666, and it is, but it also felt like I wasn’t meant to read it.  It feels like a character study that he did for himself in order to better understand the characters he wrote about there.  It feels like a sketchbook that was set aside and not meant to be a part of anything.  If you haven’t read 2666, this story makes no sense (not that he is known for writing linear stories), if you have read 2666 you will eat this up with a spoon, as I did.  You will relish each new detail, you will want more.  But kind of like too much ice cream, maybe not such a great idea.  I love Bolano and I love his work, but I want to read what he wanted me to read and I am starting to feel a bit dirty as each new piece comes out.

The Mowing. My God, The Mowing.

“‘My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts about everything and for the most part I am in doubt.’” Personal Truth.

63.12 Anna Karenina

Undoubtedly, the worst job in the world would be to run the notes of all these jerks back and forth waiting for any of them to actually do something.

This was my main thought as I sludged through the first 700-some pages of this book.  Honestly, I didn’t like anyone.  It is supposed to be a love story but we never see anything about Vronsky and Anna together.  Plus she says stuff like this: “Her complete ownership of him was a continual joy to her.” What the what???  The only things Anna seems to love are the things she believes someone is trying to take away from her.  Poor Karenin just seems lost in the world somewhere and then there is the cad Oblonsky – I think I liked him best, because at least he was having some fun.  And Levin.  My goodness, Levin.  A lot of sowing, mowing, and reaping for that man on his farm and off.

I dreaded picking the book up but forced myself to just so I could finish.  My mother and I decided to read it together for the sheer need of forcing one another along, and it worked.  Not sure I would have made it on my own…

But curses, just when I think I am out they pull me back in. The final scenes with Anna are the most compelling of the book. Finally there is some insight into how her entire life has been and how her air of confidence is just a screen. It was sad to read and yet exhilarating.  There are all the details about the position of women in society, making Russia in the 1800s feel like a very modern place indeed.  And there are some great comedic looks at what happens when people have specific expectations of how events in life are supposed to go.

The book is far too long and bloated, but looking back I am very glad to have read it and recognize the reasons it is so well respected.  Heavy emphasis on the "have read" part.

A True Hero's Quest

“Well, actually, I love books because books are my best friends.” Truth.

61.12 Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

I loved this book.  Yes, it is a little sugary sweet, and yes, it is a whole lot nerdy (and there may be a royalty check for Google in the mail), but it is also full of wonderful people and places.  It is about the love of books, and words, and print.  It is about learning, and creating, and evolving.  It is a quest story with a hero who isn’t looking for the answer but for the solution, and he is looking not for himself but for his friends, and when he finds it it is poignant and simple and timely.  He counts on his friends, and they pay him back in kind, and we see that sometimes life and immortality are the same.  I will forever be hopeful that upon entering a bookstore, the man behind the counter might just ask, “What do you seek in these shelves?”

On a side note, I used the above picture instead of just the sole cover because this is the picture I used on my Twitter feed for the #Dailybookpic of weekend reading.  I was finishing the book on the left to start the book on the right.  And imagine my delight when just a few pages into Penumbra, Sloan wrote this:

“My Kindle is a hand-me-down from my dad, one of the original models, a slanted, asymmetrical plate with a tiny grey screen and a bed of angled keys.  It looks like a prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are new Kindles with bigger screens and subtler industrial designs, but this one is like Penumbra’s postcards: so uncool it’s cool again.”

Now, my original Kindle is not a hand-me-down from my father, but his first Kindle was an original hand-me-down from my brother so that isn’t far off, and if there is anything I am a pro at it is being so uncool that I am sure that someday I just might be cool again.

Good Girl Gone Bad

“Choice was dangerous: you had to forgo all other possibilities when you chose.” Truth.

57.12 A Casual Vacancy

I wonder about the negative reviews of this book, they seemed to stem more from the Harry Potter books than from this book.  I have zero understanding about people being offended that Rowling has written a book for adults and it has - GASP! - sex, drugs, and swearing!  Some even complain about all those big words she uses.  I mean... Since when are readers in charge of what writers write?  Because she wrote a book our children (and most of us) loved?  Why does that make people turn away from her instead of embrace her?  It makes no sense to me.  Thank god I ignored the crazy reviews and read it anyway.

This is a grown up book, and it is one hell of a book.  It had more painful moments than hopeful but it was real. There are a lot of characters to keep track of which left me off kilter in the beginning but I knew I would eventually keep them all straight and I did.  They live in a small village and their lives, and the lives of their children, are hugely intertwined and this is what keeps the plot moving. I am not sure why it is being billed as a murder mystery as it really isn’t; it is more a character study. Many of them are rather awful on the inside, but mostly they are just human and trying to find happiness in their lives in the aftermath of the sudden death of a friend. 

The most well-written and interesting characters for me were the teenagers.  No surprise there – Rowling can write teens, and, as she showed us in the HP books as well, she has a true grasp on the fact that they are not just mindless mini-adults who mind their parents’ every command – they are smart and aware of what is going on around them.  Maybe this is the true reason people are giving the book bad reviews; maybe acknowledging your kids have power and may be flawed is the only thing scarier to them than Voldemort - as in the truth of it cannot be named. These kids are taking part, making things happen and we need to remember and respect that.  In fact, most of what is to be taken away from this book comes from the children: how to be brave, how to change your outlook, how not to ignore what is right in front of your face before it’s too late, how to celebrate and remember what made you care about people in the first place, and how to honor them when they are lost regardless of how you feel about them now.  I mean Rihanna as funeral dirge?  It’s brilliant, really.  The whole thing was bloody brilliant in fact.

Wax Tracks

“Underneath all the other stuff. Good heart is eighty-five percent of everything in life.” Truth.

“Do what you got to do and stay fly.” Advice.

54.12 Telegraph Avenue

Chabon can be a wordy little bugger, and he is rather fond of his thesaurus as well, but I have been here before. His books take a bit to get rolling, to find their cadence; and since I have been here and loved what I found I stuck with it even though I found it harder going this time. Then there it was... Page 158. That moment where his characters become so human and do the absolute right, yet oh so simple, thing. It was there and I felt vindicated but unfortunately that feeling didn’t last even though I wanted it to so much.

Usually Chabon’s books have a sense of hope that runs through their core and that was missing here.  I had a very hard time getting into this story and staying with it because these were not very pleasant people to be around. Only when faced with loss did they recognize anyone’s importance and none of them seemed better off in the end. They all were searching for hope desperately and weren’t able to give it to one another, and some parts of the plot left me feeling truly uncomfortable.

As the main setting of the book is a record store, there are a lot of references to music that I wish I had been more familiar with, I imagine it may have connected me more to the story. But I can certainly identify with spending hours in record stores flipping trough all the stock until you found the perfect one, taking it home and oh so carefully putting the record on the player and lowering the needle, sitting on the bed and listening to the whole album and then starting it over again.  With iPods and ear-buds music has become a much more singular experience and that makes me long for the days of old when my mom would put on a record and we could hear it all through the house, but times they are a changin'.  In the end, the characters and the nostalgia of Telegraph just didn't make me. I love Chabon and think he is a very talented writer, but sadly I didn’t love this book.

Old Friends

“One mustn’t dream of one’s future; one must earn it.”  Truth.

“There’s always another train. Always.”  Truth.

46.12 The Prisoner of Heaven

 The Shadow if the Wind is one of my all time favorite books.  My experience reading it was exciting and invigorating jus when I needed to believe in the fun of reading again.  The mystery, the romance, the books! I loved the characters and the places.  I thought Fermin Romero de Torres was the most romantic man I had ever read; a bit of a cad to be sure, but romantic.  These are characters that I have since wondered about and hoped for (is that crazy?).  I missed them in Zafon’s The Angel’s Game, a sort of prequel, but with The Prisoner of Heaven all of my old friends are back and they are an absolute joy to read.  I think the feeling of characters being old friends is one of the most wonderful things about being a reader, what an amazing thing.

They remind me of the importance of family, friends, and loyalty.  I love their Barcelona, Sempere and Sons, and of course, the Graveyard of Forgotten Books, the return there even brought the tears.  They also remind me about hope.  Each of them has been at a point where they have lost everything, but they trust one another, help one another, and come to find that happiness can return.  And maybe that is why I picked up this book right now, I needed a bit of hope on my horizon, and it doesn’t surprise me in the last that these are the characters that brought it to me.  They made me believe again before, and they did it again here.  I am very thankful.

I know Zafon does not want this to be considered a sequel, he wants all the books to interact with each other with no need to read them in any specific order but I think that the emotional punch of this book, as well as some of the mystery and its clues, would not have been as profound without having read the other two first.  It also sets up what could be a really great fourth book, which makes me all sorts of giddy.

Beautiful Little Fools

“’Nothing makes you happy except what you don’t have. You’ve never known how to do anything but to take and take and then ask for more. You have everything and act like it’s nothing.’” Truth.

43.12 Tigers in Red Weather

First of all, this is a beautiful book.  The cover art and the end pages are really exquisite and play in to the idea of the socialite existence of these two beautiful women in post WWII America.  They live a privileged life at Tiger House on Martha’s Vineyard, with the parties, tennis clubs, clothes and jewelry, and to have the book literally wrapped in such a classically beautiful way helped get me into the right headspace every time I opened the book.  It is one of those books that I just had to have in hardback, and even better that I found it used!

Second, while the buzz around this book is making it an “it” book of the summer, I had zero idea of its plot coming in which seems to always work to my advantage.  However, looking back, I am not sure plot is really the right word.  This is one of those stories that you progress through with baited breath but in the end nothing much really happens.  The plot spans about 25 years and each section is told from a different point of view of someone in the familywith the events overlapping so you see things in different ways and pick up little nuggets of understanding as you read, but in the end I am not sure what the point of it all was. Even though we get the point of view of each main character I didn’t feel like I really knew any of them very well, or cared deeply for their well being.  I still felt like I was kept at a distance about what was really going on.  However, the last section had me on absolute pins and I couldn’t put it down until I turned the last page.

Third, I have never read a book that made me want to drink so much!  All those hot days filled with cold martinis, white wine, and gin and tonics.  I even have a new jar of olives in the fridge, and a bottle of pinot grigio chilling. I defy anyone to read this without craving something to drink.  And this says something about the descriptions, where her characters may be lacking a bit of depth the setting was palpable.  It all felt so real and so desirable.  It felt like home to me even though I have never been there.  I wish Tiger House was real and I could go live there, something about it felt eternally safe.

All in all, and for a first book, this very well written, and I really enjoyed it for what it was.  It was fun and wonderfully descriptive, but I don’t think it will have a lasting impact on me as a great book.

True Life

“There are moments in your life when something’s taken from you, and once you’ve lost it you don’t get it back. What you were before is neither here nor there. You’re different now.” Truth.

31.12 Death of a Murderer

In my teens and twenties I was very interested in true crime, I read a lot of books about cases and have seen every episode of American Justice – I love that man’s voice.  While living in London, my history class took a Ripper walk through Whitechapel.  There is something so odd about doing things so drastic and horrifying and then living like they never happened.  Once I had my own child I couldn’t do it anymore, it is far too close to home now.  Anyway, I also used to watch a lot of British murder mysteries.  They are so compelling in their grittiness, and the true horrors of the of the crimes and the eventual destruction of the people trying to solve the cases.  No one ever comes out better than they were before.  I love Cracker, Prime Suspect, Wire in the Blood, Lynley, Moorse, Luther, Whitechapel, and when I need it to all be a bit lighter, Midsomer Murders.  I know I have seen the case of The Moors Murders somewhere along the way but for the life of me I can’t remember which show, but I can still hear someone screaming, “Myyyyyyra!”  It is one of those cases that is just too awful, one that makes it scary to be a mother, and it clearly has left behind ghosts.  

Death of a Murderer is about a police officer on a 12-hour graveyard shift whose job it is to watch over a body in the morgue.  Just sit there and make sure nothing happens, no big deal right? His wife wants him to call in sick because the body is that of Myra Hindley, although the book never uses her name.  If you are not familiar with The Moors Murders this book will not give you much information except to convey the deep hatred for this woman in England.  In fact, I think you probably need some sort of background knowledge about the case for the book to even make sense.  Myra and her boyfriend murdered children and during the trial she was absolutely despised for her lack of emotion, but the story here is about this man.  He spends the time thinking about his life, and his secrets.  Those secrets that all of us have about things we have done that we hope no one ever finds out about.  It is a very mild story but rings very true.  It is a hard day for him and he dwells on things that make him feel like his life just hasn’t panned out… Wouldn’t it just be better if… I wonder if I had gone here… If only I wasn’t stuck now… But then the day is over and you (us and him) start to remember what you love and live for, you make grand plans to celebrate the life you have and honor those around you, to take the time to enjoy what you are now and not think about the what ifs, but then inevitably the feelings of the low and the high fall away and life goes back to the status quo.

No matter the circumstances, I guess life for most really does go on.

A Lesson in Parenting

“Even awful people can be polite for a few minutes.” Truth.

29.12 The Family Fang

I am glad I read this just in time for Mother’s Day. These parents are fucked up. They believe in the importance of what they are doing, but they are fucked up. Their kids aren’t perfect but they end up being okay, giving hope to us all. Is there any mother out there who isn’t worried that they are going to screw up their kids?  I am. Daily. Just today I wondered if I was going to make my kid hate books by reading them so much. I worry about pushing him too far, not pushing enough.  What he is eating, what he isn’t eating.  I am far from perfect, and he will be the same, but compared to the Fangs I am amazing (Hence, the lesson!), because seriously, they are fucked up. I digress... back to the book.

I was in the mood for a quirky, fun read. What I got was certainly original and very well written, but the quirk wasn’t quite what I was expecting and the fun really wasn’t there at all. The Fang family are somewhat well known performance artists. At least the parents are, the kids are more like extras and set pieces being moved around and manipulated by their parents’ whims for the sake of art. I thought the art was more of the shock and awe variety; not trying to entertain as much as humiliate and create chaos. But we all see art differently and even within this family each person has a different opinion and reaction. I did love how the state of the current relationships were unraveled through seeing the past “creations” but I hated the end. I was hoping to see the parents and children come together as a family, but instead I ended up hating the parents. The book lost me entirely and made me feel sad for the whole family instead of feeling any sort of connection, and that was a disappointment, as often families are.

Epistolary Overload

 “Amazing thing fiction. Tells you more, sometimes, about the writer than the writer can tell you about himself.” Truth.

25.12 The Monsters of Templeton

I love epistolary writing. Love it. When I was in fifth grade, I wrote a story made of letters and placed them in envelopes just like my favorite book, Griffin and Sabine. I was heartbroken to learn my mother had given my copies of those books away. They were fascinating to me. So creative and so powerful. They started my fascination with alternate narration devices.  While teaching, I loved discussing point of view, and how it changes the way a story is told. I also love the use of letters, journals, books with in books, pictures - I love it all!  But man, as much as I love it, there was just too much of it going on here.

The alternating points of view, articles, journals, letters. All the family members, the crazy mom, the sick friend, the affair and pregnancy, the two guys, the crazy ex-girlfriend, daddy drama, the monster. I feel like the town and its legends would have been enough because all families have ghosts and stories and crazy people, but all of the extraneous stuff was exhausting in the end. And it wasn’t needed. To be fair, this is a first book and the idea and writing are good, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it all. She has good reason to love everything she created, she did a wonderful job, but she shouldn’t have included it all.  I feel like this could have been pared down to a really crisp and fun look at a genealogical search without the unnecessary drama. Alas, it wasn’t and I think it suffered in a way that made it unbelievable and less satisfying.

Make It Stop

“…she wonders if what she believes to be a love for the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.” Truth.

20.12 One Day

Dex and Em, Em and Dex.  I would like to punch you both in the face.  I am sure your love story is familiar to everyone, because we all remember the worst about ourselves and dwell on it, but that is why it was impossible to root for you.  You were meant to have a one-night stand when you were 20 and now you are 40 and have put a massive amount of unrealistic expectation on one another.  

Dex, you are a drunk, a mean drunk.  And you take on women to try to complete something in you that can’t be fixed.  Em, you are whiney and a push over.  You are mean to all of the men in your life because they are not Dex.  In fact, you ruin everything in the hopes of being with Dex.  How did that work out for ya?

We see you both once a year, and yet not much happens to either one of you.  Neither gets better or worse, neither becomes a worthy companion for the other.  Neither of you are characters I care about or have hopes for.  I know that the Truth in life is that we take those around us for granted and put off adventures and dreams for another day, but I am thinking that reading about you was supposed to inspire me to not do that in my own life and it just didn’t.

We All Hold On

13.12 Never Let Me Go

This book is labeled Science Fiction but I didn’t find that to be accurate, and it isn’t really an alternative future either.  There is no reason to think that the world outside of the school was any different than the world we know.  The students’ world may seem different but it is simply what they were exposed to juxtaposed to our own experience.   

A lot of stories like this are full of shock and awe, full of in your face horrors of war and disease; but this one was very subtle and that was nice to read.  It developed like life does.  We grow and learn more about the world around us, and our place in it, and it is often upsetting.  But it was also told as a series of memories and that took some of the sting out of the sadness since the time had already passed and nothing could be done.  My main issue was that the relationship between Tommy and Kathy felt very surface.  I didn’t see them really grow with one another and so that made the final third of the book much less powerful.

I also see people wondering why they didn’t try to flee their fate; well… Why don’t any of us?  We grow up and go to school, on to college, careers, and families; very few challenge that expectation and none do it without questioning their actions.  So why are we asking more from the characters of a novel?  This was just the way things were.

On a side note:  Why must we ruin wonderful book covers with those damn movie tie-in covers?  They are embarrassing!  I hate them and avoid them at all costs, but I had to use it above because that is the edition I read.  Ugh... 

A Hopeful Oxymoron

3.12 – Nightwoods

I am still trying to digest this one. I liked it, but it was kind of rough.  Sad things happen, I know this, but it doesn’t make them any less sad to read about.  This book is full of people living through sad things, but the point is that they are living.  Luce takes in her niece and nephew after her sister is murdered, the children are damaged, and their father is still coming for them.  I was constantly thinking how the whole book is a subtle thriller – that is an oxymoron right?  Subtle and thriller.  Most thrillers are so in your face; the violence, the bad guy vs. the good guy, the plot twists and reveals.  This book has that all as well but it is subtle; you realize the facts instead of having them thrown in your face, the action is a slow burn, the good guys are good and the bad guys bad, but, as we all know, nothing is ever that simple.

It is a beautifully written book full of wonderful sentences and descriptions.  No detail goes unnoticed and it is the details that tell much of the story.  The small things that could go unnoticed or unconsidered.  These are characters who do not want to be known, and they do not share about themselves, but you find yourself attached to them anyway.  This is a literary mystery to be sure, and I am sure that many people will find it boring or overly written, but after considering it I think it was kind of underwritten so that the reader’s emotions have to fill in the blank spots.  I am happy to say that the emotion I filled the story with was hope.  After reading a story of such sadness, I feel hopeful.  That is kind of amazing.

Not Your Momma's Werewolf

60. The Last Werewolf

He is more like 007.  That spy who somehow walks out of the shattered ruins while everyone else dies.  He is a brute, and a cad.  A man who was once more man than animal but is now much more animal than anything, and he is the last of his kind.  And he doesn’t really give a crap.  He has dilly-dallied around for over 200 years and is over it.  He feels like he lost the desire for anything so long ago that it isn’t even worth it to run away from all the people who are after him, until he sees her...

See, 007 I tell you.

This was a quick thriller but the very frank and explicit sex, remember they are animals, will run quite a few people off.  But for a story that seems to be over before it even starts it was fun to see where it went.

And Sometimes They Were Very Sad

59. The Marriage Plot

This book was a gut punch for me to read.  It wouldn’t be for other people, but for me it was painful for reasons I won’t write about here.  It made me very sad, but I also read it differently than anyone else would and so I think all of my opinions are going to be skewed.

I identified with Madeline, maybe too much.  I also have spent much of my life escaping into stories and have so many plots and characters floating around in my mind that my realities can never live up to my expectations.  I identified with all three characters as they fell in to the chasm of the “Real World.”  We hear about it during our education, everyone around us pretends that we have done everything right to be prepared for its realities.  We go to school and study in order to Be something.  We believe that we have a handle on who we want to be for the rest of our lives, but truthfully we know nothing.  We have simply been hiding, avoiding.

The book is wonderfully written, Eugenides plays with time in a wonderful way.  His writing shows how two people can share an experience but feel and remember it in excruciatingly different ways.  He highlights again how insecure people truly are with themselves and how the people around them know very little of the truth.  He brings each of the characters to life in a very vivid, though not always happy, way.  I am sure there will be many complaints about the entitled nature of the advantaged youth of the 1980’s.

I keep seeing the story labeled as a love triangle but I didn’t see it that way; it is more about choices.  We all make choices, big and small, every day.  We also constantly wonder what the other choice would have brought us, often believing that the better choice was the other option.  I am so glad that Mitchell gave Madeline a choice, for his sake as much as for hers.

Left Cold

58. The Skating Rink

 

I found myself a little bored and less absorbed than I usually am with Bolano’s books, so I would say that this is my least favorite. Also, I have to say it was a lot less exciting than the blurb on the back made it sound; I mean, "hair raising"? Not at all!

Since he died, they are printing all of his stuff whether finished or not and I think he might be a bit horrified by that fact as it smacks quite a bit of money grubbing.  The fact that I thought about that while reading this is also an indication of my lack of interest in the story.

The story is told from three male points of view, they are only linked by off chance meetings but they all know details about the skater, the rink that was built, and the murder that occurred there. I liked all three guys even though one is a corrupt politician, he is clearly a romantic; and another has left his wife and son even though he clearly loves them dearly. Not sure I liked them as I read, but looking back I do. Also, any mention of a band of poets from Chile makes me instantly smile, as if I am in on Bolano’s joke. Each of the chapters reads like an interrogation report of what happened, as if they are making sure to highlight the best of their actions.  You have to read this in a pretty steady fashion in order to stay on top of who is who.

Again, all of Bolano’s female characters are adored as opposed to being real characters; men are willing to do anything for them but we are never quite sure why. This is a complaint that I have with all of Bolano’s works, the women are just never developed and I had hoped that since one of the main characters in this book is a woman we might finally see that side of his writing, alas…

Am I Me?

54. Await Your Reply 

“There are so many people we could become, and we leave a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it’s hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years?” – Dan Chaon. Truth.

I literally said, “Wow!” at the end of this one.  It is three seemingly separate story lines that weave together to reveal a truth at the end, and while I wouldn’t really call it a thriller, I would say that the shifting back and forth from each story propels the plot along and made it quite hard to put down.  One thing that really helped was that no specific time frame is given and so each story kind of revolves in its own world (until you realize that it really doesn’t.) All of the stories include characters that change their identity for one reason or another.  With the advent of the Internet it seems that this is a fairly easy thing to do, but it is also something that people have been doing for much longer.  Don’t we all want to leave our hometown at some point and "become" something?

These shifts in identity lead to my one complaint, and I am sure it is a common one, as a reader you felt a bit detached from things because you aren’t drawn close to many of the characters. But wasn’t that the point?  We as readers can’t know the characters when they keep changing who they are and leaving who they were behind. You can’t know fully developed characters because they haven’t developed yet. They are just names and documents. 

The truth in life is that we know what people want us to know about them.  We don’t really know ourselves. We highlight our positives and hope the negative fades away. Would we really say no if someone said we could start all over? All the characters say they are hoping to find someone who truly loves them. Is that what makes us real?  When we matter to someone else?

SO DONE!

Ok, over the last year or so I have been keeping more of an eye on the publishing world and I find that every three months or so there is a MUST read book.  Some are new works from past winners like The Marriage Plot or Freedom, but many are from brand new authors like: The Tiger’s Wife, Swamplaidia!, and The Night Circus.  It pains me to know that I bought all of the later three in hardback because I just couldn’t stand not having the new “it” book.  The Tiger’s Wife was enjoyable but far from great, I just finished Swamplandia and I feel sick about it, and now I am hearing a lot of push back on The Night Circus.  So I am stating right here, right now, NEVER AGAIN.  I will buy hardback copies of books that I am looking forward to, but no more of these publishing darlings.

52. Swampladia!

 

Fuck you.  Fuck you.  Fuck you.

You cannot have a whimsical cover like this and then torture me with the dreadful existence of these characters.  I know people have it rough and life is hard, but is there not one thing to be hopeful about?  Not one shred of light to keep moving towards?  Because if there is, where was it here?  I have been told not to judge a book by its cover, but come on.

I thought there would be a little fun in this set up:  A family who name themselves Bigtree and live on an island in the Florida Everglades, wrestling alligators and delighting fans at their park, Swamplandia!  Fun, right?  But we missed all that.  All that is over.  What we have now is a crumbling park, a crumbling family, and crumbling psyches.  A father and a son trying to do right but failing miserably while the sisters, and daughters, wander through the very real dangers of the island after being left on their own.  You would think that the worst pain they would feel would be the loss of their mother, but it gets worse.  In an awful and sickening way.  And then it is over.

Is it well written? Yes.  There are some silly plot holes and continuity errors, but overall it is good.  It is original? Setting wise, absolutely, but plot wise not really.  Is there potential for this writer? Yes, but I can see why she started out writing short stories.  Over all, is this a MUST read book? NO!!!  Frankly, I kind of wish I had missed it.

Whew!

51. Savages

Well, I need to catch my breath here for a second.  I mean, literally, my eyes can’t focus…

I flew through this in just over a day. The format makes it very easy to read and it becomes literally un-put-down-able. It reads very much like a screenplay, and apparently is already in production.  There are far too many pop culture references that will be obsolete in a few years time, but it is a fast, hip (maybe a bit too pretentious) read that pulls you in, gets your heart beat racing, and is over before you know it.

The plot involves two young Southern California pot growers trying to get back their girlfriend who has been kidnapped by the Mexican Cartel.  One is a sweet, hip, do-gooder; and the other a violence-is-the-only-answer war vet.  And the girl?  Well, she shops a lot and sleeps with both guys.  So basically I would not like these people, but for some reason I really liked them, and I was rooting for them.  Even when the things they were getting away with were laughable, I pushed aside my doubts and just hung on for the ride and it was certainly a ride.

I have to admit that I liked this book, but because it is a primary example of one of those over the top kind of hip things to like, liking it makes me feel kind of dirty.