ABAW October-November Edition

I know, October and November ended a long time ago. I am a slacker in more ways than one.

I have read much, much less the past few months than I did earlier in the year. When I began planning for NaNoWriMo, my daily reading time was cut down by my planning and writing time. These two need each other though, so I must seek balance between the reading and writing.    

October

One Day by David Nicholls

This one might be my favorite book this year. It’s at least in my top three. Read my review here. 

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

I struggled with this one. Read my review here. 

How I Write by Janet Evanovich

This is Janet Evanovich’s memoir on her writing process that expands on a Q&A from her website. I love Evanovich’s writing style. Irreverent but honest, clever, accessible, and funny. I reread very few books, but I come back to the first four Stephanie Plum novels over and over. Reading about Evanovich’s writing confirms what we know as writers: writing is hard, it’s a job, we have to work at it, and then we have to work at it some more, and if we work hard enough maybe we’ll have the chance to get published and continue to work hard.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

The back cover of this book suggests that it is about the way in which a story is born from events. I’m not a Christian, but I know the gospels well, and it was fascinating reading Pullman’s deployment of the story of Jesus. He builds plausible scenarios for the events, actions, words, and ideas that might have inspired the narratives, parables, and metaphors in the gospels as we have them now.  You can read about Pullman’s personal philosophy here, but don’t let the atheism scare you away from this book.  I know that the redeployment of the story of Jesus, this way of trying to find a plausible explanation for what many believe was miraculous, is potentially offensive to some. To that I say, read this book with an open mind. Literature, as many of us know, has the amazing power to make us FEEL and understand things in ways that we don’t expect. I found Pullman’s depiction of the story of Jesus to be very inspiring precisely because I felt connected to the essential humanity of the characters. I felt very acutely the sacrifice that the characters make in a way that makes me want to be more compassionate toward my fellow human beings. Philosophy aside, the plotting of the story is also really good. Pullman managed to take one of the most famous stories of all time and surprise me with it.

November

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Ok, no, I still haven’t finished this one. It is beautifully written, but I find that I have to read it in small doses. I’m frustrated on behalf of the women in the story and I get emotional and angry as I read some of it.  Each time I put it down, it gets harder to pick up. Couple that with reader’s guilt. I haven’t read all of the books discussed in the story, including Lolita! So I have put this book down several times thinking that I should read these other books and then come back to this one. It’s a heartless cycle for me.  Yet another title that shows I don’t do well as a reader of non-fiction and memoir, even if I really really love the subject matter.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

I enjoyed the idea of this book, planning month-by-month activities throughout the year to increase one’s overall happiness. Rubin has a website to encourage us to build our own happiness projects as well. As she says in her introduction, each person’s path to happiness is different and individual, but reading about her very particular path was edifying. I find I’ve made small adjustments in the way I think about the things I do, and even if I go no further in developing a happiness project, I find that very satisfying.

Composed by Rosanne Cash

I love Cash’s writing style. She has a fluid way of structuring her prose so that one incident, idea, or metaphor can recall and connect to earlier ideas.  I’ve never listened to her music, but saw her on a recent episode of Austin City Limits and was intrigued by The List.  When she turned 18, her father gave her a list of what he considered essential songs for her to know if she wanted to be a musician. Cash’s latest album is selections from that list. I have enjoyed discovering her music (and her twitterfeed) and am even more in love with Austin City Limits for teaching me about artists I might not discover in other ways.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

I finished reading this one out-loud to the Sonars. Yes, we all still love it.

These Days

I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to the Sonars. This is our second time through out-loud. I love how well the stories are holding up to the growth of the kids and to my growth as a writer.

I came home from the library last week with Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.  I love the first line (“Dearest Diary, Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die.”). I’m a bit baffled by the first chapter.  After this I’m considering The Passage by Justin Cronin or The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. Which would you choose?  

For Christmas the past few years, we’ve made a habit of reading Cornelia Funke’s When Santa Fell to Earth. This year we’re going to listen to Funke read it on our 900-mile drive. If you haven’t found this gem of a holiday story, please go check it out.  I love the way that Funke takes the best bits of magical Santa tradition and adds just the right kind of modernity to it, so that the story feels both more real in the context and more magical in the details. And I can’t tell you how much I’m in love with Nicholas Goodfellow. He could live under my Christmas tree any day.  Ahem. 

Book Review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card

Sonar X10 brought this book home from the school library last week.  I love his school library and its librarian.  They have a fantastic collection, targeted so well to 10-12 year olds. Every time I go in there (which is every week when I volunteer) I find some new treasure and love the librarian even more.  I’m not sure what compelled me to read this one, other than that it was here, and I’ve heard a lot about it. 

This science fiction novel depicts an Earth after repelling a violent invasion by an insectoid alien species, viciously called The Buggers.  The technology is more advanced and global politics are settled into treaties of cooperation based on the threat of a return invasion.  Enough time has passed since the previous invasion that the political treaties are growing uneasy, and political leaders are making shifts to prepare for what will happen on Earth after the end of the Bugger threat.  

In the previous war, a single hero is credited with repelling the overwhelming alien attack.  Only through the ruthless ingenuity of Mazer Rackham was the Earth saved.  Believing that a similar leader will be necessary in a future war, children are carefully screened on Earth to try to find that hero of the future.  Promising child geniuses are then removed from their families to be trained in near-Earth orbit at Battle School.  This brutal environment turns bright children into soldiers from age 6 to 10, then sends them off for duty experience before Command School in the mid-teens.  For main character Ender Wiggam, six years old at the opening of the story and the most promising current candidate for leadership—and perhaps the Earth’s last hope as the enemy returns—his training is both more brutal and more accelerated than any other student has ever experienced.  

The story is violent.  Through “games” the children are trained in tactics and shaped into the defenders of the Earth.  The manipulation of Ender, in particular, by Graff, the head of the Battle School, is horrible, and nearly destroys Ender, even as it achieves its desired outcome.  Does the end justify the means?  

My main problem with this story is the credibility of the internal lives of the children.  Yes, these are supposed to be the most brilliant children on Earth, and Ender the cream of the crop, but they speak and act more like young adults.  Would children behave this way, under these extreme conditions? I can’t say.  I’m troubled by the violence as well, but that violence is a product of the circumstances of the story more than anything else, elevating the idea of children’s brutishness to an acute level.  

The turn toward hope and reconciliation at the end of the novel does not come about in any way that I expected, and feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of the story. But that hopefulness reiterates that Ender’s suitability for his role exceeds any of his handlers’ imagination of him.

The stark violence of Ender’s Game reminded me of some moments in The Giver, and these would be interesting novels to consider together, with their different visions of a future manipulated for the best outcomes.  In particular, comparing the sanitary environment of the Battle School here, to the utopia/dystopia of The Giver could lead to some interesting comparisons.  In each case, there is something sinister and ugly that is unseen under a veneer of positive control and order.  

Sonar X10 read the first few pages and didn’t care for the tone of the book. He was initially confused by the dual lines of narrative—one from the perspective of Ender, one from the perspective of his handlers, but even a clarification of the structure did not make him want to engage the tone of violence apparent in the story right from the start.  

Book Response: One Day by David Nicholls

I want to call it a love story, but I might be more accurate if I take the words from Emma, one of the main characters, and say that this is a novel about two people who grow up together. 

Emma and Dexter. Dexter and Emma. These two hook up at a graduation party on July 15, 1988. The book narrates their lives, together and separately, on July 15th each year after that for nearly twenty years.  We see and hear about only those things that they think and do on July 15. This structure could be odd, forcing the author to provide a great deal of back story for each year, but Nicholls deploys the structural trope so cleverly. I never felt like I was being force-fed information.  I occasionally wished I could see more of their lives because I loved the characters so much, but bits and pieces of their experiences emerged through the natural progression of living and remembering. In this novel as in life, often we don’t understand the significance of an event until much later in the story. 

Emma and Dexter are friends. We know that each one loves the other, but their friendship is filled with near-misses so tantalizing that we’re almost satisfied. We see how they are both brought together and pulled apart by their action and inaction.  Dexter is a pretty boy from a privileged background. He is sexually very promiscuous and a career alcoholic. Emma comes from humble origins, is politically liberal and vocal, and works hard for everything in her life. Nicholls paints their weaknesses—Dexter’s drink and personal uncertainty is a louder version of Emma’s self-limiting lack of confidence and self-knowledge—with honesty so that we love them both in spite of the stupid things they (ok, mostly Dex) sometimes do.

They have so little in common. We don’t know exactly why they make good friends, but they do. They reserve for one another an honesty and a humor that is absent in their other relationships.  When that—often snarky—honesty breaks down, so does their friendship. But it comes back. The things that we think most likely to drive them apart are often what bring them closer together.

The writing is beautiful.  The one day structure could be clumsy, but Nicholls carries it off with grace. That one day tends to become slightly loaded, perhaps overloaded, with significance for Dexter and Emma, but there’s an implicit argument that each person has days like that on the calendar. Days that for one reason or another attract significance on top of significance.

You will laugh at the dialogue sometimes. Emma and Dexter are so funny with each other. If you are like me, you will also weep. No, you will sob.  Great, body-wracking sobs of grief and anger and surprise and disappointment.  I can’t recall a book in recent memory that has elicited such a profound emotional reaction from me. Don’t quit the book when Nicholls punches you in the gut though. Stay with the story. The final chapters give you what you’ve been hoping for the whole book. They surprise you with what Emma and Dexter have had all along, since that very first July 15.

A stunningly beautiful book that I recommend to anyone wanting to enjoy or write rich characters living in honest realism.   

ABAW September Edition

I finished only three books in September, and I’ve already written about one of them, so this will go fast.  Yes, three books is less than A Book A Week, but if I go with my total number of books read this year (63), I’m still well ahead of the 52 book per year curve. Heck, I could quit now and still be good. But I’m not going to do that. I’d rather torture you with my opinion.  

Books I Read in September

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

You can read my reaction to this rather perplexing book here.

Artemis Fowl by Eoinn Colfer

I read this one out loud to the Sonars.  The elder Sonars had read this one on their own before, but for me and Sonar X5 it was the first time.  I enjoyed this book.  I won’t say that I adored it or loved it, but there were several things that I liked and in particular Respected about this book.  It already sounds like a lukewarm date, but I assure you, it’s more fun than that.  Artemis is a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind.  Other than stealing a copy of a very important book from a fairy through the use of threats, intimidation, bribery, and drugs, I wasn’t ever quite clear on the crimes that gave Artemis his reputation, but we are to believe that he is a genius, a hardened criminal, assisted by his faithful servant/bodyguard/thug Butler.  Artemis lives in a world where no one really believes in The People (fairies, trolls, gnomes, goblins, etc.), but they DO exist, living mostly underground and completely in secret.  

In this book Artemis steals gold from a leprechaun.  Except that the leprechaun isn’t a little dude in a green bowler hat, it’s the LEPrecon, “an elite branch of the Lower Elements Police.” And the gold is—oh, well, the gold is just gold. A lot of it.  And he accomplishes this by catching crack LEPrecon Captain Holly Short and holding her for ransom until her bosses pay.  Slightly gritty without being sinister or scary, there are just enough gross jokes to get a snorting giggle, just enough mild swearing to make it feel like you’re getting away with something, and just enough humanity in Artemis to remind you that he is a kid.  A kid with a lot of money and resources, but not a lot of friends.  I liked Holly Short and the struggle she faces as the first woman doing her job.  I liked Butler, who seems like brainless meat at first, but might really be the soul of the series.  I liked the mythology of the story.  I like and respect the honesty in the book and the lack of condescension.  I didn’t feel an instant connection to any of the characters in this book in the same way that I have in other series for kids, but I think that may come in time.  I look forward to the rest of the books in the series.   

Blood Rites (Book 6 of The Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher

This is my favorite Dresden so far.  Fans of the series will recognize the piles and piles of complications, some funny, some terrifying, as Dresden is hired to be the supernatural bodyguard for the taping of a porn movie (In spite of the setting, there is relatively little sex in this book compared to other Dresdens).  Meanwhile a pack of nasty vampires are trying to kill him.  He’s stuck with an abandoned puppy (that may have special powers).  Another, seemingly less nasty but no less dangerous, group of vampires have noticed Dresden and might want him out of the way.  And there’s flying flaming monkey poo.  All in a day’s work . My favorite bits: Orphan Dresden gets some family and the world seems a little less scary.  The door is opened for new romantic involvement for Dresden.  And while Dresden continually reminds himself that he can’t let their humanity distract him into trusting the monsters, it is equally important that he not let their monstrosity distract him from respecting their humanity.  Delicious fun. 

Now Reading

Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi :: A happy gift from my sister.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling :: Out loud to the Sonars. Again.

Want to Read

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Physics of the Impossible: a Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku

Sonars are Reading

The Wide Window, Book 3 of The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

One of the Maximum Ride books by James Patterson. I forget which one. Whoops, it’s actually Ark Angel (an Alex Rider book) by Anthony Horowitz. 

N.E.R.D.S.: M is for Mama’s Boy by Michael Buckley 

Book Review: House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition by Mark Z. Danielewski

I found this book incredibly frustrating.  I don’t know how to tell you what the book is about, because it is about so many things.  Irritatingly, the book compels me to draw pictures to try to sort it out.  For you, I’ve made a chart.  Here are the levels of narrative in the book as I see them.  In the spirit of piling-on so pervasive in the book, please feel free to suggest additional layers.

The life of Will and Karen Navidson, particularly their experiences in a bizarre and changing house in Virginia

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The Navidson Record, a movie made from the photos and videos of the Navidsons as they explore the uncanny labyrinth that appears beneath their home

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Popular and academic discussion (ad nauseam) of the film, including bootleg internet copies of film

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Zampáno’s description of the film and compilation of artifacts (introduced to Johnny by his friend Lude, a neighbor of Zampáno)

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Johnny Truant’s edition of Zampáno’s text, with additional footnotes about his own life; internet versions of this text are described here and at the next level

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An edition by unnamed editors that adds documentation about Johnny’s life; a copy of this is carried by Will Navidson during his last exploration of the house

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The author, Mark Z. Danielewski

That is a very pretty, ordered, and linear idea of the book, but nothing in the book is pretty or linear.  Like some post-structural choose-your-own adventure, the reader is constantly pulled away from the central text by footnotes and supplemental materials.  These aren’t the sort of footnotes and appendices that can be ignored either.  In the midst of a bit about Will Navidson, Johnny will go on for several pages about himself, his lovers (especially Kyrie, but also Thumper, his dream girl), or his friend Lude, among other things.  Some of these footnotes have their own footnotes, and in one particularly memorable sideways slide, we are pulled into the extensive catalogue of letters written by Johnny’s mom when she was confined to a mental hospital before her death.

On top of that, there are additional layers of narrative completely outside the text I hold in my hand.  For instance, the nature of the book invites any review (like this one) written about the book to become part of the narrative.  My favorite bit of meta-narrative though, is that Danielewski’s sister is Annie Decatur Danielewski, more commonly known as the singer Poe.  Poe’s album Haunted was produced simultaneously with House of Leaves.  The video version of the single “Hey Pretty” features bro reading a particularly hot and sticky scene about Johnny and Kyrie and a BMW on a hill.  It was certainly “the longest unzipping of my life” in more ways than one.  The unzipping of the book did not have the same erotic tension though as the unzipping of Kyrie’s leather pants.

I’d like to say that at the core of the story we have a haunted house.  Ok, not haunted, but very creepy and unstable, with a vast network of rooms beneath it that change according to the will and mental stability of their occupants.  It’s also possible to say that Johnny’s struggle with his own sanity is at the core of the story.  Alternately you could prioritize one of the love stories (Karen and Will?  Thumper and Johnny?  Johnny and Kyrie?  Kyrie and Gdansk Man?).  So what is it?  Satire on the extensive mental masturbation of academic and popular discourse, along with stabs at our bizarre willingness to overanalyze anything (guilty)?  Ghost story about a creepy house?  Love story?  Self-destructive struggle with drug addiction or mental illness?  All of these?

But wait, there’s more.  The book’s structure is enigmatic and twisting, the sense of time and place in the story is incredibly squishy, and embedded within the text are many puzzles.  Codes embedded in the letters of Johnny’s mom or the corners of pages. Anagrams in the first-letters of the footnotes.  Perhaps picture puzzles in the many different photos and drawings in the book.  Be sure to examine the pub info page and the use of color to highlight or obliterate some words and phrases.

So when I say that the book was frustrating and crazy-making, I’m quite serious.  Cleverly perhaps (on the part of Danielewski), my frustration and disorientation as a reader trying to navigate the structure of the book echoed the confusion of the characters.  The structure and narrative are quite lucid and “normal” sometimes.  At other times the text is upside down, angled, backward, sometimes with words edge-to-edge on a page of multiple columns and inset boxes.  Other times there will be only one or two words on a page for several pages.

The prose is so compelling though that I found myself wishing for a cleaner structure that would allow me to appreciate the very strong writing and imagery.  I quit reading the book repeatedly, convinced that the structure was an irritating manifestation of smug self-indulgence.  If I hadn’t agreed to read the book for Patrick I would certainly never have finished.

The book is successful in that I didn’t quit it, I won’t forget it, and I’ll likely talk about it a great deal.  That success is narrowly won though.  The structure is a gamble.  Most readers likely wouldn’t keep at it, let alone pick it up in the first place.  Those who love a puzzle and are willing to experience the book as an enigma to be savored will find it a treasure.