Booklog 2007: Week 5
Feb. 5th, 2007 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneWeek 5: 29 January-4 February 2007
26. PopCo, Scarlett Thomas — I’d heard good things about Thomas’ The End of Mr. Y, so when I saw PopCo at the library I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m glad I did, although I found a lot about this book unsatisfactory. The story combines two narratives, the first about Alice, an “idea” person for a British toy company, going to a company-sponsored retreat/brainstorming session, and the second about Alice growing up with her cryptoanalyst grandfather and mathematician grandmother. There’s a lot of stuff about code breaking and making, and coolness with prime numbers, and that’s all a lot of fun. Alice’s attempts to fit in with her peers as a teen and how that relates to her obstinate uncoolness in her adult life are also explored in a really interesting way. But the underlying mystery(ies) of the book—who is sending Alice secret messages at the PopCo retreat, and why? Does it have anything to do with the famous code her grandfather claimed to have cracked but never told anyone the solution to?—have sadly dull conclusions, which also involve rather too much preaching about the virtues of vegetarianism. This was still, for the most part, a really engaging read, but the build-up was better than the follow-through.
27. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl — Another one I feel very conflicted about. The writing style is fantastic—vivid and engaging. Pessl does two incredible things, one specific to these characters, with narrator Blue van Meer repeatedly inserting the titles of related works—real and invented—into the descriptions of her life (see Special Topics in Calamity Physics, 2006), and one which I hope is simply inherent in Pessl: constructing elaborate, beautiful similes and metaphors. Pessl really does have a unique way with language, so it’s in some ways even more disappointing that the plot of this novel feels like The Secret History Lite (see Donna Tartt, 1992). Still, the book is Pessl’s first—I’m really curious and excited to see what she does next.
28. Almost Like Being in Love, Steve Kluger — A bit of a palate cleanser. Like Kluger’s Last Days of Summer, which I read last week, this is entirely froth—but it’s cute and funny, and dude, sometimes you need that. This has the additional draw of being an all-too-rare gay romance, wherein our couple, Craig and Travis, meet in high school, fall in love, get separated by college, and then try to reunite 20 years later. The characters and situations are all suitably wacky, but Kluger does add a touch of seriousness here and there—Craig is a human rights lawyer who’s thinking of running for office. Further, Craig’s partner of 12 years is incredibly likeable, and Kluger doesn’t take the easy way out by villainizing him so he and Craig can break up and Craig and Travis can rush back into each other’s arms. (Actually, I kind of wanted the opposite to happen—for Travis to get over Craig and find somebody else; possibly Julian the librarian who plays a part early on in the book, and who yes, I kept picturing as Julian Lodge.) The ending is unfortunately a little rushed, with too many events happening “off-screen,” as it were, but hey: published fluffy gay romance! Good for what ails ya!
29. The Children of Men, P.D. James — I loved the recent film version of this (which should have gotten WAY more Oscar nominations, dammit!), so of course I had to read the book, which I’d been told was very different. Is it ever! While the basic premise remains the same, many of the events—and pretty much the entire meaning of the novel—were altered for the film. While the movie is LOUD and VIOLENT, the book is quiet and desolate and lonely. The book explores themes of guilt and how men (er, mostly I mean humans here rather than males, although all the examples given in the text are male) abuse power; the film is about governmental abuse of power far more than individual abuse, and about post-apocalyptic violent desperation rather than quiet despair. It’s interesting, in light of the recent debate about the film adaptation of 300; one of the issues raised there is, Can an adaptation contain meanings not present in the original text? Watching Children of Men and then reading the James novel provides loads of evidence that the answer is yes. The novel was written in 1992 and expresses, along with universal concerns, others which are specific to its time. (After the superficial ‘greed is good’ ‘80s, have men and women stopped knowing how to love each other?) The film, made in 2006, is about things James couldn’t have dreamed of in 1992; it’s definitely an allegory for our time (as the truly frightening visual allusions to Abu Ghraib towards the end of the film make all-too-clear).
Is one better than the other? I felt the film more strongly, possibly because it is so timely. But the book is incredible in its own right, chilling in different but no less effective ways. I’ll be thinking about both for a long, long time.
Total Books: 29
26. PopCo, Scarlett Thomas — I’d heard good things about Thomas’ The End of Mr. Y, so when I saw PopCo at the library I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m glad I did, although I found a lot about this book unsatisfactory. The story combines two narratives, the first about Alice, an “idea” person for a British toy company, going to a company-sponsored retreat/brainstorming session, and the second about Alice growing up with her cryptoanalyst grandfather and mathematician grandmother. There’s a lot of stuff about code breaking and making, and coolness with prime numbers, and that’s all a lot of fun. Alice’s attempts to fit in with her peers as a teen and how that relates to her obstinate uncoolness in her adult life are also explored in a really interesting way. But the underlying mystery(ies) of the book—who is sending Alice secret messages at the PopCo retreat, and why? Does it have anything to do with the famous code her grandfather claimed to have cracked but never told anyone the solution to?—have sadly dull conclusions, which also involve rather too much preaching about the virtues of vegetarianism. This was still, for the most part, a really engaging read, but the build-up was better than the follow-through.
27. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl — Another one I feel very conflicted about. The writing style is fantastic—vivid and engaging. Pessl does two incredible things, one specific to these characters, with narrator Blue van Meer repeatedly inserting the titles of related works—real and invented—into the descriptions of her life (see Special Topics in Calamity Physics, 2006), and one which I hope is simply inherent in Pessl: constructing elaborate, beautiful similes and metaphors. Pessl really does have a unique way with language, so it’s in some ways even more disappointing that the plot of this novel feels like The Secret History Lite (see Donna Tartt, 1992). Still, the book is Pessl’s first—I’m really curious and excited to see what she does next.
28. Almost Like Being in Love, Steve Kluger — A bit of a palate cleanser. Like Kluger’s Last Days of Summer, which I read last week, this is entirely froth—but it’s cute and funny, and dude, sometimes you need that. This has the additional draw of being an all-too-rare gay romance, wherein our couple, Craig and Travis, meet in high school, fall in love, get separated by college, and then try to reunite 20 years later. The characters and situations are all suitably wacky, but Kluger does add a touch of seriousness here and there—Craig is a human rights lawyer who’s thinking of running for office. Further, Craig’s partner of 12 years is incredibly likeable, and Kluger doesn’t take the easy way out by villainizing him so he and Craig can break up and Craig and Travis can rush back into each other’s arms. (Actually, I kind of wanted the opposite to happen—for Travis to get over Craig and find somebody else; possibly Julian the librarian who plays a part early on in the book, and who yes, I kept picturing as Julian Lodge.) The ending is unfortunately a little rushed, with too many events happening “off-screen,” as it were, but hey: published fluffy gay romance! Good for what ails ya!
29. The Children of Men, P.D. James — I loved the recent film version of this (which should have gotten WAY more Oscar nominations, dammit!), so of course I had to read the book, which I’d been told was very different. Is it ever! While the basic premise remains the same, many of the events—and pretty much the entire meaning of the novel—were altered for the film. While the movie is LOUD and VIOLENT, the book is quiet and desolate and lonely. The book explores themes of guilt and how men (er, mostly I mean humans here rather than males, although all the examples given in the text are male) abuse power; the film is about governmental abuse of power far more than individual abuse, and about post-apocalyptic violent desperation rather than quiet despair. It’s interesting, in light of the recent debate about the film adaptation of 300; one of the issues raised there is, Can an adaptation contain meanings not present in the original text? Watching Children of Men and then reading the James novel provides loads of evidence that the answer is yes. The novel was written in 1992 and expresses, along with universal concerns, others which are specific to its time. (After the superficial ‘greed is good’ ‘80s, have men and women stopped knowing how to love each other?) The film, made in 2006, is about things James couldn’t have dreamed of in 1992; it’s definitely an allegory for our time (as the truly frightening visual allusions to Abu Ghraib towards the end of the film make all-too-clear).
Is one better than the other? I felt the film more strongly, possibly because it is so timely. But the book is incredible in its own right, chilling in different but no less effective ways. I’ll be thinking about both for a long, long time.
Total Books: 29
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 08:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 08:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, I don't envy Pessl being "the hot new thing." Well, except that I do, because she's published and I'm not. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 08:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 08:27 pm (UTC)I'm really enjoying your book reviews.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 11:42 pm (UTC)Well, I'll be interested to hear what you think!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 11:47 pm (UTC)Did you want me to include Hard Core Logo as well?
If it's not a bother, that would be lovely—but you've got to think of something for me to send you, too. Else you're going to end up with the very silly Trin special: a bunch of chocolate and penguin jacks.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 10:27 pm (UTC)Sadly, I never did discover the fuss.
I agree with you about Secret History - Calamity Physics had so many of the same ingredients that I was more than a little taken aback. It also had the same mix of ultimately completely unlikable characters, which hindered me. (Even Blue - because for all she's supposed to be a strong spirt (or something) she gives in to that crowd incredibly easily).
The chapter where she explains it all? It infuriated me. It was thrown in there like a chunk of Velveeta at a Brie convention. She did no work to lead us to that point, merely handed over a fait accompli in a nice, tidy chapter form, and left us to rethink what had gone before and (no doubt) remark 'oh how clever!' Only I didn't think it was clever, I thought it was lazy, and trite, and more than anything I wanted to take a red pen to the previous several hundred pages and whittle down the enormous number of paragraphs she wrote into something leaner, sharper, and a good deal less slouchy.
Oh man, I'm annoyed thinking about that chapter all over again, and it's been six weeks.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-05 11:54 pm (UTC)I was kind of going, "This seems weirdly familiar..." for the first 200 pages or so. Then it hit me what it reminded me of and it was so blindingly obvious. The Secret History but in high school and with more girls. I didn't like The Secret History that much the first time around.
That info dump chapter pissed me off, too. It's interesting, because PopCo, which I read right before hand, employed a similar tactic—mystery mystery mystery, info dump, solution, yay! Only not so much with the yay, 'cause that's a really boring and irritating way to figure things out. Sherlock Holmes' frequent outpourings of explanation to a mystified Watson were less annoying.
And the book should have TOTALLY been shorter. Seriously. Who was her editor?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-06 04:27 am (UTC)