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trinityofoneI am so far behind on this, my laughter looks like tears. The below if a little under half of what I still have to write up. To quote my many whiny emails to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wychwood, "Oh dear."
Week 39-Something: September 24-October Something (I may or may not fix this later. It involves counting, which is almost like math, so...)
216. Paradise News, David Lodge — Another delightful David Lodge book. The paradise of the title is two-fold: the tropical, Hawaiian variety, and the kind where you get to meet the man upstairs. I think I’ve run out of ways to express how Lodge is such a funny, interesting, dynamic writer. If you like books containing academic humor or featuring somewhat sorry smart people, you should just read him. This book is a nice stand-alone; I can’t decide if it’s a better entry point to his work than Changing Places or not. Oh, whatever. Just read both.
217. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman — The story of Doctor Impossible, a super-genius super-villain, and Fatale, a Bionic Woman-like wannabe superhero. This novel gives comic books the SERIOUS BUSINESS treatment, which mostly just seems to mean that the battle sequences are kind of confusing and it’s really depressing. There’s none of the joyfulness that sometimes raises its head in even the most downbeat comics; I think even Batman would consider this novel bleak. It’s still well-written, as evidenced by how much I hurt for these characters, but as they end the book almost exactly where they started it, I almost don’t see the point of reading it. It just made me sad. And unless you’re the frickin’ Great Gatsby—which is transcendent in its tragedy—I really don’t need you, book, to make me feel sad and hopeless.
218. Looking for Alaska, John Green — I really dig John Green’s writing, even when I’m not so keen on his subjects; I need to read another Tragic Dead Teenager novel like I need to go hang out at my old high school. But I read this anyway because I had liked Green’s An Abundance of Katherines so much. I didn’t like this as much, but it was still really good. Green writes fantastic dialogue and great characters, both witty and real. He somehow manages to make me nostalgic for a teenagehood I never had. So while there was nothing particularly revolutionary about this novel’s plot—in many ways, it was rather like the short stories I used to write in middle school, where mostly I was just high on my power as a writer and wanted to KILL CHARACTERS and make them SUFFER—it’s just so well written that it almost doesn’t matter. I’m very, very curious to see what Green does next; I hope he pushes himself and does something broader, more epic, because characters like these inhabiting a more dynamic universe would be an incredible thing to behold.
It’s kind of bad, isn’t it, that I want Green to take his nice, realistic characters out of their nice, realistic world and make them fight crime or battle space aliens or something. But I can’t help it. I don’t think Green is wasted on YA relationship-dramas—he’s clearly kicking ass in the genre. I guess I just like his writing style so much I wish he’d write An Ideal Book Just For Me. I never said I wasn’t selfish!
219. Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik — The fourth in the Temeraire series, and the one I've enjoyed the most since the introductory book. Which is to say, a lot. This one felt more tightly structured than the last, with the disease plot as a brilliantly chosen and terrifying centerpiece. I've never had a dragon, obviously, but the idea of losing one made me ache almost as much as the thought of losing one's daemon in His Dark Materials. The African setting really came alive; I love how we're getting to see how different cultures around the world have responded and adapted to dragons. And the ending...damn. Like a slap, that was—and a higher compliment than that I have difficulty conceiving. ;-)
If you're not reading this series, you really should be; I can't wait for the next book. And if you haven't been reading it, just think how lucky you are: you now have four wonderful novels to tide you over until the next one comes out. I'm envious!
I also have to add that I really enjoy the fact that, due to the wonders of the alphabet and the particular books I happen to have in my collection, Naomi Novik ends up shelved right next to Patrick O'Brian. It was meant to be! Though I better be careful not to buy any, say, Joyce Carol Oates. Don't you try anything, Joyce!
220. Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughan — Based on a true incident: in 2003, a pride of lions escaped the Baghdad zoo during an American bombing. Vaughan uses this as a jumping off point to tell a story that's both an exciting adventure and a painful look at the true cost of war. This could have easily become an anvilicious, MY METAPHORS: LET ME SHOW YOU THEM fest, but Vaughan keeps the symbolism nicely subtle, creating a tale (no pun intended. Really) that works—and is heartbreaking—on multiple levels. A good book to show people who think comics are just for kids. (You could also rap them on the knuckles with it.)
221. Souls and Bodies, David Lodge — This 1980 novel by Lodge (whom you may have noticed I've been reading a lot of and enjoying this year) follows a group of young English Catholics over a period of about 20 years, enabling us to see the ways their religion affects their lives (and their lives affect their religion), particularly in the shadow of Vatican II. I'm not Catholic, so partly this book was entertaining from an anthropological standpoint. Lodge, on the other hand, is Catholic, so you know that he's drawing at least somewhat from his own experiences—as a bit of authorial insertion he employs makes clear. This device doesn't work for me as well as some of the other creative twists on the standard novel Lodge has pulled in other works; even when done well, authorial insertion makes me a little uncomfortable. (I'm looking at you, Douglas Coupland and Stephen King.) But that's not the bulk of what this novel is, which is both funny and sad, with Lodge's typical skill at capturing human motivations and, well, patheticness, in a wry, intelligent way. Reading it, I thought this novel came from much earlier in Lodge's career than it in fact does—it was actually written after Changing Places. It feels a bit rougher to me than some of the others, and explores in less detail subjects he tackles elsewhere, like in Paradise News. Still, it was highly readable and hard to put down. I'm very much enjoying having a different Lodge novel to read every few weeks, and will be sad when I run out.
222. Extras, Scott Westerfeld — The fourth, surprise volume in the Uglies no-longer-a-trilogy. I liked this way more than Specials, the last book in the series (which I actually kind of hated). This novel doesn't center around Tally, the protagonist of the previous three books, but around a new character, Aya Fuse, who's growing up in a post-Pretties world. The Important Teen Topic Westerfeld is tackling this time is fame, not beauty, as following Tally's act of liberation, the world has evolved into one where wealth and social merit are derived purely from notoriety. In other words, Paris Hilton would still be in our faces all the time, dammit.
Like a lot of Westerfeld's work, this book is the most enjoyable if you don't think about it too much. There's a fun, exciting action plot to be had here, but the whole world kind of falls apart if you ponder it for more than five seconds. How is it that Aya's city—which is clearly not the same one as Tally's, as much is made of the language barrier later—was set up in exactly the same way as Tally's? Especially when Uglies made each community seem so wonderfully isolated? And I really don't see the logic of the post-Pretty world, as it's left at the end of Specials, evolving so soon into the world Aya introduces us to. And—but no. Let's go back to nothing thinking about this too hard, okay?
Well, first: I also have to say that I find the idea of all these teenage characters—Aya is fifteen—doing and accomplishing all of this stuff on their own vaguely ridiculous, which officially makes me too old for these books. (Part of my brain can't stop thinking, Where are their PARENTS?) But, uh. If you set all that aside, this really is a fun book! Really! And it provides a slightly more upbeat ending for Tally and David, which I really appreciate. So if you like the other books in this series—or even just the first one—this is a worthy addition. I'm much, much happier having this, instead of Specials, as my final impression of the Uglies world and these characters, and that's worth a lot, I think.
223. Like a Hole in the Head, Jen Banbury —cincodemaygirl recommended this book to me, and it's easy to see why: it's a mystery involving a rare book narrated by a girl who works in a used bookstore in Los Angeles. Really, though, the focus of the novel is not bibliomania; it's the protagonist, and how fucked up she is. Very, in case you didn't guess. Jill is an aimless, smart-mouthed, smart-ass, who tries to keep herself safe by projecting a persona of toughness. I found all of this very relatable (I'm smart-mouthed in my head, okay?), especially coupled with the L.A. setting; even living in Tinseltown, where lots and lots of things are shot, it's still fun to play "I know where THAT is!" whenever familiar locations turn up in films, TV, or books. Jill's narration is very engaging...for about the first third of the book. After that, her string of dumb decisions really starts to grate; it's painful to watch someone be this self-destructive, and while I started out firmly on Jill's side, I eventually just wanted to slap her. I mean, deal with the people trying to kill you first, THEN be emo, okay? There's also a really graphic torture scene near the end of the book, and it just...gah. Squick.
Banbury can certainly create interesting characters with dynamic voices, but the world she's put them in is deeply unpleasant. I mean, I guess the same could be said of any noir, but I never wanted to shake Philip Marlowe the way I did Jill. The combination—bleak noir setting + slappable protagonist—just didn't work for me. And yet all of the elements of a perfect "me" book were there, Cinco! Sometimes what's missing is just intangible.
224. & 226. Y: The Last Man — Paper Dolls & Kimono Dragons, Brian K. Vaughan — As this series continues, the little things about it that bug me are starting to bug me more, which is to be expected, I guess. In the first of these two volumes, I liked all the stuff set in Australia (poor Yorick and his little Yorick), but I found the 355 backstory really disappointing. The bookends were lame, and the actual meat of the tale told us almost nothing we didn't already know. It is a bad sign when you make the monkey's backstory more interesting than that of one of your main characters. Still...the monkey's backstory was pretty cool? Also cool: the move to Japan and all the Yakuza-themed stuff there. (Not to mention: robots! And a great little Yorick/355 moment.) Still, I was once again disappointed when Vaughan turned to backstory; Dr. Mann as a punk was a mildly-interesting twist, but once again Vaughan leans too heavily on repackaging stuff we already know—things he's already fit gracefully into the main narrative. So why take a whole chapter to not only infodump them, but RE-infodump them? Oh well. The main narrative is still really cool, and I wish my library would hurry up and get Vol. 9 in already.
225. The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland — Fall TV's big trend seems to involve people with pathetic, losery jobs at soulless chain stores (Chuck, which is so far getting a tentative thumbs up from me, and Reaper, which I'm giving a big thumbs down). Coupland, as usual, is ahead (or at least on top) of the trend, with his latest novel being set at Staples, and following two employees—the older, divorced Roger and young goth Bethany—as they write letters to each other, following Bethany's discovery of Roger's diary. This is interspersed with excerpts from Roger's work-in-progress novel, Glove Pond, which teeters amusingly on the edge between ridiculous and brilliant.
I really enjoyed reading this. Coupland is, as always, amazingly good at looking into the minds of average, if somewhat quirky, people. He gives humanity to everyone; there are generally no villains in a Coupland novel, just various degrees of flawed people. I loved the relationship between Roger and Bethany and really enjoyed the weird, weird world of Glove Pond. I did think, however, that the narrative lags a bit once Bethany goes to England, and the book lacks the sense of catharsis at the end that many of Coupland's novels, even his overall weaker ones, have. Still, this is up there with my favorites of his, and continues to give me hope that he will one day produce something that's not just Really Good, but Transcendent.
227. The House Next Door, Anne Rivers Siddons — Another book where I really dug the first third and then became progressively more and more annoyed. Narrated by a woman with the improbable name of Colquitt (forgive me if this actually IS a popular name Down South; I'm clearly an ignorant Westerner/Yankee, yo), this is a haunted house story that I'd heard was fantastic from several sources, including Stephen King—not in his usual, I'll-blurb-anything fashion, but in long passages of Danse Macabre, his book about the horror genre, which I really enjoyed. A book that scared Stephen King? That I have to read! (Two years later. Oops.)
Anyway, the first third seemed to be living up to all this hype: it follows Colquitt as she watches the empty lot next door to the home she shares with her husband, Walter, get purchased and have a house for a rich young couple built on it. Almost immediately, the site seems cursed: animals are found torn up but no culprit can be found, and then the new property's ditzy young owner, Pie Harralson, has a miscarriage in a truly horrifying way. Okay. I was totally with the book at this point, ready and eager to be spooked. But then the house's next act of evil is...making Pie's husband Buddy and another character gay. SERIOUSLY. The house makes them gay. And then makes them do it at a party. An event which is foreshaddowed by one of the two characters having an opinion about wallpaper. Which, you know, does doom one to gayness. Snerk.
Okay, so my reaction to this SCENE of TERROR (so horrifying it causes Pie's father to have a fatal heart attack!) was of course totally inappropriate, involving a lot of giggling, and this could fairly be blamed on the fact that I read a lot of porn where drugs, Ancient cities, aliens, et. al., make characters gay all the time—and it's considered a good thing. I was like, "Gee! I hope Buddy and his lawyer friend are happy together!" Surely not the reaction Siddons intended.
But I honestly do think that a lot of this book's problems stem from it simply not being capable of provoking the same reactions from a reader in 2007 as it might have in 1978, when it was published. Not because we've all seen all four Saw movies and are immune to psychological horror (I haven't, and I'm not) but because the book is really that fucking dated. The attitudes toward homosexuality, the poor, and those damn Jews who think they're as good as we are, are, frankly, backward and offensive. I'm not saying they're Siddons' own views—the book is told in the first person, so it's hard to tell—but they do make Colquitt quite unlikeable, and she's not even the one most strongly spouting them all. I get the feeling that Colquitt and everyone on her block are the type of people who would make life miserable for a person like me far more quickly and easily than a possessed house ever could.
Whether Colquitt and I would ever be best buddies aside, the novel had further narrative flaws that ruined the last two thirds for me. First, it gets repetitive; after the big Gaying Up, the house seems to run out of new tricks, falling back, again and again, on plain old heterosexual adultery as its way to ruin its inhabitants lives. (So in other words, the only thing necessary to defeat evil houses is to have Dan Savage move in? Good to know!) Siddons also uses the "if I had only known then..." trick of suspense-building WAAAAAY too many times, and it's an authorial device I'm not fond of even once. Tack on a lame twist ending and an even lamer epilogue, and the book just falls apart for me. Nice foundation, but otherwise, pretty shoddy workmanship, IMO.
228. A Place So Foreign, Cory Doctorow — A collection of quirkly sci-fi stories, pretty much all of which had interesting concepts, but very little in the way of characters. (Also virtually no female characters, I realized once I was done. Like, I think a couple times someone's mom shows up, but that's it. Wow.) I think I read for characters more than ideas (though obviously, a marriage of both is what's best) so there really wasn't much for me here. YMMV, of course, but these stories really did leave me feeling stranded, like a foreigner.
229. Monkey Girl, Beth Lisick — I loved Lisick's memoir, Everybody Into the Pool, in part because it's one of the few—perhaps the only—memoirs I've read that depicts a funny, weird, messed-up adult without pinning all those traits on a fucked-up, miserable childhood (No, look, my childhood is the MOST miserable! See how miserable it was? Wallow in the shit of my childhood a little more, plz).
ANYWAY...Lisick didn't do that! (Although Pool does contain a hilarious and squirm-worthy incident involving, um. Shit.) But I digress, as I'm actually supposed to be talking about Monkey Girl, her earlier collection of short stories/spoken word-type stuff. The idea of "spoken word" usually makes me cringe (that's not what I go to bars or coffee shops for, okay?) but as I said, I liked Pool, so I was willing to give this a shot. I'm glad I did. It's nothing revolutionary, but Lisick once again makes a good tour guide for the Bay Area underground: humorous, self-deprecating, not the least bit poseur-y, self-righteous, or faux. And I believe in her Bay Area; it touches on the Bay Area I experienced enough to make me pleasantly nostalgic. I'm not sure if this book would do much for you if the San Francisco/Berkeley scene isn't one with which you're familiar, but I liked it.
230. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz — An incredibly fascinating if flawed book, which I'm so glad I read but which makes me sad, because I think it could have been so much more than it was. Diaz is obviously an immensely talented writer (I hear his short story collection, Drown, is phenomenal, and really want to read it now); he weaves together the story of Oscar, an overweight, somewhat hopeless geek living in New York, with that of the rest of his family and the history of the Dominican Republic. I know (knew) next to nothing about the Dominican Republic (which is really shameful considering the ways U.S. history intersects with its history), so I found those portions of the book particularly fascinating, the (based on reality, brr) stories about the brutal dictatorship of Trujillo terrifying and epic in scope. Against them Oscar's struggles seem small—and I say this despite the fact that I (unlike my mother, who coincidentally read this book at the same time I did) found him remarkably and wonderfully relatable for someone who's life is, nominally, nothing like mine. I also really liked Yunior, the character who narrates most of the book; his voice is unusual and instantly distinct, and I could have easily spent hours listening to him tell a story.
So I wish, I really do, that there had been a story here. But weirdly, there's not; the book feels instead like the opening section of five or six different stories. Each of these stories is fantastic—really, really fantastic—but none of them concludes, really; Diaz just moves the narrative on to something else. The whole thing never coalesces (which, believe me, I was waiting and waiting for it to do), with the narrative instead ending on Oscar finally losing his virginity. Dude, I'm happy for you, but... I wanted more about the history of the Dominican Republic. That was where the narrative really came alive: in the footnotes. How odd. Incredibly worth reading, but odd and, ultimately, a little disappointing.
Total Books: 230 (for now)
wychwood, "Oh dear."Week 39-Something: September 24-October Something (I may or may not fix this later. It involves counting, which is almost like math, so...)
216. Paradise News, David Lodge — Another delightful David Lodge book. The paradise of the title is two-fold: the tropical, Hawaiian variety, and the kind where you get to meet the man upstairs. I think I’ve run out of ways to express how Lodge is such a funny, interesting, dynamic writer. If you like books containing academic humor or featuring somewhat sorry smart people, you should just read him. This book is a nice stand-alone; I can’t decide if it’s a better entry point to his work than Changing Places or not. Oh, whatever. Just read both.
217. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman — The story of Doctor Impossible, a super-genius super-villain, and Fatale, a Bionic Woman-like wannabe superhero. This novel gives comic books the SERIOUS BUSINESS treatment, which mostly just seems to mean that the battle sequences are kind of confusing and it’s really depressing. There’s none of the joyfulness that sometimes raises its head in even the most downbeat comics; I think even Batman would consider this novel bleak. It’s still well-written, as evidenced by how much I hurt for these characters, but as they end the book almost exactly where they started it, I almost don’t see the point of reading it. It just made me sad. And unless you’re the frickin’ Great Gatsby—which is transcendent in its tragedy—I really don’t need you, book, to make me feel sad and hopeless.
218. Looking for Alaska, John Green — I really dig John Green’s writing, even when I’m not so keen on his subjects; I need to read another Tragic Dead Teenager novel like I need to go hang out at my old high school. But I read this anyway because I had liked Green’s An Abundance of Katherines so much. I didn’t like this as much, but it was still really good. Green writes fantastic dialogue and great characters, both witty and real. He somehow manages to make me nostalgic for a teenagehood I never had. So while there was nothing particularly revolutionary about this novel’s plot—in many ways, it was rather like the short stories I used to write in middle school, where mostly I was just high on my power as a writer and wanted to KILL CHARACTERS and make them SUFFER—it’s just so well written that it almost doesn’t matter. I’m very, very curious to see what Green does next; I hope he pushes himself and does something broader, more epic, because characters like these inhabiting a more dynamic universe would be an incredible thing to behold.
It’s kind of bad, isn’t it, that I want Green to take his nice, realistic characters out of their nice, realistic world and make them fight crime or battle space aliens or something. But I can’t help it. I don’t think Green is wasted on YA relationship-dramas—he’s clearly kicking ass in the genre. I guess I just like his writing style so much I wish he’d write An Ideal Book Just For Me. I never said I wasn’t selfish!
219. Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik — The fourth in the Temeraire series, and the one I've enjoyed the most since the introductory book. Which is to say, a lot. This one felt more tightly structured than the last, with the disease plot as a brilliantly chosen and terrifying centerpiece. I've never had a dragon, obviously, but the idea of losing one made me ache almost as much as the thought of losing one's daemon in His Dark Materials. The African setting really came alive; I love how we're getting to see how different cultures around the world have responded and adapted to dragons. And the ending...damn. Like a slap, that was—and a higher compliment than that I have difficulty conceiving. ;-)
If you're not reading this series, you really should be; I can't wait for the next book. And if you haven't been reading it, just think how lucky you are: you now have four wonderful novels to tide you over until the next one comes out. I'm envious!
I also have to add that I really enjoy the fact that, due to the wonders of the alphabet and the particular books I happen to have in my collection, Naomi Novik ends up shelved right next to Patrick O'Brian. It was meant to be! Though I better be careful not to buy any, say, Joyce Carol Oates. Don't you try anything, Joyce!
220. Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughan — Based on a true incident: in 2003, a pride of lions escaped the Baghdad zoo during an American bombing. Vaughan uses this as a jumping off point to tell a story that's both an exciting adventure and a painful look at the true cost of war. This could have easily become an anvilicious, MY METAPHORS: LET ME SHOW YOU THEM fest, but Vaughan keeps the symbolism nicely subtle, creating a tale (no pun intended. Really) that works—and is heartbreaking—on multiple levels. A good book to show people who think comics are just for kids. (You could also rap them on the knuckles with it.)
221. Souls and Bodies, David Lodge — This 1980 novel by Lodge (whom you may have noticed I've been reading a lot of and enjoying this year) follows a group of young English Catholics over a period of about 20 years, enabling us to see the ways their religion affects their lives (and their lives affect their religion), particularly in the shadow of Vatican II. I'm not Catholic, so partly this book was entertaining from an anthropological standpoint. Lodge, on the other hand, is Catholic, so you know that he's drawing at least somewhat from his own experiences—as a bit of authorial insertion he employs makes clear. This device doesn't work for me as well as some of the other creative twists on the standard novel Lodge has pulled in other works; even when done well, authorial insertion makes me a little uncomfortable. (I'm looking at you, Douglas Coupland and Stephen King.) But that's not the bulk of what this novel is, which is both funny and sad, with Lodge's typical skill at capturing human motivations and, well, patheticness, in a wry, intelligent way. Reading it, I thought this novel came from much earlier in Lodge's career than it in fact does—it was actually written after Changing Places. It feels a bit rougher to me than some of the others, and explores in less detail subjects he tackles elsewhere, like in Paradise News. Still, it was highly readable and hard to put down. I'm very much enjoying having a different Lodge novel to read every few weeks, and will be sad when I run out.
222. Extras, Scott Westerfeld — The fourth, surprise volume in the Uglies no-longer-a-trilogy. I liked this way more than Specials, the last book in the series (which I actually kind of hated). This novel doesn't center around Tally, the protagonist of the previous three books, but around a new character, Aya Fuse, who's growing up in a post-Pretties world. The Important Teen Topic Westerfeld is tackling this time is fame, not beauty, as following Tally's act of liberation, the world has evolved into one where wealth and social merit are derived purely from notoriety. In other words, Paris Hilton would still be in our faces all the time, dammit.
Like a lot of Westerfeld's work, this book is the most enjoyable if you don't think about it too much. There's a fun, exciting action plot to be had here, but the whole world kind of falls apart if you ponder it for more than five seconds. How is it that Aya's city—which is clearly not the same one as Tally's, as much is made of the language barrier later—was set up in exactly the same way as Tally's? Especially when Uglies made each community seem so wonderfully isolated? And I really don't see the logic of the post-Pretty world, as it's left at the end of Specials, evolving so soon into the world Aya introduces us to. And—but no. Let's go back to nothing thinking about this too hard, okay?
Well, first: I also have to say that I find the idea of all these teenage characters—Aya is fifteen—doing and accomplishing all of this stuff on their own vaguely ridiculous, which officially makes me too old for these books. (Part of my brain can't stop thinking, Where are their PARENTS?) But, uh. If you set all that aside, this really is a fun book! Really! And it provides a slightly more upbeat ending for Tally and David, which I really appreciate. So if you like the other books in this series—or even just the first one—this is a worthy addition. I'm much, much happier having this, instead of Specials, as my final impression of the Uglies world and these characters, and that's worth a lot, I think.
223. Like a Hole in the Head, Jen Banbury —
cincodemaygirl recommended this book to me, and it's easy to see why: it's a mystery involving a rare book narrated by a girl who works in a used bookstore in Los Angeles. Really, though, the focus of the novel is not bibliomania; it's the protagonist, and how fucked up she is. Very, in case you didn't guess. Jill is an aimless, smart-mouthed, smart-ass, who tries to keep herself safe by projecting a persona of toughness. I found all of this very relatable (I'm smart-mouthed in my head, okay?), especially coupled with the L.A. setting; even living in Tinseltown, where lots and lots of things are shot, it's still fun to play "I know where THAT is!" whenever familiar locations turn up in films, TV, or books. Jill's narration is very engaging...for about the first third of the book. After that, her string of dumb decisions really starts to grate; it's painful to watch someone be this self-destructive, and while I started out firmly on Jill's side, I eventually just wanted to slap her. I mean, deal with the people trying to kill you first, THEN be emo, okay? There's also a really graphic torture scene near the end of the book, and it just...gah. Squick.Banbury can certainly create interesting characters with dynamic voices, but the world she's put them in is deeply unpleasant. I mean, I guess the same could be said of any noir, but I never wanted to shake Philip Marlowe the way I did Jill. The combination—bleak noir setting + slappable protagonist—just didn't work for me. And yet all of the elements of a perfect "me" book were there, Cinco! Sometimes what's missing is just intangible.
224. & 226. Y: The Last Man — Paper Dolls & Kimono Dragons, Brian K. Vaughan — As this series continues, the little things about it that bug me are starting to bug me more, which is to be expected, I guess. In the first of these two volumes, I liked all the stuff set in Australia (poor Yorick and his little Yorick), but I found the 355 backstory really disappointing. The bookends were lame, and the actual meat of the tale told us almost nothing we didn't already know. It is a bad sign when you make the monkey's backstory more interesting than that of one of your main characters. Still...the monkey's backstory was pretty cool? Also cool: the move to Japan and all the Yakuza-themed stuff there. (Not to mention: robots! And a great little Yorick/355 moment.) Still, I was once again disappointed when Vaughan turned to backstory; Dr. Mann as a punk was a mildly-interesting twist, but once again Vaughan leans too heavily on repackaging stuff we already know—things he's already fit gracefully into the main narrative. So why take a whole chapter to not only infodump them, but RE-infodump them? Oh well. The main narrative is still really cool, and I wish my library would hurry up and get Vol. 9 in already.
225. The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland — Fall TV's big trend seems to involve people with pathetic, losery jobs at soulless chain stores (Chuck, which is so far getting a tentative thumbs up from me, and Reaper, which I'm giving a big thumbs down). Coupland, as usual, is ahead (or at least on top) of the trend, with his latest novel being set at Staples, and following two employees—the older, divorced Roger and young goth Bethany—as they write letters to each other, following Bethany's discovery of Roger's diary. This is interspersed with excerpts from Roger's work-in-progress novel, Glove Pond, which teeters amusingly on the edge between ridiculous and brilliant.
I really enjoyed reading this. Coupland is, as always, amazingly good at looking into the minds of average, if somewhat quirky, people. He gives humanity to everyone; there are generally no villains in a Coupland novel, just various degrees of flawed people. I loved the relationship between Roger and Bethany and really enjoyed the weird, weird world of Glove Pond. I did think, however, that the narrative lags a bit once Bethany goes to England, and the book lacks the sense of catharsis at the end that many of Coupland's novels, even his overall weaker ones, have. Still, this is up there with my favorites of his, and continues to give me hope that he will one day produce something that's not just Really Good, but Transcendent.
227. The House Next Door, Anne Rivers Siddons — Another book where I really dug the first third and then became progressively more and more annoyed. Narrated by a woman with the improbable name of Colquitt (forgive me if this actually IS a popular name Down South; I'm clearly an ignorant Westerner/Yankee, yo), this is a haunted house story that I'd heard was fantastic from several sources, including Stephen King—not in his usual, I'll-blurb-anything fashion, but in long passages of Danse Macabre, his book about the horror genre, which I really enjoyed. A book that scared Stephen King? That I have to read! (Two years later. Oops.)
Anyway, the first third seemed to be living up to all this hype: it follows Colquitt as she watches the empty lot next door to the home she shares with her husband, Walter, get purchased and have a house for a rich young couple built on it. Almost immediately, the site seems cursed: animals are found torn up but no culprit can be found, and then the new property's ditzy young owner, Pie Harralson, has a miscarriage in a truly horrifying way. Okay. I was totally with the book at this point, ready and eager to be spooked. But then the house's next act of evil is...making Pie's husband Buddy and another character gay. SERIOUSLY. The house makes them gay. And then makes them do it at a party. An event which is foreshaddowed by one of the two characters having an opinion about wallpaper. Which, you know, does doom one to gayness. Snerk.
Okay, so my reaction to this SCENE of TERROR (so horrifying it causes Pie's father to have a fatal heart attack!) was of course totally inappropriate, involving a lot of giggling, and this could fairly be blamed on the fact that I read a lot of porn where drugs, Ancient cities, aliens, et. al., make characters gay all the time—and it's considered a good thing. I was like, "Gee! I hope Buddy and his lawyer friend are happy together!" Surely not the reaction Siddons intended.
But I honestly do think that a lot of this book's problems stem from it simply not being capable of provoking the same reactions from a reader in 2007 as it might have in 1978, when it was published. Not because we've all seen all four Saw movies and are immune to psychological horror (I haven't, and I'm not) but because the book is really that fucking dated. The attitudes toward homosexuality, the poor, and those damn Jews who think they're as good as we are, are, frankly, backward and offensive. I'm not saying they're Siddons' own views—the book is told in the first person, so it's hard to tell—but they do make Colquitt quite unlikeable, and she's not even the one most strongly spouting them all. I get the feeling that Colquitt and everyone on her block are the type of people who would make life miserable for a person like me far more quickly and easily than a possessed house ever could.
Whether Colquitt and I would ever be best buddies aside, the novel had further narrative flaws that ruined the last two thirds for me. First, it gets repetitive; after the big Gaying Up, the house seems to run out of new tricks, falling back, again and again, on plain old heterosexual adultery as its way to ruin its inhabitants lives. (So in other words, the only thing necessary to defeat evil houses is to have Dan Savage move in? Good to know!) Siddons also uses the "if I had only known then..." trick of suspense-building WAAAAAY too many times, and it's an authorial device I'm not fond of even once. Tack on a lame twist ending and an even lamer epilogue, and the book just falls apart for me. Nice foundation, but otherwise, pretty shoddy workmanship, IMO.
228. A Place So Foreign, Cory Doctorow — A collection of quirkly sci-fi stories, pretty much all of which had interesting concepts, but very little in the way of characters. (Also virtually no female characters, I realized once I was done. Like, I think a couple times someone's mom shows up, but that's it. Wow.) I think I read for characters more than ideas (though obviously, a marriage of both is what's best) so there really wasn't much for me here. YMMV, of course, but these stories really did leave me feeling stranded, like a foreigner.
229. Monkey Girl, Beth Lisick — I loved Lisick's memoir, Everybody Into the Pool, in part because it's one of the few—perhaps the only—memoirs I've read that depicts a funny, weird, messed-up adult without pinning all those traits on a fucked-up, miserable childhood (No, look, my childhood is the MOST miserable! See how miserable it was? Wallow in the shit of my childhood a little more, plz).
ANYWAY...Lisick didn't do that! (Although Pool does contain a hilarious and squirm-worthy incident involving, um. Shit.) But I digress, as I'm actually supposed to be talking about Monkey Girl, her earlier collection of short stories/spoken word-type stuff. The idea of "spoken word" usually makes me cringe (that's not what I go to bars or coffee shops for, okay?) but as I said, I liked Pool, so I was willing to give this a shot. I'm glad I did. It's nothing revolutionary, but Lisick once again makes a good tour guide for the Bay Area underground: humorous, self-deprecating, not the least bit poseur-y, self-righteous, or faux. And I believe in her Bay Area; it touches on the Bay Area I experienced enough to make me pleasantly nostalgic. I'm not sure if this book would do much for you if the San Francisco/Berkeley scene isn't one with which you're familiar, but I liked it.
230. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz — An incredibly fascinating if flawed book, which I'm so glad I read but which makes me sad, because I think it could have been so much more than it was. Diaz is obviously an immensely talented writer (I hear his short story collection, Drown, is phenomenal, and really want to read it now); he weaves together the story of Oscar, an overweight, somewhat hopeless geek living in New York, with that of the rest of his family and the history of the Dominican Republic. I know (knew) next to nothing about the Dominican Republic (which is really shameful considering the ways U.S. history intersects with its history), so I found those portions of the book particularly fascinating, the (based on reality, brr) stories about the brutal dictatorship of Trujillo terrifying and epic in scope. Against them Oscar's struggles seem small—and I say this despite the fact that I (unlike my mother, who coincidentally read this book at the same time I did) found him remarkably and wonderfully relatable for someone who's life is, nominally, nothing like mine. I also really liked Yunior, the character who narrates most of the book; his voice is unusual and instantly distinct, and I could have easily spent hours listening to him tell a story.
So I wish, I really do, that there had been a story here. But weirdly, there's not; the book feels instead like the opening section of five or six different stories. Each of these stories is fantastic—really, really fantastic—but none of them concludes, really; Diaz just moves the narrative on to something else. The whole thing never coalesces (which, believe me, I was waiting and waiting for it to do), with the narrative instead ending on Oscar finally losing his virginity. Dude, I'm happy for you, but... I wanted more about the history of the Dominican Republic. That was where the narrative really came alive: in the footnotes. How odd. Incredibly worth reading, but odd and, ultimately, a little disappointing.
Total Books: 230 (for now)
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 04:55 pm (UTC)Also, I adore Paradise News. It's my favorite Lodge novel, and that's saying a lot. I own two copies, and I don't know how many I've given as gifts. I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:46 pm (UTC)I really did enjoy Paradise News a lot. Now I'm trying to space out my Lodge-reading a little more, and also decide which to read next. (I have Therapy and Out of the Shelter, but could probably get almost any of the others from the library.) What do you think?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-06 03:31 am (UTC)I really enjoyed Therapy, quite a bit, though it's not for everyone. I also really liked Out of the Shelter; it's not like his other work, but it's sweet and I still remember the protagonist's time in Germany, so that says quite a bit about the book.
I can't remember if you've read Nice Work, but probably you have. I loved it.
I love your book posts. Thank you for resuming them.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:00 pm (UTC)Souls and Bodies - this is actually my favourite of all his books, although I prefer the English title (How Far Can You Go?)... As you say, the anthropological side of things is really interesting to read - for me, too, as a post-Vatican-II Catholic. It's quite frightening, sometimes, to see how very different things were before the council.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:50 pm (UTC)Yes, the English title is better (I wonder why the change?) but I was able to get a copy under the dumb American title, so I thought it would be proper to list that. But under any name, what's amazing about the book is that, despite taking place in what I still consider to be "my" century, it's very much historical fiction, isn't it? Amazing how things change.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 07:06 pm (UTC)Sadly I suspect this is true! Oh noes! :)
And I wasn't objecting to your use of the American title; it makes sense to use the title of the book you actually read *g*. But yes! in some ways, the middle of the century feels more alien than, say, Roman times - because one assumes that it will be like today, but it really isn't, a lot of the time.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-05 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-06 06:54 am (UTC)Yeah, it was great to see it on a big screen. The main differences I saw were that there were longer atmosphere shots, and he changed the line to "I want more life, father". But who am I kidding, they're all good cuts.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-19 05:38 pm (UTC)On the topic of things for you to read
Date: 2007-12-08 07:24 pm (UTC)