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trinityofoneHappy 2009, everybody! I am celebrating with the final installment of Booklog—2008!
281. Real World, Natsuo Kirino — Subtly unnerving neo-noir about five high school students, one of whom murders his mother, while the other four become in varying degrees complicit in his escape. The narrative switches between each of their POVs, and one of the best things Kirino does is show how little the four supposedly close friends really know each other. They each have secrets that are actually common knowledge, or have motivations and goals that are completely misinterpreted by the others. The overall effect was quite spooky and sad.
I picked this up because I’ve been wanting to read Kirino’s Out, but my copy hasn’t arrived yet. Having read this, I’m still very much looking forward to it.
282. Blindness, José Saramago — I had a hard time with this book. On the one hand, I appreciated aspects of the story Saramago was trying to tell—a story about horrific circumstances reducing people to their most basic qualities, both good and bad. On the other hand, I hated his prose style and some of his choices made me froth.
All of the dialogue in this book is strung together in endlessly long paragraphs with no quotes and few attributions. I do not see the point of this at all. Look, I’ve ranted already about Cormac McCarthy and his apostrophe hate; this is the same sort of argument, which I am frankly weary of reiterating. But basically, I don’t see how this returns language to a purer form, or simplifies it; I think it just makes it hard to read. Why is it so postmodern and “literary” to hate on punctuation? Punctuation is your friend.
Stylistically, therefore, I was annoyed, although Saramago does sometimes make it work: this method of writing certainly reproduces the effect of cacophony well. But even setting that aside, I had a hard time believing in the universe Saramago created. A large part of this, I think, had to do with his portrayal of women.
The novel’s main character is, arguably, a woman—the doctor’s wife, the only person who doesn’t go blind. (Yeah, none of the characters have names, either, just—at times lengthy—titles, like “the girl with the dark glasses.” This bugged me, too.) While I could never quite put myself in her shoes—Saramago portrays most of her reactions from what felt to me like a great remove—I was with her, and even admired her strength and resolve, for about the first third of the book. This feeling wavered a bit when the doctor’s wife decides she’s pretty much okay with her husband sleeping with the girl with the dark glasses, considering the circumstances (a move that felt weirdly out of place for both of them, too), but I shrugged that off as well.
Then I got to the gang rape scene.
All right, so, the first few hundred people struck blind are all quarantined inside an old mental hospital, and a group of men with a gun seize control of the food and demand payment if the others want to eat. Valuables first, then women. The doctor’s wife is among the first group led in to be brutally raped. She is, remember, the only person in the entire place who can still see, and none of her captives know this. She has the element of surprise way, way on her side. And then, the man with the gun, the leader, leaves the gun where she can reach it. She can feel the gun in her hand—the gun with which she could kill him and quite possibly stop dozens of women, including herself, from being brutalized. Saramago has her touch the gun and think about this—and then he has her decide not to take it.
I put the book down at this point and couldn’t bring myself to pick it up for several months.
I don’t think I can really explain why this bothers me so much. I guess on some level I just couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t even try, not just for herself, but for everyone else. Or maybe I didn’t like that it felt like Saramago made the decision for her, putting a possible solution into her hand and then having her reject it, like this move was somehow noble. Or… yeah, I can’t explain it. But it put me off the rest of the book.
At the end, everyone’s sight comes back, at the crucial moment, for no reason at all. Okay, I know: it went away for no reason at all, too, but still returning it—“it’s a miracle!”-style—felt like such a cheat. What was the point, really, of everyone going through all this? By the end, the young girl with the dark glasses has given up occasional prostitution and is shacking up with the old man with the eye patch. (Wow, how nice for him—I mean them.) And I, well, I didn’t believe in any of these characters anymore. It all felt false to me. The brutality, yeah, that I got. But any sort of transcendence…I just don’t see it.
283. Charlotte Sometimes, Penelope Farmer — Reread. I last read this when I was much younger, and mostly what I remember is that I found it unsettling and strange. For once, my memory is accurate. This is nominally a time travel story, but perhaps because of time’s inexorable march, the English girls’ boarding school in the “modern” ’50s doesn’t seem all that different to someone reading in 2008 (or 199-whatever) from the English girls’ boarding school in the “past” of 1918. Yes, there’s a war going on in the latter, and that ends up playing a significant role in the story, but still, Charlotte’s present is so thinly sketched out that there almost might as well be one happening there as well. Charlotte, too, seems thin, barely there, so when she starts to feel like she’s losing herself in the identity of Clare, the girl she’s replaced in the past, the unease one feels is more that she never existed in the first place.
Maybe I’ll try again in another ten years, but I’m still not sure if I’ll know what to make of this book.
284. The City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau — YA sci-fi. If you’ve read anything, ever, you will pretty much know everything that’s going to happen in this book, but it’s still well-told and engaging. I liked the main characters, spritely Lina and the unfortunately named Doon, and I liked some of the smaller details about the City of Ember. I actually really want to see the movie now, to see that vast darkness and flickering light made real. I will also be looking for the sequel.
285. Off Main Street, Michael Perry — Essays by the author of Population: 485. I loved that book; it was one of my favorite things I read this year. This book is not nearly as good. It’s really just a collection of some random magazine articles Perry wrote over the years, some of which are quite interesting, others not so much. A lot of them are about trucks. I used to edit car magazines for a living, and I have to say, when I’m not getting paid for it, reading essays about engines is not something I really want to spend time doing. Even when his topics are more diverse, none of these pieces is particularly electrifying. Perry’s a very good writer, but with these short snippets, he has nothing to build toward, and the effect is utterly unlike the amazing power of Population: 485. Read that instead.
286. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami — This seemed like an appropriate way to finish the year. It’s a novel that’s got a little bit of everything: sc-fi, fantasy, noirish mystery, a touch of romance, a bit of horror. Or, as my brother said in the fantastic email in which he recommend it to me, “As I recall it's quite beautiful—a mixture of Raymond Chandler and a passive Dante Alighieri. There's a beautiful passage about Bob Dylan and a heavy rainstorm...also quite a charming bit about cute fat ladies.”
You know, I was going to go on a bit, but I actually don’t think I can sum it up much better than that. Perhaps it is best to bid the year farewell with brevity.
Total Books 2008: 286!
...Which is actually one less book than last year. Haha. But last year I didn't finish my booklog—I crapped out at book 230 of 287! So I win! Take that, 2007 me!
A review of the best and worst of 2008 isforthcoming! here!
281. Real World, Natsuo Kirino — Subtly unnerving neo-noir about five high school students, one of whom murders his mother, while the other four become in varying degrees complicit in his escape. The narrative switches between each of their POVs, and one of the best things Kirino does is show how little the four supposedly close friends really know each other. They each have secrets that are actually common knowledge, or have motivations and goals that are completely misinterpreted by the others. The overall effect was quite spooky and sad.
I picked this up because I’ve been wanting to read Kirino’s Out, but my copy hasn’t arrived yet. Having read this, I’m still very much looking forward to it.
282. Blindness, José Saramago — I had a hard time with this book. On the one hand, I appreciated aspects of the story Saramago was trying to tell—a story about horrific circumstances reducing people to their most basic qualities, both good and bad. On the other hand, I hated his prose style and some of his choices made me froth.
All of the dialogue in this book is strung together in endlessly long paragraphs with no quotes and few attributions. I do not see the point of this at all. Look, I’ve ranted already about Cormac McCarthy and his apostrophe hate; this is the same sort of argument, which I am frankly weary of reiterating. But basically, I don’t see how this returns language to a purer form, or simplifies it; I think it just makes it hard to read. Why is it so postmodern and “literary” to hate on punctuation? Punctuation is your friend.
Stylistically, therefore, I was annoyed, although Saramago does sometimes make it work: this method of writing certainly reproduces the effect of cacophony well. But even setting that aside, I had a hard time believing in the universe Saramago created. A large part of this, I think, had to do with his portrayal of women.
The novel’s main character is, arguably, a woman—the doctor’s wife, the only person who doesn’t go blind. (Yeah, none of the characters have names, either, just—at times lengthy—titles, like “the girl with the dark glasses.” This bugged me, too.) While I could never quite put myself in her shoes—Saramago portrays most of her reactions from what felt to me like a great remove—I was with her, and even admired her strength and resolve, for about the first third of the book. This feeling wavered a bit when the doctor’s wife decides she’s pretty much okay with her husband sleeping with the girl with the dark glasses, considering the circumstances (a move that felt weirdly out of place for both of them, too), but I shrugged that off as well.
Then I got to the gang rape scene.
All right, so, the first few hundred people struck blind are all quarantined inside an old mental hospital, and a group of men with a gun seize control of the food and demand payment if the others want to eat. Valuables first, then women. The doctor’s wife is among the first group led in to be brutally raped. She is, remember, the only person in the entire place who can still see, and none of her captives know this. She has the element of surprise way, way on her side. And then, the man with the gun, the leader, leaves the gun where she can reach it. She can feel the gun in her hand—the gun with which she could kill him and quite possibly stop dozens of women, including herself, from being brutalized. Saramago has her touch the gun and think about this—and then he has her decide not to take it.
I put the book down at this point and couldn’t bring myself to pick it up for several months.
I don’t think I can really explain why this bothers me so much. I guess on some level I just couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t even try, not just for herself, but for everyone else. Or maybe I didn’t like that it felt like Saramago made the decision for her, putting a possible solution into her hand and then having her reject it, like this move was somehow noble. Or… yeah, I can’t explain it. But it put me off the rest of the book.
At the end, everyone’s sight comes back, at the crucial moment, for no reason at all. Okay, I know: it went away for no reason at all, too, but still returning it—“it’s a miracle!”-style—felt like such a cheat. What was the point, really, of everyone going through all this? By the end, the young girl with the dark glasses has given up occasional prostitution and is shacking up with the old man with the eye patch. (Wow, how nice for him—I mean them.) And I, well, I didn’t believe in any of these characters anymore. It all felt false to me. The brutality, yeah, that I got. But any sort of transcendence…I just don’t see it.
283. Charlotte Sometimes, Penelope Farmer — Reread. I last read this when I was much younger, and mostly what I remember is that I found it unsettling and strange. For once, my memory is accurate. This is nominally a time travel story, but perhaps because of time’s inexorable march, the English girls’ boarding school in the “modern” ’50s doesn’t seem all that different to someone reading in 2008 (or 199-whatever) from the English girls’ boarding school in the “past” of 1918. Yes, there’s a war going on in the latter, and that ends up playing a significant role in the story, but still, Charlotte’s present is so thinly sketched out that there almost might as well be one happening there as well. Charlotte, too, seems thin, barely there, so when she starts to feel like she’s losing herself in the identity of Clare, the girl she’s replaced in the past, the unease one feels is more that she never existed in the first place.
Maybe I’ll try again in another ten years, but I’m still not sure if I’ll know what to make of this book.
284. The City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau — YA sci-fi. If you’ve read anything, ever, you will pretty much know everything that’s going to happen in this book, but it’s still well-told and engaging. I liked the main characters, spritely Lina and the unfortunately named Doon, and I liked some of the smaller details about the City of Ember. I actually really want to see the movie now, to see that vast darkness and flickering light made real. I will also be looking for the sequel.
285. Off Main Street, Michael Perry — Essays by the author of Population: 485. I loved that book; it was one of my favorite things I read this year. This book is not nearly as good. It’s really just a collection of some random magazine articles Perry wrote over the years, some of which are quite interesting, others not so much. A lot of them are about trucks. I used to edit car magazines for a living, and I have to say, when I’m not getting paid for it, reading essays about engines is not something I really want to spend time doing. Even when his topics are more diverse, none of these pieces is particularly electrifying. Perry’s a very good writer, but with these short snippets, he has nothing to build toward, and the effect is utterly unlike the amazing power of Population: 485. Read that instead.
286. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami — This seemed like an appropriate way to finish the year. It’s a novel that’s got a little bit of everything: sc-fi, fantasy, noirish mystery, a touch of romance, a bit of horror. Or, as my brother said in the fantastic email in which he recommend it to me, “As I recall it's quite beautiful—a mixture of Raymond Chandler and a passive Dante Alighieri. There's a beautiful passage about Bob Dylan and a heavy rainstorm...also quite a charming bit about cute fat ladies.”
You know, I was going to go on a bit, but I actually don’t think I can sum it up much better than that. Perhaps it is best to bid the year farewell with brevity.
Total Books 2008: 286!
...Which is actually one less book than last year. Haha. But last year I didn't finish my booklog—I crapped out at book 230 of 287! So I win! Take that, 2007 me!
A review of the best and worst of 2008 is
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 11:41 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure you didn't want to do it even when you *were* getting paid, for that matter *g*.
Congratulations!! Woo! Now I just have to finish *mine*, darnit.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-02 11:44 pm (UTC)You can do it! *cheerleads*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-03 02:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-03 02:12 am (UTC)