15. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates

This review is actually just a combination of different things that I sent to CL about what I thought of this book a long time ago. Because of that, and because of the fact that this book was ridiculously sad, it is probably more personal than my other posts. I don't think I'll edit it too much, though. I know I had lots of things to add to it back then, but I can't even find the email exchange in which this ramble originally existed, (which distresses me in many ways, but hey, this isn't my livejournal) so it's good I have this much saved here from when I started this entry in May, at least. I think this post would be different if I wrote it from scratch right now, but I am too fond of my earlier self to inject my current (somewhat happier) viewpoint on these things. So mostly this one's for me, but it's really long and incoherent and has spoilers, so you probably won't read it anyway. What you should get out of this post, though, is that life is hard and you should read this book.




I am rusty with the in depth book analysis, as my blog is more like "it was cool" or "it sucked," but then again I haven't been reading this sort of thing recently. It took me a little bit to get into it. It is true that the liking of them sneaks up on you. I was sort of ambling through the book waiting for "the good part" and then all of a sudden I realized I cared about them a lot. I liked the writing throughout, so that kept me going, but at first it seemed to be going pretty slow. So Yates had to sort of sneak up the caring about the characters on me. And the whole not much happening thing makes sense, because you are probably supposed to feel the suburban monotony and all that.

Some things seemed a bit heavy handed at first, like the whole part about the crazy man is the only one who can REALLY see the truth behind the situation. But actually it might just be because I have 60 years of historical hindsight (and a sense of unwarranted moral superiority that comes from having grown up in the woods) to know that suburbia blows. April and Frank don't have that benefit, because suburbia just started its long reign of blowing, and they had to figure it out for themselves. So at the time I'm sure it wasn't as obvious.

It made me ache to see them in such detail. They were so real. Frank more than April, but that's probably only because we see everything from his mind up until April has her day, and then all the things that before made her annoying (thoughts about her parents, her emotional silent treatment bit, etc.) just made her seem so small and sad and human. But even just the way Frank's inner monologue went made him seem real. Yates put in a lot of things people say to themselves that they don't really talk about. Like the whole imagining the future reactions of April to what he'll tell her about his day, the way he analyzed his movements and his words as though he were on stage, and all the secret weaknesses he had that he tried to hide. Like how occasionally when Frank thinks of himself in 3rd person he is sort of mapping out his next move as though it were onstage. They started out as regular sounding people with an understandable and possibly attainable goal of getting away from it all, and as the story progressed, the responsibility that they began shouldering, all the adult decisions and actions they took built and built and then all crumbled and they just seemed so sad and underinformed and young. They were just trying so hard not to suck, but they failed.

I'm not sure where the blame should lie, either. It is partially the fault of the societal system, for somehow expecting them to be happy in that life. It is also partly the weight of the expectations of the past. The previous generations did a lot of irresponsible European traveling and decadent Sun Also Rises shit, and they (mostly April) have that to contend with, but they also have the expectation that now hard work and dedication will get you where you want to be, like with Frank's whole daddy complex. So they have those issues to contend with, and they are ill equipped. I think SJs (yeah I bring Myers Briggs into everything) can usually be happy hangin out in the stereotypical societal role laid out for them. Frank I think is an INFJ, and April an ENFP. I haven't thought about this a lot, though, so I could be wrong. Point is, they are not SJ.

But suburbia hasn't been around long enough for there to be a clear route or much of a (what's the word- starts with a P, they use it in court to mean "oh well we ruled that way last time so I guess we can do it again" goddammit what is it) to base their decisions on. It's like it takes a few years past being in a decade to be able to define it. I remember in 1999 I thought "What will the defining characteristics of the 90s be? everything seems so normal and boring and undefinable." And right now, I have similar thoughts about the 00s, but by 2004 or so the 90s had a very distinct flavor, and I'm sure that if we make it to 2014, so will the 00s. The point is, they had no idea they were stuck in the shitty Pleasantville 50s. If you look at it as the book telling you "suburbia sucks and steals your soul," then you will respond by saying "well, yes, I knew that." I think you get more from it without focusing on it being Suburbia that did them in. Suburbia does blow, yes, but it is still possible to live a fulfilled life within it (I assume, but I am not about to test this theory). I think that you aren't supposed to blame it on suburbia, because they didn't know. And more obviously, Yates didn't know. Because Suburbia hadn't been around enough to be that big dumb thing in the 50s.

I am not going to lie, though. I am a large hater of suburbia. I am also a large hater of cities, but I understand a little more why people like those. The concept of an ice cream man and playing street hockey with all the neighbor kids does sound cool, but I will staunchly claim that me hanging out by myself making forts and bottling the juice of a Jewel Weed plant for its healing properties was a million times better. I guess it is unfair to blame it all on suburbia, but I don't think I did that. Just don't go giving suburbia undeserved credit just to make up for all the shit it gets. It does get stereotyped, mostly because it is that one thing that stands out about that part of American history. So it deserves the stereotype? I guess I am saying that April and Frank still could have succeeded and it was mostly their own damn fault they failed, but still.They had no idea this was a typical plight that would define their generation. They just knew "Oh god, this sucks. I want to leave but I don't know how."
So for that I really fucking felt for them.

The ending was really good, too. I knew that something big would have to happen, and although I was rooting for them the whole time, I knew they'd never make it to Europe. As it happened, the ending was perfect in its sadness. On the back of my (tied for first with Catch 22) favorite book, At Swim, Two Boys, one of the reviewers says something like "blah blah richness of scope and ambition that makes one reluctant to come to its tragic and inevitable close." Wow, you know you've read a book a lot when you have the reviews memorized, too. Anyway, point is that I always think of that "tragic and inevitable close" thing when other books pull it off, too. There's really nothing else that could have happened to April and Frank.

Yates does the whole "what if" bit, talking about how little things could have changed the outcome, which is true, but of course those little things happened the way they did because they had to. They were doomed from the start. Which really sucks. But it was beautiful that way. Of course she would rather die trying to be herself than live the shitty way she was living, and of course Frank would hurt for a while but then find an easy and dull comfort in burying himself in the very life he originally was trying to get away from.

It was especially pertinent and emotionally murderous to me because of my current life crisis. Of course, everyone sees their crisis as new and different from anyone else's, but just like Frank and April weren't the only ones who thought their road was strikingly unrevolutionary, I am not the only graduate who doesn't want to go get a real job or some shit. But in the moment, in the glaring face of stifling mediocrity, no one can help but see their struggle as singular in its importance.

So it killed me with really really quality writing, and it also killed me by being really terrifying and raising lots of unpleasant questions about the future. I am terrified that I will end up settling, bit by bit without noticing, for something comfortable. I have no large reason for feeling that way- I've actually done a large number of cool things in my past, and I have no reason to think I will be unable to continue them. But still the difficulty of finding something fulfilling and lucrative to do, the difficulty of somehow locating and not hiding from a boy that I share both viewpoints and life goals with, the difficulty of staying with said mystical boy for more than 2 years (my record, set in high school), the difficulty of creating new people that will not only feast upon my innards for 9 months but will require intellectual and physical guidance for the rest of my life, and doing it all (because I really do want to do these things) without feeling trapped inside some cliche white picket fence. I know it is possible, because I have seen it done. It just looks real hard. So I hoped a lot that Frank and April would get their shit together and live with a beautiful purpose. But they didn't, and I knew they wouldn't, and it wouldn't have been as good a book if they'd succeeded. But goddamn, somebody needs to or else I am going to go crazy.

Pages: 337
Time: April 10-14 2009
Rating: 9.75

12, 13, 14 The Last Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney

Hey, I'm back! I started a bunch of reviews 4 months ago, so I'll finish some of those and then skip around, probably not reviewing much of what I read this summer. Oh well. At least this blog is alive again.

I lost the piece of paper I used to take notes on this book, and I finished it ages ago, but we'll see what I can remember (the entire point of this blog...oh well) about what I wanted to say.

This book is the first in a series. I'm actually up to book 4 in this series now, since I started this entry early last May. So Technically this entry can be about Revenge of the Witch, Curse of the Bane and Night of the Soul-Stealer. Anyway, the series is about a kid named Thomas Ward who is the seventh son of a seventh son, which means he is eligible to apprentice as a Spook. A spook lives a solitary and terrifying life, wandering around the country and getting rid of evil things that plague everyday society. It's not any sort of secret, though. Everyone's aware of ghosts and boggarts and witches and things, and they need a spook's knowhow on defeating this kind of thing to live peacefully.

I am kind of a wimp when it comes to scary things and I will admit that I read this in my bed at night with my bankie wrapped around me tightly. It wasn't too scary, though. I really like the art in this book, too. There is a whole page for chapter art, not just below the chapter titles, so that's neat. Lots of crosshatching and sketchy linework or whatever it is that art stuff is called.

Something that is kind of annoying, though, is how the back covers proclaim that this is the ideal series for kids who've outgrown Harry Potter. Sunday Times Review, please! These books are cool, and they have neat, creatively imagined monsters and an intricate enough plotline, yes. But there's no way it's even close to as scary or complex or sad or risque as HP. I wonder how many books in this blog I compare to Harry Potter? Maybe I should read less YA fantasy. Or maybe not.
Pages: 340-500, depending on which book
Time: may-july
Rating: 7

So...

I didn't forget about this, I swear. I am just unmotivated, and I am reading things too quickly to write about them.

11. Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy

I've got 5 books to report on, so I am starting with the easiest review.

This book cover is hilarious, y/y?

Kids are checking this out left and right at the library, and I found myself on lunch break with nothing to read, so I picked it up. It is about this chick who leads a boring life and then her uncle dies, leaving her all his stuff, and then a LIVING SKELETON named Skulduggery Pleasant comes and saves her from some dude who tries to kill her. Turns out there is this whole huge world of magic people hanging out in the world (except anyone can learn magic it seems like, but most people never notice that they can) and there is some big bad dude out to steal everyone's magic and enslave the nonmagic population. Oh, and lolz, if you though Lord Voldemort was a dumb name, the Big Bad in this book is called Nefarian Serpine. SERIOUSLY?
It's times like these when I am completely astounded by the genius of one Joanne Katherine Rowling. It seems pretty simple to come up with some sort of semiplausible (plausible as fantasy, not reality), world but really difficult to create one that isn't really dumb and with a million holes in it. This book was fun to read. I read it on the plane to Nicaragua and I was thoroughly wrapped up in wanting to know what happened next, but that isn't the only thing that makes a book good. There were no real layers to it. I made no bonds with the characters and in no way did the world created by the author seem real at any point. One mark of a good book is that it sucks you in and you forget you are looking at words on pages because you are seeing the world of the novel as though it were real in your mind's eye. This is hard for any book, but even more hard for a fantasy/sci-fi book, because it has to convince you, even if just for a moment where the story is getting really intense, that it is real. Not real as in within the laws of physics, but real as in you are not thinking "I am reading a book about ___," you are thinking only of what is happening in the story. Harry Potter does that (and of course many others, like LOTR, but that's an entire other league of detailed insanity). JKR puts so much backstory into it that there's not a question you could ask that she wouldn't have the perfect answer lined up for. Derek Landy, with this book, didn't try that hard.

I am going to talk about this even more when I review a book called The Dark is Rising.

It did deal with some pretty neat concepts, though. I like stories that place a lot of importance on names. I have a half baked J novel concept about the magic of names in my head. In this book they talk about how if you know something's real name you can have power over it. In the context of the book it is magic, of course, but it is one of those things that is really just a metaphor for real life. You know, if you know someone's true self you can use it for good or for evil. In the book, everyone has 3 names: your true name (all of them are located in this heavily protected book that no one can read so no one actually knows this), your given name, and your chosen name.

I was pretty pumped about how the main character got to choose her own name. Her given name was Stephanie, and I really hate that name, so I was jazzed she'd get to pick something else so I would get to stop reading "Stephanie," but then she went and picked Valkyrie Cain. Ugh. Skulduggery is a cool name, though. Props, skeleton dude.

So basically it was fun and if there was a sequel (he sort of sets it up for one) I might read it and if they make a movie I might watch it, but I'm not going to be upset if that day never comes.

Pages: 400
Time: Apr 11-14
Rating: 6, maybe 7.5 if I was 12 and the girl wasn't named Stephanie.

10. Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

This is one of those books that everyone and their mom seemed to be checking out. I figured out that it was partly because it is a Battle of the Books book, but still. I eventually got around to reading it recently (I am typing this one up out of order, but other people want to read it so I need to turn it back in) and man, all the talk is not for nothing.

I have read a fair amount of fantasy in my day. I'm not much for the medieval sort of fantasy with robed princesses with staffs and jeweled headbands holing back their flowing locks on the covers. But the more contemporary sort, you know, with the kid who stumbles upon a secret world and somehow ends up really special. The genre is pretty large, though, and full of not very good books. It is difficult to make something fresh and not done a million times in any genre of fiction, but I feel like it is the most glaringly obvious for fantasy. Some books (Harry Potter, obviously) can be original and well written enough to break through all the millions of predictable plotlines and characters with stupid names. The Graveyard Book pulls it off.

A Man Jack (you find out bit by bit that he's a part of this governmental conspiracy group of Jacks thing) breaks into a house, kills a mom, dad, sister, and the baby escapes (okay yeah that does sound a bit like HP, but it is different because the family is normal and the baby is normal and it just wanders away; it doesn't get saved by magic). The baby wanders into the graveyard across the street and the spirits living (residing?) there, upon figuring out his situation, decide to raise him themselves.

They name him Nobody, call him Bod for short, and give him the protection of the graveyard, meaning he's invisible to the typical mortal, just like they are. He grows up, gets into many kinds of trouble, meets a lady, deals with the Jacks as they try and finish the job, etc.

So as much fun as I've been having reading the fluffy YA fantasy lit (I will review a book called Skulduggery Pleasant that fits into this category perfectly soon), it was really cool to read a book that is what the genre is supposed to be about.

It has a really creative interesting story, good writing, an array of lovable and hatable characters (my favorite being Silas, Bod's semi-mortal caretaker), and an ending that really gets you. It ends at a perfect place in a perfect way, but it still makes me want a sequel. Badly. Nice job, Gaiman.


Pages: 312
Time: Apr 22-24
Rating: 9

9. Savvy, by Ingrid Law

I honestly wanted to read this book because of its cover. Which you're not supposed to do, but hey, sometimes judging a book by its cover works out. This time it didn't, though.

This book was about a family of people with exciting talents like electrical manipulation, the ability to create land, water manipulation...other elemental manipulation, etc. You get the picture. You turn 13 and your "savvy" manifests. So on the main character's 13th birthday, her dad is in an accident (he is a normal dude) and she freaks out, wants her savvy to be something that saves lives, finds herself on some madcap road trip with her brothers and some stuck up preacher's kids on her way to find her dad. I like reading about siblings, especially brothers, and I liked her youngest brother who hides like a cat and doesn't talk to people.

Still, though, it was thoroughly mediocre writing with really obvious plot twists and there was too much God in it for my liking. He wasn't a large force in the book, but I guess everyday references to stuff like praying for your coma-bound father to wake up rub my bitter atheist heart of stone the wrong way. Whatever.

But it was a J book, meaning its intended audience is like 8-13 year olds. And when I was 8-13 I wouldn't have caught on to the transparently contrived foreshadowing, I hadn't solidified my annoyance with unnecessary references to the Lord, and the chaste handholding would have made me blush pleasantly.

Also, the concept of powers manifesting at a certain age has always been extra cool (I am still waiting for my Hogwarts letter, and with each passing birthday I amuse myself by pretending that in the real world it comes not at eleven, but one year later than the age I just turned). So basically I'd have liked it if I was 10, or if it was the same premise but for older people.

As it is, though, I'd recommend wholeheartedly it to any young kid who, like myself at their age, desperately wished to stumble upon one of the many secret magical worlds hiding quietly within our own. Just, you know, for myself, it was kind of boring. I did read it in like one sitting, though, so it didn't take much out of my life.

Pages: 342
Time: Mar 27
Rating: 5, unless you are 10, then maybe 7.5

8. Fables Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham, etc

I apparently like graphic novels a lot more than I thought I did. Owen gave me this one and neglected to tell me the premise, so it took me a second to figure out exactly what was going on. And then I was a bit skeptical, but not for too long.

Basically every character from any fable that didn't have creative rights restricting it is in this series. Snow White is more or less running this exiled kingdom of fables, who are all living in our world, as some Opponent that you don't learn much about in book 1 has invaded their homelands and kicked them out into our dimension. Other characters of note are detective Bigby (big bad) Wolf, Prince Charming (the womanizing douche), Beauty, The Beast, Jack (as in the beanstalk), etc.

The plot revolved around Rose Red (Snow White's sister, ya know)'s mysterious death. I'm not ususally much for mysteries, but it was fun. And well drawn. I especially like the art between chapters. I know it sounds lame. But it wasn't really. With everyone being immortal and all, they've all had time to sleep with everyone, create grudges, have lots of tension of all kinds, etc.

I will probably read more of the series at some point.

I am also like 5 books behind on this thing. G'damn. I'll probably write shorter reviews til I can catch up.

Pages: 120
Time: Not sure. Probably around Mar 15-17?
Rating: I am not obsessed with comic books, but for what it was, it was good. So... 7?

7. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, by Chuck Klosterman

This book was on the Library's sale rack, and Owen told me it was good, so I took it. It is a book of essays (I do read nonfiction!) about pop culture, covering everything there is to cover, more or less.

It's one of those really opinionated essay compilations where you can find yourself calling the author a genius or an idiot depending on how much you happen to agree with whatever it is he's writing about, and I called him both during the course of reading his book. But agree with him or not, he is very funny.

I really enjoyed the ramblings on Billy Joel, The Real World, the Sims, etc. Other parts I found less hilarious, either because we disagreed- he seems to think soccer is the wussiest of sports and is only for nerds, which doesn't make sense to me at all, because (while it is probable that soccer players have a higher IQ than football or baseball players) they have always seemed like the coolest sport players there are. This might be because my concept of "cool" is perhaps different than the mainstream, but so is Chuck Klosterman's, so I don't know why we must disagree so strongly on this topic- or because I simply did not care enough about the topic he was covering to get it (NBA jokes, etc).

Anyway, so it was funny, but also sort of limited in scope, because it was published what, like 2003, and already some things are dated. He spends a large amount of time comparing Pamela Anderson to Marilyn Monroe, and I'm all "Well, sort of, maybe. But isn't Anna Nicole Smith a much better comparison, even pre-sad untimely death?" I guess it doesn't really matter to Chuck, as he prefaced the book with a page or two about time and truth and his initial worry that his book would stop being pertinent after a few years. He concluded (and I agree) that something can be true in the time that you are experiencing it. For a time, the truth of Pamela Anderson being the equivalent of Norma Jean made sense. And any kind of analyzation of pop culture has top be rooted in the moment, because that is what pop culture is all about. So for that, I enjoyed it.

And I also am jealous of people who can just pull out the perfect hilarious reference to a person/movie/character/phenomenon at the right time, and this book was full of that. I am someone who freezes up during Mad Libs, so people (C.L., you are someone who comes to mind as being particularly gifted in the snappy and appropriately funny reference area) whose brains know exactly where to reach in comparing one thing to another impress me. Really, Klosterman could have picked any doe-eyed sensitive apex-of-man icon to blame for the fact that no realistic love can last. But he the fact that picked the John Cusack (or the characters that J.C. embodies) is just perfect. Although it might currently be Edward Cullen or some shit, that is a good joke. Hell, I know I've wished John Cusack (or Lloyd Dobbler, more accurately) would materialize in front of me before.

Reading nonfiction is interesting and different, but he did that thing that David Sedaris does at the end of each essay where everything is wrapped up so perfectly in this bow tie sentence that makes you laugh and go "aww" at the same time. Sometimes my writing ends up like that, but a lot of times it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I wonder if it really worked out that beautifully in real life, or if the facts got twisted to make it end so perfectly. And that is one of my whole battles with nonfiction.


Sorry I'm so late, BTW. I had a bout of not caring about anything, and now that I am back I have like 4 books to write about.

Pages: 272
Time: Mar 8-11
Rating: 7.5

6. Life as We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Somehow this book ended up having been put on hold for me at the library. I didn't add my name to the list, and no one I know owned up to it either. It seemed pretty interesting, being about the apocalypse and stuff, so I read it. It ended up being not very interesting, but I went ahead and finished it.
It's the story of this 10th grader and her family after an asteroid hits the moon and knocks it in a closer orbit with the Earth. This messes up things like tides, causing tsunamis, volcanic action, earthquakes, etc. They hang out in their house and try to survive and things like that.

It had potential, but it pretty much sucked. The woman didn't really write poorly; it just wasn't anything memorable and the story was boring. There was some subplot with her being kind of obsessed with some figure skater that was from her hometown and made it big, and then he shows up halfway through the book when like everyone else is dead, skates with her on a pond, and never comes back. It was really annoying. Either take out that subplot or make it matter, woman. also, I'm not sure about the science behind it. I think she might be close, but I wanted a little more backing for all the things that happened after the moon came closer.

It was like someone took The Day After Tomorrow and made it even worse and without any LULZ. They mostly just sat around making bad decisions about water usage. "Oh no, kids! Half the world's population is decimated, we have zero government assistance or healthcare or electricity! I'm limiting us to one bath a week apiece. Our well water should last us to eternity, despite all the drought we've been having!" It was such a consumerist view of what "bad times" means. Wah wah we can't go to McDonalds wah wah I miss the microwave wah wah." Grow some balls. Ok, so in the event of an apocalypse I might miss microwaves a bit. But not very much, and guess what they never mentioned the whole book? Music! What kind of asshole doesn't even think about the fact that all their music is hiding on a dead-ass computer? I'd be hoarding batteries for a boom box, or rigging up my record player to be crankable. Or something.

The back was all "You are going to crap yourself this is so scary!" But it wasn't scary in the slightest. It was like an apocalypse novel for people that had never thought about an apocalypse thoroughly before. Which is probably lots of people, and I am probably a minority in my "what can I ask for for my birthday that will aid me after the collapse?" mentality. But still. Boring.

The main character was an SJ, too. Who writes SJ main characters? BORING. Ugh.

I think that crisis novels written from the P.O.V. of a child (or young adult) can be really poignant if done well. You're supposed to get something out of the fact that you're seeing the world fall apart through the simplified lens of a child's eye. Kind of like Persepolis! But this book didn't pull that off, and was just not very interesting, instead.

God, I could write such a good apocalypse novel.

Pages: 360
Time: Feb 16-Mar 4
Rating: 3

5. Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan

I'd never heard of this book before a kid checked it out from my library. It looked interesting, considering my library's severe lack of GLBT anything, so I decided to put in on hold for myself. The kid took forever to bring it back, so I forgot about it, but it came back in a few weeks ago. I had it with me in my bag when I was babysitting. The kid I was sitting was engrossed in some creepy Disney Channel show, so I was bored. I had originally planned on reading another book next, but this was all I had handy, so I read it anyway.

It's a sort of day-in-the-life type narrative of this gay high schooler named Paul. He has boy troubles, family troubles, best friend turns into a bitch troubles, plans a school dance, does his homework, learns a bit about himself. That sort of thing.

At first I pretty much hated it. The plot is simple (as the title indicates), and there was just too much too-good-to-be-true gay stuff. Like, the boy scouts changed to the pride scouts because boy scouts don't include gays, the PFLAG is bigger and more involved than the PTA, and everywhere you look another character is gay. It sort of reminded me of the worst kind of fanfiction where it's like "Oh my, Harry's gone and slept with the entire Slytherin Quidditch team! He'll have to move on to the Ravenclaw team now. I hear that Roger Davies can handle a quaffle if you know what I mean." Anyone? Just me? Ok anyway, the point is that everyone does not need to be gay in order to make gay literature significant! I think it'd actually be much more effective if the world in the book was more realistic, instead of taking place in a superopenminded town where one kid's parents are religious and conservative and everyone else in town sports a rainbow bumper sticker. Maybe I'm just too used to the south, where the opposite is the norm?

To be fair, it does seem like lots of times gay people are mostly friends with gay people, so that could be why almost all of the characters in the book were gay. I dunno.

Anyway, I was real pissed this was the only book I had with me, but since this was the case, I kept reading it. And it really ended up sucking me in. Those things I said up there still bothered me, but Levithan was really extravagantly good at creating interesting, believable characters, despite the unbelievable setting he put them in. The main character in this book (Paul) looks at certain aspects of life the same way I do, and this is something I do not think I have ever seen so accurately described before, by anyone I know or in any book I have read. By this I mean, mostly, the importance of the moment. The tiny details that make a space of time meaningful. Paul is always describing the actions of people in this poetic way where he interprets them and their many reasons for doing what they do. He notes the subtlety of body language and knows what people mean between the words they don't say, talks about objects holding secrets, stories being tangible things, and understands the weight of the important balance of old love and new love. So basically his mind is analyzing everyone around him in the same way I do, and describes it better than I've ever been able to describe it. So for that I really liked the book.

It wasn't excessively campy, with dumb stereotypical gayness all over it. There was some camp, but it was in the background. I liked the universality of the feelings the characters felt, that it put forth that love is love and homosexual love isn't different in either a worse or better way than hetero love. The honest emotions and beautiful simplicity of the love story made up for the implausible setting, but dammit, the book would have been a 10 if the setting were more realistic. Also, the last few lines of this book were kind of too feelingsy for me, so that's gonna cost it some points. All in all, it was like a more gay and less lame version of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Although, to be honest, I loved the hell out of Perks back in the day.

Anyway, I finished this forever ago. This seems to be a theme. It is looking like, with my current schedule, I will not make it to 50 books this year. I'll keep trying, though.

Pages: 185
Time: Feb 10-Feb 12.
Rating: I dunno, 8.75 for characterization and style and 5 for what were you thinking with that unrealistic background noise?

4. Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy

I was warned before I read this that it would be violent and gross. It is a good thing I have a strong stomach. I'd read The Road previously, and loved it, but violence has its place in a post-apocalyptic novel. I mean, if the world ended and people weren't roasting babies over an open fire I'd be surprised. But Child of God is just the story of a guy whose house gets repossessed and he gets pissed, wanders off in the woods, goes crazy and starts killing people.
It took me a while to get into the groove of the narration and until the last 20 pages to decide I liked it.

The barren, simple punctuationless prose that made me love The Road seemed less appropriate here. It actually made it hard to concentrate, because I didn't always know what was going on. It was really pretty though. Well, as pretty as a description of necrophilia can be.

I'm not sure what happened, but in the last chapter or so I started really feeling for the guy, and all of a sudden I really enjoyed reading it. I sort of felt tricked, like he'd set it up that way. Like you're supposed to be grossed out by ol' Lester Ballard, and then you sort of sympathize with him in a weird sort of way, and then you think, sort of sarcastically, "well, I guess he is a child of God, just as I am. Ah." I can't decide if it really just got good at the end, or if it just takes that long to really get the book. So I spent most of the book hoping I'd hurry up and get to the good part, while still marking passages that sounded beautiful, and then all of a sudden at the end I loved it.

Either way, McCarthy is sort of a poetic genius. The book is one long ramble about titties and gunshots that doesn't differentiate dialogue from exposition, yes. But it is a really well written ramble.

I'll just post a bit of it. Here he's in a cave, wondering if he'll be able to find his way out.

In the night he heard hounds and called to them but the enormous echo of his voice in the cavern filled him with fear and he would not call again. He heard the mice scurry in the dark. Perhaps they'd nest in his skull, spawn their tiny bald and mewling whelps in the lobed caverns where his brains had been. His bones polished clean as eggshells, centipedes sleeping in their marrowed flutes, his ribs curling slender and whitely like a bone flower in the dark stone bowl.

Damn.

Pages:197
Time: Jan 23-Feb 6
Rating: 6 for subject, Maybe 8 for how much I like the way McCarthy makes a sentence.

3. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Coraline was my first Neil Gaiman book. I'd always heard of him, but never wanted to read any of his stuff because I think I lumped him in with Stephen King, which was probably not the right thing to do. It was really interestingly written and very creepy. If I'd been in the intended age bracket when I read it I would probably still be having nightmares.

Coraline is a little girl leading a comfortable (but boring) little girl existence when she stumbles through a door into a world that is a lot like her own, only a little off. All of the characters from her regular life are distorted and seem, at first, to be happier versions of their real selves. Soon enough the differences become more than just the button eyes everyone has, and what starts out as harmless difference slowly slides into a life-or-death race for time against a creepy (and sort of sexist maybe in the GIMME MORE BABIES MORE MORE MORE BABIES! way)pseudo-mother.

What I liked about this book the most was the confrontation of the assumption that what you want and what you need are the same thing. Everyone seeming to have everything they want ends up coming off decidedly creepier than you might think. If the movie they made is anywhere as spine-tingly as the book, I will definitely go see it. I don't like thrillers or murder mysteries or anything like that. This book had some good, old fashioned otherworldly creepy that never felt forced or heavy handed.

I will probably want to read more Gaiman after this. Owen recommended the Graveyard Book. Any others?

Pages: 192
Time: Jan 19-22
Rating: 7.5
Also, sorry for taking so long to post this. I finished this book forever ago and am almost done with another one.

2. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

Huzzah! I did not give up so soon! I have a more or less constant stream of quality YA lit coming at me from Owen's side of the library, so I was able to finish another one in a relatively timely manner. Sort of.

This is a graphic memoir that spans the childhood of the author. She lives in Iran during the Islamic revolution/Iran-Iraq war. This is another period of history I didn't previously know much about. Chances are, most of history is something I don't know much about. Ok, so that wasn't a very astute statement, but anyway, I was occasionally confused, as it's one of those books where the protagonist is a kid who tells things as they understood them at the time, not with the clarifying benefit of hindsight.

I really liked the hearing of the horrors of war through her lens of inexperience, though, despite the confusion. It reminded me of what I've heard about that Foer book about 9/11 that I haven't read. Occasionally it did leave me wanting more information, but when things got intense (which happened all the time- you barely have time to get to know a few of the characters before they get killed off), it is sobering to watch these things happen through the eyes of a child.

This is one of those books that makes me wish I knew more than 1.5 languages, because I could tell there were things lost in the translation from the original French. Graphic novels are full of short, sometimes disjointed sentences anyway, and the translation was sometimes awkward, but that isn't the book's fault.

I didn't particularly identify with Marjane much, as I was not a particularly political kid. I did think she was pretty endearing, though, mouthing off to her extremist teachers and talking to both God and Marx at night.

The art was cool, too. It would be pretty disappointing to read a graphic novel and not like the art, actually, but I found the simplicity of the black and white appealing. I watched most of the movie version of this book the other day, also. The movie also covered the sequel to the book I read, but I've not read that yet. The movie's art was the same as in the book, except moving, so I liked watching it a lot. The plot moved kind of fast and left things out, which was too bad, but that usually happens with film adaptations anyway. The swirly prettiness of the movie mostly made up for it, but not entirely. I want to read the second one now, but I probably won't do it right away.

I spend a lot of time griping about American politics. So yeah, a lot of things are wildly messed up in my country. But when you're reading about people getting arrested for having playing cards and executed for possibly being maybe a little Communist, and you yourself live in a country in which people can manufacture and sell presidential shaped sex toys on the internet, it sort of puts things into perspective.

Pages: 153
Time: Jan 14-18
Rating: 7

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz

So mostly I started wanting to do this review thing because of how much I was liking this book. Now that I have finished reading it and am sitting here in front of a computer, fingers hovering over the keyboard, I am finding I don't really know what to say. I got this book for Christmas from my Mom, and started reading it shortly after New Years.

This book was so many things at once. It is, on the surface, the story of Oscar, the overweight "ghetto nerd," who spends his time watching Dr. Who, reading and rereading Tolkien, writing page after page of fantasy fiction that never takes him anywhere, and falling in love with any beautiful, unattainable girl he meets along the way. The book follows him through his life from his childhood to his death, narrated by Yunior, his only real friend. It is much more than that, though, because it is also the story of his mother's childhood and youth (or loss of, more like) in the Dominican Republic and his sister's life in the states and in the DR. All three of their stories weave seamlessly (too much cloth metaphor? sorry) in and out of each other, and all of it within the backdrop of Trujillo era Dominican Republic. I didn't know much about that part of history before reading this book, but the pages are covered in footnotes (also written in Yunior's regular street-kid-with-a-vocabulary style) detailing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, and the overwhelmingly totality of his effect on the country at that time (and after, through the "fuku" curse that supposedly followed those who opposed him).

Junot Díaz mixes rich, tragic history and the lonesome ache of being too dorky to get laid with such deftness that I am having a hard time picking a passage to type in here. Nothing can stand out when everything is written so vibrantly. here is a link to a summary, actually, so only read the first few pages of it, if you don't want to be spoiled.
The thing that impresses me the most about this book is that, at first, it seems that Oscar's life is far from what you'd think of as wondrous. From his obesity and his devastating lack of social grace or way with women to his general apathy when it came to doing anything about it, his life was not much of a wonder. In contrast, the chapters following the lives of his mother, grandfather and sister are full of guts and action and general stuff stories are made of. In the end, though, it is the realization that his story is inexorably tangled in the unending cycles of fuku and zafa (curse and countercurse) of the previous generations that makes him wondrous. What are we but the shadows of our forefathers?

I really don't have anything negative to say about this book. You should probably read it. It might help to be semi-competent in Spanish or dorkenise, in order to catch some references, but I doubt the effect will be much diminished if you are not. He really catches the astounding importance and still the smallness of existing.

Pages: 335, but full of things you can't even begin to skim
Time: Jan 1-Jan 12
Rating: 9

hello, internet

So.
I have wanted to do that 50 books project thing for a while. Now that I don't have school to distract me and I work in a library and have easy access to books, I figure it is a good time. I don't really care if anyone reads this. But if you do, I disabled that stupid comment verification thing, so comment away!

I am halfway done with my first book of 2009, so it shouldn't be long...