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...