Crooked Little Vein

Hello everyone! I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Somehow that whole being a college senior and looking for a job while working on two theses caught up with me. However, I've managed to actually get some reading in, and thus can finally provide you with some new book suggestions!

I was told to read and review this book by two of my friends. Them being who they are, I began reading with a touch of trepidation. After all, when the back cover boasts a quote from Joss Whedon (if you don’t know who that is, you should) saying, “I think this book ate my soul,” one wonders what they’ve gotten themselves into. I found myself instantly submerged into a gritty, disgusting world where the good guys were relatively repulsive people and the bad guys were simply unspeakable. And that was only in the first chapter!

            Author Warren Ellis’ novel looks like an easy read at first glance, and I will admit, the chapters are easily whipped through, with a large amount of white space on the page and a distinct lack of elevated language or style. However, I still found myself slowing down to process the set of horrid images being laid out before me. The book is at its heart a detective novel, and yet it deals in a world so dark and sexually perverse that it is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Half of the things the protagonist, Mike McGill, encounters during his search for the secret alternative Constitution of the United States (yup, I did just say that) I hadn’t even heard of before, nor do I really ever want to hear about again. This is not a novel for the easily offended, or the frail constitution. And yet somehow, despite these scenes I’ve alluded to that were so mind numbingly sick, I found myself thoroughly enjoying this book. There is something about McGill’s cynical look on life and darkly humorous take on the way his hunt plays out that is endearing, and downright compelling. As much as I didn’t want to go deeper into the underbelly of American culture, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Once you read the novel you will understand the great irony of that last statement

            Of course, like any great novel there must be a romance, and it is here that Ellis begins to lose steam. McGill tries desperately not to fall for his young assistant Trix, a deviant student writing her thesis on extremes of self-inflicted human experience. The two team up against McGill’s better judgment and soon begin their completely unbelievable affair. There is some build up to the sexual tension between the two characters, which could hardly have been avoided given Trix’s blatant sexuality and disregard for social norms, but the emotional strength between them seems to come out of nowhere. It is an idealized relationship, created to perhaps juxtapose the world of lies, mistrust and corruption that the two find themselves thrown into, but never the less, one that will cause readers like myself to groan a bit and then push onward into the novel, choosing to ignore poor romantic plotting in favor for the vivid character descriptions that are Ellis’s forte.

            I don’t think I’ve come across a novel where the characters were described in such unconventional detail. Ellis has created people who we never encounter in real life, but somehow believe in while reading because they are detailed in such a truthful manner. He is not simply saying the man had blue eyes and blonde hair, but instead concentrates on the eccentricities and subconscious patterns that only a detective would truly pick up on. When the Chief of Staff of the United States describes himself as  having opium lesions on his brain and the closest thing to God that this country will ever see, you know you’re in for an interesting read.

            So I suppose what I’m telling you all is that if you can get over the more unbelievable aspects of the story, and then wade through the veritable pool of filth and vulgarity, you will find yourself compelled to keep reading this novel and fully taken along for the ride.

and now for a bit of a change...

Hey all! I know I've been rather remiss about posting reviews as of late. I'm currently reading every single sonnet Shakespeare ever wrote (154) and I know that no one actually wants to read a review of each one. So until I comment on that as a whole, and also read some new books, I thought I would entertain you lot with this review that I wrote for The Hunt.
The Hunt is a massive scavenger hunt that happens every January at my college, and as seniors, my friends and I decided to really go out with a bang and do the whole thing with great gusto and skill. Our team, No More Unicorns is awesome. Just sayin'. (Also follow us on Twitter if you have an account, @nomoreunicorns) One of the challenges was to write a scathing book review of The Scarlet Letter. So here it is, and just remember, it's a joke! (Well, sort of).

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author who can be commended for many things. Not many people can boast of living in a house with not six but seven gables, and being bros with Herman Melville. What he cannot be commended for is the writing of The Scarlet Letter. A novel forced upon high school students practically since it’s inception, Hawthorne subsequently subjects readers to a brutal bashing of symbolism (RED IS BAD) and intolerance set against that all so intriguing backdrop of early Puritan New England.

            Our heroine, Hester Prynne, is supposed to be the ultimate badass. Not only does she have hot sex with the minister and then keep the resulting kid, she proudly wears a red letter “A” on her chest, marking her out as an adulteress. But no, we aren’t allowed to recognize just how cool and strong and independent Hester is being. Feminism is reigned in tightly, in favor of an overbearing Puritanical style that begs the reader to see the main character as pathetic, relatively evil and in the wrong. Like we’re supposed to enjoy reading about someone who sucks? Then of course there is Pearl, Hester’s daughter from her naughty night with Dimmesdale (who I will thoroughly scourge later). Pearl is the essence of a demon child, and yet we’re again supposed to have opposite feelings and take pity on her, love her even. Oh, and lest I forget, we must recognize that SHE IS A SYMBOL!

            Pearl of course is nothing compared to her father, the town minister Dimmesdale. A man who preachers all the usual Christian whatnot and then goes out and does the sexy widow late one night in the forest. A character one might actually be able to sink their teeth into. Except for Hawthorne’s inability to let the reader do so. Instead we are handed everything character trait wrapped firmly in it’s one and only meaning and told to apply that to the scene at hand. The man’s name is Dimmesdale for crying out loud. I would have gotten that he’s depressed and morally conflicted if his name had been Johnson too, thanks very much.

Even scenes when Dimmesdale is whipping himself, struggling with his desire for Hester and his love of God aren’t interesting because the reader has already come to expect how things will play out. They won’t get together, there will be sillier blathering about morality and rose bushes and prison doors and then the book will end. There is nothing to the plot that lends any sort of credibility. In fact, I get the sense that were I to rip out all the pages of the book, spread them on the ground in front of me, trample on them for good measure and then put them back together in a random order, I would still get the same story.

In fact, the only good thing about The Scarlet Letter is the ending. Not the ending, but the fact that the book itself ends and thank God for that. As I was reading I found myself thinking I would rather get a paper cut every time I turned the page than actually finish reading the book, and my edition was at least 200 pages long. So don’t go read the Scarlet Letter. In fact, don’t get anywhere near it, unless it is to casually toss is into an open flame as you pass by on your way to bro out with more quality works like The Counting House and Moby Dick.

Looking for Alaska

My first exposure to John Green’s Looking for Alaska was in my often talked about children’s lit course this past semester. We’d been discussing censorship and the challenging of various books, and my professor brought up a video that John Green had made in which he addressed his views on the banning of his own book. For some context on this video, John and his brother stopped speaking for a year except by video, which they posted on YouTube to each other every day. I was immediately struck by the intelligence, and quick wit of this author, who clearly believed in what he had written, and didn’t feel the need to censor anything in his novel, because those elements were helping him get to the greater truth. To paraphrase John Green paraphrasing William Faulkner, “I am not interested in the facts, only the truth.” That is exactly what Looking for Alaska does. It finds the truth despite the facts, and speaks with the voice of an adolescent splendidly.

            The novel of course is split into two parts, before and after, which makes writing any sort of review for it rather difficult, since I can’t talk at all about the after, or why there even is an after to talk about. Alas, I’ll just have to leave that in as a hook to you, future reader, and assure you that this is a first class novel worthy of your time. Yes, it was written for high schoolers. But honestly, at this point, who cares? I’m just as interested in reading about awkward first sexual encounters and the idiosyncrasies of teachers now as when I was sixteen. John Green has mastered the high school voice, such that I immediately loved the main character Miles “Pudge” Halter and would have probably been his friend. In fact as I was reading I really wished that I were in with the group that Pudge was, best friends with the Colonel and desperately in love with Alaska Young, your typical enigmatic troubled teen girl who is heartbreakingly beautiful and never going to be with you. It is this talent of Green’s to write voice so well that each character is distinct, but believable, that makes the novel successful.

            Of course I’m a sucker for language in general, and when not working in his characters voice, Green displays his skill of creating a scene, a feeling, what have you, that is beautiful without showing off. This is not the prose of James Joyce, and yet there is a beauty in simplicity, in explaining the details of a mundane dorm room or particularly dull professor that still turns into polished and wonderfully readable writing. For me it also helped that the Alabama boarding school where the novel is set is based quite heavily upon the boarding school one of my best friends attended, and being able to link her stories into the background knowledge that Green works off of was a fun personal endeavor for me.

            So I’ve babbled for a while, haven’t I? You are sitting there still wondering why on earth you should read this book. It is not enough that I tell you too? No, in all seriousness, this is a novel that covers the full scope of human emotion. I laughed out loud (yup, I LOLed), I cried, I felt awkward for some characters and thrilled for others. There is everything on these pages, and Green has given the story to his reader in a way that is easy without being patronizing. He wants the reader to understand grief and love and humor and all that is essentially high school, while also still acknowledging that a sixteen year old can have elevated thoughts, even existential questions about life. It is a successful novel that is most certainly on my re-reading list, and a novel I feel may just be worthy of the title “The Catcher in the Rye for this generation.” There now, you have to read it, just to see if I’m right. Don’t you love the pull of a grandiose statement?

The Art of Racing in the Rain

My immediate reaction upon finishing The Art of Racing in the Rain was to fling myself onto the floor where my dog Phineas lay chewing a bone and hug him, while tears streamed down my face. I’ve yet to control my sniffling even as I write this. For anyone who has ever had a dog, loved a dog, felt like that one animal understands you in a way that no human ever will, this is the novel for you. Yes, you will end like me, sobbing and clutching the dog you are so lucky to still have, but you will also be clutching the book, for it is at it’s heart a story of love and triumph and fighting for what you want no matter the cost.

            Allow me to disengage from the emotion for a moment and actually proceed to detail. Garth Stein knows he is writing a book that will make the reader cry. He opens at the end so to speak, slipping us the knowledge that Enzo, beloved dog of Denny the racecar driver, is getting old and ready to die. It is only that first chapter where the reader is given foresight into the later novel, for the rest of the story continues, narrated by no other than Enzo himself. That’s right. The dog is protagonist, the narrator, and a damn good speaker when you get right down to it. Enzo tells of us his puppy days, of Denny choosing him and the life they live as bachelors together. Denny meets Eve, they marry, have a daughter, and Enzo is wrapped up in a loving family just ripe for some sort of drama to tear them apart.

            This is Stein’s first triumph. Terrible things happen to Denny and his loved ones, things that I won’t get into because the reader deserves to be as sad and shocked as I was. It is Stein’s choice to keep his protagonists going, to not allow them to wallow as the rest of us might were our worlds to fall apart that makes him an excellent and insightful writer. Of course, it is Stein’s voice in Enzo, full of compassion, understanding, strong opinions and pieces of revealed truths. To see life from a dog’s point of view, to watch tragedy unfold alongside happiness is a remarkable thing, and will have you sitting at the kitchen table looking at your own dog and wondering what on earth they think of you.

            What makes Enzo’s narration particularly stirring are his philosophical views of the world. He believes that upon his death he will come back to life as a man, and practices thinking and behaving as humanly as possible throughout his life. He watches television with Denny and takes in the facts of the world. He confronts the dark hopelessness that lies dormant within all of us, through a beautiful metaphor about a dancing zebra. He understands death and what it truly means to live, but also how to keep someone living. Enzo is Denny’s support system, and influential in almost every big decision, and plot twist, throughout the novel, drawing the reader in on Enzo’s side, so that we root for Denny.

            Speaking of rooting for Denny, I come to Stein’s second triumph. The author can turn an inspirational phrase like he was born to do it. Denny is a racecar driver and as Enzo grows up, he becomes a racecar dog. He knows all the tricks, the skills, the moments of inspiration that keep a competitor going when all other hope and help is lost. The novel is littered with wonderful quotes about racing, such as a personal favorite, “There is no dishonor in losing the race, there is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.” As a varsity rower who knows more about racing, and the pain, fear and ecstasy that comes along with it than I ever thought possible, every one of these tidbits hit home. Who cares if they were about racecar driving and not rowing? Any athlete will read the novel and apply every word to their sport. If they have a dog like I do then they probably won’t ever want to put the book down.

            So really I don’t understand why you’re even still reading this review. Get in your car (pretend you’re a racecar driver for once in your life) and get a copy of The Art of Racing in the Rain. NOW! I don’t tell you to do this often…so take my word for it.

                                                        Author Garth Stein and his dog Comet

The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-time

I read a lot. I suppose that is a rather obvious fact. And while there is nothing wrong with reading in any spare time I might have, I find that sometimes my ample literary mental inventory makes it harder and harder to find books that truly touch me in some way. I live for the moment when I’m only half way into a book and already raving about it to my friends, when I am excited to turn the page and exclaiming over plot points aloud, even in very crowded dining halls at extraordinarily inappropriate times. When I started reading Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime, I realized that I had found a book that did all these things.

            This is one of those novels that has actually been on my too read list for ages. Having finally picked it up for my often talked about children’s lit course, I was immediately reminded why the book had received so much hype in the first place. The main character, Christopher Boone, is a fifteen year old with autism, living in England with his father. He tells us early on that his mother “went away” to the hospital, and died of a heart attack, leaving him with his blue-collar father who tries his hardest to understand his son’s view of the world, with limited success. It is the goal of the reader to try and understand Christopher as well, a feat that is much easier than one might think. He explains what he thinks, is incredibly direct in language and logic, and as the reader I honestly found myself thinking that what he was saying made a lot of sense. I do have a rather extensive knowledge of autism spectrum disorders, thanks to a mother’s master degree and years of teaching, and so while I read the book actively noticing the symptoms of the disease, I also was able to see Christopher as a character in his own right, not a clinical diagnosis. I believe Haddon was aware of this while writing, and wanted to present Christopher in a way that we understood he was different and could easily identify those differences, but also see within ourselves some of those same ticks.

            There are wonderful moments of humor in the novel, when Haddon’s sarcasm comes through other characters. Christopher also provides particularly hilarious bits, although the reader does struggle with whether or not you are laughing at him, or simply the situation. This is a novel that forces you to think, that makes you uncomfortable and yet in the end catches you up in a young man’s triumphs. There is profound sadness as well, especially reading as an adult. Never have I empathized so readily with parents, but there are moments when my heart simply broke for Christopher’s father. For fear of ruining any important plot points, I won’t discuss my appreciation and sadness surrounding Christopher’s mother, only say that her character is a bold choice by Haddon.

            I struggle of find a fault with this novel, and honestly can only come up with my sadness upon finishing it. Christopher, despite his many triumphs, is still on a hard road, and it is the reader’s knowledge of this juxtaposed against Christopher’s naïve ignorance that pull at the heartstrings. But don’t let that stop you! This is a novel for adults and children, each getting something completely different out of it, but in the end simply enjoying the story of a boy who is endearingly different, and incredibly sincere.

Parvana's Journey

It’s finally happened. My tolerance for children’s books has completely gone by the wayside, my ability to look at a book not as an educated adult but as simply someone waiting for a story is absolutely dashed. Again, I read Deborah Ellis’s Parvana’s Journey for my course on taboos in children’s literature. In a sweeping generalization, the book is about war torn Afghanistan and several children struggling to survive as refugees, tracking Parvana, a young girl, trying to find her family after her father’s death.

Clearly meant to be a child’s first exposure to the conflict surrounding the Middle East, Ellis has no qualms about beating her reader over the head with every single point and image within the text. There is nothing subtle about her story telling, and perhaps more harshly, nothing redeeming in her actual writing either. The reader is unable to draw any conclusion for themselves, because Ellis is there shouting with a megaphone, “You see!? Adults are supposed to take care of children, not abandon them! War is bad! I think women are mistreated!” Such a tirade of obvious realizations does nothing to educate a young reader, and leaves adults filled with contempt and scorn.

As this educated reader that I assume myself to be, I find the need to try and find some sort of redemption for Parvana’s Journey, because the idea of a book not having any merit at all saddens me greatly. However, I will admit to struggling with that pursuit right now. I take issue with Ellis’s portrayal of women in Afghanistan, for she takes a traditional Western feminist stance, claiming the burqa as an object of oppression and writing in a style that has been described as “save the Muslim girl.” While I wish to avoid a purely political and anthropological tirade here, I believe that Muslim women are quite capable of saving themselves without the meddling of Westerners who understand nothing of their culture or the customs behind the burqa.

I also fail to see how this book can be any sort of helpful educational tool. Yes, it does give a very basic and elementary view of the Afghani war that can serve as a first exposure for a child. There is violence, bombing, death, every horror of war an adult can imagine, and yet nothing ever stays too bad. There is a lack of true realism that I find disheartening. It’s as though Ellis didn’t quite have the balls to leave her novel with an ambiguous and potentially sad ending, instead choosing to wrap up her plot neatly with Parvana finding her mother and assuming that everything would then be okay. What does this teach a young child? That nothing everything bad will be easily fixed and that there is no true suffering? I don’t propose to let my child in on the crushing cruelty of the world at an inappropriate age, but if anything I would rather my child watch the news with me and then we talk about current events, than them reading this novel and not being allowed to draw the lessons from it themselves.

I promise the reader of this review that I did not go into writing this meaning to be scathing. It’s just that sort of book. So read at your own peril. I certainly won’t be joining you for a second go.

Bridge to Terabithia

How I managed to get through my childhood without reading Bridge to Terabithia I honestly could not tell you. It was one of those books that I always heard about, and I’m pretty sure an excerpt of it ended up on my state standardized testing in fourth grade, but here I am, a senior in college and have just finished reading it for the first time. And guess what? I loved it!

            Yes, yes, that is a hasty judgment without any supporting detail. I’m getting there. In this book author Katherine Paterson has tackled the daunting task of presenting death to children in a way that makes sense and yet does not demean a child’s emotional capability. The language is sparse and beautiful, the story simple. Jess and Leslie are the boy and girl next door, drawn together in their rural town initially by their differences, and soon become the best of friends. Together they create the fantasy world of Terabithia, a land where they reign as king and queen and stalk the forests fighting giants. There they escape their teachers and family, free to share secret hopes and dreams, and free to form a bond that transcends romantic love. Keep in mind, these two endearing protagonists are still children, eleven or so, and their friendship is pure, the coming together of two souls in wonderful harmony.

            Of course, such a beautiful story is bound to meet a tragic end. Books don’t often make me cry, but by the last chapter I had tears running down my face as I faced death, and the acceptance of grief. For fear of spoiling any plot points, I won’t go into detail, but will only say that Paterson understands the grieving process and writes it with integrity, allowing her characters to cope in their own way, and pull at the readers’ heartstrings all the while. She also threw in a bit with a dog, which is a sure fire way to wrench my heart. Perhaps Paterson’s greatest achievement is that in the moment of grief, no one knows how to act. Each character takes a different emotional tact, and the touching scenes come from the intersection of these emotions, particularly Jess and Leslie’s father, where the line between adulthood and childhood is completely decimated by the shared loss.

            It’s a short book, and I feel as though my emotion while reading it, through profound, has been neatly categorized. I was charmed, enchanted, devastated and then given a glimmer of hope. This classic book is worth it’s reputation, and I will be sure to make sure any child of mine reads it well before their twenty-first birthday, and then many times after.