I've been reading, and making things, but have been wretched about getting things written. Tonight I'm planning on deciding on a new book to start, and reading!! before bed, which must be soon, so this is an "-ish" post.
For whatever reason, I've been in this apocalyptic zombie zone lately; I just finished _Zone One_ by Colson Whitehead. It wasn't a revelation, but it was entertaining and well-written as far as zombie novels go. And short, so that was nice for me. I totally didn't plan to write tonight, so I have nothing planned in terms of a proper review, but I will say that it's left this odd literary nonsense rattling around my head - the last paragraph calls to mind immediately the end of _The Great Gatsby_, "The Dead," and _Little Dorrit_. A lot actually reflects "The Dead" by Joyce, tossing it up and playing with it in bizarre ways. So I have to think about all that more, perhaps reread Joyce, and write something sensible.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Bookish Tuesday: The Passage
The Passage
by Justin Cronin
I haven't seen an actual copy of this book, but have read elsewhere that it's huge. It took a good long time to read, given my general free-time constraints, but managed to get through the lots of dots on my Kindle. Finishing it made me feel accomplished, in part because it's a big book, and in part because I wasn't really that into it toward the end. The second half really. It picked up, but not a lot, right at the end. Just to preemptively tell you my rating, it's kind of an "eh" three stars.
Let me explain a bit about what drew me to the book, because I genuinely don't read this sort of thing with any regularity. I heard the author interviewed on NPR by Neal Conan, a couple of times, and the book sounded interesting if only because it was inspired by the author's conversations with his daughter, who told him his other work (award-winning modern fiction with which I am not familiar) was boring. She wanted him to write a book about a girl who saves the world. So, together they mapped an outline for this story, and he began writing the first of what he envisioned as three books. He submitted the first 400 pages under a pseudonym to his publisher (details about that I don't know, so don't ask me) and they picked it up and paid him big bucks to finish it. Oh, and he also sold movie rights before the book was finished.
What the heck is this book anyway? It's a story about militarily-engineered viral vampires/zombies, who are super-fast, glow in the dark, don't die unless shot down the throat or decapitated, and very specifically keep some of their prey alive, to facilitate the continuation of their new "species." There is also a girl, infected similarly but not bloodthirsty, who we know will save the world that has fallen into a strange, post-apocalyptic chaos with small colonies in the hundred years after the vamps have escaped, multiplied, and destroyed at least the United States (who knows about the rest of the world that tried to quarantine the outbreak). Oh, and these vampire-zombies are ugly, really disgusting, do not hang out looking cute, and are adept at ESP, mind control, and communication through telepathy.
Elements of zombies, elements, of vampires, elements of the modern take on both (think 28 Days Later), elements of epic clan-based books that envision a different human existence... All totally out of the box for my general pile of books. I'm not even into Twilight and that crap.
I did really like the first half of the book. Oddly, the whole storyline leading up to the creation of the contagion, the creation of the creatures, their escape, and the existence of the world in which everything was frightening and falling apart was compelling reading. Sure, we are talking pulp. This is not fantastic literature or anything, but there were some interesting characters, interesting stories, and compelling plot lines to pull things along. And the world of the novel's opening sequences is also in the future, so while it felt a bit clumsy at times, there was a certain element of fantasy even in what was recognizable and mundane, so it was not just a story about the military (with the help of private contractors) making vampire-zombies.
The huge jump that happens at a certain point draws you about a hundred years into the future, into a world where a small colony of people has cobbled out an existence that relies on light for life - daylight and huge lights on barricades surrounding the compound at night to keep the vamps away. The new society has created strange rules, and has created some strange idioms that I never really bought, as they were reminiscent of what seemed like an attempt to create slang in Star Wars: Episode 1 when Anniken wouldn't shut up about "wizard!" and it fell flat.
It was hard to immediately connect with all of these new characters, because everyone you had come to know in the first half of the book was dead or disappeared. what I find interesting looking back is that by the time I did get through the last 400 pages or so, I had come to at least moderately care about the new characters, or at least be interested in their journey. And while there were plot points that were, well, cheesy or contrived, it did regain my interest in the final pages. I was curious at the very least, about where things were going and how they would get there. And I do want to know how this girl will save the world.
If I didn't know the basis for the book, I'd be done with it. But there is something really interesting to me about a story that was functionally co-imagined by a father and daughter, and which has a powerful girl as savior at the center. I also heard in the NPR interview that the subsequent books won't just pick up where this book left off, but rather take us back to the moment the world falls apart and pick up a thread, adding to the world we have come to know through the second part of this first book. Which sounds more interesting than just finding out how the girl saves the world in another 1600 pages. So in a couple of years when the next book arrives, I'll probably read it. OK, I will definitely read it, I am curious. While it's genuinely crap, it's engaging enough for bedtime or beach blanket reading.
I should note that I have a crazy love/hate relationship with both vampires and zombies. I get completely freaked out by them, to the point of panic attacks in the middle of the night, and terrible nightmares, but I also kind of love them. Not the sexy ones, the really scary ones. I don't really get that. I am terrified of spiders, but if you asked me to get near one or to watch a movie about them, I'd freak out, run away, and flip you the bird from across the room. For some reason, I'm finding these creepy guys compelling, and I'm even slightly interested in what happens with this movie they a making, because the book kind of reads like it was planned as the bones for a screenplay. It could be terrifying or awful; it all depends on how they handle it, but I guess I will have to wait and see about that too.
In terms of the meanings behind this book, you could read a lot of things into the subtext, but none of it is hidden, subtle, or interesting. I would say that maybe it could end up in a more interesting place, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the type of book that is aware of it's genre placement, the political implications of it's placement, and tries to have subtext, but it's all floating right on top. It's no The Road, which is actually a deeply felt meditation on the human condition, the environment, the world and how we live. It's just all right there. It won't move you, or even really make you think, but that's OK right?
Next week, more pulp, but fun pulp. I'm thinking I will reveal my love for British mystery in all it's glory, and revel in my love for the new-ish Flavia deLuce series by Alan Bradley, starting with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
by Justin Cronin
I haven't seen an actual copy of this book, but have read elsewhere that it's huge. It took a good long time to read, given my general free-time constraints, but managed to get through the lots of dots on my Kindle. Finishing it made me feel accomplished, in part because it's a big book, and in part because I wasn't really that into it toward the end. The second half really. It picked up, but not a lot, right at the end. Just to preemptively tell you my rating, it's kind of an "eh" three stars.
Let me explain a bit about what drew me to the book, because I genuinely don't read this sort of thing with any regularity. I heard the author interviewed on NPR by Neal Conan, a couple of times, and the book sounded interesting if only because it was inspired by the author's conversations with his daughter, who told him his other work (award-winning modern fiction with which I am not familiar) was boring. She wanted him to write a book about a girl who saves the world. So, together they mapped an outline for this story, and he began writing the first of what he envisioned as three books. He submitted the first 400 pages under a pseudonym to his publisher (details about that I don't know, so don't ask me) and they picked it up and paid him big bucks to finish it. Oh, and he also sold movie rights before the book was finished.
What the heck is this book anyway? It's a story about militarily-engineered viral vampires/zombies, who are super-fast, glow in the dark, don't die unless shot down the throat or decapitated, and very specifically keep some of their prey alive, to facilitate the continuation of their new "species." There is also a girl, infected similarly but not bloodthirsty, who we know will save the world that has fallen into a strange, post-apocalyptic chaos with small colonies in the hundred years after the vamps have escaped, multiplied, and destroyed at least the United States (who knows about the rest of the world that tried to quarantine the outbreak). Oh, and these vampire-zombies are ugly, really disgusting, do not hang out looking cute, and are adept at ESP, mind control, and communication through telepathy.
Elements of zombies, elements, of vampires, elements of the modern take on both (think 28 Days Later), elements of epic clan-based books that envision a different human existence... All totally out of the box for my general pile of books. I'm not even into Twilight and that crap.
I did really like the first half of the book. Oddly, the whole storyline leading up to the creation of the contagion, the creation of the creatures, their escape, and the existence of the world in which everything was frightening and falling apart was compelling reading. Sure, we are talking pulp. This is not fantastic literature or anything, but there were some interesting characters, interesting stories, and compelling plot lines to pull things along. And the world of the novel's opening sequences is also in the future, so while it felt a bit clumsy at times, there was a certain element of fantasy even in what was recognizable and mundane, so it was not just a story about the military (with the help of private contractors) making vampire-zombies.
The huge jump that happens at a certain point draws you about a hundred years into the future, into a world where a small colony of people has cobbled out an existence that relies on light for life - daylight and huge lights on barricades surrounding the compound at night to keep the vamps away. The new society has created strange rules, and has created some strange idioms that I never really bought, as they were reminiscent of what seemed like an attempt to create slang in Star Wars: Episode 1 when Anniken wouldn't shut up about "wizard!" and it fell flat.
It was hard to immediately connect with all of these new characters, because everyone you had come to know in the first half of the book was dead or disappeared. what I find interesting looking back is that by the time I did get through the last 400 pages or so, I had come to at least moderately care about the new characters, or at least be interested in their journey. And while there were plot points that were, well, cheesy or contrived, it did regain my interest in the final pages. I was curious at the very least, about where things were going and how they would get there. And I do want to know how this girl will save the world.
If I didn't know the basis for the book, I'd be done with it. But there is something really interesting to me about a story that was functionally co-imagined by a father and daughter, and which has a powerful girl as savior at the center. I also heard in the NPR interview that the subsequent books won't just pick up where this book left off, but rather take us back to the moment the world falls apart and pick up a thread, adding to the world we have come to know through the second part of this first book. Which sounds more interesting than just finding out how the girl saves the world in another 1600 pages. So in a couple of years when the next book arrives, I'll probably read it. OK, I will definitely read it, I am curious. While it's genuinely crap, it's engaging enough for bedtime or beach blanket reading.
I should note that I have a crazy love/hate relationship with both vampires and zombies. I get completely freaked out by them, to the point of panic attacks in the middle of the night, and terrible nightmares, but I also kind of love them. Not the sexy ones, the really scary ones. I don't really get that. I am terrified of spiders, but if you asked me to get near one or to watch a movie about them, I'd freak out, run away, and flip you the bird from across the room. For some reason, I'm finding these creepy guys compelling, and I'm even slightly interested in what happens with this movie they a making, because the book kind of reads like it was planned as the bones for a screenplay. It could be terrifying or awful; it all depends on how they handle it, but I guess I will have to wait and see about that too.
In terms of the meanings behind this book, you could read a lot of things into the subtext, but none of it is hidden, subtle, or interesting. I would say that maybe it could end up in a more interesting place, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the type of book that is aware of it's genre placement, the political implications of it's placement, and tries to have subtext, but it's all floating right on top. It's no The Road, which is actually a deeply felt meditation on the human condition, the environment, the world and how we live. It's just all right there. It won't move you, or even really make you think, but that's OK right?
Next week, more pulp, but fun pulp. I'm thinking I will reveal my love for British mystery in all it's glory, and revel in my love for the new-ish Flavia deLuce series by Alan Bradley, starting with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Bookish Tuesdays: The Anti-Romantic Child
This is the first of what I hope will be a regular addition to the weekly lineup on this blog. I'm not actually reading a book a week, yet anyway, but I have been reading and can do some catching up while my "pile" of books also starts to get smaller...
by Priscilla Gilman
Just because I am way out of practice, here is the blurb to give you a sense of what I was walking into reading this book:
"The daughter of literary agent Lynn Nesbit and the late theater drama critic Richard Gilman crafts a beautifully sinuous and intensely literary celebration of the exceptional, unconventional child. Her son, Benjamin, was born when she and her academic husband, Richard, were in graduate school at Yale, where she was still working on her dissertation on the Romantic English poet William Wordsworth. As "Benj" grew older and failed to hit the usual milestones of children his age, exhibiting brilliant but "odd" behavior such as an obsession with numbers, aversion to physical affection, fastidiousness, inability to feed himself, and echolalia, Gilman realized these were "uncontrollable manifestations of a disorder," namely hyperlexia. Falsely reassured by their well-intentioned pediatrician, the couple finally sought professional therapists, and after they relocated to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where both got teaching jobs at Vassar, Benj made marvelous progress in school. Throughout her narrative, Gilman extracts from many of Wordsworth's poems, which comment on innocence and loss and gave Gilman tremendous succor during Benjamin's early development, making for both charming and studious reading. Her thoughtful memoir involves the breakup of her marriage, rejection of an academic career, and move to New York City to work in her mother's literary agency as much as it delves lyrically into the rare, complex mind of the unusual child."
When I read the description of this book, I immediately downloaded it on my Kindle and started reading with abandon. I "liked" the author on Facebook, I read her blog. Her son sounded more like Henry than any other child I have read about in the countless books I have read and half-read about Asperger's and hyperlexia. To be honest, as I raced through the text, her son reminded me eerily of Henry in many ways. Her reaction to noticing his differences was so familiar, and I could relate in many ways to being caught off-guard by this completely alternate parenting universe that had opened up and swallowed our family.
I can't say that I really liked the book, or that I could recommend the book, however. To be fair, my aversion came over time, and it was near the end of the fast and furious reading I was doing that I realized a few things:
1. I was, quite literally, skipping over all her chatter about Wordsworth, romantic poetry, allusions to literature, meaningful metaphor, etc., because they seemed, frankly, contrived. It had begun to remind me of something that seemed like a great idea, one you hatch in those moments of academic passion and work over and over in your head to the point that the brilliance of that tiny spark has been lost. Not because that spark wasn't brilliant, but because you have just taken it too far, and have stretched it too thin. It reminded me, in many ways, of my Master's thesis, or many of the "brilliant-at-the-time" papers and projects from college.
2. I like to think of myself as a potential writer. This book was precisely the kind of thing I'd write. Starkly, it demonstrated to me all the reasons it's not the best idea for a mama, who is very smart and well-read, but who doesn't have anything genuinely insightful and fresh to say, to write a book. It got kind of boring. I'll explain why below.
3. It was absolutely a memoir. Full stop. I think on some level I was expecting a memoir that also had genuinely valuable and insightful information for me as a parent of a similarly situated child, or something universal and profound. Maybe that was in there and I missed it since I didn't connect with the Wordsworth, but it was most certainly a memoir. Maybe I'm too close to the feelings to see how they are universal, or to feel touched in more than a "dear lord, that's us" sort of way. I wanted it to be more than a memoir, and it wasn't. The author seems like an incredibly lovely person, but it's really just a cut above what I write in my head as I fall asleep at night (with more literary allusions, which do make it far more intelligent than what happens in my head, but not necessarily more interesting).
4. My complex relationship with social media has really complicated my relationship with this book. I think I liked the book better right when I finished it, in part because I had not gotten daily updates, quotes, gushing reviews, and media clips posted by the author to her Facebook page. Again, she seems like a genuinely lovely person (she personally responded to me when I sent her a note saying that I related to her experience because our sons were so similar), but there is something about having daily updates, quotes, book tour updates, and even personal contact that makes me feel even more like this was just like the book that I had rolling around in my head, but she had the mom who is a literary agent so she got to write it. I've said on many occasions that even though I feel like all the stuff in my head is brilliant, the reality of it is that no one needs to hear all that, and I kind of feel like the filter would be a benefit here, but her mom got her a book deal.
5. (For the record, I get the hypocrisy of blogging about my feelings about this book, and I really get the hypocrisy that is what follows.) My own wish to have the book have some kind of resolution for her son, or for her, made me feel stressed out when it never came. She found peace in not having a solid diagnosis, and accepting his differences, and modifying her life in ways she never expected; but I couldn't get there with her. I was looking for some peace for myself, through her experience, but I wanted it to be reassurance that her son is OK, that he is doing great, and that Henry will do great too. It was like the book wasn't romantic enough for me in the end, and like I wanted reassurances or tips that would somehow get my family to a place of peace. I felt her when she wrote about the fear and the bitterness, and the frustration and confusion early on in her journey with her son, but it's as though she lost me somewhere around my own real-time experience. And now, with the updates and whatnot, I have no interest in her real-time experience, because I don't want that to be my destination.
In may ways, refusing to give solid definitions and diagnoses to her son, or to the challenges he has, Gilman does contribute a genuinely helpful (if maddening) portrait of the "spectrum" of autism, and all it's related disorders, syndromes, "-isms," "-ias." Definitions are crude tools, and it is a continuum that defies easy labels, even when your child seems to be displaying textbook symptoms. Give it a couple of days, and something will fall out of place. It is a puzzle, a spectrum, it's complex and annoying all at once.
Like I said, I didn't really like the book, and I can't really recommend it because I didn't really like it, but at the same time... it's stuck in my head, and I can relate more than I want to. Maybe that means it's good, and i am just cranky. Certainly possible with this one.
Next week: Lighter fare reviewed! I'm deciding between the apocolyptic vampire-zombie book and delightfully cheesy British murder mystery... Or possibly Cormac McCarthy. We'll see what inspires.
The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy
by Priscilla Gilman
Just because I am way out of practice, here is the blurb to give you a sense of what I was walking into reading this book: "The daughter of literary agent Lynn Nesbit and the late theater drama critic Richard Gilman crafts a beautifully sinuous and intensely literary celebration of the exceptional, unconventional child. Her son, Benjamin, was born when she and her academic husband, Richard, were in graduate school at Yale, where she was still working on her dissertation on the Romantic English poet William Wordsworth. As "Benj" grew older and failed to hit the usual milestones of children his age, exhibiting brilliant but "odd" behavior such as an obsession with numbers, aversion to physical affection, fastidiousness, inability to feed himself, and echolalia, Gilman realized these were "uncontrollable manifestations of a disorder," namely hyperlexia. Falsely reassured by their well-intentioned pediatrician, the couple finally sought professional therapists, and after they relocated to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where both got teaching jobs at Vassar, Benj made marvelous progress in school. Throughout her narrative, Gilman extracts from many of Wordsworth's poems, which comment on innocence and loss and gave Gilman tremendous succor during Benjamin's early development, making for both charming and studious reading. Her thoughtful memoir involves the breakup of her marriage, rejection of an academic career, and move to New York City to work in her mother's literary agency as much as it delves lyrically into the rare, complex mind of the unusual child."
When I read the description of this book, I immediately downloaded it on my Kindle and started reading with abandon. I "liked" the author on Facebook, I read her blog. Her son sounded more like Henry than any other child I have read about in the countless books I have read and half-read about Asperger's and hyperlexia. To be honest, as I raced through the text, her son reminded me eerily of Henry in many ways. Her reaction to noticing his differences was so familiar, and I could relate in many ways to being caught off-guard by this completely alternate parenting universe that had opened up and swallowed our family.
I can't say that I really liked the book, or that I could recommend the book, however. To be fair, my aversion came over time, and it was near the end of the fast and furious reading I was doing that I realized a few things:
1. I was, quite literally, skipping over all her chatter about Wordsworth, romantic poetry, allusions to literature, meaningful metaphor, etc., because they seemed, frankly, contrived. It had begun to remind me of something that seemed like a great idea, one you hatch in those moments of academic passion and work over and over in your head to the point that the brilliance of that tiny spark has been lost. Not because that spark wasn't brilliant, but because you have just taken it too far, and have stretched it too thin. It reminded me, in many ways, of my Master's thesis, or many of the "brilliant-at-the-time" papers and projects from college.
2. I like to think of myself as a potential writer. This book was precisely the kind of thing I'd write. Starkly, it demonstrated to me all the reasons it's not the best idea for a mama, who is very smart and well-read, but who doesn't have anything genuinely insightful and fresh to say, to write a book. It got kind of boring. I'll explain why below.
3. It was absolutely a memoir. Full stop. I think on some level I was expecting a memoir that also had genuinely valuable and insightful information for me as a parent of a similarly situated child, or something universal and profound. Maybe that was in there and I missed it since I didn't connect with the Wordsworth, but it was most certainly a memoir. Maybe I'm too close to the feelings to see how they are universal, or to feel touched in more than a "dear lord, that's us" sort of way. I wanted it to be more than a memoir, and it wasn't. The author seems like an incredibly lovely person, but it's really just a cut above what I write in my head as I fall asleep at night (with more literary allusions, which do make it far more intelligent than what happens in my head, but not necessarily more interesting).
4. My complex relationship with social media has really complicated my relationship with this book. I think I liked the book better right when I finished it, in part because I had not gotten daily updates, quotes, gushing reviews, and media clips posted by the author to her Facebook page. Again, she seems like a genuinely lovely person (she personally responded to me when I sent her a note saying that I related to her experience because our sons were so similar), but there is something about having daily updates, quotes, book tour updates, and even personal contact that makes me feel even more like this was just like the book that I had rolling around in my head, but she had the mom who is a literary agent so she got to write it. I've said on many occasions that even though I feel like all the stuff in my head is brilliant, the reality of it is that no one needs to hear all that, and I kind of feel like the filter would be a benefit here, but her mom got her a book deal.
5. (For the record, I get the hypocrisy of blogging about my feelings about this book, and I really get the hypocrisy that is what follows.) My own wish to have the book have some kind of resolution for her son, or for her, made me feel stressed out when it never came. She found peace in not having a solid diagnosis, and accepting his differences, and modifying her life in ways she never expected; but I couldn't get there with her. I was looking for some peace for myself, through her experience, but I wanted it to be reassurance that her son is OK, that he is doing great, and that Henry will do great too. It was like the book wasn't romantic enough for me in the end, and like I wanted reassurances or tips that would somehow get my family to a place of peace. I felt her when she wrote about the fear and the bitterness, and the frustration and confusion early on in her journey with her son, but it's as though she lost me somewhere around my own real-time experience. And now, with the updates and whatnot, I have no interest in her real-time experience, because I don't want that to be my destination.
In may ways, refusing to give solid definitions and diagnoses to her son, or to the challenges he has, Gilman does contribute a genuinely helpful (if maddening) portrait of the "spectrum" of autism, and all it's related disorders, syndromes, "-isms," "-ias." Definitions are crude tools, and it is a continuum that defies easy labels, even when your child seems to be displaying textbook symptoms. Give it a couple of days, and something will fall out of place. It is a puzzle, a spectrum, it's complex and annoying all at once.
Like I said, I didn't really like the book, and I can't really recommend it because I didn't really like it, but at the same time... it's stuck in my head, and I can relate more than I want to. Maybe that means it's good, and i am just cranky. Certainly possible with this one.
Next week: Lighter fare reviewed! I'm deciding between the apocolyptic vampire-zombie book and delightfully cheesy British murder mystery... Or possibly Cormac McCarthy. We'll see what inspires.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Something to come... BOOK REVIEWS!
I've been reading more lately, thanks to my Kindle, iPad, and rediscovered nighttime ritual of climbing into bed every night with some words to read. I like to keep the pre-bed reading on the lighter side (not educational materials or conference planning guides for upcoming trips - thrillers are fine, just nothing I might genuinely have to remember).
I have been trying not to read complete crap, but sometimes I do read complete crap. You are getting reviews of all of it. I'm ditching the "secret" part of my guilty reading pleasures, and you will get to read about what I am reading, even if I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I'm reading it because it's pulp.
You can, in the near-future, look forward to reviews of: The Anti-Romantic Child, No Country for Old Men, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Passage, and more! Woo, books!
I have been trying not to read complete crap, but sometimes I do read complete crap. You are getting reviews of all of it. I'm ditching the "secret" part of my guilty reading pleasures, and you will get to read about what I am reading, even if I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I'm reading it because it's pulp.
You can, in the near-future, look forward to reviews of: The Anti-Romantic Child, No Country for Old Men, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Passage, and more! Woo, books!
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