Vonnegut on the Read/Re-Read

Today I finished re-reading Kurt Vonnegut jr’s Slaughter-House Five for about the fifth or sixth time.  Even considering that I pretty much know the book by heart now I still love reading it again and again.  it is very easily high up on my list of favorite all-time books and Vonnegut himself might be in the top five of my all-time favorite authors (if not actually being my solely favorite author). 

I won’t claim that I really got anything new from the book this time around.  As usually I just appreciated its wit and wisdom.  As in the past readings I finished the book feeling a mixture of great happiness and positinve outlook on life while at the same time feeling terribly sad and despaining about the way the world is.  Vonnegut had possibly the most amazing ability at creating this sense of bittersweetness in his stories.

Besides Slaughter-House Five I also bought his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House on Saturday.  Welcome to the Monkey House has probably one of my all-time favorite short stories in it, that onebeing “Harrison Bergeron.”  In fact it was reading “Harrison Bergeron” my freshman year of college which really got me started with loving the works of Kurt Vonnegut.  I had read Slaughter-House Five as a freshman in high school but something about it had been lost on me back then and so it would take another four years before I re-discovered it and found the real genius of Vonnegut. 

I have not read eveyone of his books (though I’d greatly like to).  I hope I can get to them all in the not too distant future.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. fell down a flight of stairs my junior year of college and only a few short days after that died.  So it goes.

The Sun Also Rises Again

I am currently re-reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises for the second time (which will make it my third reading altogether).

As I have likely mentioned in previous posts, The Sun Also Rises holds a special significance to me, in that I think it is really the one book which demonstrated my growth as a reader and lover of literature.  When I first read the book, my junior year in high school, I loathed it and found it difficult to complete.  I wish I could offr more of an explination as to why this was, but my teenage brain and thought process is quite alien to me now and thus, in all honesty, I really am unsure as to what it was specifically that I disliked about the book back then.  What I can say was that at the time I was quite satisfied with the notion of never picking up Hemingway again.

My first re-read of The Sun Also Rises occurred during my junior year of college, four years after I had had my first painful encounter with the book.  In truth I had not intended to re-read the book at all, but a professor of mine challenged me to give it a second chance and see if I still hated it.  I didn’t.  In all honesty it was almost a mystical experience or something.  I breezed through the novel the second time (which really isn’t much of a challenge considering tha tit is quite a short story) and found myself enjoying every moment of it.  I discovered a humor to the book that I had comepletely missed the first time around.  I also found myself enjoy the tact and skill with which Hemingway had committed words to the creation of a story.  Nothing seemed wasteful with Hemingway’s writing style.  The man had written exactly what he intended to write without needing to over elaborate or becoming clumsy with his style.  As a writing major at the time I found myslef greatly appreciating the use of language that Hemingway had employed in the story and how it maintained a steady motion and consitent sense of character.  Four years prior I had been greatly mistaken, The Sun Also Rises was indeed a fantastic novel.

So that brings us to my current reading.  I had bought the book some weeks back in a used copy of The Hemingway Reader which I had found at a GoodWill store.  This past Sunday I picked it up in the morning as I sat out on my porch and drank a cup of coffee.  It was very relaxing beginning the story again.  I was familiar with it, comfortable with it.  Whereas during my second reading I had picked up the story with a cynical belief that I’d find no more joy in it than I had with my first read, this time around I knew that the story would be a pleasure to work through again.

While I cannot avoid noticing again the magnificent use of language that Hemingway employees in The Sun Also Rises I find that so far during this read (I’m about halfway through currently) I have been paying far more attention to the characters in the story, especially the narrator Jake Barnes.  I know that during both of my previous readings I was well aware of the personalities and characteristics of the main cast of the story, but this time it seems that I am far more interested in the intricacies that make them all at once compelling but also tragic.  Jake has emotion, that much in unquestionable, yet he approaches the story with a certain stoic attitude which shapes our perception of the whole story.  There is a kind of defeatist quality to Jake’s narration which makes us feel that even in the dazzling swinging times the characters might be having in appearance, that in truth there is a lingering sadness and malaise to all of their existences.  In this way we, the readers, truly encounter that “Lost Generation” with which the book so intimately deals.  To be lost is to be without direction and that is exactly what the different characters are, directionless, wanering around, pursuing the semblance of happiness and enjoyment all the while spiraling furthing into indifference and defeat.

I think it might be easy to enjoy the book solely for the nostalgic feel of the 1920s in Europe with lots of drinking, late nights, and parties but this approach to the story misses the key point which it that all those things were merely a shell or a mask put on over the real quality of the people who performed the parts.  There is an existential note to it all, not necessarily the angsty existentialism which emerged after the second world war, but instead, agian, that defeatism in the face of reality.  Jake, deeply in love with Brett knows there is no chance of happiness with her because of his injury in the war (WWI) and Brett, equally in love with Jake, knows that she lacks any ability at actually loyalty which would ever allow for them to be happy.  Instead of seeking some kind of resolution the characters seem to avoid their problems by pursing outside entertainment and a ton of drinking.  As such the story can come across as being without any real sense of resolution or closer, which I suppose might be frustrating to some, but in the end that is entirely the point, that there is no closer because the characters are completely incapable of making such a thing happen.  Thus the story is a tragedy of characters and their inabilty to save themselves from their own directionlessness.

Truly fantastic.  The Sun Also Rises is one of those books which I strongly suggest to anybody who enjoys good writing and storytelling but also likes the challenge of pulling more from a story than may initially be apparent about it.  Hemingway has remained a classic for a reason and The Sun Also Rises is a great example of why that is.

H. P. Lovecraft “Tales”

Yesterday I bought The Library of America copy of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Tales, a collection of 22 of Mr. Lovecraft’s most famous stories.  The whole collection was selected by Peter Straub, an appropriate individual for the job, if I may say so myself (Mr. Straub also wrote the notes for the collection).  It was this collection, several years back now (when I was in college) that first introduced me to H. P. Lovecraft.  Much like Everything is Illuminated I found Tales while I was shelving some books, and thought “why not?”  A good choice all around.

I have long been a fan of what is considered horror or dark fiction.  As a child (I’m sure of mentioned this before) I was particularly fond of John Bellairs who wrote startlingly creepy books for children and young adults.  As I got older I moved on to Stephen King (who I know I have mentioned as probably my favorite living writer).  I have also long been a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, whom the inside cover of Tales‘ notes as having been a direct predecessor to H. P. Lovecraft’s dark works.

There is much in Lovecraft’s works to admire.  He had an uncanny knack at creating a sense of uncertainty.  Most of his stories rely on at best a questionable narrator, if not one who is outright unreliable due to the possibility of insanity or some other degree of derangement.  While I read some of the stories last night I thought of this fact.  As the reader, the audience of the story, it is hard to determine the truth in what the narrators give.  You want to believe it because it is what you are provided in the story, and yet these narrators often admit to having slipped into madness and insanity due to the horrors they encountered and often what they describe is too strikingly absurd to truly believe.  It is a wonderful conflict which Mr. Lovecraft created.

Then again there is his mythos, the vast dark stories of beings of immense power, which have influenced a great number of other writers since.  The Lovecraft Mythos creates a world in which we are all unfortunate victims to the whims of beings so vastly more powerful than ourselves and beyond anything we possess the capacity to understand.  These are ancient creatures that lack any regard to the suffering or needs of humanity, they exist for their own timeless purposes and we just happen to occasionally get in their way.  They are incomprehensible monsters and yet they have the amazing ability to fascinate us, to make us want to understand even a mote point about them.

The sad thing about H. P. Lovecraft is that he died at a rather young age (he was only 46 years old).  One can only imagine that if he had lived longer he might have had the chance to created even more strange dark tales, as well as expand further upon his mythos.  Alas it is not so, and we must make do with those works that he created.  If you are looking for eerie, dark tales, of the things that go bump in the night, then Lovecraft is an essential read.

“Dune” Everybody should Read It!

I would like to extend praise to Douglas Cohen in his efforts to sell Frank Herbert’s Dune to more traditional fans of the fantasy genre (as opposed to the science fiction, where Dune is generally placed).  That being said though, I wish he had pushed further, and not just outreached to fans of the fantasy genre but to readers of all sorts.  While I admit to the personal nature of my opinion, because of my love of the book, I feel that Dune is one of those great novels that should be picked up by everybody.

The thing is that even though Dune is definitely science fiction in its basic structure, I think the story does a lot to transcend the genre.  It is a work, somewhat like Tolkien’s The Hobbit that offers so much more than a simple genre labeling would provide.  I remember when I first read Dune, back when I was a sophomore in high school, being absolutely fascinated by the apparent parallels to the trade guilds during the Enlightenment.  Dune has so much more to do with political systems and power struggles than it really does with spaceships and different planets (sure the spaceships and planets are present, but they are really just vehicles used to convey the complex ideas within the story).  Essentially Dune has always struck me as a wonderfully developed contemplation on the interplay of politics, economics, and religion and how pulling a string in one area inevitably causes effects in the others.

What is more is that Mr. Herbert created some of the most memorable characters you could ever encounter.  Paul Atreides is ten times the hero that Luke Skywalker could ever aspire to be.  He demonstrates outstanding qualities of bravery, level headedness, and all around wisdom in the face of great adversity and ultimately finds transcendence in the tough lot that life has given him.  And the villains like Baron Harkonnen truly strike an emotional chord of the possibilities of the corrupting influence of power and greed. 

Really it is a magnificent book, that I strongly suggest to everyone who claims to like a good read.  It has all the elements that make it an appealing sci-fi or fantasy novel and yet it does so much more than that in the end so that it doesn’t really matter much what genre it is lumped in.

Interestingly, while I was cleaning my room this weekend, which led to my finding and beginning to re-read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (which I wrote about in my previous post) I also discovered my copy of Dune and strongly considered giving it another read for old times sakes.  I have it on my desk at home and think that it might be what I move on to once I finish Everything is Illuminated.

Finished “Anathem” . . . Finally

I will start by saying that Neal Stephenson’s Anathemis a really long book.  The hardcover was 890 pages of novel, plus nearly another hundred worth of appendix content.  Now a book being long isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, it just means it is long, and if you are the kind of person who does not like devoting a lot of time to a single book then something like Anathem probably isn’t for you.  I actually don’t usually mind long books, but I also haven’t been reading as much or as fast as I used to so it can be a little difficult when it takes over two months to read a single novel.

That being said I found Anatheman overall enjoyable story.  I think that Mr. Stephenson did a great job at creating a interesting social structure and hierarchy as well as a truly original story in a science fiction genre that often has too many variations on the same theme.  All and all I liked it.  I thought the characters, especially the narrator Erasmus, were all interesting and relatively believable people.  I was interested by the various plot developments and curious as to how everything was going to work out, which strikes me as an all around success in any novel.

My main detractor though goes back to the great length of the book.  Upon finishing it, and at several times in the story, I felt that really it was just over stretching.  I don’t think Anathem needed to be nearly 900 pages long.  I don’t think that it even needed to be 500 pages long.  yes there was a lot of interesting moments and a lot of characters and obviously Mr. Stephenson felt the need to fully develop the society in this world which is quite different than anything that we know, but there just seemed to be a lot of stuff that seemed to drag forever unnecessarily.  And while I don’t know for sure, I imagine that the original draft was significantly longer than the published book because there were some parts that read as if Mr. Stephenson had more that he wanted to write but didn’t include.

My personal conclusion to this is that the book should have just trimmed down and focused more on exact plot points, or Mr. Stephenson should have opted to write a couple books, like a trilogy.  Now sure, you can ask how a trilogy where each book is about 300 pages long would be that different than a 900 page book, but I think that it definitely would.  It would create a bit more of a differentiation in the story arks, and possibly have allowed Stephenson to add that bit more that at times seemed missing.  It is kind of a tough call but, that is my overall feeling.

I will give Anathem an A for overall plot and concept and a B for overall reading enjoyment and experience.  Probably not for everybody, but I think some people will really like it.

Michael Arrington, In Praise of Science Fiction Novels

Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch fame, provides a wonderful piece about his favorite/most recommended science fiction books/series.  I love that Mr. Arrignton recommends that people skip reading books on how to run successful businesses (or likely any other “inspirational” self help books) and suggests that people looking into the classics of scifi to find quality imagination and innovation at work.  I agree fully (a few years back I wrote about how I would love to teach a class on Literary Cristicism of self Help books and more or less how they are crap).

I was pleased to see several of my favorite books on Mr. Arrington’s list.  And the ones that I haven’t read yet are included on my list of “to read” books.  The one book that I was surprised to see was Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.  I am still slowly making my way through Anathem (I refuse to put it down till I’m finished).  I don’t want to say much right yet (I’ve been taking notes), but I will say that I wouldn’t quite put it on par of classics like Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land. 

Still a great post, which is a little deviation from the normal appearing on TechCrunch, but enjoyable nevertheless.

Congratulations to David Berona

I would like to extend a congratulation to David Berona, the Director of Lamson Library at Plymouth State University, on recieving The New York Book Show award for first place Special Trade/Adult Graphic Novel. During the four years that I attended my undergrad studies at Plymouth I worked at Lamson Library.  My junior and senior years were the first two years that Mr. Berona was director of the library.  While I didn’t work terribly close with Mr. Berona (I was at the circulation desk) I did have the occasion of conversing with him on a number of occasions.  I recall having a very good discussion with him on Art Spiegelman’s great Maus graphic novels.  In fact I will extend some credit to Mr. Berona for helping me come to appreciation of graphic novels and comics.  In my last two years working at Lamson, Mr. Berona greatly increased the number of graphic novels and comics available in the library, several of which I read and rate highly, including Bone and The Dark Knight Returns.

So anyways, always glad to hear of the successes of former Professors or people I worked with back in college.

Charlie Huston’s “Already Dead”

I will begin this post by saying that prior to picking up Charlie Huston’s mystery novel Already Dead I knew next to nothing about the author or the books he has written.  The way in which my attention was brought to Charlie Huston was through reading a post on Early Word: The Publisher| Librarian Connection which pointed me to Huston’s new novel The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death.  Stephen King provides a captivating review of the The Mystic Art on Amazon.com (see book link previously) which made me think that it would be worth a look (a feeling which I feel stronger about having now read Already Dead).  One of the great benefits of working in a library is that I literally have thousands of books within immediate reach of me every work day.  So, after reading the reviews for The Mystic Art I decided to see if we had a copy available at work.  We didn’t but we had a number of Huston’s other books.  At work I took a quick break and went to browse the shelves to see if anything by Huston would possibly interest me.  That is how I found Already Dead.

On finishing Already DeadI will state that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  The reason for my surprise stems from two major facts.  1).  I don’t really care for mystery novels.  I don’t have anything against the genre in general (and arguably some books that I have read could be considered slightly within the mystery genre, like say many of Stephen Kings works) but it just doesn’t really interest me.  Probably part of it is because I associate mystery novels with my mother’s personal reading preference, while I have always been swayed more towards fantasy, horror, and scifi.  2).  I don’t really read books about vampires.  Yes, that is right, Already Dead is about vampires, I realize I neglected to mention that previously, but now you know.  The fact that I don’t read vampire novels (in fact the only one I think I have ever read is King’s Salem’s Lot and I read that more because it was a Stephen King book than because it was about vampires) might surprise some people who know me because I happen to be a pretty big fan of vampire movies and I find the mythology that has developed around vampires to be rather interesting.  Probably a big thing that has driven me away from vampire novels is the general pop goth stereotype I associate with the works.  I do not have anything against either pop or goth but neither are areas that generally interest me and I think a lot of vampire stories are written with these groups in mind.  Sure, I’ve been curious about works by Anne Rice (my college roommate was rather fond of her works) and have considered picking up one of the Sookie Stackhouse novelsby Charlaine Harris because I was really enjoyed HBO’s first season of True Blood (which was based on Ms. Harris’ works).  So all around not a reader of either mystery or vampires.

But I did like Already Dead.

I think a big part of my enjoyment stems from the fact that Huston’s novel provided me with a very quick and relatively easy read that was entertaining but also thoughtful.  Huston’s style of writing, in my opinion, can best be described as pulp.  Already Deadread like a gritty detective novel that seems like it would be more in place in the late forties or early fifties, except for the whole vampire thing (I don’t think they were quite the same level of popularity then) and the computers and ATMs and cellphones and everything else in the novel that presents modern day Manhattan (where the story is set).  In a way the noir pulp feel of Already Dead set in modern NYC seems almost anachronistic, but it works for the characters and the plot in a way that dives the reader from front to back.  For this fact alone I give Huston high praise.

As I said above I found Already Dead to be a pretty easy read.  It only took me about two days to read it (though admittedly I was sick yesterday and spent most of the day in bed reading).  Just because it was a quick and easy read does not mean I think it was written simply.  All around I found the story to be very creatively developed and the language to be written with admirable intelligence.  Huston has a knack for words, especially when he puts them in the mouth of his characters, like the narrator Joe Pitt.  He captures the gritty underside of the world in startling detail all the while keeping the read accessible and progressing.  And while the book was easy enough to pick up and get through, I actually feel that there is a lot more going on than first impressions give.  Sure you can read Already Deadas a detective novel featuring vampires in modern day New York and walk away having encountered a fairly entertaining book.  But I would suggest you could dig deeper into the story and pull a lot of relevance from the themes that arise.

Already Deadis dark, and honestly that is a bit of an understatement.  I would list this book as rated Mature with the capital M because a lot of the subject matter is pretty rough (the least of which is a vampire sucking somebodies blood or a zombie munching on some brains – both of which happen repeatedly in the story).  Probably not the best book for teeny-bopper fans of Stephanie Meyer’s the Twilight Saga to jump to next (though I don’t know for certain just how detailed and mature the subject matter in those books gets).  Besides the general violence that one would associate with vampires and zombies there is also a fair share of other dark aspects of society presented; murder, rape, child and domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol, sex, and enough “colorful” language to fit right in with a Quentin Tarantino movie.  This isn’t to say that Huston glamorizes any of these subject matters.  In fact, if anything, he writes about them exactly as they are, the hardships and dark sides of life that some people have the misfortune of experiencing.  It isn’t gratuitous, it is just the world in which the characters of Already Dead live in.

Another theme that I pulled from the book, though I think that it is a little bit burried under the other more visual elements form the story, is the concepts of illness or sickness.  Quite obviously the vampires and the zombies are infected with disease and this is a fact that is brought up time and time again; the zombies have a flesh and brain eating bacteria and the vampires have a blood consuming virus (simply referred to as Vyrus).  But beyond that there are other ways in which illness is present in the story.  Joe Pitt’s girlfriend, Evie, has HIV which is the main reason she won’t have sex with Joe (even though as a vampire Joe is immune to the disease – Evie is unaware of Joe’s vamprism though).  Then there are the diseases that might not be caused by any germs but seem to be the ills of society.  There are several characters who are homeless or drugs/alcohol abusers.  Several of the people have been victimized by abuse or are themselves abusers.  Even the perception of Manhattan and it’s society seem to represent a sickness in the world.  part of this is inevitably due to Joe Pitt being the narrator and his cynical perception of the world and people around him, but I also think that Huston was consciously using the idea of illness to further frame the story.  Nobody is clean in Joe Pitt’s world and near the end of the novel there is a pretty grim couple of paragraphs in which Pitt contemplates the fact that inevitably everyone is either dying or on the road to being killed.

Joe Pitt himspef presents an interesting study.  As the protagonist and narrator he is what I would call a pretty good example of an anti-hero.  Being an anti-hero does not mean that a character is necessarily a bad guy or a villain but more so that they do not follow the normal perception of traditional heroism.  Joe fits this description in that he tends to be far more concerned with his own well being and survival than with other people around him.  Joe doesn’t end up in most of the situations in the book because he is pursuing the goal of being a hero and savior, instead much of his actions are driven by his desire to earn his next meal or to save his own hide.  Joe shows little problem with roughing people up or, if the situation calls for it, killing them.  He seems to view most others as either inferior to him or too dangerous to really try and get involved with.  But Joe also does have some deep set moral drives.  It is revealed in the story that before he became a vampire he had lived in an abusive household and so he tends to have a strong drive to protect innocent people, especially children and teenagers.  Further Joe comes across as having a somewhat guilty conscience of his need for blood.  This doesn’t always stop him from taking it but it is a matter that seems to always be in debate in his mind.  There is also his relationship with Evie and his knowledge that if he made her a vampire it would cure her of her disease but ultimately curse her to another and potentially worse one.  If Joe has any real weakness it may be that he is too smart, which is also, interestingly, one of his biggest strengths.  Joe Pitt can’t seem to escape from his own mind and thoughts, and at times from his own mouth (he often fails to know when to shut up).  In some ways life might be easier for Joe  if he was more brawn and less brains, like the giant vampire Hurley.  But Joe is a thinking and his thinking often gets him into more trouble than out of it.  But it is his ability to reason which also allows him to be more than a blunt instrument and thus overcome being a truly monstrous character.  While Joe knows how to use violence when it is needed he can also refrain from it.  It is his intelligence that in many ways makes him a kind of heroic.  What drives Joe into action is usually his own self interest but inevitably his intelligence leads him down other paths, even ones that may be of danger in the long run.

So Already Deadis a pretty good book in my opinion.  A quick read but an interesting one.  Charlie Huston has written three other novels in the same setting and with Joe Pitt as the main character.  I think I would like to check them out just to see how Huston further develops his characters and the world of Manhattan populated in part by vampires.  There were also a few questions left open at the end of the book which I imagine will be further examined in the following books.  I also would still really like to pick up The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death.

Read Before You Give? Or Not?

A post from Brian Herzog on his blog Swiss Army Librarian raises the question of whether or not it is socially acceptable to read a book before you present it as a gift.  This is actually a matter I have considered before and coming out of the Holiday season I think this is an appropriate area of contemplation.

Personally I see no real problem with this, especially considering the gift of a book is often based on a personal opinion (of the gift giver) that the book would be something that the receiver would enjoy.  A lot of books that I have given as gifts are books that I have read before, though generally I will buy a new copy as a gift (this is in part because I like to horde my books and also because I like to write a note to the person I am giving the book to inside the cover).  I guess you could take the question further and say, “is it okay to buy a book, read it, and then give it to somebody as a gift?”  My response . . . sure, why not?  I mean as long has you haven’t done significant damage to a copy of a book (essentially as long as it is still readable) then why shouldn’t it be gift worthy?

One might be tempted to say, “because it is a used item.”

Really?  Well ask yourself this.  1). Can you really tell?  Assuming that the book has not been beat up by the giver’s reading process it is probably kind of difficult to determine whether or not the book was previously read.  2). Isn’t the idea of giving a book as a gift a lot more about the content within?  Sure there are some books with nice looking covers and it could be annoying having to deal with previous fold-marked pages (something else I’d like to write about at some point) but really the important thing in a book is that it is readable or that the pictures are still in good condition.

As a rule the books that I give to people are generally things that I have read previously (though not necessarily the exact copy) because then I am in a better position to talk about it and give reasons for why I chose it as a gift.  For example, I gave my cousin a copy of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov for Christmas this year.  Part of the reason was because she mentioned that she was going to be taking a Russian Literature class at school, but further so because The Brothers Karamazov is one of my all time favorite books (which I happen to believe should be an essential on any list of Russian Literature — actually several of Dostoevsky’s works are worth making the list; The Idiot, Crime & Punishment, and Notes From the Underground to name some of the best).  I bought her a new copy of the book, though it was the same translation/publication that I had read previously.  On the other hand I give both my brother and father books for Christmas that I had not previously read at all, though I did take a bit of time to glance through them.

I have on occasion given books that I have owned as gifts, though on much more casual terms then say as a wrapped Birthday or Christmas present.  There have been times, when through interaction, I have deemed that some people need to be exposed to a certain book that I own, and thus give it to them.  An example is when a friend and I, my junior year of college, each exchanged one of our favorite books.  I gave her Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and I was given in turn Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (which at the time I had not yet read — which many people still find fascinating).

I could go on and on about giving books as gifts and could expand further on gift giving in general (in fact just the other day I reread a paper I wrote a few years ago on the topic of gift giving and sacrifice).  I think that the really interesting and important thing to remember is that a gift is a comment or critique of a type between the giver and the receiver.  I don’t have qualms with reading a book before you give it as a gift, but consider the book as a whole and why you want it to be a gift, it is the message of the giving that is probably the thing of real importance.

Books Brought Back

Before leaving Vermont I grabbed a number of books that I wanted to have back in South Carolina.  Over the course of the years I spent living in Vermont (and New Hampshire partially while I was in college) I accumulated a vast number of books.  I hope to someday have a house where I can set up a giant bookcase and then get all the books that I have to fill it (I love books!) but I don’t know when that will be, so for the time being I am just slowly collecting books that I want around.  This time the two books that I am really excited to have brought back were Jonathan Safran Foer’s novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  I’ve read both novels before, junior and senior year of college respectively, and loved them both.  I have really wanted to reread Everything is Illuminated for some time now because I feel like there is a lot that I missed the first time through.  I’ll probably pick it up after I finish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I also brought back a book of science fiction short stories, a collection of Philip K. Dick writings entitle Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (the man was an absolute genius by the way), Charlie Papazian’s vital The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, and a number of cookbooks.  All great things to place on my small bookshelf that I keep in my room (it really is very tiny, but for now, as a renter, it is appropriate).  I am excited to have these various reads available to me at my whim now.  I plan on doing some major room cleaning an organizing on my days off on Thursday and Friday, and I will probably devout a good amount of time on the bookshelf.

A Man Without a Book

Somehow, as is occasionally the occurrence, I have found myself without a book to read.  How this happened is that I was reading a book (Harry Turtledove’s Into the Darkness) which I just couldn’t get into.  The book wasn’t horrible, and it had some interesting concepts for a fantasy novel (the basic premise is a world war in a land of magic that parallels WWII Europe).  Ultimately my problem with it was that it just jumped around between too many characters which made it hard for me to feel invested.  I don’t mind books that have a big cast, but it needs to be presented in such a way that I don’t feel like I am just jumping from person to person.

So I put the book down.

I can’t remember who told me this (possibly several people) but I have heard it said that you should try to commit yourself to at least 100 pages before you put a book down (I got about 145 into Into the Darkness).  I think this makes sense in most cases because by 100 pages you should probably have a pretty good idea if you like the book or not.  There have been other books that I haven’t even made it through the first chapter and that seems like a very clear sign for me to move on.  but point is, give a book a shot, if it doesn’t give you what you are looking for don’t be ashamed to put it down.

But what this comes to is that I am currently without a book to read.  I haven’t taken anything out of the library because I don’t really want to bring a book to my parent’s house with me when I head up to Vermont this weekend (well a loan book that is, if it was my own it would be a different story).  Also, currently I do not feel like rereading any of the books I have in my house (I often do reread personal favorites but I am not in the mood currently).  I have an idea that there are some books in Vermont, either at my parent’s place or my grandmother’s, that I would like to grab.  So I am in a current state of patience.

The thing is that I am itchy to read.  Fortunately I just got two browsing books from a friends during a White Elephant gift exchange this weekend.  Strangely, not necessarily unfortunately, one of the books is an Encyclopedia of Karma Sutra (the whole White Elephant joke thing).  What is actually interesting about the Karma Sutra book is that a few years ago I wrote a paper about Eastern Tantric practices which play a very important role in Karma Sutra (beyond that I guess the book just provides a good conversation piece).

I also have a few magazines lying around that I haven’t read all the way through.  Further this gives me some time to focus on writing and drawing, two things that I consider on equal enjoyment level with reading.  Hoping to find a new book soon though.  Will report back when I got one.

Praise of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman”

A bit late on noting that the 20th anniversary of Gaiman’s epic comic creation (which occured a few weeks past) but not so late that I cannot lint to a great post on the 5 Ways That Sandman Changed the World.

I did not grow up as a lover of comic books.  Sure I read some here or there, but ultimately I was never really terribly interested in them until around Junior year of college.  It was that year that I picked up Alan Moore’s great comic, which some regard as the greatest comic of all time, Watchmen.  I will put my reaction simply as having been blown away (I’m also proud to report that my brother has recently had a similar reaction to Watchmen).  From there I went on to read other great comics (or Graphic Novels depending on your semantic preference — I still owe a post on my views of the use of Graphic Novel versus Comic Book) such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Jeff Smith Bone amongst others.  Interestingly I had been curious of Gaiman’s Sandman books before beginning my real comic reading mostly because I had greatly enjoyed his novels Neverwhere and American Gods (both wonderful pieces of urban fantasy).  After having read the above mentioned comics and finding myself enjoying this form of literature, I made it a personal goal to pick up The Sandman at some point.  I was lucky when I got a job at the Greenville County Library System that the main library had all the comics available.  I made my way through the series in about a month’s time.  All around The Sandman comics rank up there with Watchmen and Maus as the favorites that I have read.  If you like comics or are interested in trying reading some I would suggest checking out Neil Gaiman’s works, they are very good.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels That Deserve Movies

My friend Evan pointed me to a post from Topless Robot on Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels that deserve film adaptations.  I consider this a pretty good post and was quite glad to see several personal favorites on the list, especially Dick’s The Man In the High Castle and Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (very proud of the second, which is one of my all time favorite books, and landed number one on the list).

I have long been a fan of fantasy and science fiction novels.  As I think I have mentioned before, The Hobbit gets some big credit as being the book that really got me into reading altogether.  I’ve since enjoyed a wide variety of novels from authors of science fiction and fantasy.  It is always neat to view film adaptations of novels that you have enjoyed, though, unfortunately, it seems that all to often they fail to capture the real greatness of the book version of the story (of course their are plenty of exceptions; personally I think the “The Lord of the Rings” movies did a wonderful job). 

Part of the problem that I see with the list from Topless Robot is that while I enjoy a lot of the books included I am not so sure that the stories would ultimately appeal to the wider audiences.  The Man In the High Castle probably would be doable, and I like to think that Stranger in a Strange Land and Snow Crash would be generally appealing to the crowds, but others might just not garner the attention or appreciation that could make for successful movie versions.

Who knows though.  Both Sci-fi and fantasy films have seen relatively more attention in recent years (due largely in part, I believe, because of the quality of computer special effects).  Maybe we’ll hear of some of these being made in the future.

R.I.P. Michael Crichton

Best-selling author Michael Crichton, who authored such well known and popular novels as Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Timeline passed away this past Tuesday.  Crichton was 66 years old.

I’ve read a number of Crichton’s books myself including The Lost World, Sphere, and Prey.  Back in 1996, when I was only twelve years old I picked up The Lost World (I had not read Jurassic Park amazingly considering how mush I liked the movie) and absolutely loved it.  I wrote Crichton a letter telling him how much I appreciated his novel.  All I got back was a basic form letter, you know a “Thank you for your comments” kind of thing (a fact that has always irked my father even though I didn’t really mind that much).

Personally I would not list Crichton as an author of great literature but I will give him credit for creating very popular and commercially successful books that have the wonderful ability to truly captivate readers.  Personally I link Crichton as being in a clade with authors like John Grisham, Dean Koontz, and even to a degree Stephen King (though I like King by far the best) in that they have all been very successful at marketing the “pop novel”.  Crichton will be greatly missed but we should all be appreciative of the work he provided to the world.

The New York Times offers its own take on the man who Crichton was.

“The Stand” is 30 years old, so Mr. King gives an Interview.

“Earlier in my career, I was just excoriated by the critics. I was just drubbed unmercifully, and I think I got more of it because the books were successful, and they were just horrified because they sensed it was something that was working in the popular context. It was different than what had gone before.” ~ Stephen King

How appropriate, I am currently reading a Stephen King novel (Duma Key), I have written a couple other posts about the prolific author on this blog, and today I find this wonderful interview with him on Salon.com.

I cannot remember exactly when I read The Stand but I do remember that it was one of the longest books I had ever picked up at the time.  I devoured it.  I recall spending ling hours lost in the story.  To date I would still consider it one of my favorite King books (which, considering I like almost everything of his I’ve read might not really be saying that much).  I would really like to pick up The Stand again because, while I can remember most of the essential plot and characters, it has been quite a long time and some of the story has become hazy.  Interestingly, I just found an old copy of The Shining while I was cleaning my room this past weekend, this is another book that I really want to reread.  Especially because my view of the story has been distorted recently by watching Kubrick’s film version many times since getting it for Christmas (Kubrick’s “The Shining” is a great film but it is not credited as being very true to the novel).

I love reading interviews with authors talking about their works.

Of Literary Value; Continental Consideration

While primarily I would like to use this blog to discuss specific books that I am either reading, have read, or plan to read, I feel that this is also an appropriate space for me to discuss some things of interest in the greater realm of literature as a whole.  Ideally I would like to someday go back to school for some more degrees and for a couple years now I have thought that it would be pretty great to get a PhD in some study of literature.  Any advanced degree is likely still several years away, but that is no reason for me to sacrifice thinking about literature and the studies that surround it.

That being said I point you to this AP article that appeared on CNN.com earlier today.  I encorage those who ahve interest to read the article themselves, but will sum it up by saying that it is about how Nobel Prize permanent secretary Horace Engdahl thinks that literature from the U.S. is overall lacking and that that is why most Nobel Prize winners are European (and note that I am summarizing nicely, Mr. Engdahl more specifically referred to U.S. writing as “ignorant”). 

With bold statements such as those said by Mr. Engdahl it should be no surprise that there has been some raised debate about the merit of literature on both sides of the Atlantic.  Of course there always exists debate about the merit of literature as there has to be by the very nature of the art.  How is it determined whether or not a piece of writing is one of literary worth?  Of course there are many criteria to consider and disagreement on the value of the criteria is part of the whole discussion.  If a book achieves great popularity does that automatically make it of value in the study of literature?  Does it all rely on the critics who either praise a work of writing, or scoff at it and call it dirt?  What about when the piece is read?  Just because something is considered of value today will it be tomorrow?

The thing is that the study of literature cannot truly posses an objective degree of value.  There is no universal rating that marks some writing on the level of mere amateur garbage while it lists other pieces as near divine writ.  Yet it can be agreed that some writing has had an impact of great significance and thus must indeed be of “literary value.” Consider Shakespeare, or Crevantes‘ Don Quixote, there is not much argument that these are people or stories that are considered to have quite a bit of “literary value.”

So what does it mean that a European very intimately involved in the Nobel Prize thinks poorly of American writing?  I would say it really depends on where you stand, not just in the Continental sense, but ideologically in regards to what constitutes literary worth.  Personally I think there is a good deal of writing coming out of the States, as well as out of Europe, that is worth literary priase and recogntion.  A comment that suggest that one geographic region continually creates better works of writing than another region should be regarded as exactly what it is; a completely subjective statement.  As such the offense that Mr. Engdahl may have caused some may not be due so much because he does not appreciate American literature but more so because he would so confidently assert that somehow the writings of European origin are superior without considering the absolute impossibility of there existing any objective proof of this idea.

This article made me really excited when I read it earlier today because it allows the kind of discussion that I so love in regards to literature.  I hope other people have thoughts on this.  If you do please share them with me, I’d love to hear what you think.