I want to talk about what sort of books I like best, and why I like them as a segue into the rest of the post:
I guess a lot of the fiction I read falls under the category of literature, as opposed to genre-fiction. I like stories that are not "romances" but have a romance as their focus, fiction that features time as a prominent theme, and literature set in a place that is not what I know (that would be outside of the United States, or before the 2000s) especially if it is written by a non-American.
I know that I like to read stories that feature romances because I find human relationships compelling and there's something vicarious about it, and literature from other places as a substitute for the traveling that I wish I could afford but can't, broke college student that I am. Alternately: different time periods, especially times of war. I don't know quite yet why I am so obsessed with the concept of time, but I have a hunch it has to do with my favorite genre: science fiction. Anything that has time-travel is automatically 75% more awesome to me. But interestingly, it's sci-fi television and films, especially the more recent ones that feel like less of the all-boy's club the pre 80s stuff is, that I prefer and not science-fiction genre novels. I never liked chemistry or physics in high school and I don't care about technological jargon, I just like the strange and the fantastic. Which is why young adult fantasy and horror are my other favorite genres.
I will always read a good ghost story. I loved telling ghost stories when I was little and I had a reputation for coming up with good ones. I also loved the Narnia books and the Chronicles of Prydain- any kind of fantasy I could get my hands on, and I continue to have a soft spot for such books, even now. Fantasy not geared for teenagers just doesn't affect me the same way so I don't think it's a waste of money to pick up new YA titles that catch my eye. I just guiltily splurged and picked up the first three Percy Jackson books (though they're more kiddish than YA if we're being honest) and I have White Teeth waiting for me to read as well (a YA book in poetry as opposed to prose? I am sold on that gimmick alone).
Keeping all this in mind, my favorites. There's a rule: no two answers can be the same book.
Book next to my bed right now: Good Omens, Love and Obstacles, Emma, Hopscotch by Cortazar. Books I have not read get the stack by the bed.
Favorite series: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Favorite book: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The one book you would have with you if stranded on a desert island: Love in the Time of Cholera
Book/series you would take with you on a long flight: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or maybe The Complete Persepolis if I'm in a graphic novel mood
Worst book you were made to read in school: A Tale of Two Cities, maybe. Great Expectations is vastly superior.
Book that everyone should be made to read in school: The Great Gatsby to appreciate prose, and Catch-22 to know that not everything you read in school is humorless. Oh and The Catcher in the Rye because everyone can relate to it, I think.
Book that everyone should read, period: The Diary of Anne Frank
Favorite character now: Perhaps Briony from Atonement
Favorite character as a kid: I'm not supposed to repeat but honestly it was Lyra from The Golden Compass
Best villain: Dracula
Favorite concept series: I don't remember
Favorite invented world: Lewis Carroll's Wonderland.
Most beautifully written book: I don't know but Nabokov surely wrote it.
Funniest book: Don Quixote
Books Being Read Midway Through March
I'm getting to a slow start reading Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union and Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence. They are two of the most thoughtful contemporary writers I can think of- it's going to be a bit longer before I finish.
In bookbuying news, I've bought very little lately because I can't really afford it or the guilt. I did pick up all three parts of The Lord of the Rings secondhand for $7. What I want to do though is to buy some new graphic novels. I'm just undecided about which.
In other news, the story about how Harper Teen paid a cool million for someone's debut YA trilogy is inspiration for me, to say the very least.
In bookbuying news, I've bought very little lately because I can't really afford it or the guilt. I did pick up all three parts of The Lord of the Rings secondhand for $7. What I want to do though is to buy some new graphic novels. I'm just undecided about which.
In other news, the story about how Harper Teen paid a cool million for someone's debut YA trilogy is inspiration for me, to say the very least.
The Girl Who Enjoyed A Good Crime Story
I know I said I "wasn't that into it", but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really hooked me about halfway through the book. I read to the end without stopping, which is exactly what a good crime/suspense/mystery novel should inspire, so I'm going to reverse my previous judgment. You might want to pick this one up if you haven't already.
An import penned by the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the first in an intended "Millenium-series". Larsson completed a trilogy of books before his death: Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, which is not yet available here in the US but will be released in May. The books have been hugely successful worldwide and it's not hard to imagine why Larsson's novels have become so successful here, too, amidst a crime television boom in primetime. Described as "a blast of cold, fresh air", The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo provides something familiar, but remains fresh enough to be set apart from the pack.
Our main protagonists, who eventually team up to solve a crime or two, are Mikel Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. The former is a journalist recently disgraced with a libel conviction which throws the future of the magazine he co-owns into question, and the latter is a tough, prickly and emotionally distant young woman whose pierced and tattooed appearance leaves an unusual first impression. She digs up dirt on people, including him, and he digs up dirt on people too. Blomkvist's skills and his situation eventually get him noticed by a man named Henrik Vanger of the noted Vanger Corporation, and Vanger asks him to find out what happened in an unsolved crime from several decades ago involving his beloved niece Harriet. Vanger cannot let it go, and sends Blomkvist on a quest to unearth his family and company's dark secrets in the hopes that an answer still may be found.
Blomkvist goes through a number of love interests and many potential suspects within the family are introduced, but the novel really picks up speed later when several complex threads of the Vanger case are developed (is there more than just one crime going on here?) and Salander's considerable skills and prickly nature are matched with Blomkvist's focus. All told he's a bit dull to center a novel around, but the occasional POV from Salander is refreshing. She's a fascinating and complex, unorthodox character who acts as an excellent foil to Blomkvist as the search for a killer heats up. The mystery is ultimately rich and thought-provoking, and as you finish you will want to pick up the next book.
Books Read in February Before I Started This Blog
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Haunting, beautiful, words read like they were stripped down by rough human hands that would occupy the novel)
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (This is my favorite of her books & I am unapologetic about it)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (An odd intro to Gaiman for me because it makes a better film than book, but still fun)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (I promised to be honest so three words: kind of dull)
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (Not my favorite in the genre but I want to read the rest of the trilogy anyway)
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (Delightful)
Up in the Air by Walter Kirn (Awful and brainless, I didn't finish. Watch the film instead, it has two brilliantly written female characters at the heart of it & I was in awe)
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje (Still my favorite author and with good reason)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (I'm reading this now and I'm Just Not That Into It, sorry Sweden)
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (This is my favorite of her books & I am unapologetic about it)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (An odd intro to Gaiman for me because it makes a better film than book, but still fun)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (I promised to be honest so three words: kind of dull)
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (Not my favorite in the genre but I want to read the rest of the trilogy anyway)
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (Delightful)
Up in the Air by Walter Kirn (Awful and brainless, I didn't finish. Watch the film instead, it has two brilliantly written female characters at the heart of it & I was in awe)
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje (Still my favorite author and with good reason)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (I'm reading this now and I'm Just Not That Into It, sorry Sweden)
The Truth in the Lies
Nothing in the world of Paul Auster's Invisible is straightforward. Reading it is an experience akin to wandering a hall of funhouse mirrors, or perhaps an descent into the different circles of Dante's hell, to borrow a literary reference that Mr. Auster himself takes in the opening pages. I had never read any of his novels before but my immediate conclusion was that he is a writer of immense talent and complexity. While I wouldn't accuse him of being esoteric, just try to keep up with the rest of his literary references.
The most pressing question Invisible raises is what separates the author from his novel. Much has already been made autobiographical references in his work and this instance, they thicken the plot even more. Auster was a student at Columbia University, translated French poems, spent time abroad in France. The main protagonist of his novel, Adam Walker, is also a Columbia student who travels to Paris. He translates French poems and as it turns out, has a familiarity with a certain twelfth-century Provencal poet that turns up in the pages of Dante's Inferno and gives the antagonist of the novel his name.
Invisible is divided into four sections. The first devotes itself to the point-of-view of Walker as the interestingly named professor and his withdrawn yet alluring girlfriend introduce themselves to the struggling undergrad poet at a party in the spring of 1967. It's an innocuous enough beginning to a relationship that becomes twisted in tragedy. One incident will go on to mark Adam forever. The second part jumps to James Freeman, Adam's friend from his college days, as he resumes contact with Adam many years later as a well-known novelist. The third part moves to Paris, where Adam almost unconsciously seeks out the professor and his old girlfriend and clumsily tries to reinstate himself on better moral ground. The fourth part ties up loose ends back in what accounts for the present, or perhaps goes to untie more.
Walker, as it turns out, is attempting to write the biography of his own life and the novel is largely parts of this biography. Freeman advises him on how to get over a difficult hump, recommending a point-of-view shift that is also incorporated. "I needed to separate myself from myself, to step back and carve out some space between myself and my subject (which was myself)," Freeman explains himself, and perhaps the author, as he recalls his own attempts at a memoir. The most shocking part of the novel, arguably, is evoked in the second-person; Walker's transgressions become the readers' transgressions in the accusatory "you".
Freeman is left with the task of finishing Walker's biography, which is what he has been doing all along, but with admitted considerable changes to names and such things. As Freeman tells us, his name is not James Freeman, but we cannot be sure that it is or is not Paul Auster either. More elements of the story are thrown into doubt, and it becomes hard to separate the truth from the lies.
I would definitely recommend that you pick up this book. You would be a bit unsettled, and a bit confused as Auster has surely intended you to be, but the book is quick reading. I pushed through it in a matter of days, eager for the conclusions that reaching the end would bring. Auster makes nothing easy for us but instead uses his considerable skills to provoke thought about the art of writing, the nature of sexual attraction, the potential of the human mind and the depravity into which it can sink. Read it.
Buy Invisible.
On Twilight, Nazis, and Book-Burning
Today I discovered a picture on Flickr that depicted a burnt copy of New Moon. It's one of those movie tie-in covers too, all black and glossy with Robert Pattinson et al's faces ridden with angst. I actually don't like looking at Robert Pattinson's face in the slightest but that photo evoked a grimace from me for entirely different reasons.
The burning of a book is marked historically by censorship of ruling political/religious institutions and parties of the day, and oppression of the distribution of certain kinds of knowledge. Bookburning is a notable ceremonial process for political, religious, or moral objections to literature and content. Book burning has connotations of oppressive authoritarian governments, from Qin Shi Huang of China cracking down on the works of the Hundred Schools of Thought in order to unify all political visions with his own to the infamous burning of books under the Nazi regime on May 10, 1933. Do we really want to go there over this?
It's definitely trendy to hate on Twilight now. If you're not a preteen girl chances are you feel underwhelmed about the novel series-turned films about a vampire (yes, the sparkles) falling in love with a human teenager. Even worse, the series is popular. Even worse, it's not brilliantly written. I've read it and I wouldn't say that it's worse than Dan Brown or a lot of other bestselling books. Bestselling books are bestselling because they have appeal beyond invested readers to the kind of person who will pick up a paperbook at random at the airport, and maybe read seven books in a year, why do I even have to say this? Someone who does not read a lot will have less strenuous standards of a text beyond "Is this entertaining? Is there enough suspense that I want to finish this story to the end?" And that's fine. Different people getting different things out of different types of books, brave new world. Snobs and college-age male skeptics, set down your Bic lighters.
I would be remiss if I didn't address the more serious aspect of the Twilight backlash about the kind of message it sends out to susceptible young girls about gender roles and relationships. Edward Cullen's behavior could be red flagged for abuse if you made a checklist. Having read all of the books but Breaking Dawn (even I have my limits), I had to say that the Twilight series is romance fantasy of the most flippant kind. To me, the discriminating and slightly older than the target audience reader, it takes itself so seriously that it cannot possibly be serious. But there is something though about this Bella Swan girl that teen girls are relating to in droves. To me she reads very much like an empty vessel, but perhaps that makes it easier for their self-insertion into the story.
Would I let my daughter read the book? I wouldn't stop her from reading very many things to be honest; I would hope I raised her to have a questioning mind. The truth is, our culture is already like navigating a minefield of sexism and backdated social views. "Girls, you in danger." Time is short, Twilight is cheap, and it's not setting us forward, I know that.
The Twilight backlash still makes me roll my eyes thought because it ends in needlessly dramatic, wannabe-edgy thoughtless gestures like this. You are setting up no debates about the things that matter, or even reading a book- in fact, you're thinking less than Stephenie Meyer, Twilight author. You didn't want it in the first place, WHY ARE YOU BUYING A BOOK TO BURN IT?!? Start discussions over the validity of the text, protest near Stephanie Meyer's house with a sign or something, but don't burn the books. It's destructive and it's offensive and it's not up to you to take that book off the market.
The burning of a book is marked historically by censorship of ruling political/religious institutions and parties of the day, and oppression of the distribution of certain kinds of knowledge. Bookburning is a notable ceremonial process for political, religious, or moral objections to literature and content. Book burning has connotations of oppressive authoritarian governments, from Qin Shi Huang of China cracking down on the works of the Hundred Schools of Thought in order to unify all political visions with his own to the infamous burning of books under the Nazi regime on May 10, 1933. Do we really want to go there over this?
It's definitely trendy to hate on Twilight now. If you're not a preteen girl chances are you feel underwhelmed about the novel series-turned films about a vampire (yes, the sparkles) falling in love with a human teenager. Even worse, the series is popular. Even worse, it's not brilliantly written. I've read it and I wouldn't say that it's worse than Dan Brown or a lot of other bestselling books. Bestselling books are bestselling because they have appeal beyond invested readers to the kind of person who will pick up a paperbook at random at the airport, and maybe read seven books in a year, why do I even have to say this? Someone who does not read a lot will have less strenuous standards of a text beyond "Is this entertaining? Is there enough suspense that I want to finish this story to the end?" And that's fine. Different people getting different things out of different types of books, brave new world. Snobs and college-age male skeptics, set down your Bic lighters.
I would be remiss if I didn't address the more serious aspect of the Twilight backlash about the kind of message it sends out to susceptible young girls about gender roles and relationships. Edward Cullen's behavior could be red flagged for abuse if you made a checklist. Having read all of the books but Breaking Dawn (even I have my limits), I had to say that the Twilight series is romance fantasy of the most flippant kind. To me, the discriminating and slightly older than the target audience reader, it takes itself so seriously that it cannot possibly be serious. But there is something though about this Bella Swan girl that teen girls are relating to in droves. To me she reads very much like an empty vessel, but perhaps that makes it easier for their self-insertion into the story.
Would I let my daughter read the book? I wouldn't stop her from reading very many things to be honest; I would hope I raised her to have a questioning mind. The truth is, our culture is already like navigating a minefield of sexism and backdated social views. "Girls, you in danger." Time is short, Twilight is cheap, and it's not setting us forward, I know that.
The Twilight backlash still makes me roll my eyes thought because it ends in needlessly dramatic, wannabe-edgy thoughtless gestures like this. You are setting up no debates about the things that matter, or even reading a book- in fact, you're thinking less than Stephenie Meyer, Twilight author. You didn't want it in the first place, WHY ARE YOU BUYING A BOOK TO BURN IT?!? Start discussions over the validity of the text, protest near Stephanie Meyer's house with a sign or something, but don't burn the books. It's destructive and it's offensive and it's not up to you to take that book off the market.
Free Will Versus Fate in the Making of This Blog
Let me be straightforward about the content of my first post to this blog: I will outline who I am and why it's relevant, why I think that it is worth my time to write this blog, and last but not least what I promise to deliver.
When I was four years old, perhaps a little younger, I learned how to read. I remember Friday afternoons spent on our old leather couch under the scratchy white blanket with a book; even more satisfyingly when those Friday afternoons were rainy. I remember my first bookshelf, which I still have- it's a study old thing and will outlive the bookshelves I've bought since. (There is still nothing better than the sight of a bookshelf crammed with books, nor is there a better insight into the intellectual life and growth of a person.) I remember both the daring and comfort of a new book- adventure and entertainment without leaving the living room. My life was great because of books.
It wasn't just the escape of the story that beckoned to me, there was the physical object of the book too. Many people who were part of my life at the time can attest to walking into a room and seeing me sitting there with my nose buried deeply within the pages of a book, inhaling like my life depended on it. As I grew, I read in the car. I wrote my own stories, in several different shades of Magic Marker, and stapled the pages together to pass around. I got lost in bookstores, libraries, the Bookmobile. I carried around at least three books with me at all times.
When I finally reached the age where I was college-bound, it seemed natural that I become an English major. The world had changed since I was a child, but I hadn't. We were facing one great digital revolution, people wringing their hands about the fate of publishing (hands are still wringing), a tough economy that recognized the validity of choosing such a major about as much as my other more rational-minded and critical peers ("Haha, what are you going to do with a BA in English?") but I couldn't see myself in any other line. It was working with books and languages, or nothing. Call me crazy but I had been taught to play to my strengths, and my strengths were literary analysis and writing. I was mediocre and bored in math, most of the sciences (and to top it off, squeamish about blood so doctoring was out), nervous about public speaking, and no great shakes at other creative potential careers (though I suppose acting or painting wouldn't have been any more practical than my chosen career path). So English it was.
I contemplated journalism and teaching at various times, but kept circling back around to the allure of the book itself. The cover. The pages. The binding. I love it all. In a world with an eye cast forward towards e-books, this makes me doubly crazy. It is a passion that won't die. And I don't intend to fight it, I will just embrace it for as long as I can. Call me not just a bookworm, but an optimistic bookworm. I will always enjoy the heft of a new book in my hands, and this is why I want to be in publishing.
One of the things I can and have attached myself to in this so-called digital revolution affecting the publishing industry is the blogosphere. Or what some would dismiss as a vapid symposium of people with little to say but a platform from which to speak anyway, full of shallow analysis marked by cynicism and casual dismissal to rule the day. But it's been my finding that for as many mediocre bloggers there is someone thoughtful, honest, provoking or just damn interesting blogging about the same topic. Voices that we wouldn't get the opportunity to hear otherwise, and a community to plug into; a community that would not be replacing something that already exists but generating new contacts. The magic words are "You're reading that? I am too." and often that's all you need.
I've decided to 'plug in' and launch a book blog of my own. Whether or not it will be a success under any definition remains to be seen, but I'd like to try and put my own bookminded waves out there.
First and foremost, this blog is to chronicle a voracious appetite for reading. All the books I love and the books I don't and why will be written about here in excessive detail. As I work to attain a Master's in Publishing, other publishing topics might crop up too, especially concerning book design. I'm also a writer trying to crank out my first novel- I'd like to include relevant slices on the craft of writing. And because I believe in media cross-contamination, film/television/music references in my favorite literature and my favorite of other media's literary references should crop up too. It'll be a party.
I promise to be entertaining first of all. I don't think I'd like to type just to see myself type. (If I get too dull or distracted I'll pull out- that's the great/terrible thing about blogs, they can blow away easily like a tumbleweed when the blogger gets bored.) I promise to be honest. I promise to care for what I'm writing about. Always that.
Let's get you and I hooked up with some good reads. My view on what makes a book good is closely aligned with Hemingway's, so take note:
Here's to being compelled by books long into the future.
When I was four years old, perhaps a little younger, I learned how to read. I remember Friday afternoons spent on our old leather couch under the scratchy white blanket with a book; even more satisfyingly when those Friday afternoons were rainy. I remember my first bookshelf, which I still have- it's a study old thing and will outlive the bookshelves I've bought since. (There is still nothing better than the sight of a bookshelf crammed with books, nor is there a better insight into the intellectual life and growth of a person.) I remember both the daring and comfort of a new book- adventure and entertainment without leaving the living room. My life was great because of books.
It wasn't just the escape of the story that beckoned to me, there was the physical object of the book too. Many people who were part of my life at the time can attest to walking into a room and seeing me sitting there with my nose buried deeply within the pages of a book, inhaling like my life depended on it. As I grew, I read in the car. I wrote my own stories, in several different shades of Magic Marker, and stapled the pages together to pass around. I got lost in bookstores, libraries, the Bookmobile. I carried around at least three books with me at all times.
When I finally reached the age where I was college-bound, it seemed natural that I become an English major. The world had changed since I was a child, but I hadn't. We were facing one great digital revolution, people wringing their hands about the fate of publishing (hands are still wringing), a tough economy that recognized the validity of choosing such a major about as much as my other more rational-minded and critical peers ("Haha, what are you going to do with a BA in English?") but I couldn't see myself in any other line. It was working with books and languages, or nothing. Call me crazy but I had been taught to play to my strengths, and my strengths were literary analysis and writing. I was mediocre and bored in math, most of the sciences (and to top it off, squeamish about blood so doctoring was out), nervous about public speaking, and no great shakes at other creative potential careers (though I suppose acting or painting wouldn't have been any more practical than my chosen career path). So English it was.
I contemplated journalism and teaching at various times, but kept circling back around to the allure of the book itself. The cover. The pages. The binding. I love it all. In a world with an eye cast forward towards e-books, this makes me doubly crazy. It is a passion that won't die. And I don't intend to fight it, I will just embrace it for as long as I can. Call me not just a bookworm, but an optimistic bookworm. I will always enjoy the heft of a new book in my hands, and this is why I want to be in publishing.
One of the things I can and have attached myself to in this so-called digital revolution affecting the publishing industry is the blogosphere. Or what some would dismiss as a vapid symposium of people with little to say but a platform from which to speak anyway, full of shallow analysis marked by cynicism and casual dismissal to rule the day. But it's been my finding that for as many mediocre bloggers there is someone thoughtful, honest, provoking or just damn interesting blogging about the same topic. Voices that we wouldn't get the opportunity to hear otherwise, and a community to plug into; a community that would not be replacing something that already exists but generating new contacts. The magic words are "You're reading that? I am too." and often that's all you need.
I've decided to 'plug in' and launch a book blog of my own. Whether or not it will be a success under any definition remains to be seen, but I'd like to try and put my own bookminded waves out there.
First and foremost, this blog is to chronicle a voracious appetite for reading. All the books I love and the books I don't and why will be written about here in excessive detail. As I work to attain a Master's in Publishing, other publishing topics might crop up too, especially concerning book design. I'm also a writer trying to crank out my first novel- I'd like to include relevant slices on the craft of writing. And because I believe in media cross-contamination, film/television/music references in my favorite literature and my favorite of other media's literary references should crop up too. It'll be a party.
I promise to be entertaining first of all. I don't think I'd like to type just to see myself type. (If I get too dull or distracted I'll pull out- that's the great/terrible thing about blogs, they can blow away easily like a tumbleweed when the blogger gets bored.) I promise to be honest. I promise to care for what I'm writing about. Always that.
Let's get you and I hooked up with some good reads. My view on what makes a book good is closely aligned with Hemingway's, so take note:
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."
Here's to being compelled by books long into the future.
