March came in like a lion, with me spending nearly every available minute reading for the first week or two, then tapering off recently to play torchlight, black ops, and the do things all the time game. A few nights ago my kindle was showing low battery, so I plugged it in before I went to bed. When I woke up it was showing me the screen saver, but it would not turn on like usual. I tried everything I could find online to no avail, and ended up calling amazon customer service. After a minute or two of explaining my problem, I got transferred to a kindle specialist who, after trying a few more tricks, decided to send me a new unit. No charge, and it was sent overnight to me, arriving less than 24 hours after I called in with my problem. I’m pretty impressed with their level of customer service; if this is their plan to make me a loyal customer, it is working well. The only downside to all this is that since they just sent me a new one, I had to reload all of my books onto it from my computer, and I lost all the folders I had made, most notably the one I have of books I had completed. It had not occurred to me that my kindle would be replaced so soon into its life, so I haven’t been writing these down anywhere else - until I make these notes. I can remember most of the books I read, but I feel like I am forgetting one. So here are the books I read in march, maybe minus one. Also, I’ll stop writing about the books I am currently reading, and just write about them as i finish them, unless I have some great mid-book insight to reveal.
Completed:
Name of the wind - This is my second time reading this book, and it is no worse for wear. My first real reading passion were fantasy novels, forming the core of my love for many nerdly pursuits and also providing a nice refuge from a sort of ass trip through junior high. David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Piers Anthony, dragonlance, Robert Jordan, and so many others. As an adult I have gone back and read some of these with mixed results, and have come across other newer fantasy series that I appreciate as a mature reader, not just basking in the warm glow of nostalgia. This is probably the best new fantasy book I have read since childhood (sorry game of thrones, I still like you a lot) and certainly the series whose release I am most eagerly anticipating. If you have ever had an appreciation for fantasy books, read this as soon as possible. Since the series is not yet complete, and a good ending is pretty important to me, it could turn out that this series turns out super shitty. It is easy to like the beginning of something, and is much easier to create an interesting premise than it is to make a complete story that stays interesting till the bitter end. I hope it stays as good as it started, which is an excellent segue to my next book.
A wise man’s fear - The sequel to name of the wind, released this march, it is still very good, no worries. The author (Patrick Rothfuss) has been pretty clear since the first book that this is a series of three, and after reading these two books, it still has a clear narrative structure that will finish in the third book. These books are mostly told as a recollection of the main character’s past, and I could see the third book wrapping up the past storyline, and then there going a new series that covers what happens in the present. Either that or the last book is going to be around 12,000 pages long in order to wrap the series up suitably. The books are paced pretty slowly, but the way he writes, it never seems boring or like it drags - even in the parts where not much is happening plot-wise. Same as above, if you like fantasy novels, read this. Or wait a few years till the series finishes (?) in order to avoid waiting, if you’re the sort who can’t stand an unfinished story.
American on purpose - This is Craig Fergeson’s autobiography. I don’t watch late night talk shows any more, but I know of Ferguson, and think he is pretty funny. I was thumbing through the books I had to read and picked this without much thought, as I do with a lot of things, giving them a few pages to grab me. It turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be. A lot of it is the story of his life, and his troubles with drinking, his comedy career, so forth. The part I found the most interesting is concerning his lifelong desire to become an American. Not that I am American patriot number one, but unlike some people, there are a lot of things I like about my native land. It was interesting to hear about someone from another country wanting to become American as a counter point to Americans who are fed up with the many things that are valid to be fed up with in America, and who hold up other countries as good examples of how to run things. It was a nice reminder that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and that despite all our faults as a nation, we have a lot of unique advantages over other places in the world other than money and power, though those are certainly still advantageous. I meant more cultural advantages.
Lord of the flies - A classic that I was not required to read in my school career, and probably for the better. I can see myself at 15 resenting having to read this book, and despite its actual overall quality level, disliking mostly on principal; ladies and gentleman of the jury, please see exhibit A, the great gastby and a tale of two cities. Maybe I should go back and read all of the modern classics as an adult to see how they hold up, this one certainly did well. Though I don’t agree with everything he has said, I’ve always felt that Thomas Hobbes was on to something with his whole state of nature business. You don’t have to go too far away from everyday society to reveal a horrible and bestial side of man, always lurking beneath. This crops up any time the rules are not applicable and people feel like they can get away with their deepest desires, free from repercussions. The awful margins of war, riots, looting after a disaster, so on, so forth. It seems that most of the time in these situations you have the same pattern, a few people fight for order and cooperation, and many more give in to chaos. This book seems to me to be the blueprint for the entire zombie film genre, which succeeds not on the merits of its gory horror movie tropes, but on the way the characters react to the end of the world. In this book, dawn of the dead, the walking dead, the road, fallout, the disasters are mostly interchangeable. In most of the better apocalypse related material, the story is really about the struggle between order and chaos, and examining how different people handle life without an orderly society. What happens to us when society breaks down? This book, all zombie/apocalypse related literature and films, and many awful parts of the world seem to be in agreement that if (when) society collapses, even just for a little, all hell will promptly break loose.
A tree grows in brooklyn - I have heard the name of this book forever, but never read it. Something about the title always put me off for some reason, don’t know why. It is a wonderfully slow paced book, where the plot isn’t nearly as important as the picture that is being painted of new york city from a hundred years ago. It is delightful to see the similarities in the mundane aspects of early 20th century life and early 21st century life. Marriages, children, paying the bills, managing your family, a job you might not love, making your own happiness. I can relate to many of their day to day struggles even though the characters in this book deal with a much more serious poverty than I do - I have a warm house and nice things in it. However, as I think I mentioned before, this book is nowhere near the boiling-a-pig’s-head-in-a-bucket-on-top-of-tires-and-old-garbage-on-christmas-morning levels of poverty in angela’s ashes. Though the books do share a number of similarities, they are very different in scope. In this, they are poor but not dying, and the father in brooklyn is more of a sad drunk than the father in angela’s ashes, who drinks away all of the families welfare money, forcing them all to be so fucking dirt-ass poor all the time. Reading it the way that I did, in small snippets over the course of a few months really drove home the feel of the book as a series of events only related to each other so far as they happen to the same people, not as a tightly constructed plot.
Started, not completed:
None, save the first two or three pages of about a half-dozen different books I have already read to see if I wanted to give them another chance.
Currently reading:
Princess bride
The mother tongue
