Well, two kids hasn’t stopped me from reading yet, though I’m pretty sure the worst of the sleep deprivation is yet to come; it has only been less than a week as of this writing. Last night I noticed that my book light might have been too bright for her, even though her bassinet is on the opposite side of the bed from me. This would be a difficult development, because I can usually count on at least 15 minutes or so of reading every night. Maybe I need to do my reading in a more covert fashion, and prop a blanket over my head while I do it.
John dies at the end – David Wong
I went into this one blind, picking it on title alone from positive Internet word of mouth (Word of hand? Letter of keyboard mouth?) The author writes for cracked.com, which despite formerly being the poor man’s mad magazine, has carved itself out a pretty funny corner of the Internet mostly via clever lists. As it turns out the book became popular in much the same way as I had originally heard about it. The author had written a short horror/comedy story, and posted it online around Halloween instead of his usual writing, and it got a small following. He continued this trend every year, and the following grew steadily until he decided to put all of the stories together into a book. This book reflects its origin by sometimes feeling a bit disjointed, though this makes perfect sense given that it was written piece by piece over a large span of time. There are story lines that fizzle out, and others that come in somewhat unexpectedly later on in the arc of the book. You cannot try to take this book at face value and make sense of all the ins and outs of the plot, it is by no means that precise. The book does a great job presenting a very specific mood throughout without seeming to care very much if the entire plot is logically airtight. In this regard it is much more David Lynch than Christopher Nolan; sometimes (constantly) weird shit happens, and you just have to roll with it and not think too hard about it.
By the end of the book I was left with was roughly the same feeling I remember from evil dead and army of darkness – an easygoing mix of scary and funny, these two things joined securely by absurdity. I am usually not one for serious horror in any medium, my overactive imagination takes whatever fright is actually there and ramps it up to terrible, otherworldly levels. My usual response is something like turning all of the lights on, locking the windows and putting a chair in front of the door, standing up in the middle of the bed for the entire night with a machete and a football helmet. Just to be safe. Please let the jury see exhibit A, the great event horizon freak out of 1997-1999; and exhibit B, the time I read the shining at night in the winter, what-the-fuck-was-I-thinking. This book did not trip my usual fear reflex, though some parts were creepy, it was creepy in an atmospheric way, instead of creepy in an I-can’t-sleep-ever-again-way.
One of the things that the author did that I found particularly endearing was in his characterization of the evil forces in his world. In this world there are major supernatural forces at work, across multiple dimensions, and as it goes, some of them are pretty fucking evil. Many fictional inter-dimensional evil forces are the strong silent type, see your typical saurons, or cthulus. Silent, evil, most of their work done through lesser evil intermediates. All communication with them is usually limited to a sense of dread, madness or pain. Not so the major evil in this book, Korrok, who is depicted as the guy you always hated in school, the bully, the asshole. Destructive merely for the sake of his own personal enjoyment, instead of fulfilling some sort of prophetic destiny for evil, the main antagonist takes perverse joy in what he does, and imagining all the hurtful ways he could do it. He physically embodies all the world's assholes and bastards, and talks to you the way you’d think they would talk to you, if they were a giant evil throbbing psychic eyeball. In ways it reminds me of Randall Flagg from the stand, evil, but with a lot of personality to go along with it. Not enough to win you over to his side, but enough so that you remember him, standing apart from all the others evils you’ve crossed paths with.
Seventh son – Orson Scott Card
I was looking for a quick read so that I wasn’t tied up with something when dance with dragons came out, so I re-read the first book from the alvin maker series. A good series, especially in the beginning, but each book loses a little of the spark that really drew me to the first one, though a little slower than card’s other series (ender’s Game) which not only fell off the rails in the third book, xenocide, but also crashed into the mountain and shit itself. This series doesn’t hit the wall all at once, but each sequel past number two or three is definitely worse than the one before it, but never by a large enough margin for you to put the series down - you have too much invested in it. By the fifth and sixth books, they are nearly unreadable, and you wonder how you got lured so easily into a bad book. If there was a serious disaster you could have just quit, but the quality level keeps slowly drawing you in deeper, until you are drowning in the quagmire of book 6. Maybe a quick check on Wikipedia for dates of publication to see if he lost his mojo all at once across all series....yeah, 1991 seems like the cut-off. I’ll just let it be known that ender’s game and it’s sequel, and this book and the next two after it are excellent books for most young readers, the rest of each series is to be dealt with at your own risk, and with forewarning.
Ender’s game is probably my favorite book, if measured purely by nostalgic value. It had immense meaning for me when I first read it at 12 or so, hitting at exactly the right time for maximum artistic impression. I have read it more times than any other single book, never going more than a year or two without going back to it. This one piece of art has always been so close to me, but the artist who made it is somebody whose opinions I find sort of reprehensible. This is a hard divide to span, loving the art, but hating the artist. I know some people who have disavowed him and all his works based on his personal views, and the publicity he draws about it. In his case I feel that he is a bigot, and a vocal one at that. But it really isn’t any different if the artist in question is more of a crazy person, like of the Kanye West variety, or sort of an asshole, of the David O. Russel variety. Both are not men I’d probably enjoy knowing personally, but both are excellent at what they do. Many of history’s most beloved artists have been terrible alcoholics or drug addicts, or just generally bastardly. Is it not possible that making truly great art for many must come from a place of turmoil? I usually fall on the side of the argument where you forgive them their faults, and enjoy the things they make as objects divorced from their creators. It seems like a can of worms the other way, where you have to vet the creator of everything you come across to make sure one of them isn’t a bit of a shit. The feeling I get from people who want to banish certain artists works based on their personalities is that they are being somewhat arbitrary in these decisions. If you dug deep enough into most of the people who make the things you love, I worry what you might dig up.
Dance with dragons – George R. R. Martin
I’ll follow the same structure I set out for my review of books one through three.
Short version: sigh. Slightly longer version: FUCKING SIGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I’m not sure where to start here; I’ve been so excited about this book for so many years. The shortest way to actually sum up how I felt about this book is to say that, at the end of it, it was not that book I expected or wanted it to be. Which I guess is my fault for expecting it to be anything in the first place, that is always a certain path to disappointment. It is fair, for those of you who have some familiarity with fantasy books, to say that he wheel of times this series pretty hard in this book. There are so many new names and faces, or names and faces that were peripheral characters before who are being drawn closer to the spotlight. Not that that is a bad thing, or a bizarre thing in a series with such a high character mortality rate, but the manner in which it is done is maddening. I don’t want new threads to be introduced this late, not when there is so much going on in the world that I already care about. I want the things that have been set down already to be resolved. Is that an unfair desire? I don’t know, maybe it is unrealistic. I just don’t want entire sizable fractions of the book devoted to new entirely new characters, when there are major characters who are left dangerously in the lurch, or whose wheels seem to be spinning chapter after chapter. Let me re-phrase what I said before: It’s not that I dislike new twists towards the end of the story, what I don’t like is when they feel shoe-horned in, or like they were never planned in the first place. Lots of times I like to feel like the author knows what is going on, or more importantly, what is going to happen later. Again, I think this is unrealistic. I know from reading what some authors write about their own writing process, that sometimes things happen that they didn’t foresee, or that characters become almost self aware, and start behaving in ways that go against the original plan of the plot without going against their own nature. As a reader, though, it is frustrating. I’ve seen enough good fictions lose their way later on because it seems like they are shooting from the hip instead of sticking to the original story. If, in some cases, there ever was an original story line to follow. I watched some lost, and got tired of it, that’s not what I’m looking for.
It’s not that nothing happens, things do happen. Not nearly as much as happens in books one and three, the agreed upon high points of the series, but it’s not to say that NOTHING happens throughout. The real problem, and this is a bizarre problem for a 1000 page book, five deep in a series, is that I felt like it ended too early. A more apt way to describe this is to say that it ended on the wrong beat to keep this book and the next one interesting. It seems like pretty basic narrative structure to have a character arc, but that is still needed to keep you invested in any story, even one as convoluted as this one. At the end of books one and three, almost all of the characters have had major development in the book, but many questions are left unanswered, many times by the cliffhanger ending. Cliffhangers aren't a problem, they just have to happen at the right point in the story to work properly. In order to avoid any serious spoilers, I’ll draw a comparison to star wars. Near the end of the empire strikes back, luke learns that vader is his father, after a long struggle to go to him and confront him. This would be an example of a good cliffhanger. There is some resolution (his quest to find vader) but also many new questions asked. If empire were this book, it would end when luke arrives at cloud city. Yes things would have happened in the movie, but the ending would have left you limp. No real questions would have been answered, the character arc was less of an arc, and more of a character tangent. Instead of seeing something big happen, and being excited about even more happening, the credits would roll, and you would think “That’s it? That was the end?”
I like the world this book takes place in quite a lot, the atmosphere, the history, all of it. I also like the characters, and as a work of minor to medium character development, this is the cat’s pajamas. However, I also like the over-arcing plot of the books, and mid range character development takes up space that could be devoted to propelling the story in some direction. The worst part about all of this, is that I still feel so close to this series, and so invested in it, that I’m certain to be waiting in line (online) when the next one comes out, and I’m sure I’ll have full faith that it will restore this series to it’s former glory. After 15 years and 5000 pages it fucking better.
June
The baby storm looms, dark on the horizon. I plan on finishing the next martin book before she gets here, and we’ll see how I do after that.
George R.R. Martin - A Feast For Crows
This book is the first of the series that is a chore to finish, and to me that speaks highly of the three previous books, being as long as they are, and yet being so propulsive. It is the sort of book you’ll only like if you are already deeply engrossed in the world, and still, you’ll enjoy it begrudgingly. This is the book that a song of fire and ice hipster would claim as their favorite. The story with this book is this: the author realized as he was writing it that it was getting too long, and decided to split it into two books. In order to avoid an awful cliffhanger ending, and a fractured and unfinished book, he decided to split the two books in half by character, focusing on a handful of characters in book 4, and saving the rest of the characters for the fifth book. His misstep was that he picked (and introduced new) almost all shitty and grating characters for this book. In its defense, there are a lot of things that get set up that will surely have serious consequences later on. This is still, however, the slow point in the middle of the series, after all the good set up, but before all the interesting resolution starts to unfold. The good news is that by using up all the boring bits in this book, he has saved all the good characters for the next book. So let’s all keep our fingers crossed that he hasn’t lost it, and that book four was just sort of bland.
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
I would recommend this book to anybody who has ever worked with children or adults with special needs, it raises a number of interesting ideas about the nature and consequences of intelligence. Another of the “heard of it but never read it” types of classics, the story focuses on a mentally retarded man (Charlie) who receives an experimental surgery that hopes to dramatically increase his brain function. One of the things I found myself thinking about the most during the book is about how much truth there is in the old adage “ignorance is bliss”. The surgery makes him much smarter than before, but this new found cognitive ability gives him not only the ability to remember facts and analyze higher forms of argument and logic, but also to reflect on the possibly awful nature of the people who he knew when he was retarded.
I used to work at a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities, and one of the things I felt was that the more profoundly mentally challenged people were happier than the people who only had mild to moderate disabilities. The mild cases were much more likely to not only know what was wrong with themselves, but also be able to compare how they acted in relation to “normal” people. The most self aware and mildly disabled seemed to me to usually be the most likely to be unhappy, because they were the people who could recognize when they were being mocked, or when they were being excluded based on their differences. I knew a number of children and adults who were mildly disabled, and bristled at being treated as inferiors, or became easily frustrated at their lack of skills in certain areas because they could see where others succeeded, and it tore at them. Now, to be clear, this is by no means a rule. I also knew many people who were severely disabled who seemed quite unhappy, or people who were mildly disabled but had a cheerful demeanor and positive outlook on life. Lots of it came down to personality, and could not be classified or defined by levels or types of disability, but it was still a general pattern I saw.
In the book, Charlie has much the same train of thought. He sees interactions from his past in a new light, whereas before he might have thought that the people he worked with were laughing with him, he could now see clearly that they were laughing at him. One of the other side effects of his surgery is that along with his intellectual growth comes an equal level of emotional growth, which seems logical enough. He goes through a crash course of emotions that most of us get to deal with slowly throughout adolescence and young adulthood in the course of a few weeks. He stumbles through a romantic relationship or two, not knowing how to conduct himself, or how to act on all the new feeling he has . He has to come to terms with his growth from generally childlike to full adult emotions too fast, and as a result his personality changes from generally cheerful to cynical and callous.
I don’t think that the author intends to give you the impression that ignorance is indeed bliss, but it at least shows that it isn’t a simple issue, and that sometimes more knowledge can be as hurtful as it is enlightening.
Daniel Quinn - Ishmael
I have read this book before, maybe 6 or 7 years ago. At the time I remember feeling strongly about it, that it was an important book, with a strong and well argued point. The book is about man’s environmental impact on the earth, and how this problem is larger than just America, China and the rest of the major industrial powers of the world; the claim is that it has been a large scale societal problem for most of humankind sine the rise of planned agriculture in the fertile crescent. The book does not suggest that we drop steady agriculture in favor of hunting and gathering, but more that we acknowledge that we can’t keep consuming and growing at the rate we do without there being dire consequences. It also makes some interesting suggestions about the biblical story of cain and abel (among others) being an allegory for the dominance of agrarian societies at the time over the pastoral way of life. In the story, cain is shunned for his sins, and is marked as a sinner and driven away. The standard reading of the story makes cain the farmer out to be the villain, and it is suggested that it is told this way because it is originally a myth told from the point of view of the nomadic shepherds of the region. This is noted as ironic because the early Jews who adopted this story in the old testament were most certainly part of an agrarian society, and had adopted somebody else's denouncement of their way of life into their central creation myth.
Many of the ideas in the book are valid and worth discussing, but they are delivered in what now seems to me like a cheap and juvenile manner. I think it would have come across as a more well reasoned book if it had critically analyzed some of its own assertions, instead of just having a one sided discussion often bordering on lecture. It seems comparable to some of the old greek philosophical works, where an idea is presented as a false dialogue by having an “opponent” try to take the idea apart with mostly straw-man arguments, only to be continually rebuffed by the expert on the subject. It might have come across as better written if it had been just a book of non fiction about what the author thinks about the modern ecological movement, or if it was more deeply rooted in a better worked piece of fiction, and you took the ideas from the book in a less direct manner. Instead it seems like the book it beating you over the head with these ideas, all the while sort of weakly pretending to be a work of fiction. Doing some reading about the book after I had finished it to see if my sentiments was shared by anyone else who had come back to the book (they were), I was surprised to find that many people reported that this book was presented to them in a college level course. This is, in my opinion, not college level discourse. Not that i think it is without merit - quite the opposite in fact, there are many good points of discussion presented, I just think it is better suited for critical evaluation by a younger audience. Though I read it and felt moved by it in my post college years, looking back on it now it seems so different, so much less important. I think this is a book best read during that critical impressionable part of your life, where you are open to big, sloppy world changing ideas regardless of how well formed they are. It serves as an excellent reminder to me that while many things in the world have stayed the same, I have changed.
Gary Paulsen: Hatchet
After revisiting Ishmael, I decided to try to read something else I had already read, but from much farther back. I remember being deeply attached to this book at a very young age, some time in grade school. As with the previous book, this is one that needs to be read in the right age range to leave the maximum impression, that range being maybe 8 to 12. This is the first time I have re-read anything aimed at such a young audience, and the thing I was the most surprised at was how short the book was. I finished it in what seemed like less than one sitting, having only 1700 or so kindle mystery pages (conversion rate to real book pages not known). This is a great book for any emerging readers, a story of a child’s self sufficiency in the wild using just a small hand axe and his accumulated knowledge. It was a pleasant change of pace in its simplicity compared to the moral quagmires i usually read, there was very little awful soul crushing shit happening all the damn time, yes I’m looking at you mister Martin and mister McCarthy. There really isn’t much to say about this one, it is competently written, straightforward and to the point. Not much going for long form subtext here. Though one time at work one of my co-workers said, during a conversation about books we had read and loved as kids, that she very specifically did not like this book. Not indifference, not apathy - no. She said it was boring and stupid, who would want to read about someone out in the woods? I guess it takes all kinds. Even the doesn’t like a good book kind.
George R.R. Martin - A Feast For Crows
This book is the first of the series that is a chore to finish, and to me that speaks highly of the three previous books, being as long as they are, and yet being so propulsive. It is the sort of book you’ll only like if you are already deeply engrossed in the world, and still, you’ll enjoy it begrudgingly. This is the book that a song of fire and ice hipster would claim as their favorite. The story with this book is this: the author realized as he was writing it that it was getting too long, and decided to split it into two books. In order to avoid an awful cliffhanger ending, and a fractured and unfinished book, he decided to split the two books in half by character, focusing on a handful of characters in book 4, and saving the rest of the characters for the fifth book. His misstep was that he picked (and introduced new) almost all shitty and grating characters for this book. In its defense, there are a lot of things that get set up that will surely have serious consequences later on. This is still, however, the slow point in the middle of the series, after all the good set up, but before all the interesting resolution starts to unfold. The good news is that by using up all the boring bits in this book, he has saved all the good characters for the next book. So let’s all keep our fingers crossed that he hasn’t lost it, and that book four was just sort of bland.
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
I would recommend this book to anybody who has ever worked with children or adults with special needs, it raises a number of interesting ideas about the nature and consequences of intelligence. Another of the “heard of it but never read it” types of classics, the story focuses on a mentally retarded man (Charlie) who receives an experimental surgery that hopes to dramatically increase his brain function. One of the things I found myself thinking about the most during the book is about how much truth there is in the old adage “ignorance is bliss”. The surgery makes him much smarter than before, but this new found cognitive ability gives him not only the ability to remember facts and analyze higher forms of argument and logic, but also to reflect on the possibly awful nature of the people who he knew when he was retarded.
I used to work at a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities, and one of the things I felt was that the more profoundly mentally challenged people were happier than the people who only had mild to moderate disabilities. The mild cases were much more likely to not only know what was wrong with themselves, but also be able to compare how they acted in relation to “normal” people. The most self aware and mildly disabled seemed to me to usually be the most likely to be unhappy, because they were the people who could recognize when they were being mocked, or when they were being excluded based on their differences. I knew a number of children and adults who were mildly disabled, and bristled at being treated as inferiors, or became easily frustrated at their lack of skills in certain areas because they could see where others succeeded, and it tore at them. Now, to be clear, this is by no means a rule. I also knew many people who were severely disabled who seemed quite unhappy, or people who were mildly disabled but had a cheerful demeanor and positive outlook on life. Lots of it came down to personality, and could not be classified or defined by levels or types of disability, but it was still a general pattern I saw.
In the book, Charlie has much the same train of thought. He sees interactions from his past in a new light, whereas before he might have thought that the people he worked with were laughing with him, he could now see clearly that they were laughing at him. One of the other side effects of his surgery is that along with his intellectual growth comes an equal level of emotional growth, which seems logical enough. He goes through a crash course of emotions that most of us get to deal with slowly throughout adolescence and young adulthood in the course of a few weeks. He stumbles through a romantic relationship or two, not knowing how to conduct himself, or how to act on all the new feeling he has . He has to come to terms with his growth from generally childlike to full adult emotions too fast, and as a result his personality changes from generally cheerful to cynical and callous.
I don’t think that the author intends to give you the impression that ignorance is indeed bliss, but it at least shows that it isn’t a simple issue, and that sometimes more knowledge can be as hurtful as it is enlightening.
Daniel Quinn - Ishmael
I have read this book before, maybe 6 or 7 years ago. At the time I remember feeling strongly about it, that it was an important book, with a strong and well argued point. The book is about man’s environmental impact on the earth, and how this problem is larger than just America, China and the rest of the major industrial powers of the world; the claim is that it has been a large scale societal problem for most of humankind sine the rise of planned agriculture in the fertile crescent. The book does not suggest that we drop steady agriculture in favor of hunting and gathering, but more that we acknowledge that we can’t keep consuming and growing at the rate we do without there being dire consequences. It also makes some interesting suggestions about the biblical story of cain and abel (among others) being an allegory for the dominance of agrarian societies at the time over the pastoral way of life. In the story, cain is shunned for his sins, and is marked as a sinner and driven away. The standard reading of the story makes cain the farmer out to be the villain, and it is suggested that it is told this way because it is originally a myth told from the point of view of the nomadic shepherds of the region. This is noted as ironic because the early Jews who adopted this story in the old testament were most certainly part of an agrarian society, and had adopted somebody else's denouncement of their way of life into their central creation myth.
Many of the ideas in the book are valid and worth discussing, but they are delivered in what now seems to me like a cheap and juvenile manner. I think it would have come across as a more well reasoned book if it had critically analyzed some of its own assertions, instead of just having a one sided discussion often bordering on lecture. It seems comparable to some of the old greek philosophical works, where an idea is presented as a false dialogue by having an “opponent” try to take the idea apart with mostly straw-man arguments, only to be continually rebuffed by the expert on the subject. It might have come across as better written if it had been just a book of non fiction about what the author thinks about the modern ecological movement, or if it was more deeply rooted in a better worked piece of fiction, and you took the ideas from the book in a less direct manner. Instead it seems like the book it beating you over the head with these ideas, all the while sort of weakly pretending to be a work of fiction. Doing some reading about the book after I had finished it to see if my sentiments was shared by anyone else who had come back to the book (they were), I was surprised to find that many people reported that this book was presented to them in a college level course. This is, in my opinion, not college level discourse. Not that i think it is without merit - quite the opposite in fact, there are many good points of discussion presented, I just think it is better suited for critical evaluation by a younger audience. Though I read it and felt moved by it in my post college years, looking back on it now it seems so different, so much less important. I think this is a book best read during that critical impressionable part of your life, where you are open to big, sloppy world changing ideas regardless of how well formed they are. It serves as an excellent reminder to me that while many things in the world have stayed the same, I have changed.
Gary Paulsen: Hatchet
After revisiting Ishmael, I decided to try to read something else I had already read, but from much farther back. I remember being deeply attached to this book at a very young age, some time in grade school. As with the previous book, this is one that needs to be read in the right age range to leave the maximum impression, that range being maybe 8 to 12. This is the first time I have re-read anything aimed at such a young audience, and the thing I was the most surprised at was how short the book was. I finished it in what seemed like less than one sitting, having only 1700 or so kindle mystery pages (conversion rate to real book pages not known). This is a great book for any emerging readers, a story of a child’s self sufficiency in the wild using just a small hand axe and his accumulated knowledge. It was a pleasant change of pace in its simplicity compared to the moral quagmires i usually read, there was very little awful soul crushing shit happening all the damn time, yes I’m looking at you mister Martin and mister McCarthy. There really isn’t much to say about this one, it is competently written, straightforward and to the point. Not much going for long form subtext here. Though one time at work one of my co-workers said, during a conversation about books we had read and loved as kids, that she very specifically did not like this book. Not indifference, not apathy - no. She said it was boring and stupid, who would want to read about someone out in the woods? I guess it takes all kinds. Even the doesn’t like a good book kind.
May
All quiet on the technical front, except that I can hear this little piece rattling around inside the new kindle. I wonder how many hardware issues I’m going to have before I start to really complain? I guess as long as they keep sending me new ones, I haven’t really got that much to be mad about.
In my reading this year I have been focusing mostly on books that I haven’t read before, and have only a few times gone back to re-read something. There are so many books from various best of lists that I have loaded up on my computer that I have yet to try out, it seems silly to re-read something when all that great new content is waiting for me, but there are some books worth returning to for a second tour. At the beginning of the month I was coming off last month’s serious book tear (there are still three books that I read last month that I just didn’t write about, for lack of great insight - I guess I could just do a quick blurb/review? I don’t know.) and I decided to go back and re-read something I had already read. And instead of picking something quick, I picked the opposite.
A GAME OF THRONES,
CLASH OF KINGS,
STORM OF SWORDS,
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
I’m just going to lump all of these together, as they are all the same long story in a series. These books are universally loved by most, they come out at a snail’s pace, and the newest offering is set to come out this July, so I wanted to come into the new one with the story fresh in my mind. This time along I have encouraged other people to read it with me, and I have three guys at my work reading it, my wife, and I think I’m about to get my cousin on board too. Here is my short review of these books: DAAAMN.
Here is my slightly longer review: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.
Here is the full length version. If you read what I had to say about name of the wind, many of the same things are going to be applicable here. Lots of the books that I read when I was younger were written poorly, or in the no frills / workmanlike manner that many books aimed at pre-teens can be written. I would like to think that this series is a bit more well written, and it is arguable whether it is or not, but the subject matter is pitch black. Murder, incest, slavery, rape, torture, betrayal, war - rarely is it done tastelessly or sensationally, but the world these books take place in is a pretty fucking unforgiving place. The worlds of harry potter and lord of the rings (for example) are black and white places. Yes, in both stories, bad things can occasionally happen to good people, but generally speaking, the good guys are good and they win in the end, and the bad guys are bad and lose because of it. Not to knock either of those series or authors, it is just part of what they are. I never really worry that harry potter is going to die in any of his adventures. Harry is in the woods with a spider? Yes the forbidden forest full of elephantine spiders is a bit frightening to imagine, but in the back of my mind i know he is going to make it out alive. There is a zero percent chance that the encounter will end with the spider impaling Harry through the chest and then sucking his insides out through the stab hole while Ron watches from his own silken cocoon, shitting himself and screaming until his voice is hoarse. ZERO PERCENT. This makes sense with harry potter, it being aimed at children and all, but as an adult reading it there is a certain sterile quality to the encounters that removes some of the suspense from them. Not so in this series, (officially called “a song of fire and ice” but to hell with that, I call it game of thrones) the encounters are the opposite of sterile. They are, metaphorically speaking, filthy. People die all the time. Main characters. I’m not going to spoil any of the series for you here, but let it be known: main characters are not safe. No no no, they are not. The first time I read through the books, at one point I put the book down in disbelief, then flipped through the rest of book’s chapter headings to see if I was being tricked. At a later point in the series, I had to put the book down and walk away from it for a bit, to let my head clear, and decide if I wanted to keep reading. It is incredible what this does to the potency of the story - once you realize how harsh the world is, nothing becomes out of bounds, and every encounter becomes something you need to take seriously. The emotion of the characters become more potent, their fear more palpable; it lends a gravity to scenes in other books that just seem like filler between adventurous moments.
The author has cited the war of the roses as part of the inspiration for this series, and much of the book is given over, predictably if you know anything of that period in history, to court intrigue. The cast of this book is well past one hundred by the end of the first book, and most of them have their own selfish motives and desires. The absolute skeletal outline of the beginning of the first book is that a leader from a part of the world where there is no backstabbing aristocracy to speak of is drawn into the royal court during a time of serious upheaval and is immediately out of his element. In any other fantasy book, this stoic, salt of the earth sort of leader would be the clear good guy to the weaselly scheming of his new royal group of bad guys. Everybody there has their own agenda and personal advancement to see to, and sometimes this requires them to abruptly change allegiances if it looks like that will help them more than their old plan would. There is some excellent food for thought in the first book concerning the usual tropes of good guys following the rules, and bad guys looking out only for themselves. The question arises a few times of whether it is more right to follow the rules if that will lead to bad things happening, or if it is alright to massage the truth if it means avoiding those catastrophic situations. It turns nicely on its head the idea that the traditional good guy does what’s right, and that will always lead to the best possible outcome, and instead asks you to ponder if he may be blindly doing more harm than good by sticking to what is right by law. Now, certainly the schemers make out like bandits from these massagings of the truth, but what if they also avoid a war? Are they really looking out for the best interest of anyone but themselves? The characters are written with enough subtlety and depth that it isn’t always obvious who wants the greater good, and who wants personal gain, or if they really can want both.
The first three books are definitely plotted on an upward trending graph, whereas the fourth book has a touch of the shitties. It’s not completely without merit, but compared to the third book it is the first time I have felt like my re-reading to get up to date for book five is more chore than pleasure. Given the specific reasons why he fourth book was bad it is very likely (fingers crossed, wood knocking, so forth) that the fifth book will pick up where the third left off, and be fucking awesome. Or maybe he lost his authorly way and the whole series will be garbage forever, and be the twin peaks of fantasy novels: lots of early promise, no follow through.
In my reading this year I have been focusing mostly on books that I haven’t read before, and have only a few times gone back to re-read something. There are so many books from various best of lists that I have loaded up on my computer that I have yet to try out, it seems silly to re-read something when all that great new content is waiting for me, but there are some books worth returning to for a second tour. At the beginning of the month I was coming off last month’s serious book tear (there are still three books that I read last month that I just didn’t write about, for lack of great insight - I guess I could just do a quick blurb/review? I don’t know.) and I decided to go back and re-read something I had already read. And instead of picking something quick, I picked the opposite.
COMPLETED
A GAME OF THRONES,
CLASH OF KINGS,
STORM OF SWORDS,
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
I’m just going to lump all of these together, as they are all the same long story in a series. These books are universally loved by most, they come out at a snail’s pace, and the newest offering is set to come out this July, so I wanted to come into the new one with the story fresh in my mind. This time along I have encouraged other people to read it with me, and I have three guys at my work reading it, my wife, and I think I’m about to get my cousin on board too. Here is my short review of these books: DAAAMN.
Here is my slightly longer review: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.
Here is the full length version. If you read what I had to say about name of the wind, many of the same things are going to be applicable here. Lots of the books that I read when I was younger were written poorly, or in the no frills / workmanlike manner that many books aimed at pre-teens can be written. I would like to think that this series is a bit more well written, and it is arguable whether it is or not, but the subject matter is pitch black. Murder, incest, slavery, rape, torture, betrayal, war - rarely is it done tastelessly or sensationally, but the world these books take place in is a pretty fucking unforgiving place. The worlds of harry potter and lord of the rings (for example) are black and white places. Yes, in both stories, bad things can occasionally happen to good people, but generally speaking, the good guys are good and they win in the end, and the bad guys are bad and lose because of it. Not to knock either of those series or authors, it is just part of what they are. I never really worry that harry potter is going to die in any of his adventures. Harry is in the woods with a spider? Yes the forbidden forest full of elephantine spiders is a bit frightening to imagine, but in the back of my mind i know he is going to make it out alive. There is a zero percent chance that the encounter will end with the spider impaling Harry through the chest and then sucking his insides out through the stab hole while Ron watches from his own silken cocoon, shitting himself and screaming until his voice is hoarse. ZERO PERCENT. This makes sense with harry potter, it being aimed at children and all, but as an adult reading it there is a certain sterile quality to the encounters that removes some of the suspense from them. Not so in this series, (officially called “a song of fire and ice” but to hell with that, I call it game of thrones) the encounters are the opposite of sterile. They are, metaphorically speaking, filthy. People die all the time. Main characters. I’m not going to spoil any of the series for you here, but let it be known: main characters are not safe. No no no, they are not. The first time I read through the books, at one point I put the book down in disbelief, then flipped through the rest of book’s chapter headings to see if I was being tricked. At a later point in the series, I had to put the book down and walk away from it for a bit, to let my head clear, and decide if I wanted to keep reading. It is incredible what this does to the potency of the story - once you realize how harsh the world is, nothing becomes out of bounds, and every encounter becomes something you need to take seriously. The emotion of the characters become more potent, their fear more palpable; it lends a gravity to scenes in other books that just seem like filler between adventurous moments.
The author has cited the war of the roses as part of the inspiration for this series, and much of the book is given over, predictably if you know anything of that period in history, to court intrigue. The cast of this book is well past one hundred by the end of the first book, and most of them have their own selfish motives and desires. The absolute skeletal outline of the beginning of the first book is that a leader from a part of the world where there is no backstabbing aristocracy to speak of is drawn into the royal court during a time of serious upheaval and is immediately out of his element. In any other fantasy book, this stoic, salt of the earth sort of leader would be the clear good guy to the weaselly scheming of his new royal group of bad guys. Everybody there has their own agenda and personal advancement to see to, and sometimes this requires them to abruptly change allegiances if it looks like that will help them more than their old plan would. There is some excellent food for thought in the first book concerning the usual tropes of good guys following the rules, and bad guys looking out only for themselves. The question arises a few times of whether it is more right to follow the rules if that will lead to bad things happening, or if it is alright to massage the truth if it means avoiding those catastrophic situations. It turns nicely on its head the idea that the traditional good guy does what’s right, and that will always lead to the best possible outcome, and instead asks you to ponder if he may be blindly doing more harm than good by sticking to what is right by law. Now, certainly the schemers make out like bandits from these massagings of the truth, but what if they also avoid a war? Are they really looking out for the best interest of anyone but themselves? The characters are written with enough subtlety and depth that it isn’t always obvious who wants the greater good, and who wants personal gain, or if they really can want both.
The first three books are definitely plotted on an upward trending graph, whereas the fourth book has a touch of the shitties. It’s not completely without merit, but compared to the third book it is the first time I have felt like my re-reading to get up to date for book five is more chore than pleasure. Given the specific reasons why he fourth book was bad it is very likely (fingers crossed, wood knocking, so forth) that the fifth book will pick up where the third left off, and be fucking awesome. Or maybe he lost his authorly way and the whole series will be garbage forever, and be the twin peaks of fantasy novels: lots of early promise, no follow through.
April, part one
My reading schedule hasn’t been interrupted this month, despite kindle hardware issues, because of amazon’s policy to send you a new kindle before you send them the unit in need of repair, leaving you in full possession of your devices throughout the repair process. Way to go again, amazon. All of the holdup on any of the return/repair steps were fully on UPS, more specifically our probably angry at the world, petty for no real reason UPS delivery man. I did eventually receive it from them, though I’d like to note it was successfully delivered (on the fifth attempt, plus being sent back to amazon after three failed deliveries), by a different UPS driver. I can only imagine that this is UPS company policy in order to avoid particularly shitass drivers being greeted after a certain number of failed deliveries with a tiger pit lined with punji sticks in the front yard.
I remembered just recently the exact outcome of my last reading challenge to myself, and why it got derailed. Babies. Well, baby, the singular, to be more specific. When Atticus was born it cut significantly into my free time, and it was easier to watch something on the TV while holding him during the long long nights of newborn boot camp than it was to hold a book, what with all the page turning. Maybe a kindle will make this easier, but I doubt it. I already have some long form games (helloooo new vegas!) saved up for the occasion, to help pass the staying-perfectly-still on-the-couch-til-4am-as-not-to-wake-the-baby-who-is-asleep-on-top-of-me-so-my-wife-can-sleep phase. The last time around I was foolish enough to think I wouldn’t lose that much free time, and that I would find time to read just as much as before. Pfffffff. This time I know what is coming, and my goal is to read at least one book each month to give myself something to write about. I know I started this with big talk about no goals or expectations, but I’ve become quite fond of writing these and want to give myself this one, very small goal, as to keep this going. Enough preamble, on to the books.
PRINCESS BRIDE - When I read a book, I have a feel for the characters and the places of the book in my mind. I don’t usually have a specific and portraitable image of them, but more a general idea of who they might be, or what I’ve seen that I can draw on to recreate the image in my imagination. I’m sure I am not alone in this, and I feel like this is one of the things that makes reading so endearing - the ability to make each story uniquely your own by transforming the printed words into the full story playing out in your mind’s eye. So take this book, one that I came to after I saw a very iconic film version of the book. I liked it quite a bit, and, like other great book to movie adaptations, I can see that lot of the quality of the film came from good source material. I felt a disconnect from it though because I wasn’t creating a personal version of the story in my mind, I was just reading a version of something I had already seen. It felt like an overly elaborate screenplay, or a transcript of the film. I think if the movie had been only average, or forgettable, or if I had only seen it once, or a very long time ago, it might not have been quite as bad - but I’ve seen princess bride the movie many times. It was impossible for me to picture any of the characters as any way other than the way they were cast in the film, and the points of the book that had been changed for the movie felt odd and out of place. I think the better the movie of a book is, the harder it becomes to either go back and re-read it again with your original mind’s eye story intact, or to read it for the first time and not have your story altered irreversibly. Can anyone go back (or for the first time) and read Mario Puzo’s the godfather and really have their own version of what don Corleone’s office looks like? Can you picture Luca coming and talking to the don in a voice that isn’t slow and deliberate? I certainly could not.
METAMORPHOSIS - I initially picked this just as something short to be able to finish quickly, because I was having a what should I read sort of crisis. Sometimes you need to cleanse the palette from whatever it is you read last to get back on track. I have heard about Kafka before, but this is the first of his I have ever read. I was surprised by this short story, and can understand now why people use his name as a general description for a type of book or movie. It painted such a clear emotional picture of despair and loneliness, and in such a singular way. I always like when I can read something made long ago and still identify with it; it reminds me that people have always been roughly the same, and will in all probability always be. People will always be worried about being alone or isolated by their families, or feel alienated by the world. People will always resent those that make their life harder, but feel guilt for doing so. Not about the same ideas as this, but I felt the same thing at the end of a tree grows in Brooklyn, as that book is about a lot of the same core issue most people have in their life today. I think that there is a certain type of art that is good because is will always be relevant to people no matter when they take it in, and that the metamorphosis is that sort of art.
This author seems like one of the missing pieces from a larger puzzle regarding categorizing a sort of story I enjoy, but have always had difficulty describing to people. The two authors I link together in this regard are Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Lethem. Though both write excellent science fiction, both also write stories that occupy what I always thought of as the space between hardcore genre fantasy/sci-fi and real literature. They have well written stories where fantastic things take place without being the defining aspect of the entire book. Or, you could say it is a book with magic (or whatever the science fiction equivalent of magic is) in it without being a book about magic. Upon further research I have now learned that there is a term used generally to describe this type of book: magic realism. Though there seems to be some debate as who is included in this genre and who is a writer of strict fantasy, I think the through line for me is the use of a fantastic element to examine something more deeply or to expose some manner of truth. Neither of the authors I listed are considered part of this movement, but Kafka is mentioned as one of the first major authors of this sub-genre. It seems that most people who write about this type of book use one hundred years of solitude as their go to example of magic realism, so I guess I should probably read that soon. Oh, the book itself. Don’t turn into a giant lobster-roach, or everyone will hate you and you will die.
YOU MIGHT BE A ZOMBIE - In addition to reading books, I also read a fair amount of the Internet. I view it as the new magazine; small to medium length pieces to look at or read, of varying topic and worth. This is a book by the writers at cracked.com, a strangely compelling site full of top 5 and 10 lists of facts, stories, and humorous editorializing along the way. I remember cracked as being the poor man’s mad magazine, but it seems like they went the right route when compared tot heir old rival by getting good writers and a website, as opposed to a relatively shit sketch show. The problem with the magazine parts of the internet is that I read it like I would a magazine, skipping past all the boring bits and ads to get to what I’m really there for. This book immediately tripped my internet reading brain, and I skipped freely past anything that I wasn’t interested in, or already knew a bit about (I seem to a bit about a lot, it seems). VW was founded by the nazis? SKIP. The Milgram experiments were pretty scarSKIP. We went to war a bunch of times over bananaSSSSKKKKIIPPPP. Not to say I didn’t enjoy the parts of the book I read, on the contrary I liked them quite a lot. I just couldn’t read it like I do a book, not anymore, the internet has changed my light reading patterns. I’m not going to do full write-ups of them, but I also started and then did not finish after reading about a fifth of what white people like the book, and something called the book of general ignorance. They were both full of less interesting and less funny things that the cracked book. Also, too snarky, and too poorly formatted, respectively. So, short version: do you like the internet? Yes? Read this.
THE GAME - When I fist set out to read this, I was under the impression that it was a bullet-pointed sort of affair, a list of pickup strategies and techniques to use on women in order to bypass their built in genetic defenses against being picked up in a bar. Not that I need to learn how to better pick up women at this stage in my life, but I had read a bit of a debate on penny arcade a while back and this was mentioned there as an interesting jumping off point on this subject. The debate there was between the camps of “this is a bit greasy-seeming, predatory almost” and “some guys are sort of awkward and just need a bit of assistance when it comes to talking to girls”. It sounded interesting, so I set out to read it as an anthropologist would study lower primates and learn from their interestingly simple ways. It turned out to be quite a bit more interesting than I had originally made it out to be. After about 100 pages (no real idea, 800 locations? What is that worth in honest to god book pages?) I was ready to give it up, as instead of an easily readable manual of secretive pickup tactics, it was looking to be a long form story about this one man’s rise to conquering all of the ladies in the greater Los Angeles area. What I did not realize at the time was that this was merely the first part of the goodfellas pattern of normal things, followed by awesome things, followed by shitty things, followed by somewhat normal things again. It gets away from a celebration of picking up women as a system capable of being broken down and learned, and gets into the ramifications of living your life this way. All the things I was feeling sort of gross about in the beginning were eventually dealt with later on in the book. Many of these men are left pretty unhappy with their romantic lives, as all they have ever focused on is getting everybody's pants off as best they can. Consequently, they failed to form any real lasting relationships, or even knew to look for somebody they might, at some point, want to talk to. In the end I felt not-scuzzy about reading this, and saw some merit in the systems they are selling. Not the silly lingo, or the itemized lines and moves, but some of the more basic lessons are ones that many young men would do well to learn if they are having trouble meeting women. They make a point to stress good personal hygiene, having relatively new and clean clothing, and having things to talk about if you plan on talking to new people. All solid advice, I think, and not just for picking up women, but for not being a gross bastard. The people who have a profit to make of teaching lonely men their supposedly fool-proof love techniques would be the first to claim that these will work for anyone who follows them to the letter, no matter how awkward looking or acting he may be. I’m not sure that is really how it is, some of it will always come down to natural charisma and looks, but there is certainly room for growth. The real question I wonder about is would I as a younger lonelier man have been drawn to trying out these tactics, and would they have worked? Probably, and sadly, also probably.
I remembered just recently the exact outcome of my last reading challenge to myself, and why it got derailed. Babies. Well, baby, the singular, to be more specific. When Atticus was born it cut significantly into my free time, and it was easier to watch something on the TV while holding him during the long long nights of newborn boot camp than it was to hold a book, what with all the page turning. Maybe a kindle will make this easier, but I doubt it. I already have some long form games (helloooo new vegas!) saved up for the occasion, to help pass the staying-perfectly-still on-the-couch-til-4am-as-not-to-wake-the-baby-who-is-asleep-on-top-of-me-so-my-wife-can-sleep phase. The last time around I was foolish enough to think I wouldn’t lose that much free time, and that I would find time to read just as much as before. Pfffffff. This time I know what is coming, and my goal is to read at least one book each month to give myself something to write about. I know I started this with big talk about no goals or expectations, but I’ve become quite fond of writing these and want to give myself this one, very small goal, as to keep this going. Enough preamble, on to the books.
COMPLETED:
PRINCESS BRIDE - When I read a book, I have a feel for the characters and the places of the book in my mind. I don’t usually have a specific and portraitable image of them, but more a general idea of who they might be, or what I’ve seen that I can draw on to recreate the image in my imagination. I’m sure I am not alone in this, and I feel like this is one of the things that makes reading so endearing - the ability to make each story uniquely your own by transforming the printed words into the full story playing out in your mind’s eye. So take this book, one that I came to after I saw a very iconic film version of the book. I liked it quite a bit, and, like other great book to movie adaptations, I can see that lot of the quality of the film came from good source material. I felt a disconnect from it though because I wasn’t creating a personal version of the story in my mind, I was just reading a version of something I had already seen. It felt like an overly elaborate screenplay, or a transcript of the film. I think if the movie had been only average, or forgettable, or if I had only seen it once, or a very long time ago, it might not have been quite as bad - but I’ve seen princess bride the movie many times. It was impossible for me to picture any of the characters as any way other than the way they were cast in the film, and the points of the book that had been changed for the movie felt odd and out of place. I think the better the movie of a book is, the harder it becomes to either go back and re-read it again with your original mind’s eye story intact, or to read it for the first time and not have your story altered irreversibly. Can anyone go back (or for the first time) and read Mario Puzo’s the godfather and really have their own version of what don Corleone’s office looks like? Can you picture Luca coming and talking to the don in a voice that isn’t slow and deliberate? I certainly could not.
METAMORPHOSIS - I initially picked this just as something short to be able to finish quickly, because I was having a what should I read sort of crisis. Sometimes you need to cleanse the palette from whatever it is you read last to get back on track. I have heard about Kafka before, but this is the first of his I have ever read. I was surprised by this short story, and can understand now why people use his name as a general description for a type of book or movie. It painted such a clear emotional picture of despair and loneliness, and in such a singular way. I always like when I can read something made long ago and still identify with it; it reminds me that people have always been roughly the same, and will in all probability always be. People will always be worried about being alone or isolated by their families, or feel alienated by the world. People will always resent those that make their life harder, but feel guilt for doing so. Not about the same ideas as this, but I felt the same thing at the end of a tree grows in Brooklyn, as that book is about a lot of the same core issue most people have in their life today. I think that there is a certain type of art that is good because is will always be relevant to people no matter when they take it in, and that the metamorphosis is that sort of art.
This author seems like one of the missing pieces from a larger puzzle regarding categorizing a sort of story I enjoy, but have always had difficulty describing to people. The two authors I link together in this regard are Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Lethem. Though both write excellent science fiction, both also write stories that occupy what I always thought of as the space between hardcore genre fantasy/sci-fi and real literature. They have well written stories where fantastic things take place without being the defining aspect of the entire book. Or, you could say it is a book with magic (or whatever the science fiction equivalent of magic is) in it without being a book about magic. Upon further research I have now learned that there is a term used generally to describe this type of book: magic realism. Though there seems to be some debate as who is included in this genre and who is a writer of strict fantasy, I think the through line for me is the use of a fantastic element to examine something more deeply or to expose some manner of truth. Neither of the authors I listed are considered part of this movement, but Kafka is mentioned as one of the first major authors of this sub-genre. It seems that most people who write about this type of book use one hundred years of solitude as their go to example of magic realism, so I guess I should probably read that soon. Oh, the book itself. Don’t turn into a giant lobster-roach, or everyone will hate you and you will die.
YOU MIGHT BE A ZOMBIE - In addition to reading books, I also read a fair amount of the Internet. I view it as the new magazine; small to medium length pieces to look at or read, of varying topic and worth. This is a book by the writers at cracked.com, a strangely compelling site full of top 5 and 10 lists of facts, stories, and humorous editorializing along the way. I remember cracked as being the poor man’s mad magazine, but it seems like they went the right route when compared tot heir old rival by getting good writers and a website, as opposed to a relatively shit sketch show. The problem with the magazine parts of the internet is that I read it like I would a magazine, skipping past all the boring bits and ads to get to what I’m really there for. This book immediately tripped my internet reading brain, and I skipped freely past anything that I wasn’t interested in, or already knew a bit about (I seem to a bit about a lot, it seems). VW was founded by the nazis? SKIP. The Milgram experiments were pretty scarSKIP. We went to war a bunch of times over bananaSSSSKKKKIIPPPP. Not to say I didn’t enjoy the parts of the book I read, on the contrary I liked them quite a lot. I just couldn’t read it like I do a book, not anymore, the internet has changed my light reading patterns. I’m not going to do full write-ups of them, but I also started and then did not finish after reading about a fifth of what white people like the book, and something called the book of general ignorance. They were both full of less interesting and less funny things that the cracked book. Also, too snarky, and too poorly formatted, respectively. So, short version: do you like the internet? Yes? Read this.
THE GAME - When I fist set out to read this, I was under the impression that it was a bullet-pointed sort of affair, a list of pickup strategies and techniques to use on women in order to bypass their built in genetic defenses against being picked up in a bar. Not that I need to learn how to better pick up women at this stage in my life, but I had read a bit of a debate on penny arcade a while back and this was mentioned there as an interesting jumping off point on this subject. The debate there was between the camps of “this is a bit greasy-seeming, predatory almost” and “some guys are sort of awkward and just need a bit of assistance when it comes to talking to girls”. It sounded interesting, so I set out to read it as an anthropologist would study lower primates and learn from their interestingly simple ways. It turned out to be quite a bit more interesting than I had originally made it out to be. After about 100 pages (no real idea, 800 locations? What is that worth in honest to god book pages?) I was ready to give it up, as instead of an easily readable manual of secretive pickup tactics, it was looking to be a long form story about this one man’s rise to conquering all of the ladies in the greater Los Angeles area. What I did not realize at the time was that this was merely the first part of the goodfellas pattern of normal things, followed by awesome things, followed by shitty things, followed by somewhat normal things again. It gets away from a celebration of picking up women as a system capable of being broken down and learned, and gets into the ramifications of living your life this way. All the things I was feeling sort of gross about in the beginning were eventually dealt with later on in the book. Many of these men are left pretty unhappy with their romantic lives, as all they have ever focused on is getting everybody's pants off as best they can. Consequently, they failed to form any real lasting relationships, or even knew to look for somebody they might, at some point, want to talk to. In the end I felt not-scuzzy about reading this, and saw some merit in the systems they are selling. Not the silly lingo, or the itemized lines and moves, but some of the more basic lessons are ones that many young men would do well to learn if they are having trouble meeting women. They make a point to stress good personal hygiene, having relatively new and clean clothing, and having things to talk about if you plan on talking to new people. All solid advice, I think, and not just for picking up women, but for not being a gross bastard. The people who have a profit to make of teaching lonely men their supposedly fool-proof love techniques would be the first to claim that these will work for anyone who follows them to the letter, no matter how awkward looking or acting he may be. I’m not sure that is really how it is, some of it will always come down to natural charisma and looks, but there is certainly room for growth. The real question I wonder about is would I as a younger lonelier man have been drawn to trying out these tactics, and would they have worked? Probably, and sadly, also probably.
March Books
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
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