Pauline's A-Z Reads 2011

While last year's 62 reads was more than my set goal for 2010 (which was 52, or a book a week), it was still a bit dismal considering that I missed out on letters I, N, Q, U and X. I plan to make up for it this year.

But first, an introduction.

Hey there! :) I'm Pauline, a Journalism student from the Philippines. I'm 20, amusingly curly (hair or brain - goes both ways, really), and a big reader. I'm not big on paragraphs - I'm more into lists, so here's a get-to-know-me-in-bullets:

* I hate fish.
* My mother named me after a character she read in a book. When I asked her about it for an assignment on where our names came from in 2nd grade, she couldn't recall the book's title or author - all she could remember was that the Pauline character in the book was a detective. It's been a mystery to me ever since. Close call: James Patterson's The Beach House, which unfortunately was written years after I was born.
* I'm the eldest of six (4 girls, 2 boys) and I reckon half of us sibs are big readers. I think.
* I have a folder on my desktop called Attempts at Immortality. It's filled with drafts and ideas for novels, short stories, and skits. Nope, nobody's read them besides me. Yet.
* I have a book blog called The Wannabe Literati.
* This year, I'll be reading through the 1001 lists as well as award-winning books. Yes, such is my attempt in exposing myself to the great reads of the world. Hopefully I can keep it up, though.
* My favorite author is Augusten Burroughs, mainly because I find him so brave for sharing his entire life for the world to read.

Those with asterisks have been reviewed below:

A:
Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad
B:
Annie Barrows - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society*
C:
J.M. Coetzee - Foe
D:
E:
F:
G:
David Grossman - Lion's Honey*
H:
I:
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day* ; Nocturnes
J:
K:
L:
M:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Memories of My Melancholy Whores*
N:
O:
P:
Victor Pelevin - The Helmet of Horror
Q:
R:
Lee Rourke - The Canal*
S:
Mary Ann Shaffer - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society*
Anita Shreve - The Last Time They Met*
T:
U:
V:
W:
Alice Walker - The Color Purple*
X:
Y:
Z:

"But sleep remain a stranger to this night." - Thoughts on The Color Purple by Alice Walker

I can’t beleef I’s took long to read this book. But then again, books have they way of coming to your life when’s you need them most.

I first hear of The Color Purple back when’s my friends taking up class in Film and Litratur. They was made to read it before them teacher show the movee to class. Sure was curios, them says it about poor black womans with lesbian tendesis. Plus the fact that Oprah had somethings to do with the film. Hear the book was famous. Felt likes I the only one who not read the book yet, but then forgots it until I pick it up on my book pile on New Year’s.

Book’s thin, not much to read, wudda have read it in one sitting if I’s wanted, but you know me, I likes to make good things last. Instead made myself not read it until night, before sleep, but then spent first three nights of the year with insomya. Thank the good Lord for this book or I’s have chewed sleeping pills like candy.

Do I’s got to tell you what it story for? Maybe I shudnt. Maybe you go and git a copy and read it yourself. I’s know what I tell you, tho. I’s tell you how nice it was, reading The Color Purple. Reminds me of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon – them some of last year’s reads – more of the late one than that before, really. Celie’s a good bloke, not very bright, but her dumb she makes up for character. Her sister Nettie was the smart one, went off as a mishunary to Africa, sent letters to Celie that wudnt have been read because Celie’s husband dint givem to her. Damn Mr. __________ – good thing’s there Shug to help Celie out.

Oh, Shug. She be fine and dandy as hell. Feisty woman at a times when womans not supose to be. She like the version of Anna in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in somes way, and Kitty be Celie – they’s fall for the same man at the start, Vronsky. But Anna and Kitty dint git no lesbians with each other.

And there’s be everyone else: Harpo, his wives stubborn Sofia and singing Squeak; Celie’s childrens Olivia and Adam, born when Celie’s Pa raped her before he marry her off to Mr. __________; mishunarys Samuel and Corrine, who welcomes Nettie to the family when she ran away. They’s such a band of misfits they form a family that be perfect.

Damn. I’s said I aint telling you nothing. Now I’s must have spoiled you something.

The Color Purple git funny some, git really sad, too. There even be surprise bits. Mostly it thoughtful book, makes you think about lotsa things. Best part I read that make me pause and let things sink in, when Shug and Celie talk about God. Celie always write to God her letters, but then she stop. Shug ask her, then they’s talk about God.

Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.

That Shug. She may be a sinner, but she knows God better than them some churchgoers.

PS. Writing like this, it git hard to keep up. Miss Walker ma’am, you’s one hell of a writer to keeps this up for an entire’s length of a book. Dang.

Originally posted here.

"Such extraordinary emotions in the space of paragraphs." - Thoughts on The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve

I hate you, Anita Shreve.

I hate you for writing The Last Time They Met. For making me fall in love and breaking my heart, all at once, on the same (last) page. I hate how you pretty much destroyed my hope in finding love as perfect and enduring and dangerous as that of Linda and Thomas. I will now probably end up an old maid with delusions of love so grand, there is no possibility whatsoever that I will find it. All thanks to you.

I hate you for creating a character like Thomas: a man who has his faults, but who loves with such a passion that all faults are forgotten. You just made me go against my personal standard of not falling for men who smoke, all for someone who unfortunately exists only on paper and in your words.

Thomas, oh Thomas. Who aged so beautifully backwards, whose poetry I was never able to read (yes, women who are reading this, this lovely character writes poetry!) but for which I am willing to bet a limb on is beautiful prose. Thomas, whose love never waned from boyhood to manhood to old age, despite all the sad in-betweens and heart-wrenching subplots to the story. I caught myself asking - nay, praying - if the good Lord will permit him to come alive, so that I may look for him, find him and fall in love with him, in the hopes that he will love me in return. But then I realized this cannot be - nay, this shouldn't be - because I am no Linda: I am not the woman he was meant to be with.

And Linda, whom I envied with such conviction because she was capable of love so enduring that it survived personal tragedies, subsequent relationships, distance and time. Linda, compared over and over to Magdalene - a fallen woman. And yet despite that she had the luck of the draw; she, whose soulmate was a man equally, if not more, madly in love with her as she is with him.

I hate you for writing The Last Time They Met the way it's written: backwards, like reading a book from the last page forward. And yet, it never read like a flashback or a memory or a reminiscent. Oddly, Thomas and Linda seemed to have grown more as they aged younger, from fifty-two, to twenty-six, to seventeen, yet at the same time they also seemed more bare as the story progressed; like watching an artist paint on tape and in rewind: a complete portrait, fully painted, worked in reverse until all that remained were the sketches, skeletal. But aren't skeletons the basic means of support?

I hate you for giving them writing professions, for making Thomas a poet, and for letting him tell Linda that she's cut out for novels than poems (Did you become a poet because of me?). I hate you for including an exchange of letters, for allowing a peek more intimate than any narration could ever hope to achieve: words written by the characters themselves, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, overall inadequate. As Linda first wrote to Thomas: "I think that words corrupt and oxidize love. That it is better not to write of it."

And to which Thomas promptly replied: "Write me. For God's sake, keep writing."

I am running out of words as to how your book has ruined me, Anita Shreve. And so I will resort to quoting from their brief exchange of love letters - a more adequate show of the agony you have put me through:

"So much has been left unsaid."

Ugh, Anita Shreve. Your book has turned me into a blabbering lovestruck buffoon.

PS. The ending was the death of me. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

Orinigally posted here.

Hello Pauline,
Just stumbled upon your thread and absolutely *love* your reviews. Looking forward to reading more!

#5: Why, thank you littlegreycloud! :D

"... absolutely *love* your reviews." - You flatter me so! :P

Amazing review of The Last Time They Met. I will definitely be adding that one to the TBR mountain. Thanks.

Look forward to your next reads.

“I’m not asking you to understand. I’m asking you to listen.” – Thoughts on The Canal by Lee Rourke

First off, a story (of sorts) – here is how I ended up reading this book:

“Oh, a book on boredom! That’s a new concept. Interesting. Maybe I should read it. I definitely should read it. Or maybe the boredom thing’s just a ploy – you know, those kinds of books ‘promising narration of an equally promising point of view,’ until you actually read it and then find out it’s a total waste of time and brain cells. Then again, I wouldn’t know until I try. Oh well, no harm done in reading it.”

And that was that.

A person needs three things when reading Lee Rourke’s The Canal: patience, patience, and more patience. But don’t get me wrong – I didn’t enumerate patience three times to emphasize a great deal needed for this book. Rather, different things call for different kinds of patience, and so you need three versions of it for three things: patience for the story, patience for the (unnamed) narrator, and patience for the shifting fascinations on things, namely on ducks, gravity, and airplanes.

Am I making sense here? Not really, no? Here, let me try again.

I’m the kind of person who stubbornly reads through a book no matter what. Sometimes I put them down for a time – a day or two, a week, a month, until I run out of other books to read and I have no other choice – but for as long as I’ve started reading them, I have a need to finish them. Fortunately, The Canal didn’t need to be put down out of boredom – on the contrary, I had to stop reading to prolong the agony before the last chapter, something I did not expect to be doing when I started reading. Which is why, dear readers, it is a book that should not – I repeat, not – be judged by its first 50 pages.

The narrator – nameless, faceless, jobless even – is probably the most bored person I’ve read of. He reminds me of that dude from Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero, except that this narrator isn’t filthy rich nor young (nor with an identity, even). Our narrator, however, has a lush vocabulary. Some examples:

“I’d say it was almost crepuscular…”

“I hoped that my crumbling riposte the previous week hadn’t alarmed her.”

“…looking at the multitudinous rooftops of Hackney.”

So to say that the narration is lifeless and boring is just plain wrong – nobody uses miasma in everyday sentence, let alone on everyday thought. The upside to our male narrator is an equally nameless, albeit more mysterious, female subject – who is harboring a secret. On page 51.

Told you not to judge by its first 50 pages.

This secret is the thing that bonds these two strangers – she talks, he listens. “Bored people will listen to just about anything,” she said, and so he is consumed by her confidences, to the point that he obsesses over her identity – “and her lessness made it all the more terrifying” – and what had brought her to the canal, where he spends his boring days. What she shares would shock any of us in real life, I’m sure, but then again, isn’t it easier opening up to strangers? “Unlike my friends, the few I have, I don’t care what you think about me.”

Rourke writes with subtle OCD, his attention to detail covering ducks and canal dredgers and airplanes; he can shift from the general picture to Boeing 747s and specific sub-aquatic birds. The book’s tone is set to somber, yet I can’t help but think of Rourke’s writing as quirky – quietly dizzying, or whatever oxymoron fits the description. I disagree with John Wray’s blurb at the back of the book – “The Canal may look, at first glance, like a love story” - because it is a love story. Only it’s not about the love story, but something else.

Overall, The Canal is one elaborately long, suspenseful scene, stretched so far, for as long you can take it, and then in one swift movement Rourke lets you go. It starts with boredom, yes, but then again boredom leads to many things.

PS. Rourke's description of rain: "a cacophony of mini-aquatic explosions" - just perfect.

Originally posted here.

"Important, but not quite loved." -Thoughts on Lion's Honey by David Grossman (translated from Hebrew by Scott Schoffman)

I am no stranger to the story of Samson; I studied in a private, religious school for 13 years, during which I was - for lack of a better, or nicer, word - force-fed the Bible and its stories*. Samson's feats of strength (the only one I was ever able to remember was the one at the end, really - collapsing the two pillars and killing three thousand Philistines in one blow) and his treacherous, short-lived romance with Delilah ("you are my sweetest downfall," so sings Regina Spektor) made a mark on me early on, if only because a) every child remembers stories of superhuman feats, b) Samson and Delilah was my first fatalist love story - I was yet to be introduced to Romeo and Juliet, and c) I was, at a very young age, wondering why Samson had to die together with the Philistines - sure, he had his eyes gouged out and was weak from his recent haircut, but if God really loved Samson, shouldn't He have saved him? Enveloped Samson in a force field while the arena tumbled down around him, perhaps?

I didn't find the answer to that question in Lion's Honey, David Grossman's interpretation (or maybe it's called an analysis?) of the story of Samson (the Book of Judges, chapter 13-16, in case you want to brush up on biblical history). However, Grossman did shed quite the new light on Samson that made me go "why didn't I think of that?" and "oh my ... goodness, he's right!": that Samson was - and these are my words, not Grossman's - a misunderstood freak who never realized that he was exploited (nationalised was Grossman's term) by God, and that his womanizing (which really is too big a word in his case; does being with three women - not even simultaneously, no - count as womanizing? Then again it was the biblical times) was in truth a need for intimate connection which he'd lacked his entire life, beginning with his miraculous conception (they say his mother was barren, but hey, the patriarch should be under suspicion for infertility, too), ending with his first love Delilah's treachery (the three times she tried to harm him should have been enough of a warning - but, alas, the poor guy was in love) and ultimately leading to his demise under the two pillars with the Philistines (which in any case looked like a suicide but since it's in the Bible, it counts as a sacrifice).

Grossman wasn't as blunt, though.

The exploration of Samson's life is so detailed, so intricate, that Grossman even had footnotes; his discussion alone of how an angel informed Samson's mother of her impending divine pregnancy ate up the first 30 pages of the book. That Samson was a misunderstood person "who has been planted in the world and operated as a lethal weapon of divine will," at the same time clueless as to his purpose in life - "He goes through life like a walking enigma, marvelling over his secret, his riddle." - and his greatest struggle being pre-destined for such greatness as God's instrument (or puppet, depending on how one views it), a destiny which has made him different, an outcast, when all he ever wanted was to fit in. His story is littered with allusions to his great disconnect - with his parents, his people, even to himself; Samson was larger than life, yet despite his great strength, he was emotionally inadequate for the job. "How astonishing and poignant, this gulf between enormous physical strength and an immature, childlike soul."

Grossman's interpretation of the story of Samson is so far, far removed from what I've grown up with; Scott Schoffman's translation is delicious in its simplicity - what could have turned out to be a boring, seemingly academic book became vivid in giving a new (albeit quite the eccentric) definition of one of the Bible's greatest heroes. I was honestly expecting a work of fiction when I picked up the book, but I'm glad I was wrong.

Samson's story, though full of great feats of strength, ended sadly with his death; Lion's Honey, however, has made me even more melancholic, sadder for a man whose greatest wish was "that one person love him simply, wholly, naturally, not because of his miraculous quality, but in spite of it."

I hope he didn't die in vain.

PS. A thought, in retrospect: everyone's trying to be different, "but maybe it is not a weakness, an illness, to be like everyone else."

* I have nothing against the Bible, though. In fact, my copy is quite the confidante (I hide small notes and the occasional rainy-day bill between its pages) and great giver of advice (the occasional Bible-dipping, as introduced by Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors). I'm not trying to be blasphemous, I swear.

Originally posted here.

Giveaways: two books up for grabs on The Wannabe Literati!

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow

and

Textual Healing by Eric Smith

"Don't let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love." - Thoughts on Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman)

I cannot claim to have wholly appreciated Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, simply because, at twenty, I am too young to appreciate his character's life's longevity as well as his having never fallen in love. Heck, I can't even pretend to know the difference between mere sex and passionate love-making. But Marquez writes with such a passion that it reaches out to you and makes you feel it too, and for that alone my romantic self swoons.

I will always have a thing, so to speak, for male romantic writers, or men who write romantically, or boys who write down their feelings, and here was an almost-century-old columnist who decides to fuck a virgin on the eve of his 90th birthday - an understandable conquest for a man so widely known and respected in his community, but was secretly the resident Casanova for decades. The thing is, regardless of all things accomplished, he was lacking in something vital: he had never fallen in love, ever. And at ninety, would you even care?

But lo and behold, that is exactly what happens to him on his 90th birthday: he falls in love with the virgin prostitute (what an oxymoron) offered by the brothel of which he is a regular. But this girl is too tired with work and with taking care of her siblings that she is fast asleep - and he lets her be. He lets her be, again and again.

And this first love of his, it invigorates him to no end - "age isn't how old you are but how old you feel" - and both torments and teaches him things that, at the age of a decade removed from a century, one ought just reminisce about. But here he was, learning about love and all its trappings: "...love taught me too late that you groom yourself for someone, you dress and perfume yourself for someone, and I'd never had anyone to do that for."

As for the melancholia, there is much, because isn't it that where love is, there's bound to be a bit of heartbreak? Here, let me hint at it with this quote:

"I buried myself in the romantic writings I had repudiated when my mother tried to impose them on me with a heavy hand, and in them I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love."

Ah, young love - and yes, first, though aren't first loves the youngest of them all?

PS. There was this little gem of a quote that enlightened me about the difference between sex and love-making, and quite blunt, too: "Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love."

Originally posted here.

"Don't keep looking back all the time, you're bound to get depressed." - Thoughts on The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

It seemed quite unlikely that I'd be impressed with Mr. Stevens' accounts of his motoring holiday that took him to see the English countryside, so subtly interwoven with his reminiscences of certain instances and occasions during his days as butler to the great Englishman Lord Darlington. Quite frankly I judged the book as a mere simpleton, and was, to say the least, puzzled as to how it won an award as prestigious as the Man Booker Prize.

That was my opinion upon reading the first page.

I would like to admit now, having finished the book, that I could not have been more wrong. I love Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. In fact, it now counts as a favorite.

You see, it really did all lie on the simplicity of the book - a simplicity in writing and narration that hid a fistful of complications, surfacing one by one in the subtle way that Ishiguro must be known for (this being my first book by him). Stevens' motoring adventures across the countryside was inconspicuous enough to have served as a backdrop for his musings and dipping into his past, brought about by a letter from a former houseworker, Miss Keaton, who worked with him during the glory days of Darlington House - glory days that were now marred with gossip against his former employer Lord Darlington, and the role the Englishman played during Hitler's regime.

I was at first, though, torn between merely adoring Stevens and intensely loving him and being on his side, come what may. He talks extensively and highly of being a butler as a serious profession; of the business of bantering, and how he fails miserably at it; of tradition; and, most importantly, of certain memories recalled during his trip - memories that are both honest and unreliable, supposedly painful but were otherwise remembered not because of the pain felt, but by the great accomplishments achieved as a butler during those times - emotional and powerful memories, diminished into mere memorable butlering trivialities. Stevens tells and retells his stories again and again, with facts and their probable implications altered each time; these being seemingly random memories, when so obviously things are not remembered just because. "There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable." Here was a man who was so out of touch with his country - "restricted as I am by my responsibilities in the house" - and himself. He was a sad man, and even he didn't know that about himself, and I loved him for it.

The Remains of the Day is a story of, among other things, nostalgia, regrets, denial, and a lost love. It is a story of how looking back is a dangerous thing, in a way - we try to remember and see faults, and in seeing those faults we are pained. "After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?"

PS. I would like to thank the previous owner of the copy I read, who spared no marginal space in writing copious notes - it is all thanks to you that I was able to realize a love story was involved, even before it was hinted at. Yes, I am quite appalled I was that daft.

Originally posted here.

"The old adage - humor is the best way to make the unbearable bearable - may be true." - Thoughts on The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Dear Reader,

Forgive me if I succumbed to public opinion, but I have been enjoying reading books on, well, books - or writing, or authors, or something to that effect - and this one was everywhere, books-on-books catergorically speaking. And The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows was a good enough read, too, though there was more Guernsey and literature and not enough potato peel pie in it.

Let me tell you what it's about (or maybe just a gist): it's about Juliet, a writer/columnist, who receives a letter from Dawsey, a practical stranger from a little island off the coast of France that is Guernsey, who got his hands on a book that was formerly hers - and as with any other story involving books and serendipity, they start a correspondence. This exchange of letters grows to include Dawsey's accidental book club, Juliet's childhood friends, her publisher, and her mysterious suitor. What started out with a secondhand book on Charles Lamb ends up becoming a book in writing about the people she corresponds with. A lot of other books were mentioned in the process.

As for the unbearable: this was set in 1946, just after the Second World War, and the characters all have sad, painful, and unforgettable war stories to tell. The way they made these stories less horrible was by telling them with humor, and it is with humor, too, that they learn precious things about each other. "I think you learn more if laughing at the same time." This is true indeed.

It is, in all honesty, not a book that sticks, but it is a good read nonetheless. Come to think of it, it feels like that dependable friend that you may not often get to see, but is easy to remember when memory beckons him.

I hope you have as much a good time reading it - maybe even more - on the chance that you do.

Pauline

PS. I didn't catch your first name.

Originally posted here.

Just wanted to drop by and say that I'm really enjoying the reviews you write. Always original and erudite (this may actually be the first time I've used this word) and I hope you keep it up throughout your challenge. Thank you.

#14: I haven't run into the word erudite in a long while now - which reminds me, I still don't exactly know what it means! I've always depended on context clues, haha. Thank you for the kind words, AHS-Wolfy! :)

This book is a total mindf*ck. - Thoughts on The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin (translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield)

Here’s the thing: I don’t know what to feel about this book. It frustrates me; it frustrates me to no end after reading. You see, I didn’t get it. No, that's not true, because I did, really, generally get it. But that’s the thing, see – it’s the surface things that I understood, but for anyone who’s ever read Victor Pelevin, there’s always more to his books, and The Helmet of Horror is no exception. Merely understanding does not cut it.

So why am I so frustrated? Why don’t I just altogether hate the book and be done with it? Because it’s so good, that’s why – it is dark, it is funny, it’s subtle, it’s shrewd. It loses you and then pulls you back again and then loses you again, but this time it is you who forces yourself back in it. It is a labyrinthine book about labyrinths – actual and imagined, in all shapes and sizes and meaning – and nothing gets crazier than that.

Pelevin’s modern (and nothing says modern more than a chatroom conversation by virtual strangers, from different backgrounds and with different issues in life) adaptation of the story of the labyrinth, the Minotaur (half man, half bull), Ariadne and Theseus, The Helmet of Horror gets weirder and darker and seemingly confounded as it progresses. It reminds me of the movie Saw, only minus the bloodshed and more of a psychological thriller of sorts. “I shall construct a labyrinth in which I can lose myself, together with anyone who tries to find me,” so it begins, opening up a cyberworld devoid of time and true identity, and touches on aspects of religion, philosophy, politics, technology, even love. “In fact, the whole cycle is simply the circulation of now in various states of mind, in the same way that water can be ice, or the sea, or thirst.”

And yet, with all that heaviness, Pelevin nevertheless threw in some irony and humor for good measure – moments that allowed for one to breathe in-between lines. Mind you, though, these were inserted by Pelevin in the long-winded conversations so discreetly, so as not to mess with the whole somber, mysterious mood of the book. A sampling:

“Dead people don’t hang around in chat rooms.”

“People go bald because they have no choice, but they shave their heads out of self-respect.”

“If you had genuinely free choice, the results could be pretty miserable.”

“If we start worrying about spies, pretty soon the world will be full of them.”

And my favorite, on the subject of free will – not only because the analogy is funny, but because it’s so true, too:

“Life’s like falling off a roof. Can you stop on the way? No. Can you turn back? No. Can you fly off sideways? Only in an advertisement for underpants specially made for jumping off roofs. all free will means is you can choose whether to fart in mid-flight or wait till you hit the ground. And that’s what all the philosophers argue about.”

This book deserves a re-read – one day, when I’m ready enough to devour the book entirely, and not just nibble on the surface. And if this is how Pelevin leaves me after reading his books – babbling and confused – the by Jove, bring it on.

PS. The title isn’t a quote from the book – I couldn’t find one (or if there was one, I’d have missed it) to fully encompass what the book is. Also, it really is a mindfuck.

PPS. Look out for Romeo-y-Cohiba and IsoldA - they’re my favorite of the bunch of online misfits.

Originally posted here.

I read my first Pelevin last year with The Sacred Book of the Werewolf and I know it won't be the last of his that I get to. That one sounds pretty good so I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for it.

#17: A friend over at Goodreads said that Pelevin was a hard read, so after I he told me that I kinda forgave myself for the fully grasping his points. How was The Sacred Book of the Werewolf? This Canongate Myth was actually my introduction to him, so I'm quite curious as to how his other books are.

I really enjoyed it. Didn't find it a difficult read at all but it does take some thinking about at times. I've actually posted my review for that one.

#19: Just read your review. Yikes, that one sounds intimidating, especially since I haven't read Murakami either so I couldn't relate to your analogy. Though now I'm really, really curious. I'll try to look for a copy asap. :D

"Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others." - Thoughts on The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Ah, Margaret Atwood. I've only read two of your works - your quite obscure short story collection, Bluebeard's Egg, and this retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope's point of view - and still I know for certain I will love the rest. I have yet to read your award-winning books, but I will hold on to The Penelopiad and claim it as my favorite of yours (so far).

"Half-Dorothy Parker, half-Desperate Housewives," so says the blurb from The Independent (UK), and while I haven't read anything by Dorothy Parker and am no big fan of Desperate Housewives, I will go on a limb here and assume they must be really great, to be half-and-half of something as wonderful as this book.

Written in two alternating forms - in a narration and in varying styles of poetry, for isn't Atwood known for both? - The Penelopiad is the story of the loyal and cunning Penelope, Odysseus' wife, who really isn't all that popular or well-known in Greek literature as her husband (I didn't even know about her until I read the book, but then again I haven't read The Odyssey - such a shortcoming, I know). She is sassy, in a refined sort of way; she is hilarious, the kind that makes you want to guffaw but for some reason you try to stifle it all in a prolonged chuckle. Penelope is sarcastic and ironic and grave and serious, and she makes you laugh even though she's sad, and I am still in awe with how Atwood perfected such a voice. Penelope is a character that is such a character, if you know what I mean.

The story is told by Penelope herself (the narration) and by her twelve maids - the twelve maids who were hanged by Odysseus upon his return after years of absence - as a sort of Chorus that kept asking one question: why were they hanged? And here we find out that The Odyssey is plagued with intrigue; that upon closer inspection, it wasn't just about Odysseus and his adventures. That maybe, just maybe, Penelope wasn't the quintessential faithful wife history claims her to be. "What can a woman do when scandalous gossip travels the world? If she defends herself, she sounds guilty."

There so much duality in The Penelopiad: the styles of writing, the versions of each episode in the story, the characters themselves. Well, everything and everyone except Odysseus, I guess - known as a trickster, a great persuader, a liar and a con-man, which he all is, consistently, even to his own wife. And she to him, maybe, could be.

"The two of us were - by our own admission - proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It's a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said.

But we did.

Or so we told each other."

Ultimately, The Penelopiad makes you think of how the truth is obscured by the passing of time, and how nothing is ever reliable, not even one's self.

PS. In keeping with Atwood's everything-isn't-what-it's-said-to-be, Helen of Troy - who happens to be Penelope's cousin - is quite the little bitch.

Originally posted here.

"You've been living in a world full of nonsense, David. No one has been telling you the truth about anything." - Thoughts on Stitches by David Small

Memoirs are often written; David Small drew his. What Augusten Burroughs accomplished with thousands of words in Running with Scissors, Small also did in panels of black and white in his graphic biography, Stitches.

Raised in Detroit by a complicated mother and a radiologist for a father, David wasn't much of anything growing up; he was a kid, acted like a kid, got bullied sometimes and got scolded often. Then a lump started growing on his neck - a harmless lump that was operated on three and half years after the initial diagnosis. Only, that harmless lump caused him one of his vocal cords - and turned out not to be as harmless as he's been told.

Being an illustrator for children's books, Small's lines and ink washes are in their simplest forms, yet they carry such a weight that conveys the complications, confusions, and bleakness of his childhood. The profile sketches are beyond simple illustrations themselves - with a few strokes he's conjured facial expressions so powerful that the anger or sadness felt by the characters transcend paper and ink.



Every family is loony and dark and psychotic in its own way - such is a familiar theme with memoirists. But Small's story is far removed from the tragic, comedic, dysfunctional family saga - and with it being drawn instead of written, Stitches is a memoir subcategory in itself.

PS. Think of Alfred Hitchcock, only drawn.

Originally posted here.

"In my experience, dreams are unreliable, and the lovers whom people see in their dreams, well... Put it this way, I'm not exactly convinced. Far from it." - Thoughts on Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith

Sigh. I hate it when a book disappoints me, especially when I've convinced myself early on that I will love, oh I will love it so, so much. Alexander McCall Smith's Dream Angus is my fourth Canongate Myth, and even before I've started reading the series, just when I was learning about them and reading the synopsis of each title, I was convinced that this one - this book about dreams and love and all its different manifestations - would be the stand-out, that one orange among the series of apples*.

Darn it, Alexander McCall Smith. Darn it.

Something was amiss. No, some things were amiss. I felt it the moment I held the book: it was light, too light, like it was lacking weight and substance and something else that mattered. I told myself, no, it's purposely light, because it's a book about Angus, the Celtic mythology's giver of dreams and a figure of youth and love, and it is only right that this re-telling should seem just as unburdened. And so I read, and I read some more, and no matter how much I tried it didn't feel right at all.

I tried to love you, Dream Angus, and when that didn't work I tried to at least like you. And maybe I did, a little bit, but once disappointed, you can never go back.

You were, for lack of a better term, just meh.

But there were redeeming qualities, the stuff that made me keep on reading. The five different stories (were they related, written without a sense of time?), despite leaving me wanting, were good. Angus was in each one of them, in various forms - an unwelcomed visitor, a shrink, and something else; my favorite was the uncle who threatened his nephew with nightmares (and maybe I liked it because it was different). There were such beautiful phrases and lines: "he drowned in the sky" and "but the gesture never came," "And he wanted to disbelieve what he had just heard because so few words could not end a world." Dream Angus was written - I hope you can forgive me if it sounds too schmaltzy- so dreamily.

And maybe that is why. It felt written in haste, in a haze, at times lucid and at times not. To put simply: "Sometimes the reality is not quite so appealing as the vision, distinctly so, but let's not be pessimistic."

PS. "Love and its disappointments were the bread and butter of people like him." Yes, there was love, plenty of it, and it all ended in disappointment. I'm so sad. So very, very sad. Sigh.

*I like apples, but I love me an orange. My analogy sucks. I'm sorry.

Originally posted here.

"Worst Places to Die: On a toilet in a Barnes and Noble, reading this book." - Thoughts on Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason by Mike Sacks

There's something about reading award-winning books and novels on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list that makes me want to read really loony books in-between. Well, not really - maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to pick up and read Mike Sacks' Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason.

A collection of short stories, lists, and illustrations spanning both ends of the oddball spectrum, Your Wildest Dreams is the treasure book of ludicrous (and sometimes bawdy) humor your mother tried to keep away from you. From the love-notes-exchange-turned-sour in "Saw You on the Q Train," the groom's wedding day tweets in "George Sarkin is Using Twitter!" to the clueless psychologist aboard the sloop Winslow in "From the Sea Journal of the Esteemed Dr. Ridley L. Honeycomb," Sacks must have one hell of an imagination to have thought up these stories - they're so darn absurd, he must either be crazy or a genius, or both.

He reinvents popular jokes by adding somber endings in "FW: Loved the Following Jokes and Thought You'd Love Them as Well!!!"; in "Arse Poetica," he pitches script ideas to a hardcore porn producer... in the middle of an orgy. One of my favorites is without a doubt "The Rejection of Anne Frank" - where an editor turns down her biography ("a memoir from a 15-year-old is a bit much") and offers some pretty comical criticism:

"Fantasy always works, especially with your tween demographic. Come up with something totally original - for instance, is there any ambiguous historical evidence for the presence, in Nazi Germany, of hot teenage vampires?"

But nothing - nothing - beats the letters of Rhon Penny (silent h), a writer trying to get published by thinking up all sorts of gimmicks and pitching them to various authors such as Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon and the family of John Updike.

If you're not prudish about a bit of crass humor and appreciate intelligent comedy bordering on the ridiculous, then Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason is a definite must-read. Indulge yourself - but don't tell your mother.

PS. See page 206.

Originally posted here.

"The kind that stays with you, a clever line in a movie, a well-written anecdote in a book, a quip in a poem, and finally, finally I had a punch-line, a point, a meaning to the rambling." - Thoughts on Textual Healing by Eric Smith

I tend to shy away from funny-romantic stories when it comes to books, mainly because the cookie-cutter formulas are getting rusty overtime: boy (or girl) with a crisis meets and falls in love with a girl (or boy) who becomes an inspiration for self-improvement, evil ex (or mother, or boss, or obsessed stalker) comes in and ruins everything, everybody's in the dumps for a chapter or two, realization that love transcends everything else, epic chase scene involving killer traffic and a very supportive crowd, anti-climatic "this won't work, we're not meant to be" dialogue, award-winning monologue on love, and a happily-ever-after - it's like the rinse-and-repeat instructions at the back of shampoo bottles.

Eric Smith's Textual Healing, however, has a sugar glider, a ninja vs. pirate duel, a guy who's a Dick, and a support group for writers who can't write. And that's just for starters.

Andrew Connor - who prefers to be called Ace, thank you very much - is a thirty-something writer living in New York, the author of the hugely successful Chasing Fireflies ("a simple story about a small town librarian who fell in love with a beautiful, rich woman from New York City"). It was so successful, it got adapted into a made-for-TV movie on HBO, starring Ed Norton and Penelope Cruz. With the money he made from royalties, he opens up a bookstore at Hoboken, right across the flower shop of a haiku-speaking ninja ("The sun shines brightly. I yearn for the autumn winds. The thrill of battle." - if you don't believe me, count the syllables yourself), and with an obsessive-compulsive employee who alphabetized everything in the store. Recently broken-hearted (his girlfriend left him for a suit named Richard), his best friend Shawn sets him up with backpacking, unpredictable Hannah, and his Fahrenheit 451-toting neighbor (and fellow writer) Stephanie lures him into joining Textual Healing, a writers' circle for authors with issues. Oh, and did I mention his bestselling book is on clearance at 90% off?

All of this, and more, over the fact that Ace hasn't written a thing since Chasing Fireflies - two years ago.

While Textual Healing isn't the most meticulously edited book, it is a breath of fresh air amongst the done-to-death cliché romantic comedies out there. For one, Smith's sense of humor is so timely (for a Hannah Montana reference, see page 230) but never approaches overkill; his paragraphs are packed with witticisms and subtle puns that build up and then drop bombs at the right moment. He's crazy funny, I tell you. Ace is a smart romantic with a great sense of humor - his inner thoughts are so hilarious, that even at his most desolate times I find myself giggling like a schoolgirl (see "Please, take me back, Pop Tart." on page 8).

I'm dying here - there's so much to tell about this book, but I don't want to spoil it all for you. So instead, here are some teasers - some of the crazy-funny things I loved about the book:

someone refers to William Shakespeare as "Bill"

authorophiliac: one who is heavily attracted to, or is addicted to sexually interacting with, famous authors

what, exactly, is a sugar glider?

Andrea and her jacket photo

the comical love story of HowsYourFace and SexyLilJew4U

Brian's dress-up birthday celebration - can you guess what a formal apology looks like?

A cross between Rob Fleming of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and Ted Mosby of How I Met Your Mother, you'll simultaneously laugh at and fall in love with Ace Connor and his bunch of misfit friends. An intelligent, laugh-out-loud treat - Textual Healing is the paperback counterpart of your feel-good romantic comedy of the year. Now go make your husband/boyfriend/man of your dreams read this.

PS. "People don't meet after stealing glances at each other from across a crowded ballroom dance floor. They don't fall in love over the Internet, ironically having their partner be their best friend. And no one gets off a bus at the end of a story with the one they love... they always leave." Ugh - marry me.

PPS. "I'll show you how to light up a cloud." :)

Originally posted here.

"I had a feeling that I wasn't crying over any one sad thing, but rather for many. ... I wished my heart would break and get it over it." Thoughts on Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow, both by Banana Yoshimoto (translated from Japanese by Megan Backus)

Banana Yoshimoto made me cry on my birthday. She made me think of my past year, and she made me think of you, too.

It wasn't my intention, really, to read Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow on the night of my birthday; in fact, it wasn't my intention to read Yoshimoto anytime soon at all. I was still sorely amused by her fruity first name to take her book seriously (this coming from someone who lives in a country where Apple is a fairly common name).

But there I was, bored on my 21st, eyeing my shelf for a quick enough read for the night, and so I pulled out her slim little book, plopped myself down on the couch with a bag of chips and a glass of soda, and read until the wee hours of the night.

By two in the morning I was holding back sobs and wiping my nose, wanting so much to go about the house with arms flailing because, goddamnit, how can I think of you on a special night like this?

And why, oh why, did I read two such bittersweet novellas on a supposedly happy night?

"When I'm dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen," says Mikage, whose only remaining blood relative, her grandmother, dies and leaves her completely alone. Then she meets Yuichi, a boy her age who was very close to her grandmother, and who invites Mikage to live with him and his charming - albeit unusual - mother, Eriko. The relationship of these three people is the story of Kitchen - a story of love and loss and of moving on.

"Maybe all I had been hoping for was a bed in which to be able to stop thinking, just for a little while, about what happened before and what would happen in the future," and I knew then and there that this book was in some way speaking to me; that I would love this character Mikage because she was speaking my language; that she was me, and I was her, and that at one point in my life I have said, or I've been meaning to say, the same things. "From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a gloomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul."

I saw how apt the whole thing was; I saw how all this was already laid out before me, that this was gift of sorts from some great entity I barely knew. Because this was the story of my past year, only of a varied kind, and that sitting on the couch reading this book was in truth a kind of retrospection of my life, and that lo, here was my 20th year written down for me in someone else's words so that I may grasp it more fully and take something from the experience of it all. Granted, I did not have someone die on me, unlike Mikage, but I knew the feeling of a loss so great it consumed me for the past year and dug a hole in my person, a void that I thought would always and forever be gaping and which scared the shit out of me because it felt that nothing and no one could save me from it. "There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can't bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that." So true, so true.

And then there was Satsuki, who in Moonlight Shadow experienced a loss of a different kind - the death of a lover, Hitoshi, who died in a car accident. How do you deal with that, an instant parting without a chance to say goodbye? And it is here that I remember you, and I am thrown back into the past full of uncertainty and regret mingled with blissful happiness and the need to make things work, how it all ended without a good enough explanation and an incomplete resolution. What then? "All I wanted was to get through this as quickly as possible, to see the day when memories would be just memories. But the more I wanted that, the further away it seemed. Thinking of the future only made me shudder." Thinking of the future only reminded me of how you're not a part of it anymore.

"The times of great happiness and great sorrow were too intense; it was impossible to reconcile them with the routine of daily life," and so I got rid of the routine altogether, wallowed in self-pity and abused the bed. But, "After my painful, fitful sleep, whether or not I had been able to see him, on awakening I would know it had been only a dream - in reality I would never be with him again. And so I tried not to wake up."

Had I known that such a small book could contain so much beauty and power in a thousand strings of words, I'd have done two things, depending on my state: on one hand, I would have run away, delayed reading this for as long as possible, because to read a story not unlike mine, not unlike ours, unfold before my eyes, teeming with lines that pierced straight through the heart - it was both beautiful and lovely that it was sad to see it pass. But I didn't run away; I held my ground. And amidst the small pangs of hurt I found solace in two stories that spoke of moving on. "People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within, I thought," and again I realized yes, this is true. "In this world, there is no place for sadness. No place; not one."

If I could take hold of time and wind it back like a clock, I think I would have given you this book on the night I flew away and told you to read it, goddamnit, because it is everything I have failed and will never be brave enough to tell you, and if fate were a person I'd have hoped he'd handed this to me one day and told me to read it, because it would prepare me for everything that's headed my way. But now I know better, now I know that was and never will be the case. "I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness." Ah, there it is, a word to describe my state - muddled cheerfulness. Muddled, yes, but cheerful all the same.

Sigh. If there was only one thing to be thankful for on my 21st, it would be that for some reason I chose Yoshimoto's Kitchen among the handful of books on my shelf. It was meant to be - I just know it.

PS. "Parting and death are both terribly painful. But to keep nursing the memory of a love so great you can't believe you'll ever love again is a useless drain on a woman's energies."

PPS. The best line I've read in a book, ever: "Believe in the me that you knew."

PPPS. I climbed a window ledge for you on your birthday, too. You never knew, of course. You never knew.

Originally posted here.

On Reading History: Mike Sacks, author of Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason – a humor anthology that pokes fun at oddball characters and their idiosyncrasies – lists the five most influential books he’s read growing up. (click to read)

"I meant to leave you a reasonably candid testament to my better self, and it seems to me now that what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with." - Thoughts on Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

"There have been heroes here, and saints and martyrs, and I want you to know that. Because that is the truth, even if no one remembers it. To look at the place, it's just a cluster of houses strung along a few roads, and a little row of brick buildings with stores in them, and a grain elevator and a water tower with Gilead written on its side, and the post office and the schools and the playing fields and the old train station, which is pretty well gone to weeds now. But what must Galilee have looked like? You can't tell so much from the appearance of a place."

Ah, Gilead. It's been a month now since I finished reading you, and I must admit I still feel insufficient in writing about you - you are a modern epic. Here I am, leafing through my notes (all ten pages of them, almost unreadable, written so small so that a page may accommodate as many thoughts as possible), and one line stands out: "This book feels like a full meal," I said, and I meant it, and still do.

I cannot put into words just how beautiful you are, to be honest. I feel insecure. It's like professing to the world a love that only I had the chance to feel. But I will try, for the sake of telling, probably with excessive quoting, and subtle sighs included.

***

Where do I start? But of course, I begin with Reverend John Ames, who in 1956 wrote a letter to his young son in order that he may not be forgotten and that he may get to be known better, lest he die soon enough to miss out on being there when his son grows up. "You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind." And here lies the story of Gilead: the history of a small town in Iowa based on three generations of men of cloth, Ames and his father and his father before him; the story of simple lives lived with great impact on those around them; a long letter detailing incidents of love and loss, self-doubt, forgiveness, praise and acceptance. "It was just that kind the place was meant to encourage, that a harmless life could be lived here unmolested."

Here was a man who lived a full life, and yet as he writes his letter one gets the sense that he still yearns for a bit more. "Remembering my youth makes me aware that I never really had enough of it, it was over before I was done with it." He's devoted his entire life to his church, and in doing so never really thought much of marriage and family until later, when he met his much younger wife and had his only son. And now he realizes that having started so late, he's destined to miss out on a lot, and while he ought not regret this (for hasn't he lived a full life preaching the Word of God?), it prompts a remembrance of things that have passed. Of his seventy-six years, seventy-four were spent living in Gilead.

"There must have been a hundred little towns like it, set up in the heat of an old urgency that is all forgotten now, and their littleness and their shabbiness, which was the measure of the courage and passion that went into the making of them, now just look awkward and provincial and ridiculous, even to the people who have lived here long enough to know better. It looks ridiculous to me. I truly suspect I never left because I was afraid I would not come back."

***

"You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty, and love and mutual incomprehension." And here we learn of his father and his grandfather, his predecessors even in vocation, and their relations. His father was a preacher and his grandfather a minister, and were men of clashing temperament - his father was a pacifist, while his grandfather, prompted by a vision of Christ in chains, "preached men into the Civil War," losing his right eye while serving as a chaplain in the Union Army. "He told me once that being blessed meant being bloodied, and that is true etymologically, in English."

John Ames explains in his letter the complications between his father and his grandfather, and of his opinions on them both. His grandfather, in particular, was quite the character: a man feared and respected, John Ames regarded him as one of those "saints and martyrs" of Gilead, albeit with a caveat. "Those saints got old and the times changed and they just seemed like eccentrics and nuisances, and no one wanted to listen to their fearsome old sermons or hear their wild old stories."

And in his telling of his father and grandfather's shaky relationship, we find the root of the parade of disappointments that seem to plague this story, always between father and son. "Reverend, no words could be bitter enough, no day could be long enough. There is just no end to it. Disappointment. I eat it and drink it. I wake and sleep it."

One of those disappointments manifested in the story is his godson and namesake, John Ames "Jack" Boughton, returning after a long absence, for his father - and John Ames's closest friend - is dying. Jack seems to have let down the Reverend in more ways than one. And here I was baffled beyond understanding, as to why John Ames should be so disappointed with him, when even Jack's own father Old Boughton was not? Even the Reverend cannot explain why his relationship with Jack is strained - it just is. "...and it is true that we all do live in the ruins of the lives of other generations, so there is a seeming continuity which is important because it deceives us."

***

Nostalgia. If I could sum up Gilead in a word, that would be it. Robinson made me feel something akin to nostalgia (which clearly isn't the right word for me, as I'm only twenty and nostalgia is a long way off), the overflowing of regrets and absolutions, the ruminations on old age, the cheerful remembering masking quiet discontent. "I told you you might have a very different life from mine and from the life you've had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life," John Ames writes in his letter, and I believe this to be true. Because while Gilead is the center of the story, it is only but a stop in their journeys: the characters came, they went, they decided to stay, they might one day leave. And while this is the story of John Ames's life as told in a letter to his son, in letting his son know that once upon a time he existed in this world, Gilead is also about a man who took a look back at his life and saw its entire duration in playback, finding out that every single moment - be it of joy, sorrow, transgression or forgiveness - mattered to his being. "It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve." Reverend John Ames, in telling his young son the details of his life, gave us a glimpse of it, too, and of the little town of Gilead, and the people who made it come alive.

"When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all."

PS. "There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient." Remember that.

Orginally posted here.

Bouncing through to wave hello. I started Gilead last night and I am trying to figure out why I left this one languishing on my bookshelf for as long as I have!

Great reviews!