Category: Uncategorized

Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice (1950)
Neil Gaiman, American Gods (2001)
Agatha Christie, At Bertram’s Hotel (1965)

Johanna Spyri, Heidi

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2008) – Wow! Lived up to the hype. A-

Although it’s embarrassing never to have read On the Road before, it never appealed to me much—I would have forced myself through it on the “it’s good for me” principle. Infinitely better to half-listen to it, especially with a gifted narrator like Frank Muller (I guess not all the Recorded Books people are as stuffy as John McDonough).

I’d meant to read this when we got it at the library, but teaching a class which will cover Facebook prompted me to finally check it out. I enjoyed Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions quite a bit, but as soon as I started this one I remembered the patina of gratuitous sex he’d laid over everything in that book. At the time it didn’t slow me down too much, but surely I would have noticed the crazy overwriting–maybe an editor (that dying breed) took it out in the earlier book. From a random perusing: “His jowls reverberated with the motion, like fleshy waves in a swirling epidermal storm.” Every noun has at least one adjective. It was a timely read and a quick one, but it left a bad taste in my mouth, both from the quality of the writing and from a feeling that Mezrich was set on making the gossip as juicy as possible (look at that subtitle!), subtleties be damned.

Thank goodness for Paperback Swap, where I was able to replace my copy of the misguided Expanded Edition with the original. I’m not sure when I last read this version–I probably didn’t get the “updated” one until a few years after it came out–but I’d forgotten quite how good it is. (Kev totally disagrees!) I couldn’t put it down for long once I’d started, and I was sad when it was over. It was partly because in contrast with the lesser/longer version, I relished the crisp pace and authentic feel of the time period; partly because whoever the talented editor was, he or she managed to cut away the majority of King’s inherent weaknesses as a writer; and partly because it is a wonderful narrative.

I’ve always been fond of post-apocalyptic stories, starting (as far as I can recall) with The Girl Who Owned a City. (I suppose the turtles dealing with the Flood in Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake fit in as well.) Competent loners thrive, and the abundance of stuff left behind creates a paradise of resources. Plus, the minutiae of daily life become interesting challenges.

In The Stand we have a classic random-collection-of-survivors team, overlaid with a Manichean struggle between Randall Flagg, “the dark man,” and Mother Abigail, a saintly elderly African-American woman. Although King is prone to creating a “magical negro,” I personally find Mother Abigail to be less offensive than his other characters in that vein. Her internal dialogue shows her to be more complex than she seems to the other protagonists, and her death isn’t just a “save the white folks” sacrifice. The unsung editor cut down the set pieces devoted to the crazy-as-a-bedbug people King tends to spend too much time on (“The Kid,” an extraneous psychopath, was eliminated entirely–I vividly remember searching for the end of his interminable scene in the 90s edition). With the crazy kept to a reasonable level, The Stand fits squarely in the SF/fantasy genre as opposed to horror (my working definition: SF/fantasy has a why, even if it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny; horror is not interested in why), so it’s no wonder I like it best of any King novel.

 

I haven’t blogged audio books, partly because I listen to so few, and partly because they don’t seem as “real” as regular books. Also, I can’t go back and remind myself of particular passages. However, I’ve been listening to more on my MP3 player, and this one in particular was thought-provoking–but I’m unlikely to read it now I’ve listened to it.

I downloaded a bunch of Recorded Books audios because our district library subscription was about to be canceled. I’m not a fan of their interface (nobody is), and I’m not a fan of their readers (a minority opinion). I prefer only to listen to audios read by the author, but there aren’t enough of those (especially at Recorded Books, because they pride themselves on their readers). But I’m using the MP3 player to pass the time while working outside, and that lowers my threshold. Bird-watching fascinates me, so the content won me over. But ugh! John McDonough is completely the wrong reader for this title. He sounds elderly and stuffy, but it’s a first-person memoir by a guy who’s only two years older than me, writing in a voice that is the opposite of formal and stuffy. I wouldn’t have continued listening if the story wasn’t so interesting.

Richard Koeppel is a “big lister”–someone who’s seen thousands of birds and has made it an avocation. His son Dan tells Richard’s life story and his own, both shaped by obsession with birds–Richard because it’s his central concern, Dan because his father cared more about birds than about him. Richard was fascinated by birds ever since seeing a brown thrasher at the age of 11, but his parents discouraged him from pursuing ornithology; Dan never got the bird bug, but in middle age realized it was the only way to get close to his father.

Big listers are a strange breed: some content to check off a bird pointed out by a guide, even if they couldn’t identify it themselves, others almost scientists (although the mania for accumulation seems to pull against the achievement of true science). Dan tells the stories of Phoebe Snetsinger, the greatest lister of all time, motivated by a cancer-carried death sentence; Joel Abramson, Richard’s college room-mate who became an ornithologist; Peter Kaestner who parlays a career in the Peace Corps and as a diplomat into enough time in each country to pick up the local birds.

Phoebe Snetsinger thinks of her record (over 8,000) as her legacy. Richard also thinks of his list as an accomplishment. Right after finishing this audio book I saw a letter in Harvard Magazine in which the writer says “I expect that in about another 25 years I will have seen more [Harvard-Yale] games than anyone, ever. Not that this is of the slightest importance in the greater scheme of things, but I think it will make a fitting epitaph someday.” At least he denies its importance, but for that to be your epitaph? That kind of collecting bug I don’t really get. It’s telling that Richard Koepell counts other things as well: beers, cheeses, now butterflies.

Ultimately Dan makes a certain kind of peace with his father by accompanying him on birding trips. They’re together when Richard spots #7,000, and Dan whips out a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

Dan bares his pain and confusion at his parents’ treatment of him (his mother, while not bird-obsessed, left some major parenting voids as well), and this may be too much memoir for birdwatchers, while focusing too much on birds for memoir lovers. Memorable nonetheless.

I have a square fat two volume set of CMC which was a school prize–cheaply printed and bound, so not a physical object I’m deeply attached to, but I love the contents. Yay for Project Gutenberg epub on the Sony Reader! I read this very slowly, mostly on the elliptical trainer, and it’s transformative not to have to lug around a book that won’t stay open and gets in the way when you’re not reading it.

This must be the quintessential melodrama of revenge. As with Les Misérables, I read abridged versions in school and wasn’t missing much; moreover, with CMC the most interesting stuff is all in the first volume (Abbé Faria’s education of Dantès in prison, the escape, and the treasure island). I nonetheless enjoyed the full version (it had probably been a good 20 years since I last read it all the way through), especially the implausible but compelling intertwining of the lives of all Dantès’ enemies. Last time I think I picked up a little bit on the lesbian relationship between Eugénie Danglars and Louise d’Armilly; now it’s much more striking. Apparently this part of the story was glossed over in the English translation.

Although their relationship is considered scandalous, and Dumas mocks Eugénie’s lack of convention, ultimately I think one feels admiration and a certain sympathy for her. She is so strong-willed and independent; Albert would be miserable with her. When Benedetto, the con man to whom she was engaged, ends up in their room after all three of them have fled Paris–one of the few comic scenes in the whole book–the dissolution of her male disguise humiliates her, but she and Louise still make it to Brussels and move out of the book’s sphere. I guess that’s what I like about her: alone of all the characters, she resists Dumas’ Manichean narrative arc. She is her own person, neither fundamentally good nor bad.

Everyone else is pushed around the stage in a series of incredible coincidences, which makes the book feel like a hermetically-sealed environment, even though it spans multiple countries. Monte Cristo’s powers seem supernatural, so it was interesting to research the book’s references to Count Cagliostro and the Count of St-Germain.

Danglars wears a Breguet watch! How amazing–that product placement (or rather brand names used as a short cut to highlight a setting or a character) from 1844 still works. I was tempted to get an old cheap one on eBay, except there’s no such thing.

Not a great literary classic, but a great popular culture classic–very satisfying to me. I’m sure I’ll read it again someday.

This is what I wrote just after finishing HP6:

I love the excitement and anticipation of a new Harry Potter book; I’ve gone to Barnes & Noble just for the midnight thrill (even though I buy my book through the library) for the last 3 volumes. Cracking a new one is like seeing old friends again. I sank into this one with pleasurable anticipation, which was mostly rewarded…but not entirely. As I’ve already seen some reviewers saying, Book 6 is so busy setting up for the finale that it’s weak on its own. One of Rowling’s strengths is normally the richness of the tapestry’s details; the minor characters, the specifics of spells the students are studying, the new creatures and methods…

That’s all I wrote back then, but I was basically going to say I found #6 too busy with narrative and not as enjoyable as the previous 5. Well, I’ve re-read it twice since it came out, and I think I was projecting my own headlong rush to gobble it down; it really holds up very well. I don’t think I wrote any notes on Deathly Hallows, but I loved it. What a satisfying end to the series. I’ll re-read them all in a year or two (unless I get sick enough to stay home for more than a day; the last time that happened, years ago, the pleasurable part was doing nothing but read Harry Potter for an extended period.)

Low expectations can be good because it’s easy to exceed them. This book had so many strikes against it (self-published; gimmicky in the extreme; unclear on audience; badly drawn; full of grammatical mistakes) that I was surprised to find anything redeeming in it, but I did love the character Pook. He’s a doth (dog/moth), essentially the author’s cute white bulldog (visible in a photo) with blue and orange wings added. I think that’s why, although the other characters are wooden, Pook feels alive–Stadther is writing what he knows.

The most famous precursor to A Treasure’s Trove is Kit Williams’ Masquerade, which wasn’t a very good story either but at least had truly impressive illustrations. I like puzzles but this one felt very contrived, like it wasn’t following the classic rules. I used to fantasize about finding the Canadian Club whiskey cases that were hidden as part of a marketing campaign in the 70s–I was much too young to drink, but the search fascinated me (especially after seeing one that was hidden in Manhattan–more accessible than volcanoes and glaciers!) That yen for finding the hidden is still alive (hence the popularity of geocaching), but it’s got to feel possible. I’ve just been listening to the audio of Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw, and his use of the distinction between puzzles and mysteries (originally by Gregory Treverton) comes to mind. Canadian Club was a puzzle; Treasure’s Trove was a mystery. Nonetheless all the gimcrack-looking jewels were found.

I loved Dry–I leafed through it at a bookstore and then couldn’t put it down–so my hopes were high for this earlier slice of autobiography. Good but not great. Burrough’s adolescence was unbelievably bizarre (although a few people involved have disputed his account) but he survived and found humor in it. The main moral I absorbed is that people can adapt to anything.

The title is so long that the author didn’t fit: it’s Christine Ann Lawson, 2000.

I read this book to better understand a situation in my own life, and although it was somewhat interesting, I didn’t find it particularly helpful. Perhaps the most useful bit was an explanation of why the women described can seem like normal parents to the vast majority of observers:

Emotional intensity, impulsivity, unpredictability, and fear of abandonment are symptoms observable primarily by those who have an intimate relationship with the borderline. Casual acquaintances, co-workers, or neighbors are less likely to witness the borderline’s sudden shifts in mood, self-destructive behavior, paranoid distortions, and obsessive ruminations.

Lawson categorizes women with borderline personality disorder into four categories: helpless waifs, frightened hermits, bossy queens, and vindictive witches. There’s a lot of
heavy-handed parallelism with Alice in Wonderland, and a mix between case histories and biographies (Charlotte Du Pont, Sylvia Plath, Mary Todd Lincoln).

That’s the extend of my notes (read in 2004, writing now in 2010)–but now there is a second situation where having more insight would be helpful, so I might try to borrow it again.