Hilary's Book Blog

The Hunger Games led me to re-read this early King novel with a very similar plot: adolescents (all boys of course, given the time period) compete to last longest in a death march, with the winner getting anything he asks for during the rest of his life. But at least here the kids aren’t trying to off each other – it’s the military who sets the rules and enforces them. Although the setup is given some cursory rationale (“the Major,” a shadowy figure who inspires awe and hatred, has taken over the government after riots wrecked the US), and there’s even a paragraph to address why on earth these kids would volunteer (poverty, propaganda, the risk of public shame), it’s got the classic horror feel of a situation created without much purpose beyond freaking out the reader.

In an essay on King, Algis Budrys criticized him for inaccuracies in most of his work (like the Ford Pinto in Cujo breaking down because of a weakness that engine didn’t have) and concluded: “He seems to have the feeling… that the reader demands circumstantial detail, and supplies the detail, but doesn’t bother to research the detail.”  Some of the specifics felt off in this too, like the way the highways ramps gather thick crowds of spectators.

I’d loved Goodbye, Mr. Chips since reading it in a Reader’s Digest collection my grandmother owned (as I recall). I got on a James Hilton kick about 25 years ago for a silly reason–I confused Jack Finney’s Time and Again with Hilton’s Time and Time Again. I’m not sure if I read this on that original kick, but it sure didn’t hold up now. A very slow-paced, talky novel about a scientist who has a nervous breakdown about nuclear science. Weirdest is the early on realization by the narrator that her mother and Brad, the protagonist, were having an affair.

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.)