I got through 26 (for pleasure) books this year. It’s been the most in a long time – possibly most all time – and I feel especially satisfied with the number considering by August I had only finished two. What was supposed to be a several part series throughout the latter half of the year has sadly been condensed to a fully complete first two parts and a rough subsequent part. To clarify, when my reading pace picked up this year, I decided to make a point to log my thoughts concerning all the books I finished. Unfortunately, part in due to time and part in due to priorities, most of the thoughts are rough and incomplete: a combination of disorderly bullet points and half sentences. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to publish them here to allow myself to move on and focus on reading and writing for this year. Without further digressions, here they are:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace
- I feel as though the unfortunate thing with reading any fiction by Wallace post-IJ is going to seem incomplete. I liked Brief Interviews. However, it reminded me of the hole left by IJ. This sounds dramatic and definitely is, so I’ll just conclude here.
Railsea – China Mieville
- I appreciate Mieville’s young adult outing and am glad I finally got around to reading this.
The Revenant – Michael Punke
Before I even begin writing about my thoughts on the book, I should clarify something right at the outset. I dislike the movie. I wouldn’t say I hated it, but I definitely liked very little of it. I tried entering the book with a sort of indifference or ambivalence to it, however I think some of my bias slipped through a little. So bear with me. (Hey that’s a pun!) You’ll find that I spend most of this reflection contrasting the movie with the book which is something I wouldn’t normally do, but the differences here best articulate the novel’s shortcomings.
The book is written from an omniscient perspective, which would have been fine, except that the “omniscience” in this case hardly gives us a sense of the inner turmoil of the characters and instead reads sort of like an American history textbook recounting the tale of vanilla American hero Hugh Glass. To describe the characterization of Glass with respect to the novel: Glass is stoic. Glass is noble? Glass is smart? Glass is hungry. Glass is boring. I didn’t gleam anything interesting from his character. The movie does a much better job of portraying the mental battle of being stranded and left to die.
Another thing the movie does better is provide motivation for the characters. In the movie, Fitzgerald, the villain, elects to stay behind and bury Glass when he dies and after some time, shoots Glass’ son and fakes an attack from the natives to coax the other member of the troop left behind to also desert Glass. This sparks Glass’ intense desire for revenge to kill his deserters in an effort to avenge his son. In the novel, Glass doesn’t have a son. In fact, his thirst for revenge is due to Fitzgerald stealing his special gun, and the novel makes it very clear several times, that it’s a very nice and rare and special gun. Oh and the other deserter steals Glass’ knife. There was that. Also there was a real native attack implying they would risk death by staying behind, so they had a perfectly valid reason for leaving Glass behind. Glass works for months to get his revenge, all because they stole his weapons. Perhaps I’m trivializing the situation in which he was left but it caused me to invest minimal interest in his character.
Glass eventually finds Fitzgerald at a fort, the name of which escapes me, and in the end, after a random trial by court occurs, he (Glass) resolves not to kill him (Fitzgerald). So there’s no payoff. Instead Glass remarks some shit about the stars and the novel ends. The movie ending is better, even if I didn’t care who lived by the end of it.
Deeply Odd – Dean Koontz
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I found myself drawn towards book series more than stand-alone novels. In some instances, the results were rewarding (e.g. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Dune, A Series of Unfortunate Events to name a few) and in others, not so much (e.g. Eragon, <insert others here that I can’t think of atm>). However, regardless of the quality, I always strove to finish. Odd Thomas is something that now belongs in the latter category and it’s made its return to bite me in the ass.
I started the Odd Thomas series sometime near the end of middle school, and it was exactly what I was looking for in a new series (“new” w.r.t. me seeing as the series started several years before I started reading it). Although I’m not sure how it would hold up now, I really loved the first book at the time. I tore through the next three which ranged greatly in quality. Following the fourth installment, I took a long break from the series (as did Mr. Koontz) and whenever a new installment came along, it became something quick and pulpy to read during breaks from school. As I mentioned above, I have to finish.
Deeply Odd wasn’t the worst Odd series book I read, but at this point that isn’t really saying much. Perhaps due to being in the twilight of his career, Koontz is beginning to crutch heavily on convenient plot structure which makes for a more chaotic read. There are a number of plot devices and instances of deus ex machina that are never receive explanation. Odd also has this strange knack for running into the exact people who offer exactly the right resources at exactly the right time. When Odd himself asks for an explanation, a conversation of the following form ensues:
“How did you know ______?”
“Why wouldn’t I know ______?”
“I guess you’ve got a point there.”
Insert quip here which will lead to witty pop culture banter for another page…
The other funny thing I found is that Odd’s psychic magnetism, a power he possesses where he is drawn to something he seeks is Koontz’s best conceived plot device and throughout the entire novel serves as a way of transporting Odd from point A to point B. How will Odd find the villain that plans on killing people? Wonder no further, Odd will simply picture the villain and be drawn to his secret warehouse where tons of zany supernatural shit will occur. Which brings me to another point: the amount of supernatural and science fiction elements has increased since the series started. At the end of this novel (spoilers), Odd ends up at this mansion where cultist are summoning some kind of mammoth demon and some otherworld universe is mixing with our own and that universe contains an evil Odd Thomas that devours souls and the cult leader has some magical pistol that he can conjure but doesn’t use and the demon suddenly gets pissed and murders everyone except Odd and some captive children and it’s just a clusterf*** and it doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, I could highlight many other instances of what I found to be lazy writing, but I’m tired now and you’re probably tired of reading this.
Odd Interlude – Dean Koontz
Bad. The worst installment in this series. The book was conceived as a transitional between installments (book 4 and 5) but doesn’t provide any additional context to those installments. It makes absolutely no sense as it turns Odd, with the aid of a supreme artificial intelligence, into this slayer of giant snakes – maybe it wasn’t a snake, I don’t remember at this point – and genetically mutated human-alien hybrids. Avoid, even if you read the series.
Death with Interruptions – Jose Saramago
It’s much easier to write about the books I didn’t enjoy versus the ones I did. And it’s hard to write what specifically I enjoyed about Saramago’s Death with Interruptions. It was funny. It had some beautiful sequences. It was resonant. It has a unique and challenging prose that requires the reader to remain focused during giant block paragraphs where dialogue is interchanging between multiple characters at a time and punctuation is sparing and capitalization is used with significance. It was one of the great novels I read this year.
Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari
- Another book club pick. The main shortcoming of the book, and this has to do more with Aziz than the book itself, is that much of the humor contained therein are jokes that have appeared in Master of None or Aziz’s standup. While definitely funny, I just wish that Aziz recycled less material.
- The book actually worked really well in the context of a book club (provided your club is willing to share some of their own experiences). I also think the experience of reading can be enriched by reading with a SO and discussing different points and potential things you both learn.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions – Edwin A. Abbott
I love math. I loved this book and am glad I finally got around to reading it.
This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald
This book was fire. I sadly didn’t write enough down while I was reading it, but it was wonderful introduction to Fitzgerald’s work.
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
- The toughest of the three (Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway) modernists I had read this up to that point in the year.
- They each had different strengths. Hemingway made me think the most, Fitzgerald made me feel the most, and Faulkner demonstrated with the most overall skill with interesting techniques, variety in prose.
- More so than Fitzgerald, who is a master of prose in his own right, Hemingway’s prose itself conveys “the Lost Generation” by being a character in itself. It’s sort of this simple on the surface style where really pertinent feelings are conveyed underneath.
- Iceberg Theory is tough in what isn’t said between the characters. With a lesser author it could totally fall apart, but everything in the Sun Also Rises seems so meticulous. Every sentence carefully placed to convey what is happening just outside Jake’s focus.
- I think it’s really interesting how Jake seems to focus on the problems of other people more than his own (to cover up his shortcomings) and his own problems are only revealed in context of little lines of dialogue that allude to his “sickness”.
- Avoids long musical sentences in favor of tight simple ones which makes everything in the novel feel very fleeting.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Extremely captivating on a chapter by chapter basis, but also extremely exhausting. i.e. I would finish a chapter that would be a really interesting page turner, but then be sort of ambivalent about starting the next chapter
- This might stem from the tons of different plot lines that are present and having to keep track of how everybody fits together
- Also everyone has a similar permutation of names, so keeping track of characters can be a little exhausting. It can be hilarious and the names have a purpose, but I haven’t delved too deeply into that since I haven’t finished the book yet.
- I find it interesting that GGM (I’ll abbreviate for now and expand when I write the full thing) doesn’t seem to conform to the age old rule of “show, don’t tell”. He pretty much directly tells you his character’ thoughts and feelings at the same time he shows them and will constantly summarize their arcs. I find this interesting. I’m interested to know how GGM does this more skillfully than a lesser writer. (This is a question I don’t have the answer to)
- Some of the characters seems sort of flat as a result of the above point as we don’t get to really feel their depth since everything is sort of explained away, not leaving much to be filled in. This seems to be intentional.
- I haven’t finished the novel yet, but this could stem from the novel being about the town/century and how it changes using the Buenida’s as a vehicle do show that change.
- I wasn’t sure how I felt about the novel until about the last 100 pages when I felt an strange shift (within myself?) as I read. Around the last 100 pages, the remaining characters are dying and I couldn’t help but feel like the book felt empty as more and more of them passed. It was a really strange feeling and I think is a testament to Marquez’s skill of crafting a very alive world.
- Metonymy for Columbia as a whole (am I using that word right?).
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
- What sort of started to draw me into the narrative, oddly enough, was the allusions to Physics, specifically Maxwell’s demon.
- I know that Pynchon studied Engineering Physics for some time at Cornell before joining the Navy and that he worked at Boeing for some time prior to making it big as an author. There’s definitely a love for physics / meta-physics that’s present here and I’ve heard is more prevalent in other Pynchon novels which appeals to me greatly as a math nerd. See useful links for more discussion of this idea.
- It’s sort of refreshing to have an author that embraces Physics (and math) to use as a narrative device. Math and Physics seem to get a bad rep among writers (I remember Fitzgerald making light of it in This Side of Paradise) which sort of goes along with the whole “it’s okay to be bad a math” topic that I could spend way too long discussing.
- The feeling of being lost every few pages. This mostly has to do with Pynchon’s analogies and allusions / references. He’ll take a metaphor for some situation and flesh it out to such an extreme level, that I started to confuse the narrative with the metaphor itself. I’ve read that Pynchon is an author that requires rereading, and I can definitely see why.
- While I didn’t LOVE it. It definitely has encouraged me to check out more of Pynchon’s work. (Still working up to reading Gravity’s Rainbow) so I’ll probably end up picking up V. pretty soon as my next Pynchon read.
- Useful Links
- For explaining entropy and how Maxwell’s Demon relates to the overall narrative of the novel – http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/entropy/paradox.html
- Link I’m using as sort of a guide into Pynchon – http://imgur.com/vh1OnK7
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
- (pg. 76-77) The part where they break down speech and writing into some kind of semantic logic to summarize the meaning of it was fucking hilarious. A quote: “[A]fter two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out… in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.”
- Thus far the novel is like 90% dialogue. I remember hearing that somewhere before I started reading, but I didn’t realize just how true it was. It’s almost like a play in that sense. Every chapter we just jump to a new scene where people talk about some shit.
- So far, I fucking love Foundation. It’s a nice break from all the other pretentious shit that I’ve been reading over the last few weeks. It doesn’t pretend like it’s anything more than it is, which is something I’ve always loved about science fiction as an “underdog” (kill me) literary genre.
- Foundation almost serves as a short story / world-building collection that I suppose (and I don’t know this yet) sets up future installments of the trilogy.
The Stranger – Albert Camus
- I am sort of indifferent to the first half of the novel (i.e. part 1). Camus seems to be a fan of Hemingway, since his style bears a lot of the similarities to The Sun Also Rises, albeit I found the first half of this to be less interesting than that. The novel finally picks up at the end of part 1 when the plot actually gets rolling. But in between the beginning and that point (about halfway) not much compels the reader to continue reading other than the expectation that something eventually will happen.
- Part of the problem stems from the indifference of the main character. I’m sure there’s a point to it, but it doesn’t make the novel feel compelling. He seems passive about practically everything and thus has almost no characterization other than being indifferent. His mother dies, he’s indifferent. His friend abuses women, he’s indifferent. A woman he likes wants to marry him, he’s indifferent. He doesn’t believe in love. He doesn’t believe in anything.
- The ending of part 1 though, is probably the most magnificent part of the novel up to that point. It’s almost like a shocking moment for the reader as we have to reconsider what we know about the main character. Thus far not much has been revealed about him and suddenly he shoots a man 5 times on the beach, seemingly with no remorse. Let’s see what part II holds.
- In general, I found the novel to be pretty forgettable.
- (Months later) I found a pretty great tidbit on why this should be read in French that I kind of understand.
Libra – Don DeLillo
- I’m approaching the halfway point of the book and I still haven’t gotten the feel for DeLillo’s style just yet. There are some really interesting passages, but overall the prose doesn’t particularly stand out. Perhaps it will click in the second half.
- Something that this novel reaffirmed for me was my general dislike / lack of interest in the military as a topic in a novel. I love spy movies. War movies can be fun. But there’s something about reading about military life that I find particularly dry. There are quite a few sections that rely on some military jargon and I can surmise the gist of the conversation nonetheless, but there’s something about the lingo and subject off-putting.
- My interest as I read this book sort of feels like sine wave. I’m usually hooked during the Oswald sections whereas the disillusioned CIA sections can occasionally feel overlong (I usually put the book down during these sections).
- One of my friends aptly summarized how I feel up to this point about the novel. It’s pretty fucking good, but after a while, it starts to feel like I’ve read the same thing over and over again.
- The parts about Oswald are usually the freshest, but occasionally drift into a discussion about how he’s a Marxist and whatnot.
- The parts about the CIA team, specifically Win’s sections seem to always focus on how he’s creating / building this perfect shooter to lead a trail to Castro. I swear to God I read the same passage like 4 or 5 goddamn times up to the halfway point of the novel.
- The parts about the dude whos in the future whos putting all this together (I forget his name, keeps talking about finding traces.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
- (30 pages) So far, I love it. There’s something oddly enjoyable and fun about it and I’m not sure exactly what that is yet. Perhaps it’s because it’s challenging, but in a manageable way and much less depressing than the rest of the modernists I’ve read thus far. It’s also pretty funny at this point. I’ve also picked up a lot of random tidbits of Irish History, so that’s always a nice side prize.
- (Finished) Holy fuck. That was pretty incredible. I get why James Joyce is considered great and this is barely the tip of the iceberg. I really appreciate whoever put together the Wordsworth Classics edition as the endnotes came in handy many a time. Joyce is definitely a writer that deserves to be returned to and this particular work deserves to be reread.
The Power of Myth – Joseph Campbell
- So far so good. I don’t really have much that I’ve reflected on thus far, but I’ll probably spend some time reading over the sections that I had highlighted while reading.
- There have been a couple points over the course of earlier sections of the interview, where Moyers and Campbell discuss the idea of spirituality in the modern world. Campbell seems to think that religion as a form of spirituality is largely dying out since it struggles to modernize itself in many different respects. Campbell additionally has pointed to LSD (and other forms of psychedelic drugs) as a new form of modern “spirituality”. He presents an interesting story about a tribe of Native Americans (?) who go on a journey to acquire this plant elicits a hallucinogenic response and that those on the journey reflect on themselves and their place in the world more and more as they get closer to the plant. In a way, the journey to the psychedelic plant (look up its name) is an introspective one and the journeymen do as much as possible to separate themselves from the physical world.
- Adding on to this point he talks about “ego-death” with psychedelics as a possible spiritual awakening.
- (100 pages) The one thing that consistently bothers me while reading Moyers and Campbell go back and forth, is the points when the conversation was obviously edited and the topic changes subject in a way that’s almost jarring. Just an observation that sometimes is frustrating. Of course this might be just how I’m reading the conversation and perhaps it flows better when actually vocalized.
- (Almost Finished – About 30 pages left) There are so many interesting anecdotes presented by Campbell throughout the conversation. There’s no doubt that he knows his shit. However, the way these anecdotes are presented really exposes the fundamental, and seemingly intentional, shortcoming of the novel: none of Campbell’s ideas are given the space to be fleshed out. Instead we get a nice little taste of how everything is connected, a carrot being dangled in every section, inciting just enough frustration and curiosity in the reader to explore further.
Iron Council – China Mieville
- (~50 pages) So far, less than impressed. It has the elements of a Mieville fantasy story, but feels uninspired compared to Perdidio Street Station and The Scar. Everything feels a bit rushed. It’s like China had a checklist of the tropes he prefers when he writes fantasy novels and is making sure he hits all of them. Every chapter thus far consists of a set piece at a different location, which usually ends in a fight and then the characters move somewhere else. Alas, hopefully the story and inspiration pick up over the next few parts.
- (~150 pages) It’s starting to feel more Mieville. So far, Iron Council sort of walks the line between the two types of books Mieville likes to write, one being raw and messy (e.g. the previous Bas-Lag novels) and the other being clean and meticulous a la Embassytown and The City & the City. Iron Council doesn’t really commit to either side and really feels like a transition novel for Mieville as he moves towards more concise narratives. It looks like the next section up ahead is a bit more “experimental” than previous sections and I’ve heard it carries somewhat of a notoriety.
- (Finished) I can’t tell if this is a good book with okay parts, or an okay book with good parts. It certainly earned the title of being Mieville’s most political book. The good: I can appreciate that Mieville explored some new elements this go-around. While slightly jarring, though certainly not as much as it’s made out to be, the flashback section is certainly necessary to some of the larger political parallels Mieville sought to draw. The bad: I’ve already described some qualms in the previous sections and I still feel the same way now that I’ve finished.
Turning Point 