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June 29
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Rob
gave
 
to:
A Wild Sheep Chase (Paperback)
by Haruki Murakami
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in June, 2008
Rob said:
"Okay. I think it’s time I take a break from reading Murakami. A Wild Sheep Chase is the third book by Murakami I’ve read in the last couple months and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a few things that can be said about Murakami and h...more
Okay. I think it’s time I take a break from reading Murakami. A Wild Sheep Chase is the third book by Murakami I’ve read in the last couple months and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a few things that can be said about Murakami and his work:
1. Women are mysterious creatures. They come. They go. And rarely does their purpose go beyond sex. I’m getting kind of tired of reading the sentence: “Then I found myself thinking about sex with her.” Big surprise!
2. Murakami’s narrators are smart, lazy men. At first this was endearing. “Okay,” I thought, “here’s a true modern day man.” Now all I can think is, “Come on! Get a job, already! Contribute. DO SOMETHING!”
3. Murakami is interested in dark, wet, cold, isolated places that make his narrators confront the inner workings of their own heads. Picture yourself at the bottom of a dry well on top of a deserted mountain with cold, wet snow falling down the well shaft onto your uncovered head. Only then will you begin to understand where Murakami is trying to take you. Here is where you’ll find the answers. If you don’t like this image I wouldn’t recommend reading Murakami.
A few words about A Wild Sheep Chase in particular: the premise is wonderful – the embodiment of a sheep that is hell bent on world domination.
Seriously.
That’s pretty good.
Seriously.
...less
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June 21
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Rob
gave
to:
The Chocolate War (Paperback)
by Robert Cormier
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in June, 2008
Rob said:
"My friend Vicki sent me a list of the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books of the last ten years. The Chocolate War was on that list, so I figured, what the hell! I’ve never read any young adult literature. This might be a...more
My friend Vicki sent me a list of the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books of the last ten years. The Chocolate War was on that list, so I figured, what the hell! I’ve never read any young adult literature. This might be a good place to start! Let’s see what all the hoopla is about!
I can see why this novel has been challenged in the past. There are several references, and other clear statements, about what high school boys do with themselves when they’re all alone in their bedrooms at night. And as we all know, talking about sex with young adults always stirs the pot. Also, this book is about some major themes: evil, justice, gang-mentality, abuse of power. And in the end, this book doesn’t end with flowers and rainbows. It’s a pretty downbeat ending. But to me (no surprise here), these are all realistic themes that should be dealt with in fiction, especially young adult fiction. I can see teaching this book to a class and getting into very important discussions about justice, hatred, and sincerity. These are topics that should be talked about in our classrooms.
Okay, enough preaching!
In response to Cormier’s writing itself, all I have to say is, simply, this is good writing. All you have to do is read the first little chapter of this book to realize you’re in good hands. There’s nothing extraneous in Cormier’s writing. He uses short, clear, terse sentences that move the story forward and keep you interested. Good stuff.
A times while reading this book I felt like I was in the same world created in the movie Brick, which came out a couple years ago. The dialogue between the characters isn’t as stylized, and the main plot device isn’t as adult, but I still had the sense while reading this novel that we were in a slightly exaggerated world. Everything was just a little bit hyper-real. Characters where more that just real, they were real with very intentional purposes. There are heroes and there are villains. The book is very clear about that. In other novels I would like to see more complexity of characters, bad characters doing good things sometimes, and good characters doing bad things, but in this book it doesn’t matter so much. I appreciated the black and white nature of the book. It imbues it with an interesting sense of tragedy.
...less
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Rob
gave
to:
The Accidental (Hardcover)
by Ali Smith
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in June, 2008
Rob said:
"This is a novel that fits into the category of “stranger comes to town.” A family is living in a rented summer house out in the country side of Great Britain when one day a woman by the name of Amber knocks on the door. Amber walks in and everyth...more
This is a novel that fits into the category of “stranger comes to town.” A family is living in a rented summer house out in the country side of Great Britain when one day a woman by the name of Amber knocks on the door. Amber walks in and everything changes for everyone in the house. I could give more specifics about what happens to each character, but ultimately, I think, that’s not the major concern here. What’s important about this novel is how Smith tells her story; free-flowing stream-of-consciousness writing filled with references to pop culture and classical literature and simple human emotion. This is some of the most realistic writing I’ve read in a long time. How Smith writes, I think, is exactly how people think. Minds jump from topic to topic. Reactions to past situations are built through re-thinking and re-hashing the past in relation to what’s happening now, at this very moment, in the present. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this process take place in real time within these characters’ minds.
Favorite part of the book: The end of Magnus’s last section where he knocks on Astrid’s bedroom door and they have a talk. You’ll see what I mean if you ever read this book. The scene is just so perfect. It says so much in so little, and that’s that the kind of writing I adore.
...less
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June 13
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Rob
gave
to:
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International)
by Haruki Murakami
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Rob said:
"Having just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and being confused by some aspects of that book, I decided to dig deeper in Murakami’s earlier work in the hope of finding some answers. Hard-Boiled Wonderland did in fact shed some light on the use ...more
Having just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and being confused by some aspects of that book, I decided to dig deeper in Murakami’s earlier work in the hope of finding some answers. Hard-Boiled Wonderland did in fact shed some light on the use of the narrator’s subconscious mind in Wind-Up Bird. The give and take between the conscious and subconscious is forefront in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, much like it was a theme in Wind-Up Bird, with the main difference being the narrator’s mind in Hard-Boiled Wonderland has literally been split by a scientist, where in Wind-Up there is no scientific explanation of what is going on in the "split" mind of the narrator. I now can applaud Murakami for doing what he did in Wind-Up. In that book he wasn’t overly concerned with the explanation of WHY there was such an odd interplay between the conscious and subconscious. Instead he trusted his reader to focus on the general importance of the interplay between the two.
This brings me to what I didn’t like about Hard-Boiled Wonderland: too much explanation. The main driving force in Hard-Boiled Wonderland is explaining WHY there is a split in the narrator’s mind. One storyline in the book takes place in modern day Tokyo while the other takes place within the subconscious mind of the narrator. What pulls the novel forward is the reader’s anticipation of finding out why this split exists, and what part of the narrator’s mind will win out in the end? What part of the narrator’s mind will become his permanent consciousness? In answering these questions Hard-Boiled Wonderland gets bogged down in its explanation, I think. Or maybe a better way to put it is that the plot becomes more important than the characters. By the end of the novel I wasn’t as invested in the characters as I was in Wind-Up. In Hard-Boiled, the narrator is thirty-five-year-old dude who acts like a sexist eighteen-year-old. That got pretty old. And by the end of the novel I really didn’t care that much where he ended up. It was an interesting enough journey where the novel took me, but in the end, emotionally, it just wasn’t as powerful as I hoped it would be....less
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Rob
gave
to:
Ceremony (Paperback)
by Leslie Marmon Silko
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Rob said:
"Ceremony melds western storytelling and Native American myth to show how its main character, Tayo, comes to terms with his place in America after his return from the second world war. This book deserves the praise that is lavished on it. It’s multi...more
Ceremony melds western storytelling and Native American myth to show how its main character, Tayo, comes to terms with his place in America after his return from the second world war. This book deserves the praise that is lavished on it. It’s multi-layered and worth several reads. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an honest glimpse into a Native American experience....less
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Rob
gave
to:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Paperback)
by Haruki Murakami
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Rob said:
"This is a mystery of a book. But a good mystery. There is no doubt that Murakami’s writing style pulls me forward. He’s such a simple writer. On the surface he’s very easy to understand. He can be writing about washing dishes and looking out a ...more
This is a mystery of a book. But a good mystery. There is no doubt that Murakami’s writing style pulls me forward. He’s such a simple writer. On the surface he’s very easy to understand. He can be writing about washing dishes and looking out a window in a Tokyo suburb and I’m enthralled. But there are so many themes in this book that I think he fails to pull together in the end. There are several amazing sections having to do with the Second World War. There are also some very interesting parts having to do with the subconscious mind and how it controls lives. Separately, these themes are very interesting. Put together in this book, mish-mashed together, I’m a little confused by what Murakami is trying to say about these topics, especially in relation to one another. But again I’ll say this book never failed at keeping my attention, and that’s a strong compliment for a 600 page book. In fact, I look forward to reading more of his other work in the hope of shedding light on some of the odder parts of this book....less
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May 23
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Rob
gave
to:
McSweeney's Issue 11 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)
by Dave Eggers
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Rob said:
"A good all around collection. In true McSweeney’s fashion, there’s a piece concerning the existence of The Colossal Squid! There’s also Act 2 of a play that began in Issue 9. I again had a hard time getting into the play, but the DVD that comes...more
A good all around collection. In true McSweeney’s fashion, there’s a piece concerning the existence of The Colossal Squid! There’s also Act 2 of a play that began in Issue 9. I again had a hard time getting into the play, but the DVD that comes with the book shows a performance of one of the scenes, which helped a little. Subscribers to McSweeney’s Wholphin DVDs will be familiar with Alison Smith’s story “The Specialist,” which was turned into a short film for Wholphin issue 1.
My fiction favorites include:
1. Tom Bissell’s “God Lives in St. Petersburg” – Concerns a missionary English teacher in a former Russian province. A story concerning the clash of sex, faith, and morals in a foreign country. The story of the world, anyone? Pretty disturbing stuff, therefore I liked it. (And don’t call me a pedophile for saying that!)
2. Sean Warren’s “What Keeler Did to His Foot in the Navy” – A sailor’s story of unwillingly befriending a loner while out at see. Hi-jinks ensue when they hit the Philippines for leave.
3. Stephen Elliot’s “I’ll Change Completely” – Three stories linked by the fact that all the main characters were (or still are) part of the juvenile detention system in Chicago.
In terms of non-fiction, Daphne Bell’s piece dealing with Napali prostitutes in Bomaby was fantastic....less
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April 05
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Rob
gave
to:
Things That Fall from the Sky: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Kevin Brockmeier
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Rob said:
"I was blow away when I first read Brockmeier’s story “The Ceiling” in an old issue of McSweeneys. There was something about that story that stuck with me long after I finished it. Days later I still felt the weight and sadness of Brockmeier’s...more
I was blow away when I first read Brockmeier’s story “The Ceiling” in an old issue of McSweeneys. There was something about that story that stuck with me long after I finished it. Days later I still felt the weight and sadness of Brockmeier’s characters lingering in my head. I had to read more, so I picked up this book, his first collection of short stories, and I wasn’t disappointed.
One of the most interesting stories in the collection is “These Hands,” which tells the story of a male nanny’s love for the 18-month old girl he takes care of. While this type of story could easily veer into creepy territory, Brockmeier doesn’t let it. His whole point, I think, is to question why, in fact, we would think this situation is uncomfortable to talk about in the first place. Why can’t a male nanny truly love the little girl he takes care of every day? Why can’t a grown man feel totally heartbroken when that relationship is taken away? These are the types of questions Brockmeier poses. And what I like most about the story is that it doesn’t present easy, pat answers. Moral judgment itself is thrown into question.
Other highlights in this collection included “Space” and “The House at the End of the World.” Most of the remaining stories contain fairy-tale elements. Of these I enjoyed “The Light Through the Window” and “The Passenger."...less
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Rob
marked as to-read:
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (Hardcover)
by Tobias Wolff
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Rob
gave
to:
A Confederacy of Dunces (Hardcover)
by John Kennedy Toole
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Rob said:
"A Confederacy of Dunces is an episodic novel. There are many quick shifts in character and circumstance that sometimes feel very random and pointless. But this is not a reason to quit reading this novel. Keep going. Toole does a wonderful job of pull...more
A Confederacy of Dunces is an episodic novel. There are many quick shifts in character and circumstance that sometimes feel very random and pointless. But this is not a reason to quit reading this novel. Keep going. Toole does a wonderful job of pulling all the threads together in the end, and he does it in a way that is both funny and full of pathos. This is a well crafted novel with unforgettable characters. I’ve never read about anyone as despicably sad and pathetic as Ignatius Reilly....less
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