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July 24
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Matt
gave
to:
Chronicler of the Winds: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Henning Mankell
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended for: Contemporary Lterature fans
read in July, 2008
Matt said:
"I have a bookclub with this book tonight, so for an exercise I'm going to try to type all my thoughts out about this book, which was more satisfying on my second reading. My general short statement about this book is a recommendation for anyone to re...more
I have a bookclub with this book tonight, so for an exercise I'm going to try to type all my thoughts out about this book, which was more satisfying on my second reading. My general short statement about this book is a recommendation for anyone to read this, it has a power. So the rest of this review is unneccesary to read unless you love my reviews because it's an exercise, and will contain spoilers.
This short book (230 pages) does take awhile to get good and sink in for the reader, because the narrator tells the history of this unnamed African country. It's a that had conlonial power well into the twentieth centery. The book does not list dates but my guess would be the sixties to eightes the Europeans held power. Then the revolutionaires took over, and controlled things in other ways. And it the present time (this was written in Swedish in 1995) which may be the early nineties, another faction called 'The Rebels' is trying to gain power by terrorizing the villages and countryside. This history which makes the first 50 pages or so a tad boring was necessary for this story to make the world believable, and sets up the brillance for the last two thirds of the novel.
The narrator is a baker from a young age, and works for a crazy theater owner Dona Esmeralda who may be a hundred. He liked working for the theater to bake bread at night,and observe the actors putting on their strange masterpiecse directed by Dona. He life changed when he notices in the middle of the night a street kid with two bullets in his chest on center stage, who looks like an old man. This kid was a leader with powers, and talks the baker to take him to the roof. Over the course of nine nights, the street kid, Nelio, tells his story to the baker and then dies. This changes the baker purpose in life to tell Nelio's story and spread the word on injustice in their coutry. Early on the narrator makes it clear that a year has passed, he became homeless, and wants to tell the story to anyone who would listen.
Nelio's story starts with his childhood and 'The Rebels' brutalizing his village. His parents and friends may have died, he does not know. He escaped by shooting a captive that told him to kill his friend or die. He ran and journeyed for a long time and meets a albino dwarf that may have had magical powers. The two travel together for awhile, he sees the sea for the first time. Nelio get advice from the albino, but they have to part ways and he goes to the city.
Once the story gets the city, this novel becomes moving, and believable in ways not many authors can produce. It shows the social injustices of the poor and in particular the homeless youth problem that you hear about in third world countries. This does exist and the documentary 'Born into Brothels' shows visually shows the sadness of the epidemic. Back to the book and why I liked it so much. Throughout the book it has this powerful theme that these kids have lived longer than their years. They are aged 8 to 14 but in experience years are 70 to 90. This is a touching theme, and along with others that they're goal is simple to stay live. These ideas are hard to relate to, because most people remember they're childhood memories of school, playtime, or other pursuts, and major decisions were left to the parents. The author makes the reader relate to them and their ordeals. I believe that the characters are three dimensional. In the middle the reader is away of Nelio's background, but on the 4th or 5th night (the chapter sections are by the nights) the rest of the gang story is told about five of them. All stories are heartbraking, some forced from their villages, one child warrior, on run away. But they experienced more that most people experience in there lives.
The leader of the gang that Nelio replaces was Cosmos, and he had an idea that really makes the reader think. He asks Nelio 'what does a street kid want most in the world.' The answer was an ID card, to verify their existence. This is powerful because it is so foriegn to most people, but embodies the invisibility of these kids.
This book ends nicely with a stage preformeance by the kids, which nicely wraps up the coverage of the theatre.
But the best thing about this book and what's makes it's breath taking is brining these street kid characters to live. For people that liked 'What is the What,' this is similar in the coverage of Africa, but is more of a captivating story of a whole demographic of homeless childred.
I also want to read 'A Long Way Gone.'
...less
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Matt
read and liked
Bart's
review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:
"This book falls just shy of exceptional – which is not to write that it doesn’t have exceptional parts. It has plenty of exceptional parts, actually. Trouble is, very few of them concern the book’s protagonist and namesake; and despite being ...more
This book falls just shy of exceptional – which is not to write that it doesn’t have exceptional parts. It has plenty of exceptional parts, actually. Trouble is, very few of them concern the book’s protagonist and namesake; and despite being called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao few of the book’s wondrous parts have anything to do with Oscar Wao.
This book won most of last year’s literary awards. That may or may not be overstating its worth. Ever since “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” appeared as a short story in The New Yorker eight years ago – and, actually, a few years before that even – critics and Lit professors have been waiting desperately for a chance to give Junot Diaz the full brunt of their praise. This obviously has more to do with culture and that lame wing of English departments called “cultural criticism” than it has to do with Diaz’s talent, but there we are.
Don’t doubt Diaz’s talent, though. When he is telling stories about the protagonist’s family and its struggles in the Dominican Republic, he is at his best. He takes a number of Dominican history books – and a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa – and spins them into a compelling, insightful short history of 1930-1980. The book has no better parts than when it treats a deep character, like Oscar’s maternal grandfather, and a deep history, like the reign of Rafael Trujillo, and has so much storytelling to get done that it doesn’t bother being amazed by itself, y con cuantas palabras el escritor puede incluir en espanol.
But too much of the rest of the time, there are Diaz’s twists on what are becoming lamentable literary staples. There’s the comic book and Sci-Fi collection, of course, and a hundred or so allusions to its characters. There’s the “distinctive voice” of the narrator – UrbanDictionary.com meets “Blood In, Blood Out”. And there’s the author’s own inability to distinguish what is dominicano from what is latino, and what is latino from what is universal.
In other words, for writing about Dominicans, Diaz gets an unfairly wide berth. Unfair to him, that is. There are plenty of moments in this book when, as the reader, you think, What a writer! But then there are other times when the author is speeding through a lesson on what it means to be Dominican, and you are thinking, Hold on, he’s describing Mexicans I know. Or when the writer is explaining that Latin men are obsessed with sex, and you are thinking, Yup, along with white men, and black men, and Asian men, and even, I assume, Eskimo men. This lack of perspective on Diaz’s part, one suspects, comes not from a lack of talent or intellect but from being coddled – first by professors, and later by critics, who are either too anxious to recognize a talented latino writer or scared to death of being called (horror of all horrors) “racist” by one of their peers.
How unfortunate. What Diaz needed at some point during the seven years he enhanced his short story was to have someone say: “Not good enough! Good enough, probably, to win a Pulitzer and a pile of other awards, yes, but not good enough to justify your gifts. Look, Junot, you can go deeper than this. You can take this nerdy cardboard guy named Oscar Wao and do more with him. But in order to do that, you’ve got to get past the fact that he’s a Dominican. ‘Porque el es un dominicano’ can only take a character so far. And you have the ability to go further. Put him on that island, with a million other Dominicans, and then figure out what, aside from a weight problem and science fiction and a curse, drives him to make such a maniacal choice in the end.”
But there’s lots of hope. In the next few years, Diaz is going to revisit this novel and realize he could have done more. Then he’s going to realize that his critics – the very people who should have demanded more – are too easily fooled. He’s going to eschew their praise and go deeper. When that happens, what results will be genuinely wondrous....less
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July 21
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Matt
took the never-ending book quiz.
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July 17
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New comment on oriana's review of
Zeroville
(see all 9 comments)
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Matt
read and liked
oriana's
review of Zeroville:
"On the whole, this was a phenomenal book. It's all about movies, but also about punk music, hippies, madness, murder, blowjobs, surfing, Joan of Arc, god, forgiveness, wonder, and maybe even love.
It lost one star for the ending, which I wouldn't...more
On the whole, this was a phenomenal book. It's all about movies, but also about punk music, hippies, madness, murder, blowjobs, surfing, Joan of Arc, god, forgiveness, wonder, and maybe even love.
It lost one star for the ending, which I wouldn't usually do (by 'ending' here, I mean literally the last like three pages), but the more I've thought about it, the more upset those three pages have made me. And it really does color the entire reading experience to have an ending that leaves you feeling unsettled and perplexed at best and lazily duped at worst.
So that's the bad news. The good news is that this was one of my favorite stories about a socially inept crazy person maybe even since Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. (I imagine some people will get indignant about that comparison, but fuck off, it's my review.) Vikar -- our hero -- is amazingly drawn and consistently fascinating. I definitely fell in love with him a bit, which is a dangerous thing to do with a quasi-autistic, because he will break your heart without even understanding the basic emotions necessary to do so. Zazi too (our heroine) was stunning, reminding me some of a Pynchon construction, maybe like Prairie in Vineland, though ultimately much darker and less redemptive/redeemed. There are some fantastic secondary characters, like the afro-ed robber, who I know is kinda for (dark) comic relief, but I thought his few scenes were just sensational; and Viking Man and Dottie and all that; and Soledad, who was the only character I really didn't like, because she was the utterly undeserving love interest and that shit always pisses me off.
Jeesh, and I haven't even said anything about the story yet. Well look, it's all all all about movies, a million old movies all intertwined and hinted at and mentioned sideways and in passing. It's also written kind of like a movie, by which I mean it's got hundreds of chapters, from one word to a few pages long, and at times you feel like it's been 'cut' in an editing room, and 'spliced' together just like a film. (I borrowed that idea from someone in my reading group.) Being more or less pop-culture-illiterate, I really didn't get the vast majority of these references, but it really wasn't a problem for me. In fact I think it saved me from focusing too much mental energy on figuring out what movies or actors he was talking about, and allowed me to just revel in the pulse and thrall of the story.
I really truly did love this. I will definitely read more Steve Erickson, and would probably be wise to reread this one some time. ...less
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Matt
gave
to:
Zeroville (Paperback)
by Steve Erickson
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Matt by:
Daniel
read in July, 2008
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July 14
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Matt
added Tender Is the Night
to the book list Best Books of the 20th Century
add a comment »
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July 06
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Matt
read and liked
michael spencer's
review of Breakfast of Champions:
"A loveable, highly enjoyable and entranced satirical look at western culture (and the United States in particular), this might be rightly termed not as a novel but as one of the best examples of contemporary American parable. Vonnegut is witty, dry, ...more
A loveable, highly enjoyable and entranced satirical look at western culture (and the United States in particular), this might be rightly termed not as a novel but as one of the best examples of contemporary American parable. Vonnegut is witty, dry, matter-of-fact. His detached perspective gives fresh meaning to the subjects about which he writes, and he plays with words in a way that lets the reader know that, yes, the author is fully aware of the fact that this is fiction, not reality, and something that is read, not fully experiential, and so on. He breaks through the sacred threshold between reader and author so that you know he is someone to whom listening is a worthy gift.
There were multiple, uncountable times of breaking out into laughter with this story. There existed also a few times of having to laugh uncontrollably for a while. And so on. However, at the end of these one comes to a place in the novel that could make one freak out in like respect, mostly because of the sheer flip to painful, personal material.
Vonnegut tackles issues of our day in a way that makes one pain with the truth of it. He does this by sandwiching it in such sarcastic, detached humor that it is easy to find oneself curious as to which things should be laughed at, and from what motive that laugh ought spring forth, and so on. Put simply, it challenges the definition of "fiction". It begs the reader not just to be engaged but to engage back. In this way, he more than adequately represents in the author-reader relationship what he represents in his characters and himself in the novel. It is definitely one for the keeping, even if no other Vonnegut novel is owned.
ETC.
**
These initial impressions are still up here because they are better suited for premonitional reading:
I have very high hopes for this one, Joseph. You'd better prepare for my exacting precision in review!
(This is fifteen minutes later now:) Never mind, I'm already laughing.
**
...less
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Matt
gave
to:
Breakfast of Champions (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
bookshelves:
classics
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Matt by:
everyone
read in July, 2008
Matt said:
"Controlled randomness are two words I would stamp on this book by Vonnegut. The narrator is the creator of the characters and controlls their actions and thoughts with the stroke of his pen. That's kind of silly metaphor for all fiction pieces where ...more
Controlled randomness are two words I would stamp on this book by Vonnegut. The narrator is the creator of the characters and controlls their actions and thoughts with the stroke of his pen. That's kind of silly metaphor for all fiction pieces where it's the author's whim and fancy of who does what when and what repercusions result from these fabricated actions. So in a way, in Breakfast of Champians, Vonnegut is poking fun at serious fiction, because none of it is true and all of it is an author's whim.
With a humorous touch this story builds up to the first art festival in Midland Indiana. The characters are ridicilous mostly focusing on two deranged souls; a succesful car dealer who owns half of Midland but is progressivly loosing his marbles, and an prolific unknown author whose published hundreds of stories in girly magazines, and is also inzane. The narrator created both of them and through the process of this book with a begninning, middle, and end the story develops and builds up to the great bang of these two individuals meeting. Other characters of the narrators device serface and are all described as bizarre, exaggerated, and with a certain doom that is funny.
To paraphrase my last sentance this book is bizarre, exaggerated, and with a certain doom that is funny because it's about our beloved country and is definitly an americana novel. It covers the absurdity of our wars, slavery, racism, comercialism, materialism, patriotism, medeaism, and everything else red, white, and blue. The Midland character represents the American dream, and how it can be shattered. The abscure author character represents how our country turns a blind eye to true art unless it can be profitable. At the midland festival they bought a 50,000 dollar painting which was simplistic artwork, but the price tag showed validity. A lot of Vonnegut's jokes are at the expense of our country, but may take an American reader to appreciate them.
This book is enjoyable and I gave it four stars instead of five because one loose end character or situation just dissolved and dissappeared. And I'm a product of literary thought we're everything should be resolved nicely at the end, like a care package with all the emminities.
I'd say to everyone to read this one, it won't take much time, and you have nothing to lose....less
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July 05
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Matt
added a quote:
"Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present."
— Kurt Vonnegut
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Keep reading books and writing those reviews, Matt. Best of luck to you.
