false 77 156 148 true 5638115 read 0 true 215436 currently-reading 8 true 215435 to-read 59 false 407675 i-recommend http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77773770 to: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
I’ve wanted to read Mr. Chandler for ages now, and his own life story (conveniently included at the beginning of this edition) shows up a fascinating and plucky gentleman. As the virtual inventor of the modern detective novel, his achievement and influence is undeniable. When reading TBS, I could see private dick Philip Marlowe in every 40s film noir ever made, gravelly voice, smoked up sexiness, tipped hat, aggressive banter and slang, hard assed yet sensitive, too cool for school.

Mr. Chandler’s writing is razor sharp and vivid when he is recreating the seedy underbelly of LA. I loved his language. The dialogue was so very quick and witty and full of fabulous 30’s and 40’s slang, and his descriptions border on poetry at times, gunshot grim and gorgeous.

My one complaint: I found TBS a bit of a ‘boy’ book: too much mafia and manly men, women all beautiful and wasted, and a plot so convoluted that I couldn’t keep up. This last I found to be the most distracting of all. Marlowe was always a step ahead of the game, in the right place at the right time, knew what to say and when not to say it, page after damned page. Halfway through, I gave up trying to understand what was going on and just read for the mayhem and fun of it (and this wasn’t difficult at all). ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75070263 to: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (Paperback) by Oliver W. Sacks
bookshelves: i-recommend
I didn't want this book to end. I started slowing down even as I wanted to keep going. I'd sit in the New York City subway trains and think about reading but not. And I know I'm going to reread it sooner rather than later.

Dr. Sacks goes through a multitude of clinical case studies, within four different categories of right brain disorders (those that disrupt/destroy our sense/perception of reality): losses, excesses, transports, and the world of the simple. Throughout the book, he is constantly engaging with the human condition, overwhelmingly compassionate, curious, lyrical. He invokes stories, elevates them, shows how neurology, and medicine in general, have forgotten about people and why it's imperative for the profession, for the world. It's also striking to note how complex and tenuous our grasp of reality is, how many ways there are to lose it.

Because I've been obsessing recently about memory and memory loss, this passage in particular, from a letter from Dr. Sacks' mentor, A.R. Luria, struck me as being so nuanced and smart and ultimately, comforting:

"A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being, matters of which neuropsychology cannot speak."

Would that we all know this. And read this book. It's one of the best I've ever read. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/43297857 to: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Hardcover) by Junot Díaz
bookshelves: i-recommend
The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao made me laugh and made me cry. A lot. Junot Diaz's rambunctious epic Spanglish novel reads part autobiography, part history lesson, 100 miles an hour fabulous and moving.

From the tortured Trujillo regime of the Dominican Republic to the endless burbs of New Jersey, I was captured by each and every member of the doomed Cabral family, most especially by Oscar whose sad fat scifi loser life was so scrupulously and unjudgmentally and hilariously etched by Mr. Diaz as to cause me real heart aching pain.

My only critique was the narrator (Junior, maybe a version of Mr. Diaz?), whose brashboy style and perspective and footnoting I thoroughly enjoyed, but whose appearance in the text, when it wasn't his story being told, felt at times obnoxious and most times unnecessary.

Either way, I highly recommend this book. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75069971 to: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1) by Rick Riordan
I was all set for a fabulous fantasy series, armed with the first 4 of Percy Jackson's adventure books, courtesy of my brother, the fantasy fiend (though I've been one too since my teenage years). I thought the Olympians series would be a cross between Harry Potter and the Amulet of Samarkand. I was gravely disappointed. I admit part of it was the characterisation of my zodiac sign, Aries, as brutish ugly warring types. But fine, I can be all of those things. There were more serious problems with the first book (and no, Maher, I'm not reading the rest).

The obstacles had highly simplistic solutions. Cerebus, the 3 headed dog guarding the gates of Hades, can fobbed off with a rubber ball. Charon, the River Styx boat guard, with money. Etc. Our hero Percy, a demi-god, son of Poseidon and a human, displays no wild Harry Potter intelligence. A certain humour, yes, but nothing even close to Bartimaeus's footnotes. HIs only motive is finding his (beautiful kind ie perfect) mother. Bo-ring.

He is accompanied on his quest by a dorky buffoon of a satyr and a beautiful wise daughter of Athena. Hello, utterly shameless Harry/Ron/Hermione derivative? And how is a quest this important (preventing war between the three most powerful brothers and gods) entrusted to an untrained half-blood? Oh right, a prophecy. I'm sorry, but that's not good enough.

I kept finding holes in the plot that annoyed me. For eg, when they encounter an eccentric woman, there's this thought Percy has:

"Only later did I wonder how she knew Annabeth's name, even though we had never introduced ourselves."

Immediately, I thought, oh they're not going to find out who this person is b/c he's STILL wondering later how she knew. Of course, a page later, it's obvious because she's Medusa, Poseidon's "girlfriend" and bitter at Athena for breaking them up and turning her into a snake head. They all know perfectly well why she knows. So why, Mr. Riordan, did you write that line? I know you're trying to point out she knows their names mysteriously at first, but it's not so mysterious a second later. Or how about when Ares smuggles something with Percy, and oh so conveniently "worked some magic" to make it appear only when it was exactly time. Maybe that's possible in this Olympian world, but then *work* the plot and background information so that the reader understands and believes it when it happens.

I knew by Percy's first early vanquishing of a monster that things were going to go easy for him the whole book, that no supposedly insurmountable problem would foil him for more than a few pages. This was also obvious by his convenient knowledge of all the ancient Greek stories when it's useful for him to know them. This is again something that could have been easily set up in the beginning where he's shown floundering in every school subject. Um, even Latin and Greek. So then how did he learn all that? A genetic disposition?

Anyway, the one good thing is that the plot moves briskly so it's an easy read. On an unrelated note, I hope someone out there writes a series using the Hindu gods and humans and a quest and so on. Then, even if it sucks, at least there'll be brown people and brown customs in it. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74743902 to: Invisible Cities (Paperback) by Italo Calvino
bookshelves: i-recommend
Sometimes you aren't ready to read a book. My sister recommended Italo Calvino to me more than 10 years ago. My writing advisor a few years after that. I picked up "Invisible Cities" both times and put it back down again, finding it scattered and confusing. I found it again this week at my parents' place in Pittsburgh and devoured it each night, each dreamscape city building itself in my mind, breaking me down.

It's hard to say what the book is about. A conversation between Marco Polo and Kubla Khan at the twilight of his empire? Stories about cities and history? An ode to Venice? A meditation on time and memory and how going afar changes the near?

There is this passage:
"... what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places."

Though I can't completely get my head around this passage, I am utterly moved, and delighted. Perhaps I needed to go travelling for years for these words to resonate. Or to become a writer.

However, even with such a little book (less than 200 pages) and a lyrical and philosophical writing style, I found the city descriptions slightly repetitive, and some of the conversations as well. But I kept reading, feeling like there were secret messages. Like this wondrous passage, a call to a calling, a purpose in life:

"There are two ways to escape suffering the inferno of the living. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

I'm sure Mr. Calvino had an ordering scheme, or reasons for the categories of cities he chose. I couldn't decipher them, and I'm not sure whether any of that narrative stuff even matters. He is a philosopher, and an artist of the highest order. I highly recommend this book. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72018451 to: Sons and Other Flammable Objects: A Novel (Hardcover) by Porochista Khakpour
I was excited to read Ms. Khakpour's debut novel, "Sons and Other Flammable Objects" having highly enjoyed her funny witty NYT oped ("Iranian Revolution Barbie") and her nerve.com bad sex essay (we all have one in us). However, as clever as she is, and this is clear from her writing and the way she structures her book, I found myself plowing rather than breezing through it.

The characters never felt real, but more like foils for what they stand for: the stultified father, the wayward son, the hang dog mother, the beautiful girlfriend, the forgotten homeland.

There are many flashes of bizarre and poignant depth, but it's so overwritten as to overwhelm the story (essentially a story about broken families). The descriptions are multiplicitous but without adding enough to the scenes to warrant the verbiage (although don't get me wrong - many scenes and even the stock characters have a startlingly original and haunting quality).

Sometimes I found the father and son characters interchangeable in their careless slangy speech patterns. And I also thought the symbolism and foreshadowing and historical and metaphorical parallels heavy handed. For example, did all three (father, mother, son) all have to have the exact same thought about flying in planes being out of space and time and thus a reprieve of sorts from life? I got it the first time around.

I wish she had slashed about a quarter of the book, and spent more time making her characters real rather than tragic and symbolic. It would have been much sharper and snappier, in line with her sharp snappy writing style.

Still, there aren't many books out there on the Iranian immigrant experience - and the loneliness of that existence (really any immigrant experience) is palpable in "Sons..." The book also spans both the east and west coasts and post-911 traumas, and does it all with a thoroughly modern sensibility. I'll look forward to more.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70420250 to: Kiss of the Spider Woman (Paperback) by Manuel Puig
KotS-W is a conversation between two inmates, a gay window dresser and a revolutionary. I was biased from the beginning, but against the blurb writer. The window dresser is described on the back of the book as self centred but charming, but in no way does he come across as self centred, unless you pick on something late in the book (which would be a spoiler so I won't mention it more explicitly), but even that wouldn't be considered self centred IMHO (he was really a lovely man). The revolutionary is described as fiercely idealistic, thus setting us up for what we should think of each of these men. I hate being told what to think.

But the worst was the footnotes on homosexuality that invade the text, totally randomly. According to my further research, these footnotes were inserted by Mr. Puig himself (randomly, this much is true), to display the "scientific" and political investigations into the "causes" of homosexuality. Each succeeding theory apparently disputes the last, perhaps building up to a house of cards. It didn't work for me because no matter how less lame a theory of homosexuality is, it's still lame, and offensive, and plus it took me away from the actual text for pages and pages at a time.

I like footnotes when they're funny and relevant and resonant (see "Oscar Wao" or "the Amulet of Samarkand"), and maybe back in the 70's when this was published, KotS-W's footnotes were provocative and subversive, but now, in our multi-culti gay ways, they appear dated and disrespectful.

Ok, so ax the book jacket blurb, and the footnotes, and I much enjoyed KotS-W. The growing friendship between two unlikely friends is profound and beautiful and told through the vivid and visual movies that the window dresser recounts for the revolutionary. I don't know that the movies actually contributed that much to the book - mostly because there were so many films and so much time was spent on retelling them - but they were so interesting, I didn't care.

One last complaint: I did find the omniscient jail reports to be a rather obvious device for telling the reader what's happening behind the scenes. I would have rather Mr. Puig figured out a more subtle conceit. Again, further research tells me these are "experimental" fictional techniques, but I am yet not compelled. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/65214665 to: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: A Novel (P.S.) by Michael Chabon
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70419789 to: The Blind Assassin (Paperback) by Margaret Atwood
bookshelves: i-recommend
Margaret Atwood is a genius and I'm only the last to say it as this Booker prize winning book has its jacket and first few pages flooded with praise from the highest literary quarters.

This was my first Atwood book (so many to go) and it's a story of two sisters, two lovers, a family in decline, a revolutionary on the run, and of course, as per her sci-fi inclinations, a world with 5 suns and 2 moons and a kingdom on the brink of invasion.

I'd say her writing was on the overdone side, as she never lets one adjective or descriptive phrase sit on its own but have at least 2 companions, but the thing is, all three are so articulate, sharp, emotional, and to the limpid point, that I cannot complain. Halfway through, I didn't want the book to end, and on practically every page, I was amazed at how deeply she understands the human condition, and how beautifully she can describe it.

I did find the characterisation between the sisters to break down towards the end, but it didn't stop me from inhaling the twisting plot as fast as I could. The Blind Assassin is acidly wry, funny at times, poignant, and deeply aware. I highly recommend it. ]]>