Since it's the first of the year (or close enough), I thought I would make a decision regarding this tiny corner of the internet I've called mine for nearly two years now.
I'm stopping my blog.
It was a great thing for me for a while. And now it's just a thing that exists. A thing I ignore.
So instead of pretending like it is something I may later pay attention to, I will just shift my book-reading life on the internet over to goodreads. Seems like less work.
So be my friend! http://www.goodreads.com/betsyismadeofawesome
And thank you for reading. I have appreciated it.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Devil in the White City
[Please read the note at the bottom - and ignore where I say 'fiction.' Apparently I don't mean it.]
At my school, the honors kids read Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City for their class on Chicago. My friend who works at the library read it (and has read his other novels too). Andy's Mom read it because she loves Chicago.
The point being: people I know have read this book, and the people I know who have read it have liked it. So I read it.
I, however, did not like it.
The concept of the book is that it balances the historic and non-fictional story of the Chicago World's Fair with the fictional story of a serial killer functioning out of Chicago at the same time as the fair. The problem is that it did not balance.
The passages about the architecture and preparation, the struggles, and the deaths due to accident or sickness were all quite interesting. I learned a lot about Chicago and architecture in general, but these passages account for a good deal more of the book than the fictional counterpart. I read it on my Kindle so I don't have a great handle on how many pages in the book would be the equivalent, but I would read about 15 kindle pages about architectural structure and competition, and maybe three (including a generous section heading) about the murderer.
This leaves the murderer woefully underdeveloped. His story was told so fleetingly, and so repeatingly, that even the most stomach-turning parts (he was a doctor, so of course the killings are fairly graphic) were brief and a little boring. I didn't get to know him, and I didn't think that his story was woven well enough into the world's fair story to even be relevant.
I could pretty much tell that he wrote the historic portion first, and tried to piece in the fictional account. That would be the tactic that I would also use, if I were to work on this project, but I think that too much consideration was spent on the non-fiction than the fiction, and as a reader of fiction (primarily), I think the combined narrative suffered on both counts because of it. However, it might be a good way for a non-fiction reader to delve into fiction by having a few fictive bits thrown into a historical story.
And of course, perhaps because I've been reading Sherlock Holmes lately, I think that the crimes that he committed seemed quite interesting, but I would have liked more of an insight into the criminal mind. The investigation starts too late and seems too rushed to give me the sort of satisfaction that I expect from a crime/mystery story. Amping up the investigation would have made it more engaging, I think.
I'm glad I read it. I really did love learning about the fair and the work that went into it (and I appreciate the work that went into this book too), and honestly without the fiction bits I likely wouldn't have even tried; I'm bad at reading non-fiction unless it's a focused memoir. But I won't re-read it, and I don't think that I can, in good conscience, recommend it to my fellow fiction readers.
[EDIT: Apparently every time you see me use the word 'FICTION' in relation to Holmes, the murder, ignore me. I was grievously misinformed about the nature of the book (and possibly Larson's larger body of work, though I didn't like this book enough to explore this in-depth) and it turns out he was, indeed, a real person who actually did these things. It just turns out that the actual story could have used some tweaking to adjust the balances of time and character activity - maybe Holmes should have been fictionalized for more control of the character. That is probably the opposite of the goal here though. (Please don't kill me, historians!)
I'm leaving up my original reaction to this book because it was the way I experienced it, and knowing that it is all historical doesn't change the way I feel about the craft and pace of the story.
Thanks Ali for helping me out on this. I clearly didn't take the honors class. (Though I swear someone who took it told me it was fiction...)]
At my school, the honors kids read Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City for their class on Chicago. My friend who works at the library read it (and has read his other novels too). Andy's Mom read it because she loves Chicago.
The point being: people I know have read this book, and the people I know who have read it have liked it. So I read it.
I, however, did not like it.
The concept of the book is that it balances the historic and non-fictional story of the Chicago World's Fair with the fictional story of a serial killer functioning out of Chicago at the same time as the fair. The problem is that it did not balance.
The passages about the architecture and preparation, the struggles, and the deaths due to accident or sickness were all quite interesting. I learned a lot about Chicago and architecture in general, but these passages account for a good deal more of the book than the fictional counterpart. I read it on my Kindle so I don't have a great handle on how many pages in the book would be the equivalent, but I would read about 15 kindle pages about architectural structure and competition, and maybe three (including a generous section heading) about the murderer.
This leaves the murderer woefully underdeveloped. His story was told so fleetingly, and so repeatingly, that even the most stomach-turning parts (he was a doctor, so of course the killings are fairly graphic) were brief and a little boring. I didn't get to know him, and I didn't think that his story was woven well enough into the world's fair story to even be relevant.
I could pretty much tell that he wrote the historic portion first, and tried to piece in the fictional account. That would be the tactic that I would also use, if I were to work on this project, but I think that too much consideration was spent on the non-fiction than the fiction, and as a reader of fiction (primarily), I think the combined narrative suffered on both counts because of it. However, it might be a good way for a non-fiction reader to delve into fiction by having a few fictive bits thrown into a historical story.
And of course, perhaps because I've been reading Sherlock Holmes lately, I think that the crimes that he committed seemed quite interesting, but I would have liked more of an insight into the criminal mind. The investigation starts too late and seems too rushed to give me the sort of satisfaction that I expect from a crime/mystery story. Amping up the investigation would have made it more engaging, I think.
I'm glad I read it. I really did love learning about the fair and the work that went into it (and I appreciate the work that went into this book too), and honestly without the fiction bits I likely wouldn't have even tried; I'm bad at reading non-fiction unless it's a focused memoir. But I won't re-read it, and I don't think that I can, in good conscience, recommend it to my fellow fiction readers.
[EDIT: Apparently every time you see me use the word 'FICTION' in relation to Holmes, the murder, ignore me. I was grievously misinformed about the nature of the book (and possibly Larson's larger body of work, though I didn't like this book enough to explore this in-depth) and it turns out he was, indeed, a real person who actually did these things. It just turns out that the actual story could have used some tweaking to adjust the balances of time and character activity - maybe Holmes should have been fictionalized for more control of the character. That is probably the opposite of the goal here though. (Please don't kill me, historians!)
I'm leaving up my original reaction to this book because it was the way I experienced it, and knowing that it is all historical doesn't change the way I feel about the craft and pace of the story.
Thanks Ali for helping me out on this. I clearly didn't take the honors class. (Though I swear someone who took it told me it was fiction...)]
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Oskar Schell's 9/11
I don't pretend to be the kind of person who goes out an experiences things for myself. This is a habit I'm trying to stray from, but it is fact that my friends make fun of me for liking inside so much. What my friends, however, are missing is the fact that I don't miss experiences by staying inside, I just have different ones.
What I'm getting at here, is that I primarily experience things that aren't my daytoday through books.
Today is September 11th, 2011. Ten years ago today I sat in my 7th grade home room and watched, quite distantly, two towers fall.
My 9/11 experience has always been distant. Filtered through TV's and news papers, photos and folklore. I have experienced it through the stories of others, through the tears on the faces of strangers. And that's the way the majority of America has experienced it. My September 11th is defined by my distance, by the unity of destruction.
My experience of September 11th, and the general, shared experience (Where were you that morning? Never Forget. Etc) is something that has been romanticized in our culture. Romance is something that I recognize easily because it lives at the core of my being. Generally, I think that romanticizing someone, something, some experience, etc is a good thing. This is how I relate to my world.
But when it comes to 9/11, I think that it is, in general, a mistake. By romanticizing, we miss something real. It enters into the realm of the imaginary and into the realm of fiction.
Jonathan Safran Foer, however, wrote a book in 2005 called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The hero of this story is Oskar Schell, a brilliant nine-year-old who understand so many things intellectually, and so few things emotionally.
Oskar's dad died in 9/11, and one year after he finds a key his dad left behind labeled "Black," and decides he needs to find the owner of the lock this key solves. Loud&Close is the emotional journey that this brilliant child goes on in an attempt to understand his mourning, and it's the closest I've ever felt to this experience that has become such a blanket, a corner stone to our culture.
Schell is a hopeless romantic, but Foer manages to take his romance and extract his real emotions out of it. I've read every book that Foer has written, and while his style isn't as polished as writers who are older than he, his emotion is the raw element readers seek in his books. Part flip book, part prose, the book itself leaks tears onto you.
This is a fictional story. But this fictional story helped me empathize with the people who experienced this first hand, to understand what that day may have felt like, and how the effects of it ripple through the lives of New Yorkers, and the broader America today.
So while I think abstractly about the real victims of 9/11 (for that is all I'm capable of, in my distant experience), I think concretely about Oskar Schell, a little boy with heavy boots.
What I'm getting at here, is that I primarily experience things that aren't my daytoday through books.
Today is September 11th, 2011. Ten years ago today I sat in my 7th grade home room and watched, quite distantly, two towers fall.
My 9/11 experience has always been distant. Filtered through TV's and news papers, photos and folklore. I have experienced it through the stories of others, through the tears on the faces of strangers. And that's the way the majority of America has experienced it. My September 11th is defined by my distance, by the unity of destruction.
My experience of September 11th, and the general, shared experience (Where were you that morning? Never Forget. Etc) is something that has been romanticized in our culture. Romance is something that I recognize easily because it lives at the core of my being. Generally, I think that romanticizing someone, something, some experience, etc is a good thing. This is how I relate to my world.
But when it comes to 9/11, I think that it is, in general, a mistake. By romanticizing, we miss something real. It enters into the realm of the imaginary and into the realm of fiction.
Jonathan Safran Foer, however, wrote a book in 2005 called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The hero of this story is Oskar Schell, a brilliant nine-year-old who understand so many things intellectually, and so few things emotionally.
Oskar's dad died in 9/11, and one year after he finds a key his dad left behind labeled "Black," and decides he needs to find the owner of the lock this key solves. Loud&Close is the emotional journey that this brilliant child goes on in an attempt to understand his mourning, and it's the closest I've ever felt to this experience that has become such a blanket, a corner stone to our culture.
Schell is a hopeless romantic, but Foer manages to take his romance and extract his real emotions out of it. I've read every book that Foer has written, and while his style isn't as polished as writers who are older than he, his emotion is the raw element readers seek in his books. Part flip book, part prose, the book itself leaks tears onto you.
This is a fictional story. But this fictional story helped me empathize with the people who experienced this first hand, to understand what that day may have felt like, and how the effects of it ripple through the lives of New Yorkers, and the broader America today.
So while I think abstractly about the real victims of 9/11 (for that is all I'm capable of, in my distant experience), I think concretely about Oskar Schell, a little boy with heavy boots.
Monday, August 29, 2011
This might get Ugly...
Bad blog titles anyone? Let's move on...
As mentioned in my audio book post, I've been reading (...listening to) the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I finished them a little while ago, and I've been waiting to write this to see if I could calm down about how much I disliked them and gain some perspective.
As mentioned in my audio book post, I've been reading (...listening to) the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I finished them a little while ago, and I've been waiting to write this to see if I could calm down about how much I disliked them and gain some perspective.
It hasn't worked. This is my anger rant disclaimer.
Uglies, Pretties and Specials (the fourth book, Extras, is not a story about the main character of the first three books, so I didn't feel the need to read it) are dystopian post-apocalyptic stories of Tally Youngblood, our hero (but only in the technical, structural sense, since she only has a talent for messing stuff up). Tally is an Ugly when we begin our story. In their society, they are ugly (or, um, regular as we would think of it) until they are sixteen, when they get surgery, turn pretty, and start their life of binge drinking. Seriously.
The story, of course, is of Tally escaping pretty-ness. But because Tally's character is SO INCREDIBLY DUMB she never actually makes the choice to rebel. She's tricked into it. She's tricked into every decision she makes.
So let's talk about Tally for a second. No, let's talk about Westerfeld first. Scott Westerfeld is a man. I'm not saying that men have to write male main characters, or women, female characters (See: TFiOS by John Green; Harry Potter by JK Rowling). But I am saying that there better be a reason why you're choosing one gender over another, and I never got the feeling that there was a significant reason. In fact, I'm angry that he did choose a female character, because he turned an excellent opportunity for a strong female lead (See: The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen, or The Golden Compas' Lyra Silvertongue) into my unadulterated anger. It would be a more interesting story if the main character was male, and failed to be the masculine hero society expects (if this story must be about failure and sucking at things).
But let's have a quick character comparison before we completely disregard Tally:
Katniss is strong. Katniss is courageous. Katniss is a Griffindor. Katniss is kind. Katniss is emotive. Katniss makes mistakes, but they show her humanity. Katniss is clever. Katniss' character is continually developed over the course of three books. Katniss makes hard decisions. Katniss takes care of the people she loves.
Tally is weak. Tally is stupid. Tally's character is incredibly inconsistent. Tally is fickle. Tally is horrible to her friends. Tally is completely driven by her relationships with men. Tally needs to be saved. Tally falls into traps (in fact, I suggest this as the new title of the series. Tally Falls Into Traps. It would be a fairly literal description). Tally is a Slytherin. The dumb, slutty kind, not the sharp, cunning kind (I'm looking at you, Pansy Parkinson).
Tally's primary female relationship with her "best friend" is based in hate and competition, not trust. It's not as though Tally doesn't have her moments, but whenever she succeeds, Westerfeld immediately sets her back further than any ground she covered.
Okay, yeah. Tally sucks.
Westerfeld has an interesting premise that he's working with here: If we take every person in the world and make them look the same, we won't have anything to war over. His societies are independent and sustainable. There's a strong message about living responsibly. Then he takes the lamest, flattest character and sticks her in an interesting situation filled with difficult choices where she could distinguish herself as a leader. Instead she falls in love with a boy she just met for some reason, and the book goes to shit.
My friend Kacie argued that the romance parts of the story are for the younger readers, and maybe so. And it's not like I don't like a good love story. It just seemed to distract from the ultimate goal of the novel: to make a comment on society. Instead he takes a stab at teenage girls, the audience of this book. Get someone to save you, you dumb little thing.
I don't mean to attack Westerfeld here; after all, the Uglies series are the only books of his I've read. But they're not making me want to read any of his others, honestly. And why did I bother reading all three? Because I'm a completest. You should know that by now.
All I want is to sit down with Westerfeld and talk about his really great first draft, and what we could do to make it a story teenagers should read, instead of avoid.
Next up: A book I actually liked. Get ready to meet the Goon Squad.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Just read it to me, Sonny!
I'm almost two months into my job. Side effects include: abandoning your blog. And reading, honestly. I need to get back on this pony.
While I haven't had a ton of time to actually read, I have spent a bit of time listening to books on tape (...on my iPod), since my job doesn't really require the use of my brain. This audio book listening extravaganza has helped me decide two things: 1) it is way better to hear an author read their own work, and 2) middle aged women should not read books about teenage girls in the voice of a teenage girl.
Let's start with point #1, shall we? I listened to Neil Gaiman read his fairytale, Stardust, which was delightful. Neil's imagination works uniquely, and his story was brought to life with his own voice, his own inflection and cadence. The listener gets to hear the story as it sounds inside of the author's head, which is a strangely intimate experience, and appeals to my hopeless romanticism. As so many things do.
I also have the .mp3 of the first chapter of John Green's new novel (coming out in January!), The Fault in our Stars, or TFiOS, as the kids are calling it, that he read on a live stream show a little while back. Since I'm so invested in John's video blog which he's been doing with his brother for nearly five years now, I've come to both understand his personality as well as find comfort in his voice (does that sound creepy? Sorry).
When I read books by British authors, I read them in my head with a British accent. When I read books by John Green, I read them in my head in his voice. He writes the way he talks, so hearing him read his own work sounds so natural; it makes the story sound true. He's been considering reading the audio book for it, which I would love, but he's hesitant because this is his first book he's written from the perspective of a girl and he's worried people would be creeped out by it. I think people would get over it.
Regardless, I'm excited for this book for every reason I could be excited for it. I've already pre-ordered it.
Speaking of teenage girls, this brings me to audio book point #2: middle aged women should not read books about teenage girls in the voice of a teenage girl. I've been listening to the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld lately (I'm nearly done with the third one, Specials), and I think that my negative feelings on the series are at least partially linked to the performance of it.
The main character is 16, and the woman who reads it is not. I would have no problem connecting the fact that Tally is a teenager without the reader dumbing down her voice to sound younger. It's distracting, and takes much needed intelligence points away from Tally. She also has one voice for every male character, which makes it difficult to keep track of to whom she's talking. Lesson learned? Keep it real, lady. You're trying too hard.
I did read an actual book with my very own two eyes, A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan (it won the freakin' Pulitzer!), but that book deserves its own post. I think that sounded like a promise.
Keep turnin' those pages people. I'll do the same.
While I haven't had a ton of time to actually read, I have spent a bit of time listening to books on tape (...on my iPod), since my job doesn't really require the use of my brain. This audio book listening extravaganza has helped me decide two things: 1) it is way better to hear an author read their own work, and 2) middle aged women should not read books about teenage girls in the voice of a teenage girl.
Let's start with point #1, shall we? I listened to Neil Gaiman read his fairytale, Stardust, which was delightful. Neil's imagination works uniquely, and his story was brought to life with his own voice, his own inflection and cadence. The listener gets to hear the story as it sounds inside of the author's head, which is a strangely intimate experience, and appeals to my hopeless romanticism. As so many things do.
I also have the .mp3 of the first chapter of John Green's new novel (coming out in January!), The Fault in our Stars, or TFiOS, as the kids are calling it, that he read on a live stream show a little while back. Since I'm so invested in John's video blog which he's been doing with his brother for nearly five years now, I've come to both understand his personality as well as find comfort in his voice (does that sound creepy? Sorry).
When I read books by British authors, I read them in my head with a British accent. When I read books by John Green, I read them in my head in his voice. He writes the way he talks, so hearing him read his own work sounds so natural; it makes the story sound true. He's been considering reading the audio book for it, which I would love, but he's hesitant because this is his first book he's written from the perspective of a girl and he's worried people would be creeped out by it. I think people would get over it.
Regardless, I'm excited for this book for every reason I could be excited for it. I've already pre-ordered it.
Speaking of teenage girls, this brings me to audio book point #2: middle aged women should not read books about teenage girls in the voice of a teenage girl. I've been listening to the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld lately (I'm nearly done with the third one, Specials), and I think that my negative feelings on the series are at least partially linked to the performance of it.
The main character is 16, and the woman who reads it is not. I would have no problem connecting the fact that Tally is a teenager without the reader dumbing down her voice to sound younger. It's distracting, and takes much needed intelligence points away from Tally. She also has one voice for every male character, which makes it difficult to keep track of to whom she's talking. Lesson learned? Keep it real, lady. You're trying too hard.
I did read an actual book with my very own two eyes, A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan (it won the freakin' Pulitzer!), but that book deserves its own post. I think that sounded like a promise.
Keep turnin' those pages people. I'll do the same.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Last week of FREEDOM
Well, I got a job. I start next Monday. Think of the most boring thing I could be doing, and that's it. But it's money and it's full time, so I can't complain. However, it is going to seriously cut into my sittin' around time.
Speaking of sitting around, I haven't been doing much reading. Mostly, I've been obsessively watching the new series of Doctor Who, and honestly, if there were endless episodes of this show, I'd probably never read again. Especially if the tenth doctor never regenerated (I just love him, okay?).
However:
I did finish the Martian Chronicles. It reminded me how much I love the way that the past imagines the future. The time period is from about 1999 to 2025, where people have personal spaceships, etc, and it is VERY different from how 1999 actually was.
It makes me think a lot about how the past imagined the future, which is now our present. It's my favorite thing to talk about. The humans who lived on earth 70 years ago really expected technology to be, well not "further along," per se, but focused on different things. Like flying cars. Marty McFly, where's my flying car? Where's my personal rocket ship? All I have is this touch screen phone that can access the internet from any place on earth that has signal. Ptsh.
Aside from my blatant love for the ignorance of the past (in the typical manner that it comes in - we're experiencing it now as we imagine the future for ourselves, etc), I loved the way the story was told. It was written as little vignettes or short stories over the years. Some were published separately along the way in magazines, some were not. The stories tell a linear tale of the colonization of Mars, but they don't tell it through the same characters. The continuity of the story is really impressive, but as the blurb on my copy of the book declares, Bradbury is "peer-less."
-
I finished the third volume of Absolute Sandman also. Sandman is an interestingly-written story as well, as it was a serial comic from the late 80's (the first comic came out two months after I was born). Gaiman really had no idea where the story was going when he started out, which can be a daunting task, because you can't go back and edit the issues that have already been published.
As one can assume from such a prolific work, Sandman tells many stories. Some are those of Dream (of the Endless), the titular character. Some are of his brothers and sisters (the rest of the Endless) including Death, Desire, Delirium, Destruction, Destiny... etc. Some are just of people and their dreams, or how they interact with different realms.
The separations between the stories (there's a lot of resolution at the end of each of the comics, though there are larger story arcs that have been collected in the slimmer paperback Sandman collections you can usually find in bookstores) makes it hard to keep the pace up when reading. It's like watching an old sitcom from the 90's. Each episode tells its own story, and then it ends. The only benefit of reading from the beginning is understanding the characters a little better.
I hope that there is some grand resolution at the end that makes it all seem like an extremely cohesive work, and I hope I remember the events of the first two volumes well enough to have the ending actually mean something to me. We'll see how it goes, but volume 4 is checked out to me through Inner Library Loan, and is due on the 7th, so that's my goal.
-
I started on Player Piano the other day (because who reads just one book at a time?). This was mostly spurred on by a conversation that I had with my friend Kacie about how much I love Vonnegut. So far it is incredibly dry, but it's about machines taking the place of humans. IT'S ABOUT THE SINGULARITY.
Logically, I should love it. I love talking about the singularity. However, it's his first novel, and I'm yet to get to a brilliant part 100 pages in. I can understand how he perhaps wouldn't have his footing yet in his famous black humor, but his later books (where he has little inside jokes with the readers) are much more satisfying to me (so far). I am excited for the cute little ways he imagined a high-tech future that is so low-tech now. It's sort of the opposite of the way Bradbury does it.
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LOTR Update: I started reading The Hobbit (again, just one book? are you crazy people?) last-last weekend when I went up to my friend's cabin. And by "I started reading" I mean that my friends read it aloud to me in British accents. Aside from it being incredibly difficult to continue this magical story in my very un-British head, I also came to a part with a spider and decided to put it down for a while. Yes, I'm dumb.
I still feel weird about LOTR, because it was something that I stigmatized as a child. People who read LOTR were weird, ya dig? So I'm still trying to get past this and enjoy the story. But I don't love it enough to read a spider part. It's not Chamber of Secrets, seriously.
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I have decided that I need to re-read Harry Potter 7 before The Big Day (7.15.11 FOREVER), so that will probably take priority. Also: bought Luna Lovegood SPECTRESPECS for opening night (I just love her, okay?).
Expect to hear the tears of many a potter fan early morning on the 15th as we all leave the movie theaters at the same time and weep on our drives home.
Speaking of sitting around, I haven't been doing much reading. Mostly, I've been obsessively watching the new series of Doctor Who, and honestly, if there were endless episodes of this show, I'd probably never read again. Especially if the tenth doctor never regenerated (I just love him, okay?).
However:
I did finish the Martian Chronicles. It reminded me how much I love the way that the past imagines the future. The time period is from about 1999 to 2025, where people have personal spaceships, etc, and it is VERY different from how 1999 actually was.
It makes me think a lot about how the past imagined the future, which is now our present. It's my favorite thing to talk about. The humans who lived on earth 70 years ago really expected technology to be, well not "further along," per se, but focused on different things. Like flying cars. Marty McFly, where's my flying car? Where's my personal rocket ship? All I have is this touch screen phone that can access the internet from any place on earth that has signal. Ptsh.
Aside from my blatant love for the ignorance of the past (in the typical manner that it comes in - we're experiencing it now as we imagine the future for ourselves, etc), I loved the way the story was told. It was written as little vignettes or short stories over the years. Some were published separately along the way in magazines, some were not. The stories tell a linear tale of the colonization of Mars, but they don't tell it through the same characters. The continuity of the story is really impressive, but as the blurb on my copy of the book declares, Bradbury is "peer-less."
-
I finished the third volume of Absolute Sandman also. Sandman is an interestingly-written story as well, as it was a serial comic from the late 80's (the first comic came out two months after I was born). Gaiman really had no idea where the story was going when he started out, which can be a daunting task, because you can't go back and edit the issues that have already been published.
As one can assume from such a prolific work, Sandman tells many stories. Some are those of Dream (of the Endless), the titular character. Some are of his brothers and sisters (the rest of the Endless) including Death, Desire, Delirium, Destruction, Destiny... etc. Some are just of people and their dreams, or how they interact with different realms.
The separations between the stories (there's a lot of resolution at the end of each of the comics, though there are larger story arcs that have been collected in the slimmer paperback Sandman collections you can usually find in bookstores) makes it hard to keep the pace up when reading. It's like watching an old sitcom from the 90's. Each episode tells its own story, and then it ends. The only benefit of reading from the beginning is understanding the characters a little better.
I hope that there is some grand resolution at the end that makes it all seem like an extremely cohesive work, and I hope I remember the events of the first two volumes well enough to have the ending actually mean something to me. We'll see how it goes, but volume 4 is checked out to me through Inner Library Loan, and is due on the 7th, so that's my goal.
-
I started on Player Piano the other day (because who reads just one book at a time?). This was mostly spurred on by a conversation that I had with my friend Kacie about how much I love Vonnegut. So far it is incredibly dry, but it's about machines taking the place of humans. IT'S ABOUT THE SINGULARITY.
Logically, I should love it. I love talking about the singularity. However, it's his first novel, and I'm yet to get to a brilliant part 100 pages in. I can understand how he perhaps wouldn't have his footing yet in his famous black humor, but his later books (where he has little inside jokes with the readers) are much more satisfying to me (so far). I am excited for the cute little ways he imagined a high-tech future that is so low-tech now. It's sort of the opposite of the way Bradbury does it.
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LOTR Update: I started reading The Hobbit (again, just one book? are you crazy people?) last-last weekend when I went up to my friend's cabin. And by "I started reading" I mean that my friends read it aloud to me in British accents. Aside from it being incredibly difficult to continue this magical story in my very un-British head, I also came to a part with a spider and decided to put it down for a while. Yes, I'm dumb.
I still feel weird about LOTR, because it was something that I stigmatized as a child. People who read LOTR were weird, ya dig? So I'm still trying to get past this and enjoy the story. But I don't love it enough to read a spider part. It's not Chamber of Secrets, seriously.
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I have decided that I need to re-read Harry Potter 7 before The Big Day (7.15.11 FOREVER), so that will probably take priority. Also: bought Luna Lovegood SPECTRESPECS for opening night (I just love her, okay?).
Expect to hear the tears of many a potter fan early morning on the 15th as we all leave the movie theaters at the same time and weep on our drives home.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The job search sucks.
Ugh. Looking for a job is stressful. However, my tried-and-true method of escaping the pain of my life (melodramatic) has come in handy once again. Reading, you're a lifesaver.
I read This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen last-ish week, which I didn't actually like very much. Dessen is one of the most popular YA lit writers, and I liked her books in high school, but I since haven't really been able to connect with her since. I think this is perhaps a fatal flaw (though it maybe highlights the fact that I'm on the cusp of the transition from insider to outsider when it comes to YA Lit. I don't wanna talk about it).
This lullaby is about a girl named Remy who is dealing with her mother's fourth(?) marriage and having to be the grown up in every situation. It's also about this boy who is in love with her for apparently no reason.
Characters are underdeveloped, the storyline drags because nothing really happens. Characters don't make decisions that are true to their character. There seemed to be an unnecessary bulk or padding. I'd give it a one out of five.
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I also read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This one was a lot more satisfying. If you can get past the fact that this story is about a pedophile, the craft of the story is quite amazing.
It's told from Humbert Humbert's point of view, a man on trial for his crimes, with an intro from "his doctor." Nabokov has put a lot of space between himself (the writer) and Humbert (his narrator) which is understandable, because the story is written in the first person, which I think makes it more likely that a reader would put Humbert's views back on Nabokov. Sometimes his narrator even refers to himself in the third person, showing how he's struggling with himself, in much the same ways as Holden does in Catcher (though the struggles are different, it's a universal want for some space from yourself, if that makes sense).
Again, it was hard to read three hundred pages about a 40-year-old dude who is having sex with a 12/13 year-old girl, but Nabokov's prose is beautiful and this novel is amazing.
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Finally, I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, a novel that is regarded (though it was only published in the 90's - and by MTV, ha!) as a YA classic. I've always felt like not having read this book was a chink in my YA Lit armor, and I'm really glad that I've finally had the experience of reading it.
It's written in letters, "Dear Friend, Love Always, Charlie" which is a really interesting way to access a story. It's not a diary, it's not just a first person story. Charlie is writing to someone he respects and feels he can open up to, so the information is different (more emotional) than a first person story, and more filtered than a diary.
It's cool because you can see him growing up over the course of his freshman year, even in the quality of his writing. I became fond of his friends like they were my friends, and the honesty of his letters reminded me of how I felt when I was a freshman in high school (there's a level of that cold, hollow depression that marked that year for me). I think I would have been able to really relate to Charlie when I was 15.
One of my favorite things about this book was the additional assignments that he got from his English teacher. He was assigned books that were more-or-less about how much it sucks growing up (I love that he was taught Hamlet the context of this - I mean, if Shakespeare ever wrote YA Lit, amirite?) and that mirror was powerful. He read Catcher in the Rye like, four times. I could see a lot of Holden in him.
Also, this book is being made into a movie which I'm really excited about (mostly because Emma Watson is going to play Sam and I LOVE HER). I think that the short, one year time period will lend itself well to not leaving a whole lot of shit out, and I'm also curious to see how the story is told.
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Next up: I just started reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, because I want to know him outside of Fahrenheit 451. It's not even 200 pages, so survey says I'll finish it today.
After that I start the Serious Undertaking of reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time. I know, SHAME ON ME. But now I want to read it because all of my friends love it, and I want to be included in their conversations. This is called peer pressure.
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One more fun thing: I love Internet Memes because they're funny. English Major Armadillo is one of my favorites. If you like to read or write, then you will understand.
I read This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen last-ish week, which I didn't actually like very much. Dessen is one of the most popular YA lit writers, and I liked her books in high school, but I since haven't really been able to connect with her since. I think this is perhaps a fatal flaw (though it maybe highlights the fact that I'm on the cusp of the transition from insider to outsider when it comes to YA Lit. I don't wanna talk about it).
This lullaby is about a girl named Remy who is dealing with her mother's fourth(?) marriage and having to be the grown up in every situation. It's also about this boy who is in love with her for apparently no reason.
Characters are underdeveloped, the storyline drags because nothing really happens. Characters don't make decisions that are true to their character. There seemed to be an unnecessary bulk or padding. I'd give it a one out of five.
-
I also read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This one was a lot more satisfying. If you can get past the fact that this story is about a pedophile, the craft of the story is quite amazing.
It's told from Humbert Humbert's point of view, a man on trial for his crimes, with an intro from "his doctor." Nabokov has put a lot of space between himself (the writer) and Humbert (his narrator) which is understandable, because the story is written in the first person, which I think makes it more likely that a reader would put Humbert's views back on Nabokov. Sometimes his narrator even refers to himself in the third person, showing how he's struggling with himself, in much the same ways as Holden does in Catcher (though the struggles are different, it's a universal want for some space from yourself, if that makes sense).
Again, it was hard to read three hundred pages about a 40-year-old dude who is having sex with a 12/13 year-old girl, but Nabokov's prose is beautiful and this novel is amazing.
-
Finally, I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, a novel that is regarded (though it was only published in the 90's - and by MTV, ha!) as a YA classic. I've always felt like not having read this book was a chink in my YA Lit armor, and I'm really glad that I've finally had the experience of reading it.
It's written in letters, "Dear Friend, Love Always, Charlie" which is a really interesting way to access a story. It's not a diary, it's not just a first person story. Charlie is writing to someone he respects and feels he can open up to, so the information is different (more emotional) than a first person story, and more filtered than a diary.
It's cool because you can see him growing up over the course of his freshman year, even in the quality of his writing. I became fond of his friends like they were my friends, and the honesty of his letters reminded me of how I felt when I was a freshman in high school (there's a level of that cold, hollow depression that marked that year for me). I think I would have been able to really relate to Charlie when I was 15.
One of my favorite things about this book was the additional assignments that he got from his English teacher. He was assigned books that were more-or-less about how much it sucks growing up (I love that he was taught Hamlet the context of this - I mean, if Shakespeare ever wrote YA Lit, amirite?) and that mirror was powerful. He read Catcher in the Rye like, four times. I could see a lot of Holden in him.
Also, this book is being made into a movie which I'm really excited about (mostly because Emma Watson is going to play Sam and I LOVE HER). I think that the short, one year time period will lend itself well to not leaving a whole lot of shit out, and I'm also curious to see how the story is told.
-
Next up: I just started reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, because I want to know him outside of Fahrenheit 451. It's not even 200 pages, so survey says I'll finish it today.
After that I start the Serious Undertaking of reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time. I know, SHAME ON ME. But now I want to read it because all of my friends love it, and I want to be included in their conversations. This is called peer pressure.
-
One more fun thing: I love Internet Memes because they're funny. English Major Armadillo is one of my favorites. If you like to read or write, then you will understand.
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