Looks like today's a day for finishing books. I've also finished vol. 1 of Out.
I'm really not sure if I want to bother moving on to vol. 2. But I've finally figure out why I'm so hot-and-cold on this novel. I think Kirino writes absolutely electric dialog; when characters are talking, the tension immediately ratchets up, even when nothing actually happens. Whereas the narrative is very flat, and long sections of narrative always make me want to put the book away.
The end of the book has a great bit of dialog between Satake and Anna, which made me want to continue. Then he goes home at the end of the section, and all of a sudden I didn't care any more. Guess I'll decide in a few days.
Showing posts with label Out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Out. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Romance of 3 Kingdoms, Neon Rain, Bluebear, Night Vision, Out, Treasure Island
Last week was blessed vacation week, and a time, I thought, to catch up on a lot of reading. More fool I. Instead, I ended up halfway through 3 books, between reading to the kids and trying to decide what's a beach book and trying not to take my Japanese dictionary to the beach...
The one book I managed to finish was James Lee Burke's The Neon Rain. I had high hopes for this, because I loved Cimarron Rose, and Neon Rain is the start of his other long-running series, about Dave Robicheaux, a cajun detective. Unfortunately, I think Burke's reach exceeded his grasp in this one. The book wants to be all about the horrors of American policy in Nicaragua, and how immoral it is to use the Sandinistas, but that's hard to pull off when the vantage point is a policeman in New Orleans. As a result, it always feels like the real story happens before the novel, and Dave Robicheaux is just cleaning up some loose ends that don't really matter so much.
On the plane, I started reading The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear to the kids. This German novel is the story the adventures of a bluebear from his earliest youth through 13 1/2 lives (bluebears live 27 lives, the narrator tells us). Only a 100 pages in, because reading out loud is slow going, but the book is very funny, and the illustrations are very cute. (Drawn by the author). The book is very episodic, and Jenna tells me it remains so (she's halfway through), but that plays to the author's strengths, I think, which is that he throws one neat idea out after another. From a Giant whale that is also related to sharks, cyclopes, and saurians, to a carnivorous plant-island, to minipirates, the author's inventiveness drives this book, and it would be a shame to tie it down too much to a strict plot.
On the trip, I began reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I'm still only 140 pages in (the first volume is 700 pages -- argh!), and it's slow going. New characters are introduced at a moment's notice, only to be disposed of 5 or 10 pages later. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell when you first meet a character whether he's going to be a major character or not, and my Westerner's bias makes it hard to tell all the Chaos, Changs, Suns and Ts'aos apart. That having been said, once I hit my stride, I've been enjoying the book tremendously. One interesting thing to me is how amoral almost all of the major characters are (I'll call anyone who survives for 2 chapters a major character). They change allegiance for money on a regular basis, they ignore warnings from Heaven, they desert their underlings without a second thought, and, when someone finally comes along to punish them, it turns out that the new guy is just as bad as the one before. This is really different from, say, The Tale of the Heike, which has a very strong moral current--the author of that book always lets you know that the Taira clan deserve to be brought down. The author of the Romance is much more ambivalent about the movements of history.
I began Night Vision by Paul Levine, but there isn't much to say about it. It's kind of funny, and that's it. I also read more of Out, but nothing new there either.
I've been reading Treasure Island to Moshe, and it really is a wonderful book. Stevenson has a great knack for having his people speak very differently, which is something I always admire in an author. Dr. Livesey is very easy for the kids to understand, whereas the latest chapter we read is almost all Long John Silver talking, and it's in such a thick argot that I had to translate constantly for the kids.
Hopefully I'll make some headway on some of these books, and be able to give an actual comment on them later.
The one book I managed to finish was James Lee Burke's The Neon Rain. I had high hopes for this, because I loved Cimarron Rose, and Neon Rain is the start of his other long-running series, about Dave Robicheaux, a cajun detective. Unfortunately, I think Burke's reach exceeded his grasp in this one. The book wants to be all about the horrors of American policy in Nicaragua, and how immoral it is to use the Sandinistas, but that's hard to pull off when the vantage point is a policeman in New Orleans. As a result, it always feels like the real story happens before the novel, and Dave Robicheaux is just cleaning up some loose ends that don't really matter so much.
On the plane, I started reading The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear to the kids. This German novel is the story the adventures of a bluebear from his earliest youth through 13 1/2 lives (bluebears live 27 lives, the narrator tells us). Only a 100 pages in, because reading out loud is slow going, but the book is very funny, and the illustrations are very cute. (Drawn by the author). The book is very episodic, and Jenna tells me it remains so (she's halfway through), but that plays to the author's strengths, I think, which is that he throws one neat idea out after another. From a Giant whale that is also related to sharks, cyclopes, and saurians, to a carnivorous plant-island, to minipirates, the author's inventiveness drives this book, and it would be a shame to tie it down too much to a strict plot.
On the trip, I began reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I'm still only 140 pages in (the first volume is 700 pages -- argh!), and it's slow going. New characters are introduced at a moment's notice, only to be disposed of 5 or 10 pages later. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell when you first meet a character whether he's going to be a major character or not, and my Westerner's bias makes it hard to tell all the Chaos, Changs, Suns and Ts'aos apart. That having been said, once I hit my stride, I've been enjoying the book tremendously. One interesting thing to me is how amoral almost all of the major characters are (I'll call anyone who survives for 2 chapters a major character). They change allegiance for money on a regular basis, they ignore warnings from Heaven, they desert their underlings without a second thought, and, when someone finally comes along to punish them, it turns out that the new guy is just as bad as the one before. This is really different from, say, The Tale of the Heike, which has a very strong moral current--the author of that book always lets you know that the Taira clan deserve to be brought down. The author of the Romance is much more ambivalent about the movements of history.
I began Night Vision by Paul Levine, but there isn't much to say about it. It's kind of funny, and that's it. I also read more of Out, but nothing new there either.
I've been reading Treasure Island to Moshe, and it really is a wonderful book. Stevenson has a great knack for having his people speak very differently, which is something I always admire in an author. Dr. Livesey is very easy for the kids to understand, whereas the latest chapter we read is almost all Long John Silver talking, and it's in such a thick argot that I had to translate constantly for the kids.
Hopefully I'll make some headway on some of these books, and be able to give an actual comment on them later.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Out, Long Halloween
I read The Long Halloween over shabbat. I was intrigued, because I saw that it had gotten the "absolute" treatment, and I liked Time Sale's work back when he was an indie artist writing Billi 99.
The good news is, I still like his art. The bad news is that the story was not very good. Loeb, the writer, structures the story in chapters such that each one takes place on a holiday(Halloween, Christmas, 4th of July, etc). Each one also has a cameo by one of Batman's super-foes. Since the story is set early in Batman's career, Loeb seems to be trying to make a point about how Batman's presence draws these villains to Gotham (He even has Gordon and other characters say something to the effect of "none of these freaks were here before Batman came," just so we readers don't miss the point). The only problem is that he never actually bothers making the connection, and most of the villains have no reason for being there at all--they're just there to show up in the cameos for that holiday, then go away again.
Then there's the surprise ending. Lafferty may not have been 100% correct when he said that every book would be better without the last couple of pages, but he was sure right about this book. It's a surprise, but it loses any impact, because it makes no sense in the context of what's come before. You can't even go back to the beginning and look at it in a different light--it just makes no sense.
Also moved along in Natsuo Kirino's Out. I started the 4th chapter feeling very let down by the book--it really hadn't been what I'd been hoping for. But in this chapter, the police investigation into Kenji's murder finally gets under way, and Kirino's talents come to the fore. I think that everything up till this point (Masako's near-rape, Kenji's murder and disposal, the yakuza's crimes) are presented for shock value, and it's just not that interesting. (It probably doesn't help that I'm reading it through the filter of Japanese, which has an automatic distancing effect, lessening the shock value)
Here, though, we see Masako under pressure, and, even though we know what's going to happen, it's still very tense. I think that's one of the marks of a good story-teller -- even though we know how a situation is going to come out, she can still ratchet up the tension. I'm looking forward to finishing up the first book.
I started Meir Shalev's Fontanelle, if you can call 2 paragraphs starting. My dictionary was utterly useless by the time I hit the fourth word, so I've ordered a new one that should help. Sadly, I can't carry the Even Shushan everywhere I go.
The good news is, I still like his art. The bad news is that the story was not very good. Loeb, the writer, structures the story in chapters such that each one takes place on a holiday(Halloween, Christmas, 4th of July, etc). Each one also has a cameo by one of Batman's super-foes. Since the story is set early in Batman's career, Loeb seems to be trying to make a point about how Batman's presence draws these villains to Gotham (He even has Gordon and other characters say something to the effect of "none of these freaks were here before Batman came," just so we readers don't miss the point). The only problem is that he never actually bothers making the connection, and most of the villains have no reason for being there at all--they're just there to show up in the cameos for that holiday, then go away again.
Then there's the surprise ending. Lafferty may not have been 100% correct when he said that every book would be better without the last couple of pages, but he was sure right about this book. It's a surprise, but it loses any impact, because it makes no sense in the context of what's come before. You can't even go back to the beginning and look at it in a different light--it just makes no sense.
Also moved along in Natsuo Kirino's Out. I started the 4th chapter feeling very let down by the book--it really hadn't been what I'd been hoping for. But in this chapter, the police investigation into Kenji's murder finally gets under way, and Kirino's talents come to the fore. I think that everything up till this point (Masako's near-rape, Kenji's murder and disposal, the yakuza's crimes) are presented for shock value, and it's just not that interesting. (It probably doesn't help that I'm reading it through the filter of Japanese, which has an automatic distancing effect, lessening the shock value)
Here, though, we see Masako under pressure, and, even though we know what's going to happen, it's still very tense. I think that's one of the marks of a good story-teller -- even though we know how a situation is going to come out, she can still ratchet up the tension. I'm looking forward to finishing up the first book.
I started Meir Shalev's Fontanelle, if you can call 2 paragraphs starting. My dictionary was utterly useless by the time I hit the fourth word, so I've ordered a new one that should help. Sadly, I can't carry the Even Shushan everywhere I go.
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