I finished listening to Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House a couple of days ago. Aside from all the interesting things you can say about her character development and style, the ending is very exciting -- I couldn't wait to have some commuting time to myself, and ended up listening to the last 20 minutes at home. This was a nice bonus from a ghost story is mostly cerebral.
The novel, about four people who decide to research a haunted house for the summer, focuses on Eleanor, the most obviously-troubled of the 4. Pushed around by her mother and sister, Eleanor doesn't like where she is in life, but is too insecure to strike out on her own. The camaraderie of the four Hill House sojourners seduces her into thinking she has found a new family, but, at the same time, she's constantly afraid that they're talking about her behind her back. The house plays on these twin issues, until she has a complete breakdown -- but is the house itself a malevolent force, or is it just Eleanor's belief that drives her. It's certainly easy to read the novel as implying that the house is a force on its own (and we know that Jackson believed in haunted houses), but there are a number of clues that things aren't so simple.
When the 5th and 6th characters show up, they are completely unaffected by any of the goings-on in the house. Not only that, but when they investigate the house's most physical manifestation, (the writing on the wall in Theodora's room), it's not there -- is this an implication that the group suffered from a mass hysteria? I'm not one who likes to find the rational reason behind every event in a fantasy story, but here I think the more interesting reading is that Eleanor drives herself to madness, and that the house is a non-actor.
I also read False Dawn, but James Levine, and I wish I hadn't. His worst book; 'nuff said.
I've started on book 3 of the Metamorphoses, dealing in the founding of Thebes (and no actual metamorphoses yet). I'm really loving Ovid's use of the meter, switching between dactyls and spondees to wonderful effect. In this respect at least, I much prefer him to Vergil.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Great Gatsby, American Gods
It's been too long since I last blogged. Not because books piled up, sadly, but because it's a sign that I've read almost nothing. Luckily, audio books came to my rescue; they're an agonizingly slow way to read, but I'm guaranteed my commuting time every day.
I "read" both American Gods and The Great Gatsby in this format. The former was pretty good, but there really isn't much to say about it. Gaiman proposes that the gods exist inasmuch as people believe in them, and the gods are struggling to remain "alive" in this day and age of non-belief. I kept thinking, though, about the difficulties with the premise -- different groups of people can have radically different ideas of the same deity (look at modern monotheism -- is God vengeful or merciful? Depends on whom you ask). But, having said that, Gaiman works it into an exciting story by the end, although it felt like some plot threads were very tacked-on.
On the other hand, there's too much to say about Gatsby. I somehow never read the whole thing in high school (long story), and I'd forgotten that; I actually just wanted to go back and read the book again, see I liked it better now. I think that it's a novel that's wasted on high schoolers; one of the major themes is the desire to turn back the clock, to go back to the old days when the future was bright. And, of course, high schoolers don't really have this desire, so it doesn't speak to them as strongly. Gatsby himself embodies this desire -- he wants to go back to when he first met Daisy Buchanan, but as a wealthy man, and has devoted 5 years to the project.
Every analysis of the book will talk about that. But I haven't seen any that talk about how Nick Carraway does the same thing. At the end of the novel, he returns to the mid-West, and there's a long flashback to his prep school days, when everyone used to come in on the train. But now he's 30, and he can't go back there. Tom never wants to go back, but he's so loutish that I think it's supposed to be a defect in him -- he hit his high point in college, but he doesn't even really know it. Daisy is torn between Gatsby (her past) and Tom (her present), but ends up choosing the present. But it's clear that neither alternative would be very good for her -- neither past nor present has the answers.
I "read" both American Gods and The Great Gatsby in this format. The former was pretty good, but there really isn't much to say about it. Gaiman proposes that the gods exist inasmuch as people believe in them, and the gods are struggling to remain "alive" in this day and age of non-belief. I kept thinking, though, about the difficulties with the premise -- different groups of people can have radically different ideas of the same deity (look at modern monotheism -- is God vengeful or merciful? Depends on whom you ask). But, having said that, Gaiman works it into an exciting story by the end, although it felt like some plot threads were very tacked-on.
On the other hand, there's too much to say about Gatsby. I somehow never read the whole thing in high school (long story), and I'd forgotten that; I actually just wanted to go back and read the book again, see I liked it better now. I think that it's a novel that's wasted on high schoolers; one of the major themes is the desire to turn back the clock, to go back to the old days when the future was bright. And, of course, high schoolers don't really have this desire, so it doesn't speak to them as strongly. Gatsby himself embodies this desire -- he wants to go back to when he first met Daisy Buchanan, but as a wealthy man, and has devoted 5 years to the project.
Every analysis of the book will talk about that. But I haven't seen any that talk about how Nick Carraway does the same thing. At the end of the novel, he returns to the mid-West, and there's a long flashback to his prep school days, when everyone used to come in on the train. But now he's 30, and he can't go back there. Tom never wants to go back, but he's so loutish that I think it's supposed to be a defect in him -- he hit his high point in college, but he doesn't even really know it. Daisy is torn between Gatsby (her past) and Tom (her present), but ends up choosing the present. But it's clear that neither alternative would be very good for her -- neither past nor present has the answers.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Hidden World, Windup Bird, Maltese Falcon
I finally finished Paul Park's Roumania quartet, and it was veeery slow going. (See two of the other books here and here.) There's never really a feeling of tension in these novels, even though there's enough going on to make a Robert Ludlum book (revolution, nuclear weapons, biological warfare, spies, etc). It's a pity, because the setting and ideas are amazing, but, in the end, it's very hard to care about any of the characters.
I'm enjoying Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicles, but it's still in the early going yet (I'm about 2/3 through vol. 1). It's the usual mix of weird characters and a very laid-back protagonist, but more hints of darkness than in his earlier books -- one of the characters was raped, for example. Still, he manages to create these long shaggy-dog stories that are just hilarious. Then he'll suddenly switch the context on you, and you feel awful for laughing.
Lastly, I finally got around to reading the famous The Maltese Falcon. Hammett, of course, was one of the founders of the hard-boiled detective school, and I really like the other one (Raymond Chandler), so I wanted to give this a try. I ended up with very mixed feelings. Hammett had a great ear for dialogue, and he could even get of the tough-guy slang that we associate with his writing. And the story is very morally ambiguous, in a way we mostly associate with more sophisticated fiction. On the other hand, the non-dialogue writing is just atrocious. Poor word choice, cliche-ridden, ear-jangling prose. Bleah. I guess I'm glad I read it, but I doubt I'll be reading any more Hammett -- if I need to scratch that particular itch, I'll go back to Chandler.
I'm enjoying Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicles, but it's still in the early going yet (I'm about 2/3 through vol. 1). It's the usual mix of weird characters and a very laid-back protagonist, but more hints of darkness than in his earlier books -- one of the characters was raped, for example. Still, he manages to create these long shaggy-dog stories that are just hilarious. Then he'll suddenly switch the context on you, and you feel awful for laughing.
Lastly, I finally got around to reading the famous The Maltese Falcon. Hammett, of course, was one of the founders of the hard-boiled detective school, and I really like the other one (Raymond Chandler), so I wanted to give this a try. I ended up with very mixed feelings. Hammett had a great ear for dialogue, and he could even get of the tough-guy slang that we associate with his writing. And the story is very morally ambiguous, in a way we mostly associate with more sophisticated fiction. On the other hand, the non-dialogue writing is just atrocious. Poor word choice, cliche-ridden, ear-jangling prose. Bleah. I guess I'm glad I read it, but I doubt I'll be reading any more Hammett -- if I need to scratch that particular itch, I'll go back to Chandler.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Hunting Wind
This weekend I finished the third Alex McKnight book, The Hunting Wind (See my comments on the second one here.) Hamilton has been breaking the "rules" through the series (climax in the middle of the novel, climactic moments off-screen, etc), and keeps it up here. The book starts without much a mystery (an old friend of Alex's wants to track down an old girlfriend), and the stakes don't really go up toward near the end. And, at the end, we're left with no resolution of one of the central pieces of the book -- why does Alex's friend want to track her down?
In some novels, this would be a weakness -- after all, we're talking about the motivations of a central character. But here, Hamilton has made the friend both very appealing (we want to think he's a good guy), and at the same time seemingly amoral. I think that the answer to the motivation question depends on the reader's view of human nature -- how cynically we view these characters. And, to me, that's a real achievement that mysteries don't often have -- making central characters so ambiguous, but strongly drawn at the same time.
In some novels, this would be a weakness -- after all, we're talking about the motivations of a central character. But here, Hamilton has made the friend both very appealing (we want to think he's a good guy), and at the same time seemingly amoral. I think that the answer to the motivation question depends on the reader's view of human nature -- how cynically we view these characters. And, to me, that's a real achievement that mysteries don't often have -- making central characters so ambiguous, but strongly drawn at the same time.
Monday, June 23, 2008
The White Tyger
The 3rd novel in Park's Roumania tetralogy is The White Tyger, a bit of an odd name, actually. We've known that Miranda Popescu is Roumania's white tyger since the first book, even though we don't really know exactly what that means, and neither does she. This novel doesn't answer that question, which is too bad. Instead, it meanders around, not really pushing the plot forward in any meaningful way.
To be sure, a lot happens, but it doesn't feel like the story is moving toward a resolution. I'll finish the tetralogy, having coming this far, but it feels rather more like duty than pleasure. Which is a pity, because Park's writing is gorgeous, when it's in the service of a good story.
To be sure, a lot happens, but it doesn't feel like the story is moving toward a resolution. I'll finish the tetralogy, having coming this far, but it feels rather more like duty than pleasure. Which is a pity, because Park's writing is gorgeous, when it's in the service of a good story.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Private Wars, Lord Vishnu's Love Handles, Clubbable Woman, Windu-up Bird Chronicle, Fleshmarket Alley
A lot of books again! This time because we visited Israel and Jordan recently, and I always get in a lot of reading while the rest of the family sleeps.
I started vol. 1 of Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and so far I'm enjoying it immensely, much more than Out. Murakami deals with serious themes (and, from what I've read, Wind-up Bird is one of the most serious), but always in a playful way. His protagonists sort of wander through the world, letting others take the lead -- in this case, his cat has disappeared, and his wife is asking him to look for it. The search takes him to two psychic sisters, a girl who seems to have dropped out of school, and so on.
I also started The Brothers Karamazov on the plane, but the down side of these trips is that I'm so jet-lagged that serious reading gets difficult, so I'll have to try it again some other time.
Instead, I jumped in Greg Rucka's second Queen and Country novel. I wasn't so thrilled with the first one (see this post), feeling that he over-stretched the narrative to make it into a novel, instead of the shorter comic books. In Private Wars, though, he really pulls things together more solidly. He starts off in a very LeCarre-type key, where our government is supporting an evil dictator in the interest of realpolitik. However, in some ways he simplifies things in a way LeCarre wouldn't do -- the dictator herself is evil, but a lot of the worst torture is carried out by a sidekick, which gives Tara someone to beat up on, giving the audience a feeling that at least some justice was done. But then he pulls a big twist out of his sleeve at the end, and we realize that Tara's world is just as nihilistic as any of LeCarre's stories.
Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is a bit of an odd-ball book, though not as much as it could have been. The hero of the story is a psychic who is kinda-sorta recruited by the CIA, and taught how to hone his skills through meditation and giving up meat. This bare-bones description doesn't really do the premise justice, though. Travis, the reluctant hero, is teetering on the edge of financial ruin and insanity; his psychic gifts tell him that his wife is cheating on him, that his son is about to be eaten by an alligator during swimming lessons, that his wife's genes can talk to him, and all sorts of other crazy things, only half of which are true. While Travis attempts to make sense of all this craziness, he realizes that he's an alcoholic on top of it all. This early part of the novel is the best, where we're never sure which of Travis's visions are real (it's clear that some of them are just his over-active paranoia). At some point, though, Travis starts to straighten out his life, and the novel just settles down, and loses a lot of its fun.
I also read A Clubbable Woman, the first Dalziel and Pascoe novel. It turns out that Reginald Hill wasn't actually planning to write a series with them, and so there's no attempt to introduce them as long-running characters; indeed, the novel doesn't focus on them very much at all. Still, I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.
Lastly for tonight, I finished Rankin's Fleshmarket Alley over the weekend. This was, sadly, the weakest Inspector Rebus book in a long time (probably in the last 6 novels). The novel really focuses on Scotland's immigration issues, but there's no nuance at all. Rankin obviously feels the current way Scotland handles its immigrants is unjust, and I suppose I'd agree, but if I'd wanted to read a pamphlet by amnesty international, I would've bought one. In the past, Rankin has dealt with some very complex issues in a far more novelistic way, not such a didactic one.
I started vol. 1 of Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and so far I'm enjoying it immensely, much more than Out. Murakami deals with serious themes (and, from what I've read, Wind-up Bird is one of the most serious), but always in a playful way. His protagonists sort of wander through the world, letting others take the lead -- in this case, his cat has disappeared, and his wife is asking him to look for it. The search takes him to two psychic sisters, a girl who seems to have dropped out of school, and so on.
I also started The Brothers Karamazov on the plane, but the down side of these trips is that I'm so jet-lagged that serious reading gets difficult, so I'll have to try it again some other time.
Instead, I jumped in Greg Rucka's second Queen and Country novel. I wasn't so thrilled with the first one (see this post), feeling that he over-stretched the narrative to make it into a novel, instead of the shorter comic books. In Private Wars, though, he really pulls things together more solidly. He starts off in a very LeCarre-type key, where our government is supporting an evil dictator in the interest of realpolitik. However, in some ways he simplifies things in a way LeCarre wouldn't do -- the dictator herself is evil, but a lot of the worst torture is carried out by a sidekick, which gives Tara someone to beat up on, giving the audience a feeling that at least some justice was done. But then he pulls a big twist out of his sleeve at the end, and we realize that Tara's world is just as nihilistic as any of LeCarre's stories.
Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is a bit of an odd-ball book, though not as much as it could have been. The hero of the story is a psychic who is kinda-sorta recruited by the CIA, and taught how to hone his skills through meditation and giving up meat. This bare-bones description doesn't really do the premise justice, though. Travis, the reluctant hero, is teetering on the edge of financial ruin and insanity; his psychic gifts tell him that his wife is cheating on him, that his son is about to be eaten by an alligator during swimming lessons, that his wife's genes can talk to him, and all sorts of other crazy things, only half of which are true. While Travis attempts to make sense of all this craziness, he realizes that he's an alcoholic on top of it all. This early part of the novel is the best, where we're never sure which of Travis's visions are real (it's clear that some of them are just his over-active paranoia). At some point, though, Travis starts to straighten out his life, and the novel just settles down, and loses a lot of its fun.
I also read A Clubbable Woman, the first Dalziel and Pascoe novel. It turns out that Reginald Hill wasn't actually planning to write a series with them, and so there's no attempt to introduce them as long-running characters; indeed, the novel doesn't focus on them very much at all. Still, I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.
Lastly for tonight, I finished Rankin's Fleshmarket Alley over the weekend. This was, sadly, the weakest Inspector Rebus book in a long time (probably in the last 6 novels). The novel really focuses on Scotland's immigration issues, but there's no nuance at all. Rankin obviously feels the current way Scotland handles its immigrants is unjust, and I suppose I'd agree, but if I'd wanted to read a pamphlet by amnesty international, I would've bought one. In the past, Rankin has dealt with some very complex issues in a far more novelistic way, not such a didactic one.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Iliad, Tourmaline, Chaotic Dynamical Systems, How to Read the Bible
Wow! I was thinking that it's been a while since I wrote something in this blog, but had no idea it had been more than a month... Time flies when you're engaged, I suppose. You'd think that in a month, I'd have a fair amount to write about, but, sadly, no. Engagement also eats up a lot of reading time.
So... in the last month, I decided, for about the 10th time to try read Devaney's "Chaotic Dynamical Systems." And, for the 10th time, failed miserably for lack of real analysis skills. So, I looked on Amazon, and, lo & behold, he's written a book aimed more at undergrads ("A First Course in Chaotic Dynamical Systems"), with a lot more details filled in. I must say, I'm having a blast, stretching my mind with mathematics in a way that I just haven't done in the past several years. The book is engaging (for a math book), and relatively friendly to the non-math-major, at least so far (about halfway in).
I also read Park's follow-up to A Princess in Roumania, titled the Tourmaline. It's an interesting world that he's created, in which Roumania is a medium-size power, and Germany and Turkey are the major powers. Park does a great job filling in the details just fast enough so that you stay oriented, but slowly enough that you feel like you're learning it with the characters, and you always feel that there's a lot you don't know yet.
I read more of the Iliad, but nothing deep to say there.
I'm in the middle of Kugel's How to Read the Bible. I'm finding it fascinating, but I'm not sure how well it hangs together as a book, rather than a disparate collection of chapters. Each chapter (other than the first) follows a similar schema: recount a bible story, then talk about the view of the ancient interpreters, then how modern scholars view the same story. (E.g. the old view of the Babel story is that it's about mankind over-reaching, trying to get disobey God's will, and being punished. The more modern view is that it's an etiological tale, to explain the origin of Babylonian ziggurats, why Jews don't build them, and the origin of the many different languages in the world.) Great stuff. But every so often, he throws in a comment that implies that he's building a structure around the questions of faith in the Bible, given modern knowledge of its development, and I think he's not really getting there -- the book wouldn't be significantly different if you read the chapters in random order. However, I'm only halfway through, so we'll see how it progresses.
I've given up on the Three Kingdoms. Maybe someday I'll give it a try again, but the repetitiveness just got to me in the end.
So... in the last month, I decided, for about the 10th time to try read Devaney's "Chaotic Dynamical Systems." And, for the 10th time, failed miserably for lack of real analysis skills. So, I looked on Amazon, and, lo & behold, he's written a book aimed more at undergrads ("A First Course in Chaotic Dynamical Systems"), with a lot more details filled in. I must say, I'm having a blast, stretching my mind with mathematics in a way that I just haven't done in the past several years. The book is engaging (for a math book), and relatively friendly to the non-math-major, at least so far (about halfway in).
I also read Park's follow-up to A Princess in Roumania, titled the Tourmaline. It's an interesting world that he's created, in which Roumania is a medium-size power, and Germany and Turkey are the major powers. Park does a great job filling in the details just fast enough so that you stay oriented, but slowly enough that you feel like you're learning it with the characters, and you always feel that there's a lot you don't know yet.
I read more of the Iliad, but nothing deep to say there.
I'm in the middle of Kugel's How to Read the Bible. I'm finding it fascinating, but I'm not sure how well it hangs together as a book, rather than a disparate collection of chapters. Each chapter (other than the first) follows a similar schema: recount a bible story, then talk about the view of the ancient interpreters, then how modern scholars view the same story. (E.g. the old view of the Babel story is that it's about mankind over-reaching, trying to get disobey God's will, and being punished. The more modern view is that it's an etiological tale, to explain the origin of Babylonian ziggurats, why Jews don't build them, and the origin of the many different languages in the world.) Great stuff. But every so often, he throws in a comment that implies that he's building a structure around the questions of faith in the Bible, given modern knowledge of its development, and I think he's not really getting there -- the book wouldn't be significantly different if you read the chapters in random order. However, I'm only halfway through, so we'll see how it progresses.
I've given up on the Three Kingdoms. Maybe someday I'll give it a try again, but the repetitiveness just got to me in the end.
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