Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher
I wanted to like this. It had been on my wishlist on Amazon for over a year. It started out fantastically and, since I bought the Kindle edition one day when it went on sale, I was making notes left and right. The further I got into the book the more I realized I wasn't learning anything, because essentially the author would present an outdated fact about language, talk about the advancements made since that fact was believed true, challenge the advancements with recent experiments, then undermine the experiments with other observations. In the end, I came out of each chapter completely confused about what I was supposed to believe.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but it seems like maybe I'm hyping books in my head too much, getting too excited, because the ones I'm most excited about turn out to be awful. Last year at around this time I was thinking that choosing less random books was leading to more satisfaction, that if I read synopses I would be able to predict my personal preference toward certain books but I think maybe the novelty of making the list I made was too new, too exciting, and it was carrying over so that I looked past the flaws of those first books. Because now, a year later, I'm finding my satisfaction vs. my disappointment to be about the same ratio as when the books were just random.
What I thought this book would be: a mostly realistic portrayal of the underground scene in London with some surrealistic moments. Instead it is an out-and-out fantasy in an entirely made-up world, based on London, but with more magic than reality. I've come to realize that I don't really want too much magic, especially if I'm not expecting it (Harry Potter is "exactly as it says on the tin" as the saying goes - the summary is it's about an ordinary boy who finds out he's a wizard). The summary of Neverwhere is that a man gets pulled into the "dark subculture" of the "abandoned subway and sewer tunnels" of an "alternate reality." You may say, well, it says "alternate reality," so I should have had a clue, there's a big difference between a general statement of alternate realities and outright saying "there will be wizards."
The one thing that kept me going was that I was imagining the character of Richard from the TV show Keeping Up Appearances as the main character, also named Richard.
Drive by Daniel Pink
A book about what motivates people in the workplace. An impulse buy when I wanted to learn more about business because I was trying to get a job at our corporate office. Surprisingly more interesting that half the books I thought I would love. I wish the heads of our company would read it so they might learn why it's bad to offer a bonus for making a goal and then suddenly take it away just before that goal is reached.
The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
Another impulse buy. I thought it would be different (a theme I'm experiencing) but at least I wasn't crushingly disappointed. It was relatively close to expectations, but I thought there would be less academic talk and more ranting as it was supposed to rip the bourgeois art world of the sixties apart and expose the critics for being responsible for a bunch of pomp and circumstance. It did but not as amusingly as I was hoping.
There were other books but I don't really remember them and so they aren't worth another hour out of my life.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
I'm a Bum. Also, The Maltese Falcon.
I have a hard time keeping up with journals and blogs mainly because I can't just write or type something. I have to scrutinize every word and read my entry multiple times before I can submit, and often one post takes me hours to write. Maybe it's a good thing the home office of the company I work for turned me down because they didn't think I would be fast enough to keep up with the pace they needed for communications between the office and the field.
Anyway, I'm here to give a review to The Maltese Falcon. Let me preface this with the story of why I wanted so badly to read this book. Years ago I watched a little famuos movie called The Usual Suspects which has an incredibly well-written twist ending. It's brilliant. Capital 'B' Brilliant. One day I was reading an article about the movie (a review in Rolling Stone or something) and the reviewer compared the movie to the mystery novel The Maltese Falcon, saying the ending of The Usual Suspects was second only to Falcon as the greatest surprise ending in the history of writing. Naturally, I needed to read The Maltese Falcon. I have, for years mind you, avoided even reading synopses of this book for fear of the ending being revealed. This happened to me once when I read the introduction to a book, where the introduction talked about the various ways to interpret the ending. I was not happy.
So I bought the book and began reading. First, it was not well-written, despite the caption on the front cover saying "Dashiell Hammet is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." (The Boston Globe.) It's funny, when you notice things you know you do in your own writing and realize how annoying they must be to readers once you see them through the eyes of a reader. Hammet would describe the actions in a scene excrutiatingly thoroughly, like how Sam Spade would pull a cigarette, put it to his lips, take out his matches, take out one match, light it, lift it to the cigarette, etc. Jesus, he lit a cigarette, okay? I mean, that kind of detail is fine the first time but not every freaking time he lights a cigarette or cigar. It also made for some choppy reading.
I recognize the book was most likely ahead of its time, and that it used specifically precise slang for detectives and criminals of the 1920s, but I just found a lot of the dialogue and even narration laughable. I tried, hard, to understand this book probably set the precedent for using correct slang and dialect, but it just made it sound goofy, like a spoof. I guess I like books that don't try so hard and therefore have a universal feel to them. I bet I would have cared about the characters more if I hadn't been trying to decode what certain phrases meant and hadn't been rolling my eyes at what seemed like a giant cliche.
I wonder if I feel the same when someone uses specific Southern slang, or New York street accents. I wonder if those things have withstood the test of time in the real world (most Southerners still have the same phrases and accent as they did 100 years ago and the same goes with at least the New York accent) where as gangsters in no way speak the way they do in this book. Maybe they do speak that way and I would laugh at them if I heard them today, and promptly be shot.
Worst of all, though, was that the mighty ending, fabled to be the most shocking in all of literature, was extremely disappointing. It was actually obvious from the very beginning. I found myself praying it wouldn't turn out that way. Maybe in 1929 no one had ever made a twist like this before (HIGHLY doubtful - no wait, impossible and I know it's not true because I've read stories written before 1929 with similar twists). I wanted the stupid falcon to mean something more than it does. I'm sorry if that ruins a part of the plot for you but that's an ugly truth about this novel - everything in it was disappointing. I don't feel any need to go back through and see if I can find the clues that were so obvious when the ending was revealed but that were cleverly hidden while in the midst of reading. I felt the need for that when I watched The Usual Suspects, and also felt the details throughout were just amazing and so very brilliant in hindsight. There was a point where the main character of Falcon, Sam Spade, was reading the newspaper and he kept dismissing the financial news as unimportant. He does it twice. I thought that would prove highly important to the legendary twist - that he would have seen everything had he not kept skipping that section - but nope. So very disappointing.
I give this novel a low C-, bordering on a D+. I think it might not have faired as badly had I not been anticipating it for so long but that's life, because I had anticipated it and what an anti-climax. I hope my next long-anticipated novel, IQ84 doesn't disappoint.
Anyway, I'm here to give a review to The Maltese Falcon. Let me preface this with the story of why I wanted so badly to read this book. Years ago I watched a little famuos movie called The Usual Suspects which has an incredibly well-written twist ending. It's brilliant. Capital 'B' Brilliant. One day I was reading an article about the movie (a review in Rolling Stone or something) and the reviewer compared the movie to the mystery novel The Maltese Falcon, saying the ending of The Usual Suspects was second only to Falcon as the greatest surprise ending in the history of writing. Naturally, I needed to read The Maltese Falcon. I have, for years mind you, avoided even reading synopses of this book for fear of the ending being revealed. This happened to me once when I read the introduction to a book, where the introduction talked about the various ways to interpret the ending. I was not happy.
So I bought the book and began reading. First, it was not well-written, despite the caption on the front cover saying "Dashiell Hammet is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." (The Boston Globe.) It's funny, when you notice things you know you do in your own writing and realize how annoying they must be to readers once you see them through the eyes of a reader. Hammet would describe the actions in a scene excrutiatingly thoroughly, like how Sam Spade would pull a cigarette, put it to his lips, take out his matches, take out one match, light it, lift it to the cigarette, etc. Jesus, he lit a cigarette, okay? I mean, that kind of detail is fine the first time but not every freaking time he lights a cigarette or cigar. It also made for some choppy reading.
I recognize the book was most likely ahead of its time, and that it used specifically precise slang for detectives and criminals of the 1920s, but I just found a lot of the dialogue and even narration laughable. I tried, hard, to understand this book probably set the precedent for using correct slang and dialect, but it just made it sound goofy, like a spoof. I guess I like books that don't try so hard and therefore have a universal feel to them. I bet I would have cared about the characters more if I hadn't been trying to decode what certain phrases meant and hadn't been rolling my eyes at what seemed like a giant cliche.
I wonder if I feel the same when someone uses specific Southern slang, or New York street accents. I wonder if those things have withstood the test of time in the real world (most Southerners still have the same phrases and accent as they did 100 years ago and the same goes with at least the New York accent) where as gangsters in no way speak the way they do in this book. Maybe they do speak that way and I would laugh at them if I heard them today, and promptly be shot.
Worst of all, though, was that the mighty ending, fabled to be the most shocking in all of literature, was extremely disappointing. It was actually obvious from the very beginning. I found myself praying it wouldn't turn out that way. Maybe in 1929 no one had ever made a twist like this before (HIGHLY doubtful - no wait, impossible and I know it's not true because I've read stories written before 1929 with similar twists). I wanted the stupid falcon to mean something more than it does. I'm sorry if that ruins a part of the plot for you but that's an ugly truth about this novel - everything in it was disappointing. I don't feel any need to go back through and see if I can find the clues that were so obvious when the ending was revealed but that were cleverly hidden while in the midst of reading. I felt the need for that when I watched The Usual Suspects, and also felt the details throughout were just amazing and so very brilliant in hindsight. There was a point where the main character of Falcon, Sam Spade, was reading the newspaper and he kept dismissing the financial news as unimportant. He does it twice. I thought that would prove highly important to the legendary twist - that he would have seen everything had he not kept skipping that section - but nope. So very disappointing.
I give this novel a low C-, bordering on a D+. I think it might not have faired as badly had I not been anticipating it for so long but that's life, because I had anticipated it and what an anti-climax. I hope my next long-anticipated novel, IQ84 doesn't disappoint.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Has It Been that Long?
It has indeed. You knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with some sort of discipline, right? Wrong! I just haven't posted and keeping track is a drag, dude.
I've added a few things to the routine - instead of reading each of the Writers at Work books as a whole, I'm going to read one interview a week until I get through the series. I've also added one essay/short story/whatever from a magazine called McSweeney's, which is edited by the same dude who does the Best American Non-Required Reading series, so it is AWESOME. The current issue came in a box that is a giant head, complete with drawings of brain matter and sinew. Lovely and pretty hysterical.
That means I've also changed the goal of two books a week to one fiction book and one non-fiction book a week. Still 104 books a year, but changed up so I get a little knowledge thrown in with my entertainment.
Right now the non-fiction book is one I've been meaning to read for a long time. It's An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, the man who hosts Inside the Actor's Studio. It turns out he's a genius. It's a book, by the way, that would totally bore anyone who isn't a word-nerd. It's just lists of phrases like "a pride of lions" or "a nest of machine guns" (my personal favorite). Sometimes there is a back story to where the phrase originated. Sometimes, just lists.
I've added a few things to the routine - instead of reading each of the Writers at Work books as a whole, I'm going to read one interview a week until I get through the series. I've also added one essay/short story/whatever from a magazine called McSweeney's, which is edited by the same dude who does the Best American Non-Required Reading series, so it is AWESOME. The current issue came in a box that is a giant head, complete with drawings of brain matter and sinew. Lovely and pretty hysterical.
That means I've also changed the goal of two books a week to one fiction book and one non-fiction book a week. Still 104 books a year, but changed up so I get a little knowledge thrown in with my entertainment.
Right now the non-fiction book is one I've been meaning to read for a long time. It's An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, the man who hosts Inside the Actor's Studio. It turns out he's a genius. It's a book, by the way, that would totally bore anyone who isn't a word-nerd. It's just lists of phrases like "a pride of lions" or "a nest of machine guns" (my personal favorite). Sometimes there is a back story to where the phrase originated. Sometimes, just lists.
Friday, January 21, 2011
The Curious Incident of Extreme Disappointment
This critique may spoil a plot point. Read on at your own caution.
I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and was not happy with the ending. The book went from a possible 'A' grade to a 'C' pretty quickly. I don't want to give away the ending so I'll be vague about it, but I think there should have been more consequences to the actions in the first half of the book. I think the mother's actions were too heroic and perfect. I think the narrator's reactions to his mother were out of character since he was set up as a logical thinker. He understood how most violent crimes are committed by someone known to the victim; using that logic he should have been afraid of his mother because he should have understood violence escalates. The hint at his mother's violence is a passing reference in the beginning of the book, but it's there nonetheless.
Too happy of an ending for a book that should have been about consequences. 'C.'
If you ever read this book you'll be saying I give away an important plot detail in this critique. It was spoiled for me just reading the summary from the publisher.
*******EVEN BIGGER SPOILER ALERT*******
The father tells the child his mother is dead. Since the summary I read says the narrator discovers his parents' broken marriage (the one I read actually says they 'are getting divorced') I knew as soon as I read about how his mother had died that his father had lied to him. I spent even the first half of the novel waiting for the narrator to discover the truth about it and it took all of the surprise out of the big reveal for me.
I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and was not happy with the ending. The book went from a possible 'A' grade to a 'C' pretty quickly. I don't want to give away the ending so I'll be vague about it, but I think there should have been more consequences to the actions in the first half of the book. I think the mother's actions were too heroic and perfect. I think the narrator's reactions to his mother were out of character since he was set up as a logical thinker. He understood how most violent crimes are committed by someone known to the victim; using that logic he should have been afraid of his mother because he should have understood violence escalates. The hint at his mother's violence is a passing reference in the beginning of the book, but it's there nonetheless.
Too happy of an ending for a book that should have been about consequences. 'C.'
If you ever read this book you'll be saying I give away an important plot detail in this critique. It was spoiled for me just reading the summary from the publisher.
*******EVEN BIGGER SPOILER ALERT*******
The father tells the child his mother is dead. Since the summary I read says the narrator discovers his parents' broken marriage (the one I read actually says they 'are getting divorced') I knew as soon as I read about how his mother had died that his father had lied to him. I spent even the first half of the novel waiting for the narrator to discover the truth about it and it took all of the surprise out of the big reveal for me.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Curious
Right now I'm reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and it was my favorite book so far this year until last night. Last night I realized I don't sympathize anymore with the protagonist/narrator. You see, the narrator has autism and everything is told through his perspective which is interesting and that wasn't a problem until halfway through the book when something big was revealed.
And what I realized is I didn't feel the same about his situation as he feels. After two major revelations from his father, which were scary and horrible and all, the narrator becomes afraid of his father. And while a part of me completely understands, there is also a part of me that doesn't feel the same because I don't feel his father would ever really hurt him. He could in all plausible honesty, but I don't really feel the same fear that he would as the narrator.
The other problem - and I know this is going to sound really, really horrible - is that I don't feel like the narrator feels love. I don't feel a sense of loss other than a loss of feeling safe. I don't feel like he's being pulled between a fear of what his father is capable of and a sense of the father he's losing. I feel like he's losing a longtime roommate and not a father, and I feel like his father feels like he's losing his son. I know that the book is being true to the logical way autistic children approach life and I'm sure there is love underlying that logic but I don't feel it and so I'm only reading to see how the book concludes and not because I care what happens to the narrator. I feel at this point like no matter what happens I won't really care and I'm not rooting for a certain outcome. That's a problem because a lot of people would have put this book down by this point, I think.
I like the approach of giving a voice to autistic children and trying to understand how they navigate the world. But - but - it's really hard, and we've talked about this before, to read a whole novel where the main character isn't someone you can sympathize with. It's hard to explain because the things that happened in the part of the story I read last night are horrible and I do sympathize with his situation but (I'm a bad person) I just don't sympathize with him. He exhibits signs of loss, like when he vomits after one thing is revealed or screams after the second is revealed, but he's disconnected from those feelings and in fiction this causes me to be disconnected from them, too. If more than one person reads this blog, and I doubt it and that one person is probably going to be appalled at my reaction, but if more than one person reads this I'll probably get many angry comments about being unsympathetic to a person with a disability. But I can't help feeling frustrated.
Maybe that's the point. I'm sure often with autistic children the people around them become frustrated with the lack of emotion or the quirks or what seem like sudden outbursts. Maybe I'm meant to come out of this with more patience because I'll have learned something about how different minds think about or handle situations. And I will, and I feel like I have learned. But that doesn't make the story any more compelling. I think I'll really feel bad if more horrible things happen (I will feel bad) because he's just a kid no matter how detatched he seems to be from his emotions. But (sighhhhh) I think this could be any character and I would feel bad for him. Giving him autism wasn't enough to make him compelling.
I remember once in workshop a fellow student wrote about a character who had a stutter, and our professor asked what made this character special beyond having a stutter. And none of us could answer, because if we took away the stutter the character was bland and uninteresting. The narrator in Curious Incident is a little more fleshed out and just a tad more real but still not gripping.
Maybe I'll read the next page and all this will change. I don't know. I'm jumping the gun a little here, I do know that, but I just wanted to get out how I felt. I'll have a full report sometime this weekend.
And what I realized is I didn't feel the same about his situation as he feels. After two major revelations from his father, which were scary and horrible and all, the narrator becomes afraid of his father. And while a part of me completely understands, there is also a part of me that doesn't feel the same because I don't feel his father would ever really hurt him. He could in all plausible honesty, but I don't really feel the same fear that he would as the narrator.
The other problem - and I know this is going to sound really, really horrible - is that I don't feel like the narrator feels love. I don't feel a sense of loss other than a loss of feeling safe. I don't feel like he's being pulled between a fear of what his father is capable of and a sense of the father he's losing. I feel like he's losing a longtime roommate and not a father, and I feel like his father feels like he's losing his son. I know that the book is being true to the logical way autistic children approach life and I'm sure there is love underlying that logic but I don't feel it and so I'm only reading to see how the book concludes and not because I care what happens to the narrator. I feel at this point like no matter what happens I won't really care and I'm not rooting for a certain outcome. That's a problem because a lot of people would have put this book down by this point, I think.
I like the approach of giving a voice to autistic children and trying to understand how they navigate the world. But - but - it's really hard, and we've talked about this before, to read a whole novel where the main character isn't someone you can sympathize with. It's hard to explain because the things that happened in the part of the story I read last night are horrible and I do sympathize with his situation but (I'm a bad person) I just don't sympathize with him. He exhibits signs of loss, like when he vomits after one thing is revealed or screams after the second is revealed, but he's disconnected from those feelings and in fiction this causes me to be disconnected from them, too. If more than one person reads this blog, and I doubt it and that one person is probably going to be appalled at my reaction, but if more than one person reads this I'll probably get many angry comments about being unsympathetic to a person with a disability. But I can't help feeling frustrated.
Maybe that's the point. I'm sure often with autistic children the people around them become frustrated with the lack of emotion or the quirks or what seem like sudden outbursts. Maybe I'm meant to come out of this with more patience because I'll have learned something about how different minds think about or handle situations. And I will, and I feel like I have learned. But that doesn't make the story any more compelling. I think I'll really feel bad if more horrible things happen (I will feel bad) because he's just a kid no matter how detatched he seems to be from his emotions. But (sighhhhh) I think this could be any character and I would feel bad for him. Giving him autism wasn't enough to make him compelling.
I remember once in workshop a fellow student wrote about a character who had a stutter, and our professor asked what made this character special beyond having a stutter. And none of us could answer, because if we took away the stutter the character was bland and uninteresting. The narrator in Curious Incident is a little more fleshed out and just a tad more real but still not gripping.
Maybe I'll read the next page and all this will change. I don't know. I'm jumping the gun a little here, I do know that, but I just wanted to get out how I felt. I'll have a full report sometime this weekend.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Two Books
1) Understanding Comcis by Scott McCloud. I would give this book a B. There was a part of me that was put off by the fact it was written as a comic book, and I don't know why but maybe because it made it feel choppy and underdevolped. But I really liked some of the things I learned, like "closure" and how the readers of any book fill in gaps between panels (for comic books) or paragraphs or sections or chapters. I like leaps of logic, remember, and McCloud makes the argument that comic book creators must, by simple definition of time and space and the juxtaposition of words and visual art, expect their readers to be able to make leaps and bounds. I really liked how McCloud made me feel like he knew he didn't need to talk down to his audience and he could expect a certain level of intelligence out of it.
2) The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. Eh. It was good. It was interesting. It was reminscent of the original and of writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It had an older world feel to it. I liked how it reminded me how spooky something only hinted at can be, as opposed to full out monster descriptions dripping with blood and guts. It reminded me of why I find Stephen King's vampire stories so bland and his more subtle stories, like That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French, haunt me long afterwards. It's why I'm scared shitless by video games like Silent Hill but not scared in any way shape or form by games like Resident Evil. Anyway, back to Frankenstein. Eh. High C. I was turned off by all the politics. And I kept wanting to pronounce Frank-en-stine as Fraunk-en-steen. Love that movie.
2) The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. Eh. It was good. It was interesting. It was reminscent of the original and of writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It had an older world feel to it. I liked how it reminded me how spooky something only hinted at can be, as opposed to full out monster descriptions dripping with blood and guts. It reminded me of why I find Stephen King's vampire stories so bland and his more subtle stories, like That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French, haunt me long afterwards. It's why I'm scared shitless by video games like Silent Hill but not scared in any way shape or form by games like Resident Evil. Anyway, back to Frankenstein. Eh. High C. I was turned off by all the politics. And I kept wanting to pronounce Frank-en-stine as Fraunk-en-steen. Love that movie.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Three Books
A) The Green Child by Herbert Read. High 'C'. It was poetic and interesting enough but not quite a page turner. Worthy enough of my time.
B) Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac. Ugh, low 'C'. It's something about literature written during that time period (the 1800s, I think). The book was soooo long and I just didn't care about anyone in it. I also felt, pardon the pun, lost for a good deal of the story. It was something like $.89 on the Kindle, though, so not much was lost.
C) Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. 'A-'. I loved it. Unlike The Magic Mountain, this story involved philosophy in small chunks, with accompanying scenes where said philosophy applied, and was written poetically, and followed generations of a family, which is one of my favorite kinds of stories. I was really excited by this as my first read of the new year. It and Lost Illusions were really long, but this week's are really short, so I feel it is being balanced well. Angel was a library book, so I'll have to purchase a copy of my own for my bookshelf.
And yes, I mean a paper copy. There's still something about possessing a material copy of the books we love that isn't going to die.
B) Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac. Ugh, low 'C'. It's something about literature written during that time period (the 1800s, I think). The book was soooo long and I just didn't care about anyone in it. I also felt, pardon the pun, lost for a good deal of the story. It was something like $.89 on the Kindle, though, so not much was lost.
C) Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. 'A-'. I loved it. Unlike The Magic Mountain, this story involved philosophy in small chunks, with accompanying scenes where said philosophy applied, and was written poetically, and followed generations of a family, which is one of my favorite kinds of stories. I was really excited by this as my first read of the new year. It and Lost Illusions were really long, but this week's are really short, so I feel it is being balanced well. Angel was a library book, so I'll have to purchase a copy of my own for my bookshelf.
And yes, I mean a paper copy. There's still something about possessing a material copy of the books we love that isn't going to die.
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