Giant

"In Texas the truth is often too strange for fiction." - Edna Ferber

Full disclosure here: I am a proud Texan.  I have been all my life and continue to be, despite being displaced some eleven years ago.  My love for Texas runs deep in my blood, as my family can be traced back for well over 100 years to the diverse geographical expanse known as The Lone Star State.  But, that does not mean I can't be objective about Texas.  I realize Texans are a prideful people, they revel in the bigness that is Texas, they are fiercely independent; and though loyal to the United States, in most Texan hearts, Texas comes first. 

I picked up the novel Giant a couple months back and bought it solely because it (the movie incarnation, at least) is featured in my favorite song about Texas ("The Front Porch Song" - This old porch is a palace walk in on a main street in Texas. It ain't seen or heard the days of G and Rs and Xs and that '62 poster that's almost faded down and a screen without a picture since Giant came to town.).  The fact that Ferber won the Pulitzer led a little credence to the whole purchase as well. 

Ferber was lambasted for her portrayal of Texas within the confines of the state, but lauded for her realist depiction of the "new rich" of Texas in the rest of the 47 states.  I think Texans just needed a little perspective.  Though some of the scenarios and statements hit a little too close to home, it is an incredibly accurate portrait of the people of Texas (not just the rich).  But, I have the objectivity that comes with letting a book breathe for about 50 years. 

Overall, Ferber told an amazing story of the decline of the ranch life of Texas as the discovery of abundant resources of oil turned Texas from the cattle king to the oil oligarch.  She tells the story of the end of an era with less of a "good riddance" but more of a hopeful "here we go."  The closing line of dialogue of the book tells the reader, Ferber had kind intentions in her satire.  That said the satire is played up nicely by the over-the-top vocabulary she uses in the telling.  For the first 100 hundred pages, I strongly recommend having a dictionary by your side.  The words she puts into her character's mouths are often so esoteric, they strain believability.  I think it must be her way of pointing out the difference between the Texan and the rest of the country.  She overtly states later in the book that Texas was less than desirable on the education front.  Other gripes: racism, classism, ostentatious lifestyles, bull-headedness; the list goes on.  

The story is well told and the characters, though some would call them caricatures, are engaging.  I recommend this book, but I am Texan, so that might be because I "get it" more than others.   Ferber's inconsistent use of commas was a little maddening, as well as some errors in the text (come on this book is 50 years old, the manuscript should be edited by now!), but not enough to put the book down.

Rating: 5 out of 7

-L

The Sadness, In Particular

Since we started the book blog, we have a lot of suggestions for books to read from friends and acquaintances.  Rarely, someone will actually bring a book to me and say, please read this and let me know what you think.  Since this is so rare, I often take up the person on the offer.  It seems rude to do otherwise. 

I think I might start to be rude!  Here's the story:

I am into cooking.  I am currently taking a professional baking course at a local cooking class.  One of my classmates asked me if I had read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  I told her I had heard of it but I have not read it.  The next week, she brought the book and asked me to read and let her know what I thought of it.  Since the class is winding down, I put it on the top of my to read list. 

So, now that you have background on the reason for the read, here's what I think:

I didn't like it!  I thought the beginning was compelling enough, but then it just died on the vine.  It was all idea and no substance.  The premise suits foodies well enough (I guess): a girl who can taste a person's feelings by eating the food they prepare.  Yeah, imagine what that would be like, think about it for a good 4 minutes.  Now you can skip reading this book.  Apparently, that is how long Aimee Bender thought through the plot lines of this book. 

I kept comparing it to "Heroes" (without the really interesting superpowers) and The Lovely Bones (without all the murder and stuff).  I can't tell you very much else about the plot of this book, because, although, things happen, they happen without direction.  The story just meanders on, without any resolution, without any real point.  Does she use her superpower for good or for evil, or is it just a burden she lives with forever?  You will never know because the author really didn't care enough to tell you. 

I would skip this one.  I think Ms. Bender should have thought of a direction for the protagonist and then shortened the novel to a short story.  It would have made for a much more exciting 20 pages. 

Rating: 2 out of 7

-L

The Weight of Water

I learned that night that love is never as ferocious as when you think it is going to leave you.  We are not always allowed this knowledge, and so our love sometimes becomes retrospective. 

A tale of love and jealousy.  A tale of what happens when these are the emotions that rule one's life.  This is Anita Shreeve's The Weight of Water.  It is told through recollections and journals of recollections.  It is a novel set in two time periods, one hundred years apart.  The main device in the novel, as one may guess is water.  But a secondary device used to a better purpose is a fisherman's net.  The fisherman's net serves to connect the stories of these disparate women a century apart.  It serves to show the bonds of human relationship that connect people's lives to one another.  And it shows the frailty of human emotion; how all that one holds dear can unravel in the time it takes to prepare a cup of coffee.  This is best portrayed by this statement:

We have done this thing, and then that thing, and then that thing, and I have come to think of our years together as a tightly knotted fisherman's net; not perfectly made perhaps, but so well knit I would have said it could never have been unraveled

All that said, I did not really enjoy reading The Weight of Water.  I found it disjointed, the transitions from one story to the next jarring.  I also thought it odd that these women would write a narrative in the same way, even though they are in different time periods, different cultures, even different languages.  I understand that Shreeve wanted to show a connection between the present day and the past, but I found it unnerving.  The book ends up like listening to a long-winded story-teller who has grown a little rusty in the telling.  There are digressions galore, backstory of backstory.  And all I wanted was to get to the end. 

Also, I don't believe Shreeve left much to the imagination of the reader narratively.  Within the first 70 pages, I thought I knew exactly what had happened and exactly what would happen.  At the end of the book, I was right.  Does that make me smarter than others?  No, I think it means Shreeve didn't hide her hand.  I felt much like one of the narrators: "I have sometimes though that there are moments when you can see it all - and if not the future, then all that has gone before."  She did attempt to make you think you weren't getting the whole story with the inclusion of the line: "No one can know a story's precise reality."  This isn't as compelling a red herring when you read it in context. 

If you are interested in this novel, I recommend a section of pages around pages 69-71.  These are the most compelling literary passages of the entire novel.  All the quotes here in this post are culled from these pages. 
Rating: 2.5 out of 7 (Wish it could have been better)

-L

Letters to A Young Poet Obsessed with Aspidistras

I rarely read more than one book at a time.  I tend to lose focus if I do.  But, for some reason, I was reading two books this past week that met in some fortuitous way to help one another.  The two books in question: Letters to a Young Poet by Ranier Maria Rilke and Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell.  Both are books about or to poets.  Both deal with the pain and struggle poets must go through to produce art.

You know how when you find a distasteful character in a work of fiction, you find yourself wanting to fix them, wanting to have a conversation with them, to set them on the right track?  OK, maybe it's just me.  Well, instead of wanting to fix the main character in Orwell's book, I wanted to introduce him to Rilke.  I wanted so badly for the letters Rilke wrote to Mr. Kappus to be written to Gordon Comstock.  Because, like Kappus, Gordon needed some direction.  He needed to figure it out.  I mean the man is 30 years old and still hung up on money and himself, so much so that he keeps himself from the things he desires most.

Gordon's problems are numerous.  He is obsessed with money, having declared war against the "money-god" without realizing he bows down to his altar on an almost constant basis.  He is obsessed with as-yet-unrealized physical intimacy with his girlfriend of two years.  He has a dead-end job.  He has been working on one poem for two years and each day whittles it down, instead of adding to it.  He sees everything as a class warfare thing.  But with him it starts and ends with money.  Thankfully, Rilke had something to say on these topics.  I think it would go a little something like this.

Gordon on successful poetry: You were a made man once you had had a poem in [the Primrose Quarterly].  In his heart Gordon knew that the Primrose Quarterly would never print his poems.  He wasn't up to their standard.  Still, miracles sometimes happen; or, if not miracles, accidents.

Rilke: You ask whether your verses are good...You send them to magazines.  You compare them with other poems, you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts.  Now...I beg you to give up on all that.  You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now.  Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody.  There is only one single way.  Go into yourself.  Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.

Gordon on fruitless days: The ticking of the alarm clock on the mantelpiece became audible to Gordon again, bringing with it the consciousness of the sinister passage of time.  He looked about him.  Another evening wasted.  Hours, days, years slipping by.  Night after night, always the same.  The lonely room, the womanless bed; dust, cigarette ash, the aspidistra leaves.  And he was thirty, nearly.

Rilke: seek [themes] which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty - describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory.  If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

Gordon on employment:  He went to Ravelston and asked his help.  He told him that he wanted some kind of job; not a "good" job, but a job that would keep his body without wholly buying his soul.

Rilke: I can only advise you to consider whether all professions are not like that, full of demands, full of enmity against the individual, saturated as it were with the hatred of those who have found themselves mute and sullen in a hum-drum duty.

With these bits of advice from another poet, Gordon's story would be the same, but his attitude could have been different.  It is the attitude and the words stemming from it, that make Gordon such a distasteful character, that alienate him from all those who love him. 

But, all is not lost in Orwell's story.  This is only the character sketch of Gordon that takes up the first six (tedious) chapters of the book.  Then, in the final six chapters of the book, we find character development through actual events (praise for actual events in a novel, how necessary they are).   We see, finally, the development of boy into man at the ripe age of thirty.  So it is a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel.  It is a shame Gordon had to become complete at such an old age (middle-age, for the time).  It stands in contrast to the letters to Mr. Kappus, a boy of nineteen developing into a man a full decade before Gordon.

Also, in the last couple of chapters we find the explanation for aspidistras being a central device in the novel.  I will not reveal it here because if anything is a mystery throughout this novel, it is the meaning of aspidistras. 

Ratings: Keep the Aspidistra Flying: 2 of 7 (The plot is non-existent until the last of the book, I need some plot, please!)
Letters to a Young Poet: 6 of 7 (will return to this one regularly, thanks for the recommendation, Dad)

-L

Life of Pi

It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith.  Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - then they leap. - Pi Patel

I tried to be really clever and type the pi symbol in my title.  I say tried because you can see the result. 
This week's book for me was Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  I have heard good things about it from different sectors, and Stacie brought it over one day for me to read.  It has been sitting in the office for a while and I had never even looked at the bookleaf to figure out what it was about.  The bookleaf is intriguing in it's complete vagueness.  Don't worry about having to find a copy to read it, here it is in it's entirety:

A Boy
A Tiger
And the vast Pacific Ocean

This is a novel of such rare and wonderous storytelling that is may, as one character claims, make you believe in God. 

Can a reader reasonably ask for anything more?

This struck me because I already believe in God and wandered what story other than the one I have already heard could make a believer out of an atheist.  It also struck me because I LOVE when I don't know anything about what I am about to experience (be it movies, music, or books).  I love a good surprise!

Did I find what I was looking for while reading this book?  Yes and no.
I did think the story was remarkable, well told, even if it was a little tedious toward the end (although I do think this too was an author's device).  Did it make me a believer?  No.  I already have a knowledge and faith in a well-defined God, not the/an undefined god of this book.  The story plays well into the fate/hand of God  ideas of many stories that have gone before (e.g. he never would have been prepared for that if he hadn't done this), but stops short somewhere along the way.  I was also put off by the multi-god religion the main character builds for himself, especially considering they are mutually exclusive faiths. 
I did enjoy the air of mystery the book jacket provided.  Each page truly was an adventure until a little past two-thirds in.  By this time, I was done with the surprising story and was ready for the denoument.  Just get there already!  The first part of the book was what I found most intriguing over all.  If you are a person who likes to start a book and then lay it down, this could be a candidate.  Just read the first half and you will have lots to chew on. 

In regards to the athiest-turning claim of the book jacket, there are some great quotes in the first section of the book.  One is at the top of the post, but there really could have been a few more. 

Rating:  4 out of 7

-L

I am Drew's Confused Cerebrum

The first rule of reading Fight Club is you don't talk about reading Fight Club......

It was interesting having to purchase a book that the bookstores will not keep on the bookshelves. It's tucked away behind the counter that you have to request from the employee ringing up the rest of your order. It's very covert... you almost feel like you're buying something off the black market. Now, it's not because it's mature(which it is), but because Palahniuk books are often stolen. I guess that would make sense if you've read Fight Club.

That brings me to reviewing the book. I'm not sure how to go about that now that I fear that one of those spacemonkey's might come after me for saying something to the contrary about Fight Club. But, if one would be unhappy that I am critical of Palahniuk's popular novel would defeat the purpose of the anarchist care-not attitude of a "believer". But we only have one follower, and one follower that I know personally. I doubt they'll come after me even though they love knives.

In the years that I've been reading novels that have movies based on them, I have not come across a book that's worse than the movie. I don't think that I should say that Fight Club isn't a good book, but the movie was able to twist and change the book into something with a different outlook. The plot is intact, but the climax is different. The movie puts the action out there and takes away a bit of the grittiness that is Fight Club. It's not a happy ending, feel-good book. The movie brought some of that to the table. That makes me very confused, b/c I still feel like I like the movie better, but the book is worth the read.

This quote sums it up for me:

Watching white moon face

The stars never feel anger

Blah, blah, blah, the end

Less than halfway through the book that quote stuck out. At the end of the book I still felt that way. But, at the end of the book came the best part of the book; the afterward. It clued me in to what Palahniuk was attempting to do with Fight Club. Something that this first read didn't leave me with.. and that was Palahniuk's ability to write!

Let me say this.

I don't think I like Palahniuk's books.

But I'll read another one.

-D