A Survey of Things

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Initial impressions: this guy has a thing for whale penises and lady ears.

Final impressions:  the silly and the real are weaved effortlessly and the Sheep Man creeped me the f#%k out.

Also, there is another WINTER scene.  If your novel doesn’t have winter, it’s worthless.  Worthless.

Perhaps I am missing the symbolism.  Sometimes I think I may have missed a point or two.  I didn’t become very interested in the story until about the half way mark, when The Hunt really began.  There’s an evil sheep that possesses people.  AN EVIL SHEEP.  It must be found. 

The author does very well with the “where the hell is this plot going” bit.  A number of people have recommended the author to me and I searched and deliberated on which novel would be my first.  I thought this one had the most interesting title.  It ended up being literally (I’m sorry when I write this word I now imagine it being said the way Chris from Parks & Rec or Robin from HIMYM accentuate it) about a sheep chase.  It did not disappoint.  I thought the strength of the novel was in the second half, which seems appropriate.  It is better to end with a bang that with a dud. 

It’s a little bit Moby Dick, a little bit Sherlock Holmes.  

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light.  Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.”  - Proverb of the people of Winter.

Yes, another book that takes place in the snow.  Seriously, fantasy and sci-fi writers; what is up with your thing about snow?

I was not even half way through the first chapter and I just felt in my bones that this was going to be a fantastic novel (it was not because they were on a planet called Winter).  At first it was because of the authors vocabulary, I loved it.  As I continued and it was revealed that there was an Envoy (representative of a human being much like ourselves) visiting a planet of humans that are genderless except during their kemmer (a period of estrus that occurs once a month).  During this time they can take on being the male or the female.  The concept fascinated me, and I was all, “ooohhhh, where is the author going to take this?!”

It’s a study in cultural anthropology, fictitious cultural anthropology is a better word for it perhaps.  At least, that was my initial take on it.  The book is the story of the Envoy’s (Genry) time on this planet (interjected with inserts from a native’s (Estraven) journal and traditional stories or myths of the planets people).  One of the most interesting facets is that these two main characters interactions are completely misinterpreted by the other because of their cultural and physical differences.  Genry is male and for the people on this planet he is considered a “Pervert” because to them he is perpetually in kemmer and Genry finds it difficult to communicate with people without trying to identify them with male or female traits. 

That’s really the beginning and then it turns into this epic political intrigue and then to unjust imprisonment and then an epic journey (in the snow of course).  Culminating into a story of true friendship.  I am not going to lie, I did not expect to tear up reading a science fiction novel.  It was fucking beautiful ok.  Read it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Once Marvin the robot was introduced, all I could see was Eeyore.  By the end I was just trying to figure out how each of the characters fitted into Pooh’s Corner.  Arthur is Piglet.  Zaphod is Tigger.  Ford is Pooh.  I haven’t made up my mind whether Trillian is Kanga or Rabbit.  And the mice are Christopher Robin.

This book is funny.  In a very particular sort of way.  It’s so British.  It felt very Monty Python, for lack of a better association, that’s the closest I could get to the type of humor it could be.  Maybe in a sort of way a classic Mel Brooks type of humor.  I find it interesting that I associate this story with TV and film.  As I read I could imagine watching this and now I want to see the movie and I hope that its good.  This was a really fun book.  I was cracking up out loud.  Does this make me a dork?  This, among other things, yes.  Its ok.  I’m comfortable with it.  

The story is full of humor but also these really creative ideas.  I was most fond of the idea of a group of people that make planets. Luxury planets.  One, because things just get bigger and grander and quite ridiculous.  We are thinking too small with custom cars, custom homes, and man made islands.  Two, there are specializations; there’s a guy that is the best at making fjords!  It’s an art.  He won an award.

It’s mostly harmless.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I have never read anything by Virginia Woolf.  Of course I had heard of her; one of the greatest writers ever, she had committed suicide, there is reportedly a really good movie (based on a book about her) called The Hours, and there is play called “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” which doesn’t really have anything to do with her.

I went into this novel having no clue.  I may still not have a clue.  It was written as a stream of consciousness bouncing from one character to the next over the course of a day, where the end goal is a party.  I took me a little bit to settle into it.  I was all, “whats the point?” and then I was like, “oh.” Then it began to unravel or come together (by that I mean the storylines).  I think there are still things that I missed or didn’t get, but coming out of it I think its about reflection and acceptance.

These characters are just moving through their day thinking about stuff, what was, what if?  It’s not epic.  It’s just life, the mundane and the everyday.  Many of the passages made me a bit sad.  I felt really bad for Peter, who is never able to get over the woman he loved in his youth. I felt really bad for the wife of the suicidal soldier suffering from post traumatic stress.  I don’t really know if I was happy for anyone, except for Sally. 

And then there are the comas! And then the semicolons! 

“Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.”

Some of the longest sentences ever came from this book.  Then you say to yourself, “what?” and you have to reread that paragraph that covered the past two pages again, but it’s very pretty.

Sabriel by Garth Nix

I was glad that the story didn’t revolve around her being female.  She wasn’t “chosen” or “destined” because she was a woman.  She wasn’t the first woman in a long line of men.  Many times in fantasy, or really in every type of thing, the sexuality of a lead female character is a major plot line.  Here that doesn’t happen, well, not really.  Is there a love interest?  Yes, but it doesn’t overwhelm.  Luckily, the “love story” is poorly handled at the very end of the book so you don’t have to deal with it for very long.  It really could have been done better.

The last third of the novel was less convincingly written.  It’s fantasy and belief must be suspended, but it seemed rushed and illogical.  The world building up to that point was pretty good, there was still a lot missing, but its a trilogy so that is to be expected.  

It dealt with The Undead quite a bit, because that’s the focus of the story.  A number of reviews had talked about zombies being in this book, but they’re not zombies.  If you get killed you don’t become a walking dead thing.  Your body could be worn by a malevolent spirit (which was gross) or your body could be used as a puppet thing (seriously, with strings attached) or you could just be dead.  Perhaps there a different versions of zombies, but it didn’t fit my idea of what a zombie is.  So if you are afraid of zombies, don’t worry.  The book is really about magic and magical beings.  

Overall I enjoyed reading it.  It was a little bit of a thriller and fast paced, in a good way. I would like to read the rest of the series once my schedule lets up a bit, two down and eighteen to go!

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I believe that Atwood thoroughly enjoys scaring the bejesus out of her readers, in subtle fashion.  I think she is a great story teller.  Let me relay my thoughts on how I view her style; Its similar to one of those origami fortune teller things you played with as a kid.  Each turn provides another question to unfold and a layer of answers with more questions underneath.  This makes three of her novels that I have read and although this style has been used in each, the stories have been compelling on their own and still doesn’t prepare you for what you are about to read.  It is about a dystopian future of a dystopian future.

Some points:

1.  This book will make you afraid of super smart people.

2.  It will simultaneously disturb and fascinate you.  I kind of want a rakunk, even though I know its wrong.  It’s not just simply cross breeding.  No, no, they splice species genes together taking out attributes, lets say like a skunks stench, that are undesirable and make new living things that then breed on their own… and evolve.

3.  No one in this novel has a positive parent / child experience.  Be good to your children.

4.  The pigoons scared the shit out me.  I was apprehensive about falling asleep because I thought they might invade my dreams.  It is a PIG that is bred to GROW replacement organs for HUMANS.  I’m just saying, having all those human genes swirling around in them was not a good idea.  

5.  Oddly, there is a lot of discussion about porn.

6.  Obviously, none of these characters ever watched Jurassic Park or paid attention to the wise words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, “scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

The Reading with Style Spring Challenge has begun!  That means that I am going to attempt one book per task in the span of three months.  Twenty books in three months.  Will I succeed? Dun, dun, dunnnnn. 

Here is what I plan on reading:

The Lost City of Z: A tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Sabriel by Garth Nix

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Midland: Poems by Kwame Dawes

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey [Note: Does anyone think that this author’s name is awesome?  I do!]

Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy [Note: This is not my fault. The task gives me no other option than to read a book by an author I read in Dec, Jan, or Feb.  The other authors I read during this time frame were a couple of one time novelist, the lady who wrote The Scarlet Pumpernickel (in reality it’s Pimpernel), and this guy.  There was no way I was going to read anymore books on the Pimpernel man.  Yep, she wrote a whole series.  So I am going to read one of Tolstoy’s short stories, it will probably take me a month.  I was so bummed when I saw this task.]

Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

I am Legend by Richard Matheson [Note: I’m kind of scared to read this, don’t judge me.]

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross [Note: Say that author’s name ten times fast.] 

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Image above found via Gates of My Imagination

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

After that North American Beaver anal gland post, I thought I’d post something even more classy.  I finally finished this monster of a book, it took me five and a half weeks to get through it.  I was going around telling everyone, “I still haven’t finished it! I know all I ever wanted to know about Russian agriculture in the 1800’s,” followed up by sound effects and hand jesters of my brain exploding.

It does sound a bit harsh.

I would have hated it if I had been assigned this in high school.  One should actually have an appreciation of literature before attempting this in order to really understand it’s value.  I know I just said some unflattering things, but it really is a good novel, one of the best ever written. Blah, blah, blah, everyone ever has reviewed this and I have nothing new to say. Do you think that one of the reasons young people don’t like to read is because they assign things that are beyond them?  Maybe I would have loved it if I had read it in high school, because it is so romantic.  Just so everyone is clear, I do not feel that way reading it as an adult.  

I only liked one character.  One.  Well, I didn’t like her very much in the beginning.  I hated them all for the first half of the book.  The characters were very real, with all their flaws and insecurities.  They were all relatable.  How did this man get into everyones brain?  How did he figure it out?  This story is intense, not in an action packed way.  Its just people interacting with other people and not communicating (excluding the discussions that did not involve emotion).  You can totally tell that Tolstoy was just espousing his own ideas and working out his own demons about class, politics, religion, and women’s rights.

Once upon a time, my answer to the “what kind of super power would you want?” would have been mind reading.  I think that is too base.  No, I want a super power that would make people communicate with each other genuinely and honestly.  I do not want to read anyone’s mind.  

Oh hey, that kind of trance scene totally creeped me out.  I had no idea what was going on and if something odd was going to happen to Oblonsky at the hands of these religious zealots.  I was all, “oh, karma is about to get you,” but it didn’t. Ever. Team Dolly.

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

I finished this book yesterday, but I didn’t really know how to write a review about it, because my feelings are complicated.  It is a novel that reads like a memoir.  I had seen that the author is a poet and that this is his first novel.  I don’t know if it is semi-autobiographical, but I can only assume that some things are, considering the character telling this story is a poet.  The writing is really pretty (I honestly have no other word for it, I wish there was a better way to put it).  

There is an excerpt where he describes what a bad day feels like; how it can come on at any moment and you just sink into it.  Of course it’s exaggerated by him being all poetical, high, and depressed. (It made me think of the scene in Howls Moving Castle, the film not the book, when he becomes all slimy from being sad about his hair.) The whole book, every few pages you go and then stop and say, “what the fuck did I just read? That. Meant. Something.” I mean that in a profound, thought provoking way, not in an I don’t understand what is happening sort of way.  Or maybe it just means something to me right now because I’m going through a phase.

The character is basically trying to figure out his worth in the scheme of things, what his purpose in life is, faking it until something “real” comes along, etc.  He is relatable because he doesn’t know what to do with himself and who has never felt that way?  On the flip side, you want to punch him in the face because he is an asshole and a manipulative liar.  Which could be exacerbated by the misuse of prescription drugs taken with chasers of alcohol and weed.  It kind of reminds me of reading Catcher in the Rye and how annoying Holden could be.  

I liked it.