High Fidelity

I am so far behind in my book reporting, it isn't even funny. Sigh. This brings me back to those days when I had a local library (in English) that I could pillage regularly. I used to have a mixed feeling of love and despair when going to the library. All those books. How in the name of god was I going to be able to read all of them in my lifetime?....

Sigh.

That being said, mixing two things I love: reading and writing, into one blog is a lot of fun. The writing part is slightly more demanding though.

Coherence.... Dude.

Not always my strong point.

Today's pièce de résistance is High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.

This is my first Nick Hornby book.

...

Stop giving me the googly eyes in disbelief.

I live in France, remember? I was brought up in North America, okay? My only real access to Brit Pop Culture Fiction has been via my British friends here and none of them has ever lent me one of Hornby's books (see? It's really all their fault) and I hardly ever go into the English bookstores here because they're in the places tourists go and are so out of my way that it isn't even funny. I buy all my books online. Also? Online is cheaperand I figure if it's cheaper, I can buy more....

See how thrifty I am? Isn't that a virtue or something?

However, not going into a real bookshop is a shame, because I used to really like sniffing books.

ANYWAY: I see my digression pattern is still in good shape... So this is my first Nick Hornby book.

However, now, after doing the old google search, it appears that this book was considered so good that it actually had a film of it made. With John Cusack no less! And Jack Black as obnoxious Barry (AWESOME CASTING CHOICE, BTW!)

Now I feel like even more of a Nick Hornby virgin because hello? I'd never even heard of the film. Argh. Once again, I am proven to be a "clueless to pop culture eejit expat in France".

Bother.

I suppose this review is largely unnecessary. As you've probably all seen the film.

Ah well... Nevertheless, here are some of the things I loved about the book:

1. The title: Hi Fi goes to High Fidelity. It's just clever. I like clever. And it's a book about music, so of course it fits. I haven't actually heard of most of the music in this book and that sort of makes me like the character a little more because he is, largely, a git.

2. The top five catastrophic, mind-numbing break-ups. And the courage Rob, the git, has in contacting those women to find out why they all dumped him or if he dumped them, how they've gotten on with their lives... He is not disappointed in learning more about himself when he finds out certain truths....

3. There is just something so endearing about reading the life of a likeable and yet hopeless, "would never want to date", git. I wonder if all Nick Hornby's characterizations are like this? If such is the case, he's found a new fan.

4. Nick Hornby's writing style is quirky, round about, subtle but still very funny. I want to be like him when I grow up.

In short, in terms of losing my Nick Hornby virginity, this book was a great first time.

I'm craving more already.

Mysteries! Behold!

I have not posted in a while, but I have not been idle. Honest! My only excuse is that I've been reading.

There. Are you Happy? I've been AWOL for you, dear reader.

Har.

I actually had a windfall of books that were given to me by a friend. Mysteries for the most part. Here are three.

P is for Peril and S is for Silence by Sue Grafton.

P was my first "Kinsey" mystery. Even as part of a series, and a very very long running one at that, if I'm any judge (I'm pretty sure that Ms. Grafton started the whole series with the letter A. Just a hunch.), I was pleased to see that each book was, in and of itself, a separate entity.

The writing was good, the pages kept turning. I really liked P is for Peril, so I eagerly picked up the other Sue Grafton windfall book, S is for Silence...

The writing on this one seemed slightly maturer. The mystery involved was slightly darker and more sinister... and... it had had the benefit of being a really old mystery to solve. Almost mouldy, really.

Like any connaisseur of wine knows, wine that is left in a darkened cave too long can leave a sour taste in your mouth.

I'm not saying that Sue Grafton's writing had soured. In fact, I would have to say the opposite. What was sour was the way the story turned for the protagonists, what happened and how desperately long it took to get to the bottom of what happened.

Ugh. I still get shivers at the idea.

Stellar book.

Next up was a Clive Cussler book: Blue Gold. I'd never read a Clive Cussler book but had heard raves from colleagues.

Now I have to wonder if it wasn't simply raving [mad].

I'm not saying that this man is not an excellent writer. He's published a lot of books and he certainly has his fan base. All I'm saying is that anyone who uses "High Octane Brew" or "Steaming Java" to describe coffee, has got my bid as being one of those manly man sort of writers and not really my cup of tea (and yes, I do drink coffee!).

I had a hard time taking him seriously and there were a number of times where I stopped and said to myself, "the sentence would have been much nicer if it had been written this way or that way..." Never a good sign.

Add to that, that the characters were flip and smart assy in dangerous situations.

And, as if that wasn't enough, there was an evil genius.

The story itself was interesting enough to carry the writing but I'm not sure if I'll give Clive Cussler another go.

Hélas.

His Dark Materials - The Trilogy

Been a while. Been reading. It seemed wiser to talk about all the books in the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman rather than one by one.

I just finished the set.

I was halfway through the first one, which I was LOVING when a colleague came up to me: "You enjoying that?" he asked.

"Yes! It's F.A.B.!"

"Yeah... my mom sent it over to me. She wanted my opinion on whether I thought the writer was fascist. She's a minister, by the way."

Erm... I didn't ask which faith. It seemed like a weird thing to say. Fascism? This is obviously a fantasy book for young adults. It's about a girl with a lot of spirit. There's a prophesy concerning her. There'll be a coming of age! It takes place in a world that is like ours but is slightly different! There are weird words explaining common things despite the fact that place names are the same. You aren't sure if you know what's being talked about, but that doesn't matter. You go with the flow. You are embalmed in the atmosphere of the book.

In short, this is everything I look for in a good fantasy book.

Then I started Book Two.

Book Two starts in our world. With a new character. All of a sudden I was in a cloak and dagger mystery that seemed to have very little to do with the story in the previous book. I was cool with that. The character was compelling. He had problems. He was a kid that could think and keep cool under any circumstances.

And then the story went weird.

Really weird.

While still rather liking the premise of the book, the conflict in the story took a turn for the strange. I now understood why a minister could have such difficulty with the story. Philip Pullman himself is a confirmed atheist. I'm still not sure how the story swung from a girl's coming of age to creationism and the fight against the dogma of christianity and the oppression it engaged for its own survival over the ages... but it did.

There were assassins who bargained with "god" for the good of their faith. Angels who were subject to a class system and an angel that styled himself God's regent who had a name that sounded like it was straight out of the Transformers circuit. Odd worlds where life evolved differently.... and so on and so on.

In fact, there was so much stuff going on, that I was being pulled in too many directions at once. I couldn't concentrate on the story at hand, because I was wondering how the heck I got there in the first place. I can tell you now though, that it is possible to have too much going on at the same time in a book. I can't even make sense of it enough to give you a proper review. What I can say, is that I finished it out of duty, rather than racing to end because my heart was pulling my eyes across the page. It left me feeling bewildered.

What a shame.

The Historian

To you, my unfortunate successor, I bequeath my history...

I recently finished The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

I'm tempted to say that it was good.

I'm also tempted to say that it was mediocre.

What I do find remarkable, is that there is a fan site. Which mentions that this book is being courted for a movie.

This leaves me feeling largely perplexed. How does one make a film when the main character itself is largely unknown?

Because believe it or not, The Historian's main character is not the main character.

Or maybe she is.

Or was it her father?

Wait a minute... Which of these two historians is The Historian?

For argument's sake, let's say it's the daughter. She's ultimately the one that is revealing the narrative to us.

The story itself is a collection of first hand experiences (a handful really) that occur to the narrator (because she is never given a name. Ever) interwoven with letters written to her by her father describing the horrific experiences he went through 20 odd years earlier than the book's present day.

An Aside: the book was written in "first person" which left me with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling, especially since it was in doubt who the main protagonist even was because most of the story is through the eyes of the narrator's father through his letters to his daughter. This being said, I knew the narrator's father's name: Paul and so I had an easier time of following his first person account of events. I found it incredibly distracting to read a book through the eyes of a person I didn't even know the name of because I (ie. me) wasn't reading Paul's letters. The narrator was and the narrator's "I" is not me. How can I immerse myself completely in the story if I don't know the basics? But I digress.

Unfortunately, I was never able to lose this "fogginess" of feeling. Throughout the entire book, which, actually, has two story lines: one that traces the path of "Dracula" throughout Eastern Europe and the path of the narrator's father hot on the trail of a legend (or the deadly undead?) which has left repercussions on the present (the kidnapping of his Professor) for reasons unknown (which, by the way, takes place 20 years before the the second story line) and another that has the narrator tracing the path of her father who has disappeared.

This, strange as this may be, is why this book is a mystery.

We're led on a wild goose chase of remarkable proportions. Where the most insignificant details in ancient and flaking folios lead us to surprising conclusions or devastating deadends. Clues that demand much wriggly thought to puzzle them out. Libraries, archives, museums: all were poached for the slightest information about deeds from the past. Without exception. And sometimes I was left wondering: wôt the hell is going on, where did that come from, was I sleeping while I read what came before?...

When we finally catch up to the quarry, the results are surprising. The denouement (which I suddenly realise is French for the untangling of a knot) of one of the plot lines is satisfying, but the one that follows is... strange...

I'm usually a lover of a good, long, book. This book, however, owing to the way it was written, and the fact that there was a great deal of obscure information and chaste but convenient coincidences, could have been honed down a good 100 pages.

And it could have used a narrator with a name.

And maybe more blood.

And though I said that I thought that the daughter was The Historian. I don't actually think that she's The Historian.

You'll have to read the book to realise why.

The Thorn Birds

I picked up The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough secondhand at Shakespeare & Company in Paris when my cousin was visiting.

Forget the Louvre! An English book store is what every tourist wants to see. Natch!

Picking it out of the used book bin, I had a vague memory of a commercial of a mini-series with Richard Chamberlain in it so I decided to try it out. For some reason, I thought it was one of those civil war epics. I had no idea that it was set in Australia of all things! Oops.

After deciding to dig in however, the first page should have been a warning to me though on how this story would go. I knew that it was considered a "Sweeping Saga" but I had no idea what I was getting myself into:

"There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain.... Or so says the legend."

Yes.

Though the book is divided into parts spanning years and each of those parts relates to a different character, the main character of this story is Meggie. It is Meggie's story, Meggie's life. We meet her when she is 4 years old and we leave her near the end of her life. We follow her as she falls in love with that which is forbidden, as she tries to reconcile herself to a different way of life, and her homecoming. The raising of her children, the lives of the children Meggie has given to the world and the mysteries that women hold dear to their hearts.

I can't help but feel that the writing was somewhat stunted, that the tragedy itself was canned and expected. The ultimate tragedy (in the series of) could be seen coming a million miles away and unfortunately, lacked the pathos that I would have expected. Especially when learning through wikipedia that it was based on a tragic accident that occurred in the author's own family.

Perhaps it's a failing on my part because it is not the type of book that I will actively seek out. In a way, it was a rather matronly read and this book seemed to fall into my lap.

However, when I read, I want to be entertained, not driven to weep.

And unfortunately, this book wanted me to weep, but it wasn't able to drive me to it.

Something was missing.

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

So let's get started, shall we?

Today, I'd like to talk about "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon... which, by the way, amazon.com tells me was published in 2004.

This means that you've probably already read it and this review is ... ahem... mildly redundant. But that's OK. We're all getting cosy and getting to know one another.

Did you like it?

I LOVED IT!

I have this penchant for Young Adult (henceforth YA) novels and happened to "borrow" this book from an expat friend who, happily, told me she never wanted to see it again because she has too many books as it is.

I love it when that happens.

As an expat, I've found that I've become more attached to books in my mother tongue. People keep telling me to read in French to improve my French and I'm all: "NO WAY! There are way too many beautiful books in my native tongue and anyway, French literature is wan and sad, bordering on tragic and anyway reading for pleasure should be escapism, not a chore. Who wants to read about perpetual tragedy?" For all their quest for being intellectuals (intellos), there are an awful lot of commuters reading French translations of English books in the métro rather than books written by their own writers.

But it appears that I am digressing. I tend to do that. It's one of my many faults.

Yes. So. The Curious Incident.

I was pleased to see that it had garnered not one, but two "children's" book awards: The Whitbread Book of the Year and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Award and besides that, I had heard good things from friends.

Of course, this made me relatively unprepared for the word "fuck" on the second page. Or the word "cunt" later on. It appears that Britain's children's culture is a bit more "adult" than North American children culture but a few naughty words does not get in the British children's culture's way of discerning awards. Which is a good thing.

The absolute charm of the book is the literalness of the story (now I'm going to actually tell you about it rather than going off on fancies as is my want). The story is told in first person (which is very hard to pull off successfully by the way, so chapeau Mark Haddon!) by a 15 year old who discovers his neighbor's dog dead. The weapon? A garden fork. Christopher decides that he is going to track down whodunnit and write a story about it. Word by word: naughty words included and whatever else comes to mind that perfectly illustrates Christopher's world and his interests.

The story is exceedingly cunning in the fashion that it is written. We are never overtly told that Christopher is autistic. In fact, just writing that, I'm not sure if I've not made a faux pas because indeed, we are never really told that he is so who am I to write it? I have no experience with the way an autistic person thinks and so, am foolishly basing my assumption on things I've picked up along the way and that Rainman movie.

As this is a book that is destined for young adults, one can imagine the reaction of a 16 year old to it. Christopher, who is mathematically brilliant, is socially awkward but to a degree that must incite sympathy from the reader whether that reader is 16 or 70. We've all felt awkwardness but never from the perspective of someone who is considered by our society as having "special needs". It's good to keep this in mind when we interact with others and especially the people our society tends to alienate. We have it easy. Christopher's world is complex and rife with difficulties that are programmed into his being but at the same time these same difficulties are extraordinary and rich.

For example, if you are in a field, this is what you and I see:

The field is full of grass, there are some cows, some flowers, some clouds in the sky, the sky is blue... then your brain will think, "golly everything is so beautiful" or you'll go off on another tangent altogether on something that has nothing to do with where you are, like whether or not such and such had her baby or not.

For Christopher, this is what he sees:

19 cows in the field: 15 black, 4 brown and white; a village in the distance with 31 visible rooftops and a church with a square tower rather than a spire; ridges in the field which date back to medieval times when they used the ridge and furrow tradition; a coke can with a snail on it off to the side a bit with a shopping bag attached to a bush nearby; the north side of the field is highest; there are three different types of grass and two types of flowers; most of the cows are facing uphill and 31 other things that were noticed but he didn't write down because Christopher was tired.

He notices everything and his brain never goes off on flights of fancy. He is always painfully in the moment. Literally.

If this is what Christopher sees each time he goes someplace new, one can hardly blame him for not liking new situations and needing steady routines. And hating France. It is incomprehensible to him that there should be more than one language.

In the end, Christopher discovers a lot more than he bargained for. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. He even discovers a bit of himself and that he has the means to be independant and manage new situations when it really matters.

A truly excellent read.

Another Review Blog

You are ecstatic. I can tell. Another one of them "Book Review Bloggie Thingies".

Books are my opium. I love them to bits. If I'm not reading a book, I'm cranky.

Then I figured... why not start talking about them?

So that's what I'm going to do.

Rock.