readers advisory for all discussion
make me strong like hulk!
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three and three
I'll give this a go although choosing three books I love is really difficult. Three Books I Love:
1. Jane Eyre. This book represents the classics. I love its combination of melodrama and morality, of drama (secret wives, madness, fire!) and domesticity. Even though I know what's going to happen and I know that Mr. Rochester is bad news for Jane in so many ways and that the end of the book relies on some ideas about gender and disability that bother me, I always still want to see Jane and Mr. Rochester live happily ever after. I identify strongly with Jane as a smart, strong young woman who does the best she can with her limited set of options. For me, this book is primarily about the characters and secondarily about the mood and atmosphere of the setting and time period.
2. The Things They Carried. For me this is the one of the most perfect books of the 20th century. Tim O'Brien writes beautifully about terrible things. He makes the reader think carefully and critically about the way we tell stories and engage with others' stories by constantly undermining his own narrative and our sense of what is or isn't true while also making us feel for his young self and the things he (and many other young men) experienced in Vietnam. But it's not just about Vietnam stories or war stories; it's also about loss and death more broadly and so even readers who don't have any connection with or care about war are affected by the book. This book is the best combination of clever commentary and emotional engagement.
3. The Fionavar Tapestry. Okay, so this is a trilogy, but it all creates one work. I've recommended this on multiple threads because I love it so much. It is high fantasy and has some of that style, which puts off some readers initially, I think, but this makes the list for me because Guy Gavriel Kay does a fantastic job of using that style to tell a story that is fantastic and unreal (involving a combination of Arthurian legend and mythology from various cultures) but that feels incredibly real. Kay spins a very specific and human story out of these larger than life characters, boiling the myths down to their component parts (sacrifice, love, loss, loyalty, etc.) and then re-building them through the mythic characters' interactions with the modern protagonists. As a result of this process, there is fundamental truth in this series that is far more important than the fantasy elements.
Three Books I Hate:
1. American Psycho. Although I do get the effect that Bret Easton Ellis is aiming for in this book and I acknowledge that he hits his mark, I hate this book. The combination of soulless lists of consumer products, clothing, and food with extreme violence (particularly violence against women and the poor) makes me feel sick. I read this in one day for a graduate course and by the time I was finished with it I felt dead inside. Even though this book presents a critique of the consumerism and violence represented within it, the time and energy spent representing these things (or spent consuming them, on the part of the reader) works against this critique and gives too much weight to the things supposedly being vilified. The point could have been made in far less time, I believe. I always wonder, in this kind of writing, at what point does the act of describing such horrors cross over from necessary to make the author's point to indulgent. For me, Ellis definitely crosses that line.
2. 2666. I actually hate this book for much the same reason as I hate American Psycho. There are pages and pages and pages of descriptions of violence against women. It goes well beyond making its point to just being disgusting. In addition to that, I felt like this book was somewhat unfocused and I simply found it boring.
3. Breaking Dawn. I feel like Stephenie Meyer is kind of an easy target, but the other books that came to mind were ones I hated for kind of the same reason as I hated the previous two and I wanted to shake it up a bit. There are two main reasons I hate this book: 1) it is awfully written; 2) it has some icky things to say. I hated the first book in the series, too, but I think this one is even worse because the silliness of the first book is all gone and there remains nothing to enjoy here. It's just dull and the writing is really flat. And the ickiness of the earlier books in the series (glorifying stalker-y behavior, for instance) continues here as Bella and Edward get married and we have to watch Bella become extremely and unreasonably pro-life, Jacob imprint on her baby (ew), and Bella try to figure out her superpower now that she's a vampire (she suspects that it's just to love Edward more than anyone else; fortunately, she's wrong).
I didn't necessarily use the RA language in writing about the books I love and hate; I hope this still works and karen doesn't cry.
Mod
karen wrote: "no! that is wonderful and i am dancing!"Woo! Now other people need to go, too. I want to see what others love/hate and why. :-)
Ugh, I wrote up a much better version of this earlier and then it disappeared into the ether of the internets when I tried to post it. I haven't though of the three books I hate yet, but these are three books I love to stand in for three different types of books I love. Infinite Jest. I love the giant scope of the book, the almost encyclopedia nature of it. I like the 'world building' not in a traditional sense of the term maybe but that he has created a world mixed with it's own uniqueness but still feeling like it could be a plausible real reality. I love the characters and their little quirks, and all the possibly 'unnecessary' side stories help make the novel feel like more than just a story, but again like it's own world. I like the uncertainty, that everything isn't spelled out, that things are left unanswered, that there may be clues about what happens peppered throughout the text, but at times no answers are given. I like the openness of the text, that it lets you play with it, that it lets you ask questions and look for your own answers, and that it is very re-readable. I love that it demands an active role from the reader. (See also, Gravity's Rainbow, Magnetic Field(s), JR).
Nothing. I love the bleak existentialist nihilism of the book. I like it that the children revert to a level of savagery over a relatively insignificant incident, and that they do awful awful things to one another. I like the unreassuring feeling that nothing is going to be alright. I really like books that have kids doing awful things to one another. I'm a terrible person. (See also, Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies and to some degree The Stranger and Aden Arabie).
Cold Six Thousand. I love books that the voice of the writer gets stuck in your head after you've been reading the book for awhile. After a hundred pages of later Ellroy I find myself thinking in terse, highly stylized sentences (see Irvine Welsh, and Clockwork Orange). I like plausible conspiracy theories in books, secret histories, shadowy figures, but plausible, and not too so out there that I have to roll my eyes and think of the lunatics that linger in the New Age aisle. I like reading about the Kennedy Assassination in novels (see Libra). I like the sweeping scope of the entire series, the historical revision of the entire 1950's through 70's through a morally bankrupt lens. I love that there are no heroes and no villains in the book, no one is purely good or bad, but everyone lurks in the mud of moral ambiguity. I love how the characters could have easily been hard-boiled stereotypes, but they escape that fate and get to take on a life of their own instead of reading like stock characters out of some tired novel. I love the brutality of the book, and the way once again awful awful things happen but without any sign that the author is trying to shock you, they are just part of the 'alternate' American History that Ellroy is telling. Did I mention I love the language and the total economy of every word, it's something that could so easily fail and I can imagine other most authors trying to capture his clipped way of writing totally failing (see Point Omega (as another success, I might have made this sound like I was pointing to a book that tries to write in a similar style and fails, but this book has its own thing going on but the terseness and overly stylized (ie., unnatural) manner is there).
3 I Love (with adaptations from my reviews):1. Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism
Might not be the best book that can get tagged 'autism' but definitely should be the first that parents who have discovered that their child is autistic should read. Also highly recommended for teachers, young people considering a career in psychology or special education, etc.
Collins shares his own experiences with his toddler, giving us hope that with early intervention a child has a good chance of being able to be happy in his own world but still able to function in the larger realm of the neurotypical.
And he includes engaging anecdotes of lots of historical examples of patients, doctors, and other eccentrics to illustrate the, um, condition. Plus he's got a way with words that I just love. Bonus - an annotated bibliography.
Oh, and the reason I say read this first and soon is because I'm hoping we get another memoir from Collins. We first met Morgan in Sixpence House: Lost in A Town Of Books and it's wonderful & enriching to watch his development.
2. Black Jack
Wow. I generally don't read historical fiction, especially about boys, but Garfield is just a wonderful writer - poetic but not pretentious. Exciting story with all sorts of interesting revelations of the culture and context woven in. And what a cast of characters! Black Jack may not be the 'main' character but he's the catalyst and link amongst all the others. A true 'romance' in the classic sense.
3. The Evolution of Bruno LittlemoreI am *so* glad I spied this at the library. It's huge (by my standards at least), but I read 1/2 of it one night (when I was supposed to be sleeping, but oh well).
A little like one of my classic favorites, Flowers for Algernon, but with more science and romance and heartbreak and gorgeous language. Story-telling that immerses one in the chimp's world, heightened sense of smell and all. Lots of provocative issues, exploring what it means to be human, what kinds of experiments are justified, how it works to do science, or art, the different kinds of love, etc.
I've a strong feeling I'll be giving this five stars.
Ok done. Actually finished a couple of days ago, but I have so much to say in this review I'm struggling to select and then be concise. I will say I read the second half in one night, too, missing sleep. Darn short chapters ('just one more...')!
The story that Bruno keeps thinking about is Pinocchio. Sometimes he agrees with the puppet's choice to become human, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he identifies more strongly than at other times. It's interesting to see the evolution of Bruno's perspective and attitudes.
It's also interesting to read him tell his story in different voices. If he's feeling stressed, or rmembering times when he felt more the beast, his language is more direct than when he's feeling more like royalty-in-exile.
I liked another minor theme, expressed early as "This terrible fear of not being taken seriously haunts the heart of every scientist!" I read a lot of non-fiction science books, and keeping this concept/ opinion in mind will add to my appreciation of them, I'm sure.
And what about this insight, that goes beyond confirmation bias, beyond creation myths: "[Humans] are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaningless terrifies above all things.... We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols."
Or think about this one, "If I were a rational creature (which, obviously, because I am also a conscious creature, I almost by definition am not), ..."
Lots to think about. Gracefully, beautifully written. Plenty of opportunities to laugh, cry, and feel suspense, too.
ETA - I have to warn you that the yuck factor is pretty high in this. Nothing gratuitous, as it's all key to understanding who and why Bruno is, and is also all very believable - but if you're squeamish just be forewarned and forearmed.
Mod
3 I "Hate" - well, I don't finish books that don't engage me, so these are three I read a fair bit of but didn't finish, with adaptations of my reviews (which I write in order to tell other readers why I didn't finish).1. Slummy Mummy
Gave up before p 50 - couldn't sympathize, much less empathize - not only shouldn't she have married her husband in the first place*, but she shouldn't have kids - she doesn't act like a grown-up. What she should do most of all is raise her kids to be more responsible - they should be helping with chores not expecting her servitude. And yes she should be able to recognize that one woman telling another a bunch of "shoulds" sometimes is quite apt.
*Yes I know I've barely met Tom. Maybe she's just whining about his "flaws" (differences?) in the beginning and by the end she'll have learned her lesson and realized he's wonderful. If so, then she should've appreciated him all along.
And if she's a slow learner, and will mature and become more likable over the course of the book, I want some clue to that effect now, so I don't get to the end and find I still can't stand her.
2. Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
Y'know, Pearl means well. But her annotations are so simplistic, if you're not willing to fly blindfolded, she won't be much help. I glanced at every page and used this website to look up a few of her recommendations, but found nothing to add to my to-read list. And I didn't *read* much at all, so I won't take credit but rather call it DNF.
Two main problems - 1) if your taste doesn't match hers, you'll often be disappointed. 2) GoodReads community reviews and Listopias and groups make a book like hers unnecessary. Even google books and amazon reviews are probably more helpful.
3. The Lost Heart of Asia
Hmm. So far, p 57, he's spent a lot of time drinking under the desert sun with the men. Now I suppose he's going to have trouble spending time getting to know the women, seeing as he's male and this is a culture of divided gender roles, but I hope he does find a way to learn more about the people who are actually getting things done.
His focus seems to be more on history, ancient, recent, and future. Long ago the region was more rich and powerful due to the Silk Road (?) and its precursors (?), then Islam came, and the Soviets, and now the Soviets have left, so, what's next?
I think I need to do some research. As I wrote the above I realized just how sketchy my understanding of the region is....
Ok, almost 1/2 done. Still dry. I don't feel like I'm meeting individual people or seeing separate places. Everybody is a type, either a blond Turcoman who looks too Russian to be safe, or a Turcoman who misses the Soviet rule. Everybody thinks that London is in America, or England is right next to Istanbul and America is just beyond that. Young women don't realize that their peers a few hundred miles away wear the veil. Nobody likes the Iranians. And everything is dead and dusty - and the Soviets aren't the only ones to blame. The only fancy thing is the purple prose.
Oh, and nothing happens. 'My driver took me out to Ghost Town number 4 and took a nap while I fought the wind/ heat/ cold to look up at the only minaret left. Then we had tea at his brother's house.' Repeat... and again....
Ok. I read the last chapter. Believe it or not, it was exactly like my summary of the first several. So, I give up. Thubron's efforts to make my efforts feel just as futile as the lives of these 'lost' people were effective.
okay so lets see.... love:
1. the stranger:
to be completely honest when I was 16 or whatever (I think I always state a different age) I was draw to this book because this character was so unpleasant (see also: imperial bedrooms). I loved that he was the kind of person who didn't need to be what other people wanted him to be, and he seemed not only okay with the fact people hated him intensely but honestly kind of into it. As I've gotten older, I love that camus was able to let the philosophy dictate the writing style (if you read him elsewhere the stranger is the only place this voice exists as far as I can tell). I loved that he was willing to sort of step aside and remove meaning from the equation of the novel and just say, hey here's life and what someone did with it.
The city and the city:
this is probably the book you could chase my obsession with mysteries back to even though I read it long before I started regularly reading mysteries, but it was the first one that was set up in such a way that it wasn't actually important if I was able to solve the mystery being presented because there was so much else in the book. That worked for me because I have no desire to solve the mystery that's not why I'm there. I also think this is one of the best world building books I've ever read (see also: embassy town and the mouse that roared) It's a world I don't live in but that works and it's a world that says something about the world I live in.
Through the looking glass and what alice found there:
weirdly I believe the first time I read this book was significantly after I'd read the stranger, this is weird because it's a children's book I feel like. But I've always felt like this is the girls version of peter pan. It's a book about the world we want to live in about the stories that we are told in the woods and the poems. Okay so why this one and not the traditional wonderland? well honestly most of the good stuff is in this one. I mean I love teedledee and tweedledum and the jaborwacky (sp). Honestly I also just like the poetry more. My favorite this about this book and about books in general honestly is: "The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright-- this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done--"It's very rude of him," she said,"To come and spoil the fun!"" This is one of the only poems I still have a portion of memorized (I use to know a bunch in high school now I'm down to this and random bits and pieces of the childrens hour). I love the nonsense in this piece. I love that the rules of reality are being flaunted and that you can create the world in any way that you like.
Okay I hate:
I'm going to get in trouble for this... but
Infinite jest:
there is too much emotional content for me and the emotional content is way too bipolar. the book can't decided if it's happy to exist or it wants to go jump out a window and the rapid cycling of these two choices drove me crazy. I personal have read books and liked them on either side of the spectrum but I have a thing for stability in real life and this book pointed out to me that my stability thing extends to literature as well.
Okay that bright green book...
the girl must die:
the entire book was about how the author was so out there and crazy and awesome that no one was ever going to understand her and that was because people were threatened by her awesome sexuality. basically the author came off as a ginormous jackass with no reflective functioning and emotional IQ. the book keeps talking about her being a lesbian who can kick people's asses, and I just wanted to throw the book at her head hoping the pointy corners would do some damage.
If I stay:
it's a teen novel about a girl who has to decide if she wants to die or stay alive after her family dies and she spends the novel talking about her hunky hunky boyfriend. really if you are choosing between life and death isn't there something more important than whether or not your boyfriend is in a band? apparently not.
OK, I'm going to try to describe my picks schematically, so that someone could tell whether they might like or hate them.1.The Fountainhead This novel is about an ideal man. What makes him ideal is his independence. He thinks for himself and he lives for himself. He does not believe in God, and so he loves the earth. He wants to make it beautiful (for himself, of course) so he decides as a child to become an architect. His architectural principles are non-traditional and he has to fight an uphill battle for success.
There are things you might not like about this book. It takes the view that modern art is part of a conspiracy by collectivists to take over the planet. There is something that looks like a rape (but is not).
The thing I love most about it is the way in which the hero inhabits his space. He's free, he's fearless, he doesn't hate anybody. Something to aspire to.
2. The Chaneysville Incident. This is a remarkable novel about a black historian trying to track down the history of his family. Sort of like Roots: The Saga of an American Family except the searcher is the main character and it's (more or less) fictional.
What I love about it is that it takes on alleged opposites and reconciles them: black/white, urban/rural, reason/intuition and to a lesser extent, male/female. This dialectical approach to its subject matter puts it in the same camp as North and South and Steppenwolf.
Don't read this if you can't deal with an angry black man. Do read it if you want to see how this man gets past his anger.
3. The Secret History. I love this novel so much I'm writing a book about it. What I like about it is that it deals with the importance of ideas and styles of thinking. A teacher infects his students with his mental detritus and they do something awful. And then they do something more awful to cover up for the first awful.
Other than its spell-binding plot, this novel has a few very interesting characters and an allusive style that just won't quit. These characters are so smart, they even see colors the rest of us don't. Especially recommended for people interested in Ancient Greek thought and feeling.
Now for books I hate:
1. The Magus. A novel about a man who plays games with other people's minds and hearts. This kind of behavior is so wrong and I was made so completely angry by the arrogance of the character concerned that I ended up throwing the book across the room.
Recommended for psychopaths.
2. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious I didn't hate everything about this book. It is actually a fascinating account of a lot of experiments involving the unconscious. What I hate about it is that the author was grinding an ax. He was gloating over the fact that we don't know our own minds, using this alleged fact to belittle homo sapiens. It was revolting. I'm pretty sure there are techniques that one could use to get into better contact with the unconscious, such as the ones in Focusing, but our author didn't tell us about them because he wanted us to stay helpless. With that rather large caveat, though, I'd still recommend it.
3. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. It's been a long time since I read this, so I am not sure I'm being fair to it, but what I remember is the author using the interdependence of mitochondria and main cells as a launching point for an attack on individualism. (We're all interdependent, you see.) I think this is contemptible, and it is just like one of the bad guys in The Fountainhead.
I'm sorry my negative picks aren't better. I'm pretty good about ruling out books I won't like without having to read them, so there aren't a lot of books I actually hate.
oh shit you made me want to read the magus
Well, you're probably not really a psychopath.... Look, the novel has a provocative idea, probably one worth doing. But just as some people are uncomfortable with books about physical rape, I am uncomfortable with a book about mental rape. It upsets me, even more than a portrayal of a beating would. I despise the arrogant use of money and power and, and, well, let's just stop there.
heh- I put both Strangers to Ourselves and Focusing on my to-read...
I don't know if I am up to this challenge, but I am going to give it a shot. 3 books that I love:
1) Solstice, which I actually only gave four stars, but it is the kind of book that the longer it sits with you the more it grows on you.
I love it for the dark and twisted relationship between the characters. It starts out completely innocent, and the path that it takes is totally believable. The characters themselves are people who we all probably know someone like, but the reader actually gets to see the darker sides of the characters in the book. The story is really pretty simple, but it is incredibly complex in the way that it provides so much psychological insight into human nature, the good, the bad, and the mundane.
The language is just beautiful. It alternates between direct/to the point and lyrical. It is a pretty short book, and there are plenty of places to take breaks and just think...which is pretty much a requirement for me. That is about all I can muster up about this one. It has been such a long while since I have read it, and I did not review it.
2) Geek Love, which I did review and did give five stars too. This one won me over with the story. It was completely warped, and beautiful. I had a love-hate relationship with the characters. That seems to be another reading requirement for me, characters that I cannot just completely love or completely hate.
I seem to remember the writing being something that I had to get used to, but I can't remember precisely why. That did not really seem to matter after I became invested in the characters though. The thing that sticks out most for me is that physically I knew nothing about the lives of the characters. I mean, I could not relate to the physical complications of their lives, but there was an undeniable mental connection for me. As I accepted the characters and the struggles they went through I felt like I was accepting parts of myself that I had not previously been able to accept.
I definitely attach my enjoyment of this book to the emotional connection I had with it. There may not be much logic behind it.
3) Monsters Of Men, hopefully one I am better able to articulate my reasons for loving.
I will start with the way it is written. It is not prim and proper, which makes it entirely believable (I don't like having to suspend belief when it comes to my characters apparently). It has multiple narrators, and they all have really unique voices. The narrator who is supposed to be uneducated speaks like someone who was not allowed to read. The narrator who grew up educated spoke like someone who grew up educated...but it was not too proper. She acquired some of the linguistic characteristics of the people she was presently surrounded by. Oh, and each characters section was reasonable in terms of length. It allowed the perfect amount of varying perspectives so the reader a complete and unique perspective of their own.
What else...Oh, speaking of characters, I was IN LOVE with these characters. They were young, think 14-15, and they had ample amounts of courage. I can't stand characters who just succumb to circumstances. I want them to kick butt, and these characters did. Every last one of them! There was plenty of action in the book. War, if that is your sort of thing, but a completely different look at war. I can't really articulate what makes it so unique.
The book encouraged several revelations for me, and ultimately that is why I love it. The way Ness relays the emotions of his characters it sucks the reader in; before I knew it I was feeling the emotions that I was reading. I was so invested in the emotions of the characters that I felt the book more than I read it.
Super plus, the book revolves around a message about choice.
3 books that I hate:
1) Candide, and not just because it is a classic. I really wanted to like this one, and after reading it more than once and writing an essay about it that never happened for me.
I may not be a big fan of satire. I remember this not taking me long to read either time, but it also did not engage me. I prefer a sort of stream of consciousness, conversational writing style, that I can connect with. I could not connect to this style of writing, which may have something to do with when it was written, but it just felt too...pretentious may be the word for it. I can't pinpoint exactly what word describes the style of writing for me, but I imagine enough people have read it that they could figure it out.
And the characters were all just too hard to like! They seemed shallow to me, in that they were not written with a lot of depth. I did not care what happened to them, and I guess that influenced why I did not care about the message of the book. That also may be why I did not care for the satire and allegory.
2) The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, made me want to rip my eyeballs out.I had read all of the Twilight books prior to reading this one, and they did not leave such a terrible impression that I would not give reading this book a shot. It was free after-all. I felt like I wasted my time reading it.
This novella felt like Stephanie Meyer was punishing her readers for something. The language was beyond childish. I thought that the audience was supposed to be...well older than the audience she seemed to be addressing. She uses words like "kissy-noises." I guess that she felt her readers were not mature enough for some mad make-out action. After reading twilight...with its stalker vampires, obsessive wolves, and ferocious sex...I am pretty sure they can handle making out.
Okay, moving on, action! This book lacked action. I don't mean the sex kind, but it could have used some of that too. There was not much butt-kicking. It was pretty much the same ole twilight story told from the point of view of a rather insignificant character. There was no addition of insight into the Twilight world or the sparkly vampire world or the newborn vampire world. The novella did nothing. It was 80 or 90 or however many pages of...kissy noises, and lackluster vampirism.
3)A Clockwork Orange, another one people seem to generally really like that I hated. I gave it two stars on here. This surprised me. I did not just want to like this book, I expected to like it. I love dystopian societies in books. I love when characters are bad-asses (even evil bad asses). I love when the author comes up with a unique way of narrating. I did not love all of those things about this book.
It does have the dystopian society, but it was almost not gritty and dirty enough for me. This could be because it was talked up as being ultraviolent, and disturbing. That is what I enjoy and looked forward to, so my mind anticipated much more than the book delivered. Man, maybe I am pretty sick and twisted now that I think about it.
Okay, so narration...there was just TOO MUCH slang for me. It was creative, no doubt. Once you make it a good chunk of the way in the slang does not really seem to matter, but the effort of getting to know the language did not seem worth it.
I did not care for the main character, but I can't really explain why. Eh...
It seems much harder to explain why I hate a book than why I love one. And, I apologize for having written a novel of my own.
Mod
Dang Katie - don't hide your light. Great comments and not at all too long.
I just can't stand it that young women are still overly modest. I don't see guys all "I don't know if I'm up to this challenge." You don't have to have a c* to be a little cocky!Ok I'll try to avoid hijacking the thread any further.
I read this blog post that was really good about that a few months ago, but I can't find it now. It was about how it is so much more common for women to get hateful comments on internet posts than men, and how women tend to apologize whenever we write something long. It was written by a man, and I thought he had a really great perspective on it. He talked about how women are trained to apologize for thinking, which is so sad. I've tried really hard not to apologize when I write something long since I read that, but it is so hard not train myself not to.
Hm, I always thought a lot of the reason for the things I do and say-- in terms of being "modest" or apologizing-- has been beauty pageants. I hate to admit it but the really shaped who I became in many ways. Eh, regardless I guess it is a shame. I was not mindful of doing that.
Well, don't be apologetic about being apologetic!! ;)Yeah, I don't know. I feel a little conflicted about it because at the same time that I feel like I might naturally apologize too much, I also feel like the problem might be that other people are not apologetic enough. Maybe we are all wrong!
bump? next task?I'm ready - bring it on! :)
Mod
but maybe if i do some, it will cause a chain reaction in the universe and everyone will come running to share their three and threes. fingers crossed.
Mod
wuthering heights
i know, i know. the characters are hateful, the drama is completely irrational and out of proportion - it is crazy overblown melodramatic soul-screaming frustrating mean-spirited obsession. what, and that's a bad thing? i love this book. i love its gloom and its cruelty. i love the characters' maladaptive behavior. this is my kind of love. i don't relate to nicholas sparks "everyone is a good person but there are obstacles in the way of troo love." (i have never read n.s., but i have seen some movie trailers)in w.h. - the love should work - they are both selfish people who see the other as an extension of themselves - one soul split in two. they make their own problems. and they make them big. and brooding. they are the one couple who might actually become boring if they were allowed to be together. but apart?? ohhhh such childish rage and tantrums and resentment and endless punishments both inward and outward. i can't say that i am personally unfamiliar with the unhealthy responses in this book, but i am better now. on the page, i am in love with heathcliff. in reality, i would stay far away.
infinite jest
basically, what greg said. there are books that will haunt you, books that you can feel yourself just beginning to scratch the surface of. no matter how many times i read this book, i get something new out of it. the density of it makes my brain sing. after i read elegant complexity, which is the best study of IJ i have ever seen, i only became more excited. this book is sad, but there is always something funny slicing right through the sad. and it is mysterious, but enough of its questions are answered that you don't feel cheated, just invigorated. this book is the brain-equivalent of a swim in a cold lake. it reminds me every time of what literature can be, and what a good book can do to a reader beyond simply engaging them in the process of reading. this book affects me physically every time.
nearly anything by donald harington.
i know this is cheating - but for me, donald harington's work is a presence without boundaries. he is the best pure storyteller i have ever read. not that he doesn't have any little postmodern flourishes, because he does, but he is peerless in his ability to simply tell a good story. his characters, his sense of place, his descriptions, his imagination... everything he wrote just glowed for me. even the books i liked less, i only liked them less than other donald harington books. stacked up against another author, they would probably win in my heart. so my third, is just a mooshing of harington.
Mod
melancholy - jon fosse
yes, i understand that its repetition and repetition and repetition and repetition is supposed to serve a purpose and make the reader feel the way the character feels in his neurotic and anxiety-laden days. but as someone who rarely gets emotionally invested in stories, this had no effect on me except to infuriate me, as a reader. get to the point, i shout! it felt like a bee was in my head the entire time i was reading this. which i guess is the point.
innocence - jane mendelsohn
wow. i read this book so long ago that i don't remember specifics, but it lives as an ember in my heart representing "bad books." i have recently learned that it was maybe supposed to be a YA book, in which case i can excuse a lot of its clumsiness. but when i bought it, it was in the regular adult fiction section, and it was a terrible metaphorical trainwreck about older women's jealousy of teen girls. and vampires. and menses... you see where this is headed. it wasn't treated like schlock, is why it rankles. if i am reading v.c. andrews, i know what i am getting into. this thought it was being clever and literary, and i disagreed.
valis
again - a long-ago read that greg recommended to me. this nearly ended our friendship. i am not the audience for dick, it seems. too crazy to be fun, basically.
i am not good at talking about books i hate, i guess... maybe later i will look at some reviews for books i gave 2 stars to...
I want to play this game, but I have been too busy. But maybe this weekend!
Okay, here goes. Here's the 3 I love ...Henderson The Rain King – Saul Bellow
It’s the funniest novel I’ve ever read and the book that sold me on Bellow, probably because it lacks the bloat of many of his other books. Bellow has since become one of my favorite writers (and often because of his bloat—I just love his sentences). Henderson is an unusual book for Bellow particularly because the majority of it takes place in the African bush and not in a big American city like Chicago or NYC. Initially, that setting made me wary but Bellow treats the African characters and landscape with great respect. It’s Henderson’s colonial perspective that is often the real butt of the joke here. The transformation Henderson goes through is very affecting and thought provoking. And every bizarre, screwed-up character is so marvelously drawn. Also, one of the best endings ever.
Black Hole by Charles Burns (a graphic novel)
The art in this book is jaw-droppingly good and that’s what caught my eye first. Freakish mutants, high school life as a horror movie, boresville suburbia's seething undercurrent of menace, and all drawn so masterfully ... yes, please! I can flip the pages for hours, in awe of the man’s style. BUT … the story is also great here. Like the art, the book’s story—about a mid-70s suburban community ravaged by a sexually-transmitted “teen plague” that produces an unremitting freak show of bodily mutation—totally sucks you in and gets even more impressive with each subsequent reading. There’s a lack of closure here (“closure” in both the story sense and in the sense that Scott McCloud uses in “Understanding Comics” to define the connections the reader makes from panel-to-panel), or at least the closure is nebulous, so that the book itself seems like a puzzle that keeps changing shapes. I just love picking it up and getting lost it. And the comic-booky-ness of it all is great too. Burns draws on the history of the medium a lot, especially old horror and romance comics. Plus, there are a lot of pop-culture reference points that are fun …… I could keep going ….
The End of The Story – Lydia Davis
Why is this book not as touted as all of Davis’s books of short stories?? It’s amazing. There’s not much of plot here, but, at the heart, the book has a very simple story. It’s a reflection on a past love affair that didn't last; the characters and the setting are never named. Davis complicates everything with her po-mo metafictional ways. But, here’s the thing that got me: the book manages to be super po-mo and also be very very affecting. It’s heartbreaking not despite but often because of Davis’s play with the story’s formal elements. And at the same time, Davis maintains her cool, minimal style that makes her short stories so great. It’s all such a tightrope-act but Davis makes it seem so effortless.
Stay tuned for my hateration.
Three I love:The Pox Party - This single-handedly rekindled my interest in the YA genre. I never cared for history before ("social studies" in elementary/high school was a subject that I really never got on with), but this made it incredibly interesting -- it focuses on the role of people of color before and during the Revolutionary War. We know history as defined by old white men, but what about the slaves? It also touches upon eugenics and social experiments: the protagonist, who was raised by philosophers and made to believe he was a prince, finds out that he was actually the subject of an experiment on whether people of other races could truly be on the same level of whites. It's written as a first-person POV, and though Octavian's distanced and stoic, his moments of emotion are absolutely heartbreaking. I also loved the use of language -- the book and author have received complaints that it's "too hard" for teens, but the author's reaction was unapologetic: he doesn't think teens are stupid. I <3 this book.
The Scorpio Races - This is a very very recent favorite - I read it just last week and gushed over it. It pretty much hit upon ALMOST EVERYTHING I love reading in books. It's set on the small fictional island of Thisby, and isolation is a huge theme, the good and the bad -- everyone knows each other, there are people who want to get the hell out, and there are others who want to stay firmly planted because they feel it's where they truly belong. Small-town politics rears its ugly head time and time again. (It is also a tourist attraction, and there's some great observations on that as well.) The gender roles: one of the main characters is going to be the first girl to ever ride in the races, and though she's not doing it for that reason, everyone else is making a big deal about it. It's kind of dystopic in that the races involve riding on horses THAT WILL KILL AND EAT YOU, and though the residents of Thisby try to tame them, they are SCARY. Sometimes people go for a walk on beaches, and then BAM HOLY CRAP A HORSE YOU'RE DEAD. The other main character actually understands the water horses and has a really great bond with one, and it's just lovely to read.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - I only gave this four stars, but I personally enjoyed it more than that. It took a good two weeks for me to read, but I never felt it was slow or plodding -- I loved the writing style and imagery. Clarke's description of a cathedral town has to be one of my favorite pieces of writing ever. I liked how the magic was intertwined with history, and the magic system itself was interesting. The side-story with Stephen Black and the man with the thistle-down hair was especially dark and haunting.
karen, maybe give us a list of widely read books from which to choose, to enable overlap? One book that lots of folks have loved, and lots have hated, is The Little Prince...
3 Books I HATE:War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning – Chris Hedges
I like Hedges … in short form. This book, however, is a mess. He makes a lot of great points but scatters them throughout the book haphazardly. Most of the book is his recounting of personal war stories and I just felt like he was bragging the whole time. Hedges is like an ex-junkie trying to spook you with his horror stories while also saying “hey, check me out, I’m the baddest badass ever.” The book tries to be too many things: a memoir, a diatribe, a long thought-piece, a history lesson …. It fails all around.
A Visit From The Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
This is one I actually enjoyed reading but still loathe. Also, I’ll be the first to admit that I might be responding as much to the hype surrounding the book as to the book itself, but the book itself didn’t add up to jack for me. The tacked-on final chapter’s weak attempt at speculative fiction with it’s championing of “authenticity” and “real” experience made me want to throw this one across the room. Really, Egan? You’re just going to end it with “let’s just go all go back to good old days when music had soul”? And while I enjoyed some of the experimentation, I often felt it was experimentation for experimentation’s sake. Plus, the experimentation is at odds with what I took to be the book’s reactionary viewpoint.
Players and Great Jones Street – Don Delillo
I’m really having a hard time coming up with a third choice here. If I feel a well of hate coming on while I’m reading something, I usually abandon it. But I made it through both of these because a.) they are short and b.) they’re by Don Delillo, one of my favorite authors. Even within the turdiest of Delillo books there are bits of gold at the sentence-level. Such is the case with Players and GJS. I couldn’t stand the main character of GJS, a kind of rockstar/prophet named Bucky Wunderlick. He was such a cardboard cliché and was ripoff of everything Bob Dylan (who I generally can’t stand). And I really can’t remember my beef with Players other than it seemed like Delillo doing a bad impression of himself.
Three books I hate:The Perks of Being a Wallflower - I read this when I was the target age (16) and loathed it. I couldn't relate to it at all -- it seemed that the author went through a checklist of horrible stuff teenagers go through and just ticked them off as he went along, without elaborating on any of them. I didn't think Charlie was a realistic narrator at all -- I've heard conflicting opinions that he's either autistic or just really awkward, but neither ring completely true to me. The writing style drove me up a wall. Sentences like "And in that moment, I swear we were infinite" made me rage because they felt incredibly empty and meaningless. Teenage word salad. My hatred for this book is probably amplified by its fanbase.
Naked Empire - This is where Goodkind completely lost his shit. There's an empire that the main character needs to get on his side, but it's all "peaceful" and ruled by... a child. With a blindfold on. Riiiiight. At one point, the main character gets poisoned and needs an antidote. People block his way and shout, "Stop the violence!" So he just gets out his sword and mows them down. At the beginning, the main character's struggling with headaches, and his sword's not recognizing him; at the end, he realizes that he brought this upon himself because he stopped eating meat. And he didn't need to do that! As soon as he started eating meat again, all of his problems were solved! I'm not even veg*n, but I was pretty offended. The theme of this book was "Deserve victory," which apparently meant that all of the main character's actions were justified because he thought they were the right thing to do.
Digital Fortress - It's been ages since I've read this one, so I'm not sure if I can explain precisely why I hated it so much (though I read it after doing a project on computer viruses and was appalled at how much it got wrong). However, I do remember being amazed at how stupid the characters were. The dying Japanese guy at the beginning is thrusting his three fingers at everyone, and they're instead focusing on his ring? There's also the infamous, "Jesus Christ, try the kanji!" line which made language nerds cry out in horror. Siiiigh.
"Jesus Christ, try the kanji!"Wow. I'd be laughing but I've been struck dumb.
Here's the excerpt, with some wonderful WTFing from commenters: http://linguaphiles.livejournal.com/3...
karen wrote: "three i hate.melancholy - jon fosse
yes, i understand that its repetition and repetition and repetition and repetition is supposed to serve a purpose and make the reader feel the way the charact..."
Innocence!!! that is the awful book with teen internet vampires! If only the book came out ten years later it would have been a hit!
Karen, What if we did the experiment of each writing a review of the same book? I can think of a couple titles most book-ish people have read: To Kill a Mockingbird and Jane Eyre. I will of course add The Secret History to that list, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.
Mod
Okay, here are my three:O Pioneers, by Willa Cather and The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
These are my two favorite authors, and I like the same things about their writing, so I'm putting these two books together. They both write very simply and only bring out any kind of flowery language for a specific purpose. They both tell you what happens so that you understand how people feel about it, but they don't beat you over the head with it. They both write tragical misfits from a perspective of traditional gender roles, I think. Alexandra, from O Pioneers, and Jake, from the Sun Also Rises, are perfect examples of this: the capable, authoritative woman, and the impotent man. In O Pioneers, I love the plot and the surprise ending. It is so measured, but still dramatic, in a traditional, almost Shakespearean way. In Sun Also Rises, I love the lack of plot, and the focus on the characters. I think both authors write the opposite gender in a way that seems unlike reality, but I love how they do that. I think it hits on something true about the way men and women regard each other.
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
This is another instance of really simple, clean writing that I love. Even though this is a memoir, Walls doesn't waste my time trying to get me to take her side against those who did her wrong, she just tells a straight story. For me, this is a key to a story I will like. I think an author has to be willing to treat a book as something separate than themselves that stands on its own. I think in some writing, you can tell the author is looking for the reader's approval, rather than just telling you a story. I love that Walls doesn't do that. And the stories are so outrageous.
Books I hate:
Wings of the Dove, by Henry James
This book is such a waste of time. I know that James does all of the things I hate about this writing on purpose, but that does not make me hate it less. He takes fifty pages to tell you one simple thing, and then by the time he's done, you're not sure whether he's actually told you anything. It's like the ramblings of a crazy person who is holding a thesaurus. Plus, even if he is telling me what I think he's telling me, I do not care because these poor little rich kids do not have my sympathy. I feel like he's trying to pretend that he's not writing a soap opera here by using a lot of words, but he is writing a soap opera. Only, soap operas are better because you know what is happening.
Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn
This one is interesting because I think the writing is soooooo beautiful, but I hate the characters so much that it made me hate the book. I started out loving it, and I love the idea of writing about circus geeks (especially since I went into it thinking it would be about nerds), but all of them were petty whiners, and I did not want to listen to their petty whining anymore. I think I need some character to admire in a book. Oh, I feel the same way about The Piper's Son, though I think that one is more manipulative and far less beautifully written.
Skye O'Malley, by Bertrice Small
A child gets raped by a dog in this book. So, it's terrible. There are panthers on leashes, though, and that is awesome.
Here are some more suggestions for a group read title:The Night Circus
A Soldier of the Great War
Katherine
Miss Timmins' School for Girls: A Novel
The Gift Of Rain
The Whole World: A Novel
These are all pretty recent. I can suggest some older titles too, if anyone wants. I have thought a lot about The Gift of Rain and could moderate a discussion of it after we've all reviewed it, if we chose that one.
Mod
i would like something different... but I lack suggestions. i would like something modern...
Mirror MirrorA Discovery of Witches
I'm trying to think of something modern that has really mixed reviews...
Mod
Hope it is not too late to add:Book love:
Animal Dreams
This is an elegant story about someone who returns to their hometown to confront their past. "The New Life in an Old Place" is one of my favorite types of reads. I also enjoy the undercurrents of eco-feminism found in Kingsolver's novels. This is the first book I read of Kingsolver's and it remains my favorite.
Some Things That Stay
This is one of the best coming-of-age books I have read. The writing is subtle (and the story) is subdued though the main character, Tamara, is anything but. As she learns that home is more of a feeling and less of a place, the reader yearns (for more!) right along with her.
Lolita
I chose this book based almost solely on the fact of how it made me feel. Very, v. uncomfortable. There is so much associated with this novel. It gets people talking, arguing, cringing. I love the unreliable narrator piece, the writing style, and the sophistication of it all.
Haters gonna hate:Use Me
This book SUCKED. Such a bummer because it had two things going for it: linked stories and the fact that Elissa Schappel wrote it. Sadly, neither mattered and (in the end) I was so sick of the main character's obsessiveness that I complained about it FAR AND WIDE for days.
Split Estate
This is one of the most depressing books EVER that explores the aftermath of a suicide. Each character makes bad decisions that have terrible consequences and the author decides to leave it at that. The end?!
A Reliable Wife
If I hear one more person exalt the virtues of this book I might scream. It is loved for its supposed "gothic undertones?" Really? This is simply (albeit better than most) a Harlequin romance novel dressed up as lit. Srsly.
Mod
karen wrote: "it is never too late to include your three and three. but it is getting close to being too late to propose titles for the group read. oooohhhh nailbiting anticipation!!!"ooops- that will teach me to read through all the posts more carefully.
No One Is Here Except All of Us
Mr. Peanut
The Echo Maker
To Siberia
The Last Brother
Loved:Diary
This book starts out with a woman writing angry letters to her husband, who is comatose. It evokes a sort of "oh no she didn't" tone that carries through the whole novel. I found myself shocked by pretty much every single character, from strange behaviors to selfish schemes. The pace was very fast, with high tension. The tone was dark. The narrator was unreliable.
War Crimes for the Home
Another dark-toned, fast-paced novel with an outrageous protagonist who has had outrages committed against her. I guess I like main characters who have had horrible things done to them. It gives them an excuse to behave badly at the beginning of the story and it gives me a reason to root for them at the end. I also like unreliable narrators and multiple narrators. I can't remember if "War Crimes for the Home" has multiple narrators, but a senile main character definitely gives the book an interesting perspective.
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
Although the speed of this one was a little slower and the main character was mostly reliable, her perspective wasn't realistic because she told us about scenes she didn't witness, such as her own birth. There was a hint of magic, but not blatantly so. I would describe the tone as desperate, lonely, small-towny, with long-shot hopes. The time scope of the story spanned generations.
Hated:Waiting for Godot
Too artsy-fartsy! Too abstract! Too slow!
You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story
You can't be smug and self-deprecating at the same time. Or CAN you?
Uncle Tom's Cabin
This book's style is classic melodrama. Way too much emotional hand-wringing for me.
readers advisory for all
Books mentioned in this topic
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (other topics)You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story (other topics)
Waiting for Godot (other topics)
Mr. Peanut (other topics)
The Last Brother (other topics)
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so!
first game.
tell us about three books you love, and three books you hate. tell us why. it can be anything at all, but do go into detail, because otherwise, it will be no fun at all, and i might weep.