"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
And inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx.

8/24/2005

Why I’m Not Posting, Again

Filed under: — Beth @ 9:17 am

This time it is not one book that is sucking my will to read, but a whole pile of them. To wit:

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. I am reading this for the book club and I expected to really like it, but I do not. The prose is tiresome, the story feels trite, and Angela Davis’s ridiculous introduction gave me a headache.

The Turn of the Screw. One of my biggest regrets about grad school was that I never learned to like Henry James. I thought that maybe rereading this one, which I liked okay in high school, would help me along in that endeavor. Instead, it has just led me to think, “Good lord, Henry, just spit it out already,” more than ever.

The Professor and the Madman. Jeremy bought me this one, which I have wanted to read for a while. I will probably finish it eventually but it is not really grabbing me. Mostly, these old Victorian guys are just making me appreciate, for the very first time, why those French feminists get so pissed off about men and language.

I am feeling a little tired of books right now, and I feel more like either going for a bike ride or watching Survivor than sitting down and reading anything. It has been a bad summer, literature-wise.

8/18/2005

Elizabeth Kostova

Filed under: — Beth @ 9:36 am

The Historian. Well, that’s over with. Not exactly the reaction I expected to have to finishing this book – from the early reviews, I really expected to love it. But I did not love it. I did not hate it, exactly, although I don’t think it is a very good book. If I had to sum it up in one word, I would be torn between “amateurish” and “dull.”

I will start with what’s good. Kostova writes reasonably well. The prose is occasionally lovely, and I chose that word deliberately. Despite the dark subject manner, this is a very pretty book.

I also like what she does with the character of Dracula. He’s not well fleshed-out, but that seems appropriate. We don’t meet him until very late in the novel, but then we recognize in retrospect his presence in earlier chapters, and I like that. I really enjoyed Kostova’s version of the manner in which Dracula cheated death; I like her vision of how he has been spending the last 500 years. His current obsession is fascinating. This may be my favorite take on Dracula himself, as a character.

But that’s about it on the positive scale. In most ways this book is just fluff; Kostova tries for some deeper meaning and some clever structural play, but she doesn’t really accomplish what she is setting out to do here. Her structure is more maddening than clever: the time leaps, the multiple narrators, the improbable letters. The flaw that undermines every aspect of literary cleverness here is a simple and pervasive one: every character sounds exactly like every other character. Not one of them sounds like a 17-year-old girl in the 1970s, and I’m not even convinced that the principal narrator sounds like a middle-aged scholar/diplomat in the same time period. He certainly doesn’t sound like a middle-aged scholar/diplomat who is writing under enormous stress and in a very big hurry.

So the novel’s deep flaws prevent it from standing as any kind of serious literature, but unfortunately, it’s not really successful as a fun plot-driven novel, either. Because mostly, the plot is boring. People go to libraries, run into someone else who just happens to be researching the same subject, and wait a minute, just the other day I saw something in a book … here it is! Here is the tidbit of information that will lead you to the next library and the next plot contrivance.

As you can see, the historical research angle really irritated me, even though I expected to love it. We never see any of the characters doing any research; we just see a lot of annoying coincidences. After 600 pages I still have no reason to believe that either Paul or Helen are real scholars, except that the novel keeps informing me of their brilliance.

I was also very frustrated by the fact that even given the exotic locations and grim historical periods Kostova is visiting here, the novel rarely achieves a sense of time and place. You do get a sense of Istanbul and maybe of Bulgaria, but the cold war stuff never seems to gel into a real atmosphere. This was a novel that begged for some atmosphere, but it just seemed like a lot of description of scenery and buildings, without really making me see or feel history. Quite a letdown.

I really did expect to love this novel. I like vampire stories, horror, epistolary novels, novels that unfold slowly and don’t have much plot, novels set in Eastern Europe, novels that jump around confusingly in time, historical fiction, and literary experiments. But I did not like The Historian.

J.K. Rowling

Filed under: — Beth @ 9:35 am

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Still my favorite, at least in its audio version. Up to this point I could have walked away from the series and not cared how it ended, but Goblet hooked me. I like the structure of this one, as well; I enjoyed the tournament and I really loved the Moody (or “Moody") character.

I am still really bothered by the house elf storyline and I don’t think Rowling has resolved it satisfactorily. I am not sure how this subplot reads from a Brit perspective, but it is very problematic for an American. I would be really uncomfortable reading this to a child, because some of the good people in these books have really squicky attitudes about slavery, servitude, and a perceived natural order.

But whatever. You don’t care if I liked this book; everyone now is just hunting through the old books for clues about what is coming next. And this one, I think, has very important clues, at least as important as the prophecy in Order of the Phoenix. So let’s run them down. Please note that I have been thoroughly spoiled about the Half-Blood Prince but I haven’t actually finished it yet, so I don’t know if any of these are resolved or explained. If you haven’t read the latest book and have not yet been spoiled, you might want to stop reading now.

  • Chapter 36, as Harry tells Dumbledore about the scene in the graveyard when Voldemort returns:

    “He said my blood would make him stronger than if he’d used someone else’s,” Harry told Dumbledore. “He said the protection my – my mother left in me – he’d have it too. And he was right – he could touch me without hurting myself, he touched my face.”

    For a fleeting instant, Harry thought he saw a gleam of something like triumph in Dumbledore’s eyes.

    Then the look fades and Dumbledore says, oh well, that protection is gone, blah blah blah, but I think that triumphant look has to be significant. Something happened here, something about Voldemort getting Harry’s blood is significant.

    This better not come down to killing him with the power of love, that’s all I can say. Because I will throw up.

  • Later in the same chapter, when Dumbledore is assigning tasks to what will be the newly reformed Order of the Phoenix, he speaks to Snape:

    “Severus,” said Dumbledore, turning to Snape, “you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready … if you are prepared …”

    “I am,” said Snape.

    He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely.

    That one is not so significant because we know that Dumbledore asked him to do something at this point, but it is worth noting that it appears to have scared him.

  • Chapter 30, when Harry looks into the pensieve in Dumbledore’s office: there is something here about Harry’s face changing into Snape’s, and something more about a secret reason that Dumbledore trusts Snape. It can’t be just that Snape was a double agent, because Harry already knows that, right?

I swear there was one more thing about Snape I wanted to note, but I can’t find it. It might have been in Azkaban now that I think about it. My point in noting it, though, is that if it has not yet been revealed exactly why Dumbledore trusted Snape – and I don’t mean the spying, or Dumbledore’s general faith in the goodness of people – then I don’t think we can say yet that the trust was misplaced. Maybe that secret is revealed in Half-Blood Prince and it’s just been left out of the spoilers, but right now, I think something else is going on.

(Although I am not prepared to subscribe to the “Snape is really a good guy” theorizing going on; I have two thoughts, which I will share after I finish the damn book.)

8/13/2005

J. K. Rowling

Filed under: — Beth @ 7:17 am

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I forgot that I hadn’t yet posted this; I actually finished it over a week ago. I have read Azkaban twice before, both times the old fashioned way. I realize that this is everyone’s favorite, and I agree that it is the most tightly plotted and satisfying of the series, but I still think it has major problems. This was my first time with the audio version of this book, and for once the audio didn’t completely fix Rowling’s crappy writing – this is the worst audio version of any of the books, with some bad pacing, a few mispronunciations, and some rough edges in the characters’ voices.

I can tell you exactly why Jim Dale’s audio versions are better than Rowling’s printed versions: he ignores her as he sees fit. Rowling is always having a character shout or bellow or scream when a shout is too much for the moment. Dale reads the word “shouted,” but his characters don’t shout unless shouting is appropriate. His characters also don’t speak in capital letters or trail off into ellipses. And yet none of the meaning is lost.

In other words, Dale does with vocalization what Rowling ought to be doing with language. She has the laziest editors in the world, because these books are almost really good. Almost.

8/9/2005

Why I’m Not Posting

Filed under: — Beth @ 10:58 am

It is because I am reading The Historian, which is 900 pages long and nowhere near as good as it’s cracked up to be. That book is killing me, although it is finally getting interesting. The writing is better than The Kite Runner but the plot isn’t as good as Anne Rice. I am sure I will have more to say later if the damn thing doesn’t kill me first.

Otherwise, I am reading about bank robbers as research for my own writing. Or my own career change, if the lawyer gig doesn’t work out.

7/29/2005

Jon Krakauer

Filed under: — Beth @ 8:33 am

Under the Banner of Heaven. I have read very little unassigned nonfiction over the last four years, to the point where I’ve decided that reading nonfiction is kind of a waste of time, and I have decided it’s time to get over that. So I started with Krakauer because he is always entertaining even when he is writing about something scary or disturbing.

Most of what I have to say about this book I already said in the discussion at the Usual Suspects, but now that I have finished the book I’m inclined to be more charitable to Krakauer. As I was reading I occasionally thought he was making some unwarranted connections, but overall I think the book worked, and I think he raises (although without really answering) some very good questions about the nature of taith and how we fit religious beliefs into contemporary society. I do think the book would have been improved if he had included some of those meditations in the early chapters, because from the reviews I see that I was not the only reader who sometimes wondered whether his focus was the true crime story at the center of the novel, or the history of the Mormon church, or something larger than either of those stories. A roadmap might have helped me to know why I was reading what I was reading.

Krakauer has been accused of being unfair to the Mormon church, or of confusing the fundamentalist sects with the mainstream church. I didn’t see that; I thought he was eminently fair, but again, I think his point was broader than a lot of the LDS reviews of the book seemed to think it was, and maybe he would have gotten a better reception had he made that point a little earlier than the final chapters of the book.

My favorite section, by far, was the discussion of Ron Lafferty’s religious beliefs and schizophrenia. I’m still trying to sort out what I think about that.

J. K. Rowling

Filed under: — Beth @ 8:26 am

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. You don’t care what I think of this book, either, but I am going to tell you anyway. When the Harry Potter series started, I tried and failed to read the first one; I finally made it through the book a couple of years later but I didn’t really like it. Then this one came out and I gave up. It’s been a few years since I finally made my way through it, which I only did because several people told me that Azkaban was worthwhile but that I’d have to read this one first. I remember skimming a lot, and being irritated by the CAPITAL LETTERS and ellipses and all that nonsense. I’ve always thought that the plot was weak, the characters starting to annoy, and the writing the worst of the series.

But this time I listened to it on audio and I liked it just fine. In fact, I liked it quite a lot. Maybe the Tom Riddle storyline is better when you know what happens later. Maybe Jim Dale is just talented enough to smooth out Rowling’s most awkward sentences and liven up her dullest characters, and even out the pacing in order to make this a good story. I think I have to give Dale all the credit, because both Jeremy and I hated the film version of this novel, and Jeremy (who has less patience than I do for bad writing and awkward pacing) loved this book right from the beginning, and he has only listened to these books, never read them. (Apparently Harry Potter on audio is perfect for being drugged out in bed after major knee surgery.)

So thank you, Jim Dale, and I hope Rowling’s people are paying you well.

7/25/2005

J.K. Rowling

Filed under: — Beth @ 7:13 am

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. You don’t really care what I think about this book, right? I’m just killing time until the new one shows up. That said, I will note that I hated this book the first time I tried to read it, but I’ve liked it better on every subsequent rereading. This time was the first time I listened to it on audio, and read aloud I think it is a perfectly fine children’s book. In print, it is full of Rowling’s annoying textual shortcuts.

7/23/2005

Faux Faulkner winner mocks President Bush

Filed under: — Beth @ 7:53 pm

And naturally, controversy ensues:

Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple’s “The Administration and the Fury” in its print edition — only on its Web site.

“One of the things they asked was that we didn’t have profanity or any obvious sexual content. We watch for that. But anything else, like a political subject, was funny, it was parody. … We felt that that shouldn’t be censored,” said Larry Wells, who organizes the contest with his wife, Dean Faulkner Wells, Faulkner’s niece.

The story portrays President Bush in the role of Benjy, the mentally challenged son — or, as Faulkner himself said, the “idiot” — in his 1929 novel about the wreckage of a Southern family.

The contest home page is here. But you really need to read the winning entry:

Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick s face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me.

“Georgie s going to walk down to the Oval Office with me,” Dick said.

“I just hope you got him all good and ready this time,” Rummy said.

“Hush now,” Dick said. “This aint no laughing matter. He know lot more than folks think.” Dick patted me on the back good and hard. “Come on now, Georgie,” Dick said. “Never mind you, Rummy.”

We walked down steps to the office. There were paintings of old people on the walls and the room was round like a circle and Condi was sitting on my desk. Her legs were crossed.

“Did you get him ready for the press conference?” Dick said.

“Dont you worry about him. He ll be ready,” Condi said. Condi stood up from the desk. Her legs were long and she smelled like the Xeroxed copies of the information packets they give me each day.

“Hello Georgie,” Condi said. “Did you come to see Condi?” Condi rubbed my hair and it tickled.

“Dont go messing up his hair,” Dick said. “Hes got a press conference in a few minutes.”

Condi wiped some spit on her hand and patted down my hair. Her hand was soft and she smelled like Xerox copies coming right out of the machine. “He looks just fine,” Condi said.

7/21/2005

Glen Gold

Filed under: — Beth @ 7:55 am

Carter Beats the Devil. And finally, just like that, my temporary (post-exam) aversion to contemporary fiction seems to be behind me. I have already communicated this sentiment elsewhere, but I am going to reiterate it here: all of you people who read this book in 2001 or 2002 or whenever and did not order me to sit down and read it immediately? You people are assholes. I bought this book in 2002 and promptly shelved it and forgot about it. And I choose to blame you.

I read a few reviews that said that Carter Beats the Devil was a better book than The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, but I won’t go that far. Too much about Carter feels like a first novel; there are some serious pacing problems and sometimes I worried about anachronisms. (Wasn’t Thailand still Siam in the 1920s?) In scope and theme, however, this novel reminded me not only of Kavalier & Clay, but also of Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. Of the three, Gold’s work is probably the least accomplished, but that is faint condemnation since the other two would go on my all-time favorites list.

I look forward to seeing what Gold writes next, because while I loved this book a whole lot, I do think it had some rough edges and I think he will be a better writer in the future. I plan to reread Carter many times before I die, though, and I will make my husband read it, and I will make you read it so you don’t later find out what you missed and call me an asshole.