Cannonball Read II

The first Cannonball Read has come to an end. And I have failed. That’s the challenge to read 100 books in a year for those who don’t know. I have made it to 60, and though technically I have until the end of December, a) I’m so not going to make it and b) I want to take part in Cannonball Read II. So I am calling it. I will do better next year. The goal with this one is 52 books, which I think I’ll have no problem with. I’m still going to aim for 100 though.

If anyone is interested, the list of books is here, starting with the latest. I kind of like having a list of what I’ve read, even if the review part of it did become a bit of a pain in the arse (and led to me being called stupid more than once. I stand by my opinion of Catch-22. So there). I shall continue on. I may do a top/bottom ten list at some point.

Book 60: Last Night in Twisted River

Ah John Irving. At one point if you’d asked me my favourite author, I would have said John Irving with no hesitation. There was a time during my early twenties when I just thought he was the best thing ever. I read his books and was moved and amazed and depressed all at the same time. I would never write like this man. But I thought I’d grown out of it, after reading his last book, Until I Find You, and finding it lacking. I thought maybe I was done.

It seems not, since Last Night in Twisted River reminded me of all the things I loved. Sure, there’s a lot of the Irving staples — bears, sudden death, wrestling, writers, a father’s fears and its own version of the Under Toad — but that’s part of its charm. It’s familiar and new at the same time, and filled with characters you fall in love with, all so delightfully described. The book begins with a death, in a remote logging town in 1950s New Hampshire. We are introduced to Dominic and his son, Daniel. Dominic works as cook and is raising Daniel alone after the death of his wife in a freak accident ten years before. His best friend is Ketchum, a curmudgeonly logger who tells it like it is, and sports various scars, most from his dangerous work, but some from other encounters. It is the early part of the book, with its descriptions of Twisted River and their lives there, that is easily the best, but after Danny accidentally kills the girlfriend of the local policeman, he and his father flee, leaving Ketchum behind.

The rest of the novel is split into sections, each covering a certain time period. After leaving Twisted River they go to Boston, with stints in Iowa and Toronto. Each time they make a life for themselves, but worry about the ‘cowboy’ catching up with them. The story soon focuses on Danny and his struggles as a writer and young father, spanning over fifty years of his life.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It’s easy to get lost in its pages and the story being told. I love Irving’s writing style, even if he is a little too fond of repetition (why write one sentence when you can write seven?) and semicolons (man, does the dude love semicolons). At times things seem a bit hammered home, but I’ll take it for the overall feel of his words. The man writes beautfiul descriptions. One problem I had was the motivation behind their flight. I never totally bought the cowboy’s desire to find them and do them harm, it just seemed like a convenient way to keep them moving. Plus, he’s not particularly fearsome, so any tension that should be there when they’re about to be discovered is lost.

It also loses its way a bit towards the end. The focus becomes Danny’s writing, the how and the why of it, and its very autobiographical for Irving. Danny’s style is Irving’s style, his career is Irving’s career. Sure it’s fun if you know this stuff about him, but it becomes a sort of display of metafiction. Who is writing the book, is it Danny or John? Are they one and the same? It doesn’t really add anything to the story, other than a few dozen pages.

If anything, the reason to read this book is Ketchum. He is by no means the main character, but every time he came back I was happy to see him. He adores Danny and sees himself as his protector. He’s a large, gruff man who cannot be felled by anyone other than himself: ‘Only Ketchum could kill Ketchum’, and yet he still has a vulnerability to him. It is his story that moved me, the only one I felt choked up over.

Looking at it now, I feel there’s a lot I could pick apart, but while I was in it, it was almost perfect.

So, Here’s a Question…

Let it not be said that I do not talk about matters of great importance to the world.

You know comb-overs right? That stupid hairdo that some men have when they go bald and try to trick the rest of us into believing they have a full head of hair? Do they actually believe it themselves, do you think? This is not my pressing question. No, what I’d like to know is, when is that decision made? When, in the process of going bald, do men decide that they will go for the come-over? AND! What are they doing with the hair while it is growing? Because it has to grow to a certain length to be swept so cunningly over their shiny domes, so what happens to it? Does it just dangle at the back like some naff mullet? Not that all mullets aren’t naff…Do they tuck it somewhere? Do they go away for a year, like in witness protection, and come back with ‘hair’? How do they decide which side of the hair will be grown? I must know.

When I was at school one of the teachers had a dreadful comb-over, on windy days it exposed his head and waved at us, and at all other times it would slink down until it was resting on his eyebrow. I think it was working against him personally. His hair was probably like ‘Dude, if you continue to treat us in such a manner we shall be forced to make you an object of ridicule forever more!’ He knew he wasn’t fooling anyone (and if he didn’t being given a hairclip as a joke was surely a bit of a giveaway). We certainly knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. So why?

For my next intellectual endeavour I shall ponder why people wear trousers that are too short for them.

Book 59: Her Fearful Symmetry

I was one of those people who loved, nay, adored The Time Traveler’s Wife. I was absorbed by it, moved by it, and left thinking about it for days after I finished. I couldn’t put it away. So I’ve been waiting rather impatiently for Audrey Niffenegger’s new book. Anyone who could write so beautifully would surely have a great followup.

Hmm.

American twins Julia and Valentina Poole are left a flat in London in their aunt Elspeth’s will. They have never met their aunt, as she and their mother (also identical twins) have been estranged since before Julia and Valentina were born. The girls have a very close, almost suffocating relationship, at least for one of them, and have dropped out of several schools. Having nothing to do, they move to London, as the terms of the will state they must live there for a year before selling. Along with the flat, they inherit Elspeth’s neighbours: Robert, Elspeth’s lover, and Martin, who suffers from OCD so badly he can hardly leave the house. And they have inherited Elspeth who, as a ghost, lingers in her flat watching the girls and missing Robert. Through some plot contrivances, the girls become aware of Elspeth’s presence, leading to a rather ridiculous set of events. Sorry, I was trying to give a rundown of the plot without my opinions, but I failed miserably.

Her Fearful Symmetry is disappointing on so many levels. It’s about so many things that it becomes about nothing at all. The characters seem to have been stuck in the same story without belonging to it, and they are so badly developed it is difficult, if not impossible, to care about them. And so you have several people wandering through a novel, not holding your attention, and a plot that meanders trying to find a point. I found it maddening, and sad, that someone I felt to be such a good writer would come out with something like this.

The story itself is filled with elements we have seen many times before – identical twins, cemeteries, ghosts, mistaken identities – and not used here to any original effect. It’s not haunting, or sad, it doesn’t make you think, and it’s often frustrating. I find it amazing that she could so easily make me believe in a man going back and forth in time, yet make it so difficult for me to accept the reality of a ghost. It’s not so much that there is a ghost, it’s what she, and those around her, do. They behave in ways I couldn’t get behind. No one with any ounce of intelligence would act this way, and so it cheapens everything that goes on.

Story aside, the writing itself is also not as good as I expected it to be. I think she had trouble going from the first person of The Time Traveler’s Wife to the third person here. We don’t really get inside any of the characters’ heads, and the intermittent italicised lines that show their actual thoughts add nothing to the narrative, instead bogging it down. The language is also very clunky. Having just started reading John Irving’s latest, I can tell you that that’s how the third person should be written. It should be effortless. It shouldn’t cause you to trip up at the end of every sentence because it ends so abruptly.

The book has a very slow start, and if you removed the first hundred or so pages you really wouldn’t miss all that much. It is only when we finally get to Julia and Valentina’s arrival that it really gets going, and by that time I’d almost lost the will to continue. If this had been any other author I am not sure I would have. I wasn’t overly interested in the lives of these people, with the possible exception of Martin, who seems like he belongs elsewhere, they were all a mystery to me. I didn’t understand their motivations or their actions, and I couldn’t help but find most of what they did to be immensely stupid. And then there’s Highgate Cemetery, another character in its own right. While I am sure she has outdone herself with her research, does it all need to be in the book? If she had wanted to write a guidebook, she should have written one. And the same goes for her descriptions of London in general. Lots of it is spot on, to the point where it becomes boring (perhaps because I live here and know all this), but there are also things she gets wrong, and that really rubbed me the wrong way.

The problem with the book is all the things it is not. It is not a book I will read again. It is not a book I will treasure. It’s not a book filled with real characters, ones I was sad to leave behind. I think it’s fine to say you can’t expect it to be annother Time Traveler’s Wife. That’s true. But I don’t think it’s wrong to expect another strong work from an author with so much obvious talent, or to expect it to be original, well written, moving, a page turner. And overall, this isn’t.

Hanging on the Telephone

So…what do we think of the iphone? Yeah yeah, I’m like 400 years behind everyone technology-wise, but my phone contract expired in July, and I only just noticed (I should not be in charge of these things), and I’m trying to figure out whether to stay with my current plan and just get a new phone, or change providers and get me an iphone.

The pros of it are…well, it’s pretty isn’t it? Mmm hmm. And it has an ipod built in basically, and I don’t have an ipod any more. And there’s all sorts of other gadgets and internet and what-not. Cons would be mainly price I suppose. I don’t really use my phone that much. I pay about 20 quid a month at the moment and rarely go over my allowance. I’m one of those freaks who don’t really like to talk to people on the phone, I’d rather do it through texts or online. But if I had an iphone I would probably use it more, and have internet handy, and my music. I am also notorious for wanting shiny new things and then not using them nearly as much as I should. I still haven’t completed Super Mario Bros on my DS and I’ve had it over a year.

So maybe I don’t need an iphone. Maybe I can make do with something else. But right now I really, really want one.

Sigh. Maybe I should just get an itouch…

Book 58: The Handmaid’s Tale

This was the first book by Margaret Atwood I ever read. It was assigned reading during my degree, back when reading had become a complete chore and if I had to even look at another book I was going to hurl. And then I started reading, and I was hooked. I didn’t want to put it down, I was totally absorbed in this nightmare world, this twisted version of a not too distant future. I’ve read it a few times since then, and although I think each re-read has lessened the impact some, it’s still an amazing book, and one I always want people to read.

Set in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime runs things through their skewed idea of religion. The government of the United States has been overthrown, and in its place is a military dictatorship, whose purpose includes trying to overcome the high infertility rates brought about by war and radiation poisoning. There’s no more Constitution, there’s no more Congress, there’s just their word, their law, and if you don’t follow it you are shipped to the Colonies to face a slow, lingering death, or strung up on the Wall as an example.

Higher up personnel, all male of course, are given Handmaids. These women have one purpose: get pregnant, or die. They have three chances, and then they’re out. One of these women is Offred (all Handmaids are of-someone, losing their names and identities from post to post), and it is through her eyes we see Gilead, and what came before it.

From the very beginning you are in Offred’s world, you feel her fear, her lack of hope. You worry whether she should trust someone, as the wrong word to anyone could mean death. I remember feeling so outraged the first time I read this, and terrified for Offred. The idea that freedom could be taken away so easily, and without a fight, it’s one of my worst nightmares. One of the first ways they limit a woman’s power is to take away their money, putting it in the hands of their husbands or male relatives. One of my biggest fears is of having no access to cash, of being dependent on other people. It’s easy to lose yourself that way, and it’s one of the reasons there’s so little resistance.

But even in a society with so many hard rules, Offred, and the reader, slowly learn that the system is being twisted for the gains of the few, just as it always has been. Luxury items can be bought on the black market, sex is still bought and sold. These people may claim to be morally superior, to be doing their best for society, and keeping women safe from men’s eyes, from their touch, but it’s all just a lie to justify the power they have.

Part of what is so hard hitting about The Handmaid’s Tale is the section that comes after the main book, the Historical Notes. It’s such a mundane, dry account of Offred’s story. They’re not looking at her struggle with any compassion or feeling, it is so far removed from them it’s just events, not people, a lecture to be read in between announcements about fishing trips and nature walks. But we do this everyday, don’t we? That’s what history is. We can only hope we learn something from it.

This book creeps under my skin and sits there for days afterwards. What people will do with a little bit of power is frightening. But more frightening is that it feels so real. I could see this, or something similar, happening. Hell, similar things happen to women throughout the world everyday. I know how lucky I am to have my own bank account, my own name, my own identity, and the thought of losing it is what makes this book so scary.

In the end, we’re given no real resolution for Offred. We know she left a record of her time in Gilead, but whether she found true freedom and happiness, well that’s up to us to decide. Do we see this story as hopeful, that you can put back together a life that was torn apart? Or is it merely a terrifying vision of our future, one without a happy ending, a tale reduced to the footnotes of history? Me, I swing between the two, but right now, I’m going with hope.

There Are No Stupid Questions…Possibly

Things I am pondering of late:

• Why Madonna feels it is necessary to thrust her crotch at the camera in her most recent videos? I mean, I know she looks amazing, and not ‘just for her age’, and part of me thinks if you’ve got it flaunt it. The other part of me is tired of seeing her pants. Enough already. Is she channeling Michael Jackson?

• Whether Britney will ever release a single without those horrific synthesiser things over her vocals? No I don’t know the correct term, but you know what I mean, that stuff that makes her sound a bit robotic. Not quite on the level of Cher’s Believe, but nearly.

• Whether Flash Forward is actually any good, or if I am just so desperate for a tv show to get hooked on until Lost comes back that I’m willing to settle for anything? It’s not really all that well written, it has plot holes the size of Mars already, it is an incredibly American-centric investigation to say the whole world experienced the same event (‘We’re not the only ones investigating the blackout’. No shit!). And why did all the planes fall from the sky, isn’t there an autopilot? Why did that helicopter fly into the building after everyone had woken up? And on it goes. I will still watch though.

• Why I watched that Facebook video of the world’s largest spot being popped? I am seriously damaged by it. I may never recover.

• Why don’t we have any biscuits?

I Hear You Knocking But You Can’t Come In

I suffer from migraines. Have I said before that I get migraines? I do tend to repeat myself. Well on Friday I had a doozy.  I had been out for dinner with one set of friends and was supposed to meet others for drinks, when I hit a brick wall tiredness-wise, and since I was meeting everyone for breakfast the next day I thought I’d just go home and go to bed early. This was a good call. The bus terminated before my stop, always annoying, but I could deal with a 20 min walk. Except…uh oh…I have a blind spot in my vision. It’s from the car lights right? It’s not a migraine. No way it would be a migraine right now…oh yeah, shit, it is. And so I stumbled home like a blind person, my right arm sort of out in front of me, so I didn’t run into anything. It’s such a strange experience, these flashing lights going off, obscuring your vision. It’s also scary, seeing as people would appear in front of me almost out of nowhere and startle me. Plus, crossing the road was interesting. Is there a car? I can’t tell you how close I came to walking under a bus. I hugged the wall mostly. I must have looked like I was drunk. Anyway, I got home in one piece and fell into bed, and after fighting with the smoke alarm which was making stupid beeping noises, I slept the headache away. Sleep is basically the only thing that helps, although Excedrin Migraine pills are good too.

I can remember the first time I had a migraine. I was maybe 15, and in history class. I remember getting the aura, but not knowing that’s what it was, and then later feeling sick, and then the pain. Oh. My. God. What the hell was this? I had never felt a headache like it. After that they showed up pretty regularly, at one point at least once a month, sometimes I’d get a cluster of them within a few days. Just when I’d think I was getting over it I’d get the hideous squiggly lines across my eyes and go shut my self in a dark room in the hopes I could sleep it off.

And then there was the second wave a migraines. The new kind. During my second year of university, when I was in America, I woke up one morning and threw up. And threw up…and on and on, and my head was killing me. My roommate was kind enough to take me to the medical centre, where a nurse stuck a needle in my hip with stuff to stop me vomiting, or maybe just to take my mind off the pain because again: Oh. My. God. That hurt. Needles in hips? EVIL. But I did stop being sick, and they did give me some awesome drugs.  And ever since then I’ll wake up every now and then with a screaming head and the need to puke my guts up.

So yeah, migraines suck, to put it mildly. Not only is there pain, and puking, I also get an increased chance of stroke. Woot! I don’t get them as often as I used to, which is something. And usually if I do, it’s my own fault, for not taking care of myself better. If I skip meals, if I don’t get enough sleep, if I have too much sleep, if I’m feeling stressed out, I can’t be surprised if one comes a knocking. But hopefully not for a good while now, ok head?