It's about a group of slave women who spend their summers accompanying their white masters to a resort in Ohio. I think it's Ohio. I know that it's up North.
Lizzie is the main character, and I didn't like her. What happened to Mawu was her fault--fucking twice! She gets Mawu hurt twice, because Mawu and the other slaves have way more faith in Lizzie than she deserves. Aside from Lizzie's stupidity, I liked the book. You can tell I'm not in love with it, though, or there'd be 12 more paragraphs to this post.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Lying Awake with T.S. Spivet
Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman
Ok, first of all--dude. Look at that picture over there. Go ahead and google this book, find a bigger version. Does it scare you, a little? Am I the only one who is disconcerted that we can't see her legs? GHOST NUN! GHOST NUN!
So anyway, that as my first reaction to the book, and I thought I'd mention it.
ON TO THE WORDS!
Not my kind of book, but not bad. When filtered through my jaded and sarcastic mind all the shit I learned about nun-hood in this tome seemed kinda hokey, but that was just me. I really appreciated the nun's inner struggle about her faith. That is what drew me in to this book, and what kept me in.
However, any enthusiasm I had for writing a blog post about it disappeared when I started reading the next book, which is so awesome it outshines "Lying Awake" completely. I really should write the blog post BEFORE I start another book. . .
Anyhow!!!!
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen
OMG SO GOOD!
I like extras. And books rarely come with extras. "Selected Works" has extras GALORE!!! Because T. S. is a mapmaker (and did you know that you could draw maps of anything? You can make a map of how your sister shucks corn, or the circulatory system of a beetle, ANYTHING! SKY IS THE LIMIT!!!! Actually, that's not even correct, because I bet T. S. could map Heaven if he wanted to). So, got off on a tangent; T. S. is a mapmaker, and he fills the margins with illustrations, and they are simply awesome.
Also, because it's been a few days since I finished it, and my enthusiasm has slightly dissipated, I am going to be very lazy and transcribe a series of notes I made on a junk mail postcard I was using as a bookmark. I made these notes while in the waiting room(s) of a day surgery suite, waiting on the VA to finish with my father so that we could finally go home. I am VERY THANKFUL that I brought this book with me, because it turned a horrible wait into a slightly less horrible experience. Note: I will be putting my thoughts and reasons behind the notes on the postcard in bold.
p. 36, last paragraph. I love T. S.'s thoughts on reading fiction.
p. 87 Sorry for what I did. . . This is what he says to his dead brother's room. At this point I realized that T. S. is just a kid, and that just like in "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" the narrator is not exactly trustworthy here. He is capable of hiding things from me, and everything he tells me has to be filtered through his very intelligent and yet still 12-year-old mind.
p. 139 "snagged on the baleen of my recall" -- look up. Baleen or whalebone is a filtering structure in the mouth of most whales, which they use to feed by sieving small animals from large mouthfuls of seawater.
p. 199 "I am not a reading nerd." He is explaining how he doesn't spend the entire trip reading--and I've spent nearly the entire wait today reading, at least from 36 on. I can't remember exactly where I stopped reading, but I know it was at least the beginning of Chapter 12 (p. 303).
p. 265 Holy crap T. S. just stabbed a guy!!! Very exciting passage. Also very strange. What T. S. says about reading--being in a state of belief and non-belief at the same time? This pushed me a little out of the balance for a bit.
Don't forget to mention that weird foray into the nothingness on the train. Oh yeah, this happens before the stabbing--T. S. wakes up and looks out the windows and he is nowhere. Pretty pretty weird. There is a very slight explanation later on, but the author doesn't give us any concrete answers. He does this in such a way that I'm not mad at him, though.
Book's got several sections--real, surreal, a book within a book, and basically some incredibly strange shit. This is not the same book I was reading a hundred pages or so ago. In the middle of the train ride T. S. starts reading one of his mother's notebooks (he stole it before he left, he doesn't really know why). Instead of containing research on beetles (what she's been working on for like 20 years) it's the story of his great-great-great grandmother--the first female geologist--who quits her job on an expedition west, falls in love with the very first Tecumseh Spivet, and quits science. That's the "book within a book". It's a very good book, but T. S. and I were both confused as to why she tried to write it. Also, it's unfinished. She never gets around to why the chick quit science. We think it's because she can't explain her own marriage to a man so different from her.
It is around the time that he reaches DC that I start to think perhaps he died sometime back there. DC is not what he expects, and the adults he encounters don't exactly react to him in the way that I would like. It's less like I think he died and more that I kinda hope he died, and that he's not actually experiencing all of this after all. He gets to the Smithsonian, finally, and he becomes their poster-child; he is used by them. We both began to wish for his mother, his sister, his ranch, and even his silent and removed father. SIDE NOTE: his father ridicules his maps when he tries to help after the brother dies, and I totally teared up. His father is an asshole. END SIDE NOTE. The Megatheriums? And their plot? Seriously? The book took another turn. And they knew about the stabbing and the sparrows that showed up immediately after? FUCKING HOW???
That's the end of the notes. Honestly, if my address wasn't on this card I would have just scanned it in. This turned out longer than I'd planned.
For the record, he didn't die. And his father redeems himself. And you realize that the two adults he had most trusted were lying to him, but I think he's going to be ok with it.
What I haven't mentioned yet but what I think is awesome--he jumps a train across country, but gets lucky in that his train is transporting at least one Winnebago, and so he spends the trip in relative comfort. Also, the Winnebago talks to him. (He and I both know that he is supplying the words, but it's still a nice touch in the story.)
OH NOES, ENTHUSIASM SUDDENLY RETURNING!!!!
You must all read this book! And you must love it! Because I say so! SO TO MY ONE REGULAR BLOG READER, AND TO MY SOMETIMES MAYBE BLOG READER THAT I'M NOT SURE ABOUT, AND EVEN YOU SPAMMERS IN CHINA--READ IT! AND TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVED IT! I COMMAND YOU!!!
Chinese spammers: if you manage to post a comment on this blog post that even KIND OF mentions this book I WILL ALLOW IT TO STAY!!! Even if you link to porn!!! THAT IS HOW COMMITTED I AM TO THIS BOOK!
Ok, first of all--dude. Look at that picture over there. Go ahead and google this book, find a bigger version. Does it scare you, a little? Am I the only one who is disconcerted that we can't see her legs? GHOST NUN! GHOST NUN!
So anyway, that as my first reaction to the book, and I thought I'd mention it.
ON TO THE WORDS!
Not my kind of book, but not bad. When filtered through my jaded and sarcastic mind all the shit I learned about nun-hood in this tome seemed kinda hokey, but that was just me. I really appreciated the nun's inner struggle about her faith. That is what drew me in to this book, and what kept me in.
However, any enthusiasm I had for writing a blog post about it disappeared when I started reading the next book, which is so awesome it outshines "Lying Awake" completely. I really should write the blog post BEFORE I start another book. . .
Anyhow!!!!
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen
OMG SO GOOD!
I like extras. And books rarely come with extras. "Selected Works" has extras GALORE!!! Because T. S. is a mapmaker (and did you know that you could draw maps of anything? You can make a map of how your sister shucks corn, or the circulatory system of a beetle, ANYTHING! SKY IS THE LIMIT!!!! Actually, that's not even correct, because I bet T. S. could map Heaven if he wanted to). So, got off on a tangent; T. S. is a mapmaker, and he fills the margins with illustrations, and they are simply awesome.
Also, because it's been a few days since I finished it, and my enthusiasm has slightly dissipated, I am going to be very lazy and transcribe a series of notes I made on a junk mail postcard I was using as a bookmark. I made these notes while in the waiting room(s) of a day surgery suite, waiting on the VA to finish with my father so that we could finally go home. I am VERY THANKFUL that I brought this book with me, because it turned a horrible wait into a slightly less horrible experience. Note: I will be putting my thoughts and reasons behind the notes on the postcard in bold.
p. 36, last paragraph. I love T. S.'s thoughts on reading fiction.
"A novel is a tricky thing to map. At times the invented landscape provided me shelter from the burdens of having to chart the real world in its entirety. But this escapism was always tempered by a certain emptiness: I knew I was deceiving myself through a work of fiction. Perhaps balancing the joys of escapism with the awareness of deception is the whole point of why we read novels, but I was never able to successfully manage this simultaneous suspension of the real and the fictive. Maybe you just needed to be an adult in order to perform this high-wire act of believing and non-believing at the same time."p. 79--list of things to pack. It's hilarious--Underwear galore! Other things that you wear! You really need to read this for yourself. I laughed. Out loud. In public.
p. 87 Sorry for what I did. . . This is what he says to his dead brother's room. At this point I realized that T. S. is just a kid, and that just like in "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" the narrator is not exactly trustworthy here. He is capable of hiding things from me, and everything he tells me has to be filtered through his very intelligent and yet still 12-year-old mind.
p. 139 "snagged on the baleen of my recall" -- look up. Baleen or whalebone is a filtering structure in the mouth of most whales, which they use to feed by sieving small animals from large mouthfuls of seawater.
p. 199 "I am not a reading nerd." He is explaining how he doesn't spend the entire trip reading--and I've spent nearly the entire wait today reading, at least from 36 on. I can't remember exactly where I stopped reading, but I know it was at least the beginning of Chapter 12 (p. 303).
p. 265 Holy crap T. S. just stabbed a guy!!! Very exciting passage. Also very strange. What T. S. says about reading--being in a state of belief and non-belief at the same time? This pushed me a little out of the balance for a bit.
Don't forget to mention that weird foray into the nothingness on the train. Oh yeah, this happens before the stabbing--T. S. wakes up and looks out the windows and he is nowhere. Pretty pretty weird. There is a very slight explanation later on, but the author doesn't give us any concrete answers. He does this in such a way that I'm not mad at him, though.
Book's got several sections--real, surreal, a book within a book, and basically some incredibly strange shit. This is not the same book I was reading a hundred pages or so ago. In the middle of the train ride T. S. starts reading one of his mother's notebooks (he stole it before he left, he doesn't really know why). Instead of containing research on beetles (what she's been working on for like 20 years) it's the story of his great-great-great grandmother--the first female geologist--who quits her job on an expedition west, falls in love with the very first Tecumseh Spivet, and quits science. That's the "book within a book". It's a very good book, but T. S. and I were both confused as to why she tried to write it. Also, it's unfinished. She never gets around to why the chick quit science. We think it's because she can't explain her own marriage to a man so different from her.
It is around the time that he reaches DC that I start to think perhaps he died sometime back there. DC is not what he expects, and the adults he encounters don't exactly react to him in the way that I would like. It's less like I think he died and more that I kinda hope he died, and that he's not actually experiencing all of this after all. He gets to the Smithsonian, finally, and he becomes their poster-child; he is used by them. We both began to wish for his mother, his sister, his ranch, and even his silent and removed father. SIDE NOTE: his father ridicules his maps when he tries to help after the brother dies, and I totally teared up. His father is an asshole. END SIDE NOTE. The Megatheriums? And their plot? Seriously? The book took another turn. And they knew about the stabbing and the sparrows that showed up immediately after? FUCKING HOW???
That's the end of the notes. Honestly, if my address wasn't on this card I would have just scanned it in. This turned out longer than I'd planned.
For the record, he didn't die. And his father redeems himself. And you realize that the two adults he had most trusted were lying to him, but I think he's going to be ok with it.
What I haven't mentioned yet but what I think is awesome--he jumps a train across country, but gets lucky in that his train is transporting at least one Winnebago, and so he spends the trip in relative comfort. Also, the Winnebago talks to him. (He and I both know that he is supplying the words, but it's still a nice touch in the story.)
OH NOES, ENTHUSIASM SUDDENLY RETURNING!!!!
You must all read this book! And you must love it! Because I say so! SO TO MY ONE REGULAR BLOG READER, AND TO MY SOMETIMES MAYBE BLOG READER THAT I'M NOT SURE ABOUT, AND EVEN YOU SPAMMERS IN CHINA--READ IT! AND TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVED IT! I COMMAND YOU!!!
Chinese spammers: if you manage to post a comment on this blog post that even KIND OF mentions this book I WILL ALLOW IT TO STAY!!! Even if you link to porn!!! THAT IS HOW COMMITTED I AM TO THIS BOOK!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Special Topics
I don't have a new car book yet, so I'm just redoing Special Topics, and guess what?
What if Andreo Verduga is the Greek's son? It could happen. And I'm not even sure the dude speaks Spanish--he didn't respond to anything Blue said to him, and dude was in pain, I think he would have reverted back to his native tongue in that situation. Later on Blue's father brings up the Greek's son, b/c he's the one kid who's not a genius or president of the UN or whatever (also possibly the only child who is actually real), and mentioning him lets the wind out of the Greek's sails a little. Remember what Blue said--the kid had dropped out of a college somewhere in Latin America? It's possible the entire lawn boy thing was a cover, and Gareth was supposed to assist Andreo with his next hit, or keep an eye on him or something.
What if Andreo Verduga is the Greek's son? It could happen. And I'm not even sure the dude speaks Spanish--he didn't respond to anything Blue said to him, and dude was in pain, I think he would have reverted back to his native tongue in that situation. Later on Blue's father brings up the Greek's son, b/c he's the one kid who's not a genius or president of the UN or whatever (also possibly the only child who is actually real), and mentioning him lets the wind out of the Greek's sails a little. Remember what Blue said--the kid had dropped out of a college somewhere in Latin America? It's possible the entire lawn boy thing was a cover, and Gareth was supposed to assist Andreo with his next hit, or keep an eye on him or something.
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
Just going to jump right in:
Poor Rose. Her mother's preference for her brother is so obvious, and Rose handles it way better than some kids, unless being able to taste emotions in food is some sort of psychosis born from being unloved.
At first I thought the brother was autistic, or at least had Asperger's syndrome, but nah, dude's just "magic" as well, but in a different, apparently more drastic, way.
The mother is delusional, depressed, and a total fucking crackpot. She elevates her son to deity status minutes after the poor boy is born. Quote from the book: I knew, Mom said, that he would guide me. He is minutes old, lady! He's not guiding you anywhere, he's just trying to focus on your face right now and make sense of all these new sounds and shit! Although, perhaps she really could see some sort of wisdom or something in his eyes that came from the specialness of being his father's son.
At dinner one night Wonderboy decides to eat with his eyes closed after Rose dares to attempt eye contact, and the mom (rather gheyly) thinks he's trying to experience the food...deeper or something, and copies him. I swear I could have smacked her.
The dad is a robot, pretty much. Totally rebuffs his daughter's attempts at closeness. Another reason I feel sorry for her.
I really like the way Rose unveils the knowledge of her mom's affair, though, to the boyfriend and then later her mom. She does it so calm and off-hand, and totally badass.
Also, here's something weird about ME: Rose can taste emotions--yeah, I'm all for that. Very interesting character trait, and I'm on board to see how this works out for her. Then her brother can disappear and "become" objects (or whatever it is that he does) and I immediately get all NUH-UH! This is totally ridiculuous! This book is stupid. Stupid, dumb book with its retarded premise. HARRUMPH. Oh, the grandpa had a power, too? And the Dad, maybe probably? I am totally back on board!
One special character: yes.
Two special characters: FUCKING RETARDED.
But a family of special characters: back to yes.
I think that I may, in fact, be a dork.
Aimee Bender, through Rose, gives a very good explanation for the brother's disappearance--I loved that part--but she fails to explain where the specialness comes from, and I am a reader that MUST KNOW EVERYTHING!!! That is my one and only complaint with this book. Wait, my one of my two and only complaints--the mother is my other complaint. What a silly woman.
I am currently reading a book about a nun who has these experiences of God's love that may actually be caused by a small tumor, and when her doctor is explaining epilepsy to her I saw a correlation between these two very different books--what if epilepsy runs in this family? The doctor uses an example of one of his previous patients, who swore she could smell people's emotions. This IS a work of fiction, so the author could have, and very well may have, made that entire example up, but what if he didn't? What if it's entirely possible that whole areas of our brains are capable of "magical" things and sometimes a seizure or tumor can set them off? (I want to mention that I drew this conclusion because Rose's grandfather could smell the goodness in people, and that's what made me start thinking about it.)
Poor Rose. Her mother's preference for her brother is so obvious, and Rose handles it way better than some kids, unless being able to taste emotions in food is some sort of psychosis born from being unloved.
At first I thought the brother was autistic, or at least had Asperger's syndrome, but nah, dude's just "magic" as well, but in a different, apparently more drastic, way.
The mother is delusional, depressed, and a total fucking crackpot. She elevates her son to deity status minutes after the poor boy is born. Quote from the book: I knew, Mom said, that he would guide me. He is minutes old, lady! He's not guiding you anywhere, he's just trying to focus on your face right now and make sense of all these new sounds and shit! Although, perhaps she really could see some sort of wisdom or something in his eyes that came from the specialness of being his father's son.
At dinner one night Wonderboy decides to eat with his eyes closed after Rose dares to attempt eye contact, and the mom (rather gheyly) thinks he's trying to experience the food...deeper or something, and copies him. I swear I could have smacked her.
The dad is a robot, pretty much. Totally rebuffs his daughter's attempts at closeness. Another reason I feel sorry for her.
I really like the way Rose unveils the knowledge of her mom's affair, though, to the boyfriend and then later her mom. She does it so calm and off-hand, and totally badass.
Also, here's something weird about ME: Rose can taste emotions--yeah, I'm all for that. Very interesting character trait, and I'm on board to see how this works out for her. Then her brother can disappear and "become" objects (or whatever it is that he does) and I immediately get all NUH-UH! This is totally ridiculuous! This book is stupid. Stupid, dumb book with its retarded premise. HARRUMPH. Oh, the grandpa had a power, too? And the Dad, maybe probably? I am totally back on board!
One special character: yes.
Two special characters: FUCKING RETARDED.
But a family of special characters: back to yes.
I think that I may, in fact, be a dork.
Aimee Bender, through Rose, gives a very good explanation for the brother's disappearance--I loved that part--but she fails to explain where the specialness comes from, and I am a reader that MUST KNOW EVERYTHING!!! That is my one and only complaint with this book. Wait, my one of my two and only complaints--the mother is my other complaint. What a silly woman.
I am currently reading a book about a nun who has these experiences of God's love that may actually be caused by a small tumor, and when her doctor is explaining epilepsy to her I saw a correlation between these two very different books--what if epilepsy runs in this family? The doctor uses an example of one of his previous patients, who swore she could smell people's emotions. This IS a work of fiction, so the author could have, and very well may have, made that entire example up, but what if he didn't? What if it's entirely possible that whole areas of our brains are capable of "magical" things and sometimes a seizure or tumor can set them off? (I want to mention that I drew this conclusion because Rose's grandfather could smell the goodness in people, and that's what made me start thinking about it.)
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