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Friday, May 21, 2004

I'm late to the world of comic books or, uh, "graphic novels" - the new preferred term to try and get some respect from the literary world. I may laugh at the term sometimes, but it's true that comic books have come a long way and the medium has been put to great use in the last few years. One of those groundbreaking comics series is Watchmen by Alan Moore. This is generally cited, along with the Sandman series, as being a rebirth or renaissance of sorts for the format. And with good reason. Watchmen features a killer story, a great imagined alternate world where masked vigilantes were outlawed in the late 1970s and Richard Nixon is still president in 1985, and a colorful cast of characters, including the creepy and uncompromising Rorschach. There is sex, violence, vulgar language, love, and a depressing ending. I can imagine when it first appeared that it was revolutionary. Even now it has a great appeal and definitely stands the test of time.

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The Game by Teresa Toten is a book Daisy gave me ages ago and I finally pulled off my shelf. It's a fairly predictable, but well done and affecting YA novel about a girl put in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt. It was like Bridge to Terabithia crossed with Girl, Interrupted. Pretty good.

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Next up was Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler, which I happily inherited from a previous roommate. I had nearly bought it myself when it first came out because of the back summary and all the rave reviews and blurbs on the cover. Boy am I ever glad I didn't. It wasn't.. horrible, exactly. But I certainly didn't like it. It's a group of loosely connected short stories (and we know how much I don't love short stories) and while I did enjoy a couple of them, some were.. I want to say insulting, but I'm not really sure if that's exactly the word I want. They weren't unsettling, really. Not like J. T. Leroy or anything. I guess I just balked at the slight whiff of misogyny that came from some of them. It was like the author didn't actually know any real women and was just writing objects with boobs. By the end I knew that Patrick was the nominal villain of the book, but the story that features him as the main character gives no indication of that. I finished it because the ones I liked were spaced far enough apart to give me hope there would be another one and there were bits and pieces of even the ones I disliked that were beautiful; phrases here and there that delighted me and showed the author is clearly talented. Not my bag though.

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Next up were two E. L. Konigsburg titles, The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper and Journey To An 800 Number. Both are about boys confronting their beliefs about the world and their place in it. Dragon involves a rich boy who thinks he wants to be a detective, but who finds more than he thought he would when he takes on a newlywed woman as his sidekick. Journey has a larger cast of colorful characters, all wonderfully real and exotic when seen through the eyes of a rather sheltered boy sent to spend the summer with his father while his mother is off on her honeymoon with his new step-father. It's the stronger of the two, but neither comes close to my favorite of Konigsburg's, which is, of course, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

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And another piece of fluff was Wedding Season by Darcy Cosper. This got a good review in Entertainment Weekly and I liked the premise (anti-marriage woman has to attend 17 weddings in 6 months) so I got it. I'm surprised by how long this one has stayed with me. It was funny and thoughtful, sure, but the ending has had me going back and forth in my mind all week. On the one hand, I applaud the character for standing up for her principles and I even understand where she's coming from (especially after hearing a newly married friend's recent tales of how being married has put her till-then happy relationship under a lot of stress - as if the fact of saying "I do" forever altered how they relate to each other) but another part of me wants to shake her and tell her to get over herself. That nothing is perfect and her ideals are going to let her down and how she's not being practical. I don't know. I may have to let this one stew for a while and read it again later on down the line to see if I can come to a clear decision.

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After all the seriousness of the last two books I was in the mood for enjoyable fluff. A position admirably filled by Marian Keyes, whose The Other Side of the Story isn't her best, but was still cute and better than most of the other "chicklit" books out there. This one cuts between three different women loosely connected in the publishing world.

Here's where I should go off on chicklit and marketing genres, and the inherent discrimination in the category and blah, blah, but I don't have the energy. Most of the books in this classification that I've read have been really annoying. And several of them have really pissed me off. Helen Fielding and Marian Keyes have remained two authors whose characters manage to rise above the mass of desperate unmarried women cardboard cutouts that are currently in vogue. What I love about Keyes is she allows her women to skirt along the edges of disaster, but ultimately brings them back. They are often silly and irrational, but you love them by that time and want the best for them. When I want to slap them, it's more like when I want to help a friend I love see what she's doing wrong and not because I find them annoying. It's a fine line to walk and she manages it beautifully nearly every time.

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Next up was another Bookslut title - The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh. This one was excellent. The main character is an older gay man, an auctioneer who finds a series of old photographs depicting sexual acts and in several, what looks like a murdered woman. The book reminded me of The Club Dumas, but with vintage porn at the heart instead of the Devil. It had a similar feel - maybe it was the antiques and the old bookstore that brought that association to mind. I liked the writing style; it's fairly literary without being difficult or pretentious and there was even a sex scene or two. There were a few laughs and some very striking and original scenes that I really enjoyed. Good stuff.

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All righty. I've been out sick for a couple of days and there's only so much television I can watch before my brain turns to mush, so I've got a bunch of books to write up, the first of which is 1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky. I've been recommending this one to all my friends who haven't drunk the Republican Kool-Aid. In other words, yeah, there's a liberal bias. But it's not shrill or strained and the author lets you know his intentions up front. But he's too good a researcher and author to let that overwhelm and color the simple facts and the stories. While a good part of the book follows the events in America, Kurlansky is equally concerned about student uprisings all over the world, especially in France and (then) Czechoslovakia (which are particularly moving and sad). He provides an astonishing (to me, at least) analysis of how Richard Nixon nimbly hijacked the Republican Party away from the middle and while there are no explicit parallels drawn to our current war, they are there to be seen. Very readable and fast moving.

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part... and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears... and you've got to make it stop." Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964

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Monday, May 10, 2004

Jennifer Government by Max Barry was a recommendation from Rae. When I got it I thought the author sounded familiar and when I finally got around to reading it, I discovered that he was familiar because I'd read his first novel, Syrup, which I vaguely remember liking a lot. This one is almost a companion book to Feed in that consumerism and industry have taken over society to an alarming degree. In Jennifer Government everything is privatized, even the police and government, and they have to raise funding to investigate anything. The title refers to the fact that people take on the last name of the company for which they work: Hack Nike, Hayley McDonalds, Jennifer Government, Billy NRA, etc. Jennifer Government is investigating the deaths of 14 people who were killed in what the reader knows is a guerrilla marketing campaign for Nike. The plot is first and foremost and the ideas raised aren't really anything new. Luckily it's funny and moves quickly so that doesn't really matter.

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Friday, May 07, 2004

I started Mona Lisa Smile by William Gibson while on vacation this last weekend and haven't had much time to finish it until today. I honestly had no idea until about halfway through the book that it was part of a trilogy of books all set in the same future. It wasn't even until the end that I realized Bobby (The Count) was from Count Zero. Yeah, I know. Blame the sun for frying my brain. Anyway. I guess this is proof that this book can be read as a stand-alone because it's been years since I've read either Neuromancer or Count Zero (the first two books in the trilogy). It definitely doesn't hurt to have those books in mind though because Gibson always throws you into his worlds to sink or swim; there's no dipping of toes allowed. As always he tells a great story and the momentum of the plot is enough to keep you turning pages, even when you aren't exactly sure where you are or how you got there. Now that I know the books are connected I'm going to have to read them again as a unit and not years apart as I've done this time.

I've said it before - but man, William Gibson can write.

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Wednesday, May 05, 2004

On Daisy's recommendation, I read Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel next. I love how she writes this from the first person; she does it frequently (Rebecca and The Scapegoat employ the same narrative technique) and to great effect. Her narrators are flawed and unreliable and trying to figure out what's really going on when seeing everything through one biased perspective is cool. In this case, we have not only Ambrose's letters to help us discern the truth about Rachel, but also Louise. Neither is exactly trustworthy though, as they both have other motives that might explain their interpretation of the facts. Du Maurier creates such an air of creepy ambiguity in this book, beginning at the first page with a description of a man hanged for murder. I also liked the pacing of the book; she let you go just long enough to begin to doubt your suspicions of Rachel before throwing in another letter or sinister action. Right up to the end you're not entirely sure who to believe. I love that. Thanks, Daisy!

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