Here's a post I should have done about a month ago, but there have been some ups and downs (quite a few downs, actually) that made me want to wallow and read but not write. Books have been a good companion these last few months. So, here are the books I read to close out 2012.
34. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
This was the first of my commute audiobooks, and it was an excellent choice because it kept me awake. Driving back and forth to Evansville (IL 13 to Harrisburg, then 45 through Eldorado, then 141/62 all the way to USI) didn't afford much scenic entertainment, and scanning through the radio stations got old fast. So what better way to spend 3 hours a day than wandering through a post-apocalyptic America with a non-descript father and son, referred to merely as "the man" and "the boy"?
Something terrible has happened. The earth has been ravaged and decimated. And all the reader can do is wander and starve with the two main characters, wondering when (and what) their next meal will be, whether the various evil factions will catch up with them, whether disease or a simple mistake will be the end of the father and son. Their anonymity makes the story universal: they could be any father and son. They could be your brother and his child, they could be your neighbor, your coworker, an acquaintance. A stranger.
I could call the book suspenseful, but the suspense was not about the events of the narrative so much as a quiet, all-consuming dread for the fate of the characters. I had no illusions about whether they would survive; it was more about the drama of not knowing exactly how or when they would die. But I wanted to know what would happen. Having the story read to me, though, meant I had a harder time anticipating the really devastating moments, like when the boy would ask, once again, whether or not he was going to die. Thank goodness for waterproof mascara, because there were days I couldn't stop myself from crying over the horrors of the book. I'd read it again, though.
35. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
This is a case where the title is simultaneously apt and lacking: the book recounts the true story of the murder of 4 members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, a cold-blooded crime; however, at the same time, the phrase has become so cliche that it doesn't do justice to just how senseless the act was, or how cold the killers. The storytelling was disarming, in that it seemed so casual, so clearly fictionalized--I had to keep reminding myself that the events were real, that this was a real family brutally killed in the the night in their own home.
I've never read this kind of true-crime book, but I tend to watch these kinds of television shows and documentaries. Reading it was somehow worse; reading it before bed each night was probably incredibly foolish. I had some pretty gruesome murder nightmares, but they were in the same matter-of-fact style as the book, which was even more unsettling.
36. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
My next audiobook selection was a lush gothic suspense story with quite a bit of book-love in it. A bookseller's daughter and novice biographer gets the chance to hear the life story of a famous and reclusive author, who has a history of lying about her past. The book unfolded with a satisfying number of plot twists and haunting (but not quite ghostly) elements, and some really beautiful language that helped me get through some of the grayer days of my drive.
37. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
I'll admit it: I'm a bad English major, because I had never read Frankenstein before. I was fascinated by the concept, and how a young writer in the 19th century would explain a reassembled, reanimated corpse. But I'm an even worse English major because I was so bored with it. I understood the reason behind the epistolary form, but reading it was tedious and drawn out. I frequently fell asleep after reading only a few pages. I struggled to keep going. And although I read 3/4 of this admittedly short book, I didn't finish. If anything, though, it helped me understand what might make high school students permanently turn away from reading: if everything they read are canonical classics from the 19th and early 20th centuries, of course they're going to assume that books are full of antiquated, stilted language--that books are boring. That books can offer them nothing.
38. The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
If anyone is looking for a young adult book that's not sci-fi/fantasy and has some historical elements to it, I'd definitely recommend this one. Set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death himself, the book follows Liesel Meminger through early adolescence. In addition to the larger turbulence of the war, the story shows Liesel becoming an orphan, learning to read, dealing with school, and beginning to ask questions about humanity on both a small scale and in a broader sense. I expected it to be emotionally charged, since it takes place during WWII, but I didn't expect it to be so funny at times. Liesel's relationship with her best friend, a boy named Rudy, is both endearing and tragic. I think this one deserves a place alongside the Diary of Anne Frank in terms of teaching middle schoolers about life during WWII.
39. My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler
After reading/listening to so much "heavy" material, I needed something lighter--something that wouldn't give me nightmares. It was 25 cents at the Carbondale Public Library book sale, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. But here's the thing: I don't find Chelsea Handler particularly funny. I've only seen her a handful of times in various contexts on TV, and I've never been too impressed with her brand of humor. While I did laugh from time to time while reading the ridiculous descriptions of her sexcapades, I also felt like I must be a slut-shaming prude or something for thinking she's basically a crass, attention-starved bag of sadness. I kept mentally saying to her: You have a lot of unapologetic one night stands. I get it. Good for you, if that's what you're after. I can't relate too much. Where's the funny? At least I never have to read it again. Anyone want a book? FREE!
40. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I probably should have checked out the print version of this, rather than trying to listen to the audiobook, because I got through barely half of it before I had to turn it back in, and I couldn't renew it because it came from an out-of-system library. I think it was something like 19 discs! It's a slow starter, in that the first quarter of the book is so expository and boring. Things were just starting to get interesting and weird when I had to return it. The other issue with this is I love mythology and the idea of cultural archetypes passed down through fantasy stories, but there were so many things I wanted to look up while listening, but couldn't because I was driving. I couldn't even take notes. I have a feeling when I do read it, there will be a lot of marginalia and notetaking. The back stories supporting the larger story were fascinating, and I want to know where it all ended up. Too bad it coincided with a really busy time in the semester.
41. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I tend to love books about books, reading, writing, libraries, storytelling...you get the picture. One of the big ideas from this one was that if a book has a reader, the author and the story lives on. The main story is that of a young boy, Daniel, who "adopts" a book by an obscure author named Julian Carax. Daniel sets out to learn a great deal about the writer and his life, and ends up becoming dangerously entangled in searching for the truth. The story-within-the-story unfolds as Daniel gets snippets of information about the Carax however he can. The execution of this, however, is quite melodramatic--verging on the kinds of plot devices soap operas use. It didn't help that the audiobook featured schmaltzy piano interludes under some of the narration, which caused me to roll my eyes strenuously. Some of the plot twists felt downright cheap, the whole art imitating life imitating art imitating life, because Daniel's life choices/consequences often repeat or mirror those of Carax, and Carax based his book on his own life. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but it probably would have been better on the page than in the ear.
42. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
Yup, I still get a kick out of hating on Henry VIII and how he was basically a megalomaniac jerk. Gregory's writing isn't great, but it's passable enough that the book was entertaining (and a relatively quick read). I don't know how historically accurate it is in terms of the small details, but that's not why I read it in the first place.
43. Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? And Other Concerns by Mindy Kaling
I drove to Kansas City for Thanksgiving with my parents and younger brother (Aaron stayed in Illinois because he had to work), so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of entertainment for the hundreds of miles I'd be driving. And I'm glad I chose to listen to this one before I listened to Tina Fey's book, because otherwise I would have been so much more disappointed with Kaling.
A little back story: we watch The Office. We like it quite a bit--to the point where certain bits or jokes or snippets of dialogue have lodged in our brains, but not to the level of frequently quoting to it/referring to it. We enjoy the show, but it's hard to tell how much of it is due to any of Kaling's contributions as a writer or performer. Thus, I went into the experience of listening to Kaling's book expecting there to be funny moments, but not necessarily laugh-out-loud-funny.
While I did enjoy hearing her talk about her path to television writing and comedy, as well as he experiences in the industry, it also felt like she was trying really hard to live up to the hype and not quite doing it. It was good, but not great--like when you run out of everything bagels and have to eat plain instead. And Mindy Kaling knows this: the introduction to her audiobook acknowledges that Tina Fey is ultimately more awesome. But you know what? That's okay. Like her character on The Office, I think she likes to hear herself talk, so I'm sure she thought the book was witty and hilarious.
44. Bossypants by Tina Fey
I think I listened to this audiobook three times all the way through. I had to pause it at times to laugh, once with the horrified thought that I was going to pee my pants because I was laughing so hard. Tina Fey is a hilarious human being, and I have loved her since she started on SNL doing Weekend Update. She's witty, wise, nerdy, and real. I'd pay full price for this book (and I never, ever pay full price for books). And Mindy Kaling was so right to downplay the hilarity of her own book in comparison to Tina Fey's; what Kaling should have said, though, is that she basically used Tina Fey's book as an outline for her own, without having the substance or life experience to back it up. Tina Fey needs to write more books (and stop doing things like Baby Mama--you're better than that, Tina Fey!).
45. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
I don't know how many times I've read this book since buying it for $2 at a yard sale in 2005, but it was so worth it. And this time, I was re-reading it because I finally managed to pick up the sequel, Son of a Witch, at a thrift store while I was in Kansas City. I read a few pages of the sequel and realized I probably should go back to the beginning, since it had been awhile since my last reading of Wicked. It holds up. I think it helps if you spent your childhood feeling terrified of the Wicked Witch of the West by intrigued by her capacity for evil (and bewildered by her aversion to water).
Showing posts with label audiobooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audiobooks. Show all posts
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Book Report 2
I know I haven't written in a long time. And that I haven't even finished my posts about India. And that I've written almost nothing about what we've done this summer. And that I haven't said how my new job is going. Those posts are coming. Eventually. But for now, I think I can manage a post about the books I've read since April's book report post.
17. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
I first encountered Donna Tartt's work when I picked up The Secret History at (surprise!) a library book sale back when we were living in Mt. Pleasant. Since The Secret History still reigns as one of my favorite books ever, I thought I would give The Little Friend a try. The book started with so much promise: it seemed to offer insight into one family's struggles to deal with the aftermath of a horrible tragedy (the death of a child); plus, it was set in rural Mississippi in the late 1960's/early 1970's, so there was a lot of compelling cultural context available.
I felt I really got to know the main character, Harriet, and her best friend Hely; I felt like I saw what their summer was like in Mississippi. I appreciated how the plot reflected the mindset and thought processes of a moody adolescent girl desperately trying to understand the horrible thing that happened to her family. Tartt's writing was just as imaginative and captivating as I remembered it on a sentence-by-sentence level; at the same time, though, the book was bulky with detail and description that didn't do much to move the plot along.
There were some suspenseful moments that nearly shivered me out of my skin, but mostly because there were so many snakes in the book. Crates of them. Nests of them. Slithery, bitey, poisonous snakes. I had a few nightmares about snakes and drowning from this one. A book like this might be better as an audiobook on a long drive--provided you aren't driving through Mississippi.
18. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Paul Schramm recommended this one to me, and I am so glad I took his suggestion. It's a clever, quick read that demonstrates the importance of having the means and freedom to communicate. The fictional government of the book outlaws the use of specific letters as they fall off the plinth of a statue, taking their falling as a divine proclamation that the letters should no longer be used. The tale is told in letters and messages between several characters, the content of which become increasingly restricted as more letters fall. It's an allegory for the kind of oppression that seems innocuous or just inconvenient at first but soon escalates beyond reason (think Patriot Act or religious dogma). I enjoyed it immensely, thanks to my resentment at government meddling as well as my love of language.
19.-21. The His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
(The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass)
I read The Golden Compass soon after the movie was released, so my initial interpretation of the series was skewed by that. I was anticipating an adventure with realistic but supernatural characters, and I thought it would skew slightly younger in the young adult range. The books, however, are deeper and darker than the movie version suggested, which I really appreciated.
I was in middle/high school when this series was released, and I honestly don't know if I could have handled reading them at that time because of my seriously conflicted feelings towards religion. The books enact the kind of serious critique of religious dogma my teenage mind was desperately trying to articulate and sort out. Add some talking animals, witches, inter-dimensional travel, and theoretical physics, and you get a not necessarily fun but definitely compelling series.
22. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Yeah, sometimes I need to read predictable and formulaic pulp. I will not apologize for it. I just wish professor Robert Langdon (the Tom Hanks character) didn't like to hear himself talk so much, because seriously: dude likes to lecture. He needs to be part of Pedants Anonymous--except that will never exist, because pedants like you to acknowledge their credentials so much.
There's some suspense. There's a creepy villain. There's dismemberment. There's a secret society. There's a pretty girl with her life in danger. Ho hum. It was good bedtime reading because it doesn't take much brain power.
23. Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster
This is an instance where a book's subtitle really sums up what it's about: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office. It's a memoir. And even though this woman is supremely bitchy and unlikable, and I found myself reacting out loud every few pages to express disgust with something she had said or done, I still enjoyed it because it was that funny. Some of the humor comes from schadenfreude, it's true, but that's totally excusable in this case. I get so annoyed with ostentatious displays of wealth and people who seriously believe that their money makes them better than everyone else, so it was nice to see one of these women suffer. Although...she got a book published, so I expect things are looking up for her again.
24. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
In the library of my brain, there is a section of required reading for English majors. These shelves are crammed with so-called classics that every self-respecting book nerd or literature lover is supposed to not only have read, but read outside of a classroom setting for pleasure. When I go to this section of my brain, I see disappointment: the English-major staples that I haven't read (Tolstoy and Steinbeck and Joyce), started reading and couldn't finish (Austen), or read all the way through and hated (I've given The Great Gatsby at least five chances and I still hate it).
But To Kill a Mockingbird is on the "You should read this book more often" shelf, because it really is that good. It's rare to find a book that examines race, class, regional culture, family dynamics, and childhood so deftly, and without coming off as sanctimonious or pandering. But it does.
25. and 26. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Because sometimes, you need to re-read the Harry Potter books for the millionth time. Usually, I re-read the entire series from start to finish, and I've done that since before the fourth book was released. This means, however, that I've read the first three or four books quite a few times, and the last three only a handful. I watched the last three movies, then read the last two books again, and it actually changed how I felt about the screen version of the series--I felt less cheated by the movies than I had previously done, because I realized that there was no way they could equal what I had built up in my mind from reading the books. Basically, I finally let myself view them as a separate beast altogether.
27. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The last time I read these books, I was in eighth or ninth grade. My memory had softened the weirdness of the books somewhat, so that in reading them again I was able to be shocked or startled by the behavior of the characters, the way they spoke to each other, and the violence of some of the plot.
28. World War Z byMax Brooks
Really, really good. It didn't focus too much on the zombies, but rather on how the world dealt with the outbreak and aftermath, which I found fascinating.The greatest success of this book was the way the author made it all seem so plausible. From the beginning, you're forced to accept the premise, and through the first-hand accounts, you see it as a global event that happened.
29. Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
One of the rare instances in which I will say the movie is much, much better than the book. Some of the basic plot elements and a few snippets of dialogue are preserved from page to screen, and for good reason: that's all that was worth taking. The Forrest of the book is an aggressive simpleton rather than a guileless one. There's no charm to the book--it's a series of wild stunts rather than an engaging plot. I think what bothered me most was how racist Forrest was, and that the author's point in doing so was totally obvious: it's somewhat okay for Forrest to hold those views because he's an idiot, but what's your excuse?
30. Pigtopia by Kitty Fitzgerald
I bought this from the Carbondale library book sale, mostly because the cover features an illustration of a young girl holding a pig. At first, I was afraid I couldn't get into the book because the narration seemed to be in a broken dialect that took great effort to decode, since I was reading before bed and my brain was already tired. Once I got through the first few chapters, I realized that the narration alternated between two characters: the subliterate pigman Jack Plum, and Holly Lock, the normal but awkward teenage girl he befriends. With some patience, I grew to love reading the Jack Plum chapters because they were almost poetic in the inventiveness of the language. I was conscious of the effort it took Fitzgerald to render Jack's voice, and she did so with unmistakeable style. Had the entire book taken place from Jack's perspective, it would have been a chore to read; Holly's chapters provided breaks but also served as a contrast to the way Jack's mind worked.
31. Stardust, 7-Eleven, Route 57, A&W, and So Forth by Patricia Lear
This was another Carbondale library book sale purchase, and I am sad to say that the title was the best part of this short story collection. The stories were absolutely boring, and not in a way that seemed intentional or for greater effect--it was just that nothing happened in them. I only finished out of stubbornness, so I could tell myself I had read it, given it a fair chance, and was disappointed not because I expected anything great but because I expected anything at all.
I'm glad I only paid 25 cents for the book. Perhaps there was one moment in one story that was worth the price.
32. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I'm counting this as having been read, even though I listened to it as an audiobook on my Evansville commute. It's a strange book to listen to, driving alone through thick fog between Harrisburg and Eldorado and the long (and sparsely populated) stretch between route 45 and Mt. Vernon, Indiana. The book is so unapologetic, bleak, and lonely. I've long enjoyed post-apocalyptic stories because one of my frequent daydreams involves having the entire world to myself for a few days, a week, a month. What would it be like to be truly alone? Would your mind create noise to fill the absence of all that outer noise that comes from other people?
It was heartbreaking to imagine a young child having a constant awareness of his own mortality, and to imagine a father who's forced to fight for a life that holds little promise. The man and the boy remain nameless throughout the book, which hammered home the truth: that identity is so largely dependent upon belonging to a group and having a relationship with the human world. When that's gone, the self becomes an almost ridiculous idea.
The Road made me rethink my definitions of tragedy and horror. When large numbers of people are killed by disease or disaster, we think of it as a horrific event. We can count the dead and mourn them. It would seem that a global disease pandemic or large-scale environmental catastrophe or nuclear disaster would be the ultimate tragedy, but The Road proves otherwise: that the real horror could be surviving the event, left to figure out a reason for living when civilization is just a memory. The book was definitely worth the horrible nightmares I had.
33. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Before I started reading this, I knew the basics: a 14-year-old girl is murdered; one of her suburban neighbors is a suspect; it takes place in the 1970s. All this I learned from seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of the book a few years ago. What I missed, however, was the central idea that the the victim, Susie Salmon, is telling her story from her version of "heaven." I was instantly skeptical about how much I would enjoy reading it, based on the plot and the premise, because this could have gone horribly wrong. Instead, I found myself mostly buying into it. Sure, there are some cringe-inducing moments (particularly in how Susie's presence is made known among the living at times). I'd say I was engaged with the narrative 80% of the time, for the first 80% of the book. The last bit, however, went everywhere I hoped it wouldn't and became a bit too sentimental.
I am curious about how the movie version handles some aspects of the book, though, because it seems so internal, which doesn't always translate without a voice-over (and that often seems like a cop-out).
17. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
I first encountered Donna Tartt's work when I picked up The Secret History at (surprise!) a library book sale back when we were living in Mt. Pleasant. Since The Secret History still reigns as one of my favorite books ever, I thought I would give The Little Friend a try. The book started with so much promise: it seemed to offer insight into one family's struggles to deal with the aftermath of a horrible tragedy (the death of a child); plus, it was set in rural Mississippi in the late 1960's/early 1970's, so there was a lot of compelling cultural context available.
I felt I really got to know the main character, Harriet, and her best friend Hely; I felt like I saw what their summer was like in Mississippi. I appreciated how the plot reflected the mindset and thought processes of a moody adolescent girl desperately trying to understand the horrible thing that happened to her family. Tartt's writing was just as imaginative and captivating as I remembered it on a sentence-by-sentence level; at the same time, though, the book was bulky with detail and description that didn't do much to move the plot along.
There were some suspenseful moments that nearly shivered me out of my skin, but mostly because there were so many snakes in the book. Crates of them. Nests of them. Slithery, bitey, poisonous snakes. I had a few nightmares about snakes and drowning from this one. A book like this might be better as an audiobook on a long drive--provided you aren't driving through Mississippi.
18. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Paul Schramm recommended this one to me, and I am so glad I took his suggestion. It's a clever, quick read that demonstrates the importance of having the means and freedom to communicate. The fictional government of the book outlaws the use of specific letters as they fall off the plinth of a statue, taking their falling as a divine proclamation that the letters should no longer be used. The tale is told in letters and messages between several characters, the content of which become increasingly restricted as more letters fall. It's an allegory for the kind of oppression that seems innocuous or just inconvenient at first but soon escalates beyond reason (think Patriot Act or religious dogma). I enjoyed it immensely, thanks to my resentment at government meddling as well as my love of language.
19.-21. The His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
(The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass)
I read The Golden Compass soon after the movie was released, so my initial interpretation of the series was skewed by that. I was anticipating an adventure with realistic but supernatural characters, and I thought it would skew slightly younger in the young adult range. The books, however, are deeper and darker than the movie version suggested, which I really appreciated.
I was in middle/high school when this series was released, and I honestly don't know if I could have handled reading them at that time because of my seriously conflicted feelings towards religion. The books enact the kind of serious critique of religious dogma my teenage mind was desperately trying to articulate and sort out. Add some talking animals, witches, inter-dimensional travel, and theoretical physics, and you get a not necessarily fun but definitely compelling series.
22. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Yeah, sometimes I need to read predictable and formulaic pulp. I will not apologize for it. I just wish professor Robert Langdon (the Tom Hanks character) didn't like to hear himself talk so much, because seriously: dude likes to lecture. He needs to be part of Pedants Anonymous--except that will never exist, because pedants like you to acknowledge their credentials so much.
There's some suspense. There's a creepy villain. There's dismemberment. There's a secret society. There's a pretty girl with her life in danger. Ho hum. It was good bedtime reading because it doesn't take much brain power.
23. Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster
This is an instance where a book's subtitle really sums up what it's about: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office. It's a memoir. And even though this woman is supremely bitchy and unlikable, and I found myself reacting out loud every few pages to express disgust with something she had said or done, I still enjoyed it because it was that funny. Some of the humor comes from schadenfreude, it's true, but that's totally excusable in this case. I get so annoyed with ostentatious displays of wealth and people who seriously believe that their money makes them better than everyone else, so it was nice to see one of these women suffer. Although...she got a book published, so I expect things are looking up for her again.
24. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
In the library of my brain, there is a section of required reading for English majors. These shelves are crammed with so-called classics that every self-respecting book nerd or literature lover is supposed to not only have read, but read outside of a classroom setting for pleasure. When I go to this section of my brain, I see disappointment: the English-major staples that I haven't read (Tolstoy and Steinbeck and Joyce), started reading and couldn't finish (Austen), or read all the way through and hated (I've given The Great Gatsby at least five chances and I still hate it).
But To Kill a Mockingbird is on the "You should read this book more often" shelf, because it really is that good. It's rare to find a book that examines race, class, regional culture, family dynamics, and childhood so deftly, and without coming off as sanctimonious or pandering. But it does.
25. and 26. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Because sometimes, you need to re-read the Harry Potter books for the millionth time. Usually, I re-read the entire series from start to finish, and I've done that since before the fourth book was released. This means, however, that I've read the first three or four books quite a few times, and the last three only a handful. I watched the last three movies, then read the last two books again, and it actually changed how I felt about the screen version of the series--I felt less cheated by the movies than I had previously done, because I realized that there was no way they could equal what I had built up in my mind from reading the books. Basically, I finally let myself view them as a separate beast altogether.
27. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The last time I read these books, I was in eighth or ninth grade. My memory had softened the weirdness of the books somewhat, so that in reading them again I was able to be shocked or startled by the behavior of the characters, the way they spoke to each other, and the violence of some of the plot.
28. World War Z byMax Brooks
Really, really good. It didn't focus too much on the zombies, but rather on how the world dealt with the outbreak and aftermath, which I found fascinating.The greatest success of this book was the way the author made it all seem so plausible. From the beginning, you're forced to accept the premise, and through the first-hand accounts, you see it as a global event that happened.
29. Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
One of the rare instances in which I will say the movie is much, much better than the book. Some of the basic plot elements and a few snippets of dialogue are preserved from page to screen, and for good reason: that's all that was worth taking. The Forrest of the book is an aggressive simpleton rather than a guileless one. There's no charm to the book--it's a series of wild stunts rather than an engaging plot. I think what bothered me most was how racist Forrest was, and that the author's point in doing so was totally obvious: it's somewhat okay for Forrest to hold those views because he's an idiot, but what's your excuse?
30. Pigtopia by Kitty Fitzgerald
I bought this from the Carbondale library book sale, mostly because the cover features an illustration of a young girl holding a pig. At first, I was afraid I couldn't get into the book because the narration seemed to be in a broken dialect that took great effort to decode, since I was reading before bed and my brain was already tired. Once I got through the first few chapters, I realized that the narration alternated between two characters: the subliterate pigman Jack Plum, and Holly Lock, the normal but awkward teenage girl he befriends. With some patience, I grew to love reading the Jack Plum chapters because they were almost poetic in the inventiveness of the language. I was conscious of the effort it took Fitzgerald to render Jack's voice, and she did so with unmistakeable style. Had the entire book taken place from Jack's perspective, it would have been a chore to read; Holly's chapters provided breaks but also served as a contrast to the way Jack's mind worked.
31. Stardust, 7-Eleven, Route 57, A&W, and So Forth by Patricia Lear
This was another Carbondale library book sale purchase, and I am sad to say that the title was the best part of this short story collection. The stories were absolutely boring, and not in a way that seemed intentional or for greater effect--it was just that nothing happened in them. I only finished out of stubbornness, so I could tell myself I had read it, given it a fair chance, and was disappointed not because I expected anything great but because I expected anything at all.
I'm glad I only paid 25 cents for the book. Perhaps there was one moment in one story that was worth the price.
32. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I'm counting this as having been read, even though I listened to it as an audiobook on my Evansville commute. It's a strange book to listen to, driving alone through thick fog between Harrisburg and Eldorado and the long (and sparsely populated) stretch between route 45 and Mt. Vernon, Indiana. The book is so unapologetic, bleak, and lonely. I've long enjoyed post-apocalyptic stories because one of my frequent daydreams involves having the entire world to myself for a few days, a week, a month. What would it be like to be truly alone? Would your mind create noise to fill the absence of all that outer noise that comes from other people?
It was heartbreaking to imagine a young child having a constant awareness of his own mortality, and to imagine a father who's forced to fight for a life that holds little promise. The man and the boy remain nameless throughout the book, which hammered home the truth: that identity is so largely dependent upon belonging to a group and having a relationship with the human world. When that's gone, the self becomes an almost ridiculous idea.
The Road made me rethink my definitions of tragedy and horror. When large numbers of people are killed by disease or disaster, we think of it as a horrific event. We can count the dead and mourn them. It would seem that a global disease pandemic or large-scale environmental catastrophe or nuclear disaster would be the ultimate tragedy, but The Road proves otherwise: that the real horror could be surviving the event, left to figure out a reason for living when civilization is just a memory. The book was definitely worth the horrible nightmares I had.
33. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Before I started reading this, I knew the basics: a 14-year-old girl is murdered; one of her suburban neighbors is a suspect; it takes place in the 1970s. All this I learned from seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of the book a few years ago. What I missed, however, was the central idea that the the victim, Susie Salmon, is telling her story from her version of "heaven." I was instantly skeptical about how much I would enjoy reading it, based on the plot and the premise, because this could have gone horribly wrong. Instead, I found myself mostly buying into it. Sure, there are some cringe-inducing moments (particularly in how Susie's presence is made known among the living at times). I'd say I was engaged with the narrative 80% of the time, for the first 80% of the book. The last bit, however, went everywhere I hoped it wouldn't and became a bit too sentimental.
I am curious about how the movie version handles some aspects of the book, though, because it seems so internal, which doesn't always translate without a voice-over (and that often seems like a cop-out).
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