Books I’ve Read on My Journey, Volume Two
If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
An enjoyable, rollicking tale that hops from chapter one to chapter one of many imagined books, Calvino’s novel is a wonderful treatise on the expectations and interweaving of readers, but done so in a way that you—as the actual reader—are sent on interesting journeys the whole way through. The range of stories segmented here shows just how masterful Calvino is with style and storymaking. 8.85 on the recommendation scale.
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee
A very interesting book about growing up Korean-American. The style’s fairly strong, and Lee clearly thought long and hard about what he wanted to say on the subject. But…a lot of Lee’s answers are too easy, sometimes—not in solutions to the story’s problems persay, but in the actual construction of the novel. The jobs people have, for example, or his description thereof, seem like the easiest option, not always the best. Still, as Generation 2.5 as opposed to second generation, I connected with a lot of what he had to say. It was a first novel after all, and I think you can hear the MFA program in it kind of, but not bad at all. 7.1 on the scale.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
I’d been going on sort of a heavy kick of books so I pulled this collection from the Caledonian library. Very good for commuter reading, if anyone eles possibly spends more work time in transport than actually teaching. Sedaris’ style is pretty firmly established at this point, and my general problem with collections like this is more the length and repetition: twenty-five essays with the same shape, the same feeling at the end, etc., is a bit much. Sedaris can be pretty damn funny though, no denying, and for a quick read its fine. Also it did have this amazing piece of dialogue in it:
“This coffee’s like sex in a canoe!”
“What?”
“It’s fucking near water.”
Oh, 6.4 on the scale, and 4 of it was for that quote. Zing!
Rock ‘n Roll by Tom Stoppard
A hearty thanks to James Loehlin for gifting me Stoppard’s latest play. As Stoppard mentions in his intro, the play borrows heavily from Vaclav Havel’s writings, and it’s interesting to see the “other” side of the resistance from Milan Kundera’s disenchanted view. The play moves fast, spans over twenty years, but each scene is so exquisitely constructed: Stoppard is a master of these things by now. A very good luck at time’s effect on one’s views. 8.1 on the rec-o-scale.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I’m not sure if I’ve read a book where magical realism was used so effectively—in Bulgakov’s satire on disappearances occurring under Stalinist Moscow, the devil and his miscreants come to town under the guise of black magicians. Unsurprisingly, chaos ensues. The devil’s stay is also wound around a novel written about Pontius Pilate by one of the character’s in the book. I think—for a book to be absolutely special, above and beyond—it has to be kick-ass and heartfelt. Or by the end we need to have felt that it was both (meaning it doesn’t have to be heartfelt the whole way). The Master and Margarita is super close to that, and I can only think of two books and one graphic novel that have achieved both for me. Maybe if I was Russian, or Christian, it might have hit home harder. Still, an absolute kick-ass novel, and one I’d recommend to anyone looking for madcap fun, and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is based on this book’s model, if anyone’s interested. 9.75 on the recommendation scale.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka
The title alone was very intriguing, and I’d heard some good things, so I checked out this tight little tale about a Ukranian lady disrupting an English family of Ukranian heritage. Think Cold Sassy Tree except British, and with Ukranians, and funnier. While the book was enjoyable, it’s quite obviously written by and for middle-aged women, which was kind of weird for me. I mean, looking down at my body, I’m neither middle-aged nor a woman. In a certain sense it seemed like really well-done Chick Lit, something a mom might nod to and chuckle and say, “That’s so true!” It’s be a very good airplane book, for example. 5.37 on the Avimaan Syam Rating Chart.
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
My roommate found this on the floor of a hostel in Finland and passed it on to me, and how could I turn down a book of such controversy? I can understand why the book was so popular—though it’s 500 pages you just fly through it and it’s gritty style. Some scenes are chilling and others just mind-boggling and his style is punchy, raw in the way Eggers’ could be sometimes. But after I read the reports on what’s falsified…it’s as stunning as anything in the purported memoir itself. Nearly everything in the book is fake—he said he went to jail when he didn’t, he overblows every incident, he saws he got a double root canal without anesthetic when he didn’t, etc. Look, I believe any book, nonfiction or fiction, requires the reader to put a great deal of trust in the author. When that trust is broken, the reader doesn’t know who to believe, or maybe why they should keep reading, or how valid this world they’re entering is. As good as James Frey’s book seems, I can’t recommend it to anyone, because just like a memoir a recommendation is steeped in trust. ; You’re trusting me to tell you which book is good. That’s why A Million Little Pieces is the first book to be UNSCORABLE on the Avimaan Recommendation Scale. Read the stunning amount of lies here.
An enjoyable, rollicking tale that hops from chapter one to chapter one of many imagined books, Calvino’s novel is a wonderful treatise on the expectations and interweaving of readers, but done so in a way that you—as the actual reader—are sent on interesting journeys the whole way through. The range of stories segmented here shows just how masterful Calvino is with style and storymaking. 8.85 on the recommendation scale.
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee
A very interesting book about growing up Korean-American. The style’s fairly strong, and Lee clearly thought long and hard about what he wanted to say on the subject. But…a lot of Lee’s answers are too easy, sometimes—not in solutions to the story’s problems persay, but in the actual construction of the novel. The jobs people have, for example, or his description thereof, seem like the easiest option, not always the best. Still, as Generation 2.5 as opposed to second generation, I connected with a lot of what he had to say. It was a first novel after all, and I think you can hear the MFA program in it kind of, but not bad at all. 7.1 on the scale.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
I’d been going on sort of a heavy kick of books so I pulled this collection from the Caledonian library. Very good for commuter reading, if anyone eles possibly spends more work time in transport than actually teaching. Sedaris’ style is pretty firmly established at this point, and my general problem with collections like this is more the length and repetition: twenty-five essays with the same shape, the same feeling at the end, etc., is a bit much. Sedaris can be pretty damn funny though, no denying, and for a quick read its fine. Also it did have this amazing piece of dialogue in it:
“This coffee’s like sex in a canoe!”
“What?”
“It’s fucking near water.”
Oh, 6.4 on the scale, and 4 of it was for that quote. Zing!
Rock ‘n Roll by Tom Stoppard
A hearty thanks to James Loehlin for gifting me Stoppard’s latest play. As Stoppard mentions in his intro, the play borrows heavily from Vaclav Havel’s writings, and it’s interesting to see the “other” side of the resistance from Milan Kundera’s disenchanted view. The play moves fast, spans over twenty years, but each scene is so exquisitely constructed: Stoppard is a master of these things by now. A very good luck at time’s effect on one’s views. 8.1 on the rec-o-scale.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I’m not sure if I’ve read a book where magical realism was used so effectively—in Bulgakov’s satire on disappearances occurring under Stalinist Moscow, the devil and his miscreants come to town under the guise of black magicians. Unsurprisingly, chaos ensues. The devil’s stay is also wound around a novel written about Pontius Pilate by one of the character’s in the book. I think—for a book to be absolutely special, above and beyond—it has to be kick-ass and heartfelt. Or by the end we need to have felt that it was both (meaning it doesn’t have to be heartfelt the whole way). The Master and Margarita is super close to that, and I can only think of two books and one graphic novel that have achieved both for me. Maybe if I was Russian, or Christian, it might have hit home harder. Still, an absolute kick-ass novel, and one I’d recommend to anyone looking for madcap fun, and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is based on this book’s model, if anyone’s interested. 9.75 on the recommendation scale.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka
The title alone was very intriguing, and I’d heard some good things, so I checked out this tight little tale about a Ukranian lady disrupting an English family of Ukranian heritage. Think Cold Sassy Tree except British, and with Ukranians, and funnier. While the book was enjoyable, it’s quite obviously written by and for middle-aged women, which was kind of weird for me. I mean, looking down at my body, I’m neither middle-aged nor a woman. In a certain sense it seemed like really well-done Chick Lit, something a mom might nod to and chuckle and say, “That’s so true!” It’s be a very good airplane book, for example. 5.37 on the Avimaan Syam Rating Chart.
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
My roommate found this on the floor of a hostel in Finland and passed it on to me, and how could I turn down a book of such controversy? I can understand why the book was so popular—though it’s 500 pages you just fly through it and it’s gritty style. Some scenes are chilling and others just mind-boggling and his style is punchy, raw in the way Eggers’ could be sometimes. But after I read the reports on what’s falsified…it’s as stunning as anything in the purported memoir itself. Nearly everything in the book is fake—he said he went to jail when he didn’t, he overblows every incident, he saws he got a double root canal without anesthetic when he didn’t, etc. Look, I believe any book, nonfiction or fiction, requires the reader to put a great deal of trust in the author. When that trust is broken, the reader doesn’t know who to believe, or maybe why they should keep reading, or how valid this world they’re entering is. As good as James Frey’s book seems, I can’t recommend it to anyone, because just like a memoir a recommendation is steeped in trust. ; You’re trusting me to tell you which book is good. That’s why A Million Little Pieces is the first book to be UNSCORABLE on the Avimaan Recommendation Scale. Read the stunning amount of lies here.
posted by Avimaan @ 12:52 PM
1 Comments:
At 6:18 AM,
McGG said…
wow, you're reading a shit ton. I finished Kafka on the Shore, and I think I liked it a bit more than you did, although I did find the ending a bit frustrating. On to A Hundred Years of Solitude. Ever read it?
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