It

Read from Wednesday, February 15th to Wednesday, March 7th.

It, the classic, epic horror novel by Stephen King.  Got this book at a used book sale at the place where I volunteer.  Only a buck for 1100 pages of writing.  Reading horror novels like this are out of my comfort zone, but it was a nice break and change of pace.  I also rented the movie from Netflix after I finished reading the book, and it compared pretty well.

Seven kids from Derry, Maine form a Losers Club in 1958.  They are all outcasts and nerds, and they band together after one's little brother dies.  But they soon realize that it was no accident, nor is it a normal string of murders affecting the town, but actually a supernatural creature/beast/spiritual force that feeds on the town of Derry.  This beast is called It, and it takes the form of a clown with balloons most of the time, but in reality is a shapeshifter and looks like your worst fear at other times.  At various times, It looks like a werewolf, a mummy, a giant bird, leeches, and a giant spider, as well as inhabiting certain townspeople.

The Losers are composed of Bill, the stuttering leader and whose brother was killed; Richie 'trashmouth' the non-stop talking voice impersonator; Ben the aspiring architect who is overweight, Eddie the hypochondriac; Stan the neat and tidy Jewish Boy Scout; Mike the black historian/librarian; and Beverly the dreamboat all the boys love but who is beaten by her dad and later husband.  In 1958, the Losers believed that had defeated the monster, but they made a pact to return to Derry if It ever came back, (It awoke in Derry every 28 years to feed, they were able to trace the pattern back hundreds of years). The novel begins in 1985 with Mike calling the rest of the Losers to announce that It had awoken and was killing kids again.  The rest of the group are obliged to return with hopes of killing It once and for all.  Stan would rather commit suicide than face It again. 

The novel traces both stories simultaneously, telling the events in 1958 alongside their return in 1985.  There are many similarities, as the characters resume certain traits they had in their childhood, like Bill's stutter.  I'll start with 1958.  All the kids are chased at various times by Henry Bowers, the school bully who gradually turns into a psychotic killer throughout the book.  They are chased into the Barrens, a woodsy/marshy area in the middle of town, and the Losers establish a hideout there.  But they can't ignore all the other kids being killed around them.  The adults are in denial, and there seems to be a haze of memory loss among grown-ups.  The kids have all had separate experiences escaping from It, but they decide to fight back.  When they bond together as a group, they seem to have better luck, or super powers, they can use to fight.  They invade a haunted house, and shoot It with a silver ball from a slingshot, wounding It. 

Eventually, they are forced into the sewers after being chased by Henry.  They know that it is in the sewers in which It resides.  But, being propelled by Henry, the Losers are forced to confront It.  Each of the Losers has a strength that they use to almost kill It.  Richie uses his voices, Bev uses her love, Ben uses his architect skills, Eddie his sense of navigation, Mike his understanding of history, and Stan his love of birds.  In the sewers, two of Henry's buddies are killed by It, and Henry is driven completely to insanity.  Bill is transported to another dimension by It, and Richie goes after him, and they somehow wound It.  Instead of finishing It off, they decide to run away.  (There is a weird scene here:  while trying to get out of the sewers, they get panicked and lost.  So in order to calm everyone down, Beverly lets all the boys make love to her, to show how much she loves everyone.  But remember, these are all 11 and 12 year old kids.  Involved in essentially a gang-bang.  Weird.)

28 years later, in 1985, It begins killing kids again.  The Losers, with the exception of Stan, return to Derry.  They have forgotten almost everything about that summer in 1958, but gradually the fog begins to lift and they remember more details and events  (these memory revelations are where King goes back to telling what happened in 1958).  The Losers are all very successful adults.  Ben's an architect, Bill a writer, Bev a fashion designer, Eddie owns a limo company, Richie is a famous DJ and Mike is the town librarian.  He is the only one who stayed in Derry.  No one was able to conceive children.  While reconnecting, King cuts away to the insane asylum, where It helps Henry escape, talking to him through the moon, and convincing him to kill them all.  Henry attack Mike in the library, and nearly kills him, but Mike wounds Henry, and then Eddie is able to finish him off.  The Losers know they need to go into the sewers that first night in Derry, and they follow the same path back to the lair of It.  This time, they are able to kill the monster, although Eddie is killed in the process.  Bill's wife had followed them into the sewers, but she was paralyzed by It, and they had to carry her out of the sewers after.  The town of Derry is nearly destroyed by a storm in the aftermath.  The rest of the gang slowly lose their memories of what happened once again, and they return to their respective lives.

This was an entertaining book.  It was light reading for the most part, and only slightly scary at times.  Definitely some cheesy and unexplained moments, especially at the climaxes in 1958 and 85.  As I mentioned, the sex scene was very strange, and thankfully not shown in the movie.  The novel was very long, and probably could have been condensed, but many of the fears that King expounds on are very realistic.  He shows, in a simplistic way, how our own personal traumas can affect the way we perceive the world.  King is also a fantastic writer, with his style, dialogue, and character development. And the town of Derry became very realistic and detailed. Worth checking out.  Four out of five stars.

Citrus County

Read from Monday, February 13th to Wednesday, February 15th

Citrus County, by John Brandon.  This is a small book that I picked up awhile ago from the Museum of Unnatural History where I volunteer.  It was published by McSweeneys.  It is a quick story, dark most of the time, about a county in the backwoods of Florida.  In Citrus County, there are three main characters.  Shelby and Toby are middle school students, and Mr. Hibma is one of their teachers.  Shelby is bright, talented, with lots of promise.  She lives with her father and younger sister, and they are new to town.  Toby is a brooding, deeply troubled, quiet rebel.  He likes to take long walks by himself, and he lives with an abusive, alcoholic uncle deep in the woods.  Mr. Hibma is a young teacher, who skates by, sticks to himself, and prides himself on not trying very hard.  He is always harassed by one of the other, older, preachy teachers.

Of course, Shelby falls in love with Toby, and follows him around town.  But Toby realizes he is different, a villain, and knows he has to do something.  He kidnaps Shelby's little sister and keeps her locked in a bunker deep in the woods.  There is a big panic and search in town, but Toby's secret is kept for a couple of months.  Shelby works to get through it, even though it is with Toby by her side.  Mr. Hibma meanwhile is forced to coach the basketball team, while he harbors and almost goes through with a plan to murder the other annoying teacher.

Finally, Toby's guilt is too much for him and he goes to release the girl, but she has finally escaped.  Police converge on Toby's house, but his uncle decides to make a stand and he is arrested as the kidnapper.  Toby, an orphan, is adopted by Mr. Hibma, who is the only adult to take an interest in the kid.  Shelby's family is reunited, and it is a generally happy, although strange, ending.  This was kind of a bland, easy book, that I got through in just two days.  Not really something that will stick with me.  I don't really feel like spending too much time on the review. Three out of five stars.

A Very Minor Prophet

Read from Thursday, February 9th to Monday, February 13th.

A Very Minor Prophet: The Gospel according to Joseph Patrick Booker, as interpreted by his faithful scribe, Barth Flynn, a novel by James Bernard Frost.  This was my February Rumpus book club pick, and I really enjoyed this unique, large book.  It is set up, first of all, like a textbook, at least in the size, and the multiple columns of text on a page.  But then it is also meant to be a Gospel at times, with the fancy font, and also a comic book/ zine, complete with illustrations.  It is a hipster book, and an ode to that lifestyle of freaks and weirdos in Portland, and also to bikes, coffee and unique donuts.

Flynn is a young, college graduate who moves to Portland right before the Iraq war.  He goes for no discernible reason, and works in a coffee shop.  He tries writing zines, but with little success.  One day, while riding his bike, he gets a flat tire outside of an old church.  The church has been converted, haphazardly, into the home of Booker, a midget.  Booker has just returned from a trip down south, where he told people, for some reason, that he was a preacher, and so when Flynn arrived, he tried out a sermon.  These parts of the novel, where Booker preaches, are illustrated, with lots of word bubbles and cutting and pasting.   The sermon is about the real message of Jesus Christ.  How it is not the current bible-thumping, war-mongering Christians that closely follow his teachings, but actually the hipsters, weirdos, and self-proclaimed atheists that would probably be friends with a modern Jesus.

Flynn is inspired, and he creates a zine based on this experience, and this instantly becomes a hit.  He hangs out with Mercyx, a bike messenger, and develops a crush on her.  Flynn and other friends go to the church the following Sunday for another sermon.  Instead of wine and crackers, they eat Voodoo donuts and premium coffee.  Together, over the next few months, the zine does well and a professional illustrator is brought in to help.  The group has adventures, especially one bike trip up a mountain, that ends in a car crash and Flynn naked in Mercyx's room.  They kiss, but go no further.

Of course, things go downhill.  Flynn and Mercyx get awkward after she reveals she is a virgin.  He decides the logical thing would be to marry her, but his proposal is rejected and she is furious.  Flynn is also muscled out of all the proceeds from the zine, and is kicked off the project by greedy professionals.  Booker is also harassed by the leader of a local biker gang.  It is also revealed that Booker is a pimp.  That is how he made money.  Finally, in a moment of weakness, Booker and Mercyx hook up, and in retaliation Flynn buys one of Booker's hookers.  Flynn and Booker's relationship is in tatters, but Booker tries desperately to make it up to him.  He issues an apology to Flynn over the airwaves of Portland.  In this last sermon, Booker also makes the point that Americans need to take responsibility and apologize to the Muslim world for the wars going on.  Flynn rejects the apology at first, and then denies knowing Booker when the FBI come looking for him.  Turns out, Booker went to Iraq, and started preaching and apologizing, before he was strung up and martyred.  In their grief, Mercyx and Flynn are reunited, and end up getting married years later.  They inherit the church, and Flynn becomes the preacher every Sunday.

I really enjoyed this clever book.  I can really get behind all the preaching and the values of the characters.  I actually just bought a bike last week, so that I could take long bike rides like in the book.  Unique and very fun.  Flynn, the narrator, is relatable, but also deeply flawed at times, as all good characters should be.  Check this one out.  Four out of five stars.

Born to Run

Read from Monday, February 6th to Thursday, February 9th.

Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, is a fascinating non-fiction book that literally got me out of the door and onto trails.  I like books that actually have an influence on my life, and this book has been one of them, prompting me to run a lot more over the past few weeks.  BTR is the story of the Tarahumara tribe of the Copper Canyon in Mexico.  This tribe has existed mostly unperturbed by modern society, and they are known for their running ability.  Every member of the tribe is able to run incredibly long distances, usually over hundreds of miles at a time, at a fast pace, and without the numerous injuries that plague runners in our country.

McDougall profiles many of these Indians, along with Caballo Blanco, a white American from Colorado who is almost an honorary tribe member.  Caballo Blanco's main goal, and the main plot of the book, is to set up an epic ultra-marathon of 50 miles, in the Copper Canyon, pitting the Tarahumara against some of America's top ultra-runners.  McDougall discusses the world of Ultra-running in America, and some of the great races.  Some of these are up in the Rockies, or the woods of Virginia, or even Death Valley.  He also details his own training regimen, modeled after the Tarahumara, as he prepared for the race himself.  The diet was crucial, and it was all vegan.  He also advocates running barefoot, or in those Vibram five-fingers, because it is closest to our evolutionary progress, and it strengthens the feet.  In the years since Nike introduced the padded shoe, injuries have skyrocketed in the U.S., but are virtually non-existent in the Copper Canyon, where they only wear light sandals.

McDougall argues that humans evolved to be long-distance runners.  We are bipeds so that we can get more air into our lungs, and we practiced persistence hunting.  Unable to catch antelopes on a quick sprint, prehistoric humans hunted the same antelope over hundreds of miles, until it collapsed from exhaustion.  We are meant to run for a long time, but our sedentary society has evolved away from that.

The race finally ends up happening, and McDougall does a great job storytelling.  It is a close race, but it ends up binding the two cultures together over running.  I know it sounds cheesy, but it is an uplifting message.  The best advice in the book, and the advice that I have been passing along to others, is that to be a good runner, and to be able to run for a long time, you have to simply love running.  After I finished the book, I went out for a run, and I didn't want to stop because I was having a great time, just exploring, feeling good and getting the endorphins going.  I ran two hours that day.  I highly recommend reading this book, it is very inspirational.  I loaned it out to a friend the next day and others have requested to borrow it as well.  For what it tries to be, Born to Run gets Five out of Five stars.

The Alchemist

Read from Sunday, February 5th to Monday, February 6th

The Alchemist, by Paolo Coelho.  I was given this book the week before as a graduation gift from a week-long course in New York City at Momentum Education.  The themes in the book of personal journey, self discovery, and goal-seeking, correspond to many of the lessons taught in the course.

The Alchemist is a very popular book with very overt and simple themes.  I mean that in a good way.  It is a good story of Santiago, a young shepherd in Spain.  It is a timeless story, and seems to be able to exist in any era.  Santiago is a simple shepherd, but one day he has a dream of a treasure buried under the pyramids.  He dismisses it, but then he meets a king on the street who tells him that is his personal journey, and he must do everything he can to get there.  Santiago sells his flock, and sets off on a journey across the North of Africa.  At first, his money is stolen, but he works for a year in a glass shop, helping it to turn a profit.  Consequently he earns enough money to join a caravan across the Sahara.  There are dangerous tribal wars, but they manage to reach an oasis, where Santiago meets an Alchemist.  The alchemist teaches him how to realize his own personal legend, and this is more important than gold.  Santiago also falls in love with an oasis girl named Fatima, and he does not want to continue his journey.  But he realizes that if he does not fulfill his own legend, it might be easier at first, but he would end up being resentful and disappointed and disrespected. 

Santiago and the Alchemist continue onto the pyramids, but they are captured by an army.  They are sentenced to death, but the Alchemist convinces them to let them go if Santiago can harness the wind.  On the third day, Santiago is able to connect with his heart and the universal forces of the world.  He realizes how everything is connected, and causes a wind storm.  He is successful, and is able to return to Fatima.

It is a highly allegorical novel, with the themes pushed right into your face.  When you want something in life, the whole universe conspires to help you get it.  The key is to be persistent, recognize the omens, and be articulate about what it is that you want.  Along the way of your own personal legend, you are able to help out the personal legends of those around you.  Santiago was helped when he was given a job in a crystal shop, and he ended up helping the shopkeeper by developing new ideas and expanding the business. 

The Alchemist is a good fable that I recommend, even though it is probably more self-help than literature. I recommend it to anyone who feels they are stuck in a rut, or if their life isn't going anywhere.  You can all take charge of your life, make the decisions you need to make in order to fulfill your dreams, and the rest will work itself out.  Four out of five stars.

House of Leaves

Read from Saturday, January 14th to Sunday, February 5th.

What a crazy trip House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski, was.  When I first read the intro to this book, about a guy reading the same book and having nightmares, I fell asleep on my couch and had a nightmare myself.  It was crazy.  I was almost too freaked out to continue at that point, but I am glad that I stuck with it.  HOL is tough to explain.  It is a work of art, first of all.  An experiential book, one that would not work in any other format than the large, full-color, physical book.  There are pictures, diagrams, single words on pages, sentences on different parts of the page, going every direction, boxes of footnotes within pages, and words on top of other words. 

HOL is the story of a man, Johnny Truant, who finds a collection of writing by another recently deceased man, Zampano, who was writing about "The Navidson Record," a supposedly famous home movie about a man, Will Navidson, who explores his mysterious house.  So there are stories within stories within stories, told from many different narrators.  The bulk of HOL is Zampano doing an academic study of The Navidson Record, filled with all kinds of (fictitious) academic sources.  Johnny is organizing Zampano's work, but he comments frequently in a different font of footnotes.

Will Navidson is a famous photojournalist who buys a house in Virginia with his wife, Karen, and two children.  He sets out to record the family at all times with Hi-8s in order to capture intimate family moments.  Him and Karen have had difficulties because he was always out in harm's way, but now Will is trying to become a family man.  However they soon discover strange things about the house.  The inside seems to be growing larger than the outside.  Will, his brother and others cannot seem to figure out the anomaly.  Soon, a hallway appears in the house, and Will explores, using his cameras of course.  Inside, there is a never-ending maze of hallways, all pitch black and with no other discernible features, and much, much larger than the house should be.  Navidson, his brother and friends, and even some professional explorers, try to explore this fascinating, but freaky find.  The hallways always seem to shift, and although there is no sign of life, there is always a persistent growl heard from afar. 

One of the explorers goes crazy and shoots the other two.  After a shaky rescue mission, Will's brother dies as well, and Karen issues an ultimatum that they must evacuate.  They spent months apart, both from the house and themselves, and the marriage seems to be on the rocks.  But Will has to return to the House.  He cannot leave without seeing it through to the end, so he goes on an epic exploration that lasts for weeks.  Karen senses him in danger and follows him to the house, and Will is saved at the last moment by waking up on the lawn.  It is not a horror story, but in fact a love story.  They need each other, and once they realize that fact, they can go back to their own lives and are released from the house. 

Johnny, meanwhile, while trying to comprehend all that Zampano wrote, slowly sinks into a mentally deranged psychopath.  He hears and sees a monster following him at all times.  He cannot sleep.  He goes out with his friend Lude and picks up a lot of girls, but always falls back into a constant despair.  He leaves L.A. to try and find the house for himself, but he wanders around the country aimlessly, barely surviving.  Eventually, Johnny kills a guy, however he is a very unreliable narrator so it is difficult to piece together exactly what happened.  At the end of the novel, we are presented with a series of letters from his mother, who was extremely paranoid and crazy in a mental institute.  She misses her son terribly, and eventually kills herself.

This was a very interesting but great reading experience.  I was very exhausted after finishing the book.  It was very cool to constantly be shifting the book around to follow the story.  The set-up follows the mood in the story.  When the characters are cramped, the writing is cramped.  When they are lost and don't know which direction to go, the words go every which way.  It is a cool effect.  Definitely recommend checking this book out.  Four out of five stars.

Life : Keith Richards

Read from Monday, January 9th to Friday, January 13th, 2012

What a fantastic memoir by Keith Richards.  He is my namesake!  My mom loved him as a teenagers in the sixties and seventies, and named me after him.  After reading the memoir, I am honored.  Keith was a shy kid growing up in England, and he never lost that innocence.  Of course he was very susceptible to addictions, but I feel a strong connection to him.  He just wanted to sit there and pick at his guitar and play the blues.

Keith described his childhood in England, and his rocky relationship with his father, who he reconnected with in the 1980's.  He described meeting Mick and putting the original band together.  They scraped together shows, just enough to get by, until they grew enough of a following to start touring.  Then they were able to start recording, making hits, and make it to America and around the world.

Keith told the stories about traveling through America, and how many times they barely dodged the law.  He described the drugs, the groupies, the parties, the relationship among the bandmates.  Being kicked out of England because they had to pay too many taxes, so they were exiled in France, where they recorded Exile on Main Street (of which I am listening right at this moment.)  The Stones were the biggest band for the longest time, since the Beatles went their own way in the 1970's.  However, Mick and Keith had issues, and Mick went for an unsuccessful solo career, before rejoining the band for the megatours of the 1990's. 

Keith described the song-writing process, as well as the meaning behind many of the lyrics.  He is incredibly talented, and also humbled to have met many of his heroes.  Keith also described the difficult process of becoming sober and clean from the heroin, and reconnecting with his large family.  Ever since finishing the book, I have been listening to the Stones constantly, and have watched a few documentaries.  I find the whole story of the rock star epic life fascinating.  Four out of five stars.

Skippy Dies

Read from Thursday, December 16th to to Monday, January 9th, 2012

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray.  I read this book mostly by Kindle on the treadmill.  It is a tragicomedy about an Irish prep school, Seabrook.  Shortlisted for many awards, it is a recent novel that deals with a lot of current events, but feels timeless.  It took me awhile to get into the flow of the book, but once I did, I really enjoyed it.  The protagonist is Skippy, AKA Daniel Juster, who dies in a donut eating contest in the opening pages.  The rest of the long novel deals with events leading up to the event, and then the aftermath.

Skippy is a shy, awkward 14 year old boy.  His mom is sick, and there is a tension with his father.  He is on the swim team, but also takes pills to ease the stress of life.  But he falls for a girl in the neighboring school, Lori, the frisbee girl.  Skippy's best friend and roommate, Ruprecht, is a complete nerd, and obsessed with astrophysics and string theory.  He believes he can open the portal to another dimension, and almost thinks that he does at one point.  There are other boys, all obsessed with sex, girls, making fun of teachers, and pills and booze.  Murray does a great job of capturing the obsessions of young teenage immature boys, and girls as well.  There is also Carl, a drug dealer and aspiring sociopath, who is also madly in love with Lori, and will not tolerate any other competition.  He had been hooking up with Lori for a little while as he was giving her diet pills.  Also, a history teacher, Howard the Coward, a former Seabrook student who was disgraced for allowing a star athlete to get paralyzed in his place, factors into the plot.  Howard lives with his American girlfriend, but he is dissatisfied, and becomes infatuated with a new French geography teacher.

At the Halloween dance, Howard hooks up with the geography teacher, Aurelie, and he breaks up with his girlfriend, throwing all the eggs into that basket.  During the dance, Skippy escapes with Lori and they take pills and hang out and kiss, to the disbelief of most of the other students.  Skippy and Lori begin an awkward relationship, in which it is eventually revealed that Lori is just using him to make Carl jealous, even though she does like Skippy.  Also, on the Howard front, Aurelie has a fiancee and she leaves the school to get married, leaving Howard heartbroken and alone.  He has to deal with the Automator, the acting principal Greg, who is obsessed with renovating the school and breaking many of the Catholic traditions.  There are still priests teaching there, such as Father Green, who has to grapple with the guilt of molesting boys in Africa in the past.

Carl finds out about Skippy, and tries to beat him up, but Skippy miraculously manages to land a solid punch and knock him out.  However, Carl retaliates by hooking up with Lori, videotaping a blowjob, and sending the video to Skippy.  The shock of the video, and all the other stress of life, send him over the edge, and he collapses during the donut eating contest and dies while writing 'tell lori' in jam on the floor. 

Ruprecht is obviously devastated, and he gives up all nerdiness and physics and just becomes a drone that gets picked on contstantly.  Lori becomes depresses as well because she is wracked with guilt.  Howard tries to rally the students by taking them on an impromptu field trip, but this gets him fired.  The other friends rally around Ruprecht in the end at a school concert, and convince him to try one last time to communicate with the other dimension, where Skippy is believed to be.  Ruprecht plays music while also running a machine he built, and Lori sings a song from the clinic where she is held.  The story ends with a little bit of hope, as Ruprecht connects with Lori, and Skippy's memory is able to live on among them.

It was an enjoyable and well written novel.  Very accessible and stylized.  Murray is very talented, and  tells the story from all the main characters' points of views.  He uses great imagery and different styles, and is able to create both a comic mood and a tragic one.  I feel terrible for Skippy, and I also hate the people that did it to him, but I also hope for their redemption.  I would recommend checking it out.  Three and a a half out of five stars.

Treasure Island!!!

Read on Wednesday, December 15th.

I read Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine and December's Rumpus Book Club Selection, in just a day.  This was a very interesting, different read.  It is lighthearted, but also morbid, and it is forgettable, but in a good way.  I could definitely relate, to some extent, with the unnamed narrator, a recent female college graduate.  She is in a solid relationship with her boyfriend Lars, and works at a Pet Library.  When she reads Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the narrator becomes obsessed.  She is passionate about interpreting this old book and applying the core values of Boldness, Resolution, Independence and Horn-Blowing to her own life, which she views as pathetic.  

The narrator becomes crass, fiercely independent and quite bitchy.  She is very unsympathetic as she delves further and further into the madness of the book.  Eventually, she is fired from the Pet Library for buying a parrot, and then Lars breaks up with her.  She is forced to move back in with her parents, along with the annoying talking parrot.  The book takes another turn as we meet her sister Adrianna, who is older, larger, and having an affair with her elderly boss, a man who also had a brief affair with the sister's mother in the past. 

The family around the narrator descends into a partial anarchy, but she still remains inside her precious book and alienating those around her.  At one point, she kills the parrot and makes it look like it died of natural causes.  Finally, the family and Lars and others have an intervention for her, and try to convince her to give up the book.  She refuses, and stabs her sister in the hand.  She realizes how unbearable she has become and finally throws away the book, leaving hope for the future.

It is a funny book about literary obsession (which I hope I don't have to worry about, even though at many times I find myself emulating the books I am reading.)  The narrator is unlikable, but that is okay because we are entertained and curious about what she will do next.  I was pleasantly surprised by my reaction to the book, and I am sorry that I missed the author chat online due to work.  Four out of five stars.

American Gods

Read from Tuesday, December 6th to Wednesday, December 28th, 2011.

I started American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, as an audiobook, downloaded for free from Audible.com (I'm sure you've seen the ads.).  I wanted to try out an audiobook for the first time in my life, but I wasn't too thrilled.  I'm sure it would be great if I commuted to work, or drove a lot, but I do neither, so when I wanted to continue the story, I most often just picked up the book (borrowed and recommended by my co-worker Sue).  I read a lot faster than the spoken version.  

American Gods is a different genre than I normally read.  A little simplistic and cliched at times, Gaiman often writes for children and I could tell.  So the story took awhile to grow on me, but it did mostly thanks to the fascinating plot.  It begins with Shadow being released from prison.  His wife, Laura, was killed in a car crash while giving road head to another guy, and so Shadow got out early.  While traumatized, Shadow is a quiet guy and the narrator.  On the trip home, he is coerced into working as a kind of assistant for Wednesday, a strange but charismatic older man who knows everything about Shadow already. 

The conflict lies in the premise that all Gods imagined by humanity actually walk the earth, most assuming everyday, boring lives.  They came over with Americans from the Old country, where they flourished, but in America the Gods are slowly dying out as people slowly forget.  They are not Gods like Jesus and Allah, but more like the Norse Pantheon, the Hindu Gods, African animal gods and Pagan symbols, like Easter in human form.  Wednesday is Odin, the Norse King God, and he thrives on human sacrifice to him, which has been lacking in recent years.  The old Gods are threatened by the new Gods of America, those of Media, the Internet, Television and Commercialism.    Wednesday and Shadow travel across the country, (with beautiful scenery and imagery), trying to recruit the reluctant old Gods to join together with him to fight off the threat from the new Gods.  They meet characters like dwarves, elves, leprechauns, the Russian God Czernobog, Anansi from Africa, the Zorya from Russia, and Egyptian gods of the dead.  Also, Laura is reanimated as a zombie that helps out Shadow from time to time.

They are pursued by the new Gods and a government group comparable to the FBI or CIA.  Laura kills two agents that were detaining Shadow, and Wednesday hides him in a small town in Wisconsin.  This is a strange little detour in the book, as Shadow assumes a fake identity and befriends some of the quaint, nice townsfolk.  They have a tradition each winter of sinking an old car on the lake, but also a weird coincidence of kids going missing each winter. 

Soon, Wednesday is murdered by the new Gods, and all the old Gods are galvanized into action.  They retrieve his body, and Shadow agrees to hold vigil, which consists of hanging from the World Tree in rural Virginia for nine days.  While on the tree, Shadow dies, and enters the Underworld, where he is judged by Anubis, and learns that Wednesday was his mysterious, unknown father.  Shadow is brought back from the dead by Easter in time to make it to the final, climactic battle held at Rock City.  Shadow has realized that the whole thing is just an elaborate con set up by Odin and Loki.  The battle between the gods would be dedicated to Odin, and he feeds on the sacrifice, and Loki feeds on chaos.  Both gods would become incredibly powerful.  Shadow arrives just in time to convince all the gods, on each side, to just accept that America is not a good place for them, but they should make do with what they have.  Thus, the battle is averted, and Odin's ghost fades.  Laura kills Loki as well, before finally being able to rest.

Afterwards, Shadow returns to the Wisconsin lake town and discovers there a kobold in the form of Hinzelman, an old man who protects the town from economic ruin in exchange for the sacrifice of one child each winter.  Shadow and a cop defeat him, and his house burns down.  Since Shadow is Wednesday's son, he is part-God himself.  He spends the rest of his life wandering the world. 

It was a very interesting book.  Took me awhile to get into the story, but I flew through the second half of this large book.  Although Gaiman is technically a foreigner, he captures the soul of small-town America very well (almost no action happens in cities).  I purchased my own copy after returning it to Sue.  I am also interested in the HBO adaptation coming soon.  Four out of five stars.

Lord of Misrule

Read from Wednesday, December 7th to Tuesday, December 14th.

I've got eight open posts right now for books that I have read, or are currently reading.  The backlog is getting quite extensive.  As you can tell, I've been reading multiple books at a time.  I do this because I can have something on my Kindle for the treadmill, and a physical book for other places.  And then when the Rumpus Book selection comes in, I try to read that as quickly as possible for the discussion.  So I'll down a Monster, listen to some Stones, and try to bust out as many as these reviews as possible.

I've been meaning to read Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon for a while now, as it won the National Book Award for 2010.  I like reading books that offer a different perspective on the world than the one I live in, and this is one of them.  It is the story of a pair of outsiders, Tommy and Maggie, that show up one day at a run down horse track in rural West Virginia in the 1960's (I think).  Tommy is a naive, but experienced horse trainer, and he has come into some quality horses that he hopes he can use to make a quick buck at the track.  The idea is to come in quickly, race the horses and win money before anyone can catch onto the quality of the horses.  Maggie is his younger girlfriend, and they have a very abusive, but animalistic relationship. 

However, they run into problems of course.  Maggie is very attached to her animals, and when some are put in danger or sold off, she gets in over her head.  There is another trainer, a gypsy named Deucey, and a groom Medicine Ed, and Maggie buys a horse with them, Little Spinoza.  Maggie also falls under the gaze of the head trainer at the track, Joe Dale Bigg, who is a small-time mafioso.  She is protected by a loan-shark uncle, Two-Tie, but he is murdered in the woods by Bigg's henchmen.  Tommy also slowly starts to lose his mind the longer they stay at the track.  He often leaves for long periods of time, and makes irrational decisions.  Eventually, Maggie must become the heroine and confront Joe Dale Bigg after a climactic race with the legendary Lord of Misrule, and she defeats him and escapes, with a little help from Tommy, who ends up in an institution.

The story is told in four sections, one for each of the main horses, and each ending in an important race.  It is also written in a heavy dialect, which can be hard to decipher sometimes for a city boy like me.  Lord of Misrule was a great book, and I can understand why it won the award.  Overarching themes of luck and fate combine with some foxhole humor and tragedy. But such is life.  Four out of five stars.

Love and Shame and Love

Read from Sunday, November 20th to Tuesday, December 6th.

Love and Shame and Love, by Peter Orner, is another book from the Rumpus Book Club.  I haven't been getting around to reviewing the books as soon after I read them as I would like, so it will be brief.

This is the story of three generations of the Popper family from Chicago.  It mostly follows Alex Popper, and starts off with his relationship with Kat in college in the late 1980's.  Popper is a quiet, reserved kid that has a problem remembering too much.  Kat is the first girl he ever really connected with, and for half a decade they spend in bliss in their apartment, until Kat becomes pregnant and it forces her to evaluate her relationship and who she wants to end up with.  They break up, and Popper gets visitation rights to his daughter and ends up a lawyer.  Most of this story is resolved at the end of the novel.

In the middle, we learn about the modern origins of the family.  Seymour is the paternal grandfather, with his wife Bernice.  Seymour went off to WWII to fight in the Pacific, and he ended up the commander of a large battleship.  His experience in the war is told through one-sided letters to Bernice that are spread throughout the novel.  After the war, Seymour and Bernice set up shop in Chicago and host many celebrities at their house, like the Rat Pack.  The Poppers are deeply involved in Chicago politics, and they are allies with Mayor Daley.  Seymour's son and Alex's dad Philip is a rich lawyer and he makes an unsuccessful bid for political office.  Philip and Alex's mom Miriam end up getting divorced after she has an affair with one of the family friends, and the story follows Alex and his brother Leo as they navigate school living with their mom and becoming estranged from their father.

It's a beautiful, although sad story, and the technique is the most interesting part.  There are dozens of chapters, each one only a few pages long, and each one telling a short story or anecdote about the family.  These are mostly sequential, although it reads more of an oral history of the most compelling parts of Popper's life.  The ending with Kat I found especially tragic as I had hoped for more of a happy ending, although the reader is able to feel the cyclical nature of lives.

Supposedly mostly autobiographical, according to Peter Orner in his author chat, it reads like excellent fiction.  Orner does an especially good job of showing things to the reader, and letting them figure it out themselves, rather than telling them what is going on.  It can be difficult to follow along, since each chapter is a new setting and time and characters, but you eventually get the hang of it.  Really recommend it, and look forward to more by Orner.  Four out of five stars.

The Crying of Lot 49

Read from Sunday, November 6th to Tuesday, November 8th.

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon.  My first novel by Pynchon, it was discussed heavily in How to Read Literature like a Professor.  It is a very original satire written in the mid-60's.  The main character, Oedipa Maas, is tapped to be the executor of her old boyfriend's massive California estate.  She leaves her DJ husband, Mucho, to spend time on the estate and figure out what this guy, Pierce Inverarity, owned and all his real estate holdings as well.  However, for Oedipa it is a descent into near madness as she is thrust into a giant, world-wide conspiracy, or so she believes.  Tristero is an old postal service that operated in Europe in the middle ages, and it was opposed by Thurn and Taxis.  Tristero was crushed in the 18th century, but now Oedipa begins seeing all sorts of references to the organization throughout the estate and town of this man.  She is led to believe that Tristero is still conducting an underground mailing operation, using secret symbols and the acronym W.A.S.T.E.

Oedipa cannot seem to find any sort of hard facts on the organization, but she tries to hunt down information.  She meets many interesting characters, like scientists working on perpetual motion, a Beatles-like band of emo hippies, a lawyer she has an affair with, her psychiatrist (and ex-Nazi) who prescribes LSD, and a professor at a college.  However, people start disappearing mysteriously as Oedipa discovers more and more references.  Oedipa does not have any solid evidence, and she is constantly doubting whether or not she is just hallucinating everything, but every time she doubts herself, something new happens.  The term 'crying of lot 49' refers to the auctioning of a stamp collection held by Pierce, which may or not contain Tristero stamps.

It is a wonderful novel of conspiracy theories and a hidden side of history of the Old West and Europe.  It is a quick read, and I read most of it one sunny afternoon lying on the grass in Meridian Hill Park.  Thinking of using some of the conspiracy theories and strange symbols in my own work, since it is very light-hearted and upbeat.  I will have to check out more Pynchon as well; Gravity's Rainbow is still sitting on my shelf.   Four out of five stars.

Zipper Mouth

Read from Monday, October 17th to Friday, October 21st.

Zipper Mouth, by Laurie Weeks, is the second of the books for my monthly book club from the Rumpus.  I enjoyed Zipper Mouth much more than Show Up, Look Good, even though they were both about similar subjects; a girl trying to make it in New York City. She is a deeply interesting protagonist.  Heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, she works in various temp jobs while she struggles with a strong infatuation with a straight woman (she is a lesbian).  Late nights in clubs, letters to dead celebrities as if they were her best friends, apology letters to her real friends, a homeless woman spending the night on her couch, these are some of the adventures she goes through. 

There is not a traditional plot structure, and the sequences of time often are blurred.  She does not end up with her straight friend, although she often leads her on into thinking that she might.  The prose is beautiful, and it reads like one long high, and the sentences flow naturally into one another. 

The protagonist is a complete mess, but she is very sympathetic and human, someone we all wish we were friends with, although from a slight distance.  I did not get a chance to participate in the online discussion unfortunately because of work.  I would have liked to talk with Laurie Weeks.  It is a quick, brief review, because it has been awhile since I read the book.  Unfortunately I have been busy with other projects so my time for reading has suffered dramatically.  However, I highly recommend checking out the book.  Four out of five stars.

Infinite Jest

Read from Tuesday, September 20th to Tuesday, October 11th.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, is hands down the most ambitious book I have ever read.  Wallace is a pure genius, and he manages to create an entire futuristic, dystopian world so thoroughly convincing, that it is hard to think I am not still living in it.  It took me about three weeks or so to finish this book, and I really rushed through it, but it was about 1000 pages, but a couple hundred of tiny footnotes that you have to keep checking in the back of the book.  And once I finished the book, I started working on my own writing project, so I haven't had much free time to read new books or update the blog.

Where to begin?  Infinite Jest's main theme is about the importance of entertainment to a society.  It is comical, but dark comedy, and often very strange.  All the characters are dysfunctional in some way, and need something as a crutch.  For many characters, it is drugs and alcohol.  But it could also be a tennis academy and the rigid structure.  Another stays entertained by seducing women, and another by creating mind-bending movies.  The story centers around the Incandenza family.  Hal, arguably the main character, is a 17 year old star at Enfield Tennis Academy, which his father, James (or Himself), founded.  His brother Mario is autistic and deformed, brother Orin a professional football punter in Arizona, and Mother April currently the headmistress of the Academy.  James killed himself with his head in a microwave a few years before the action takes place.  He was an avant garde filmmaker who had just completed "The Entertainment" or "Infinite Jest," a movie so compelling and entertaining, that anyone who gets caught watching it will go into a trance and only be satisfied while watching the movie on repeat, never eating or drinking or sleeping, until they soon die.  The movie becomes a weapon of mass destruction, that a Quebec Terrorist group, the ATF, tries to find in order to force the U.S. government to allow their separation.

The story takes place in the near future, in which the U.S., Canada and Mexico merged into one country, O.N.A.N.  To earn money, each year is leased to a company to advertise, like the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.  Also, due to a pollution problem, most of Northern New England  was turned into a giant garbage dump, called the Concavity or the Convexity.  Quebec, after trying to separate from Canada, now aims to separate from O.N.A.N, so the ATF, which is made up of men in wheelchairs that lost their legs jumping away from trains, resort to terrorist actions.

At the bottom of the hill from ETA is the Ennet Halfway House, where Don Gately is a counselor.  Don is a reformed Demerol addict who counsels other addicts, sometimes unsuccessfully.  Towards the end, he is shot trying to protect his residents, and he struggles in the hospital to resist the urges to take the morphine for the pain.  He is visited by the ghost of Himself.  Gately also develops a relationship with Joelle Van Dyne, Orin's former girlfriend and the star of Infinite Jest the movie.  She wears a veil so no one can see her perfect face.

Much of the action takes place at ETA and the Ennet House.  There are short passages that sometimes skip around chronologically and follow different characters at a time.  It was tricky to follow at first, since it was tough to figure out how the years related to one another, but eventually the storyline emerged.  An ATF Remy Marafe infiltrates the Ennet House looking for the tape, but he is really a double agent, working for the U.S. government.  Hal struggles to break his addiction from marijuana after he and other teammates are threatened with urine testing, so he seeks help at the halfway house.  There are many other students at the school and residents at the halfway house, and nearly all of them are painstakingly detailed.

There is no discernible ending to the story, which is frustrating, but also fits in with the theme.  It is unclear whether or not the ATF gets ahold of the Infinite Jest, but the next year Hal is applying to college in Arizona, and he cannot seem to speak coherently, an ending that is difficult to interpret.  Wallace has fun playing with all the characters, as well our concept of a traditional story and novel structure.  It is really enjoyable if you just decide to go along with all the strange side-trips and backstories that he throws at you.  I also highly recommend reading all the endnotes as soon as they are presented.  It is a break in the action, but also a continuation of the story.  Some endnotes go on for many pages.  There is also a complete filmography of all the movies made by James Incandenza.

Infinite Jest is an amazing book, and I regret I cannot delve into the depths of the story any deeper.  I expect I will take another read of this book at some point in my life, expecting that there are many things I missed the first time through.  As I said, I am working on my own writing project now, and I am trying to incorporate some of the style of Wallace in my own work, like the fantastic stories and character details and the humor, (although right now it sounds similar to A Confederacy of Dunces).  Go take a month and read Infinite Jest, you will not regret it.  Four and a half out of five stars.

ONE YEAR!

The beginning of October marks about a year I've been keeping this journal/blog.  I have read 78 books in that time frame!  I hope I can get another hundred by this time next year!

Let's go back and pick out the best book of each month:

October 2010:  Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.
November 2010: You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers
December 2010: The War of the End of the World, by Mario Vargas Llosa
January 2011: The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz
February 2011: Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
March 2011: 2666, by Roberto Bolano
April 2011: Moon Palace, by Paul Auster
May 2011: Don Quixote, by Cervantes
June 2011: A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
July 2011: Going after Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien
August 2011: Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
September 2011: The Instructions, by Adam Levin (although Infinite Jest is in progress, and would probably make the list for October 2011)

Book of the Year?  Very tough decision, although I would have to base it off which book has stayed with me the most, and affected me the most. 

First Place : 2666, by Roberto Bolano
Honorable Mentions: The War of the End of the World, Going after Cacciato, The Instructions, and You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Show Up, Look Good

Read from Wednesday, September 28th to Thursday, September 29th.

I read Show Up, Look Good, by Mark Wisniewski, while at the same time reading Infinite Jest. However, there is an interesting story behind the reading of this novel.  Last week or so, I joined the Rumpus Book Club, an online group that sends you a book each month that has yet to be released.  You read the book, and at the end of the month, get to participate in an online discussion with the author.  Last night was the discussion, so I hurriedly read the book I had just received in the mail.  Luckily, it was a quick read and less than 200 pages, so I finished in plenty of time.  The discussion was very interesting, and offered Mark's point of view on the events that transpired, and I realized some things I missed, some themes that were overlooked.  Mark was very defensive of his work, as any author might be, and he came out responding to criticism about the structure of the story, and claimed that many reviewers didn't get it, or couldn't understand the subtext.  At that point, things became uncomfortable in the discussion, as it was unclear whether or not Mark was including us in that group.

Anyway, SULG is the story about an unreliable narrator Michelle, who runs away to NYC in the late 90's after she caught her boyfriend in a plastic vagina.  In the very opening paragraph, Michelle says she witnessed a secret murder, and the events of the book lead up to that moment.  However, the tone is very light-hearted at first, as Michelle navigates the many eccentrics of New York.  One by one, bad things happen to Michelle, as she learns more and more about herself, and you can recognize (or at least Mark hopes you can) the clouds building on the horizon.  Michelle finds an apartment with an old woman, and her one requirement for the deal on the rent is that Michelle bathe her each night before bed.  Michelle struggles with money, and she scalps Letterman tickets on the street to get by.  However, that apartment burns down right after Michelle befriends Ernest, a retired Yankee who can't talk cause of cancer.  She finds a place with a snobby MFA at NYU wannabe writer Sarah, who has writing workshops that boil down to mean-spirited gossip.  Michelle gets busted by the Letterman crew, then meets an old couple from Queens, Frank and Francine, but they offend Sarah and Michelle gets kicked out again. 

She stays with Frank and Francine for a night, but they imply they want a threesome with her, so she gets freaked out and finds her own run-down studio apartment.  Michelle tries to get a painting/drawing career on track, but it is doomed from the start, so she works in a supermarket under a sadistic, greedy boss.  Once she gets caught stealing old coins from the drawer, Michelle is fired, and ready to move back to Illinois, when she runs into Ernest on the street.  Ernest offers Michelle an apartment for free, all she has to do is leave for a few hours each afternoon so johns can bring prostitutes back.  Michelle is uncomfortable, but she allows it to happen, in order to live in New York.  At this point, things get dark, as she witnesses a girl being dragged away rolled up in a comforter by Ernest.  This coincides with the events of 9/11.  This is also where things get tricky to follow, as it turns out Michelle had been working at the same seedy nightclub as the murdered girl, a fact that she initially hid from the reader.  In order to escape from the mob, she must finally leave New York.

A city that initially seemed so promising and full of hope eventually became the home of all her nightmares.  She wanted to keep staying to prove to the people of her hometown that she could make it, but at what cost?  The issue/theme Mark wanted to highlight was Michelle's denial, which became more apparent as things progressed.  Her mother died in childbirth, and her father always secretly resented her for that, and Michelle gradually came to acceptance of this toward the end of the novel.  However, the mother isn't brought up as a theme until the supermarket chapter, close to the end.  9/11 coincides with the murder because both events people should have seen coming.  There were clues throughout, according to Mark (although many readers disagree), and Michelle knowingly withholds certain information until the very end.  There the issue of an unreliable narrator comes up.  Does the unreliability work if the narrator simply does not share things with the reader?  How is the reader supposed to know?

SULG is a very funny novel for the first three quarters, and then the end is dark and does keep you thinking.  The funnier parts remind me of The Extra Man, which I recently read.  Mark does a good job at parts describing the artistic process, a fact I mentioned to him in the conversation.  The ending is and will be difficult for many readers when it is released next month, and I can see how it works, especially after the conversation I was privileged to attend.  Three out of five stars.

(By the way, I hope you can tell how giddy I am to be able to post a review before the book is released, it makes me feel like a real critic!  Like I actually get to do this for a living!)

Nazi Literature in the Americas

Read from Saturday, September 17th to Monday, September 19th.

Nazi Literature in the Americas, by Roberto Bolano.  This is an interesting collection of stories by one of my favorite authors.  Each short story is set up like an encyclopedia article about a fictitious right wing author living in the Americas during the past century.  Bolano gives a biography of each author, and a catalog and description of all their major work.  In this fictional world, the authors in each chapter sometimes interact with one another, and sometimes they interact with real-life characters as well.

It is fiction dressed up in a non-fiction format, which is very interesting.  And it is also misleading to say that all the authors are Nazis.  They are all right-leaning, and some fought for the Nazis or for Franco in Spain.  But some are just conspiracy theorists railing against the communist governments.  Their writing is all influenced by their political beliefs though, which is an overriding connection.  The genre of writing is different as well.  Some are novelists, some poets, some write crazy science fiction, and some write essays on philosophers.  One of my favorites was an author who wrote poetry in the sky using the smoke from a plane. 

An interesting, quick read by Bolano, something completely different from his massive 2666.  I enjoyed it, and felt a little empathy for some of these outrageous authors, which shows how good his writing can be.  The narrator sees things from an impartial omniscient third person, but Bolano throws in tender moments that offer tremendous insight into each character.  Three out of five stars.

Blood Meridian

Read from Tuesday, September 13th to Friday, September 16th.

Coming off of the violent student uprising in The Instructions, I took on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which many critics argue is his finest work.  I agree to an extent, but most of the book was very unsettling and disturbing, as it deals with an entirely different and almost incomprehensible level of violence.  In the familiar setting of the Border Trilogy, the action in this book takes place in 1849 and 1850.  Texas has become a state, and America just defeated Mexico, and savage Indians still roam the deserts of this region.  The scariest aspect of this book is that it is in fact meticulously researched and based on historical facts.

The story follows the unnamed Kid, a 14 year old Tennessean who runs away from home to Texas.  The narrative is in the third person, and we do not know the inner thoughts of the kid, and parts of the story do not follow him at all.  However, he is the main protagonist, and he gets in bar fights in various towns, until he is recruited by an ex-Captain for an expedition into Mexico to reclaim territory for the U.S.  That expedition, while traveling into Mexico, is attacked and brutally massacred by a band of Apache warriors.  The kid and few others survive, and he staggers around the desert until he is picked up and imprisoned by Mexican police (since he was part of an invading army).  In the prison, he befriends Toadvine, a fellow American, and Toadvine convinces the officials to release them because they are experienced Indian hunters.  The kid and Toadvine are released and join Captain Glanton's gang, who have been commissioned by the governor to hunt Apaches, and are paid based on the number of scalps they bring back.

Glanton is a brutal man, an ex-officer and outlaw from the U.S.  Also in the gang is the judge, Holden.  This incredibly interesting character eventually emerges as the antagonist, but not until the end.  The judge is a self-taught genius naturalist, and often described in mythical ways.  He is a giant, and hairless, and with an easy predilection for violence.  He is smart, and enjoys teaching the other riders about geology, astronomy and other subjects.  The gang follows the trail of the Indians across northern Mexico, and eventually slaughters an entire village in the night.  They collect dozens of scalps, and return as heroes to the city.  However, they soon wear out their welcome, by partying too hard and destroying things and hurting the townsfolk.  Back out on the trail, the gang has trouble finding Indians, so they kill peaceful Indians and even entire towns of Mexicans in order to increase their profit.  Of course, they become outlaws in Mexico, and the army is sent after them. 

While being hunted by both Indians and the Mexican army, Glanton's gang manages to make it across Mexico and into Arizona.  They brutally take over a ferry crossing on the Yuma River, and rob settlers trying to cross.  This operation lasts for a few months, until the local Yuma Indians surprise attack, and kill most of the gang.  The kid, Toadvine, the judge, and an ex-priest escape, but the judge turns on the kid, by trying to get the lone gun off him.  The kid is hunted by the judge all the way to San Diego, where the kid is imprisoned.  After confessing everything to the authorities, he is released.  Many decades pass, where the kid wanders around the American West, going from odd job to job, never able to shake the memory of the judge.  Finally, in 1878 in Texas, the kid runs into the judge in a saloon.  The judge claims that violence is everywhere, and it is what man was made to do.  The judge claims he can never die, since he is able to master violence, he is able to control the world.  The kid resists, but in the end the judge finds him in an outhouse.  It is unclear if the kid is murdered, only that other patrons gasp and are speechless when coming upon the outhouse.  The judge is finally seen dancing on the stage, claiming he can never die.

The ending is definitely open-ended for interpretation, (some suggest rape and then murder).  However, the one theme of violence is ever-present, to the point where it is mindless and dull.  It loses shock value, and the only point in the book where someone is astounded by an act of violence is the final scene in the outhouse.  It is also interesting to view the evolution of a gang of criminals.  At the onset, these guys were just hired soldiers, but the power they possessed allowed them to run wild and become greedy, finally becoming an (almost) unstoppable force of evil.  We do not get into the head of the kid, but we can see from his actions that he never initiates violence, only follows along with the others.  He is one of the only ones that shows any weakness or humanity, depending on your point of view.  Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart.  I also heard a rumor that James Franco was interested in a movie adaptation, which sounds amazing.  Four and a half out of five stars.

The Instructions

Read from Monday, September 5th to Tuesday, September 13th.

In a little over a week, I finished The Instructions, by Adam Levin.  1030 pages chronicling  four days in the life of Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee. It is hard to know where to start with this one.  So much action, dialogue, and philosophical opining is packed into those four days, and in spite of the weight of the book, it was very difficult to put down.  The best place to start is with the protagonist himself, Gurion.  He is ten years old, and in his fourth school, Aptakisic Middle School outside Chicago.  He is incredibly brilliant, a self-described 'scholar' of the Jewish faith.  Other kids and some teachers are naturally attracted to him, they become his followers and fellow scholars.  However, he has been kicked out of other schools due to violence, and inciting other students to violence, through building 'penny guns.'  Throughout the book, Gurion considers he might be the Jewish Messiah, which influences his actions later in the story.  The Instructions is Gurion's story told by Gurion himself, and it is his scripture, written in 2013 while he is in hiding, but the events take place in November 2006.

In Aptakisic, Gurion is placed in the Cage, a special classroom where kids are kept in cubicles, locked in, and not allowed to talk or ask questions.  They are caged off from the rest of the student population because of their violent tendencies.  This system, and the administrators in it, are referred to as The Arrangement.  There is the cage monitor, Victor Botha; the perverted gym teacher, Ron Desormie; Principal Brodsky; the popular basketball team, led by Captain Bam Slokum; the Main Hall Shovers, a basketball fan club (characterized by their stylish scarves) that behaves more like English hooligans; and finally Boystar, a huge new pop star that all the girls go crazy for.  In the Cage, Gurion befriends Benji Nakamook, the best fighter in the school, but also a confirmed arsonist and pyschopath, Vincie Portite, as well as Main Man Scott Mookus and many of the others, as they look to him for protection.  On the first day of the book, after a fight in the locker room, Gurion meets and falls madly in love with Eliza June Watermark, and they begin a relationship the next day in detention.  

In the cage that first day, Gurion says, in response to a question from one of his peers, "We must be on the Side of Damage."  Almost immediately, other cage students start vandalizing the school with We Damage We (putting We on the side of Damage).  Gradually, Gurion realizes that he is the leader of the Side of Damage, a movement among the cage students, and more and more students from the school at large, against the Arrangement.  They start organized protests and non-violent simultaneous acts in order to provoke Victor Botha.  The story starts on a Tuesday, and leads up to a pep-rally on Friday for the basketball team, in which Boystar is going to perform and shoot a music video, along with Scott Mookus, who is mentally handicapped.

Outside of school, Gurion writes scripture and argues with his parents.  His strong willed mom, an ex-Israeli super soldier, and his dad, an infamous lawyer who defends the free-speech rights of Nazis, which conflicts Gurion.  He initiates contact with all his former friends at the schools he used to attend, and gets them to march on Aptakisic on Friday in order to hear his Scripture.  Originally, Gurion planned to just sneak out of school and speak with his former classmates, but on the morning of the pep-rally, Botha held them in the cage, and rescinded on his promise to allow them to attend.  This was the breaking point, and Gurion called the Side of Damage into action.  Here the violence starts becoming quite brutal.  The students beat Botha into unconsciousness and steal his keys.  They break out of the cage, and arm themselves with penny guns, which are made from soda bottles and balloons, and can shoot pennies and bolts.  They attack the pep-rally while Boystar is performing, and a bloody battle ensues.

The Side of Damage attacks the basketball players, the school administrators, and the Shovers.  Other students in the audience join in the carnage, and many people on both sides get bloodied up.  Each of the Side of Damage has a personal vendetta against other people, and they pursue their own fights.  Gurion is attacked by Ron Desormie, but a well-placed shot from Eliza hits his carotid artery, and he is killed.  Eventually, the students take over the gym, and lock down the school.  Boystar is held hostage, and a police standoff ensues outside the school.  The Side of Damage, along with other 'Israelites' and Jewish ex-Shovers, try to buy time before the hundreds of 'Scholars' arrive.  At this point, this becomes a major news story, and the ex-Shovers get nervous and start an uprising against the Side.  Benji Nakamook is brutally beaten to death, but Gurion and the Scholars manage to quell the rebellion.  In their final move, Gurion and the Side and the Scholars march out of the school and through the police line, all the way to the shores of the lake.  There, Gurion gives his Scripture, and then the Miracle happens.  The water of the lake parts like it did for Moses, and the Scholars start walking through it.  Gurion hesitates though, and he claims that he will not run away, but will instead stay.  The scholars return and the lake returns to normal. 

The rest of Gurion's life is told by him only through various speculation.  He is hiding out in Israel under protection of the Mossad, who believe him to be a Messiah.  His devoted followers teach his word throughout the world, but he is still waiting for his moment to start a general uprising, but in what form it will take remains unknown. 

This was a wild trip of a book, and it was very unique in many aspects.  There are many diagrams drawn by Gurion that explain set ups of rooms and the final battle.  Gurion includes email exchanges and other homework assignments and essays that he completed that help to explain past incidents and the development of his mind.  And the language is also wholly unique.  There are many words the kids use in the dialogue, like suck as a noun, bancer, dentist, and many of the nicknames that take a while to get used to, but in the end you really feel like you can speak their language. 

The book raises many interesting questions.  Gurion believes himself to be the Messiah and leader of the Israelites, which alienates many of his Christian and non-Jewish friends at Aptakisic.  But while Gurion is very intelligent and just, (he vehemently protects his friends and the picked-on), he is also incredibly prone to violence.  Perhaps that is because of the injustice in his Cage program, but it seems he lashes out to an extreme degree.  Which makes the reader conflicted:  At one point you identify with Gurion and cheer for him, but while he is brutally punching in the face of another kid.  The school is obviously a fictionalized world, but while some characters are extremely well-developed, others seem to be stereotypical (the Jennys and Ashleys, Shovers, Band Kids).

The novel is incredibly grand and intelligent, and I flew through it.  It was also very funny in many parts, while dark in others.  Gurion is one of the most intriguing characters in literature, and he made me want to follow him into battle at times.  Four and a half out of five stars.