Requirements: Must be happy, easy to read, thoroughly engaging, and quite clean.
In no particular order.
1) The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall. Vish Puri, owner and operator of Most Private Investigators, Ltd., knows a few things for certain: violent crime is rising in a Delhi transformed by Western influences; someone is trying to kill him; the only honest lawyer in town is being framed for murdering a servant girl who wasn’t murdered at all; and women cannot be detectives. Hall’s lush descriptions of Delhi enchant the reader; his intricate, masterful weaving of his main plot and several perfectly complementary subplots keep the reader quite happily ensconced in the deceptions and dangers of modern India. Beware the Punjabi curse words; the glossary of Punjabi words at the back is very helpful except when the word in question is an f-bomb, Punjabi-style. Enjoy that amusing syntax of the Indian characters’ English; the quirky dynamic between mother, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in Puri’s home; and Puri’s aptly descriptive nicknames for his employees, such as “Torchlight” and “Facecream.” Possibly one of the all-around-best mysteries I’ve ever read. Five stars.
2) Roverandom by J. R. R. Tolkien. After a puppy named Rover is separated from his little boy at an English beach, an evil wizard transforms Rover into a stuffed animal! Rover travels to the moon and to the depths of the ocean searching for a good wizard to turn him back into a real dog so he can go home to his little boy. Adorable, brilliant, and short. Children’s books aren’t written like this anymore. Five stars.
3) Flabbergasted by Ray Blackston. A contemporary Christian chick-lit novel….except that it’s told from a male, Texan stock-broker’s perspective, which makes the genre’s many clichés funny all over again. Ridiculously funny. In one of the novel’s early highlights, the South Carolina church’s single’s group goes on a beach retreat. The guys, sprawled over their two-small cabin’s floor trying to sleep, get buzzed by mosquitoes. In the middle of the night, one particularly brilliant young man decides it’s a good idea to grab the insect repellant and spray it in the air at the bugs. It succeeds and the mosquitoes vanish. But the next morning, the guys awake to blue spray paint all over them, their stuff, and the rented cabin’s interior. Joy comes with the morning. Four stars.
4) Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino save the world again from Neo-Nazis who are using Atlantean artifacts to destroy the world, much like the original Nazis did with Judeo-Christian relics in Indiana Jones. Keep in mind that Pitt and Giordino pre-date Jones—they’ve been defeating evil villains who plan to use ancient artifacts to destroy the world since the 1960s, while Indy’s only been in action since 1980! A fun, fun, fun novel, my personal favorite of the series. It’s also one of the cleaner of the Dirk Pitt novels…and the one in which Giordino gets the girl! Four stars.
5) The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. Ok, so I don’t know what a “determined chin” looks like, but I do know that Tuppence, the girl who sports said chin, is one of Agatha’s most fun female sleuths. She and her partner (turned fiancé turned husband), Tommy, completely out of work in the declining British economy in 1922, decide to put an ad in the Times: two young adventurers, willing to do anything and go anywhere, provided it’s reasonable and the pay is good. You can imagine the rest. Four stars.
6) The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Precious Ramotswe is rather happy with being a “traditionally built” woman in her upper thirties, the daughter of one of the best men in Botswana, and the sensible, resourceful owner of the only private detective agency in Botswana. As a mystery novel, McCall Smith’s work is an oddity, is it is more character-driven than plot-driven. Like real-life private and police detectives, Mma Ramotswe works several diverse cases at once and sometimes none at all, allowing the main plot to be structured around the ebb and flow of a quiet life on the edge of the Kalahari desert. McCall Smith’s descriptions of Africa and its people are intoxicating in their simple beauty. The novel feels effortless in spite of its perfect characterizations and atmosphere; I often wondered about McCall Smith’s editing process and wished that I could replicate it. A delightful novel whose delightful characters will bring you back for more. I’ve read four of its sequels so far. Five stars.
7) Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Not the greatest mystery Peters has ever written, but the highly amusing first book in a riveting saga that takes three generations of the Emerson clan from 1870s through the horrors (and antics) of World War I espionage to the 1930s. Peters’ intelligent, self-reliant, strong-willed, and yet very Victorian Amelia Peabody is one of the best female narrative voices I’ve read (better than Agatha Christie’s Anne Beddingfield); Amelia and the bellicose Radcliffe Emerson’s repartee at times rises almost to the height of that of Beatrice and Benedict. Peters’ prose is magnificent; through the course of the novel, the reader will learn a great deal about Egyptology, archeology in general, British Egypt, and Victorian society. Five stars.
8) Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan. Twelve-year-old Perseus Jackson—afflicted by ADD, dyslexia, mean bullies, a crippled best friend, and a concatenation of very strange events that make him think he’s gone mad— just wants to live an ordinary life with his adored mother, but the Fates clearly have other plans. Percy discovers he’s the son of Poseidon, the Greek sea-god, and that nearly god, demigod, or monster wants to kill him for something he didn’t do. Oh, and his very existence is a mistake, which helps a Jr. Higher’s self esteem a lot. But throughout Percy’s adventures/misadventures, he makes some great friends, learns some mean swordplay, and learns how to sacrifice his own desires to help others. Greek mythology in modern America. So much fun. And it just gets better. Four stars.
9) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling. On orphaned Harry Potter’s eleventh birthday, a huge, bumbling, and endearing man named Hagrid tells Harry his true identity: he’s a wizard! Moreover, his parents, a wizard and witch, did not die in a car accident, but were murdered by the most powerful and wicked wizard of the 20th century. Hagrid takes Harry along for a joyous, wonder-ful romp through a magical London and to the now legendary Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rowling’s first novel’s plot is basic Hero’s Journey stuff; the “mystery” Harry and his new best friends Ron and Hermione must solve is a bit elementary. But Rowling’s skilled ensconcing of important clues to events later in the series even in the first installment would make Charles Dickens proud. Also noteworthy, an Ivy League grad student just published her successful doctoral thesis…proving that Harry and Ron wouldn’t have even survived The Sorcerer’s Stone without Hermione. Tons of fun and surprisingly profound; don’t miss it. Four stars.
10) The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Have not yet read this novel; it’s next on my own list! Turning from the Botswana he grew to know so well during regular trips to the country as an adult, McCall Smith now writes about his native Edinburgh, Scotland; its quirky inhabitants; their various amusing foibles… and occasionally violent actions against their fellow human beings.
See you at the beach!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My First Kiss
Yes. It's true. I saw him on Saturday while I was sitting outside Starbucks with my friend. He was picking up pizza and cookie dough with his family. I discussed the cookie dough with him. When I saw him at church on Sunday, he appeared quite pleased to see me two days in a row. (And, at the end of the day, as he left, he said something about not being able to see me the next few days. But anyway...) After service, I was out front talking to him about something or other. I honestly can't remember what I was saying. But all of a sudden he leaned forward and kissed me right on the mouth. There was a great uproar and I think I walked away to tell all my friends. My mom made some comment about not being able to say I've never been kissed anymore. I gave in to a momentary appreciation of his cuteness.
Of course, it's not really going to work out. He seems to be quite the player. As soon as he kissed me my sister accused him of cheating, I know he has a thing for my best friend, and later another friend warned to back off for fear of a cat fight. It's really too bad. We had so much going for us. I mean, it's a slight drawback that he won't graduate from high school for another sixteen years, but a face like that is worth waiting for, isn't it?
Of course, it's not really going to work out. He seems to be quite the player. As soon as he kissed me my sister accused him of cheating, I know he has a thing for my best friend, and later another friend warned to back off for fear of a cat fight. It's really too bad. We had so much going for us. I mean, it's a slight drawback that he won't graduate from high school for another sixteen years, but a face like that is worth waiting for, isn't it?
Monday, July 12, 2010
Say Anything
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Summer Book Review: Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
Touted as both a wildly original fantasy novel and a solid police procedural, I was crazily excited to read this book. My two favorite genres combined into one book!
Not really.
There’s only one scene—a magical autopsy that’s pretty cool—that’s anything like a police procedural. The book is structured more like a thriller than a mystery novel, as Sagara’s cop protagonist Kaylin Neeya more stumbles upon clues rather than uncovering them. Yes, down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid, and that’s totally Kaylin and her partners Severn and Tiamaris (a dragon who can turn into a humanoid figure. Totally fun!). And the tension between Kaylin and Severn ever-present in the novel’s substrata propels the emotion forward.
The world Sagara creates is vivid and dangerous, not at all reeking of The Lord of the Rings like many fantasy novels on the market (Eg: Terry Brooks’, R. A. Salvatore’s, and Margaret Wies and Tracy Hickman’s novels. If you don’t believe me, pick up five random books by different authors in the fantasy section at Borders and see what percentage have elves, orcs, and hobbit-like characters in them. It’s called “high fantasy” but I think it’s cheating. My sister tells me Sagara writes “high fantasy” as well.). But Sagara uses the first half of the novel to describe the world, not the develop the plot. Which makes the first two hundred pages—and believe me, you feel each of the two hundred—torture. Once you’ve made it through the first half, however, the plot flies and one will have I-just-can’t-put-it-down syndrome.
My sister tells me the series gets increasingly better as it goes, a lá Harry Potter, so I’ll probably read the next book. Yes, the second half of Cast in Shadow totally made up for the first half.
And, best of all, I can rate the novel PG for violence and occasional mild swearing! That doesn’t happen every day.
Four stars
****
Not really.
There’s only one scene—a magical autopsy that’s pretty cool—that’s anything like a police procedural. The book is structured more like a thriller than a mystery novel, as Sagara’s cop protagonist Kaylin Neeya more stumbles upon clues rather than uncovering them. Yes, down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid, and that’s totally Kaylin and her partners Severn and Tiamaris (a dragon who can turn into a humanoid figure. Totally fun!). And the tension between Kaylin and Severn ever-present in the novel’s substrata propels the emotion forward.
The world Sagara creates is vivid and dangerous, not at all reeking of The Lord of the Rings like many fantasy novels on the market (Eg: Terry Brooks’, R. A. Salvatore’s, and Margaret Wies and Tracy Hickman’s novels. If you don’t believe me, pick up five random books by different authors in the fantasy section at Borders and see what percentage have elves, orcs, and hobbit-like characters in them. It’s called “high fantasy” but I think it’s cheating. My sister tells me Sagara writes “high fantasy” as well.). But Sagara uses the first half of the novel to describe the world, not the develop the plot. Which makes the first two hundred pages—and believe me, you feel each of the two hundred—torture. Once you’ve made it through the first half, however, the plot flies and one will have I-just-can’t-put-it-down syndrome.
My sister tells me the series gets increasingly better as it goes, a lá Harry Potter, so I’ll probably read the next book. Yes, the second half of Cast in Shadow totally made up for the first half.
And, best of all, I can rate the novel PG for violence and occasional mild swearing! That doesn’t happen every day.
Four stars
****
Summer Book Review: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
Fun, but predictable and bland. Two siblings—the fourteen-year-old son and twelve-year-old daughter of a Nubian father and a white mother—are separated after their mother’s tragic death and suddenly reunited on the night that their father basically blows up the British Museum. Don’t worry, the Rosetta Stone-turned-shrapnel reassembles itself…like magic. Because it ‘s ancient Egyptian magic!
Carter and Sadie are apparently descendents of the Pharaohs and thus have great magical powers. And Sadie’s cat—reminiscent of both Ramses Emerson’s feline partner-in-crime Bastet and Hermione Granger’s too-intelligent kitty Crookshanks—turns out to be Bast (or “Bastet”), the cat goddess, whom Carter and Sadie’s father Julius sent to protect his children. Although the “revelation” that Muffins was actually a goddess was, well, hackneyed, the antics that result are the best parts of the novel. Bast must protect Carter and Sadie, right? Well, that includes protecting them from giant steel balls (which pass for modern art in NYC). After she pounces on the priceless piece of “art” and makes it disintegrate, she tells the children, “It was a ball! You never know with balls!” At another point, the adolescents must turn themselves into birds. Bast applauds their first successful transformation: “Good job! You look delicious… I mean wonderful!” The silly scenes birthed from the irony of two humans turned into birds and the cat goddess turned into a human are the best parts of the novel.
But the novel is rife with plot elements as predictable as the whole Muffin=Bast "exposé." If you’ve read the first Percy Jackson novel, The Lightening Thief, you’ll be able to predict every single major plot twist in The Red Pyramid (Except for two, one of which I predicted about 150 pages before Riordan actually revealed it. The other, however, was a complete shock.). Riordan’s creative enough to give us a pimpled, wedding-dress clad satyr named Grover (who loves enchiladas) who, trapped in a cave by Polyphemus, must forever weave and unweave his bridal veil in an effort to postpone his wedding with the vicious Cyclops until help arrives (that was in Sea of Monsters, the gloriously hilarious second Percy Jackson book). So I don’t understand why Riordan has to resort to the same old plot.
Moreover, while Percy’s quirky, snarky narration made Riordan’s first series a standout among young adult literature, Riordan’s choice to use both Carter and Sadie’s POV in his narration ultimately makes the novel fall flat. Riordan has Carter and Sadie speak the story in turns into a tape-recorder during a car trip after the story takes place. So we switch, every two chapters, from a level-headed, American, teenage guy’s voice to a disrespectful, quasi-British, preteen girl’s voice. Carter’s a much more engaging narrator, partly because his “obnoxious” sister really is a bit obnoxious. And Sadie sounds more like someone trying to sound British than someone who is British. That’s probably Riordan trying to dumb down the Englishness for a readership of American kids who don’t watch BBC like I do…or it’s Riordan not knowing what he’s doing. That said, the narrative device would work if Sadie wasn’t obnoxious and Carter so bland.
If you want a witty, easy-to-read, PG-rated novel populated by snarky teenagers, mythic figures, and enough magic to make The Wizard of Oz in Technicolor look as insipid as ordinary suburbia, read The Lightening Thief and its excellent sequels, not The Read Pyramid. Better yet, pick up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone if you haven’t yet. Or reread The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Two Stars
**
Carter and Sadie are apparently descendents of the Pharaohs and thus have great magical powers. And Sadie’s cat—reminiscent of both Ramses Emerson’s feline partner-in-crime Bastet and Hermione Granger’s too-intelligent kitty Crookshanks—turns out to be Bast (or “Bastet”), the cat goddess, whom Carter and Sadie’s father Julius sent to protect his children. Although the “revelation” that Muffins was actually a goddess was, well, hackneyed, the antics that result are the best parts of the novel. Bast must protect Carter and Sadie, right? Well, that includes protecting them from giant steel balls (which pass for modern art in NYC). After she pounces on the priceless piece of “art” and makes it disintegrate, she tells the children, “It was a ball! You never know with balls!” At another point, the adolescents must turn themselves into birds. Bast applauds their first successful transformation: “Good job! You look delicious… I mean wonderful!” The silly scenes birthed from the irony of two humans turned into birds and the cat goddess turned into a human are the best parts of the novel.
But the novel is rife with plot elements as predictable as the whole Muffin=Bast "exposé." If you’ve read the first Percy Jackson novel, The Lightening Thief, you’ll be able to predict every single major plot twist in The Red Pyramid (Except for two, one of which I predicted about 150 pages before Riordan actually revealed it. The other, however, was a complete shock.). Riordan’s creative enough to give us a pimpled, wedding-dress clad satyr named Grover (who loves enchiladas) who, trapped in a cave by Polyphemus, must forever weave and unweave his bridal veil in an effort to postpone his wedding with the vicious Cyclops until help arrives (that was in Sea of Monsters, the gloriously hilarious second Percy Jackson book). So I don’t understand why Riordan has to resort to the same old plot.
Moreover, while Percy’s quirky, snarky narration made Riordan’s first series a standout among young adult literature, Riordan’s choice to use both Carter and Sadie’s POV in his narration ultimately makes the novel fall flat. Riordan has Carter and Sadie speak the story in turns into a tape-recorder during a car trip after the story takes place. So we switch, every two chapters, from a level-headed, American, teenage guy’s voice to a disrespectful, quasi-British, preteen girl’s voice. Carter’s a much more engaging narrator, partly because his “obnoxious” sister really is a bit obnoxious. And Sadie sounds more like someone trying to sound British than someone who is British. That’s probably Riordan trying to dumb down the Englishness for a readership of American kids who don’t watch BBC like I do…or it’s Riordan not knowing what he’s doing. That said, the narrative device would work if Sadie wasn’t obnoxious and Carter so bland.
If you want a witty, easy-to-read, PG-rated novel populated by snarky teenagers, mythic figures, and enough magic to make The Wizard of Oz in Technicolor look as insipid as ordinary suburbia, read The Lightening Thief and its excellent sequels, not The Read Pyramid. Better yet, pick up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone if you haven’t yet. Or reread The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Two Stars
**
Summer Book Review: The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
I’m always up for a riveting mystery-thriller; having heard this novel’s praises repeatedly sung as a enthralling new addition to the genre, I bought it for my family’s Hawai’i vacation.
Indeed, Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel is a riveting mystery-thriller. But it’s not beach reading. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is an intense tale of family intrigue, commercial corruption, sexual abuse, and serial killers. I’d say the novel is for the seventeen-and-up crowd only; I’m not surprised the film version is (I hear) grotesquely violent and quite unrated. In short, sensitive minds should not read this book. The novel exposes the evil and brutality rampant across Sweden—each section of the novel begins with a startling statistic about sexual abuse in Sweden today—and, in the process, evokes the same rage and disgust in the reader that Aeschylus did by describing Iphigenia’s murder in ancient Greece.
Did you know that 18% of women in Sweden have been threatened by a man at least once? Did you know that 46% of women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man? That 13% of women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship? That 92% of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police?
I know now. Larsson ensures his readers know not only the numbers, but also how it feels to live in such a country.
Larsson chose his novel’s Swedish title—“Men Who Hate Women” –for a reason.
As an exposé of a society’s injustices, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is the best I’ve read. As a mystery novel, unfortunately, it’s not quite up to standard. It’s an Agatha Christie-style murder. The crime takes place on an island from which no one can escape; the setting of Larsson’s Tattoo limits who could have committed the murder as in Christie’s And Then There Were None. But while Agatha tricked me, Stieg failed to deceive. I knew the great secret from the beginning.
On the other hand, as a character study, it’s again one of the best I’ve read. The novel’s greatest fascination is its protagonist—Lisbeth Salander, the twenty-five-year-old, anti-social, bi-sexual, liberally-tattooed hacker genius who responds to the oddities of ordinary life and the atrocities of Swedish society in the most bizarre ways.
(spoiler alert!)
What does she do when her “guardian” rapes her? Go to the police? Flee the country? Buy a gun and shoot his head off? No. She buys a video camera, which she tapes inside a backpack as any good PI (which she is) can. She buys tattoo equipment and a taser. She returns to his house—i.e., asks for a second rape—and tapes the second rape. Then she returns a third time to taser him, chain him to his bed, and tattoos his crime on his stomach. She forces him to watch the video and then blackmails him. She’s quite willing to post a video of herself being raped on youTube to get what she wants: Freedom.
To what depths has Swedish society fallen, when this is the way a woman responds to injustice?
(spoiler over)
Lisbeth’s behavior is completely unpredictable. Which makes her extremely likable, in spite of her five-year-old’s moral sensibility. Actually, most of these characters have infantile moral standards. Mikael Blomkvist, a forty-something journalist hired to solve the mystery, has sex with three different women throughout the novel, for instance. Oh, and he’s divorced. And a rotten father. But he’s sympathetic—the novel opens with him being convicted and incarcerated for a bogus libel charge. He’s immediately the underdog journalist defeated by the commercial superpower. As his daughter says, who doesn’t like a guy who’s willing to go to jail for what he believes in?
And who doesn’t like a girl like Lisbeth Salander?
Weighed down by oppressive scenes of violence, a plot line rife with sexual abuse, 664-pages of bland English prose translated from (I hear) a vivid Swedish, and a dozen or so carefully-placed f-bombs, the novel derives all its charm from its excellently-drawn main characters. And that’s a lot of charm, considering The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and the last book of the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have both bivouacked on Barnes and Nobles’ top-ten bestsellers list for the past two weeks.
Four stars
****
Indeed, Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel is a riveting mystery-thriller. But it’s not beach reading. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is an intense tale of family intrigue, commercial corruption, sexual abuse, and serial killers. I’d say the novel is for the seventeen-and-up crowd only; I’m not surprised the film version is (I hear) grotesquely violent and quite unrated. In short, sensitive minds should not read this book. The novel exposes the evil and brutality rampant across Sweden—each section of the novel begins with a startling statistic about sexual abuse in Sweden today—and, in the process, evokes the same rage and disgust in the reader that Aeschylus did by describing Iphigenia’s murder in ancient Greece.
Did you know that 18% of women in Sweden have been threatened by a man at least once? Did you know that 46% of women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man? That 13% of women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship? That 92% of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police?
I know now. Larsson ensures his readers know not only the numbers, but also how it feels to live in such a country.
Larsson chose his novel’s Swedish title—“Men Who Hate Women” –for a reason.
As an exposé of a society’s injustices, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is the best I’ve read. As a mystery novel, unfortunately, it’s not quite up to standard. It’s an Agatha Christie-style murder. The crime takes place on an island from which no one can escape; the setting of Larsson’s Tattoo limits who could have committed the murder as in Christie’s And Then There Were None. But while Agatha tricked me, Stieg failed to deceive. I knew the great secret from the beginning.
On the other hand, as a character study, it’s again one of the best I’ve read. The novel’s greatest fascination is its protagonist—Lisbeth Salander, the twenty-five-year-old, anti-social, bi-sexual, liberally-tattooed hacker genius who responds to the oddities of ordinary life and the atrocities of Swedish society in the most bizarre ways.
(spoiler alert!)
What does she do when her “guardian” rapes her? Go to the police? Flee the country? Buy a gun and shoot his head off? No. She buys a video camera, which she tapes inside a backpack as any good PI (which she is) can. She buys tattoo equipment and a taser. She returns to his house—i.e., asks for a second rape—and tapes the second rape. Then she returns a third time to taser him, chain him to his bed, and tattoos his crime on his stomach. She forces him to watch the video and then blackmails him. She’s quite willing to post a video of herself being raped on youTube to get what she wants: Freedom.
To what depths has Swedish society fallen, when this is the way a woman responds to injustice?
(spoiler over)
Lisbeth’s behavior is completely unpredictable. Which makes her extremely likable, in spite of her five-year-old’s moral sensibility. Actually, most of these characters have infantile moral standards. Mikael Blomkvist, a forty-something journalist hired to solve the mystery, has sex with three different women throughout the novel, for instance. Oh, and he’s divorced. And a rotten father. But he’s sympathetic—the novel opens with him being convicted and incarcerated for a bogus libel charge. He’s immediately the underdog journalist defeated by the commercial superpower. As his daughter says, who doesn’t like a guy who’s willing to go to jail for what he believes in?
And who doesn’t like a girl like Lisbeth Salander?
Weighed down by oppressive scenes of violence, a plot line rife with sexual abuse, 664-pages of bland English prose translated from (I hear) a vivid Swedish, and a dozen or so carefully-placed f-bombs, the novel derives all its charm from its excellently-drawn main characters. And that’s a lot of charm, considering The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and the last book of the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have both bivouacked on Barnes and Nobles’ top-ten bestsellers list for the past two weeks.
Four stars
****
The Rest Is...
“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down.
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
…………………….
I should be glad of another death.” —“Journey of the Magi” (1935). T. S. Eliot.
I know how it feels to die.
Nothingness encroaches, pressing upon your throat with Everything’s weight. It is as if the galaxy has imploded upon you. Gravity’s only thought is to flatten and squeeze you into an infinitesimal jot of Nothing.
Forget breathing. You cannot anyway. Forget screaming. You cannot—you cannot breathe. Forget weeping. Forget making any noisy protest against Fate or Gravity or Nothingness, any cry for pity, any expression of regret. No one will hear you. The rest is…
I know how it feels to die. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2010 production of Hamlet, directed by Bill Rauch, taught me how it feels to die. In Act V, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s script, four characters perish: Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet. All poisoned. Hamlet’s last words are, “The rest is silence.” Fortinbras enters, sees the carnage, and bids soldiers carry Hamlet to the stage. He will hear Horatio’s story and honor Hamlet; for “had he lived, he might have proved most royal.”
Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet ends with Hamlet choking out his final line. Then, a stern-faced, regal Fortinbras receives his immediate coronation and orders a lavish military funeral for Denmark’s dead prince. Fortinbras may rule Denmark, but Hamlet won.
Bill Rauch’s Hamlet ends with Hamlet—the son of a deaf king—speaking his final line and signing the words in American Sign Language. Yet the word “silence” never passes his lips. Unlike Branagh’s Hamlet, who barely chokes out the last word before dying, Dan Donahue’s Hamlet dies with the final word. Hamlet signs “silence” and then dies in silence. Then, a camou -clad Fortinbras kicks over Claudius’ chair and prances about the stage, spitting Shakespeare’s words in a ridiculous accent. In Rauch’s modern production, if Horatio could be a hobo, than Fortinbras could be Borat. This Fortibras shows anything but respect for Denmark’s royal dead. Fortinbras rules Denmark. Hamlet lost.
The light dims. A spotlight illuminates only Hamlet. The King his father, still in military uniform, steps into the lit circle and takes his son’s body in his arms. The deaf King’s head lowers. And we are deaf to his weeping as the spotlight shrinks around the father and his son until death’s oblivion swallows them.
Is this how it feels to die?
Is the whole world made deaf by Death, so that no one can hear one’s dying cry: “This is not what I wanted”?
Does Death destroy everything that is good in the world? Prompt incest, condemn a sensible young woman to madness, make Denmark a prison for Danes and home for tyrannical Swedes?
Is Death invincible?
What is, besides silence and nothingness and Death?
If “the rest is silence,” what is there before “the rest” that is “silence,” but noise, the harbinger of life?
“For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a wimper.” —“The Hollow Men” (1925). T. S. Eliot.
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down.
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
…………………….
I should be glad of another death.” —“Journey of the Magi” (1935). T. S. Eliot.
I know how it feels to die.
Nothingness encroaches, pressing upon your throat with Everything’s weight. It is as if the galaxy has imploded upon you. Gravity’s only thought is to flatten and squeeze you into an infinitesimal jot of Nothing.
Forget breathing. You cannot anyway. Forget screaming. You cannot—you cannot breathe. Forget weeping. Forget making any noisy protest against Fate or Gravity or Nothingness, any cry for pity, any expression of regret. No one will hear you. The rest is…
I know how it feels to die. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2010 production of Hamlet, directed by Bill Rauch, taught me how it feels to die. In Act V, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s script, four characters perish: Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet. All poisoned. Hamlet’s last words are, “The rest is silence.” Fortinbras enters, sees the carnage, and bids soldiers carry Hamlet to the stage. He will hear Horatio’s story and honor Hamlet; for “had he lived, he might have proved most royal.”
Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet ends with Hamlet choking out his final line. Then, a stern-faced, regal Fortinbras receives his immediate coronation and orders a lavish military funeral for Denmark’s dead prince. Fortinbras may rule Denmark, but Hamlet won.
Bill Rauch’s Hamlet ends with Hamlet—the son of a deaf king—speaking his final line and signing the words in American Sign Language. Yet the word “silence” never passes his lips. Unlike Branagh’s Hamlet, who barely chokes out the last word before dying, Dan Donahue’s Hamlet dies with the final word. Hamlet signs “silence” and then dies in silence. Then, a camou -clad Fortinbras kicks over Claudius’ chair and prances about the stage, spitting Shakespeare’s words in a ridiculous accent. In Rauch’s modern production, if Horatio could be a hobo, than Fortinbras could be Borat. This Fortibras shows anything but respect for Denmark’s royal dead. Fortinbras rules Denmark. Hamlet lost.
The light dims. A spotlight illuminates only Hamlet. The King his father, still in military uniform, steps into the lit circle and takes his son’s body in his arms. The deaf King’s head lowers. And we are deaf to his weeping as the spotlight shrinks around the father and his son until death’s oblivion swallows them.
Is this how it feels to die?
Is the whole world made deaf by Death, so that no one can hear one’s dying cry: “This is not what I wanted”?
Does Death destroy everything that is good in the world? Prompt incest, condemn a sensible young woman to madness, make Denmark a prison for Danes and home for tyrannical Swedes?
Is Death invincible?
What is, besides silence and nothingness and Death?
If “the rest is silence,” what is there before “the rest” that is “silence,” but noise, the harbinger of life?
“For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a wimper.” —“The Hollow Men” (1925). T. S. Eliot.
Shasta
The Cascades and Sierras are blanketed in snow. Shasta, this June, is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen it. It transcends the green-gold hills—white, blisteringly white. I feel like some primeval being looking down upon it. For the first time, I understand why the Native Americans worshipped it as a god. The Mountain is godlike, like Achilles, but beautiful as no demigod could ever be. Achilles, ever stained with his foe’s blood, killing and killed by the sword, was nothing against the Mountain.
No wonder they worshipped Shasta.
Yet here I am, above the Mountain. Its volcanic fires and fumes have died; they cannot harm me here. Man has conquered the Mountain. But not the wind or rain. The sky—no longer the earth or sea—is the domain I fear. Zeus’ domain.
Who is Zeus: a demon affrighted by the Holy Spirit; a figment of man’s collective consciousness; or the fellow subordinate of Jehovah? Who is Jehovah: not a mountain-god or sky-god or galaxy-god, but a Beyond-God? God beyond God, Light beyond light, Being beyond being…and, incidentally, non-being?
I am—quite literally—in the sky; by natural forces, human ingenuity, and God’s mercy, I am suspended between earth and Space, between finitude and Infinity, between nothing and Everything. Between earth and Space, in the air, Zeus’ principality, whom must I fear but Prince Zeus?
Except that as man has conquered Shasta, Jehovah has conquered Zeus. Jehovah brought His Everything, His Being, His Infinity into my awkward two-by-three cranny in an airplane representing under one hundred souls, teetering on Tartarus’ edge, just west of the Sierra Nevada’s spring snow.
Christ is the Prince of the Air. May the name of YHWH be praised.
No wonder they worshipped Shasta.
Yet here I am, above the Mountain. Its volcanic fires and fumes have died; they cannot harm me here. Man has conquered the Mountain. But not the wind or rain. The sky—no longer the earth or sea—is the domain I fear. Zeus’ domain.
Who is Zeus: a demon affrighted by the Holy Spirit; a figment of man’s collective consciousness; or the fellow subordinate of Jehovah? Who is Jehovah: not a mountain-god or sky-god or galaxy-god, but a Beyond-God? God beyond God, Light beyond light, Being beyond being…and, incidentally, non-being?
I am—quite literally—in the sky; by natural forces, human ingenuity, and God’s mercy, I am suspended between earth and Space, between finitude and Infinity, between nothing and Everything. Between earth and Space, in the air, Zeus’ principality, whom must I fear but Prince Zeus?
Except that as man has conquered Shasta, Jehovah has conquered Zeus. Jehovah brought His Everything, His Being, His Infinity into my awkward two-by-three cranny in an airplane representing under one hundred souls, teetering on Tartarus’ edge, just west of the Sierra Nevada’s spring snow.
Christ is the Prince of the Air. May the name of YHWH be praised.
Summer Book Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles
This is the first Hercule Poirot mystery and the first Agatha Christie book I read that was narrated by Hastings. May I say I love Hastings? This first book gives a good picture of Poirot at his most innovative and most eccentric. I noticed something that was important and felt proud of myself, but I didn't guess who did it (though I rarely do). Suspicion rotates through all the characters appropriately, and I thought it was a mystery very well done. I like Hastings!
Five Stars
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Five Stars
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Saturday, July 3, 2010
Summer Book Review: Sad Cypress
Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie is indeed sad. I felt sad for the characters, empathized with the emotional injustice of the situation, and was only moderately consoled by the potentially happy ending. I disliked the writing style, which was noticeably different than the other Agatha Christie's I'd read at the time, and found the mystery a bit unbelievable. It seemed the murder had gone to greater extents than necessary and those greater extents were the clinching clues. I also thought the murderer was ill-informed and thus the motive was kind of pathetic. Certainly not my favorite of Christie's mysteries.
Two Stars
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Two Stars
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Friday, July 2, 2010
Summer Book Review: The Man in the Brown Suit
The first Agatha Christie book I've ever read, The Man in the Brown Suit, has a lot going for it. I like the twists and changes in the characters and I liked the young heroine. I have not read any other Agatha Christie books with a young heroine yet. She was smart, precocious, romantic, and adventurous. Overall, the book felt as much like an adventure novel as it did a mystery novel, but the mystery was distinct and satisfying. This novel showed a mastery of detail research--I was completely convinced that Ann Beddingfeld was the daughter of a professor obsessed with prehistoric men. It was quite fun and I loved the romance. Of the Agatha Christie books I've read this summer, The Man in the Brown Suit is certainly the most romantic.
Five Stars
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Five Stars
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