The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow

Not great. The story is about Augie, as you should have guessed, but Augie is a lazy and stupid character. He flows from one situation to another like a leaf on the wind, with no will of his own. It gets so bad that the author has to address it, and addresses it by having Augie say on numerous occasions that he doesnt know why people are drawn to him and help him, it just happens. In the end, he sacrifices for love and sells stolen goods on the black market to pay for his untalented wife. At one time he does find his calling, running a farm and school house for children so that someone will love him, but gives that up as soon as he runs into someone with more force of personality (anyone) who doesnt like the idea.

On the positive side, it is a very well written book. You feel like you are in the story, you just dont want to be there.

A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul

I have admittedly read very little African literature. Yet I feel as though this book seemed to capture the essence of the countries repeatedly torn apart by civil war. The main character is a man who comes to a village to run a store and make his way in the world. He arrives right after a war has finished that destroyed the economy of the village. There is a period of rebuilding and prosperity that is merely illusory and then is crushed again under another war. The man sees his investment grow and then shrink. He makes and loses friends and lovers. All because of the stress of the rebellions and impending wars. Eventually he leaves and goes to Europe. The feeling you get from the book is that no matter how hard you try to build a life for yourself, it will be taken from you and the only way to build a life is to leave Africa. But even when you leave, you cannot escape.

Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis

I thought that a book about someone devoted to science would be incredibly boring. To the contrary, it was very interesting to read about Arrowsmith whose dedication to science was more poignant because of his enormous flaws in other areas of his life. He was in part responsible for the death of his first wife and completely responsible for the destruction of his second marriage. In the end he runs off to the woods with his colleague to investigate "phage" turning his back on his wife and child. Yet despite this, he remains noble. After reading the book you both like and despise arrowsmith which is an uncommon feeling at the end of a book.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

An illustration of the worst of human behavior. It follows a kid as he joins with a group that hires out as Indian killers and then goes on a killing raping pillaging spree across the desert. The story seems to really be about a character named "the judge" who initially appears as a sort of renaissance outlaw, but as the book progresses the judge progresses from Renaissance man to sociopath.

Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner

This story was incredibly slow, but I ended up liking it in the end. The book tells the story of a man fighting against personal troubles as he creates a biography of his grandmother and her life as an eastern socialite uprooted and living in the undeveloped western united states. As the man explores the life of his grandmother and grandfather, he learns about how the genetics and social upbringing he had was influenced and shaped by the lives of his grandparents. The point of the book is to discover the meaning of the phrase angle of repose. As different points in the book a possible explanation is offered and I think that the explanation a person buys into says more about that person than about the book and that phrase. I highly recommend this book because, while I have tried, I cannot find the words to adequately convey the feelings the book brings out. If you like looking at your own life while reading a book, this is a good one for it.

Battlefield Earth - L. Ron Hubbard

I went into this book prepared to be amazed and overwhelmed at the craziness that I always associate with the name Hubbard. But I was very very shocked. This is a good science fiction book. There is a little bit of social commentary but everytime I felt like it was about to go to far, the story would change and go back to the action. even the social commentary that there was seemed fairly innocuous.

The story is set in 3000 ad when humans are next to extinct and our planet is run by a multiuniverse mining company. the humans are viewed as animals and hunted for sport. one human fights back as a kind of superhuman and eventually owns about 1/3 of all the known universes and humans are the dominant force anywhere. Incredibly far fetched? Yes, but that is what a good science fiction story is. Far fetched but still a fun story.

An American Tragedy -Theodore Dreiser

I am still not sure what to make of this book. It is the story of a boy and tells of three chapters of his life. First, his poor upbringing and efforts to leave his poverty behind, ended in a tragic accident. Second, the period of time he spends in Lycurgus new york. this time contrasts his seduction of a working girl that works in his department, and his eventual introduction and acceptance into Lycurgus society and courtship of a very prominent and beautiful girl from a wealthy family. followed by his balancing the affections of the second girl while trying to resolve the problem of having gotten the first girl pregnant, ending with him killing the first girl in a tragic and confusing set of circumstances. Finally, his trial and eventual execution for killing the first girl.

The first part I found a little boring due to the fact that the boy, Clyde, is an idiot. His troubles in the first part are juvenile and easily solved, but turned into drama through his own incompetence.

The second part was distressing for personal reasons. His being in love with one girl and then quickly forgetting her when another girl came along reminded me a little too much of a young me and made reading that part of the book uncomfortable.

The final part of the book was uncomfortable for another reason. the majority of it is descriptions of the Clyde's trial for murder. attorneys for both sides cavalierly did things that would get them disbarred immediately now. but then end of the book when Clyde is trying to find God before his execution was what is going to stick with me for a long time. I do not like the death penalty, and this book seemed to describe fairly well the torment that a person who is to be executed goes through. Probably not as well as different books on this subject, but still haunting in my opinion.

All in all, it is a good book that touches on a large number of subjects worth thinking about. It dragged in places, but the poignancy of the topics it addresses makes it worth reading.

The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

I was familiar with this concept from the movie that they made from the book. But as usual, the movie was pretty pathetic when compared to the book. While a book written nearly 120 years ago won't keep up with the science very well, the human side of the story is very telling. The short story explores a human's social needs as well as the survival instinct. An overarching theme is the desire to explore and learn. The main character loses his time machine in the future, and when he finally gets it back, instead of fleeing into his own time, he continues further into the future to see the end of the world. All in all a good quick read.

Dracula - Bram Stoker

I thought when I started this book, being somewhat familiar with the vampire myths, that there would be little to surprise me. I was wrong. It was a very enjoyable read once you get past the old time feel to the writing. Dracula instead of being a major character in the book is instead mostly a motivation for the characters to do what they do. After the first part of the book, he has maybe three lines. It is written as a compilation of various peoples' diaries and correspondence, and unlike most of the time when an author attempts this, there is mostly a different style and feel to each person's writing style. A word of warning however; by the standards of today it is a fairly sexist book. If a male author tried to use some of the lines from this book as his own, he would be eviscerated.

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

This book was really hard to get into. It is about 300 pages (at least the volume I read) and for the first 200 I really struggled. The last 100 were much more fun to read. the end was OK, but seemed to be trying too hard to be poignant.

It is the story of two star crossed lovers in New York "Society" whose love is doomed by the social norms of the day combined with their desire no to hurt their families. The characters end up not being who you thought they were for the whole book. The man is the most complex. It appears at the beginning that he is in love with love, then he is in love with a woman, then he becomes rooted in habit and ends up not loving anything. The woman is flighty and while you think she loves the man, I am not totally sure she did. The man's wife appears to be a simpleton, but ends up being quite shrewd.

Worth reading once, but I dont think I will ever read it again.

Hamlet - Shakespeare

Totally overrated.

American Pastoral - Phillip Roth

The point of this book seems to be that no matter how good you try to be, you can be broken. There are a lot of different interesting angles to this book, but overarching and ending the book is that love and a desire to do good will be trumped by the hate and desire to destroy of everyone else. Most books leave you with some hope. This one does not.

The Wood Wife - Terri Windling

I really enjoyed this book. The cover claims that it is a story about desert magic, but in the first 100 pages or so, there is maybe 1 page of total "magic." But while it starts as an unremarkable story, it quickly becomes quite surreal, and totally compelling.

My only complaint is that the ending reverts back to a common love story. It just seems to me that people who live through a magical contest with supernatural creatures and learn to view time in a non linear fashion don't go back to a normal life after. It seems to me it would change them.

Two Books

I finished "A Passage to India" and "Wise Blood" in the last week. Passage was slow but decent. It basically went to the point that everyone sucks. So if you are in that kind of mood, have at it. Wise Blood on the other hand was just weird. You would think that a book that had larceny, murder, religion, self mutilation and a whole slew of crazy people would be good. You would be wrong. In all likelihood, I just didn't get it. But I really don't care.

Play it as it lays - Joan Didion

This is the story of a woman's descent into psychological unwellness after her decision to get an abortion. To me it felt a lot like fear and loathing in las vegas, but without as much drug use to get to the feeling that everything was messed up. (If you are a hunter thompson fan, dont worry there is still drug use. It is just not entire cars full.

The weirdest thing about the book was that there was no point, it was just a story. I didnt seem anti or pro anything. Nothing matters. nothing is important. what i take away from the novel is that life really sucks for some people and they make it worse through their own decisions.

Unfortunately in my copy, a previous reader had annotated it with their own thoughts. Living in one of the most conservative places on earth, you can imagine that the comments were along the lines of, "thats what happens when you kill unborn children." But i completely disagree, there was nothing in the book that would lead me to believe that had she not had the abortion she would have been any healthier or ended up any place but in a sanitarium. in fact, the book insinuates that the mental imbalance started at the death of the main characters mother (and the subsequent eating of the mothers corpse in the desert).

All in all, a very quick read, and weird. If you like weird books maybe worth a read, but no promises from me on if you will like it or be offended by it or anything else.

The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer

I had high hopes for this book. Best book about World War II and other hyperbole made me think it was going to be great. It was only OK. I believe it was Mailer's first book, and that showed in the lack of polish to the thoughts. But at the same time, you can tell that he can really write. My biggest problem with the book was the continual (in some parts it felt like every 10 pages) descriptions of a character's motivations for some action ending in some form of the thought, "even if he wouldn't admit those reasons to himself." If the book had been about how people lie to themselves, then maybe this would have been effective. But instead it felt like a crutch he used to explain more of the characters' back stories and how they related to this part of the war, even though the stories didn't really relate.

I liked less, though it is more a criticism of his view of human nature than of his writing, his (in my opinion) simplistic view of the people he was writing about. There were only two or three motivations for any action in the book, sex, loyalty, and fear. Indeed, the last two were identical many times. He may have been saying that when in a long drawn out war, a person is stripped to just his most basic instincts. It is an interesting thought, but I disagree with the premise.

All in all I am glad I read it, and will be definitely interested in reading more of Mailer's books. This was an ambitious book and idea, but even though it was over 700 pages long, I think it needed to be much longer to fully do justice to the concept of the book.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

This was a hard read. My reading time has often ended up with me falling asleep so it is tough to know how much of it is my own tiredness. There were more similarities between this book and what I have read of John Irving. I think it would be interesting to read all of Pynchon and Irving chronologically to see how many connections there are. But that is the job of a grad student in american lit., not me. maybe someday i will do it, but not now.

The book itself is quite dense. I think i would have to read it a few times to really get it. and if you want answers to the questions a book raises this will leave you frustrated. it ends by saying that there are only two possible solutions to the basic question of the book and never tells you which one. maybe an answer can be divined, but like i said, you would have to read it closely and a couple of times. (or be more gifted than I am at literary interpretation).

Interesting Connection

The next book that I am going to read is The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. Before reading it though, i wanted to check out the author a bit. i read what i could on him and one thing jumped out. in one of his letters to his agent he talks about working on three or four novels at the same time and that if they come out at all like what they are in his head, it will be the literary event of the millenium. This jumped out at me because a nearly identical conversation takes place in Joh Irving's The World According to Garp. That book is about an author who discusses with his publisher the next three books he will work on simultaneously and that if he finishes them like he imagines them it will be quite the literary event. I am paraphrasing here because i dont have garp with me. This isnt a subtle reference either, Garp was published in 1978. Pynchon's letter, while written well before 1978, was not made public until well after that. I don't know if there is a connection between Pynchon and Irving that this exchange would help prove, but it is an ineresting little theory, at least to me.

The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett

This book is about two sister who represent sophistication (sophia) and consistency (Constance).

Bennett evidently saw an old lady in a restaurant and the fact that she was old and ugly made him think that all old women are ugly, and so women who were once beautiful and are now ugly must be depressed. His purpose of showing the sad story every old woman has because she is now old, and used to be beautiful is contradicted by the story he tells. It is an exemplary work for sexism and ageism.

The sisters live very different lives and then they die. I have no idea what bennett was trying to say with this book, mostly but what i got from it was that no matter how different you are and what kind of life you lead, you end up the same in the end. with this kind of book that follows someone through their life, the end of the life is supposed to be the most poignant and instructional. in this book it appears to be that old people are fragile, pathetic, and die ignoble deaths. Sophia has a point in the book where she wishes that she was dead but doesn't want to die. This conundrum would be a good plot for exploration, but instead bennett puts her into a coma and kills her in the next page.

I could see it on a list of the best 100 books of any given year, but of the 20th century, that is a joke.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

This is the second John Irving book I have read in the last few months. I have decided that i really like his style of writing. there are books that feel like the author is finding out what happens as it is written, without plan or knowledge of what will happen next. Irving has a way of forshadowing exactly what is important, making your recognize the foreshadowing, and still leaving you surprised at how it ends. That was the case with Owen Meany. Everything was in place for the climax of the book. If you were paying attention, you had to know what was coming, but I was still surprised. the book is really about God, and I dont know if Irving was trying to say that people who believe in God are silly or that people who dont believe in God are silly, and frankly it doesnt matter. I have a feeling that regardless of what you actually believe, you will feel that Irving agrees with you.