Book Reviews

The Magicians-- Lev Grossman vs. The Catcher In The Rye -- J.D.Salinger

2011-05-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

I absolutely adored The Magicians. I thought it was genius. I read it in two days, and nearly threw a tantrum when I finished because I wanted to read more and there wasn't any book left. I made approximately everyone I know read it. Before I even finished the book, I was lending it out to my friends. I will not proselytize for any cause except really really excellent books. Lev Grossman's next book, The Magician King is out this summer and I am making every effort to make August happen faster simply so I can get my hands on the book as soon as possible.

The Catcher in the Rye inspired no such fervor in me. We read it in English class, but I wasn't the type of student to write off a book just because a teacher had the gall to recommend it. My first year of High School we read After the First Death, and ever since then I've been fairly trusting that my English teachers know what books to read. A Separate Peace challenged that conviction, but whatever. Catcher in the Rye pissed me off. And not in the right way, because I think you're supposed to finish the book somewhat aggravated. I think Salinger wanted you to put that book down, and sigh for Holden. Feel that the world was a little clearer now that Holden had exposed it and that your perspective permanently changed because of it. Surely that's what the most powerful books do, leave you a different person than you were when you opened the cover.

I hated Holden. I thought he was conceited. I thought he was lame. I didn't understand why he was taking all of this opportunity and throwing it as far away as he possibly could. Rather than finding him sympathetic, I found him abominable. His boredom didn't inspire me to do anything other than put the book down.

So when I read an interview with Lev Grossman that called out Quentin for his Holden likeness (here: http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd%2F4spot%2F20110113#72585) , I immediately balked. Surely not! Quentin is nothing like Holden! Their names both end in n and that is where the similarities end.

When I calmed down, getting over the tragic error in comparing one of my favorite books to an utterly uninspiring work took some time, I began to reconsider. Quentin and Holden do share some remarkable similarities. Namely, they are both bored. In both books, the ennui is palpable. The pages are pervaded with a sense of endlessness that comes from a person who is truly lost and feels absolutely no desire or power or ambition to change. Both make dumb decisions because of their boredom (to say any more on the matter would necessitate spoilers, so I'll stop there). Both are young men, leaving high school and facing the vast world in front of them. But really, their major similarity and a defining characteristic of both is their boredom.

So why is Quentin so attractive? Why does he work so much better for me? Is it simply because Quentin is smarter? He is a self described math nerd, and it takes a brave soul to claim that title. Is it because there's magic in the magicians and only resounding tedium in Holden's world? Perhaps the characters are not all that different and in the Magicians the context is different; I adore Quentin because he lives in a universe I cherish.

I'm not sure. However, I do know that all of you should go out now and get a copy of The Magicians. It's absolutely worth your money.

Ender's Game -- Orson Scott Card

2010-03-21T20:29:00.001-07:00

Now, I love books. All books: trashy, biographical, scientific, fantasy, deeply intellectual, I really just love them. It runs in the family too. My father just got the flu, and complained that "you know it's bad when I don't even want a book." However, even I admit that not all books are equally wonderful, equally moving, or equally important. Some are only good, some are amazing, and others are so powerful they ought to be required reading for humans. Ender's Game belongs to the last category.

Firstly, I should admit that I'm a sucker for school novels. Especially boarding schools. When I was little, I couldn't decide if I wanted to live in Jo's boarding school in Little Men, or would prefer to be in an orphanage (think Annie, the musical). Regardless, there is a certain literary power in gathering a large number of children together and allowing them to outnumber adult supervision. Ender's Game, besides offering a compelling presentation of childhood, satisfies all cravings for the boarding school mentality of adult versus child. Besides the ever present threat of the Buggers, adults are a clearly menacing presence throughout the book. This is not a new theme, however, Card refreshes the idea by making the adults scary in their small-mindedness, cruelty, and ignorance. These are not impotent or bumbling authority figures, but deliberate and incompetent men. There are only three women in the book that I recall, Ender's mother, his sister Valentine, and his peer (as far as any could be considered in Ender's league) Petra.

Card's most impressive skill lies in his ability to place information. When I read the book for the first time, I gasped out loud at least three times, none of which I will tell you about because I despise spoilers more than almost anything. Once, my senior year of High School, an English professor revealed the end of Hamlet when we were one act into the play. I am still scarred to this day. He claimed that novelty was not the main draw of any Shakespeare work. Whatever. While Card's shocking reveals are a draw for readers, they are not the component of the book which makes it so important.

I don't truly like to moralize. Nor do I like authors who do, at least in an obvious way, especially for adult audiences (the exception to this rule is Louisa May Alcott, who could preach at me all she liked and I would continue to adore her stories). Card takes a magnificent fascinating work of science fiction, and bumps it up to imperative reading by adding a beautiful moral message. Again if I said any more I'd be giving it away, but after reading Ender's Game I felt like I had a different outlook on life, and needed to reevaluate how I looked at the world. Any work that draws a reader in like that, and spits them out taking a good hard look at themselves has achieved a major literary goal. Card communicates with his reader on a level that very few authors achieve.

I have to tell you, besides gasping at several parts of the book, I may also have cried. Full disclosure. Not stupid crying that, like in The Education of Little Tree. No catharsis in those tears, and I didn't feel like the book really deserved them. Ender's Game was well worth the cry.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower -- Stephen Chbosky

2010-03-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

This book is more evidence that publishers can be crazy people. Nabokov had to publish Lolita with Olympia Press, about the sketchiest producer of books to ever exist. Chbosky published Perks of Being a Wallflower with...MTV books. Yeah, I know. Confusing. Definitely did not expect MTV to be remotely involved in producing excellent novels. HOWEVER:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a stunning, beautifully written book. I can see where MTV felt the book would appeal to their readership. The narrator is a confused, naive, impressionable boy, hit hard by his teenage years. This would seem to require that the book be angsty; a poorly constructed work to reflect Charlie's confusion. Chbosky smashes that requirement to pieces, giving Charlie an introspective and observant voice, and (despite using Charlie as a lens for just about every pitfall a teenager can face) avoids moralizing.

A particularly beautiful quote from the book, which appears all over postsecret.com: "We accept the love we think we deserve." Also, the poem in the middle of the book stays with you for days. I don't want to repost the poem here, I like how it fits in the context of the book, and I think it would feel inorganic and strange and just wrong on a blog.

This is one of those books where talking about it too much would give away parts of the book. Chbosky sets everything up so well, shocking the reader sometimes, smoothly and slowly leading the reader away other times, that talking about themes or passages just won't give an accurate enough picture of the book. Just like Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, the secrets of the book are so clear and heartwrenching at the end of the book, that once you've read it you can't give a description of any part without giving things away. I don't think I'll try anymore, but it's Chbosky's book is gorgeous, and will feel relatable to anyone who ever was or currently is a teenager. Seriously, read this book. Not required reading for humans, but very very nice.

The Soloist -- Mark Salzman

2009-07-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

A word of warning: don't finish this book immediately before bed. I finished this book about 10 minutes ago, immediately texted a friend telling her she has to read it, and then sat in bed grinning like an idiot. The whole book is beautifully crafted, well-paced, and fun to read. The message of this book is tremendously uplifting. Renne, the main character (I found myself typing soloist, not character, showing how well Salzman immersed me in the world of music) has a tragic hopeless air about him that feels a lot like Stevens's from Remains of the Day. At the same time, he is more likeable, more passionate, and somehow more substantial than Stevens. Remains of the Day ends on a low note, life passes on basically unchanged but somehow with all the hope skooshed out of it, so it's even duller and thinner than before. The Soloist ends beautifully, restoring the reader's hope for music, mankind, and every character in the book. I'm sure critics with more discerning taste would hate the ending. After all, they hated JK Rowling's epilogue, which I adored. The ending had everything I like, SPOILER ALERT the main character got his groove back, his student is outstanding and studies with him again, and music triumphs over everything.

Why was this book exceptional? Because of it's descriptions of music. I find music extremely difficult to put into words. I've never been able to describe how I feel when I play music, or listen to music, despite knowing that it is a feeling I want all the time and crave when I don't have it. Salzman expresses everything impeccably. Also, the story about a failed progidy who still lives for music and loves music and feels music with every bone of her body is soul soothing. I put the book down and all I can think about now is running to my piano and playing hours and hours of Bach.

Inda -- Sherwood Smith

2009-06-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

This book was deemed science fiction by my local library. There's a very fine line between science fiction and fantasy, but I think that science fiction depends on leaps of human innovation and technologies, whereas fantasy relies on magic. Similarly science fiction tends to look forward in time, while fantasy gives a medieval air to everything that occurs. So I would call Inda top-notch fantasy, not science fiction. Sherwood Smith has a delightful writing style, and superb command of plot. I love the languages that Smith explores! He deftly explains a history of hostile politics via a subtle use of language. The distinction between language used for war and for peace is excellent! Then the king uses a future command tense for his unique mandates. This makes Sherwood Smith's created world feel very far away from ours, where subtleties of language are lost in instant message speak and kitchsy grammatically painful phrases. The marine language is distinct not in a change of colloquialisms from the common language, but in conjugation of verbs. I do not claim to have an excellent grasp of grammar, or even spelling, but this attention to detail tickles me pink. Every time he showed off his linguistic understanding I practically giggled with joy, just like I do whenever Joni Mitchell sings "speak in present tenses." The plot initially reminded me of Ender's Game, in that you follow one particularly gifted hero who continually gets screwed over by his world. There is one giant twist which sets the world on edge. But other than that, the books are quite distinct. For one thing, I never felt Sherwood Smith moralized during his book. While I adored Ender's Game, and feel it changed my life in extremely positive ways by making me think about things I had never felt about before, it was not consistently a comfortable experience. Inda is uncomfortable in it's constant tragedy, but somehow avoids a sense of stultifying grief. The reader constantly empathizes with the characters, and deep in to the book the reader has confidence in the characters capacity to fix what's wrong with their world. Sponge, the perfect nickname for a hero, in my opinion, can fix everything. I am dying to read the next four books, and not surprised that Sherwood Smith can get a great deal more material out of this world, since he has created a realistically convoluted political system. Excellent book, with the perfect length for the material. Also, it was not impossible to read in bed, like the Chronicles of Amber by Zelazny. I only read that book twice or three times (really 10 books in one, truly excellent and spellbinding for the first five, constantly surprising you, the last five are more predictable but comfortable in their delightful characters and quick paced action) and it broke in half it was so large. Inda is everything I love about well-crafted fantasy. I look forward to Smith's explanation of magic, he seems to have it very reasonably bounded (as reasonable as magic can be, obviously). On a note fairly disconnected to the rest of Smith's writing, I found his treatment of sexual antics refreshing and realistic. The fact that royalty often shows a bend towards homosexuality makes the acceptance of homosexual relationships across the nation seem realistic. The love stories he constructs seem consistently natural, he has a fine eye for human condition, and effectively communicates the love lives of a great variety of types of people. This understanding of humanity and how people love gives the book a depth that other authors lack. For instance, when Mercedes Lackey tried to create normalcy for homosexual relations in her Valdemar worlds, I simply didn't buy it. Perhaps that was a judgment of youth, but in the Talia series and in the Vanyel series I didn't find Lackey's treatment nearly as effective as Smith's. Another great facet of a book lovingly crafted with an impeccable eye for beautiful details.

Salem's Lot -- Stephen King

2009-06-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

SUCH A GOOD BOOK!! Okay, so admittedly everything Stephen King writes is consummate genius. But this is the one I've read most recently so I am the most enthusiastic about it. Plus, after Twilight, I had the campiest conception of vampires ever, and now I'm terrified of them again, so all is right with the world. King once again gives a horrible monster that seems unbeatable. The vampire has infected the town with rapidity that would impress Bernie Madoff, and it seems like even with divine intervention, the main characters Stephen King gave you about two hundred pages to fall in love with are totally screwed. This is the genius of King, he writes delightfully LONG books! He draws you in to a situation where you feel fairly comfortable and familiar, it seems normal enough but with a tinge of something strange, and then the tinge grows slowly over about 200 pages, and by the time everything is revealed the world King's created is shot to hell. That is the best way to terrify your reader. Make them feel at home, give them some nice characters (though never infallible, because King is, again, totally genius), draw them in so they will never leave, and proceed to destroy everything. Even if King destroys the monster at the end of the book (SPOILER, he does in this book, as he does in IT) you aren't willing to turn off your reading light. Especially delightful in Salem's Lot, not a tremendous amount of the gorey stuff. Although I love when King is willing to go there, and he will freak you out with his gore (aka teeth falling out in the alien book he wrote), it's far more comfortable to not have it in the book at all. Great, great thriller, fast action (a constant in King's work), excellent horror, great book.

Hocus Pocus -- Kurt Vonnegut

2009-06-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

I adored this book. It was very well paced, had an absorbing plot and a captivating main character. Despite Vonnegut's depressing post-modern tone, which epitomized the failure of America to cope with its own action in Vietnam, the book was not so harsh that it wasn't enjoyable. The society Vonnegut creates is fascinating, he puts together rich people, rich idiots, intelligent protesters, and morally despicable intelligent and unintelligent people. By the end of the book, I was on board with adultery, but hated investigative journalism with a passion. Number at the end of the book is 82, in case you don't feel like counting the number of people drawn on the last page. This seems like a huge number, both for people to have slept with, and to have killed. And although I'm not sure how I feel about it, the poignancy of his acts of creation and connection equalling his acts of ultimate destruction and disconnection is prevalent. Eugene Hartke has some sort of perfection about him, and perfect equality and symmetry, despite his tremendous lack of morality. He is captivating, creative, and someone you end up desperately wanting to meet in person, despite the fact that he is in jail, killed 82 people in the war, and has so alienated the people around him that he is absolutely alone as he faces the end of his life.

A good review: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,318180,00.html