Ulysses (James Joyce)

I am utterly ashamed. I hang my rose-blushed cheeks, my chin on chest. Beaten. Battered. Bashed in what I thought were my brains.

In other words, I cannot get through this. I have had it in my purse for five days an have finished 46 pages. Joyce has some brilliant language but, well, the stream of consciousness (SOC) is too much for me. I like SOC, I do. Have read it before and, yes, it is a struggle to get used to but, once you are inside of the author's world, it usually becomes easier. Not here. At least, not for me. Part of it is the use of outdated allusions, I think. To the Bible or Irish folk songs. In Latin, in Italian, French and other languages. Also, he skips between and within time without transition so the past and the present are both overlapping ghosts. And lastly, and most tangibly, the quotation punctuation is all screwy. For instance, Joyce writes a quote like this:

--Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current will you?

This is a basic example from the first page but it gets worse when the speaker's action, the actual words and the main character's thoughts get all together with no "quotes." I guess that little dash is not enough for my pea-sized brain to decode. I surrender, Joyce. I hope, I hope to pick this up again one day and find that it makes sense. That I can swim through it. Maybe I'm just too lazy right now or maybe I just need some sort of Rosetta Stone. Anyone got one for sale? Seen one up on E-bay? "The James Joyce Secret Society Decoder Ring."

No, no, excuse me.

--The James Joyce Secret Society Decoder Ring, she said. I wonder where I could find one?

Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

1200 pages. Let me write out the numbers to give the weight of that justice: Twelve Hundred pages, One Thousand and Two Hundred pages. If I bought another copy, I could use them to do bicep curls but, well, that's an expensive and not very durable (paperback) dumbell. And my one copy was already almost destroyed. I must say that Rand does keep a reader on a short leash through that Grand Canyon of a trek. The world she creates feels to me like like being inside an Art Deco/Avante Garde painting. Everything is speed, motion, smooth bright color, commerce, technology, man-made machines, all in aerodynamic lines celebrating man's glory, his capacity for glory, the glory of man's mind and man's spirit. If it is a painting, then, it is an overly symbolic one where each object or tone/color is of the utmost importance, a philosophic work that struggles to fit the art form to an entire life view like stretching a tapestry over a wood and metal frame. Yes, that metaphor is apt because sometimes the tapestry (the art of the novel) wears thin with the insistant poking of the philosophic framework from under the surface.

To outline the plot, you should meet the cast of characters, all of whom are perfect examples of Ubermenschen. They are not only incredibly intelligent (they carry on conversations that could never exist in the real world, even between Nobel Laureates) but also beautiful, their muscles carved of marble, their hair of silk, their expressive eyes of various gemstones. I'm exaggerating here but only slightly--I was a bit frustrated and, okay, attracted by this. I mean, how do some of them stay so gorgeous when they are described as doing nothing but sitting in an office to over-work for 12 hours days? Recipe for obesity if you ask me. But I digress. This cast of sexy supermen and women is pitted against the world at large, a world that wants to only get by, take what it can and work what it has to. I think that Rand taps into any reader's feeling on this point. We all have been in a situation where we feel that we are working harder and/or smarter than those around us yet our work is benefitting them just as much, if not more. Rand believes that modern society is made up of these intellectual and financial "looters" who rob the talented and the virtuous of their work to make the rest of un-talented and un-working society function. These superpeople are Atlas, holding the world on their shoulders because they have been brought up to believe it is their moral responsibility. But what would happen if Atlas Shrugged?

The back cover describes the novel as "part action-adventure" and the plot about this struggle can be classified that way, though it is not frenetic enough for Bruce Willis to ever get involved in the film-version (which would be, what? 6-8 hours long?). The action is slowed, and rightly so I think, to insert the philosophic converations, thoughts, ephiphanies. I like how this gives real world examples to the theories, concrete expressions of her lofty ideas. It gets tiresome, however, during the 60 page speech by one of the main heroes that basically repeats all the theories that had been related already but with different metaphors. Rand tries to break it up for the eye by chunking the text into lots of paragraphs but nobody is being fooled. 60 pages. And this was the hardest part of the book for me--get on with it! She is going to fall in love with him, and that guy is going to find out the truth, and the bad guy is about to step into this trap and, twiddle dee dee, I need to read this 60 pages before the plot progresses!

Upon completion of my task, I can say that I liked the novel. I can see why it is considered a classic. I like the philosophy behind the novel, too, though I think parts of it are a bit dated. One can always strive to enact this world view in their personal life. In fact, I have often been thinking about it when reading or watching other stories, how her theory could relate to different character and circumstances. But economically, I don't know. I don't know if the free Capitalism she espouses would be wise or even feasible to enact. I think a lot of it stemmed from her own childhood experience with Communism and perhaps her ideas would have changed along with the rest of the world's post 1989. But business is not my forte so I shall stay out of it all together.

A fantastic read. I will agree with another friend, who warned me before starting Atlas Shrugged. He said, "I wanted to do nothing but read this book. I wanted to call in sick to work to read this book." And no, that's not exaggeration. Good thing that I get to read for 1-2 hours at work everyday, hmmm? Yay for nap time!!

The Kite Runner (Khaled Housseini)

Housseini is a doctor by trade, who wrote a national best-seller his first time out of the gates (which makes me very envious and proud of him simultaneously). He's a good writer, more with plot than with fancy description but good. And a story set in Afghanistan, that relates some of the culture and history of the country in language that American's can understand, is a hot commodity in this day and age when we are all struggling to comprehend the events of the world around us.

This is the story of two boys, one rich and one poor, one master and one servant, one racially "superior" and one "inferior." The master, Ali, flies the kite in local competitions where each man must cut loose the kite of his rival with the glass-edged string of his own kite. The servant, Hasan, then runs to fetch the lost kites--the Kite Runner, you see--and has an uncanny knack for the task. "Anything for you," he says, with true devotion. But history and human weakness separates these life-long friends.

Remember the holocaust poem that you were made to read, silently and aloud, as homework and at assemblies, about speaking up? And when they came to take me, there was no one left to speak. This is a story about how a life can be lost, spiritually that is, by doing nothing at all. By letting something evil happen, you inherit that evil and carry it around for life, your own back-grinding load. But of course there is redemption. Come on, you knew there was going to be redemption, right?

Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

Second time reading this one. I have no money to buy books and I don't feel like going to the library. Plus, on occasion it's fun to read a book that you don't have to wade through for a day until you know whether it's good. Sometimes it is just nice to know.

An Indian boy named Piscine Patel, son of a zoo keeper and en route from India to Canada, is cast out to sea when his ship goes down. His only companion? A male, adult Bengal tiger. For 227 days, he survives. For exactly 100 chapters, you will not only survive but thrive with creative energy while considering the many issues that Martel raises--zoology, religion, human nature, endurance, balance. A story that excels in all areas--plot originality and movement, unique descriptive style, and themes that emerge as if from your own head, your experience, your skin. And, to me, that three-punch combo is rare and precious. The kind of novel that I would be proud to say I wrote but, because I know is so perfect, is and maybe always will be beyond me.

The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

Morrison's first novel, her Nobel-prize winning work about Pecola Breedlove, among other characters. Pecola wants nothing more than to have blue eyes, to fit the standard of beauty she sees in Shirley Temple and her own baby dolls. Why does a little girl not want a doll?, they ask. We pay good money for a plaything for her and she does nothing but destroy it, drag it by it's hair, rip out it's eyes. A powerful work that, of course, speaks to the heart of racism and African-American identity. But in a broader sense, Bluest Eye is about stepping outside of such standards to accept and celebrate the self. Morrison's descriptive talent can tell any story. My personal favorite is Jazz, worth checking out if you too are a fan.

The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen)

Tales of the dysfunctional family have been all the rage for the last few years. Yes, yes, I get it. We're all dysfunctional in our own little ways and usually, under the quirkiness and neruosis, you find the true emotions that lie underneath--love, family.... Not in this book. A very interesting and well-written story centering around a family whose matriarch just wants everyone back in suburban mid-West for one last Christmas together. The separate plotlines of the three children are all complex and intriguing as Franzen switches back and forth between his family of characters. When in one character's shoes, you see the horrid things the others do and what pain lies in the interior of the person you inhabit. But then it shifts and you can't help but think the character whose mind you were in before is utterly reprehensible. A quick read--it definitely sucks you in, your nose in the crease of the spine--but on the whole unfufilling to me for one reason. In the end, I could not relate to any of these creatures that passed themselves off as human beings. I pitied them. I felt the interest of a scientist looking at a new species under the microscope. But they were nasty, mean people and I didn't identify with them at all. I believe that may be a main theme of the book but, personally, I am thankful that the people Franzen sculpts exist only within those pages, which I can easily close, leaving them caged between front and back cover, safe on the shelf.

The Winter of Our Discontent (John Steinbeck)

Winter of Our Discontent, meaning either:
1) That season when we were so discontented.
2) The end of the era of our discontent, quickly to be renewed with a spring of happiness

Who knows. I think that Steinbeck purposefully wants his reader to ponder that notion when reading about Ethan Hawley, a man of prestigious descent but with the humble job of shopkeeper and a family who craves more. If success is monetary and success is "good," then why are Ethan's "good" deeds not bringing him prosperity? Shouldn't he then do the "bad" things to be the "good" guy? A story for anyone who enjoys pondering such questions, such questions where it is not the answer that is important but only the asking. A story for anyone who wondered what it would be like, just how would it feel, how would it be accomplished, to rob a bank. Shhh. Don't give it away now.

We The Living (Ayn Rand)

Ayn Rand's first novel and a cathartic, semi-autobiographical tale of life in Communist Russia. It's amazing to think that English is not her first language when you read this gritty prose, prose that brings the bitter cold of winter felt through ragged clothes right up to your nose. The plotline reads like a Romance--a woman caught in a triangle with two men, different in every way. One representing the free soul, being torn apart by a dictatorship, and the other the man who represents that government in an idealistic (perhaps ignorant) way, full of the idealism of Marx. Political and philosophical, Rand begins to explain her life's philosophy of Objectivism and, I think, reveals from where this theory emerged--growing up in such a brutally cold environment--cold unheated flats, cold to the arts and sciences, cold to the individual spirit. I swear, I had to put on an extra pair of socks during this one and couldn't stop thinking of those Primus stoves. A Primus for every family as the only means of cooking. Funny to think that I own a Primus, for camping of couse, of how an object can transcend geography and time, how a stove can mentally link my backpacking adventures and the meatless tacos I cook to the struggle for survival (and spiritual death) in the Communist Russia of the last century.

Civilwarland In Bad Decline (George Saunders)

Second time reading this collection of short stories and am just as impressed. The title story is the jewel of the whole, I think, and is the tale of the second-in-command at a local amusement park/tourist attraction. Which has come under attack by local gangs. Darkly funny without losing any dramatic impact. A modern Southern writer of talent.