King Lear, William Shakespeare

Spoiler Alert: Everybody dies.

Believe it or not, there is a shocking amount of good English major lit out there that I just haven't read. I am remedying this defect, and King Lear is part of my solution.

It is a Shakespearean tragedy, so I came in knowing that pretty much everyone dies. Because it is about a father and his three daughters, most of the characters are related, which makes the disregard and cruelty with which they treat each other even more poignant. I enjoyed the twists that it took to get from the beginning to the point where everyone dies, even if the original premise made the story a little unbelievable. The entire conflict hinges on King Lear's making his three daughters give public speeches about their love for him and his youngest daughter's refusal, despite her deep love for him. Being a tragedy, it goes downhill from there. Being Shakespeare, there are a lot of disguises and tricks thrown into the story, plus a few good storms and failed suicide attempts.

My favorite character was the Fool, who offered an alternately nonsensical and wise counterpoints to the suffering throughout the play, following Lear in his exile. And of course, I loved the language of the play. That's why I read Shakespeare.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Yes, I am fairly certain that most, if not all, of my fellow-bloggers have read this novel, and I hope a good chunk of my readership as well. I am also fairly certain that almost everyone who reads this novel develops a strong opinion of it, and I might be risking my often-in-jeopardy literary neck by offering my own view. But here goes.

First, in case you haven't read it, Wuthering Heights picks up the age-old question of nature-versus-nurture in the form of several very twisted love stories. The action centers around Heathcliff, a foundling child of mixed race, who enters the Earnshaw household. The older sibling, Hindley Earnshaw, hates him; Catherine, the younger, loves him. However, for various reasons, she chooses not to marry him, but the pretty-boy Edgar Linton instead. From there, the novel spirals into Heathcliff's elaborate machinations of vengeance.

I'm not sure what Bronte was thinking when she wrote the novel, but the narrative point of view is unusual, to say the least. A complete outsider (Lockwood) narrates the novel, but the housekeeper tells him the story that really constitutes the plot. However, she did not witness every event in the story, so she gives Lockwood long monologues from other characters... It is story veiled in story veiled in story and presents the dilemma of the unreliable narrator ad absurdum.

I don't like stories told through third-party narrators. I don't like stories where I don't identify with, like, or respect any of the characters. I don't like stories about hatred or vengeance. And if I picked some adjectives to describe the novel, they would be dark, twisted, annoying, and boring. So, logically, I should really hate Wuthering Heights. Yet, I don't. I enjoyed it the first time I read it, four years ago, and I enjoyed it this time, and I have no idea why.

1491, Charles Mann

Yes, I'm still here!  I am absolutely astounded by how quickly my fellow-bloggers read books.  But after a month of reading (and traveling cross country to Colorado), I finally have a new one for you -  1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.  A professor assigned a chapter from this book during the spring semester and I liked it so much that I decided to buy it.

Unlike many historians and archaeologists, Mann is able to pull together a succinct synthesis of American civilizations pre-Columbus, focusing on the ways people modified their environments to shape the world early colonists later experienced.  Perhaps it sounds a little dry, but Mann is an excellent writer and takes you along on his adventures to the Amazon, the Mexican countryside, and New England.  I was impressed with how well he tackled some complex archaeology, and drew comparisons between so many diverse groups of native peoples in the Americas.

I certainly recommend this book for anyone interested in early American history, archaeology, Native American studies, or environmental studies.  It's easy to read, but does take a while to tackle the whole thing if you're an unfortunately slow reader like me.

And with that, I'm defecting to another Jane Austen before I tackle any more archaeology or history.

On Writing, Stephen King

My little sister loaned me this book, and I am very upset about having to give it back. Stephen King abandoned horror fiction for the length of one book to write about writing. His detour resulted in an accessible, fun-to-read book that covers a variety of topics. The book is part autobiography, part grammar and stylistic lesson, part rant on pet-peeves, and part advice to aspiring writers.

Having read it, I am disappointed that King writes in a genre that I don't enjoy, because I enjoyed his writing and wanted to read more than this short book. He didn't give any advice that I haven't heard, but he wrote it in a way that I liked to hear. If you write fiction, you should read this book; it is inspiring, entertaining, and helpful, a pretty good combination of traits.

The True Meaning of Smekday, Adam Rex

After the Boovish invasion of Earth, Gratuity Tucci has learned a lot about human nature. For instance:

"--Most folks will steal if they can get away with it.
--Most people want to break other people's things and roll cars over, but won't unless their planets are invaded by aliens, or their basketball team wins the finals.
--About one in a hundred people resent having to wear clothes all the time.
--Alien invasions make people stick flags on everything. Not just American flags, either. The Jolly Roger made a real comeback around this time."

This book is brilliant and hilarious. It is framed as an essay for school: What is the true meaning of Smekday?--the day formerly known as Christmas, the day that the Boov arrived to colonize Earth, and the day the Boov left one year later. The winning essay will be put in a time capsule that will be opened in 100 years. In her three attempts at writing the essay, Gratuity reveals the story to the reader in a not quite chronological way, which makes it incredibly engaging. I loved the way the author structured this book. He is also an artist, so there are some amazing illustrations, and interjected comic pages drawn by the Boov who can't write in English.

Thematically, it is largely a comment on Manifest Destiny and the treatment of Native Americans. It deals with issues of race and prejudice through the blunt, sarcastic, witty voice of 11 yr. old Gratuity. And the plot itself was amazingly conceived.

In an attempt to reach the human reservation in Florida by car, Gratuity and her cat, Pig, meet up with a Boov criminal, who has taken as his Earth name J.Lo. (Favorite line in the book: "It was a long message, and in pretty good English, but with that same pitched whine that J.Lo had. J.Lo the Boov, not J.Lo the singer/actress/perfume.") Together they travel across the country searching for Gratuity's mom, who was abducted toward the beginning of the invasion. Then Gratuity, J.Lo, and Pig join forces with a gang of boys who have been hiding under Disney World to drive the Gorg (another set of invading aliens--much more evil than the Boov) out of Earth. I won't ruin the ending for you.

One of the best things about this book is that even though the narrator is a girl, boys love it too. It's pretty gender-neutral in its style, and the sense of humor really appeals to boys. It's on a 5th/6th grade reading level, but we did it with a book group that included 3rd/4th graders and everyone loved it. Highly recommend it!

The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

My first adult book of the summer! Look at me go!

Because of the movie, you probably know that this is a book about a young girl who is raped and murdered by a serial killer. The story is told by the girl's ghost as she watches her family and friends deal with the tragedy of her death.

It wasn't quite what I expected. I thought more of the book would be devoted to tracking down her killer and bringing him to justice. But it was much more subtle and complicated than that. It's an upsetting story, but having Susie's ghost as narrator (yes, her name is Susie, and spelled the same way I spell it, which--not gonna lie--kept jarring me as I read it) lends a sort of peace to the story that it wouldn't have had being told by the father or the detective. The reader knows from the start what happened, so the pressure for justice and the need for the characters to learn the killer's identity isn't quite the same as it would be if we needed that information as well. Also, while Susie is dead to the characters, she is very much alive to the reader, an active participant in the story.

Incidentally, having now finished the book, I love what Alice Sebold does with the title. I can't think of many serial killer book that have so perfectly incorporated and thematic titles. And maybe that's what impressed me the most about this book: it's not just another serial killer book. The driving force behind it is much more complex than the surface murder mystery.

The ending is one of those perfect endings that is not what the reader expects, maybe not what the reader wants, but (after having read it) obviously the only possible way the story could have ended. An inevitable surprise.

Good book. I recommend it if you haven't already read it.

Thursday Next Series, Jasper Fforde

I decided to wait and post about this series in one entry. Fforde wrote four books about his "literary detective" heroine, Thursday Next: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten. They are set in England in a world that might-have-been, if Winston Churchill had not carried England through the Second World War.

Thursday, a Special Operations agent of the Literary Detectives, spends most of her days searching out forged Miltons and keeping Marlovites (those who think Marlowe penned Shakespeare's plays) from rioting. Then an operative from a high unit of Special Operations comes to seek her help. Acheron Hades, the archnemesis of the world as his name might imply, is plotting evil things, and Thursday can recognize him since he once was her professor. As events unroll, Hades and Thursday discover a way to travel into books, a feat Hades uses to blackmail the world when he threatens harm to Jane Eyre and Thursday uses to pursue Hades.

And that's just the first book. In subsequent books, Thursday battles more of the Hades clan (their names are Cocytus, Phlegethon, Lethe, Styx, and Aornis) and goes head-to-head with her country's personal evil corporation. She ends up living inside Book World, a complex fictional society where characters live and new stories are created. Ultimately, she has to save the real world from threats of its own and characters from the Book World.

Fforde creates an alternate England that provides a hilarious, witty, and sometimes scathing critique of the modern world. He throws in time travel, re-engineered extinct species, and full contact croquet just for the fun of it, and his novels are fun. However, I found his long sojourn to Book World very tedious. He creates a detailed set of rules and mores for his fictional world that fall flat after reading the parts that take place in the modern world. They tested the bounds of belief and were not always internally consistent. And, frankly, I ultimately did not care about the complexities of Book World. I wanted Next to get on with her life in the real world.

Still, I think this series (or at least the first one) is a must-read for any English nerd. How can you turn down a novel with Shakespeare vending machines?