Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll!!

The Other Boleyn Girl was a different view of merry Ole England than 1984. Though it was almost as dark at times. To be honest my heart isn't really in this post. Don't misunderstand, the book was good in a historical romance novel type of way, but it fizzed at the end and has left me a little dry. The narrator for this book is Anne's younger sister Mary, in the film played by Scarlett Johansson, but she doesn't narrate the film. Now I'm not sure how I feel about this quasi first person way which Ms. Phillipa uses. Because it's obvious that she wants to tell the story from a lesser known character's point of view, and as such invent an interesting new character. Where I distaste such an approach is that Phillipa has her narrators quite naive to the torrid turmoil of the royal court. But for all their innocence they are very aware of how the whole affair is unfolding. Also there are lapses where the narrator describes things in 1st person that she didn't experience in 1st person. Conversely the reader and the narrator are at other times jointly kept in the dark about some shady dealings of the other characters. These inconsistencies don't really bother me they're just stylistic hazards.

As the narrator Mary Boleyn(pictured here) really steals the story. Anne Boleyn is the classic historical character but she really takes a back seat in this book. It is called The Other Boleyn Girl because the two sisters are rivals. At first Mary is King Henry's lover and Anne is overshadowed, then they switch places as Anne steals the King's attention. The images of these historical characters is very engaging, but initially the part I wanted to get to was Anne and Henry's marriage. This also brings me to my major problem with the book. The book annoyingly stalls out along with Henry and Anne's wedding. It just blah blahs along while Henry tries to divorce his first wife. Then it just glazes over their wedding. Somewhere in all of this the book hits its climax when Mary courts and marries William Stafford. Once this happened I was satisfied and disconnected from the story which just fell apart along with Anne's life. By the time they chopped her head off I didn't care and could have chopped the book up without much remorse.

Overall King Henry was kind of a major douche, shagging any girl flaunted in front of him. The Other Boleyn Girl tries to throw in some medieval feminism but whatever. It peaks early and is very good up to that point. Then an overly long fizz follows. Dragging so much that I didn't really care who lost their head. At least I now know some good methods for flirtatiously snagging power men, so look out Luke!

The Tonic of Wildness

Thoreau's cabin? Or the site of several brutal murders?

So my last reading conquest was Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. It’s a collection of essays in which Thoreau waxes poetic about living alone in the woods for two years.

For some reason, it was hard for me to get through this. It took me a good solid three weeks to finish, and by the end I wanted to cut my throat with a piece of glass. I think I get bored a little too easily, and Walden bored me to no end.

There are a lot of beautiful quotes and pieces of wisdom in this book; they were just overshadowed by the self-righteous soliloquies about how wise Thoreau’s practices were.

I’m just glad to be done with it, to be honest. And to prove that I got something out of it, here is my favorite quote:

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations…their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.”

Ernest Hemmingway??

I read a little about this geeze on Wikipedia. This made me curious to know the opinion of the counsel. So? What do y'all know/think of this fellow who while standing in the door of his Idaho home, blew his paranoid head off with his favorite shotgun?

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Let me just start by saying that Flanner O' Connor is messed up. I read the other stories too, but I'm only going to post on the most famous of them which is the one the title is after "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

I'm going to tell you the basic gist of the story so if you want to read it yourself you could stop reading now, but I if I were you I wouldn't bother reading it.

Basically, this family is going on vacation and they take their cantankerous old grandma (shown in all of her pride on the left) with them. She is a bitty old lady that complains about everything. Before she leaves the house she gets dressed all nice and fancy so that if anyone finds her on the side of the road dead they will know she is a lady (hmmm). They stop at a restaurant on their way home and while they are their they talk to a guy about how the "Misfit" broke out of jail and is highly dangerous.

Well the grandma being the ray of sunshine that she is, insists that they go off into the middle of nowhere to see this plantation she remembered from her past. Well turns out, just kidding kids, that plantation is in a different state, and oh before I forget I brought my cat along in my bag without telling anyone and then accidentally kicked it so that the person driving would crash the car...oops. (raise your hand if you know anyone like this. I was so frustrated with the lady by the time I got to this point that I almost couldn't finish the story. O'Connor really know how to make you hate someone).

Well the mom breaks her shoulder and as they are assessing the damage the Misfit and his gang shows up and makes them all get out of the car and come with him into the woods...

I bet you can guess where the story goes from there. (If not feel free to ask cause I'm not going into detail).

I will just say this, the story is supposed to be a catholic perspective on the Grace of God. In the end supposedly the grandma obtains grace because she tells the misfit he is one of her children just before he shoots her dead and makes the comment that she would have made a good christian if there had been someone to shoot her every minute of her life.

I get the message trying to be sent by this story, I just don't like the story itself. I did think it was interesting how O'Connell set up a comparison between the murderer and the bitty old grandma and then showed the stark difference between the two, but I think she missed the mark a bit by focusing more on cheap grace than true repentance.

I will not argue that grace is important and that without it this life is useless, but I will argue that the context in which she is arguing grace doesn't really fit.

Another diatribe

Time for Round 2! You'd think I'd be all angryd-out after my 'Life Of Pi' rant, but if you thought that then you don't know the forever-simmering lake of hatred that is Luke. To quote 1984 off the top of my head, 'Hatred is not more tiring than love, as many believe. It is self-sustaining when it is truly embraced.' Or something like that.

What book have I set my sights on this time? This one.

But that's 'I Am The Messenger', the young adult book that has won numerous awards and is beloved by high school English teachers and intelligent, literate teens worldwide! It has a good message! It's funny! The author of it also wrote 'The Book Thief', a great story! What kind of bastard could be heartless enough to skewer it?

This guy.

On the left. I'm the one on the left.

'I Am The Messenger' is the tale of a pathetic loser who, through some extraordinary circumstances, is able to realize that he's actually a unique human being capable of doing great things. In the process he strengthens his relationships, becomes beloved by just about everyone around him, gets the girl he so desperately desired, and basically becomes the greatest man alive, second only to Jesus. And all he had to do was believe in himself! Well whoop-de-damn-doo, I'm glad we've solved the answer to middle-class apathy and lack of ambition. Hey kids, want to be amazing and loved? Step 1: Quit school, get a crappy job, and sit around. Step 2: Bitch about how boring your life is and do nothing significant to change it. Step 3: Hope for a life-changing event to come sweep you up out of your doldrums. Step 4: Smile happily like a doofus as said event happens to you. Congratulations! You didn't have to do anything but be a worthless loser. Wasn't that easy?

Okay, so I'm oversimplifying it. But since you've probably seen, heard, and/or read this exact same story fifty bajillion times with the exception of minor details, does it really matter what those details are? I say no, but if you're actually reading this then I owe you the details. Here they are: Ed Kennedy, nineteen years old, is a cabdriver living in some small town in Britain, and either the town doesn't have a name or I can't remember but I am not going back to check. So anyway, Ed Kennedy lives in this town and does nothing more than pet his beloved dog the Doorman, go to work, and hang out with a trio of friends whom he really couldn't care less for, except for Audrey, a saucy little number. See, Ed wants to get into Audrey's pants but he's not assertive or cool enough to seal the deal (every time he tries Audrey tells him she "just wants to stay friends". Ouch) and so he languishes in miserable lust, a every other young male who ever existed. Until one day... *drum roll* He heroically thwarts a bank robbery! And wouldn't you know it, someone takes notice and decide that Ed is just the guy to perform a series of good deeds meant to help out certain inhabitants of the town. So Ed begins receiving the aces from a deck of cards with three people written on them, people Ed's supposed to help. Each task is different (he must reunite a priest with his estranged brother, save a woman from her abusive husband, assassinate the Pope) but they all serve to add to the greater good of the townspeople and make Ed feel better about himself. He also comes to the realization that he loves his dog, so much so that they get married, have three kids, and end up living happily forever. A daring ending, to be sure, but a little unusual considering the targeted audience.

Now that we've gotten the plot out of the way, let's move on to why I didn't like this book.

For one thing, the characters never feel real. Everyone Ed meets is just a caricature put there to act out a predictable role and move the plot along. His friends, his enemies, the people he helps, all of them are completely two-dimensional and not once do they do anything surprising or unpredictable. As a result I ended up hating just about every person in this town and wishing one of them would just grab a gun and go on a shooting rampage that Ed must stop so that something, anything exciting could happen.

One of my main complaints with 'Life of Pi' was the fact that it occasionally moved too slow for its own good. Well, on the flip side of the coin, 'I Am The Messenger' moves way too fast. Here you have a unique setting, an intriguing premise, and the potential a great story. So you'd think that Mr. Zusak would realize what he has here and advance the story at an appropriate speed so that you have savor the book and have time to process everything that's thrown at you. But instead I was being continually introduced to a new character that I couldn't care less for, and even before much was revealed about the character or their past the story was moving onto another event and involving more characters I didn't give a damn about. And how come every time Ed shows up to help someone their response is always to accept him wholeheartedly? Wouldn't you be a little bit suspicious if some scrawny kid knocked at your door and said he was there to change your life? Wouldn't you maybe suspect a scam? I'm not saying that we should turn out everyone who comes to offer help free of charge, but it breaks the flow of the narrative and the believability when every character's response to Ed's offers are, "Sure, come in and help me with whatever's troubling me in life but do it fast so you can move on to the next two-dimensional character and get that much closer to ending this book." After this happened so many times I began to suspect that Mr. Zusak was simply writing this book to either pay the bills or earn more young adult awards that he could add to his ever-growing collection. At any rate, hooray for bad pacing!

Since I'm lazy and running out of angry energy, I'll just sum the rest of my complaints in a single sentence: the humor is unfunny, the conclusions to every event are far too predictable, the dialogue feels terribly synthetic, and the characterization is nonexistent.

What makes me mad about this is I was supposed to like this book. It came highly recommended, it won numerous awards, critics seemed to love it, and 'The Book Thief' is one of the greatest books I've ever read, so I was obviously expecting the same caliber from this one. But I was disappointed. If nothing else, this book has taught me to not expect quality from someone just because they've delivered it so effectively before. I mean, look at George Lucas. So sad.

But the good news is that I'm now done reviewing the two books I disliked and can now post about ones I actually enjoyed. So the next post is going to be slightly less bitter (not much) and much more respectable (a bit). I'll see you then.

Heavenly or Hellish Creatures

Confession: I have been waiting for a couple of days for someone else to post on this here book blog, because I finished Mere Christianity and I don’t want to look like an unbelievable goober by publishing three posts in a row with no interruption. So, thank you, AJ.

So Mere Christianity is an apologist tract by C.S. Lewis that basically explains and defends the core doctrines and theology of Christianity. Even though he wasn’t writing from a Mormon standpoint, I still enjoyed it immensely and it helped me to build my testimony of the LDS church.

C.S. Lewis was a Christian rock star; just an amazing, exemplary person. His words are soaked with intelligence and understanding and readability; he makes abstract concepts about Christianity easy to grasp, but he also makes it clear that there are some things that we just don’t know. I will also know begin to refer to him as the Analogy King, because he backed up every idea he wrote about with a funny or interesting analogy. He discusses sin and virtue, marriage, the Godhead (although he refers to it as the Trinity), the sacrament, post-mortality, et cetera.

Like Lewis’s other theological books, every single line from Mere Christianity is very quotable. So let’s see some quotes!

“The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes right because the sun shines on it.”

“Love is the great conqueror of lust.”

“Again, Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse—so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years; in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be.”

So, jes, I loved Mere Christianity, I wish I would have read it sooner. Now I am going to read Walden and maybe Dubliners, hip hip hooray.

(As a final note, I’m pretty sure Holland quoted Mere Christianity during this General Conference when he said that someone once said that true love must include the idea of permanence. I hear that the General Authorities quote C.S. Lewis more than pretty much anyone, except maybe Jesus.)

I'm very bad at following through on anything, I realize. I was supposed to have written a bunch of posts within the space of two weeks and here I am with only one to my credit. Since I'm sitting around the house waiting for my wisdom teeth holes to heal, I'll write about a book I didn't particularly like (re: hated): 'Life Of Pi'. Warning: what follows is a bitter, pathetic rant written by a very sad man. Reader discretion is advised.
Life Of Pi
This is the tale of a young Indian boy by the name of Pi whose family works at a zoo. His family isn't at all religious, but he's a very inquisitive boy full of curiosity and wonder which leads him to becoming a member of, not one, but three major religions (Hindu, Christianity, Islam). Due to political and economic issues (this is India in the 70's, so I'm assuming things were not peachy-creme wonderful) his dad decides to sell the animals and move the whole family to Canada. They and all the animals get on a boat and begin the long journey across the Pacific Ocean. But for some unknown reason, the boat sinks, killing everyone aboard except for poor Pi and a tiger who end up together on a lifeboat. Pi must learn to keep the tiger happy and fed to prevent himself from being killed and/or eaten. What a setup!*

What follows is supposed to be a riveting tale of survival, faith, and introspection. Too bad I thought it was total sucking crap. Maybe that's being too harsh. Let me elaborate: 'Life Of Pi' is a young adult book that can't decide whether it's supposed to writing for teens or children. The prose switches from extremely elaborate and verbose to simple and childlike. It seems like this book wouldn't really be able to capture a child's short attention span but neither would it be able to pique the interest of a literary teen. Nor would it be able to entertain a twentysomething reader by the name of Luke out for a good read.

But a little identity crisis is no reason to hate a piece of entertainment. 'District 9' was my favorite movie of '09; 'Bioshock' is one of my favorite games of all time; and I even love the ever-ephemeral David Bowie, crazy chameleon that he is. The real reason I have a bone to pick with 'Life Of Pi' boils down to the fact that it's bad. Just plain bad. The writing is uninspired and bloated; I can't tell you how many times I thought yet another scene of Pi's survival (catching fish, shielding himself from rain, keeping the tiger happy) dragged on way too long, kind of like my posts. I just wanted to shout, 'Okay, I know it's hard being on a lifeboat in the middle of nowhere with a tiger, and now you have to kill a turtle and eat it, boo-hoo. I DON'T CARE! MOVE ALONG!!!' And I actually did shout that quite a few times, which explains all the raised eyebrows and worrisome looks I got from my classmates and co-workers. The point is this book suffers from the same problem Roseanne Barr has has when she steps up to the buffet: it doesn't know when enough is enough. I never, never skim when I'm reading no matter how wordy the writing gets (and that includes the classic writers, like Dostoevsky and Hugo) but in this particular case the writing was so bad and the character so insufferable that I found myself skipping lines, then paragraphs, then entire chapters just so I wouldn't have to spend any more time with this crap. Good God.

And that's another thing, why did Mr. Martel create such an exceedingly annoying character, then tell the story from his perspective, and then make him the only human character for %85 of the book. What the hell was he thinking? Pi's supposed to be this wonderful little boy full of hope and imagination who wants to come closer to God in any way he can, so why did I find him annoying as hell? He never shuts up, he never stops whining, and he never thinks that whatever he's thinking isn't revelatory in some way or another, despite the fact he has nothing of interest to actually say. I wanted to strangle little Pi by page 5 so you can imagine my how murderous I was feeling by the end of this 200-plus crapfest. And the "humor" (make air-quotes with your fingers while reading that) is anything but. I've laughed more at funerals.

And let's get to the final complaint I will lodge against this book: its own damn self-righteousness. See, this book isn't content with just being a young-adult book; it's a life-changing book. Yann Martel is here to blow your mind and your soul, make you question existence and believe in God, make you WONDER and THINK FOR YOURSELF. You can practically see Mr. Martel smiling to himself while he writes this, saying 'Man, this is so original and unique and is going to be one of the greatest books ever. A character who believes in three religions simultaneously? How amazing is that. God, I'm awesome.' Crap almighty Martel, you're not Hemingway or Pynchon, get over yourself. And you're from Canada, no less. Canada! How dare you try to be smart. Go back to your syrup-sucking and moose-mounting. And write a better book.

But apparently I'm in the minority here. This book won all kinds of crap prizes and it came to me highly recommended by my brilliant sibling Kelsi, so maybe I'm just an angry husk of a man who's too far removed from human contact and love to enjoy a simple coming-of-age tale about a boy and his fight for survival against impossible odds. Fine, I'll grant you that. Just as long as I don't have to read that stinking turd 'Life Of Pi' ever again.

*Okay, the one thing this book has going for it is the story. Despite the fact that I rip on it most thoroughly I did think the setting was unique. So you know, there's that.

1984 Top 5 greatest years in the history of the World!

I can't think of a non-cheesy way to start this post so I'll just dive in. This book was crazy good, wow! For the first time in my life I dogeared pages and marked passages in one of my books. It was quite a journey, though I'm happy to report that I didn't cry at the end which is a big deal for me. However, I didn't cry because I wasn't surprised by the ending, a fact which I will discuss later.

First I want to discuss the passages I marked, I marked them because they are some of the most beautiful I've ever read. There's just something about human spirit fighting oppression that gets me.(pounding of chest at this point)

The first is personal to me as one of my mantras is, "Everyone's crazy but me" This quote from the book had a familiar ring.

"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."

The next I think I might have choked up at. For these reasons I prefer to read alone, I must be part Vulcan with the whole deep running emotions stuff. But if I choked up I had good reason as this is one of the most hauntingly beautiful set of words I've ever read. Quick set up we all know 1984 is a dsytopia, but the reason the main character Winston is saying this to the girl, Julia, is that they live with the constant pressure of being discovered to be against Big Brother and the consequences that would follow.

"I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving --that would be the real betrayal."

She thought it over. "They can't do that," she said finally. "It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything--anything-- but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."

"No," he said a little more hopefully, "no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them"

Oh so tender. Of course the book goes onto destroy even that sentiment. Which is what brings me to my literary analysis. Orwell presents you with a romantic character, romantic because of their situation and their attitude towards it. Then this character shares with you (the reader)

his hopes.

In this case, that he finds his rebellion living within the deepest parts of himself. Then Orwell systematically destroys that hope in the character and you. In music I believe it's called inverting, Fugue in D minor does it by introducing a melody and then later basically playing it upside down. And that's what happens here, highest high, lowest low. "They can't get inside you." Oh yes they can Winston and they do. Orwell not only destroys the character's hope and rebellion but the reader's as well. That is what I meant by I knew what the ending was going to be. Not because I'm smart but because it had been engrained into me as well as Winston for 50 pages. The tourture didn't stop untill Winston had lost hope and when he did, I did. For awhile I had hoped that it was like V for Vendetta. That Obrian was just preparing Winston for rebellious work in the brotherhood. But after a bit I abanonded that idea, and realized that it would all end when they wanted it to, because they had total control. When Winston was as they say, "Perfect". I'm afraid I must make a confession, this bother's me because I'm not a conceeded person. I like happy endings, I tried to convince myself that I didn't, that happy endings were so "common place" and I was above such dribble. I even cheered at the end of the movie Cloverfield because everybody dies. All characters you meet, dead. But that B-C grade movie's got nothing on 1984. Because 1984 ends with hopelessness and that's the saddest thing of all. As to what Orwell was trying to convey to the world with this book I won't say, I'll leave that to others, mostly because I'm too sad to think about it anymore, mostly.

He's a Tramp

My latest reading venture was a departure from Mark Twain: I decided to read My Autobiography by Charlie Chaplin. I was mostly motivated to read this after Luke and I watched Modern Times, and I realized that I am in love with Charlie Chaplin.

His autobiography wasn’t quite what I expected. He was raised in poverty in London, with his crazy mother, absentee, drunkard father, and older brother (who also went on to star in films). He got in the vaudeville circuit, came to America, broke into movies, broke into socialism, made fun of Nazism, was called before the Committee of Un-American Activities, then left the country. He was a genius and an icon, revolutionized the silent film industry, et cetera et cetera.

There are some details that Chaplin seems to be deliberately vague about while he is writing. For instance, his second marriage (which produced two children, who he was “quite fond of”)—I don’t think Chaplin even mentioned his second wife’s name in his book.

There also is a lot of name dropping—Charlie met basically every famous or influential person who lived between 1920 and 1950, including: Fatty Arbuckle, Winston Churchill, President Wilson, President Hoover, President Roosevelt, Albert Einstein and his wife, William Randolph Hearst and his wife and mistress, George Bernard Shaw, Orson Welles, H.G. Wells, Picasso, and Gandhi. There are literally hundreds more, probably 50% of which names I didn’t recognize (probably B-listers of the ‘30s).

The most interesting point about the book is that Chaplin is almost obsessive in recounting how much money every single venture made him, starting from his youth and continuing through his film career. He wasn’t shy about dropping figures and sums—not in a braggy way, though. It seemed more meant to be informative. Maybe Chaplin was just so supremely interested in money, and he thought his readers would be, as well. (I think his personal fascination with wealth stems from his humble beginnings, but that’s just a theory.)

Anyway, another book come and gone. I enjoyed this one. Chaplin did a better-than-adequate job of writing his own autobiography; it was entertaining and enlightening.

(Final note: Chaplin was a fervent anti-fascist and he hated Hitler. He said that when he first saw pictures of the rising German dictator, he was annoyed that Hitler’s mustache was similar to his.)