Read This: My Foray into YA Lit

After a heavy month of reading a book on relationships (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work) and a Willa Cather novel for my book group (Death Comes for the Archbishop), my curiosity led me to some lighter fare for May.  Much lighter.

I’d like to say that I’m interested in writing young adult literature, so that’s why I read Twilight and Gossip Girl this weekend.  But no, it was mainly because I wanted to see what all the hype was about, and because, as it turns out, they are both highly enjoyable.

Stephenie Meyer, as we know, is a Mormon mother who has written a ridiculously successful series about vampires.  Vampires.  They’re so hot right now.  Even to the point that their popularity has been parodied on South Park.  Though I found Harry Potter completely unreadable (sorry), I decided to see what this series of thick fantasy young adult books is all about, and put a copy of Twilight on hold at my local library.  There were about 48 other holds on the same title, I might add.

There’s something to be said about a 500-page novel that you can read in two days.  The story is more angsty teen romance novel than Sci-Fi, though the Sci-Fi part kept me interested when the saccharine parts threatened to overwhelm the story.  Twilight isn’t a great novel, but it’s highly entertaining, moody book, and I feel like I understand popular culture just a little bit more having read it.

Then there’s this:

I’ve watched a few episodes on the web and the show didn’t really draw me in.  I wasn’t too surprised to find that the book is much sassier, naughtier, druggier, sluttier, and all around more entertaining.  The fantasy of living on the Upper East Side is quite fun and well-imagined, as is all the rich-bitch prep-school high-society stuff. It’s guilty pleasure at its best, which a glossy show on CW just can’t match. Gossip Girl is a great way to spend an unemployed (but should be finishing up my research paper and other finals) afternoon.

And now I’m off to find the next book in each series.  More productive afternoons await me.

Read This: Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris was the pick last month for my ladies’ book group.  Yes, I belong to a women-only book group, started by my former neighbor.  I’m a little bit of an outsider, not being in my mid-to-late thirties nor being an attorney, though they welcome me all the same.  And unlike your stereotypical women’s book club, we actually do talk about the book (though we fit in plent of wine, snacks, personal talk, and oohing and ahhing over babies, when present).

Though the topic of the book might be a little *too* close to home for those who have recently been laid off, or who are working in a layoff environment (and indeed, about 30% of us last night had been affected by layoffs), it’s a good read if you can stomach it.  Written in chorus from the perspective of an ad agency full of gossipy, neurotic, troubled, and all around typical work folk, it is, in equal turns, hilarious, catty, insightful and tragic.  It’s one of those rare funny books that also left me deeply satisfied at the end.  And of course there are some great musings on the futility of the rat race:

It was the sort of thing, six months ago, that would have sent him right over the edge, seeing these men, these first-generation Americans without much choice in the matter, spend their morning in the dark recess of a loading dock power-spraying the asphalt and the Dumpster – good god, was work so meaningless?  Was life so meaningless?  It reminded him of when an ad got watered down by a client, and watered down, until everything interesting about the ad disappeared.  Carl still had to write the copy for it.  The art director still had to put the drop shadow where the drop shadow belonged and the logo in its proper place.  That was the process known as polishing the turd.  Those two poor saps hosing down the alleyway were just doing the same thing.  All over America, in fact, people were up and out of their beds today in a continuing effort to polish turds.

Listed as one of Time Magazine’s Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, it has long been available in paperback, and more importantly, at your local library

Read This: The Road

 

I checked this out from the library last week and read it in a few long sittings.  I love how McCarthy is equal parts literary genius and entertainer.  I found myself alternately gripping my seat and pausing to look up words like ”vermiculate” and “crozzled.” The post-apocalyptic story he weaves is a profound page turner, detailing both the horrors and the great good of humanity.

I am very excited to see that a movie is set to come out in 2009, starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.  From the photos below, it looks exactly how I’d pictured it while reading. CANNOT WAIT.

Read This: Out Stealing Horses

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson was my pick for my book group this month. Petterson is Norway’s answer to Cormac McCarthy, which I think is the highest compliment any modern writer could hope for. His prose and his imagery resemble McCarthy’s but his writing feels fresh and eludes classification. He alternates stripped down sentences full of implied meaning and emotion with rich, breathless pastoral scenes:

And that was what we set out to do: wring the last warmth from the paths through the forest and the high ridges in the sunshine on the Furufjellet and see the reflection of dazzling birch boles swirling through the trees like arrows shot from the bows of the Kiowas diving into deep green ferns swaying at the sides of the narrow gravel path like palm leaves on Palm Sunday in the Sunday School Bible.

The chapters alternate between the narrative of a man in his sixties and the man’s memories of a summer in the countryside in his teens. Something we discussed in our group was how different parts of your life may fade or come to the forefront of your mind as you head into your twilight years. Personally speaking I’ve never felt as if my life had a defining era or turning point, but perhaps when I’m eighty I might be able to see the meaning in something that is happening right now in my life, or in something that has already happened.

Comparisons won’t do it justice, but the experience of reading it was similar for me to that of reading McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (not just because of the horse connection) and Haruki Murakami’s Norweigan Wood. If, like me, you’re a sucker for pretty language and foreign backdrops, and you don’t mind ambiguity, I say, read this NOW.

Read This: Infidel

This is one of the most powerful books that I’ve read lately. Whether you think Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a brave voice for Muslim women or a frightening spokesperson for assimilation, you cannot deny that she has a remarkable story and is an incredible person. Raised as a Muslim in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Ethiopia, now a Dutch citizen and former Dutch Member of Parliament, she is a fearless crusader against the worldwide oppression of women (and human beings in general) in Islamic societies.

Arriving in Holland at a time where refugees from all over the world were seeking asylum in record numbers, and working with social agencies as a translator, Ali witnessed the peril of immigrants who viewed their new country as a nation of godless hedonists, and refused to follow the rules of an open and free society. Ali has seen first-hand how European nations have turned a blind eye to the suppression of women in Muslim communities in their countries, under the often misguided pretense of multiculturalism:

“When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so.”

She’s stoked the ire of both Islamic extremists (one of whom was responsible for the murder of Theo Van Gogh, who produced a film of hers in 2004 which criticized the fundamentals of Islam) as well as of those of us politically correct westerners who’d prefer to see Islam as a religion of peace (with a few radical nutjobs on the fringe) than one of violence and oppression.  

While I don’t know enough about the Quran or the history of Islam to agree with say, her assertion that there was nothing surprising about the 9/11 attacks, given the history of Islam and the militant language of the Quran, I do find her life fascinating and heroic. Reading Infidel challenges me to reconsider my liberal knee-jerk reaction against the idea of assimilation. She’s given us a clear example of how assimilation can be successful, and how the sequestering and appeasement of immigrant communities can work against the values of a free society and even be dangerous.

If you want a good ideological challenge, give it a read.