Mishima Yukio -- Thirst for Love

[jain]

6. Mishima Yukio, Thirst for Love

I loved the first three-fourths or so of this book and disliked the rest. The book centers on Etsuko, a young widow who moves in with her husband's family at the invitation of her selfish and miserly father-in-law. Her quiet desperation in this world of petty familial infighting is both painful and fascinating to watch. There are a number of flashbacks that further develop the narrative and characterization, including one to Etsuko's husband's hospitalization and death that's truly brilliant. I also really liked how Mishima presented the endless rounds of miscommunication among the various family members and servants in the story.

However, the book also suffers from an excess of melodrama--particularly towards the end--and the characterization didn't always ring true.

Those Who Walk in Darkness

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

7)Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley is a fascinating post-9/11 parable via SF. In a world where mutants roam, serving as superheroes and supervillains, a square-off between good and evil went terribly wrong, obliterating San Francisco. The response from 'normals' is to put a death warrant out on any mutant anywhere in the US.

Our story follows a team of M-Tac police officers whose job it is to carry out that warrant.

Soledad O'Roark is a double rarity- a woman, and an African-American- serving among the elite of M-tac. She is a hero, nicknamed "Bullet" for the creative ways she's applying ballistic technology to killing metanormals.
( Rest of the Review Follows )

extra copy of Kindred

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

Due to absentmindedness, I have an extra copy of Kindred. Does anyone want it for this month's book club read? I'm willing to send anywhere in the U.S. by Media Mail for free. First comment gets it!

ETA: Taken!

The Count of Monte Cristo, the book that keeps on giving

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

There's a reason this book is a classic.

I first read The Count of Monte Cristo when I was sixteen. It was about revenge, sneaky revenge! My poor, put-upon teenage American soul latched onto that with the fervor of a remora.

When I was in my twenties, the Count shifted from revenge to... seduction. Smooth, smooth seduction that led to very satisfactory comeuppance. Dantes knew how to give each of the four men enough rope for them to willingly take, and it became enough to hang them.

In my thirties, the Count accompanied many a night with a nursing baby or toddler. The Count became a study of justice, of a man who had a dream come true and uses it for truth, justice and the AmericanFrench way. When little voices cried "it's not fair, Mommy" all day long, The Count couldn't fail to reflect that unwanted programming in my brain.

For some birthday in my forties, I asked for the huge Oxford edition. 1095 pages of the Count, I thought, would surely be complete. I was wrong - one key chapter was missing. I went back to the version I'd read in high school and reread it and realized that the true message of The Count of Monte Cristo is about the task of being the hand of God.

I'll be fifty this year. When I read the book now, I understood it's not about revenge, or being used by God, but about repentance.

How's that for one book? Over some thirty years, this book and I have changed together. There aren't many that could survive rereading and reinterpretation again and again.

Almost everyone knows the story (if only from the incredibly badly-mangled movies.) Edmond Dantes is young and about to achieve all his dreams: the captaincy of a ship, a beautiful wife, enough for his father to live comfortably the rest of his life. However, his rise flushes out two envious men who, with a drunken third who doesn't try to stop them, manage to get Dantes arrested at his own engagement party. When the circumstances of Dantes' arrest are made clear to the prosecutor, he's ready to dismiss the charge until he finds that Dantes unknowingly has proof of the prosecutor's father's treasonable action. Instead of freeing the innocent Dantes, the prosecutor throws Dantes into prison and arranges for his life-long incarceration. While there, Dantes meets another prisoner who not only educates him, but tells him of an ancient buried treasure. When Dantes escapes the prison, he acquires the treasure and uses it to fund his revenge.

The book is a rip-roaring, non-stop read. Dumas, a descendant of an African-Caribbean slave, wrote several of his best known works as serials, being paid per word, and he delivered. Every chapter delivers a sufficeint amount of action and intrigue that would keep readers coming back week by week. Twists, turns, unlikely coincidences, and outright improbabilities riddle the book. By the time the final revenge is extracted, the reader has been given everything a good novel promises to deliver: the satisfying ending with a hopeful coda.

Do not think that the movies (any version) tell the whole story. Most of them get caught up in the romantic story and twist the ending to a resolution that Dantes' characters never dreamed of happening. Don't look for the sword fight; there isn't one. The romantic ending isn't what you'd expect, but what you get is perfectly right.

There's the reason this book is a classic.

Alicia Erian, Towelhead

[sanguinity]

(So. Freakin'. Far. Behind. On. My. Reviews.)

34. Alicia Erian, Towelhead.

I loved this all to pieces, and inhaled it in as close to a single sitting as my life allows. (I think it actually took something like four sittings, over the space of twelve hours or so.)

Jasira is thirteen, and surrounded by adults who think they're looking out for her, but are actually all betraying her. All of the adults suspect that all of the other adults are failing Jasira in assorted particular ways (and each of them is right in their suspicions about the others), but in their quest to be The One Thing Which Jasira Isn't Getting (while making absolutely sure to get what they themselves want from Jasira), they all perpetrate their own injuries and insults upon her.

(You know what these adults reminded me of? The adults in the Ramona books. Who were supposedly on Ramona's side, yet who betrayed her as casually and routinely as breathing.)

I could not read the Ramona books as a child, because Ramona was five and completely vulnerable to the adults. But Jasira is thirteen, and while she's still vulnerable, she has also learned the fine arts of deceit, of secrets, of playing adults off against each other, of playing them off against themselves. In the midst of all this adult betrayal and attempts to control and use her, Jasira starts carving out a space for herself: a space where she has agency, where she calls the shots, where she's the only one who knows everything that's going on.

I spent the entire book simultaneously rooting for Jasira ("You go! You show them that you're a person and they don't run the show!"), and cringing in terror for her. And also yelling at the adults to get with the program and take on the responsibilities of adulthood. (I can tell that I've somehow become a grown-up somewhere along the line, because I find myself thinking things like, "I know you have issues, everyone has issues, but there's a kid mixed up in all this which means that you don't get to make this about you.")

Some stuff I really liked about this book: ( mild spoilers )

Then there are things about the climax that, when I step back from the book, bother me a lot: ( far more serious spoilers )

So, in the end, I'm somewhat conflicted about the book. Even while loving it enough to have inhaled it in more-or-less one sitting, and to have refused to pick up another book for a full twenty-four hours because I was still too busy thinking about this one.

Do with that what you will.

(By the way, for those who chose not to read the spoiler-cuts, but who still want trigger warnings up-front: there's sexual predation upon a thirteen-year-old in this book. Just so you know.)

04/50: Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

[bulliciosa.livejournal.com]

( Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie )

Toufic El Rassi and Derek Kirk Kim

[sanguinity]

Three graphic novels!

35. Toufic El Rassi, Arab in America.

Pretty much precisely what the title says it is: reflections on being Arab in America, especially after 9/11. El Rassi covers quite a lot in a fairly short space, and does a good job conveying the feeling of insecurity in being perceived to be the enemy in the only country you have ever known.

36. Derek Kirk Kim, Same Difference and Other Stories.

I really liked the title story, but am at a loss to say anything useful or intelligent about it. The "other stories" are an odd collection of short pieces, pretty diverse in style and subjects, many-to-all of which had originally been published as webcomics. Some I adored, others were simply odd. I'd definitely look forward to seeing a second grab-bag collection from him.

37. Derek Kirk Kim, Good As Lily.

The storytelling on this one was tight and engaging, and I liked the inter-squabbling between the characters. I did have problems with the central conceit, however: one's eighteen-year-old self as the fount of meaning and insight for one's life? I kinda want to sit down with Kim and ask, "Really? You thought being eighteen was all that?"

Edwige Danticat

[mizchalmers.livejournal.com]

17. Edwige Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying

My uncle did not look resigned and serene like most of the dead I have seen. Perhaps it was because his lips were swollen to twice their usual size. He looked as though he'd been punched.

This is Danticat's memoir of her childhood. She was raised by her uncle Joseph in Port au Prince and by her father in Brooklyn. At the precise moment she found herself pregnant with her first child, her father was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease; but it was her uncle who died first, and under circumstances almost impossible to comprehend. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained him, accused him of faking illness while he suffered an attack of acute pancreatitis and shackled him in the hospital, where his heart stopped.

Danticat's book is full of echoes. In its cool delineation of apocalyptic grief it recalls Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Its juxtaposition of immigrant communities on the East Coast with the bewildering corruption of a Carribbean nation reminded me of Junot Diaz's Oscar Wao; the relentlessly clear-eyed portrait of Haiti matches that of Graham Greene's The Comedians.

Yet of all the old shades this book raised for me, the most vivid was that of Vikram Seth's wonderful Two Lives. The memoirs share a compulsion to record both the suffering and the nobility of those who raised the writer; a compulsion that is at times almost off-putting in its intensity. What could be more human or heartrending, though, than this desperate need to chronicle the stories that pass from the world with our fathers and uncles and aunts? To understand how they came to be who they were? And in the end, what else can we give our children?

No Death, No Fear; Being Peace; & Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

The first of Thich Nhat Hahn's books I read was No Death, No Fear.

This is from the very beginning of the inside front flap, but so far it's one of my favorite parts.

There is a story about a Zen master whose monastery was overrun by marauding soldiers. When the Zen master did not appear frightened, the soldiers' captain said, "Don't you know who I am? I could run my sword through you and not think twice about it." The Zen master replied, "Don't you know who I am? You could run your sword through me and I wouldn't think twice about it."

When I showed the book to a friend, he said it didn't seem like the sort of thing I would buy. I felt a little put out by that, and at the time I wasn't sure exactly why, but I've worked it out now. The subtitle of the book is "Comforting Wisdom for Life," which sounds much fluffier than it is, and much like some of the self-help books I dislike. (I can't stand fluffy.)

I finished Being Peace. It's a good book. I liked No Death, No Fear a little better, but this was good.

I have just begun to seriously study Buddhism. I've believed in many of the precepts for a long time, and I find that there isn't much in the books that is new to me. It's strange to read it, and have what I've believed be affirmed. And there are parts with which I don't quite agree...a few things about sex, and food, for example.

But then, I don't want to be a monk.

I still don't think of it as a religion, not as I practice it. But if Buddhism is as these books describe it, I have been a devout practitioner for a while now. It's becoming more important to me to be able to talk about it.

I've always found that what Thich Nhat Hahn writes is true, that anger evaporates in the face of understanding. I really can't be angry when I understand that the reason someone has hurt me is beyond their control, or they had good reasons that I can understand and support.

In Peace is Every Step, he writes a lot about being present, being mindful, simply being part of your environment. It sounds fluffy, which I hate, but I'm able to deal with it because at the bottom of it, Thich Nhat Hahn's mindful meditation on the cycles of life is compatible with physics and ecology. It works for me.

I just got The Art of Power in today's mail, and I'm very excited about reading it. I'm certain it's going to be a lot different than most books with "power" in the title.