Eat, Pray, Love the movie

So, yeah, they're turning the book into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Both parts of that sentence seem equally strange to me. Although I like Julia Roberts (especially in America's Sweethearts, call me a dork), I don't see her as Elizabeth Gilbert in the slightest. They just seem to have completely different vibes. (Although when I saw Gilbert at a reading, she said that she felt like she had no involvement in the movie whatsoever and felt like she had to let the work go and let it become the filmmaker's work...if I am remembering that correctly.) Buzz Sugar however recently reported that Richard Jenkins was recently cast as Richard from Texas, which seems absolutely appropriate.

But I also just don't see Eat, Pray, Love as a movie, as much as I love it. Because the thing is, nothing really happens. Yes, she travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia, but so much of the book happens in her head. It's about how she feels and what she's working out internally. And for God's sake, she spends most of her time in India in meditation - and frankly, I don't see more than five minutes of that on film being compelling.

Interestingly, a man is writing and directing the film, due out in 2011. It's Ryan Murphy, who I'd never heard of before but obviously should have, as he's the creator of Nip/Tuck, Glee, and the writer/director of Running with Scissors. (Funny enough, I haven't seen any of these, though I've heard good things about all.) I read a story recently that said he's still working on the EPL screenplay, though I can't seem to find it again on the Interwebs. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

#10: Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

So upon a second read, I can still say that I love this book. I don't understand why people hate it so vehemently but my theory is that it involves the ugliest of emotions, jealousy. People are jealous that Elizabeth Gilbert got paid to write what seems like an easy book about living in Italy, India, and Indonesia over a period of a year following a nasty divorce.

But yeah...writing a book, even about your own life, isn't easy. More than anything, I really admire Gilbert's willingness to be honest. Over the course of 334 pages, she's happy, depressed, selfish, giving, and self-absorbed, just to name a few characteristics, and she doesn't seem to skimp on any of it. She doesn't hide it and she doesn't sanitize it. And sure, there were some parts I found annoying - reading about anyone's spiritual enlightment always comes across as a little false - but it's all there, no holds barred. I feel like if she had toned down her emotions, then the haters would be griping about dishonesty, or something like that. I guess you can never please some people. :)

Having said that, upon this second read, I have been persuaded to investigate meditation. Spefically, Ketut Liyer's "sit and smile" meditation, which I didn't specifically recall from the go-around. I'm not sure I'm really the Hindu mantra type, but still could use some calm feeling in m life, and I liked the idea of a meditation where you just try to emanate positiveness. I'm not terriby good at it yet, but I guess you've got to start somewhere... Like Bali, perhaps? Yeah, still hoping to go because Eat, Pray, Love makes it just seem strange, convoluted, and fantastic.

#9: The Reader, Bernhard Schlink

I seriously disliked this book, but I'm not terribly surprised - I avoid Oprah's choices like the plague. But it was our book club selection this month, so I read The Reader anyway. It infuriated me so much that upon completion, I searched the Web for other people's reviews - I just couldn't believe that everyone else loved this book. (It turns out, they didn't - popular reviews on sites like Amazon and Good Reads are mixed.) Oh, and by the way, serious spoilers ahead.

In a nutshell, The Reader is a first-person narrative by a German man named Michael Berg. At age 15, he contracts hepatitis and when he falls ill on the street, he meets an older woman named Hanna. They begin an affair. In between the nookie, Michael reads to her (hence, the title of the book). But Hanna always remains mysterious and refuses to talk about her past. Eventually, Michael grows up and grows out of the affair, and it coincides with Hanna's sudden flight from the town. Less than ten years later, Michael discovers all of Hanna's secrets when, as a law student, he attends the trial of five women accused of being Nazi concentration camp guards. Michael figures out that Hanna can't read and because of it, she's accepted more blame than she's due; although Michael considers telling the judge, he chickens out in the end. Hanna is sentenced to prison for life. I won't ruin the rest of the book; these details are enough to talk about what I want to discuss.

Michael's conclusion at the end of the book is meant to represent the "truth," and that's mostly what I object to...this ridiculous, one-sided, bullshit "truth." I did read a couple of reviews that suggested that perhaps Schlink intends the reader to see Michael's own culpability but after thinking that over, I have to dismiss it. It's always hard to tell where the line between writer and narrator ends, but Michael never has a moment of clarity, not a second of doubt. He's still blaming Hanna on the last pages. And since this is sort of Schlink's fictionalized autobiography, it also makes me think that he's presenting here his own meditation and conclusion on the question of German guilt.

Basically, in trying to figure out how - as part of the first generation of post-war Germans - to see the Holocaust, Michael settles on blame. He blames everyone: the generation before his, his parents, Hanna. And he's ultimately unsatisfied because no one seems as sorry as he thinks they ought to be. He's so self-righteous - and mid-book, clearly enjoys playing the martyr - that he never sees how he's contributed to the situation.

At the trial, when the other defendents realize that Hanna's digging herself into a hole with her honesty, they gang up on her and turn her into the scapegoat. The book implies, I think, that Hanna fell into her role as a guard (because she was running away from a situation where she'd have to admit her illiteracy) whereas these other defendents are actually bad people at heart (because they're still acting rotten, trying to evade responsibility). The big moral question, supposedly, is how we deal with our kind feelings toward Hanna, who admittedly worked as a guard at Auschwitz. But why aren't we ever asked to judge Michael's actions? He vacillates for pages about whether or not to go to the judge with this inside information, and finally does, saying: "I did go to the presiding judge after all. I couldn't make myself visit Hanna. But neither could I endure doing nothing." There's such a self-congratulatory tone to the sentences. The only problem? He doesn't actually tell the judge about Hanna. He goes there, sure, but he does NOTHING, because he's afraid to rock the boat and jeopardize his own situation. And that makes him no different than the millions of Germans during World War II who did nothing in resistance because they were afraid of the potential consequences to themselves. You could say Michael's dilemma is minor in comparison, but he was never presented with the big question in his lifetime - this is his moral test and he fails. Actually, he fails it every time. And in the context of the trial, it actually does have some consequence - Hanna gets a life sentence and the other women, who deserved more, only get a few years. Michael helps them get away with murder, in all senses of the phrase.

Instead, Michael wallows in this pseudo-guilt, agonizing over whether he's a bad person because he loves a bad person. Seriously? It's just so overwrought and melodramatic. Which is sort of amazing in a book that uses almost no description. Rather, The Reader is a book filled with vague, contradictory prose that intends to ask these big questions, but kinda just meanders around them instead. Since I've already written an epic, I'll let someone else's review take over...I laughed out loud when I found it, since clearly she and I folded down the exact same pages with the intent of making the point. So, for more on The Reader's stilted prose, click here: http://www.caribousmom.com/2008/08/16/the-reader-book-review/

Anyway, moving on: I'm about halfway through my second trip through Eat, Pray, Love. I've been reading it with a more critical eye, just to try and see it through the haters' eyes, but what can I say, I still love it.

#8: In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje

Yes, I've read this book before - multiple times, in fact. It's interesting to me because certain scenes always stick out, even now I can recount them, but then there are other details that I consistently forget. In the Skin of a Lion is a weird, strange, lovely book. And since I've blogged about it recently, I won't go into it again. Mostly I'm just adding this entry as a record of book #8. Alright then, moving on...

The Sisterhood of Mean Girls

So, as I was Googling to try and verify that the Sisterhood girls did indeed go to different schools in the first book, I came across a very disturbing story about how Ann Brashares came to write The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Although I first read the account on Wikipedia, it seems to be well substantiated in outlets I trust, like Gawker and The New York Observer (although the link no longer exists).

According to these sources, a young woman named Jodi Anderson used to work at Alloy Media + Marketing, a company which connects products to a targeted audience...and the audience seems to be teen girls. (I'd always wondered why the company published books and sold clothes, and now I know!) Anyway, in the book division, Alloy works as a packager, coming up with marketable ideas and outlines and then hiring a writer to produce an actual book. Anderson apparently came up with the Pants concept, based on her own experiences of sharing a pair of pants with her college girlfriends, and she thought she was going to be chosen to write the book, since it was her idea and all - but Brashares, co-president of the company, decided to write it instead. Anderson has since written her own book (actually multiple books), but none have been anywhere near as successful as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. She apparently has also not commented on the matter.

This makes me ill. I'm always amazed at what people are willing to do to one another. No doubt Anderson's employment contract stated that Alloy owned any and all ideas and could do what they wanted with them, but I don't think it excuses it. No matter what the legalese says, you're still building your success on somebody else's inspiration. The contract is a way of making everyone who profited feel better. My old boss essentially tried to do the same thing, although I had already left the job so there was no contract to bind - but he had been a crafty litttle devil when he'd signed his, and owned every new concept, no matter which staffer came up with it. He said to my face that he was claiming ownership over everything with an implied and what are you going to do about it? Thankfully, I was smart enough to tell him to shove it.

Anyway, I found all this Alloy information by way of articles and blogs about Kaavya Viswanathan, the high-schooler-turned-Harvard-student whose first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life was a bestseller containing a great deal of plagarism. Viswanathan also worked with Alloy publishing and according to Slate (via The New York Times), her original novel involved Irish history - not the un-dorking of an Indian girl trying to get into Harvard (which is kinda-sorta Viswanathan's personal tale). No one really seems to blame book packaging for the plagarism; I think it's more frustration, seeing people write best-sellers and earn themselves fame and fortune in the process, only to find out there's unhandedness involved (because I think we could all write bestsellers if given a concept and someone else's book to lift from). As one of the literary agents involved said, per the Boston Globe: "We had all recognized that Kaavya had the craftsmanship, she's beautiful and charming, she just needed to find the right novel that would speak to her generation and to people beyond her years as well." Her original concept wasn't good enough, so they gave her a new one. OMG, and apparently she got half a million dollars for it, too. Kill me now. (Even worse, the Amazon reviewers mostly trash it, controversy aside.)

This blogger talks mostly about Opal Mehta but also briefly about Ann Brashares:
http://avastconspiracy.blogspot.com/2006/05/dirty-chick-lit-secret-exposed-in.html

Ann Hulbert on Kaavya Viswanathan:
http://www.slate.com/id/2140683/fr/rss/

The New York Times on book packaging:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/books/27pack.html?_r=1

#6 and #7: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Books 3 and 4

So I finished books 3 and 4 - Girls in Pants and Forever in Blue - about two weeks ago, maybe more. I've forgotten the finer details, so I won't spend much time on this post. But I do know that out of all four books, I think I liked Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood the best, mostly because it was the only book that hadn't been pillaged for the movies. It was nice not to know what was going to happen. (Book Two wasn't bad in that respect, but the third was the only one that was truly Hollywood-free.) For the same reason, I wasn't quite as into Book 4, as the Sisterhood movie sequel basically followed right along. But overall, as easy reads, the series was pleasant and enjoyable, and even contained little nuggets of wisdom that I identified with.

There's only one thing that I really wanted to point out: At the beginning of Book 3, the girls all go to the senior party together, and I think it's pretty well implied that all four of them (plus Brian and Effie) go to the same high school. But I would be willing to bet good money that in Book 1, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, they go to different schools (though as I recall, two of them - maybe Carmen and Lena? - did go to the same school). I remember especially because I found it a little hard to believe that they would be able to remain best friends with all the distractions and new schoolmates that high school presents. Anyway...

At the moment I'm reading two books: Frida: A biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera and In the Skin of a Lion. Frida's not bad, but it's slow, and I'm sort of wondering if I'm going to read all of it - in general, biographies aren't my genre (I generally find the nitpicky details, like dates and names of schools and neighbors, tedious). I'm not sure what I'd start otherwise, though - maybe a second run of Eat, Pray, Love?

#4 and #5: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Books 1 and 2

I really love the movie version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants so I decided to pick up the book. I'm kind of a sucker for teen movies and films because even though I'm no longer a teenager, I find that they generally contain the optimism and hope that I miss from being a teenager. You know, that your friends are going to be your friends forever and everything is destiny and your life will work out perfectly. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not an unhappy adult - I just miss that unabashed innocence of the uncomplicated years is all. There's something very powerful in that belief.) I was also under the mistaken impression that this was a book written during my teen years and I'd just missed it - but no, it was written in 2001 and I was in my 20s then.

Anyway, I wasn't so keen on the first book. And apparently the movie producers weren't either, since they changed almost every detail. (I tried to find an explanation for this on the Internet, but no go; almost every review said they remained mostly faithful to the book. Huh? Did we see the same movie?) The basics remained the same: It's a story about four best friends who find a pair of jeans that fits them all perfectly and they send the pants around to each other over the summer as a way of staying connected. Lena goes to Greece and falls in love; Carmen goes to South Carolina to visit her divorced, single father, only to discover he's found a new family; Bridget goes to soccer camp in Baja and falls for a coach; and Tibby stays home to work at a drugstore and she forms a friendship with a 12-year-old who has leukemia. But then after that, the book is pretty different - and strangely, I think the screenwriter did the better job. I recognize that I have a strong bias toward the movie, and perhaps I wasn't giving the book its own fair shot, but I just found it to be...meandering. The movie does a much better job of providing reasons and/or explanations - like why Bridget is so reckless, what happens with her and Eric on the beach, why Lena's in love with Kostos at the end of the summer...

But the characters are compelling, without a doubt, and quite similar to the live-action versions. So I decided to read Book 2, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. I was totally curious as to how things turned out - I've seen the second version of the movie, but with the way Book 1 ended, it seemed impossible for the book version and the movie version to match up. And sure enough, they didn't, not really in the slightest. But that was okay - I quite liked Book 2. Even though it also suffered from some contrived situations, it was touching - and I felt genuinely bad for Lena and Bridget, especially. In the second book, the girls are still in high school; Lena stays home for the summer agonizing over Kostos, Carmen stays home and ruins her mother's relationship with a new boyfriend, Tibby goes to a filmmaking course in Virginia, and Bridget runs off to Alabama to reconnect with herself and her grandmother.

My only real gripe with the second book was the emphasis on appearance - which seems like a harmful thing in a book written for teen girls. Basically after the ambiguous thing that happens with soccer coach Eric in Mexico, Bridget slides into a funk. She quits soccer and dyes her trademark hair black - and god forbid, gains 15 pounds. And while I realize it's supposed to be a metaphor, I was mostly just left with the impression that weight = bad. I just wonder if young girls realize that Bridget re-finds herself because she confronted the truth - and not just because she went back to being that gorgeous, svelte girl that everyone loved.

Anyway, so I'm on to Book Three tomorrow. Yes, I've been sucked into this series. And I'm kinda hoping Lena is going to get the movie's fairy tale ending with Kostos. I don't think it's going to happen but having lived through a similar situation in real life, I know it sucks and you think about it forever, so I've got my fingers crossed for her.

And on a final note, as an added bonus, the very hilariously awesome clip of America Ferrera and Blake Lively promoting The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Yes, it's the one with the eye roll...

http://gawker.com/5041417/in-the-name-of-the-sisterhood-blake-lively-forgives-america-ferrera-her-eye+roll

My List of 30

Alright, so thinking about that list of the 1001 Greatest Books EVER in the wee hours has led me to think about my list of 30 for the year. I'm not sure why I made a list, except that I was a bit frustrated that I didn't read some of the books I intended to last year - I skipped a lot of "serious" ones in favor of easy reads.

I also want to re-read some great books this year. While I don't especially like re-reading - there are just too many out there - it troubles me to have forgotten the intricacies of books I absolutely love.

Okay, so here it is. I have no doubt that at the end of the year, I will find that I've read a completely different list.

I've already read four: Beach Babylon, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (as yet un-blogged)

The next 17 are previous un-read tomes I'd like to tackle:
5. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
6. The Subtle Knife
7. The Canterbury Tales
8. Lolita
9. The Beautiful and the Damned
10. The Golden Notebook
11. Alfred and Emily
12. War and Peace
13. 1,000 Years of Solitude
14. Revolutionary Road
15. The Reader
16. Metamorphosis
17. The Bell Jar
18. Hayden Herrera's biography of Frida Kahlo
19. Joanna Denny's Anne Boleyn
20. Nicholas and Alexandra
21. Outliers

And the ones I've already read and would like to read again:
Eat Pray Love, An Italian Affair, The Great Gatsby, A Moveable Feast, In the Skin of a Lion, Villette, The Time Traveler's Wife, The Red Tent, House of the Spirits, Farenheit 451, Slaughterhouse 5, My Father's Glory, and My Mother's Castle

And actually, if memory serves, 11 of these books are on the list of 1001 from the last post. (And some, bizarrely aren't - like A Moveable Feast, Farenheit 451, or The Canterbury Tales. What's up with that?) Hmm, maybe I should register myself after all...

Yes, I like making lists. Because don't you know, making lists of what you ought to be doing helps you put off doing it?!? Yes, let's keep making lists...

The 1% Well Read Challenge

Who'd have thunk it, but apparently there are reading challenges all over the Internet. Apparently there are also a heck of a lot of people blogging about their reading, just like me. I had no idea. I seriously need to spend more time surfing the web.

Anyway, I came across this website, http://1morechapter.com/, that presents the challenge to read 10 books in a year from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I've come across this hefty tome before in the library. And while I probably won't join the challenge, mostly because I've already made a list of my 30 books for this year (okay, so it's longer than 30 already, sue me), I was interested to see which of the 1001 books I've already read. The list has changed between editions, but I'll count both...I think I'm going to need all the help I can get.

Play along here: http://1morechapter.com/projects/1001-list/

Alright, so here goes:

1. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri (hated it)
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
3. Atonement, Ian McEwan
4. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
5. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
6. Felicia's Journey, William Trevor
7. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
8. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
9. Time's Arrow, Martin Amis
10. Amongst Women, John McGahern
11. Possession, A.S. Byatt (This one has been axed from the current 1001 version. A crime against literature and the awesomeness that is Possession if you ask me...)
12. Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
13. Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
15. The Swimming-Pool Library, Alan Hollinghurst
16. Beloved, Toni Morrison
17. An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro
18. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marcia
19. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
20. Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
21. The Handmaiden's Tale, Margaret Atwood
22. The Lover, Marguerite Duras
23. Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard
24. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
25. A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro
26. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
27. The Shining, Stephen King
28. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
29. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
30. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Okay, I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the 1001 and already have 30. Since I don't want this to go on forever, I'm switching format:

Slaughterhouse-Five (31); 2001: A Space Odyssey (32); God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (33); Cat's Cradle (34); One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (35); Franny and Zooey (36); To Kill a Mockingbird (37); Breakfast at Tiffany's (38); The Lord of the Rings (39); The Talented Mr. Ripley (40); The Old Man and the Sea (41); The Catcher in the Rye (42); 1984 (43); Cry, the Beloved Country (44); Animal Farm (45); The Little Prince (46); The Grapes of Wrath (47); Rebecca (48); The Hobbit (49); Tender is the Night (50); Brave New World (51); A Farewell to Arms (52); The Sound and the Fury (53); Orlando (54); The Sun Also Rises (55); The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (56); The Great Gatsby (57); A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (58); A Room with a View (59); Heart of Darkness (60); Dracula (61); The Kreutzer Sonata (62); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (63); The Death of Ivan Ilyich (64); Return of the Native (65); Little Women (66); Crime and Punishment (67); Fathers and Sons (68); The Woman in White (69); Madame Bovary (70); Villette (71); The Scarlet Letter (72); Wuthering Heights (73); Jane Eyre (74); Le Pere Goriot (75); Last of the Mohicans (76); Frankenstein (77); Northanger Abbey (78); Pride and Prejudice (79); Gulliver's Travels (80)

Huh. I'm impressed with myself. I've read most of the stories in Borges' Labyrinths but didn't count it; I know I've also read some Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but can't actually remember which ones I read and which ones I just saw the movie of. What can I say, it all happened within the same time period and it's not really my genre. But I figure if I can't remember, I can't guess-timate.

But midway through I also realized why I don't give lists like this much attention - because they're invariably filled with books you ought to read but feel like taking a bullet. There are a number on there I started and put down early, within 30 pages or so. But there were also a few that deserve a special shout-out because I stopped reading them almost at the end - and I never do that. Except when a book is killing me slowly, which is what happened with In Cold Blood, A Passage to India, Jude the Obscure, Vanity Fair, and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Oh me oh my, this was fun.

#3: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

While I completely understand why this book won the Pulitzer Prize, I'd have to rate it my feelings on it somewhere from fair to good. I did like it, I found some parts absolutely captivating, but I'd also like to sit down with Junot Diaz and get some answers.

In terms of tone, starting on page one, the novel kicks ass. You don't figure out who the narrator is until the middle of the book but that unknown voice is hilarious and irreverant, and peppers the beginning bits of the novel with these wise-ass footnotes where you learn all you ever wanted to know (and perhaps more) about the history of the Dominican Republic. I certainly didn't know much, just Porfirio Rubirosa and its reputation for beautiful beaches and a location on a small island with Haiti. Oh, and that they're losing the fight with Spain over which country holds the true remains of Christopher Columbus.

Seemingly the title gives the book away: On the face, it's a book about this fat Dominican sci-fi nerd called Oscar and his short life (not sure about wondrous, though). He's obsessed with Tolkien and girls and never really comes close to either one. If you believe in magic, the reason behind Oscar's bad luck is a fukú – or a family curse that's affected all of them because his grandfather dared oppose the infamous Dominican dictator Trujillo. If you don't believe, Oscar's troubles are his own fault because he never makes much attempt to change the situation. He knows he's a dork, and he's sad about being a dork, but he never makes peace with it or tries to change it. That's one of my main gripes about the book, his lack of agency. I believe in the idea of the fukú, but Oscar doesn't really know about it – so he can't blame it. He just wallows. And as a result, he becomes annoying and I never really came to see beyond it because he stays a pretty one-dimensional character. I just never cared that much about what happens to him in the end.

On the other hand, the story of his grandfather's demise and his mother's childhood and escape to America is fascinating – and reminds me of Latin American magical realism novels. Which I love. Because who doesn't need a little magic in their lives? I sure do. Anyway, the middle section of Oscar Wao is filled with the mysterious Caribbean, a brutal dictator, beautiful women, a magic Mongoose with golden eyes, a man without a face, and missing words...and reminds me of novels like Love in the Time of Cholera and The House of the Spirits.

My other gripe with the book is the use of slang – I would actually say overuse, although I couldn't find a reviewer that agreed with me. If I ever meet Junot Diaz, I'm going to ask him about it. While certainly the abundant usage of Dominican slang helps set the tone, I got annoyed with it pretty quickly. As a Spanish speaker, I didn't mind the general terms but there was quite a bit that wasn't even in the dictionary. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani implies that it was enough to get a general sense of the meaning (she calls it, "a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish that even the most monolingual reader can easily inhale"), but I disagree – a novel is a work of art created by words. And so if you can't grasp the intricacies of the words, doesn't that vague up the message? I don't know for sure, but it bugged me. None of my friends seem to mind it, although one said that it took her the entire book to figure out the meaning of tio, or uncle.

Oh, the other thing I would ask Junot Diaz? I would ask him what the Mongoose says at the end of the book. It gives Oscar a three-word message, but like all the "truths" in this novel, the words get swept away by the fukú, lost forever. And I'm totally curious if even Diaz knows what the Mongoose says – or if he can only guess at it.

Kakutani's review that contains way more details on the book's plot than you may want to know:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/books/04diaz.html

#2: The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, Lauren Willig

I'm sad to come here today and report that this is the worst book in the series. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation was one of the wittiest books I've ever read and it's like this one, the fifth installment, wasn't even written by the same person. It really lacks the charm and cleverness of its predecessors – even the ones I didn't much like. And by the way: I'm going to discuss how the novel ends in the next paragraph so fair warning, SPOILER AHEAD.

But more importantly, nothing really happens. There are no genuine high points of drama, so the book just seems endless. Instead, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine is just a collection of little moments and a lot of hand-wringing over a ridiculous misunderstanding. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure what took nearly 400 pages to tell. The book is about two things: Robert’s plan of revenge and his occasional wooing of Charlotte. And in the end, he doesn’t even fulfill half his brief: His prey is murdered by someone else, and the murderer escapes into a carriage. Of course he gets Charlotte, but that part was easily predictable by page 14. That is, the page where the two characters make their first appearance. (And fair enough, it's a romance.)

The “tension” in the book, I'm guessing, is supposed to emerge from Robert’s about-face with cousin Charlotte. He romances her on a rooftop and then disappears; when he returns, he acts like his affection was a misunderstanding on her part. And that’s fine, but Willig hits us over the head so many times with Charlotte’s earnest confusion that it just becomes jokey, instead of suspenseful: “It would be too tempting to let herself believe that Robert had come because he couldn’t stay away, that the strange note in his voice had been a sign of repressed emotion, that his concern about Medmenham was a sign that he still wanted her for himself.” (p.202) Gee, as it turns out, the most convoluted explanation for Robert’s standoffish behavior was totally true! I have to roll my eyes over the beating that feminism just took with this paragraph.

Those are all plot and characterization issues, but sadly, language got an equal thrashing here. Willig has written some really incredible novels and I just don’t understand what happened with this one. One thing I noticed early on was the overuse of adverbs, which weighed down conversations that were intended to be light banter. As an example, the two page spread starting on page 28 uses 10 adverbs to describe the word “said” (or its equivalent). He/she said: gloomily, firmly, blandly, giddily, earnestly, thoughtfully, offhandedly, prosaically, ruefully, hopefully. The “said adverbly” set-up alternates with an equally plodding device, that of substituting more complicated verbs for “said.” On these two pages alone, she uses: asked, articulated, murmured, inquired, mimicked, commented, and grumbled. In dialogue, the word “said” blends in and the reader passes over it; other verbs tend to stop or slow the speech down. Obviously, you’re going to use adverbs; I certainly have in here. Same with more sophisticated verbs. The issue is overuse. And in the end, it amounts to dialogue that isn’t allowed to stand on its own. I think that is the biggest weakness in the novel, and reading it page after page just became tedious.

Alright, I’ve bashed this novel enough so I’ll leave well-enough alone. Sad to say, this was probably my last Pink Carnation novel. :(

#1: Beach Babylon, Imogen Edwards-Jones

I knew it had been awhile since I'd blogged but wow, two months. Yikes! Sometimes I procrastinate and come to the blog with 4 or 5 books queued up, but today the news gets worse: I've only finished one book since New Years. Clearly I am going to have to read hard and heavy in the coming months to make up for this initial shortfall.

I didn't intend to immediately read another "Babylon" book - they're interesting but it feels a little like reading Danielle Steele (ie, like cotton candy for the brain = initially sweet but bad for long-term health). I started both Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho) and The Monsters of Templeton (Lauren Groff) but I couldn't get into either one. So I ended up on Beach Babylon. It wasn't great - it's really just a bunch of anecdotes (about life working at a luxury beach resort) strung together. And while they're individually interesting, every book needs a real plot, and this one just didn't have it. But having said that, it was a quick read and I clearly got through it. And that's really all I have to say about it...

Oh, except for the cover. I've made it a little larger than usual so you can see how this gorgeously tanned woman has the freakiest pale hand. It doesn't even look like it belongs to her. And it kinda creeps me out.

Next up: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I'm on page 20 or so, but so far it's fantastic. Which is why it won the Pulitzer Prize, I suppose. Since it's our current book club pick, I had to temporarily put down Lauren Willig's new novel, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. I'm on page 100 or so of that, and so far, sadly, it's awful.

#30: Fashion Babylon, Imogen Edwards-Jones

Yeeeeesssss! I have arrived at Book 30, just before the clock strikes the proverbial midnight. Thank god. I can't adequately express the relief I feel to have accomplished this goal for the first time in, like, five years. Five years! Seriously.

I found this book after reading a post on Jezebel.com about luxury brands. It was based on a New York Times story by Guy Trebay (link below), about how stores are discounting luxury goods by 70 percent because of the economy. Some of the Jezebel commentators were saying that when a label/store can sell a $2000 blazer for $300 and everyone still makes money, that shows you how these fashion goods are worth exhorbinant and arbitrary prices. (For the record, I would never pay anywhere near $2000 for an item of clothing.) Anyway, someone recommended Fashion Babylon as a good look at just how arbitrary it is.

Fashion Babylon uses true stories (according to the author) to flesh out the fictional tale of a fledging British fashion designer who wants to show at New York Fashion Week. For the most part, I liked the book. It was definitely a quick read -- I read it in a period of about 36 hours -- and at times, I felt like maybe the author had written it a little too quickly. The one thing that bugged me was that she relied on the same celebrity names (Kate Moss, Scarlett Johanssen) and movies (Munich) over and over again as throwaways, which tends to imply lazy writing. Also, as an American reader, I found the overwhelming usage of British slang frustrating, as there were lines here and there I just didn't understand (but which didn't contribute to the overall book in any meaningful way). Still, I learned lots of interesting things about fashion. Like how designers will blantantly copy vintage dresses (by another label) and no one seems to notice, or how a designer will go out and buy simple pieces, like a white shirt, from a regular store and then just replace the label with their own. Or how, after the initial development investment, perfume only costs about 50 cents a bottle to produce -- no matter the cost on the shelf. The main point, I thought, was how designers set their prices to establish a value for their brand; if you want to be a Dior, you set prices like Dior, and it has little to do with what your clothes are worth (which is basically nothing). Then you sell your loot to a store and if it's in the U.S., they mark it up by another 3 times what they paid, and that's how, all of a sudden, you have a $600 dress. All I can say is: Thank God I learned to sew.

Luxury link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/fashion/04SHOPPING.html?_r=2

#29: Sleeping Tiger, Rosamunde Pilcher

I really love this book, and all of Rosamunde Pilcher's for that matter, although I've never gotten around to The Shell Seekers, her most famous. There's not much to them -- they are generally about a lonely person who gets surprised by love in an unusual place, but they're sweet and hopeful novels.

I hadn't read Sleeping Tiger since 1997 (the first year I started keeping a list of the books I'd read for the year), but saw it sitting there on the shelf beckoning to me. The book is about Selina Bruce, a 20-year-old orphan who's about to marry the wrong man. She's been brought up as a proper young English lady by her grandmother, who's recently died, and she's always done what's expected of her. And the plain girl is about to marry her grandmother's junior lawyer, mostly because she feels she has no other options. Until one day, her fiance gives her a book called Fiesta at Cala Fuerte. The author's photo on the back looks exactly like a photo she once saw of her father, who supposedly died in the war right before Selina was born. So the former wallflower runs off to the Spanish island of San Antonio to find her father and, not unexpectedly, she blossoms. I guess what I most like about it is the idea that you can escape to find yourself...and a glorious setting in the Mediterranean doesn't hurt.

Yeah, the Med. I got all excited to find my own San Antonio, which according to the book is located in the Balearics. But alas, a little Googling tells me it's a made-up island; the closest I could find was the club-land town of San Antonio on Ibiza. Still, there are five real Balearic islands -- perhaps peace and love could be found on Formentera or the one I'd never heard of, Cabrera?

In reading it again, I realize how much I've changed since I first read it (which was not 1997, btw). For one, I see now that the romance between Selina and George Dyer happens way too quickly and without much reason (which is okay, I still love the book). I also found all the vocabulary words I'd highlighted way back when -- words like acquiescence and aversion -- and it's hard to believe that I didn't know what they meant. But, most funny, I also now know that some of the Spanish phrases used in the book are incorrect, like when the Spanish police officer tells her "No hablo Inglese" (umm, "inglés") or when George tells Selina that ella should be pronounced "elya" (as opposed to "a-ya").

Most interesting, at the end of the book, on the inside of the back cover, I found a name and address written in my own handwriting. Problem is, I have no idea who this girl is, where I might have met her, or why I wrote her address down. Hmm.

#28: Mademoiselle Boleyn, Robin Maxwell

I found this book to be, for the most part, poorly written, historically inaccurate, and boring –and if this wasn't Book 28 just two weeks from the beginning of the new year, I would have chucked it through the window somewhere in the middle. So I'm a little bit pissed at Mademoiselle Boleyn because I felt like I had to keep reading it, and I was terribly impatient to just be done with it.

When I started this book, I asked myself, Why do I keep reading these Tudor histories? I love the Tudors, am obsessed to be honest, but the same thing keeps happening over and over again – which it should, considering the events are historical record. But it makes for repititious reading; the historical details are scarce, especially when it comes to Henry's wives, so I find that even the tone and the scenarios tend to be the same from book to book. Over time, it gets to be boring...which is probably why I haven't read a book on the Tudors in, like, 9 months.

So at first, I got excited by Mademoiselle Boleyn – something different! The book focuses on Anne's upbringing in foreign courts, and ends where the other books generally start. But my enthusiasm dimmed when I realized why writers don't write about Anne's upbringing: We know little about it. Robin Maxwell essentially made this book up – she took a real person, put her in the correct location (Francois I's court), and then went hog wild on the details. And that really bugged me – I know that this is a novel, but still, I think history owes Anne Boleyn more than that. She was a real person and she deserves our respect – she certainly deserves more than the author's lewd imaginings where, for example, Anne catches her sister in an orgy.

But the book really lost my interest when Maxwell decided to make Anne Boleyn and Leonardo da Vinci the best of friends. It's not just unlikely; it's stupid. In the Readers Guide, Maxwell writes in her defense: "This is a perfect literary amalgam of a period that is chock-full of holes, an extrapolation of known facts, and a leap of imagination. I reasoned that the friendship could have happened, and there is no evidence against it." Sure, Francois' sister Marguerite never wrote in her diary, "Oh, mon dieu, I can hardly believe that Anne and Leonardo haven't struck up a friendship! Why ever not?" But generally speaking, you don't often find "evidence" against things that never happened. People don't tend to dwell on the thousands of things that could have been, but weren't.

In terms of historical accuracy, I'd have to give this book a big fail. While of course Anne is the protagonist, and thus is the focus of the book, I felt that Maxwell inaccurately enlarged Anne's importance at the French court. In truth, Anne was a minor personage until she caught Henry VIII's eye. I guess I don't see the point of making her the star of the French court when she wasn't; historical fiction is still supposed to have some basis in history. In order to increase the tension of the book, Maxwell has everything come together at the Field of Cloth of Gold, a two-plus-week extravaganza where Henry and Francois meet in friendship in 1520. Here, in the book, Anne meets her true love Henry Percy and Mary Boleyn catches Henry VIII's eye; about 20 pages later, the book ends with Anne's return to England, and she catches Henry VIII's eye on Dover Beach. While all of these events did indeed happen, none of them happened at these places or points in time. They've been bunched together to help the novel out. There's not that much of a historical record, but I don't see the point of distorting what there is. If you want to create the secret life of Anne Boleyn based on your wild imaginings, fine, but don't claim that your work is a researched piece of likely history (which is what the Readers Guide is all about). It seriously just bugged.

Anyway, I'm done venting. I've moved on to the next book, Sleeping Tiger by Rosamunde Pilcher. I've read it multiple times but not for several years; I've lately been thinking about going abroad for an extended period of time, so a book about escaping abroad seemed appropriate. :)

#27: The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin

Woo hoo, number 27 done and we're just barely into December. My 30 books are within sight. :)

So, I just finished The Westing Game. I never would have picked this up in a million years, but I'm in a book club and it's the December choice. It's a children's book and it reads like a children's book, and after running through the Twilight series, I have a serious hankering for adult fiction. The basic premise of The Westing Game is that 16 people have been selected to live in an apartment building called Sunset Towers, although they don't realize that they've specifically been brought together until they find out they're all the supposed heirs of eccentric millionaire Samuel W. Westing. The will pairs them up into 8 groups and whichever group figures out who murdered Westing wins the fortune. You're supposed to play along and figure it out for yourself, too. Personally, I couldn't be bothered (although I managed to keep up), but I can see how it would be fun if I was still 8-years-old. I loved Encyclopedia Brown, after all.

And that's that. I haven't totally decided on the last three books but I'm thinking Paolo Coelho's The Witch of Portobelllo, Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton, and perhaps Lolita.

#26: Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer

Oh, Breaking Dawn, how you ruined Stephenie Meyer’s captivating series about vegetarian vampires and teen love. Your writing is erratic, you’re about 300 pages too long, your characters do things out of character, you introduce so many new characters in so little space that you needed to add a chart to keep them straight, you contain numerous detail errors that we won’t get into, and you forgot to include the dramatic plot point. It’s too bad. I really enjoyed the series and I feel like this one ruined it for me, leaving a sour taste in my mouth for the whole thing. If this had been the first book in the series, I would have skipped the rest. But I see now I’m not the only person who feels this way; countless readers and critics have wondered what the hell Meyer was thinking. I’ll do my best to keep this short.

On the most basic level, Breaking Dawn just didn’t hold my interest. The hardback copy I have is 754 pages long, and not surprisingly, it’s filled with a lot of rambling. For the most part, readers seem to realize that this series is not an example of good writing. It’s simple and Meyer relies on a lot of elementary adjectives and adverbs, instead of building unique prose. And that’s okay; the appeal of this series, I think, has always been the personal relationships: the love and tension between Bella and Edward; the confusion between Bella and Jacob; the competition between Jacob and Edward; the family dynamics between the Cullens and Bella. So then in Breaking Dawn, when Meyer abandons the relationships that have pushed the story forward, she creates a vacuum. In the fourth book, Edward is a fairly hollow character and there’s little interaction between him and Bella; Jacob and Edward are now buddies so there’s no rivalry; Jacob imprints on Renesmee early, so there’s no romantic tension left. Without these propelling winds that have kept the series going, Breaking Dawn just flounders on the rocks.

Personally, I was surprised that Bella became a vampire; I actually thought, at the end of the last book, that Edward would give her up and she would mate with Jacob. Oops. But she became a vampire and that’s Meyer’s choice and I don’t really object to it. But my issue here with Breaking Dawn was that in Bella’s conversion, basic vampire lore got thrown out the window. Obviously Meyer was already pushing the boundaries with the vegetarian Cullens, and that’s fine; she took a standard legend and transformed it into something original. The Cullens by nature want to drink human blood, and even though they resist, it’s a constant struggle – that’s transforming legend into your own. But it seems ludicrous to write a story about vampires and then ignore their basic characteristics, like she does with Bella post-transformation. Vampires drink human blood; that is what makes them vampires, by definition. But vampire Bella isn’t really interested in humans; she has super-duper control over her emotions (which is amazing, considering she was 100% emotionally driven as a mortal). Bella doesn’t struggle, and after three books of prepping us for her newborn struggle, it’s like what the hell? when nothing actually happens. As Edward tells her, “You shouldn’t be able to do any of this. You shouldn’t be so…so rational.” Wise words, Eddie. Unfortunately no one was listening.

I looked at Stephenie Meyer’s FAQs on her website, and I found the last sentences of the defense of the book interesting: “The surprise to me is that so many people do like my books. I wrote them for a very specific audience of one, and so there was no guarantee that any other person on the planet besides me would enjoy them.” I am pretty well convinced at this point that Meyer is living out a dream-fantasy, with herself as Bella, as she’s writing these books. As such, she doesn’t want to transform that into something horrific...which is where the unbelievable plot turns emerge from. Take away the vampires and the story becomes clear: A mousy girl moves to a strange new town where she suddenly becomes the most popular girl in school; the most gorgeous, amazing guy in the world falls in love with her and through this love, she transforms into the most beautiful, powerful woman the world has ever seen. I get that it’s a fantasy to have Bella emerge as the vampire with the strongest powers, who becomes the only one who can save the Cullens' way of life, after she’s been the weakest link…but this turn of events doesn’t really fit within the framework Meyer’s created over the last three books. And because Meyer knows this manuscript isn’t going to be sitting a drawer, for her own personal use, I do think she has a responsibility to the reader to stay on course. And Breaking Dawn just doesn’t do that. It veers. Oh, how it veers.

In the end, though, I have the same problem with this that I did with the last Harry Potter book: These final installments fail because their protagonists don’t learn anything. Both Harry and Bella go through an epic battle and yet they come out on the other side completely the same, as if nothing had ever happened. Look at The Lord of the Rings – Frodo dumps the ring in Mount Doom, yes, but he can't be the same. He won, but he lost, because he has to leave Middle Earth. He literally can't go back to his old way of life – and that’s what gives that book its heft. There are consequences, for both good and evil. But in the Harry Potter and Twilight series, risk means nothing because the enemy is vanquished and nothing of that struggle remains. Here in Twilight, you've been told over three books that there's supposed to be some struggle/conflict in becoming a vampire – some struggle in staying yourself – but in the end, Meyer skips it...because didn't you know, becoming a vampire is like, the most awesomest thing, way better than being who you were before? It comes out of left field and that, in the end, is what makes the series end flatly.

Rob Pattinson's Confessions

Yes, I'm blogging about Twilight again, mostly because Rob Pattinson has become my new favorite person. Not in that screaming-teenager-please-Edward-bite-my-neck kind of way, but because it seems it's no-holds-barred with this kid...which I find totally refreshing as the Twilight mania careens way out of control. I mean, I like the series, but it's not Shakespeare. And I'm a little concerned that teenagers can't seem to tell the difference between an actor and a fictional character. Get a grip, girls!

Anyway, Pattinson recently gave an interview to E!'s Ben Lyons about his take on the series' popularity. While looking totally nervous and running his hand through his artfully disheveled hair, he says, "When I read it, I was convinced Stephenie was convinced that she was Bella, and it was like a book that wasn’t supposed to be published. It was like reading her sexual fantasy..." And I realized, he is so right. Stephenie Meyer created Twilight from a dream that she had where she met the most perfect man she had ever laid eyes on in a clearing. He was amazing, sure, but the most amazing part was that he loved her. Isn't that every girl's fantasy? (Not to mention the plot of every makeover teenager movie in existence?) The dream was so vivid and strong that Meyer even remembers the date. She wanted to hold onto it so she started writing it down. The result, of course, was the phenomenally bestselling Twilight. It's not an especially well-written novel; I do think its appeal, like the VC Andrews books, is its fantasy aspect...and I don't just mean the mythical creatures. Pattinson totally hit it on the head, and I can't believe I hadn't thought of it before.

You can watch the clip here:
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/lyons_den/b68229_rob_pattinson_on_whats_weird_about.html

#25: Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer

So, Eclipse. At first, I wasn't too keen on this one, as it does the exact same annoying thing as Harry Potter; Meyer, like JK Rowling, uses the same set-up over and over again. By book 3, it's a little old. The preface hints at some impending doom that Bella has no control over, but then the book starts and everything is great, there's trial in the middle until bam, some larger menace arrives and the vampires prepare for a fight. That's basically what's happened in every one, with varying specifics. Still, there's something captivating about this overarching story which probably explains why I'm already 50 pages into Breaking Dawn. (The book jacket says it's the final book in the Twilight saga. But what about Midnight Sun? I'm confused.)

I also felt - and Meyer's website hints to this, though I can't find where I read that now - that Eclipse was written a little too quickly. Or maybe just not as freely; of course, Eclipse is the first Twilight book that Meyer wrote, knowing that the series' popularity, and I would imagine she felt some pressure. I saw it mostly in little mistakes, like at finals time. On page 316, Bella talks about how she's nervous for the first day of finals because she has her two hardest tests, Calculus and History; but then just a few pages later, and the same day, she says that she's relieved that finals were finished. There was also a 5-ish page section around 555 where Edward calls Bella "love" in about every other sentence. I also was able - and I don't know if this was intentional on Meyer's part - to guess everything major turn of event before it happened, and in some cases, like a hundred pages before.

So anyway, in Eclipse, Bella essentially has to choose between Edward and Jacob. I was a little surprised by the turn this took, as I never really thought that Bella saw Jacob as anything more than a brother - or a crutch. I never really thought that she was in love with him, and I'm still not totally convinced. Was Bella ever really convinced? Supposedly she's made her final choice, but I have a feeling that Jacob is going to reappear in Breaking Dawn, though I'm not exactly sure how that could play out. It will also be interesting to see where the story goes - Meyer has started to tackle some of the uncomfortable questions behind Bella's potential transformation, and I'm totally wondering how she's going to resolve it so that Bella stays herself while also staying forever with Edward.

Anyway, on a final note, Meyer earns props for including both Robert Frost and Wuthering Heights in this installment. She opens the book with "Fire and Ice," one of my favorite Frost poems. And occasionally, Bella and Edward argue over her beloved Wuthering Heights. But as you know from a past entry, I'm not a fan of that classic; Edward is of the same mind. "The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others' lives." Here, here!

And lastly, my favorite quote from Eclipse: "Then he [Edward] turned back to Jacob. 'But if you ever bring her back damaged again - and I don't care whose fault it is; I don't care if she merely trips, or if a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her in the head - if you return her to me in less than the perfect condition that I left her in, you will be running with three legs.'"

Next up? Haha, it's Breaking Dawn. And then I'll have to run through 4 more books to reach the 30. Not sure what they'll be yet. Woohoo, the goal is within reach!

#24: Time's Arrow, Martin Amis

I finished Time's Arrow on Monday, and while I'm not sure I necessarily liked it, it's still an interesting read. In some parts, I felt Martin Amis got a little too literary, just to be literary, in the tradition of hip young novelists like the recently departed David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Safran Foer. All I ask of a book is that it be straightforward, you know? I hate when writers clown around. So that was my one issue with Time's Arrow. If the last page was supposed to hit me over the head with some grand meaning, it missed.

On the other hand, the premise of Time's Arrow was fascinating. At the moment of Tod T. Friendly's death, a soul is reborn. Friendly carries it inside him, unknowningly, and they start traveling backwards through his life. He starts out as the old retiree tending his garden, gets younger and becomes a doctor, gets even younger and goes back to his native Germany where he works at Auschwitz. The soul doesn't understand how life works, so to him, a lot of things seem terribly confusing; but also, more importantly, destruction looks like healing and healing looks like destruction. I thought Amis did a superb job at sticking with the conceit, writing everything backwards, even conversations. But what was so weird, and genius, is that once you accept the conceit, it was amazing how many of the situations played just as well, whether you read them from the top or the bottom. Which just says that life is absurd.

The book also at times made me crazy. Literally made me feel crazy because I couldn't remember which direction things should go, since they made sense both ways. I'd have to stop and think about it.

So overall, thumbs up. Now I need to go read The Curious Case of Benjamin Button...but right after I'm done with Eclipse! :)