Richard Tull and Gwyn Barry: friends/enemies since university; both writers; the first an unsuccessful, unreadable experimental novelist, the second a bland, populist millionaire.  Perhaps, given this is an Amis book, it is inevitable that Tull realizes what he must do: “a literary endeavor, a quest, an exaltation–one to which he could sternly commit all his passion and his power.  He was going to fuck Gwyn up.”  And so it begins.

The Information contains Amis’ usual staples of black humour, strange characters, and idiosyncratic dialogue, written in Amis’ distinct style.   Also similar to his other books is that it is hard for me categorize.  Like Amis’ London Fields, it incredibly unpleasant, but in some ways, even more so: Richard Tull is pretentious, jealous–his attempts to ruin Gwyn run from writing articles to smear his reputation to getting him beat up–but is also, quite simply, just pathetic.  Gwyn Barry, on the other hand, is no better; his success and boyishness barely masking his egotism and petty, controlling nature.  As off-putting as these characters are, the book is still compelling, and perhaps that’s a bit of the point.

“What’s this?  The History of Increasing Humiliation.  Nonfiction, right?” [...]

[Tull] said, as he had said before, “It would be a book accounting for the decline in the status and virtue of literary protagonists.  First gods, then demigods, then kings, then great warriors, great lovers, then burghers and merchants and vicars and doctors and lawyers.  Then social realism: you.  Then irony: me.  Then maniacs and murdereres, tramps, mobs, rabble, flotsam, vermin. [...] The history of astronomy is the history of increasing humiliation.  First the geocentric universe, then the heliocentric universe.  Then the eccentric universe–the one we’re living in.  Every century we get smaller.”

Tull’s actions mean nothing, his betrayals, and others’ betrayals to him, mean nothing–not in the scope of the universe.  Planets do not collide, the stars do not explode.  Yet ultimately is the realization that Tull himself means something; as a husband, a father, and a human*.  That, or perhaps I came away with the wrong interpretation of this book as I attempted to inject some humanism into something that, it seems, is quite misanthropic ;)

A hesitant recommendation if the above sounds appealing.  To be honest, looking back at this over a month after I read it, I’m still not sure if I even liked it… but I don’t regret having read it.

*after thinking about it, I’m making this sound waaaaaay  more sentimental than it is ;)  It’s definitely not that kind of book.

This may surprise anyone whose only exposure to me has been through my generally art-related (and/or ditzy posts) on internet forums–not to mention, this blog–but my background is science.  For true!  An Hon. BSc and everything ;)  And from my time at university, where I dabbled in areas from neuroanatomy to insect biology, it became easy not only to lose the forest for the trees, but to lose the trees for leaf spiracles.   Things have a way of getting dreary.  Sometimes, even now, I wonder how I ended up there… but Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything reminded me :)A Short History is an account of the history of scientific discovery; and since science, really, describes our physical world, it really is a history of  everything as far as we know it: the origins of the universe, the nature of the atom, evolution through natural selection, and so on.  However, one large difference between this book and my university texts is that while the information is gathered from scientists, it’s  written by a layperson for laypeople.

How many people have been turned off of science because it’s boring?  Many, many and more many, I’m sure, and yet science, at its core, should be extremely interesting.  In his introduction, Bryson relates his own experience as a child, when he first opened a geology textbook and saw the common globe-with-a-wedge-cut-out, showing the layers of the Earth, and felt a sense of wonder:

Excited, I took the book home that night and opened it before dinner–an action that I expect prompted my mother to feel my forehead and ask if I was all right–and, starting with the first page, I read.

And here’s the thing.  It wasn’t exciting at all.  It wasn’t actually altogether comprehensible.  Above all, it didn’t answer any of the questions that the illustration stirred up in a normal enquiring mind: How did we end up with a sun in the middle of our planet and how do they know how hot it is?  And if it is burning away down there, why isn’t the ground under our feet hot to the touch? [...] And how do you know this?  How did you figure it out?

But the author was strangely silent on such details–indeed, silent on everything but anticlines, synclines, axial faults and the like.  It was as if he wanted to keep the good stuff secret by making all of it soberly unfathomable.

Hmm, sounds like my experiences with geology too ;)

Bryson addresses this problem by conveying how knowledge doesn’t just appear, it’s built upon discoveries; discoveries that are made sometimes through years of careful research and sometimes through serendipitous luck, but always by people.  Scientists, as you will learn, can be as petty or as high-minded as anyone, and by telling the stories behind them, Bryson adds that little bit of anecdotal spice that addressed my need for gossip ;)  Bryson’s writing itself is easy to read and engaging, and entertaining while still being informative.  You can feel his enthusiasm for the subject.

One drawback to the book is that I personally wished it could have gone into more detail, at times.  While I realize it’s not a textbook, sometimes Bryson would mention laws or details in passing that I would only vaguely remember, and it would have been very handy to have had some more heavy explanations in the footnotes, so things would feel less glossed over, and would explain more of the “how” Bryson speaks of.  Also, speaking as a project manager for a company that does scientific art, I think a few more diagrams would have helped at times, too ;)

However, those complaints are really about something the book is not trying to be.  As it is, A Short History of Nearly Everything can be taken as a fun starting point to further exploration; a spark to rekindle your  sense of wonder in the world that surrounds us, and the scientific curiosity that makes us strive to understand it.

(Cheers to CaptainBinky for the recommendation and book :D)

Toru Okada is a young man in Japan with a wife and home but unsure of his place in life   Soon after he leaves his job to discover what he really wants, his cat disappears, then his wife… and to find them, Okada must search at the bottom of a deep well.  OF HIS MIND.

Well, not exactly, but close enough ;)

As may be apparent from my flippancy, I did not like this book.  It wasn’t a matter of it being a chore to read (although I personally found the writing a bit choppy, which may partly be due to translation issues), but the book as a whole seemed less than the sum of its parts.  There were some interesting scenes, some mildly interesting characters (although most were too intentionally quirky for my tastes), but these were connected by only the slimmest of threads.  In the end, I realized I had managed to travel from point A, and, by ambling about randomly, had landed at an arbitrary point B.  And while I realize that post-modern books often don’t follow the usual structure of a novel, this left me very unsatisfied.  Unresolved plot points, weird events without explanation, and being waaaaay too long has a way of doing that (and yet I liked Infinite Jest).

I dislike using the term “self-indulgent” in describing artistic works, because I feel that if an artist likes their own work, they’ll probably think others will like it too; by being self-indulgent, they’re creating something they think is good (this is probably a very naive view) and  that term is only used when they don’t quite pull it off, even when it can be applied to successful works.  Anyway, the point of my bringing this up is that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle struck me as self-indulgent: more an exercise in writing than a book for others to read.

Looking back on this review, I sound harsher than I really feel.  I didn’t like the book, but it wasn’t terrible by any means.  It’s just I got nothing out of it, and sometimes indifference is more disappointing than visceral hatred, which at least has entertainment value (I’m looking at you, The Lovely Bones.  Six years after the fact and I still remember the crappiness).

And on that note, I’ll leave you ;)

A sculptor who seeks to create minatures so small they are invisible; a tower so tall that it extends into heaven, and takes generations to climb; a husband suddenly overcome by the abstractness of words.  Just a few of the stories in Steven Millhauser’s latest short story collection, Dangerous Laughter.To admit bias at the very start (because I know people rely oh so heavily on my opinions! ;) ), Millhauser is one of my favourite authors: he has an uncanny ability to create the impossible in settings that are yet also nostalgic, and to show the hidden of the everyday.  And he didn’t disappoint in this collection.

A recurring theme is objects or experiences that grow it complexity and intricacy until they seem to touch another world, before it must inevitably collapse.  However, unlike most books where I read to find out what happens, it’s really in the growing that the tale (or description, not all of them are really “stories” in the usual sense) really shines.  In the titular story, teenaged girls attend “laugh parlors” where laughter is forced out of the participants until they can no longer handle the explosive release.  However, Clara Schuler, a withdrawn, unstriking girl is different:

She stood so motionless that she seemed to be holding her breath; perhaps she was; and you could feel something building in her, as in a child about to cry; her neck stiff; the tendons visible; two vertical lines between her eyebrows; then a kind of mild trembling in her neck and arms, a veiled shudder, an inner rippling, and through her body, still rigid but in the grip of a force, you could sense a presence, rising, expanding, until, with a painful gasp, with a jerk of her shoulders, she gave way to a cry or scream of laughter–laughter that continued to well up in her, to shake her as if she were possessed by a demon, until her cheeks were wet, her hair wild in her face, her chest heaving, her fingers clutching at her arms and head–and still the laughter came, hurling her about, making her gulp and gasp as if in terror, her mouth stretched back over her teeth, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands pressed against her ribs as if to keep herself from cracking apart.

[...] Now whenever loose groups of us gathered to pursue our game, Clara Schuler was there.  We grew used to her, waited impatiently for her when she was late, this quiet girl whod never done anything but sit obediently in our classes with both feet on the floor before revealing dark depths of laughter that left us wondering and a little uneasy.  For there was something about Clar Schuler’s laughter.  It wasn’t simply that it was more intense than ours.  Rather, she seemed to be transformed into an object, seized by a force that raged through her [...]And we understood one other thing: she would allow nothing to stop her from joining our game, from yielding to the seductions of laughter, for she lived, more and more, only in order to let herself go.

But can the disconnect between body and this other realm last indefinitely?  You’ll have to read to find out, because (as you might have already guessed) I recommend this book.  Some stories are a bit weaker than others (I’m looking at you, “Cat ‘n’ Mouse” and “The Dome”), but even at its lowest points, Millhauser’s great imagination provokes wonder.

Nicholas Nickleby is a young gentleman of “high spirit”, who tries to make his fortune against the odds of poverty, a rich uncle who plots against him, characters who harass his family, and the general foibles which come across his way.

I’m enough of a Dickens fan that I like Dickens even when I’m not liking Dickens, if you get what I mean ;)  Nicholas Nickleby is a example of that.As always, Dickens paints his scenes brilliantly, with a mix of vividity, sympathy and humour, while colourful characters (like the husband of sugar mama Madame Mantalini, or the shrewish Fanny Squeers) make the book enjoyable to read.  However, the main plot and main characters are rather undernourished in comparison.

The plot has little drive to it; entire chunks could be taken out, and the only things that would be missed would be the side characters.  The main characters, on the other hand, which I consider to be Nicholas and Kate, are rather boring in their “perfection”.  Nicholas doesn’t so much talk as declare things, and Kate doesn’t do much at all beside be proper.

I’ve read all of Dickens’ novels (this was actually a re-read, from many years back), and in my opinion, Dickens just got better and better as time went on.  As one of his earlier works, Nicholas Nickleby has the writing, but not the tight plotting, interesting storylines, and more complex characters of his later work.

Recommended if you like Dickens, not recommended if you don’t, and if you haven’t read any before, I would start with something else ;)

Imagine a book written about a book written about a non-existant documentary filmed about a house… yep, this is House of Leaves ;)

To make that description slightly less confusing, “House of Leaves” is a manuscript written by a blind man, whose death leaves it in the hands of Johnny Truant, a down-and-out tattoo parlour assistant.  The real-life physical book House of Leaves consists of this manuscript, annotated heavily by Johnny Truant, whose unravelling life and growing obsession is revealed in his footnotes.  The manuscript purports to be an academic work on the documentary film The Navidson Report, but this film, as Truant discovers, does not exist, and neither do most of the copious references scattered throughout the work.  The documentary, purportedly by Pulitzer-prize winning photographer Will Navidson, is about the house he and his family move into–a house that is bigger on the inside than its outside.  Just under an inch at first, but soon a hallway of cold darkness appears…

By this point, I’ve either lost you or intrigued you, and that about sums up what I feel about this book.  House of Leaves is an experimental novel–beyond the switches in narrator and story, as well as in tone and style–it plays with your expectations about what novels are.  The typography is odd, in some parts of the book the words take on the appearance of the surroundings (eg. thin columns in the dark hallway), or are positioned to force the reader to read a certain way (eg. holding the book upside-down).  Words are coloured.  Passages are crossed out.  The back contains a mostly nonsensical index.  Some parts have been lost due to Johnny spilling ink on the manuscript.  Yes, it is, in a word, different.

But beyond the interesting writing style, is it good?  In some places, it is absolutely amazing.  I couldn’t convey in my summary how terrifying the hallway is, in its impossibility and pure emptiness, which Danielewski conveys wonderfully.  The sense of loneliness, panic,  and simultaneous agoraphobia/claustrophobia create a mounting horror that lingers–I have to admit it affected my sleep when I read a bit too close to bedtime ;)  As terrifying as it can be, however, there is a deep emotional heft to it.  It’s not just a horror book, it’s about love, relationships, discovery, and all with well-drawn, sympathetic characters.

However, there are some parts I found difficult to muddle through.  Some of these were by design, as the manuscript sometimes goes on and on about theoretical topics (the dryness of which Truant himself comments on).  Some parts, though, I found hard to follow, and these were mostly to do with Truant’s life.  Written in a first-person view, these passages at times transition into a rambling, stream-of-consciousness style that are difficult to understand simply as an English  sentence, and even more so as a sentence trying to convey a meaning beyond the words used.  Perhaps it was just me.  I’m not afraid to admit I probably didn’t grasp everything going on, or the significance of certain events, but things occasionally struck me as abstract for the sake of being abstract, and a little pretentious.

My recommendation for this book is a little different, in that I recommend it if you can accept the odd writing style, which wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste (you’ll probably be able to tell by about page 7, not including the introduction).  It’s a challenging read, and sometimes a little dull, but ultimately very rewarding :)

I’ve never really been “into” zombies, so while I was interested in the sound of this book, I didn’t really expect too much… I was pleasantly blindsided by the awesomeness :D

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is exactly what it sounds like, a collection of stories from the survivors of a world-wide outbreak of zombies.  Mindless destroyers of everything in their path, zombies brought humankind to the brink of annhilation, and now, ten years after the war, are still posing a quiet threat.

What’s most effective about this book is its realism and grittiness.  Brooks not only goes into the actions of individual people, but all of human society.  The cover-ups of early outbreaks in China, the pharmaceutical companies profiting from selling “vaccines”, the literal decimation of the Russian armies to prevent mutiny–the reactions of humans to the zombies are often as terrifying as the zombies themselves, and feel believable.  The reporter-writing style suits the book well: there are no flourishes or embellishments, the survivors simply tell what happened as they saw it with clear, stark images:

One held the boy’s feet while the other grasped his hands.  I tried to take a blood sample and instead extracted only brown, viscous matter.  As I was withdrawing the needle, the boy began another bout of violent struggling.

One of my “orderlies,” the one responsible for his arms, gave up trying to hold them and thought it might be safer if he just braced them against the floor with his knees.  But the boy jerkeed again and I heard the left arm snap.  Jagged ends of both radius and ulna bones stabbed through his gray flesh.  Although the boy didn’t cry out, didn’t seem to notice, it was enough for both assistants to leap back and run from the room [...]

The boy began to twist in my direction, his arm ripped completely free.  Flesh and muscle tore from one another until there was nothing except the stump.  His now free right arm, still tied to the severed left hand, dragged his body across the floor.

This, in combination with the great variety of interviewees, keeps the book clipping along at a quick pace.  The writing itself  is not something that will stick with you, but it’s very effective as a method of storytelling.

I did find that the pace slowed as humans began to get the upper hand, but I think that’s a result of there being many ways things can go wrong (and they do), but few ways things can go right (there’s basically one plan).  Or maybe it’s my bloodthirstiness, I don’t know ;)  More characterization would have been welcome for my personal tastes, but it’s not that kind of book.  It’s a record of what happened, not the people it happened to.

Besides that, World War Z is an extremely entertaining, addictive read.  Recommended, even if you’re not “into” zombies ;)

I gave fair warning a few weeks ago that I will write my oft-rambling and seldom-insightful thoughts on books I’ve just read, and the first one’s a doozy: Infinite Jest ;).  A monster of a book at 1079 pages, it is at times daunting to read, and even difficult to describe.  Sure, I could tell you that it’s about a young tennis star-in-the-making at a prestigious tennis academy beginning to mentally unravel; that it’s about a counselor at halfway house for recovering drug addicts wanting more than anything to stay clean; that it’s about a film so entertaining that anyone who sees it becomes fatally addicted to it; that it’s about the groups who want that film for their own purposes, including a militant Quebec separatist group of wheelchair-bound assassins.  I could say that the book’s about all that,  and, somehow, how they all connect, but Infinite Jest is not so much about the story as it is the telling of the story.

Infinite Jest has been described as extremely innovative, and while I’m hardly a judge of that, I know I’ve personally never read another book like it.  The story is told through different characters’ eyes, jumping through space and time, in little anecdotal vignettes, straight narratives, or essays.  The tone of these scenes vary greatly, spanning from comedy to pathos, from scene to scene, and sometimes even within the same one.  However, this is not a criticism, as Foster Wallace does both well.  The book is often very funny in a absurdist way, but what could, if alone, be taken as snideness is balanced by heart and (I felt) real compassion.  It’s similar to a body made up a different cells: each kind is unique and different from the others such that you’d hardly think they belong together, yet together they create a functional whole.

It’s this same connections slowly being revealed a bit here and a bit there that make this book a difficult read.  You have to pay attention, and be prepared to flip back and forth at times (and yes, the 100+ pages of footnotes at the back certainly doesn’t help readability, but they are necessary).  Things are often left ambiguous and open-ended (in some instances very), and there are dozens of characters to keep track of.  As can perhaps be expected in a book of this length, there are some times when I found it a bit dragging, but these were few, and even when the story wasn’t moving the writing was still enjoyable.  It is hard, even though any one paragraph would not seem overly so (the writing itself is generally easy-to-read and conversational). It took me a month’s worth of long commutes to finish.

Despite my enjoyment of this book, I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.  I freely admit I didn’t get everything, and that when I finished the book one of the first things I did was search for more information about it.  But what higher endorsement can I give than saying that instead of simply satisfying my curiosity, reading about connections I had missed made me want to see them for myself?  One day I’ll tackle the 1079 page monster again, and next time I’ll be more prepared :D