School Book: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

I had to read Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for the class I TA for this term. I knew before I started it that it wouldn't be my kind of book, and I was right. If anything, it reminded me of Shelia Watson's The Double Hook; like it, this book really wasn't about the story. But unlike Watson's book, By Grand Central Station used quotation marks.

By Grand Central Station is about the author's love affair with a man. Unfortunately, that man is married. And the book does not tell the story so much as chronicle the author's emotions throughout the love affair. It was really tough to figure out just what exactly was going on as the book progressed. And me being me, I like a good story; that this lacked a real story meant that I really didn't enjoy reading it. Luckily, like The Double Hook, By Grand Central Station was also really short, so I was able to finish it quickly. I'll be able to move onto better, story-focussed things tomorrow.

School Book: The White Hotel

A friend of mine assured me that D. M. Thomas' The White Hotel was a good read. So after my struggle with The Golden Notebook last week, I was looking forward to something better. Unfortunately, I wasn't really impressed with The White Hotel. It was short, which was a major plus. But it definitely wasn't my kind of book.

The White Hotel is the story about an extremely strange dream that one of Freud's patients has. The book starts out with the lyric form in which the dream was originally written (after a few letters from and to Freud). Then it gives a more elaborate narrative account of the dream. The third part is from Freud's perspective, in which he psychoanalyzes the dream and cures the patient's hysteria. Then the final parts of the book deal with her life after being cured by Freud.

Unfortunately, I found the book to be rather dull for the most part. There were a few pages when the dream turned wacky which were interesting. And the end definitely got my sympathy. But overall I did not enjoy reading this. I'm not going to lie though, I wasn't looking forward to it when I realized it dealt with psychoanalysis. While it was interesting in novel form, I am not a fan of Freud and his theories, which may have given me a biased outlook right from the beginning.

I did, however, like it more than The Golden Notebook; the plots and characters weren't nearly as confusing in The White Hotel!

School Book: The Golden Notebook

I am ridiculous happy to be finished Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. It's about 550 pages long, very choppy and tough reading, and I managed to read it in four days (yes, I'm very proud of myself. If I can pull that off, especially with two of the days being virtual write-offs because I was busy, I can get any book read for school!) :D

The Golden Notebook is the story of Anna, told mostly through her five notebooks. There's the black notebook, which contains her writing life (mostly made up of her adventures in Africa), the red notebook, which contains her political life (she's a member of the British Communist Party), the yellow notebook, which contains her emotional life (told through fictitious characters she invented), the blue notebook, which contains the events of her daily life, and the golden notebook, which she buys near the end of the book to tie the other notebooks all together. The notebooks are split up, so you do not get their full stories at once, by each other and by the narrative of her life after the notebooks.

When I originally read the back of the book, I was intrigued. I planned on reading it over Christmas. It sounded pretty interesting. But after talking to some people in my class who said it was terrible, I had a hard time starting it (hence starting it four days before we would discuss it in class). And unfortunately, they were right; I didn't really enjoy reading it. The Golden Notebook is just too choppy - I started liking a section (say the yellow notebook) but then it ends and I'd have to read several pages of boring blue notebook. A friend of mine said that it is dated, which is also true, making it harder to relate to. And I didn't really like the characters. Anna and Molly kept jumping into the same sorts of relationships with the same sorts of guys over and over again. And the men in the book were terrible people. Everyone was miserable, parts of the book didn't seem well-written, and I found about 4/5th (I'm being generous. It was probably more) boring. Definitely not a recommended read.

But I will say, if you do read it, remember what the first line of the book is. It comes up again later, and I didn't realize it until after we discussed it in class.

The Tempest

For my Identity in Contemporary British Fiction class, my seminar is going to be on John Fowles' The Collector. A lot of the criticism on the book mentions how it is similar to Shakespeare's The Tempest, so I decided to read the play so I knew exactly how The Collector is like it. Right off the bat, with the dramatis persona, I found that some of the characters from The Collector are named after characters from The Tempest. The overall plot was rather different, but I enjoyed reading it.
The Tempest opens with a storm shipwrecking the King of Naples’ ship. Everyone is scattered across an island, believing that everyone else has died in the storm. The storm was summoned by Prospero, the ex-duke of Milan; he has brought them here to teach them all a lesson and win back his dukedom.
While I wasn’t too fond of the scenes dealing with the King and his lords, I did enjoy the play as a whole. It was a magical, fun story that reminded me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in some ways. I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys Shakespeare and wants a quick, easy read.

Library Book: Northlanders Book 1: Sven the Returned

I grabbed this while I was at work because it looked and sounded cool. I mean, how can you not be intrigued by Entertainment Weekly saying it is "Vikings finally done right!"? So being sick of the crappy books I've read for school, I decided to give Northlanders, Book 1: Sven the Returned a shot.

Right off the bat, I have to agree: this is vikings done right. The story is brutal, with an art style to match. It suited the very idea of vikings. And Sven was sufficiently hard-core. But unfortunately, as with most of the things I've read lately, the story sort of died at the end. Maybe it was because Sven didn't have a particularly good reason to keep fighting here, or maybe it was because of some events which obviously happened behind the scenes, but there was no spectacular climax and nothing to keep me wanting to read more (or know what happens next).

Anyway, it was cool, but in my opinion not cool enough to recommend to everyone. If you really like vikings, you'll like this. Otherwise, you might be better off passing it by.

School Book: Never Let Me Go

I thought Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go sounded intriguing, so I decided to read it next (plus Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus wasn't here yet, so I needed something else to read). Unfortunately, Never Let Me Go just never lived up to my expectations. Also, spoiler alert - I talk a bit about the plot here.

The back of the book says that Kathy, Ruth and Tommy are special. They grow up as students at Hailsham. And it is only after they are grown up and near the end of their lives that they realize just how special they are. Like I said, it's intriguing. But in practice, Never Let Me Go read like bad sci-fi. It didn't take me long to realize that these kids weren't normal, with the talk of being a carer for those who are giving donations. And there was never any talk of seeing their parents, or of going home for the holidays.

It turns out that these kids are clones, created so they can donate their organs when they get older. This is a strange and ineffective system going on: the kids grow up, have to care for older clones who are donating, then start donating their own organs once they're finished. It doesn't matter that a lot of people are un-suited to being a carer, this is the way the system works. The book never explains why they needed clones, either; wouldn't it be more efficient just to grow new organs in a lab?

Anyway, Never Let Me Go is the story, told from Kathy's viewpoint, of her and her friends growing up, and how their friendship is first shattered, and then brought back together later in life. Unfortunately, through almost all of the book, I kept wondering why I should care. None of the characters really seemed to come to life for me, and I had a hard time caring about them until the end. I thought the end was pretty good, when it explained everything and gave me a bit of a reason to care about the characters. But it was too little too late. And right after the climax, when all the mysteries are revealed (including what makes the Hailsham students so special), the book seems to meander to a close, and again I found myself losing interest in the main characters. Overall, I was unimpressed with this book. And don't be fooled by the quote on the cover from Time; this book wasn't a page-turner.

School Book: The Collector

When I started reading John Fowles' The Collector, I didn't want to put it down. It is the story about a Butterfly Collector who comes into a lot of money and uses it to kidnap a young woman. The first third of the book is told from his perspective and it was really creepy; the way things were worded, you just knew that something was going to happen. The second part of the book was told from the girl's perspective, as written in a diary. It detailed most of the events from part 1, everything from her getting kidnapped to the same point where part 1 ends. The final two short parts are again told from his perspective.

Unfortunately, the last parts fall flat. The book seems to build and build to nothing. It was anticlimatic and sort of predictable, if you weren't looking for something more fantastic. I sort of felt cheated reading it.

The Collector reminded me of Tin Man (which I reviewed way back when on Shauna's World) - the beginning was fanatastic, but then it all fell apart as it kept going. Unfortunately, being a book, most people would not be happy with only reading part 1. So my advice is to not bother with this one; find something better.