School Book: Captain America: The New Deal

It isn't every day that I get to call something like this a school book. But Captain America: The New Deal is indeed on the reading list for my Literature After 9/11 class! And I was really lucky to find a copy locally - it's been out of print for awhile and will be reprinted in December of this year.

I don't know a whole lot about Captain America. To be perfectly honest, I think most of what I know (and my opinion of him) was formed while playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 with a friend on Xbox 360. When all was said and done in that game, he seemed like a real jerk and I didn't really like him. And while my opinion hasn't really changed, it didn't stop me from enjoying this book.

Captain America: The New Deal has such a ridiculous concept: Captain America takes on terrorists! I kept telling everyone before I read it that I don't think the terrorists have much of a chance (unless there's some kind of super villain behind them). I don't want to give any spoilers here, so I won't discuss one way or the other what happened. But the basic plot is that several months after 9/11, a small town in the middle of the US is held hostage by terrorists. It's up to Captain America to save the day, defusing the bombs and rescuing the entire town. The story itself is very exciting, although there were a few confusing pages. Nick Fury appears, which is always a plus. And there was a really great sequence right near the beginning with Captain America searching for survivors at the Twin Towers' Ground Zero.

Like I said, it's a bit on the ridiculous side, but all in all Captain America: The New Deal was a really good read.

School Book: The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun

I was a bit leery of reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun. I've read The Lord of the Rings several years ago and found it a bit dry, so I was sort of expecting the same type of writing. Luckily I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, I wasn't really expecting Norse poetry, but was sort of expecting prose (like Ackroyd's Canterbury Tales). But even in the explanatory stuff that his son, Christopher Tolkien, included, there was no dry anything; I genuinely enjoyed what pieces of Tolkien's lecture notes were included.

I read The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun out of order. I started with the poems, then went back to the introduction and later the commentaries on the poems. This is how I normally read school books, specifically Shakespeare and the like. I want to enjoy the work without anyone else's comments first, and then I'll go back and read whatever the editor/translator/whomever has to say.

The poems themselves were rather entertaining, but a bit hard to figure out at first. The style in which they were written is just so foreign to a modern English speaker. But once I got over that, I just enjoyed the story. Of course, the introduction and commentaries did help a bit. Once I'd read the poems I went back to these areas and some of the points I'd had trouble with started making more sense.

In the end I read the entire book from cover to cover, and I really enjoyed all of it. Tolkien's lectures were quite interesting and well-written, and I liked how his son explained how the poems came to be the way they are.

Reread: Beowulf

This was, I think, my third time reading Beowulf. The first two times I read it were both the year before I started this blog (when I was finishing up my first degree). I remember talking to a friend who said he absolutely hated reading it. But I really enjoyed it. Right off the bat I realized it was a viking story, which was a lot of fun. I watched Beowulf and Grendel that year, before rereading it a second time in preparation for the exam. And now I got to read it a third time for my "Translating the Middle Ages" class. I even lucked out: we're reading the Seamus Heany version, which is the version I have.

Going back to Beowulf was like going back to an old friend. Sure, I didn't remember the specifics, but I still remembered the just of the story. I also still remembered the ways in which the CGI Beowulf differs from the poem. (In case you're wondering, read the poem; it's better!)

Beowulf tells the hero's story, from his coming to help the Danes defeat Grendel to his downfall fifty years later saving his people from a dragon. It has a lot of battle and adventure in it. But more than that, it also gives you a glimpse of what life was like during the end of the 1st millenia AD. Now I know there weren't dragons and Grendels running around, but you can at least see some of what life was like in the halls of the vikings.

I don't want to say much more about it, other than to restate how much I like it. Sure, it isn't for everyone. But give it a try - you just might be entertained!

School Book: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

When I first started reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. The main characters in both books are rather similar: they are young boys who are both socially awkward. But from the first chapter, I knew that I would enjoy Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a lot more than The Curious Incident. It was funnier, and overall a better story.

Extremely Loud is the story of Oskar Schell. His father is killed in the Twin Towers. While snooping in his dad's room afterwards, Oskar discovers a strange key hidden in a vase. He decides to embark on a quest to discover what the key opens, even if he has to open every lock in New York City!

At the same time, this is also the story of his family. His grandfather left his grandmother when she told him she was pregnant. Interspersed throughout Oskar's story are chapters written from both of his grandparents' perspectives trying to explain why things happened the way they did. These narratives were just as interesting as the main story.

While Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was rather different from what I normally like to read, I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for something different, then I recommend giving it a try!

School Book: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables

Today I read Robert Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, translated by Seamus Heaney. It was a really easy and quick read. I was really interested in the first part of the book, which was The Testament of Cresseid. Having studied Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida last year, I was interested in a different take on the material. And this was an extremely different take!

After abandoning Troilus, Cresseid was herself abandoned by Diomedes. She returns to her father's house and curses both Venus and Cupid for her plight. Cupid takes exception to this and asks the other gods to intervene on their behalf. And so the other gods curse Cresseid to become a leper. Cresseid passes the rest of her days in a leper house, but encounters Troilus one day (although neither recognizes the other). It is an extremely sad tale, especially at the end when they realize who each other was.

Included in this book are also seven Fables. The Fables were pretty entertaining to read. All in all, this was a quick but enjoyable read.

School Book: Falling Man

Don DeLillo's Falling Man is like nothing I've ever read before. I really enjoyed reading it, but I couldn't tell you why. It was an odd book in many ways. The descriptions were fantastic, but everything else was just really strange. It was often hard to tell what character was being talked about, or even talking; they were rarely mentioned by name. Even other characters wouldn't call each other by name (for example, the main characters, Keith and Lianne, called their son "the kid," which was odd, but at least you consistently knew who they were talking about). On top of that, the dialogue was extremely artificial, and very hard to follow.

The actual story is also a bit strange. Falling Man is the story of Keith, who survived the attack on the towers. After getting out just before they collapsed, he decided to head home to his estranged wife. Falling Man is the story of his family coming back together and then slowly coming apart again as time and distance from the towers increases.

Falling Man is not something I would normally read. It's also something I wouldn't normally like. With weird and generally crappy dialogue, I'm surprised I made it through it so quickly. But I honestly did enjoy reading it.

School Book: The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling

It's taken me a bit, but I finally finished the prose retelling of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. I have never read The Canterbury Tales in their entirety, so this was a great opportunity for me. (Previously I have read both the General Prologue and the Miller's tale twice).

But right off the bat, things seemed a bit off. The big problem is that Peter Ackroyd's version is a prose retelling; the original Canterbury Tales is a Middle English poem. Yes, it can be a bit hard to understand for us modern audiences, but a lot is lost in translation. Both the General Prologue and the Miller's Tale seemed quite cut and rather dry compared to the original; they were missing both the clever use of language and the multiple meanings inherent within the original. I was also kind of bothered by the use of swears throughout the prose retelling. They often seemed out of place, particularly in the Miller's tale.

But otherwise this was an enjoyable read. As long as you keep in mind that this is a retelling which is rather different from the original, Peter Ackroyd's version will keep you quite entertained!