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#21 - Right Ho, Jeeves!

Right Ho, Jeeves!
P.G. Wodehouse
Fiction
Read from 5/23 - 5/26
My grade: 9

Not exactly like The Inimitable Jeeves. This one had one plot, rather than several discrete misadventures.

#20 - Very Good, Jeeves!

Very Good, Jeeves!
P.G. Wodehouse
Fiction
Read from 5/18 - 5/22
My grade: 9

Exactly the same as The Inimitable Jeeves, which nonetheless got an 8. Mysterious!

#17 - The Inimitable Jeeves

The Inimitable Jeeves
P.G. Wodehouse
Fiction
Read from 5/4-5/9
My Grade: 8

Very light, very funny, very English.

#42 – The Sea

The Sea
John Banville
Fiction
Read from 9/22/06 -9/26/06
My grade: 5

Middling. Won the Booker. I think it won the Booker for two reasons: (1) it was depressing; and (2) he used many unfamiliar words – at least one every two pages. He said “climacteric.” What the hell?

Anyway, another book where young girls are veiled in mystery, instead of the truth, which is that they are ELEVEN and surely concerned more with, say, sand castles, than developing weirdly sexual things with their twin brothers and the neighbor boy. Seriously, who are these authors, and have they ever actually seen a child? Ugh.

Anyway, the book was most of the things I don’t like about today’s literary fiction. Bleak, boring, unappealing narrator (why is the unappealing narrator so appealing to the author?), things that don’t make sense masquerading as mystery, everyone dying, and so on.

Spoilers below:

Abandoned - Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart!
Lydia Millet
Fiction
Started 8/31/06, abandoned 9/1/06-ish

Ugh. Too dreamy for me, which is too bad, because the premise is awesome. Three nuclear scientists are transported, at the moment of their first nuclear test, to the modern world, to see what they helped create. Such a great premise, and not one I expected would lend itself to dreamy bullshit.

I might dip into a later chapter and see if the writing got better. I ended on page 81, so there was a little hope left.

#38 - Post Office

Post Office
Charles Bukowski
Fiction
Read from 8/25/06 – 8/26/06
My grade: 8

Wild. I read this because I heard that Matt Dillon was starring a movie adaptation of another Bukowski, and simultaneously all the lit-bloggers went into Bukowski-praising ecstasies. 

It was very raw – the voice is incredible and immediate. Post Office, and, I bet, his other books, was obviously auto-biographical.

I rather enjoyed reading his hijinks, though he lost me a little when he kind of raped that crazy lady. It was hilarious, and I didn’t know what to do with that. Whenever the tone doesn’t match the content, I get this little shiver of cognitive dissonance. Sometimes it’s great, as with black comedy, but other times it’s just disturbing. 

Overall, it was funny in a very specific way. Like nothing I’ve read before. He’s very frank and a big loser, and can write like nobody’s business. I really have no idea what to give this. It was so out there (for me), it doesn’t seem to fit on my 1-10 scale at all. I’m tempted to give it a “blue” or “hat” or something.

#37 - Michael Martone

Michael Martone
Michael Martone
Fiction
Read from 8/22 - 8/24
My Grade: 10

So great! I read about this on the Lit Blog Cooperative (their summer 06 rec). I enjoyed it immensely. It's just contributor's notes, about 40 of them, each one providing a note from the writer of the rest of them (it's the kind of post-modern that doesn't make my head hurt). I loved the form - he actually made it work. Each one was sort of a short story, a little world with a unique Martone in it. The voice was really great - the impartial contributor's note voice, where one describes one's life in a forced third person. It has so many possibilities, and Martone explored a lot of them.

Anyway, ramblings aside, I particularly loved the plagiarism one, the Kafka one, and the acknowledgment of his first editor.

He reminds me of Vonnegut, who is mentioned, coincidentally.

I will certainly read more Martone. He proposes, in an interview I read online, a new dichotomy - not fiction/non-fiction but story/non-story. He writes non-story fiction, which he likes to call fictions. But it's all less pretentious than I made it sound. Martone = Good. 

Abandoned - The Unconsoled

The Unconsoled
Kazuo Ishiguro
Fiction
Started 8/16, Abandoned 8/20

I get it, but it's boring and irritating to read. I've decided to spare myself. Also, I don't want to sour on Ishiguro, as he is brilliant and this is just not for me.

Mini rant: I hate opacity - why do authors insist on it? Is it just more fun for them to write? Here's a tip: It's not fun for me to read. SERVE ME!

#35 - A Complicated Kindness

A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews
Fiction
Read from 8/3 - 8/7
My Grade: 6

This Doppleganger recommendation didn't work out quite as well.

Nomi Nickel is certainly memorable, but I didn't think the book was that great. First of all, nothing happened until the last few pages, and it got kind of annoying. Second, I didn't really connect with the themes - oppressive small town, fundamentalism, family abandonment, rebellion. These aren't exactly my hot buttons. This was almost one of those books where everyone seems alien to me, but Nomi was pretty human and real, I just didn't feel the story. At the same time, it wasn't at all light, and was quite sad and depressing.

All well.

#34 - Hey Nostadamus!

Hey Nostradamus!
Douglas Coupland
Fiction
7/18 - 8/2
My Grade: 10

The first of two Doppleganger recommendations.

Deeply intense, right from the start. I loved the four viewpoint structure, and it served the story perfectly. Great book.

I liked the questions it asked about violence and religion.

I thought the figure on the front was kneeling down, maybe at the shooting that opens the book, maybe shot. When I turned the last page, I turned the book over and realized he's praying. That, my friends, is not a realization to have on public transportation, because you might cry a little.

I was a little dissuaded by the hipster title and cover, but this was masterful, incredible, deep. I loved it; it was sad in just the right way. And it didn't engage in any dramatic hyperbole.

I have to ask, though, where is the comma in the title?