I've read other things, too! (honest)
I'm going to talk about things other than DH soon. I promise. Like... now! Ta da!!
Title: The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
page count: 339 pages.
This book broke my heart into a million pieces and neglected to put it together again. Estha and Rahel, the twin children of divercee Ammu, grow up in revolutionary India. Sort of. Their grandmother, Baby Kochamma, doesn't help. Their uncle doesn't help. Their father - drunkard, willing to trade his wife in for his job - doesn't help. And, ultimately, their (already loved) cousin, Sophie Mol, doesn't help. Sophie Mol arrives in India - fresh and pink and English and so, so loved by all those awaiting her - just in time to die, and to make Ammu send Estha way.
I'm not telling this story very well. But, then, the book doesn't follow any one road, but instead meanders down several, spinning back upon itself, folding and unfolding until you end up back at the beginning, bewildered. It is ultimately a book about love, and about loss, and maybe a little bit about revence, and it is odd, therefore, than all I could feel from it was this immense gaping nothingness, right in the centre. All these people - these people that should love each other, but somehow do not - are so beautifully written, and so human and so repugnant in their selfishness, that you can't help but stop and think - my god. My god, humanity is an ugly beast.
I do love books that make me think on the beauty in people. This book does that by showing you the ugliness.
***
Title: Diary
by Chuck Palahniuk
page count: 260 pages
This is Misty Wilmot's shitty life - and no matter what she does, it stay just the same.
I've either loved or hated the past Chuck Palahniuk books I've read, and I'm afraid that this falls into the latter category. Stylistically, it can't be faulted but, ultimately, the character is a little too normal. Odd, I know, but to stomach Palahniuk's particular brand of vitriol I need a narrator who is just plain nuts - so nuts, in fact, that they are an oddity, something you cannot relate to. The narrtor of Survivor, for instance, I dound completely foreign to me, and so the book was interesting. It didn't sting to read it. This book crawled under my skin and carried off bits of me, giggling to itself and waving paintbrushes all the while.
And then it said -
I'm not strange. I'm normal. I'm perfectly, perfectly normal.
Which is, of course, when I hid it under a big pile of rocks.
That is all.
***
Title: The City and the Stars
byr C. Clarke
page count: 255 pages
It's a worrying sign when you can guess what's going to happen fifty pages into a book... and it unfolds just as you predicted. It's even more worrying when you finish off the book in a couple of hours, because it poses no challenge whatsoever.
This might be part of the SF masterworks series, but I'd consider one of Clarke's weaker stories, simply because there isn't that much in it - and what is in it isn't that interesting. A city is perfect, yet stagnant. Someone is born who wants to change that. He finds another city - imperfect, yet still reclusive. Guess what? He brings them together by calling them both stupid poopyheads. Or something similar.
The big revelation of the story is simlarly disappointing - humanity was driven back from the stars, and locked into these cities by an evil invader... except that, actually, that didn't happen. The ancients lied. They were really big fat cowards, who didn't want to go gallavanting off into space.
The problem is, not only did I predict both the story and the revelation from the first few pages, but the story is itself not very absorbing. No one wants to read about what a big bunch of cowards did to make themselves feel less cowardly! There is something immensely unsatisfying about it, and by the end, I was wishing an asteroid would drop on their heads.
So there.
***
I might go finish watching Prisoner of Azkaban. I have popcorn. I have diet coke. I have peanut M&Ms. I am the home cinema queen. Yes.
More to the point, I've spent so long stressing about exams - and say what you like, it was merited, as the exam was bloody hard! - that I'm emotionally exhausted. I'm totally regressing into potter-love as my default-setting. *purrs*
Title: The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
page count: 339 pages.
This book broke my heart into a million pieces and neglected to put it together again. Estha and Rahel, the twin children of divercee Ammu, grow up in revolutionary India. Sort of. Their grandmother, Baby Kochamma, doesn't help. Their uncle doesn't help. Their father - drunkard, willing to trade his wife in for his job - doesn't help. And, ultimately, their (already loved) cousin, Sophie Mol, doesn't help. Sophie Mol arrives in India - fresh and pink and English and so, so loved by all those awaiting her - just in time to die, and to make Ammu send Estha way.
I'm not telling this story very well. But, then, the book doesn't follow any one road, but instead meanders down several, spinning back upon itself, folding and unfolding until you end up back at the beginning, bewildered. It is ultimately a book about love, and about loss, and maybe a little bit about revence, and it is odd, therefore, than all I could feel from it was this immense gaping nothingness, right in the centre. All these people - these people that should love each other, but somehow do not - are so beautifully written, and so human and so repugnant in their selfishness, that you can't help but stop and think - my god. My god, humanity is an ugly beast.
I do love books that make me think on the beauty in people. This book does that by showing you the ugliness.
***
Title: Diary
by Chuck Palahniuk
page count: 260 pages
This is Misty Wilmot's shitty life - and no matter what she does, it stay just the same.
I've either loved or hated the past Chuck Palahniuk books I've read, and I'm afraid that this falls into the latter category. Stylistically, it can't be faulted but, ultimately, the character is a little too normal. Odd, I know, but to stomach Palahniuk's particular brand of vitriol I need a narrator who is just plain nuts - so nuts, in fact, that they are an oddity, something you cannot relate to. The narrtor of Survivor, for instance, I dound completely foreign to me, and so the book was interesting. It didn't sting to read it. This book crawled under my skin and carried off bits of me, giggling to itself and waving paintbrushes all the while.
And then it said -
I'm not strange. I'm normal. I'm perfectly, perfectly normal.
Which is, of course, when I hid it under a big pile of rocks.
That is all.
***
Title: The City and the Stars
byr C. Clarke
page count: 255 pages
It's a worrying sign when you can guess what's going to happen fifty pages into a book... and it unfolds just as you predicted. It's even more worrying when you finish off the book in a couple of hours, because it poses no challenge whatsoever.
This might be part of the SF masterworks series, but I'd consider one of Clarke's weaker stories, simply because there isn't that much in it - and what is in it isn't that interesting. A city is perfect, yet stagnant. Someone is born who wants to change that. He finds another city - imperfect, yet still reclusive. Guess what? He brings them together by calling them both stupid poopyheads. Or something similar.
The big revelation of the story is simlarly disappointing - humanity was driven back from the stars, and locked into these cities by an evil invader... except that, actually, that didn't happen. The ancients lied. They were really big fat cowards, who didn't want to go gallavanting off into space.
The problem is, not only did I predict both the story and the revelation from the first few pages, but the story is itself not very absorbing. No one wants to read about what a big bunch of cowards did to make themselves feel less cowardly! There is something immensely unsatisfying about it, and by the end, I was wishing an asteroid would drop on their heads.
So there.
***
I might go finish watching Prisoner of Azkaban. I have popcorn. I have diet coke. I have peanut M&Ms. I am the home cinema queen. Yes.
More to the point, I've spent so long stressing about exams - and say what you like, it was merited, as the exam was bloody hard! - that I'm emotionally exhausted. I'm totally regressing into potter-love as my default-setting. *purrs*