Recent books
Some books I've read this year
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - Wow. Lord Jim is an English teacher's dream. There's just so much symbolism, so many literary techniques, so much to compare and contrast. It's the kind of book you feel like you must discuss with others to point out your own insights and hear what they found. That said, I'm not sure if I really liked the book. Conrad isn't an author who I love. He is an author whom I highly respect.
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon - Not knowing anything about it beforehand, I now find it hilarious that I read this book immediately after Lord Jim. I felt like I was missing so much meaning and symbolism, so I peeked at a Cliff Notes-type website, and found that Pynchon was being intentionally obtuse as a means of showing the confusion of the modern world. After that, I was able to sit back and enjoy the book with a smile on my face, knowing I had fallen for Pynchon's joke. Sure there's symbolism and meaning here, but just when you think you have a handle on it, things get even more confusing, just like the plot.
His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman - The Golden Compass, the first book of this trilogy, was one of my favorite books I've read this year. It's got adventure, fantasy, science fiction, and some philosophy and religion thrown in. The plot is one of those allegorical fantasies that sound silly when described, but make perfect sense within the novel. I loved it . . until I read the second book. In The Subtle Knife, the action slows down, the author starts trying to explain fantasy (the Force is midichlorians, Anakin), and everyone becomes amoral Satanists. No, really! Satanists! By the third book, the main characters are trying to kill God, or an angel posing as God and . . .well, it's all a big mess of over-ambitious writing that crosses the line from sounding silly but working within the novel to just not working at all. I didn't finish the third book. Maybe it got better. I didn't care.
The Coming of Conan by Robert E. Howard - Now, for fantasy that doesn't get bogged down with its own metaphysics, this was the perfect answer: a collection of the original Conan the Barbarian stories. The edition is newish, but the stories were originally published in pulp magazines in the 30s and their age shows -- there's loads of sexism, racism, and men behaving badly. Yet, the action and humor of the best stories make for great bus stop reading material. Many of the others were obvious editor-pleasers to get Howard a much-needed paycheck. But stories like "The Tower of the Elephant", "The Queen of the Black Coast" or "The Black Colossus" made me want to read more of Howard's work.