Sunday, December 16, 2007

Early November Reads

I’m back in the reading mood. I’d been out of it for a while; not sure why. Watching a lot of DVD movies. But, now I’m frequenting the library again, and so the TV has been turned off for several weeks. This is a good thing.

I find that I’m not as much of a fiction reader as I used to be. I probably read one piece of fiction for every 5 non-fiction. Most of the non-fiction I’m reading isn’t worth recording, though. It’s just my perpetual curiosity/self-improvement/permanent student mode in action. A lot of kitchen remodel texts, cook books, Photoshop CS3 manuals, photography techniques, and -- more recently -- some Christian texts.

However, I’d like to do a better job of tracking my reading. I can be a voracious reader, but I suspect I’m also a careless reader. How many times have I recognized a title, but was really fuzzy on what the story was about? Too often!

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

I had forgotten how much I love Steinbeck’s writing style. I picked up a recording of Of Mice and Men to enjoy while driving to Joplin , Missouri . I was sucked in within the very first few minutes. A surprisingly short book….but so rich. The writing is clean…not a single unnecessary word.

My memory of the book, from years ago, was that the story (with a shocking ending) about two unusual friends and hard it was to be a migrant worker during the depression. That is only tapping the surface though. This is really a story about loneliness, friendship, and the quest for the American Dream.

“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. . . . With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.”

The loneliness is the strongest emotion. The old man who loses his old dog. The black man, isolated from the others. The pretty wife hungry for attention. George and Lenny had their share of trials too, but they seemed somehow easier since the had each other.

I loved the voice Steinbeck used for his characters. Direct, gritty, tough….it rings true, and you can hear all the cracks, callouses, fears, resentments that each man bears by the words he chooses.

A Long Way Gone – A Memoir of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Nonfiction. Ishmael lived in Sierra Leone . He was twelve years old when the civil wars began, and he saw families wiped out – in fact, entire villages devasted. The brutality that he saw is such as no child (or adult) should ever have to witness. Separated from his parents, and eventually from his older brother, Ishmael flees the war by crossing through the forests from village to village, struggling to avoid being shot, captured, or starving to death.

Eventually he is captured by the army and forced to become a soldier. The training is brutal. The expectations are heinous. They are told that they must take revenge on the people who had killed their families. Ishmael describes, in clear language, the conversion of a child’s mind from one of innocence and fear to one of unbridled violence. And when, finally, he and some other youths are rescued from the soldier’s life, he admits their resentment.

Ishmael never sees his family again. One can only assume they did not survive the war…so many did not. Ismael traveled to the U.S. to share the story of what was happening in Africa . His story is a shocking and enlightening one.

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

Ugh. Talk about your waste of time. Rebecca is a glutton for melodrama, but lacks the talent to actually create it. The story is actually about a Ghostwriter. Her lover’s mother died while writing a controversial book about Isaac Newton’s involvement in Alchemy. The lover contacts her to finish writing the book. What follows is a bunch of weird hauntings (to no real effect), descriptions of ancient murder and intrigue, and a revelation of Newton ’s selfish scramble to the top as fellow scientists. There is potential for some great scenes, but Stott prefers to keep the action entirely mental and, in my opinion, a lot less interesting or satisfactory. The description of the love affair is on a some bizzarro intellectual/spiritual plane that doesn’t seem real. The characters have no control over the situation, but are pawns in the after-life greed of the deceased alchemists. In short, a potentially good story poorly executed.

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