Absurdistan; Discworld (3)

Copying from my lj :x

• Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart. (A NYTimes review here) This was even better than I anticipated, and I'd been looking forward to reading this book for over a year. Maybe two? It was always checked out! It's kind of impossible to not compare it with A Confederacy of Dunces because the main character, Misha, is kind of what Ignatius would have been if he was the son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. They're very similar both physically and mentally, although Misha gets more character developement and faster, I think. Anyway, apart from just being good, the novel totally appeals to my sense of "Heehee, I get that joke that is referencing something from the USSR!", plus the book has a middle-aged Armenian born in Glendale who can't get away from his mom. So, you know, yeah x) But really, instead of St. Petersburg, Misha calls his home city St. Leninsburg. I mean, that's just brilliant. The review says you can open the book at random and quote, and it's right. But I'd rather quote from the Prologue right now:

"This is a book about love, The next 338 pages are dedicated with that cloying Russian affection that passes for real warmth to my Beloved Papa, to the city of New York, to my sweet impoverished girlfriend in the South Bronx, and to the United States Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS)."

I recommend the book without reservations :)

And 3 Pratchett books, my first ones, all from the Discworld series:

• Small Gods. Read this one first. Fascinating and hilarious, but I guess I was expecting that. In hindsight, I think this had less of a complicated plot? Or at least it didn't branch out as much.
• The Last Hero; illustrated by Paul Kidby. Much shorter, but the illustrations were fun. Sillier than Small Gods but not necessarily funnier.
• The Fifth Elephant. Read this one today. The plot sometimes got to be a bit too much, but it didn't stand in the way of enjoying the substance of the book. Felt more like something from a series, but possibly because I was already recognizing names/places from the previous two books. But also probably because it has a bigger set of main character. And I'm already a shameless Carrot/Angua shipper. I CAN'T HELP IT. I love Carrot. So yeah, definitely picking up more Discworld in the future, and if you're going to guess that I'll try to get the ones with Carrot in them, you'll be, uh, right. That was anticlimactic.

Failed

Master and Commander - by Patrick O'Brian

Forced myself through 116 pages of it but cannot get any further, as that I have no particular interest in sea-faring stories, the British Navy, or technical details of sailing. It's like Call of the Wild for the navy, complete with the hanging and the swearing. This is actually one story that I believe may be more interesting as a movie if only so I can skip over all the details about the length of the main-mast and staysail.

The Cheating Culture

The Cheating Culture by David Callahan (hardcover 295pages)

...is one of those books that I picked up to get an idea of what's going on in the society right now. It's got a lot of interesting (but mostly depressing, as you might've guessed from the title) information and was a surprisingly good read, considering its genre and prose style. The opinion part, of course, has to be taken with a grain of salt. It made me think. It also made me feel somewhat paranoid but for all that most of it is about things that would make me more cynical, it ended on a surprisingly positive note -- mainly consisting of the author saying: okay, we have all these problems, but this is what we can do about them and it can be done.

That being said, Lucy, if you're still reading this, I'd like it if you read this book some time, so we can talk about it. A lot of its premises are based on socioeconomic paradigms and I'm curious to see what someone who actually knows something about economics can say about it. (Like I've said, I've mostly read it for the facts and I don't know enough to evaluate the opinions.)

...

In other news, started Master and Commander but don't like it much right now.

The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison, 216 pages with afterword.

In terms of shock value it's up there with A Million Little Pieces. I like it much better than Song of Solomon though -- the structure and style is a little different (I would say it's more lyrical both in terms of word usage and in the way it's fragmented) and it really worked for me. There are lots of themes and ideas in the book and it's definitely not a light read, or a happy read. That being said, it's also a surprisingly fast read (I started reading at around 11am and finished by 2pm, even with flipping back and forth a few times). As much as the book is about racism in the days just before WWII, it's also about people. The children's voice is astonishing accurate and that makes the story all the more stark and just...it's an amazing book. Not what I usually would go for, but wow.

Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards (401 pg)

The pacing is a little on the slow side until the last 1/3 of the book and small cliches keep on showing up, which is vaguely annoying. However -- and this is a very big however -- the author's insight into human nature is amazing. And by "human nature" I mean not the study of a tragic hero or a criminal mind, but of average people like you and me. The author has a good grasp of what makes people lie, what makes people cry, and how each decision has an effect that ripples not only into the future but into the past too, via memories. It hurts to read sometimes, and although this is not necessarily a book I'll buy and keep (not my type), I'd recommend others to read it at least once.




Hey look, I finished a book in the middle of a school year. Yay!

Memory Keeper's Daughter

Started last night (told ya all that I'm crackin') and was very skeptical over the first few pages, because the main characters felt like they're being cast toward the romance-novel (pretty blonde with green eyes who smells of lilacs as one of the main character, to give you an idea) type. However it was (forgot which page I'm on, but definitely finished the first page) actually fairly good. Of course at this point all that means is that I want to keep reading it to find out what happens, but things are starting to look promising.

I thought this should get saved somewhere.

kate (8:49:40 PM): ah yes, the perfect solution
kate (8:49:46 PM): hug lepers online!
lucy (8:49:52 PM): x))
lucy (8:49:55 PM): this is why I love you.
kate (8:50:11 PM): because I'm perverted?
lucy (8:50:23 PM): because you ruin everything.