Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes

Of all the books I've reviewed on here, there are none of them as sweeping as Don Quixote. I began Book I back in June of 2006, and started Book II in January, so it's also been one of the more drawn out reading experiences of my life. That said, it's also been one of the most satisfying.

Summarizing Don Quixote is quite difficult, because describing the basic framework of the story doesn't even come close to doing it justice. Often described as the first modern novel, it manages to touch upon literary devices and genres that have only rose to prominence in the last 50 years, not bad for a book completed shortly after the King James Bible. Between the poetry, the interstitial novels, the occasional breaking of the fifth wall (and the indirect insertion of Cervantes himself into Quixote's word), Don Quixote as a literary powerhouse can't be overstated. But, is it any good?

I found Don Quixote to be an enjoyable read. At some points, particularly in the largely satirical first book, it read just as quickly and easily as any modern novel. In the second book, written not only to complete the story but also to make a statement about deceit, human cruelty, and plagiarism, the novel takes a darker turn, and the jokes played on Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza become so overblown that they inspire sympathy for the once-comic characters. As a result of the weightier second book, it's a bit more difficult to get through, particularly if you tackle it right after the first. I found that once I took some time off and approached book two on its own terms, it was well worth the read.


One last note: if you're considering reading Quixote, I recommend this translation (Edith Grossman). I had started several others previously, and found them amazingly dull.

Edge City by Joel Garreau

Garreau uses the term “Edge City” to describe the suburban communities that developed outside of major metropolitan areas in the last half of the twentieth century. He admits that the moniker is hard to define, noting that it is essentially a judgment call as to where these “cities” begin and where they end. But nonetheless, he makes an attempt to define his term. In the introduction he states that Edge Cities are a “psychological location—a states of mind—even more than a physical place.”

No doubt realizing that this definition would not be adequate for his purposes, Garreau provides another, more complex definition of the term. Edge Cities must have a certain amount of office and retail space. They primarily must be places of employment, must have more jobs than bedrooms, and must be “perceived by the population as one place.” The final qualification is that all of these factors have to be recent—within the last thirty years.

With this second definition, Garreau provides his readers with a fairly specific idea of what constitutes an Edge City. However, throughout the book, this definition changes, parts of it are forgotten or dismissed, and at times it is almost completely thrown out. Garreau needed an amorphous definition, one that he could tweak and adjust to fit various localities, because he is not simply providing a general description of Edge Cities, but using these emerging suburban cities to examine several different issues, such as wealth, power, race, and class.

It is obvious that Garreau approves of Edge Cities, even celebrates them. Too often he describes these suburban enclaves in a way that makes them appear to be fault free—the hope for the future. Although most of these “cities” had few problems and their inhabitants lived relatively good lives, problems existed elsewhere as a direct result of the growth of these places. Garreau either ignores or overlooks these problems throughout Edge City.

Although at times it was a little tedious, ultimately this was an interesting read.

The Innocent Man by John Grisham

I may destroy my literary credibility here, but I really enjoy John Grisham. Along with Stephen King, I think he's the cream of the crop of popular authors. If you don't believe me, compare a page from any of his books to pap by Dan Brown or the tedium of Tom Clancy. That said, his last few novels haven't really done much for me, so I was excited to hear that The Innocent Man was going to be a true crime novel.

It's a very interesting read, alternatingly disturbing and infuriating, as one miscarriage of justice after another is carried out. In a way, it brings to mind the whole Duke rape scandal, something that was never far from my mind as I read through the book.

The most interesting aspect to me is that, by the end of the book, most of the principle characters have gotten some semblence of justice, but lives have still been totalled in the process. I'd like to write more, but I've got to go. Good book. If you like true crime, check it out.

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

So, after a long hiatus, I'm back with a few updates. First on the docket: Ender's Shadow, Card's parallel novel to the classic Ender's Game. If you've read Ender's Game, you'll know that it follows the path of Ender, an unusually talented child who becomes the human's leader in their war against the invading Buggers. It's quite good, one of the best sci-fi novels I've read, so I was rather interested to see how Ender's Shadow would augment Ender's Game.

The original title of Shadow was Urchin, and it would have been a little more fitting. It's obvious that Ender was included in the title to obviously tie the book to its classic predecessor, but anyone reading Shadow hoping to learn about Ender will be sorely disappointed. In fact, Ender doesn't appear in the first half of the book, and for most of the second half, he's a periphery character. The protagonist in Shadow is Bean, a periphery character in Ender's Game. The first half of the book chronicles his life on the streets of Rotterdam, and how me managed to survive despite being the smallest and weakest. Without giving spoilers, it also sets up characters that I suspect are expanded upon in the later volumes of the series.

The first half of the book is the most interesting, since it gives nothing but new information. The second half is good as well, but if you've read Ender's Game, there's no big reveal, and the ending is already known, so it lacks the suspense of its older brother. Still, Ender's Shadow is a fine book in its own right, and anyone who enjoyed Game should give it a shot.

More concerning Science Fiction

This pretty much sums up part of the way I feel about science fiction

The 2007 Tournament of Books

Fellow Fifty-bookers! Reading enthusiasts! Internet stalkers! Lend me your ears. Spring is just around the corner, and that can only mean one thing: The Morning News is about to start the 2007 Tournament of Books! The contest begins this Thursday, with elimination-style reviews eventually paring the selection down to one, official, greatest work of fiction of 2006. Reviewers come from all over (Colin Meloy [thanks, Chris] of The Decemberists is one of the reviewers for the first round this year) and each is assigned two books to read, review and choose between.

BUT! That's not all. This year, you, the reader, have the chance to win every damn book they'll be reviewing. They've asked the web's top book-bloggers (our invitation must have been lost in the mail) to predict the outcome of the tournament. You can review their selections on this website, where you'll also find this year's bracket in PDF format. Choose which blogger you think is spot-on, send an email to The Morning News with your selection by 6pm tomorrow night (Wednesday, March 7th), and if both you are chosen randomly to compete and your selected blogger wins the fantasy book tournament, you will receive every one of the 16 brand-spanking new books that have been selected as the best of this past year. I highly recommend it. Plus, the tournament offers plenty of fantastic novels to choose from for your next review.

Good luck, Godspeed, and keep those pages turning Planeteers... er, Fifty-bookers.

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

Ah, 100-page books. While Brent is slaving away at Don Quixote and War and Peace, I'm pulling away from the crowd by reading books like The Island of Dr. Moreau. And yes, it is a legitimate book, not a comic book, Nathan, and not a short story, Alyson.

The plot of this book is likely known to you, either from the awful Marlon Brando/Val Kilmer flick or the countless parodies on The Simpsons and what-have-you. An intellectual named Edward Prendick is shipwrecked and ends up on a ship bound for the Island of Dr. Moreau, where he is kicked off with the Doctor's assistant Montgomery. Prendick remembers Moreau from a high-profile scandal in which Moreau was kicked out of London for mutilating cats in his experiments, and learns he has come to the island to continue with his work: creating people from animals. (Not, as some parodies might have you believe, combining humans and animals.)

This book, written in 1896, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. As all great science fiction, the book's value lies not in the science but the social commentary. With the island's Beast People, who have been indoctrinated by Moreau with "the Law"--Don't walk on all fours, don't eat meat, don't scratch or claw, be human--Wells seems to suggest that we are captives of our own inner natures, as the Beast People cannot help but revert back to their feral ways. Moreau's attempt to "play God" fails utterly, perhaps undermining our concept of control over our own bodies and minds.

But it also displays what it one of science fiction's biggest faults, which is that the science dates it extremely. Moreau's methods have nothing to do with "genes" or "DNA," but "vivisection"--a word which seems almost arcane to us in light of modern science fiction, in which Dr. McCoy can fix your broken arm by waving a blinking box over your skin. Moreau teaches his beasts to talk and think, but never once uses the word "conditioning," an idea for which Pavlov didn't win the Nobel Prize until 1904. No modern reader would be fooled into thinking that Moreau could create a human being this way, though many at the turn of the century might, and that's a shame--for all its potential and even though much of it deals with worlds that don't yet exist, it tends to become dated much quicker than other literature.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

I normally don't read the back covers of books if I have not already read the work itself. While I didn't read the brief synopsis on the back of Ethan Frome, the one-sentence description at the top caught my eye. "The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside." This is a very good description of Ethan Frome.

As Brent pointed out in his review of this book, the plot is not all that complicated, noting that it could be described as a character study. I also agree with Brent on the subject of Wharton's prose. At times I found it completely arresting. The images that her words conjured up were amazing.

As I was reading the book, I thought numerous times of the Woody Allen film, September. Ethan Frome and September share many of the same themes, such as forbidden love, depression, and complicated relationships. But the strongest connection between the two is the setting. Edith Wharton's vivid descriptions of the fictitious Starkfield, Massachusetts make the town an active character in the story. Often the town, and the weather associated with it, do as much to progress the plot as any of the characters do. In September, the setting is not a town, but a house--a house which Woody Allen has described as the most important character in the film.

Another film that Wharton's novella brought to mind was Lost in Translation. I would find it hard to believe that Sophia Coppola had not read Ethan Frome prior to making the film. Besides the general melancholy feel of the movie, some of the characters are quite similar to those in Wharton's work.

Note: If you have not read Ethan Frome, leave the introduction that accompanies this edition until the end. If you read it before, it will ruin what little twists and turns of plot the story does have.

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

The Phantom of the Opera is my favorite musical ever, and that's saying a lot, considering how much I love musicals. I saw the Broadway Series South performance a few years ago in Raleigh, I dragged Chris to the movie when it came out, and I immediately bought the DVD when it was released. So I was excited to pick up the book at the library and experience the original. I'll leave out a plot summary for this one, just because I assume most people probably know it.

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.

+ Framing I love that Leroux writes as a historian. He writes as if this really happened, and it's his job to investigate the events of the opera house. It just makes things more interesting and gives a more exciting feel to the story.

+ Rich Characters The characters in this story are crazy. Someone is always doing something crazy or saying something crazy or being crazy in general. There are a few characters in the book that never appear in the play or movie. One -- the Persian -- is a major character and greatly alters the plot line. The rest are minor characters coming and going through the story. Leroux delves far deeper into the personalities of the main characters -- Christine, the Phantom (whose name is Erik in the book), and Raoul. The backgrounds of the characters are explained in more detail, giving the reader insight to why they act as they do. As much as I love musicals, they are frustrating in the fact that they never seem to be able to get everything across -- you're always missing something in the plot or dialogue or character development. None of those things are missing in the book. The ending was phenomenal; we finally found out about Erik's past.

+ A Whole New World Please, no Disney renditions. What I mean is, the opera house creates an entirely separate world for the reader. There is no Paris or even a France. There is simply the Opera house. The labyrinth wrapping the opera and the colorful characters -- like the rat-catcher or the door-closers -- running to and fro creates a special reality that belongs only in the Opera house. Just like the Harry Potter series or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, reading The Phantom of the Opera is like retreating into a whole new world.

+ A Great Story The most important thing for me when I'm reading a book is plot line. I want stuff to happen. I don't care about long descriptions or uneventful narrative. I just want a good story. That's what Phantom is. I guess that's why it's a classic.

Overall: A

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

When I read books that are particularly gripping or suspenseful, I have a very bad habit (or my eyes do) of jumping to the last line of a chapter before I can stop myself. It can really deflate the suspense, and I find myself having to cover up the last few lines with my hand or a book mark to keep that from happening. Reading Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, sometimes my greedy eyes still managed to get the best of me. This is a well-written, thrilling novel, and if I’d read The Da Vinci Code, I would probably compare it to that. Alas, I have not, but from what I know both novels’ characters spend most of the story traveling across Europe, unearthing secret documents that have been buried, often intentionally hidden, even, under centuries of history to solve an ancient mystery. The only difference is that instead of trying to bring to light Jesus’ marital status, Kostova’s characters are trying to find, and destroy, the vampire Dracula (I admit that this is a big difference). If nothing else, this book strengthened my sense of European geography, which always used to get a bit fuzzy once I got east of Italy. The main characters spend their time chasing Dracula’s past all across Holland, France, Romania and Hungary, to name just a few.

The book follows three generations of historians, and is narrated by the youngest (she never gives her name), who tells her father’s story through letters he left to her, who in turn relates the story of his mentor through letters written to him within the letters that he wrote to her. All of this results in an infuriating use of quotation marks that led me to seriously question the need to have one-third of the book told through letters. Said letters also really lose their sense of urgency—the man believed himself to be in serious danger of vampire attack—when their author stops warning his daughter and rushing to recount the steps that he took in tracing the path of Vlad Dracula, and starts to spend nearly full pages describing haircuts, exquisite ottomans (the furniture, of course), and Mediterranean food. This didn’t make the book any less entertaining—in fact, quite the opposite. Kostova’s writing is crisp and intelligent, and her descriptions of European architecture and her novel’s characters are captivating. Her sharp (you probably wouldn’t call it beautiful or colorful) prose fleshes out the plot and lends the novel a dark, brooding feel, right from the first paragraph:

As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorable forward for us with its shadowy claw.

Scenes switch from innocent to grim with one well-placed word from the author. The first half of the book feels so personal that it reads almost like a diary, and was a believable story for so many pages that it was almost easy to forget that it is, after all, a novel; Kostova keeps up this pretense by taking up the perspective of her own, nameless narrator even in her note to the reader and the dedication: For my father, who first told me some of these stories. Does she want the reader to assume that she is her own narrator? That extra element of reality would contribute significantly to the story’s viability as a thriller. After a while though, it started to seem like little twists were written in just for the sake of making the novel a page-turner, and not necessarily to advance the plot. Again, this didn’t make it any less of a great book. I won’t tell you what happens in the end, but I will leave you with this little bit to pique your interest:

Helen was full of these surprises, and I grew to consider them my daily fare, a pleasant addiction I developed to her ability to catch me off guard. But she never startled me more than at that moment in Istanbul, when she suddenly shot the librarian.