The Call of the Wild by Jack London

I was under the impression that my mom read this book to us when we were little kids, but after reading it I am certain that that was not the case. It would have scarred our little animal-loving minds for life. My brother and sister and I were into anything that anthropomorphized animals. Disney was at the top of our list.

I don't know this for sure, but I would guess that London did not intend this to be a work of young adult fiction. The Call of the Wild is infused with a gritty realism -- dogs tearing the throats out of other dogs and even humans, men beating dogs to death, people not bathing...need I go on? I imagine that over time his works fell into the young adult category because his stories appealed to the young, especially boys. I, for one, was obsessed with White Fang, another London novel, when I was little. Here again, I am not for sure that I ever actually read it.

The Call of the Wild is the story of Buck, a mix between a St. Bernard and a Scotch shepherd dog. During the height of the Klondike gold rush, Buck is taken away from his home in sunny California by an unscrupulous man who worked for Buck's owners. This man ships Buck up to Seattle, where he is bought by two French-Canadian men who run mail through the Yukon. This brings me to my main criticism of this work. London is horrible at vernacular. Take this bit of dialogue, "'Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!' he cried. 'No, nevaire! Heem worth one t'ousan' dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?'" This gets really annoying quite fast. And London is not even consistent, at times Francois can pronounce the "th" sounds and at other times he cannot, such as when "these" is rendered "t'ees".

Buck moves from owner to owner, as he treks back and forth across the Yukon and other northern territories. As you can pick up from the title, the story is basically the education, or perhaps the re-education, of Buck in the ways of his ancestors. However, this book could also be read as a hero story.

I picked up this edition at a used book store in New Orleans (it's not the one pictured at the top of this post). It came with Bâtard, a story that was meant to be a companion piece to The Call of the Wild. This short story was unbelievably dark and gruesome, further solidifying my belief that London never intended his work to be read solely by kids. What was weird and annoying about this edition was that it had the most patronizing endnotes in the world. There was only ninteen of them and there was no rhyme or reason to what got an endnote. At one point London used the phrase "Alpine proportions" and there was an endnote to explained that this was London's way of saying that there was a lot.

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross.

- Milton's Paradise Lost, Book II

The Amber Spyglass is the final book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. He got the name for the trilogy from Paradise Lost, and supposedly the three books are influenced by Milton's classic work. I can't comment on that aspect since I have not read Paradise Lost. However, quite often this book put me in mind of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

The story picks up right where The Subtle Knife left us, in cliffhanger fashion. Lyra has been kidnapped and Will is trying to find her. For the most part it closely follows Lyra and her friend Will, two tweens on a multifaceted quest that changes drastically throughout the course of the book.

The plot of this book is much more complex than that of the first two. However, while the story is complex, it is also very clear. Not only does Pullman write clearly, but he also writes well. For example:
"She took a deep shuddering breath. She pressed her hands and legs against the rough planks of the platform, and having a minute ago nearly gone mad with fear, she was now suffused with a deep, slow ecstasy at being one with her body and the earth and everything that was matter."
As with the first two books, Pullman does an excellent job with battle scenes.

Although Pullman is a somewhat vociferous atheist, this trilogy focuses heavily on religious themes such as God, hell, and the afterlife. Granted, he has his own unique take on these themes. Also, Pullman often makes biblical allusions with his choice of words, and in a few instances he uses specific biblical characters, like when we find out that Metatron, an angel, is Enoch from Genesis.

I had some questions while reading the first two books -- things that appeared to be minor plot holes -- but Pullman was able to clear those up in this final book. More importantly, Pullman managed to end the series well.

I loved all three of these books. They were well-written, incredibly original stories.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

This is the stragest piece of fiction literature I've read in a long time. If you have ever read anything by Murakami, you will know what I mean when I tell you it's a bit too quirky for me to summarize without the novel sounding as though it's too far fetched to be enjoyable. If you're in the other camp and haven't read anything by him, I strongly recommend you check him out.

The narrator is a mediocre, nameless man living in Japan as a co-owner of an advertising company that he started originally as a translating service with his alcoholic best friend. At the opening of the novel, the narrator is dealing with a recent divorce to a woman we know little about except that she kept detailed records of her sex life. He begins a relationship with a call girl who has "the most bewitching, perfectly formed ears." When her ears are covered, she's a plain looking woman with no intrigue. When her ears are uncovered, she's more or less an insta-sex goddess with psychic abilities. It only gets weirder from here.

The narrator is contacted by a man working for dying government leader because of a picture he used in an ad that contains the physical manifestation of a mythological sheep. The narrator did not take the picture himself. It was sent to him by an old friend he calls the Rat who has more or less disappeared. The narrator is given an ultimatum: Find the sheep or else. This prompts him and his lady friend to run all over Japan on a wild sheep chase. I don't want to go into anything that happens after this because I don't want to spoil it for you.

Other notes:
-For a novel translated into English from Japanese, the language flows very well. I would have thought that this was written in English to begin with if I had not noticed the note at the beginning of the book saying otherwise.
-Murakami doesn't seem to like giving his characters names. Only two characters are given names that aren't simply descriptions like "my girlfriend" or "the Strange Man." Those characters are J, the bar owner, and their friend Rat, which are both nicknames rather than given names. I found this a little odd.
-The book opens with a little story about a woman the narrator had a casual sexual relationship with during his college years that seems to have no relation to the rest of the text and that this was never tied in bothered me.
-If you visit the author's website, there's a section that tells you what he ate, drank, and listened to while he was writing various different books, and I found that interesting. He also has a play list that includes all the songs referenced to in his novels. For a Japanese man, he includes a lot of American music from the sixties and seventies in his writing.
-This book is a part of a trilogy that for some reason has four books instead of three. As Nathan noted in his review of Pinball, some of the books in the trilogy are now out of print in the US.
-Sometimes I think Murakami is trying to be weird on purpose. (Think Tom Robbins.) It's one thing to have an unusual plot (refreshing) but when you throw in things like a gigantic whale penis and a possessed, homeless man in a sheep outfit, one has to wonder.

Nine Stories by JD Salinger

I love love love these stories. I expected to like them--after all, Catcher in the Rye is one of the world's best books--but I don't think I expected them to be as memorable as they are. Though, I suppose, if you produce as little as Salinger, you really ought to make the best of what you publish, right?

What impresses me about Salinger is that, while these prose in these stories isn't necessarily my favorite--especially because Salinger is keen on using judgement words like "memorable" and "unprettiness," which sort of ruin for me the experience of discovering things about characters and situations organically--but the dialogue and the realness of characters' interaction is so true and well-wrought that each story becomes very convincing. Too many authors deprive their characters of personality by making their characters say things that could be uttered by the average man, but the dialogue of Salinger's characters shapes and defines them because it's so fresh and not dumbed down. Here's an exchange between Seymour Glass and a small girl in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish":

Sibyl released her foot. "Did you read 'Little Black Sambo'?" she asked.

"It's very funny that you should ask me that," he said. "It so happens I just finished reading it last night." He reached down and took back Sybil's hand. "What did you think of it?" he asked her.

"Did the tigers run all around that tree?"

"I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers."

"There were only six," Sybil said.

"Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?"

"Do you like wax?" Sybil asked.

"Do I like what?" asked the young man.

"Wax."

"Very much. Do you?"

Sybil nodded. "Do you like olives?" she asked.

"Olives--yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without 'em."

To me, this sounds like many conversations I've had with small children. There's an element of absurdity to it that you think would be easy to capture, but I suspect if you or I tried it we wouldn't come nearly as close as Salinger at making it sound natural.

I did have one reservation, which was that Salinger seems fixated on two types of characters: the precocious child and the witty, cynical 20-30something. After finishing the collection, however, I decided that this was not necessarily the limits of Salinger's abilities, but that these stories really do work with a few central themes in common, whereas I had been expecting sort of a hodgepodge, unconnected collection. I think somewhere in these nine stories Salinger is suggesting that precociousness in a child--like Sibyl, or Esme in "For Esme--with Love and Squalor," or the Comanches in "The Laughing Man"--becomes in young adulthood a sort of unsatisfied and restless cleverness that manifests itself in depression and ennui. Most particularly it can be seen in the first-person narratives of "For Esme--with Love and Squalor," in which the narrator is a disillusioned soldier who is always cracking jokes, and "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period," about a young art student who pretends to be an accomplished Parisian artist in order to work at a correspondence art school with an older Japanese couple. Of course, in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," these qualities combined with what seems to be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder form a recipe for suicide. The narrator of "Blue Period" (De Daumier-Smith is his psuedonym; his real one is never given, though surely he overlaps somewhat with Salinger himself) uses his mendacity as a guard against his own disillusionment and cynicism, and he struggles through his corrections to his students' work--which is mediocre at best--until he stumbles across the paintings of a nun which are, to him, an unexpected and fleeting moment of sheer beauty. It is almost as if Salinger's young characters, marked by their cleverness but never their happiness, are constantly seeking the sense of wonder that they grew out of in childhood.

This idea comes across particularly strong in my favorite story of the nine, "The Laughing Man," about a boyscout leader who is constantly telling his troop a serialized story about the title character, an absurd amalgmation of crime noir, Bond novels, and comic books who "subsists on eagles' blood and rice." It is told through the eyes of one of the scouts, who doesn't understand completely what is at hand when the scoutmaster's girlfriend keeps showing up and then, suddenly, doesn't--but when the scoutmaster pulls over the troop bus and tells the final chapter of "The Laughing Man," brutally killing off the boys' beloved hero, we know what has happened: his heart has been broken.

The last story, "Teddy," brings the theme of precociousness to a strange extreme. The titular character is a young boy aboard a ship returning to America from Britain where, we learn very gradually (Salinger is a master of delayed exposition), he has been undergoing psychological "tests." As he bickers with his parents and scribbles in his diary, he seems just another gifted little boy until he reveals something to a passenger coincidentally familiar with the boy's "tests"--in former lives he has sought to obtain Nirvana but a spiritual stumble has caused him to be reincarnated once again as Teddy, to try one more time. He has an acute awareness of his spiritual life and could tell you, if you wished, the exact date and circumstances of your death. This is strange territory for Salinger, but the story's power and effectiveness is undeniable.

Of course, these themes surface again in Catcher in the Rye, and I feel that having read them gives me a fresher understanding of that book, especially the relationship between Holden and his precocious little sister, Phoebe. How much more potent is Holden's preoccupation with the vulgarities scratched on the walls of Phoebe's school when the possibility that Phoebe will grow into someone like Holden emerges? Something to think about.

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

"'Lord, is it then true... that thou and Tash are one?' The Lion growled so that the earth shook and said, 'It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites.

For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?' I said, 'Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.'

But I said also, 'Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.' 'Beloved,' said the Glorious One, 'unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.'"--Emeth, the Calormene, describing his encounter with Aslan"

I had such a difficult time with this concept when I was a child that I let it overshadow the entire story. However, I missed a really great story with a lot of truth in it. I am really glad I reread it. I don't have too much to say, except that it was good. I still don't agree with the quote, but i don't have too.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

This "book" is only sixty pages, and yet it took me a week to read. I'm just trying to give this thing away to Carlton.

But anyhow, Of Mice and Men is one of John Steinbeck's short novels--a list that includes some really fantastic works like Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, and some dreck like The Red Pony and The Pearl that are the reason no one who ever went to high school likes John Steinbeck. I'd say that Of Mice and Men falls pretty squarely in the middle of those, lacking the detail and flavor of the former two but not making me want to kill myself like the latter. Part of the reason is that Steinbeck meant it to double as a novel and a play--that is to say, it is written with a heavy concentration on dialogue and interaction over description. The result, I'm sad to say, is that it tends to be a little dry.

But the plot is pretty neat (spoilers): two migrant workers, the cunning, cynical George and the hulking man-child Lennie, find work as "bindle stiffs" (this is something to do with hay, or something) in a migrant worker community. Their plan is to make enough money to buy a little plot of land where Lennie can tend rabbits and George can do a little farming, and it seems as if their plan is close to fruition when the old one-handed ranch hand Candy agrees to pitch in with his considerable savings. But, you know what they say, the best laid plans of something or other. Lennie, who has the strength of an elephant but the mind of a six-year old, accidentally murders the boss' wife while trying to stroke her hair, and, well, everything goes to hell after that. The final scene, in which George shoots Lennie from behind to spare him an awful death at the hands of a lynch mob, is one of great resonance and power even if I'm not sure I completely buy George's actions.

In any case, I don't recommend this book, if just for the fact that Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row are so much better. Read those, and then save this one for the days when you need to catch up in the Fifty Books Project.

Coachella by Shelia Ortiz-Taylor

'Against his will he has plunged into mystery, somehow held captive in that temporal zone between the question and the answer. But if you could ask him what shape life ought to take, he would tell you this: that life should be like a map on which one could chart one's clear course. And those of others. Life should have a legend by which one could calculate distance, speed, points of intersection. Somewhere on the map it should say: YOU ARE HERE. By traveling at a certain speed, for a certain length of time, one should be able to estimate one's approximate time of arrival and probable outcome.' Shelia Ortiz-Taylor

"Ortiz-Taylor writes novels that help to illuminate the Mexican-American lesbian experience." -Tina Gianoulis

Need I say more? Doubtful, but I want to make sure you have a full picture.

Characters:

• Casa Diva, (seemingly its own character) a spa house for gay men that is over-run with AIDS.


• Marina Lomas, Victim of her abusive husband and recently turned lesbian.


• Yolanda Ramirez, local phlebotomist and lesbian.


• Crescencio, a man in love with with a dying, married woman.


• Ella Townsend, the dying, married, before mentioned woman.


• Mr. Townsend, Ella's abusive husband.


• A few other Indians, Mexicans, and Gays. (Not that I am grouping them all together, but the author seemed the think those were the superior beings on earth.)

Plot:
The women of Coachella all believe they need extensive plastic surgery on the regular basis. This is not an idea put in their heads by their abusive husbands, but in fact a sad truth that they themselves can see as their boobs sag, bellies pooch, and faces age. However, all of their surgeries require extended hospital stays where they are eventually given blood transfusions.

All the Gay men living at the Casa Diva, most notably the owner, are getting nagging colds that refuse to go away and soon turn into pneumonia.

The phlebotomist, Yolanda, is seeing a surprising increase in the number of people with low white blood cell counts. She realizes that this is an indication of AIDS.

Yolanda thinks that AIDS may be a virus, and it may be carried in the blood. The blood bank might be contaminated. She takes her research to the doctor, after a brief discussion, they decide that they are more like business men than doctors. They hide the fact of the tainted blood so that they don't loose money on it.

Marina comes to town with her baby girl as she tries to escape her abusive husband, David. She starts working at the Casa Diva and meets Yolanda. The two women soon become lovers and move in together. When they hear that David is coming after Marina, they hide out with a friend. Yolanda's father, Crescencio stays at their trailer and shoots David to death.

That night there is an announcement on the News. Everyone is made aware of the tainted blood, but most of them will die anyway. We are not too sad, since Davis has been killed, Ella escaped her abusive husband by dying of AIDS herself, and all the good people of Coachella know that Yolanda was really the one who made the important discovery.

General Conclusions :

• All straight men abuse women because their scarred emotions don't know any other way of asking for love.


• Women understand women better, and men understand men better, so you should not attempt to have a romantic relationship with the opposite sex.


• Mexican culture is far superior to American. If all the Mexican natives would throw off American bondage and be gay they would live much happier lives, but still die of AIDS.


• If you are a lesbian, your books will get published without the content even being scanned.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

I read The Chronicles of Narnia when I was about ten, and felt that they really were very grown up books. It was surprising to go back and see how simple this book is. It was also great to see that while the reading level hasn't advanced with me, the story is still charming and the allegory still stirring.

The story of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy is pretty straightforward, but I think that is as it should be with children's tales. Children don't catch twists the same way adults do, and an interesting story doesn't mean complicated.

Well, the book is still most excellent. Lewis is a great writer. He does a good job going from his in depth writings for adults to his beautiful stories for children without losing any truth. He still gives you the same sense of wonder at the power and awesomeness of God whether you are a child or all grown up.

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

"That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone: now in his corruption he had learnt."

The Power and the Glory is a look at Catholicism from the prospective of a Catholic. Greene's whisky priest is a bad man. He has not obeyed the laws of God, but he still has the power to absolve others from their sin. His compassion compels him to hear the confessions of the spiritually abandoned Mexico, and forces him into a life of hiding and fear.

The 'bad guys' are the police who seek to kill the whisky priest, but they are really no different than he is. They are officials who break the law, yet are fighting to eliminate all religion on the basis that this will give the children of Mexico a better life than their ancestors.

The difference between the two is what their purpose. The whisky priest is an instrument of God, but still cannot escape his own sin. The officials are sincerely striving to do right, unfortunately it is all in their own eyes.

In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

i am never without it(anywhere i go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear

no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life
which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Rose and Maggie May were left to grow up on their own after their mother died and their father became withdrawn and eventually remarried. With no one to introduce them into the world of adulthood, each sister makes her own way with the recourses life has given to her.

Rose is smart, in the traditional sense of the word. She is a lawyer, has a great job and apartment. What she lacks is beauty, fashion, grace, and any form of self love. She wants to be beautiful like Maggie, but is also very snotty and bossy about Maggie’s lack of responsibility.

Maggie is beautiful and resourceful, but she is learning that using her body to advance in the world rarely gets you anywhere you want to be. Her dyslexia put her behind is school and makes holding a job difficult. She wishes she was smart like Rose, which eventually leads to her betrayal of their somewhat rocky sisterly bond.

One small thing that makes the story more realistic and relatable is that Rose and Maggie have different memories of their childhood. They were impacted differently by things they went through together and they have their own memories that the other sister doesn’t share.

Most of the things I have mentioned are complete incidentals. Rose and Maggie have a typical sister relationship. They hurt each other a lot, and they don’t start trusting each other again just because they are sisters. The great thing is that each sister eventually sees what she is lacking and becomes a balanced adult. The change brings them back together and gives them the will to reinvest in each other.

In Her Shoes is well written, with interesting in depth characters and real life struggles. The resolution is great without being over the top. I would recommend it as an airplane or chilling out book.