book reviews: January

So I decided to write about the books I read this month, but this essentially derailed into a rant about My Sister's Keeper, a book I cannot believe I wasted hours of my life reading. I should have just watched the movie, Jesus.

WARNING: spoilers.


1. The Stranger, Albert Camus. translated by Matthew Ward. 1942.
Jan 1-22

I had this book on my bookshelf for ages. My god, it is good to finally rid myself of the guilt that struck me every time I passed it in favor of a different book. It should have been a short read, but I ended up savoring it, pulling it out every day to read a chapter, or maybe even just a few paragraphs.

There's something deceptive about the simplicity of the story: Mersault goes through only the bare bones of life, narrating each event with a lack of passion, but the book forces you to think, if only to contemplate what you'd do when faced with the certainty of death.

I don't know, I just really liked this book. I loved it. I read passages aloud to myself if only to revel in the unfeelingness of the words, felt a certain kinship with Mersault that frightened me at times. Also, it reacquainted me with a lovely word: absurd.



2. A Little Princess, Francis Hodgson Burnett. 1905.
Jan 22-25

Reading this book was a strange mixture of affectionate enjoyment and awkward judgment. My enjoyment of the book was diminished slightly by the colonialism and ~poor white girl's burden~ heavily present throughout the story, but all that aside, Sara Crewe is more or less a lovable character and you start to wish you were there with her, holding her in your lap and letting her spin tales and pretend to be a princess.

Once you get over the voice in your head that screams, "omg little white girl and the Indian servant who serves because that is his calling and he truly loves his master and he is dull and doesn't speak but is QUICK-FOOTED and AGILE and CARES FOR THE LITTLE WHITE GIRL HE YEARNS TO SERVE wow awkward awkward awkward!" Lie back and think of England.



3. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual, Michael Pollan. 2009.
Jan 25-26

Short and sweet; this shouldn't even count in this list because it's a list. Of rules to follow when eating. It may be simple and common sense, but after a quick read through I was struck by how much we take food (or food-like substances, anyway) for granted. Well worth a read, I say!



4. My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult. 2004.
Jan 27-31

When I was in the seventh grade, English class was my favorite time of the day. It's easy to see why, when you get the details: awesome teacher who started every class with "Tales of the U.T." (U.T. standing for Unusually True, not Urinary Tract); funny and relevant comic strips on handouts; assignments that weren't a chore to do; excellent grades.

One of these assignments was "a day in the life of a Japanese student your age and your gender". It was one of the rare assignments in that I didn't want to do it; I had nothing to write about. As exciting as Japan may be, we'd had a Japan unit almost every year and I was sick and fucking tired of Japan. The one time it was exciting was in the third grade, when the whole class had to learn knitting to make a quilt for this school-wide project, and everyone watched Big Bird in Japan while knitting, and I sat with this boy my best friend at the time liked and acted like a spy, asking him extremely roundabout questions about what he thought about my friend. That was the one time the Japan unit was fun, okay, because of a guy. That I was only interested in by proxy, because my friend was deeply in love with him and his smile and it was all very cute and I was always very invested in my friends' happiness and love lives.

Okay, that was a terrible tangent. Back to the story that seems pointless but all has a point! I procrastinated on the story like no one would believe. Instead of writing this goddamned assignment, I stayed up late reading truly horrendous fanfiction. The night before the assignment was due, I sat myself down in front of the computer, cracked my knuckles, and started writing.

It is very obvious that I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I borrowed names from Cardcaptor Sakura and Inuyasha, I went into detail about the morning routine of Higurashi Sakura-chan and her older brother Miroku. JESUS CHRIST, I KNOW. Painful, isn't it? Three pages into this drivel, I panicked. Where the fuck was this going? I made Sakura train with Kaho in the morning, going through figure skating routines. I made her father the nicest father ever. I made her shower. I made her dote on her cat. I made her argue with her brother. I used Japanese words like "baka" and wrote "onii-san" as "oni-san". I made her go to school. I WAS GOING NOWHERE WITH THIS STORY.

So what did I do? I killed off the older brother. Hell yeah, I went there. I was reaching, okay? Less than half a page before the end of the story, I made the teacher announce to Sakura-chan that Miroku-kun had gotten into a car crash after dropping her off at school and died instantly.

The teacher probably wondered what the fuck he was reading. Still, he said "I was surprised you slipped something so tragic into something so short. I was impressed that you managed to treat it effectively with sensitive writing and judgment. 80/70" (Emphasis his. Dunno why, but it's kinda funny.)

Am I telling you guys, the nonexistent audience, this anecdote to brag? No, I am telling you this because a couple years ago I found this story again and laughed so hard I cried, all the while wondering what the fuck the teacher was smoking to give this piece the highest mark in the class. Remembering the argument they had this morning, a single, solitary tear rolled down her cheek. COME ON, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS. At least I can say that I wrote this when I was in the seventh grade - so that's what, at age 12?

Sadly, accomplished writer Jodi Picoult has no such excuse.

Thus I have no idea what the fuck happened in this trainwreck of a book. She took a fascinating plot with an interesting dilemma, dragged it down with unnecessary metaphors and character anecdotes that did nothing for the story, and then shat out an ending just as terrible as my 7th grade vomit-fest.

Let me just list the number of things I found terrible about this book, because of course you guys care:

1. TOO MANY NARRATORS. At least one of them (Julia) I can say with full certainty was not needed to further the plot. The only thing she really did was help introduce yet another unnecessary character that has potential to be a protagonist of her own bestseller but used as a cardboard placeholder here and stir up romantic subplot that, again, does nothing for the already plenty interesting story. Oh, and she gives a pithy little speech at the end about... something deep, probably. LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKS I DO NOT GIVE, THERE ARE MANY HERE.
   


2. ALL THE PITHY ONE-LINERS. Cool one-liners are awesome to end a chapter with, especially if you have something profound to say. Cool one-liners are NOT awesome when they are used to end every goddamn chapter, and occasionally to end every goddamn paragraph of a goddamn agonizingly long chapter. Ms. Picoult, there is such a thing as being too profound, and you accomplished it three chapters into this over-long monster of a book. Congratulations.
   


3. Why were the more interesting tidbits of the book not expounded upon? Why not go into detail about Kate's heartbreaking romance with Taylor, rather than waste pages upon pages talking about a romance that honestly does nothing, absolutely nothing to the plot?! There were so many interesting stories and anecdotes Picoult could have detailed that could have twisted heartstrings and inspired waterworks, but no, time to go on and on about Campbell Alexander's high school romance that SIZZLED OUT LIKE A FIRE CHOKED OF ITS LIFE-GIVING OXYGEN, HAHA, LOOK AT THE ANALOGY I CRAFTED WITH EXPERT PRECISION AND CARE.
   


4. omg, stop talking about stars and fire and trying to force EVERYTHING into a metaphor about fire/stars/fire fire FIRE. Jesus Christ. Brian's perspective could have been axed from the book and everything would have been fine. The book would have 75% less of its "FIRE FIRE EVERYWHERE, LOOK AT HOW MANY THINGS I CAN RELATE TO A FIRE" trope, which is sad, because Brian is a firefighter and by cutting him out of the picture there should be 95% less fire-metaphor/similes/analogies. Christ.
   


5. Maybe my initial dislike of the book makes me biased beyond help, but the characters were so unsympathetic. My shriveled, blackened heart beat a little for Jesse, the older brother made useless in the face of his little sister's disease and suffering (silently, internally, because of course one member of the family HAS to be extremely NOT well-adjusted) for it, but that was about it. I could not even muster the passion to care about Kate, the girl dying of kidney failure. FAIL. Whether that is on my part or Picoult's part, I cannot tell.
   


6. Some people are really good at writing multiple perspectives into a book. Switching characters every chapter is something that can work really well depending on the story, but I'm not quite sure if this story is the right story to do this in. I was reminded of the idiom too many chefs spoil the broth as I was reading the book, and I think it's an apt judgment in this case - the number of narrators could have been cut down to three, two, even one! and it still would have worked. The relentless jumping around into different people's heads just made it hard for me to sympathize with them, especially when key moments in certain characters' lives were explained from a different character's point of view.
   
   Having this many narrators gives the reader less room to interpret. We're basically being hammered over the head with "THIS IS THIS CHARACTER, THIS IS HOW THIS CHARACTER THINKS AND REASONS AND ACTS, SO YOU BETTER AS HELL SYMPATHIZE! LOOK AT THEIR PAIN! LOOK AT THEIR SUFFERING! ISN'T HUMAN LIFE SO DRAMATIC YET SO TRIVIAL? FEEL SORRY FOR THEM, BITCHES!" and as a reader, I wanted to hammer myself over the head with something other than the emotions I was supposed to feel. No, I wanted to beat myself over the head with a goddamn sledgehammer.
   


7. I know adolescents are smarter than we often give them credit for, but Anna is thirteen fucking years old and thinks/talks like an inexperienced university professor.



8. The ending. Jesus christ, the ending. COP. OUT. I cannot go on enough about how terrible the ending is. Why. Why would anyone go into the trouble of developing a plot that has moral/ethical dilemmas worth pursuing and considering, birthing characters that (should, in theory) capture readers' imaginations and their sympathy and make them care about their sufferings, come to a perfectly fine denouement, leave the potential for a message both profound and touching, and then throw it all in the trash by writing "CAR CRASH, PROTAGONIST DIES, THE ENTIRE FUCKING PLOT OF THIS 239482034 PAGE BOOK IS MADE FUCKING USELESS"?! If there is a ~deeper meaning~ to this cop-out of an ending, please, fucking enlighten me, because it felt like the entire book was a waste of the time, effort and all the fucking headdesk-ing it took to read.
   
   It's like all of a sudden I understood how my seventh grade English teacher must have felt - here is a piece of writing that is correct grammatically, has a plot, has characters, and then HOLY SHIT HERE IS A TRAINWRECK, I CANNOT TEAR MY EYES AWAY FROM THIS DISASTER. How the fuck do I grade this? Is this an A++ or a complete and utter F? Well, this is the seventh grade. Let's cut her some slack. A++! A++s all around! I need a swig of whiskey, who the fuck told me teaching teenagers how to write was a good idea?
   
   The only difference here is that Picoult is not in the seventh grade, and it was not three pages of build-up thrown into the fire, it was over three hundred pages.

If anyone still left reading this essay of a post disagrees with me and thinks MSK is a decent/good/great/not-a-waste-of-dead-trees read, please do comment with what you liked about the book! Hostility aside, it'd be nice to be able to look back at the book with more than just seething "omg SHOOT ME that was shit".


In conclusion, I have many feelings about My Sister's Keeper, and now that they are all out I am going to move on with my life and read something that doesn't make me feel like I've given entirely too much attention to a Twilight-esque book.

Coming in February: more books! I've started reading Pride and Prejudice and Fight Club, alternating between the two in an attempt to inspire myself into writing something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but with less zombies and more Brad Pitt and bloodied knuckles. Mr. Darcy with washboard abs! Elizabeth Bennett, first lady to join the Fight Club, though if you call her Elizabeth or god forbid Lizzy she'll punch you in the fucking balls, and then kick your teeth in for good measure. It's Eli, and she'll adhere to the fifth rule of fight club to the fucking letter, so if you spend more time ogling her breasts than getting ready to put up a hell of a good tussle, well, you won't come back to fight club for a long, long time, she'll make sure of it. And Mr. Darcy will moan about how inadequately handsome Eli is, but then at night when everyone is sleeping (except for Mr. Bingley, he stays up composing soppy love poems to Jane-the-secretary) Mr. Darcy pays a visit to the guy who stared a little too long at Eli's ("Nonexistent, my god, Mr. Hurst's shuddering tits are far more titillating than her flat chest," he bites) cleavage and makes sure he won't come back to fight club ever. HAHAHA I have only read the first six chapters of P&P, what am I doing.

...aaaand apparently there is a Jane Austen's Fight Club?! Damn it, I am always late to the party. )':