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Last Love in Constantinople, Milorad Pavic

Not as satisfying as his other books, but still pleasing.

The Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami

Words can't begin to describe the delight of reading Murakami while eating steamed rice and crab and seaweed salad in a tiny tiny Japanese restaurant, with music from the Umbrellas of Cherbourg in the background. Suffice it to say that I had an overall pleasant experience.

About the book, though. I must reread Dance Dance Dance now that I read the book to which Dance was a sequel. Maybe I will see new significance then. The Wild Sheep Chase wrapped up very nicely, almost all too nicely, but delicately so. It went well with my meal, which was wrapped up with green tea ice cream. Not that I finished the book during that meal. Oh well.

The Yellow Arrow, Victor Pelevin

Damn, the insects book is still not in the library. Still, this novella was rather satisfying. You know, Pelevin kinda reminds me of Cortazar (but maybe because I've been reading both at the same time), except that Pelevin has much much much more hopeful endings.

The Flanders Panel, Arturo Perez-Reverte

More relatively light reading from Perez-Reverte. A mystery involving a painting, a chess game, and murders. Wraps up nicely a la Christie, but with some good detailed explorations of art history and chess history. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a good mystery, and some sumptuous descriptions of Spain.

The Moviegoer, Walker Percy

This wasn't a book I would have read on my own. I read it because Kevin D. had an extra copy, and he gave it to me, and in general I think Kevin has good taste in books, if not my taste. Sort of like Gina and I and movies. I had heard Kevin talk about Walker Percy for a long long time. I'm glad he made me read it.

I liked the language of the book, the way I could hear the words trip out on the invisible narrator's tongue, easygoing and light. But more than that, I think the book sounds like Kevin. The narrator, Binx, sounded like Kevin, both in dialogue and in personality.

Oh.

And it made me think - maybe we readers are more influenced by books than we think. Like maybe the books, the authors end up shaping our personalities somehow. Or maybe we like certain authors because they so resonate with us, and by reading a friend's favorite writer I can catch a glimmer of another them, a similar wavefunction to that in their heads. Hey, wasn't that the point of my reviews being in the indicators section of my page anyway?

Kevin, by the way, I will miss next year in school when he's not around. I hope that if I'm not reading too much significance into he and this book, he finds all the best in his search.

The Blue Lantern, Victor Pelevin

Collection of short stories. Odd humanizations of everyday objects, and of animals, too. The two stories that centered around that were uplifting. The stories that revolved around the living dead were eerie.

Cronopios and Famas, Julio Cortazar

I must read more Cortazar. This was pretty awesome. I think "Age of the Dynamasaurs" on medianstrip must've been inspired by Cortazar. Amusing instruction manual and little stories, sometimes scary, sometimes surreal, sometimes off the wall and wacky. Always lyrical.

Concrete Island, J.G. Ballard

Weird. This book is the same as the one below. Really. Less beautiful and poetic and Kafkaesque, a bit more grunty and dirty, but really rather similar. I enjoyed it, but that's enough of Man Imprisoned By Fate And Searching Himself Out books for now. Don't read these two books in a row. Really. As another note, though, I'd always worried about getting trapped in those highway islands. This doesn't alleviate my fear.

The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

Much lighter than Abe's other novels, which is not to say that it's a happy-go-lucky book or anything either. It's a good read, quite poetic in the descriptions of the dunes and the everpresent sand. And though the situation in this book is, on its face, more hopeless than any of Abe's other books I've read, the actual take on it is by far the most hopeful.

The Seville Connection, Arturo Perez-Reverte

Another breeze-through beach book you won't feel too bad about. Hacker breaks into the pope.net, leaves some messages. Less supernatural than his other book, but some lovely musings on faith. I really like Perez-Reverte's characters.

As She Climbed Across the Table, Jonathan Lethem

Like my friend Dan, I read this in one sitting. In the San Francisco Public Library, to be exact, a very comfortable library, I might add. I'd meant to read some Lethem awhile ago, after reading Dan's review, and after seeing the nice covers Lethem has (yes, I do judge that way). After reading a Really Cool Essay by Lethem, I finally got around to reading As She Climbed.

I was very iffy at the beginning - the book simultaneously amused me (funny tech references) and made me uncomfortable (that were a little too over-the-top and earnest) like Dan's phase song. But as the book went on, I got into the twins, Philip, Alice, etc. And yeah, by the end of the book, I was even mildly sniffly, going "Aww..."

Publish and Perish, James Hynes

This book is hilarious! They're all horror novellas (three of 'em) set in the environment of, well, postmodern academia. When you read a story, you know exactly where it's going. That's not the thrill of these stories. The thrill is of seeing a downed anthropologist live through Harvest Home. The thrill is of seeing the classic Poe/ Bradbury/ Twilight-Zone type setups, and watching the internal dialogue of hoity toity academicians as they progress through the stages of the story. Again, a beach book much like the one below.

The Club Dumas, Arturo Perez-Reverte

Reviews call it "a beach book for intellectuals". Yah. It was. Great references to classic serial fiction (none of which I'd read after high school, and particularly wanted to read after high school, but reading this book made me want to again, which I think is a feat in and of itself.) It reminded me of Norfolk's Lempriere's Dictionary - it's a mystery in about the same way, and yes, everything wraps up nicely at the end. Check it out for some light reading you won't feel soiled by.

Only bad point - I don't think the penultimate little "twist" worked particularly well. But you might.

The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami

Collection of short stories by my most-read author of the year. Lots of kinda sad stories, actually (for instance, the first chapter of Wind-Up Bird is in here), but all very nice and dreamy to read. I *really* liked "The Dancing Dwarf." And "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" is enough to make even incurable (well, maybe not) unromantics like me worried that they might've. missed. out.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

God this book went fast, as John warned. Hour and a half, Steph-time, tops. A fun ride while it lasted, though. Yes, I was catalyzed into reading it because the movie's coming out soon. But really, I'd planned to, if only because a lot of my pals like it.

Aside: You know what's weird? Okay, so really, very few friends of mine actually read the books I like to read. Well, mostly just Dan, and to some extent Gina and Kevin and Greghaven'twrittenyouinawhileGreg. But a lot of the people I hang out with LOVE Hunter S. Thompson. Popular author, makes sense. Just something to notice.

Besides, Ralph Steadman does his illustrations, and I do so love Ralph Steadman. Anyway, like I said, a good ride, not incredibly deep and stuff, but a hell of a fun read. Gave it to Wayne so he could read it.

A New Life, Orhan Pamuk

So I picked this book using my usual method of scoping out new authors. [1] Browse the new paperback section. [2] Look at the authors referenced in the back. [3] If a significant portion of those authors match a significant portion of the authors I already like, buy. Bonus points if the blurb on the back makes any reference to self-referentiality.

So this author has been compared to Calvino, Kafka, DeLillo (haven't read, but plan to), Borges, Nabokov, Ballard. Good. I read it. It's pretty good, though lighter than I would have expected from these author comparisons. The lightness level is about Murakami's, I'd say. Anyway, I didn't actually like the book at first. The way it plunged in, the language the author (or the translator, I can't tell) used, was a bit...overearnest. But I think that was intentional. And midway through the book, I think it kinda comes together and the overearnestness kinda starts making sense, not in the making sense of the overearnestness itself, but why the author uses it. (Comparisons to Pale Fire.) The language itself is like an earnest Calvino, and some of the plot elements are where the reviewers get Ballard from (bus accidents, Crash.) It was weird reading a book and knowing exactly how the reviewers got the comparisons, and I have to admit, that was a little disconcerting.

Still, all in all, it was a fairly good book. Beautiful depictions of the bus stops and cafes of Turkey, weird conspiracy theories, uncomfortable descriptions of Love where I think the author is *trying* to make the reader uncomfortable with those overearnest descriptions because he knows his usual type of reader doesn't like that stuff. Pamuk's gonna be signing books here this week, I might drop by or something. Maybe I'll read White Castle first or something.

A Frolic of His Own, William Gaddis

WHOA! WHY HAVEN'T MORE LAW TYPES I'VE MET AROUND HERE READ THIS BOOK? It's amazing. I mean, it's *already* amazing because of the dialogue (uh, it's *all* dialogue, really), but it's even more amazing because of the great portrayal of the law. The fake opinions I've read in the book are the best! Hilarious citations of real cases that many of us have read first year! And they're used accurately too! I can't recommend this book more. His discussions of everything from landmark tort cases to rules of civil procedure are simultaneously insightful and hilarious, in a dry witty way. I'm trying to force the book on my friend Kevin, but he says he's backlogged already and besides we need to finish the Mock Court constitution.

Plus, the book's not just a satire, there's a lot of realness at the heart of it. Even if you hate the filthy rich characters, one sorta grows to feel sorry for them at the end, and maybe even grieve a little at their tragedies of nonresolution.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

I've read a lot of Murakami this year. Yet another example of Dan and I having the same reading tastes. This was definitely more developed than Murakami's other books, though I have to say, I enjoyed Hard- Boiled Wonderland a little more, but I think that's just because I've been really moody as of late, and this is not the best book to read when moody. If you want to be unmoody, that is. Beautiful book, ostensibly about the progression of a marriage breakup, with the everyman narrator. Dream prostitutes, resurfaced war memories, houses that are the nexus of spiritual energy, wells.

The Ruined Map, Kobo Abe

Kobo Abe, I've decided, is a cross between Stanislaw Lem and Kafka. (I overmention my favorite authors, I know. This book stylistically (and even plotwise, somewhat) seemed like a cross between Lem's Investigation and Kafka's Trial. Quick summary: protagonist is hired by a wife to investigate the husband's disappearance. Weird interactions with wife's brother, husband's coworker, etc. Taxi-drivers. Nude photographers. Boy prostitutes. The wife is frustratingly, well, frustrating. Anyway, no, while Abe hasn't replaced Pavic as my favorite writer, I still enjoyed this book a lot. Though not as much as I'd hoped.

Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami

I lied, didn't read A Void before this. I might put that off some, because I need some lighter reading after reading my Property Law textbook. Murakami, I've decided, is a lighter version of Abe crossed with something more romantic, say, never mind I can barely name anyone romantic. Dance Dance Dance was a little disappointing compared with Hard-Boiled Wonderland (see below.) Far fewer fantastic elements, much more detective fiction elements (not that that's a bad thing.) A few things were redundantly repeated - all the characters called the protagonist "odd", even though, really, the protagonist was extremely normal and everyman. Maybe this was supposed to be done in an ironic fashion, but it was slightly annoying nevertheless.

Still, all in all, I liked the book. It's a quick read, sucks you in, light enough to be relaxing but not so light that it's an embarrassing thing to read. Keeps your brain ticking, as it were, but utterly unpretentious. Lovely and not overdone descriptions of food: bonito shavings, gourd soups, pizza. Oh yeah, and yes, I can see the Philip K. Dick comparisons. (Murakami probably even reads Dick, as he mentions Dick in this novel.)

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World, Haruki Murakami

Wow, my first Murakami book, and I must say, I was impressed. Not as much as I was by Abe, though. Murakami made, well, a little too much sense. (There's a fine balance, in my mind, between too much and too little sense. Though my balance tends to be on the "less" sense of the axis.) Not nearly as surreal as what I've read of Abe, which is too bad. (I make the Kobo Abe comparisons because all the critics I've read seem to. They also seem to make comparisons with Kafka, and again, this book was way tidier than Kafka's.)

Mad scientist, protagonist who processes/secures data by passing it back and forth between the right and left hemispheres of his brain. Librarian, ooh, librarian who is thin but has an incredibly huge appetite, due to "gastric dilation." Another world, the End of the World, with dream readers and split shadows. Underground laboratories behind waterfalls. Commentary on the nature of consciousness, yadda yadda. I've never seen this book in the "science fiction" section of a bookstore. Which leads me to a theory about science fiction, as well as other genre fictions. That the books that get put in those sections, by definition, suck. (Well, as measured against the tastes of the bookstore managers.) Otherwise they'd be elsewhere. Under literature.

maybe, if read again

V., Thomas Pynchon

This book was just *this*close* to being put in my "books I thought were okay" list, except then I thought back to the experience of reading it. See, I started this way back in June, read a third into it or so, then had to stop to finish up my dissertation. I reread the part I'd read, and finished the book just now, in December. The part I'd reread was a *lot* better the second time around. A lot. Actually, it was pretty "good." So I suspect the rest would be pretty good if I reread it as well. As it was, the experience of reading it was kinda dreamlike, with some good bits of lucidity interspersed with unrooted driftiness that kinda lost me. I dunno if it's me or the book. Good sequences describing V., boring stuff about so-called military intrigue, good sequences about the Whole Sick Crew. Didn't like the descriptions of sex, I think I like pasta sex and this book was full of burger sex.

maybe

The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Italo Calvino

Eh. Like his Italian Fairytales, but not rooted in history. Or maybe rooted in history, but I couldn't tell. Seemed like a good theoretical idea that didn't really work out well in practice.

Blow-Up, and Other Stories, Julio Cortazar

Not nearly as satisfying as Cronopios and Famas, alas. Many somewhat creepy stories, which were enjoyable, but just as many tedious stories. Oh well. Can't win 'em all.

Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie

It was all right, but a little too epic for me. And for a Giant Family Saga, it just wasn't all that great, not when there are books like One Hundred Years of Solitude around. The story tried to be Big, in Goddesslike Proportions, but I thought the points at which Rushdie succeeded the most was when he described smaller things, like eating pickled mangoes. Yeah, sure, there was a bit of an unexpected twist here and there, and the book covered a lot of the spice trade, which I enjoy reading about in general, but the story was just way too big. Maybe it's just my preference for types of reading, that really could be.

no

Forty Stories, Donald Barthelme

I always try to read Barthelme every once in awhile, then remember that I don't really like him. Not sure what it is, just the style I guess. Boring and droopy. And I always get to "Me and Ms. Mandible", a short story which annoys the hell out of me but I've somehow managed to reread a million times.

Menachem's Seed, Carl Djerassi

Disappointing. I'd liked all Carl Djerassi's other books, but this one, eh. Characterization was annoying, I couldn't see the attraction either of the people in the liason had for each other, and, you know, the science wasn't even as interestingly described as in Djerassi's other books. Oh well, just skip this one, and read Cantor's Dilemma or The Bourbaki Gambit.

White Noise, Don DeLillo

Maybe I should read some more DeLillo. Maybe later. White Noise just wasn't that good. I mean, the dialogue was interesting, and concerned quite a few creative philosophical topics, but really, those thoughts would have been better expressed through individual essays. None of the characters sounded any different from each other, and the main character's progress towards death was just, well, tedious. So's the fear of death, a focal point of the book. A tedious topic, and tediously addressed, at that.

The White Castle, Orhan Pamuk

Didn't think much of this book. Less edgy than A New Life, I thought, and a bit rambly and tedious. Interaction between the main character and the doppleganger was tiring, and besides, the passage of the book was entirely predictable. Eh. So much for a pattern of liking Pamuk.

Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, Carol DeChellis Hill

Ugh. I can't read this. I got this in an attempt to diversify my reading. See, I rarely, if ever, read any female authors. Anyway, this was a failed attempt, maybe next time. Because boy this book sucks. I can't even get a few pages in.

Let me quote bits and pieces:

"But Delko knew nothing of love. And Amanda was discreet. Hotchkiss, the handsome and dashing aerodynamic engineer, was definitely in pursuit, and she had explained to him as best she could explain that she was not technically, theoretically, or otherwise available, due to her enchantment - for that seemed at times the only word with the devastating likes of Bronco McCloud. McCloud was a jet pilot who gave devilry a new fame. He was, it was said, a handsome devil, a daredevil, devil-may-care kind of devil who had the reputation of being one of those Terrible, Wonderful men who caused women, often at precisely the same time, great joy, as well as despair."

Ugh. THIS IS WHY I AVOID ROMANCE FICTION. This is crap crap crap. I feel soiled by even having this book in my possession. I can't wait to sell it at a used book sale, except that then I worry I will have to avow having even bought it. But this is not what was promised by the back blurb, oh poor trusting me. "This book is in the running as a 'great American novel'; it's ambitious and strange, comparable to Pynchon's V. or" blah blah blah (LA Times). No. Not comparable. I just read V., and there's no crap prose like that in there. Boring meandery bits maybe, but nothing that makes me WANT TO VOMIT.

The back cover also says "Carol Hill has deftly synthesized feminism, romance, sophisticated science, and broad comedy into a spirited, high-flying novel" (Newsday.) I was drawn by the "sophisticated science" bit, but I should have been warned off by the "romance." And if this is feminism (which I will NOT, WILL NOT accede that is), then that kind of feminism can GO TO HELL.

Before I gave up on this book, I peeked at the middle bits to see if the prose got any better. It didn't. Another hideous passage: "Someplase else, a farmer held something in his hand. It was a leaf. And it was a startlingly bright green. Young, alive, the farmer held it in his hand, wondering. 'Nature has its infinite variations; no two leaves are alike.' He'd read that once. Green life, like man's fingerprints, could never be duplicated. Each leaf, alone, singular. Things like this astonished him, when he thought about it..." AIGH! CAN YOU SAY "HACKNEYED"?

I guess it's back to my male-centered fiction. At least just for A Void. That's the last unread fiction I brought home for the holidays.

non-fiction

Judicial Power and the Constitution, edited by Louis Fisher

Pretty good - lotsa essays on, well, judicial power and the constitution. Nothing incredibly amazing.

Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism, Sharon Beder

"I'm gonna read this and work myself up into a frenzy!" I said to John when I bought it. I read it, and did indeed work myself into a frenzy. Argh. Hate those corporations.

A History of the Modern World, R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton

I'm sure my roommate the Latin American studies major thinks I'm a dork. I've been sitting around the apartment reading this, because my sense of history is sadly lacking. Everytime she starts to say something, I'm all like, "Shh! Don't ruin the surprise! Gotta find out how this World War thing is gonna turn out!" I'm kidding, of course. Kinda.

Symbol Sourcebook, Henry Dreyfuss

If you find this anywhere, get it. It's kinda hard to find, and John (thank you thank you!) got it for me for my birthday. It's an "authoritative guide to international graphics symbols" and I haven't seen anything like this anywhere. Meteorology symbols? Alchemy? Electrical engineering? You name it, it's in there. Reminds me of when I was young and I was playing with my parents' organic chem stencils (yes, they had stencils back then) and I had no idea what those symbols meant but boy did I want to know. Did you know that the international symbols for "to modify" looks like a circle with a karat in it?

Graphic Design Cookbook, Leonard Koren and R. Wippo Meckler

So you can't really "read" this. But hey, it's damned good to look at! And if you're doing any kind of layout, or poster design (I'm doing that way too much for student organizations nowadays), this is a real timesaver, especially if you just want something to jumpstart brainstorming. Saves on time, too, if you're just trying to get a good solid poster out and aren't trying to do something original and cool. Better than some sourcebooks.

Sex, Laws, and Cyberspace, Jonathan Wallace and Mark Mangan

Good review of free-speech-on-internet caselaw, with an explanation of civil procedure that kicks my Civ Pro casebook's ass up and down the street! Get it for the case summaries and descriptions. Check out some of the history of communication stuff. Ignore the end, where it devolves, gets all mushyfeely about how wonderful the net is and stuff. You've heard it before.

Everything You Need To Know About Asian-American History, Lan Cao and Himilce Novas

Well, it's probably not everything you needed to know, but there's sure a darned lot. Chinese American history, Filipino American history, Laotian American history, you name it. Good bibliography in the back, too. And some handy dandy geographical statistics too. Buy it before it's all out of date and a cool new crop of Asian American politicos come around.

Commodify Your Dissent, edited by Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland

Collection of essays from The Baffler. Buncha buncha rants about the selling and marketing and commercialization of culture, especially rebel culture. Good stuff, screamy rants like the sort I'd storm about yelling after reading bits and pieces of Consumer Culture (much more academic and economic analysey.) Also, my friend Rita's Christmas present. Yeah, I'm awful, prereading Christmas presents. Babbled about a review of this book during one of my law school study sessions - Kevin wouldn't stop reading the review to pay attention to our civ pro flashcarding. Anyway, good stuff. Liked it a lot.