Siddhartha

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Coming Soon

Howl's Moving Castle

Coming Soon

Disgrace

Disgrace J.M. Coetzee 9.5/10

Disgrace is a masterpiece. The 200 pages are sparsely written, terse and trying. One can hardly muster sympathy for the apathetic and unprincipled protagonist (Lurie) as his distanced, uninvolved life is slowly stripped from him. Disgrace is the story of a man who had almost nothing, and loses that.

Lurie lives a solitary, passionless life as a professor of communications at a Cape Town, South Africa university. "Because he has no respect for the material he teaches, he makes no impression on his students...Their indifference galls him more than he will admit." Lurie merely goes through the motions of life, living without purpose and only moderated joy.

Characters in disgrace are believable and complex - from his lesbian daughter living alone in the countryside to Bev Shaw, the animal lover whose veterinary clinics primary responsibility is the disposal of unwanted animals. The irritatingly indifferent Lurie changes only in miniscule measures - measures unknown and unnoticed by the stalwart professor who repeatedly claims that at his age, it's too late for change, too late for growth.

Lurie loses everything and rebuilds himself in the African countryside, but it's clear that nothing has really changed. Lurie is different now, but the world is the same and the political environment that has brought about the society he's a part of doesn't change simply because we grow. Even his relationships are established - the roles each member plays are established and too firm-set to change. Disgrace is not an uplifting book, but is excellently written and intriguing...and that's what I look for in a book.

Forever Odd

Forever Odd Dean Koontz 6/10

Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas is purportedly his most well-liked creation. Koontz is a popular dog-loving Californian writer with a penchant for mixing the supernatural into his mystery and/or adventure stories (normally with a heartwarming bit of romance).

Forever Odd eschews romance in favor of a stronger emphasis on the supernatural: the protagonist, Odd Thomas, can see ghosts. He can talk to them, but they sadly (and sometimes amusingly) lack the ability to talk back. The majority of the story is a murder mystery where Thomas tries to find the killer who kidnapped his best friend and killed that friend’s father. He relies on his improbably accurate intuition to follow the killer through an intriguing path involving villains even more odd than me.

This is the second book in the series, and a few of the familiar characters return. His old boss (from his days as a fry cook at a local burger joint) and mother figure gives him solid advice, and the tragic yet morbidly amusing ghost of Elvis plays a small part as well. Ozzie, the fat chef and writer, makes an appearance along with his strangely terrifying cat Terrible Chester.

I enjoyed Forever Odd, but I won’t be actively looking to read the other books in the series. I think I read so much Koontz as a teenager that I’m a little too familiar with his writing style. He’s a very prolific writer – I’m sure he has over fifty books, of which I’ve read more than twenty. Perhaps I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I could have because, at the current stage in my life, I’m looking for lessons. I’m looking for purposeful writing with a message. Some find it condescending: like the author takes on a role of moral superiority by ‘lecturing’ us on right and wrong, mature and immature, or good and evil, but lately I’m able to put aside my pride and try to glean whatever wisdom I can from a story. “Forever Odd” was an intriguing, engaging, and funny story. I read it in two days, hardly able to put it down (though that seems to happen with 90% of the books I pick up) until I was finished. Koontz knows how to entertain, and he shows it once again with “Forever Odd”.

Prep

Prep Curtis Sittenfeld 8/10

Prep is an impressive novel. Much like Catcher in the Rye, it doesn't feel like a work of fiction. It's another book providing insight into the real world, allowing me to remember what those high-school years were like. Sittenfeld is an amazing author in her ability to present situations that beg for some kind of moral judgment with a kind of distinct objectiveness. You want to know what's right, you want to know what is to be learned from a situation, but you're forced to make your own decision.

In a certain way, the novel is depressing in that way. Not because we can't come to our own decisions about what's right, but that the protagonist can't. We're forced to live through years of poor decisions, and as such it becomes a very difficult read. It's so easy, from an older age, to look back at some of the problems and insecurities of youth dismissively...but we get no such satisfaction from our protagonist in Prep. Late into her junior year, one of her classmates attempts to come up with a particularly cutting insult. "Lee," she says, "you haven't changed at all since freshman year." The classmate is correct, and reading Prep puts you through all those years with Lee while you agonize over the poor decisions she makes over and over again.

I don't mean to focus on the poor aspects of the book. I highly recommend Prep if you enjoy books that spur thought, self-evaluation, and remind us of our not-so-perfect past. Just don't expect you'll read it and be cheered right up.

Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger 9/10

Catcher in the Rye has been reviewed and analyzed much deeper and more effectively than I plan to do in this blog. I haven't read any outside reviews (which is a bit unusual) but I want to talk about what really stood out to me about this book: a brutally believable protagonist. Salinger's "coming of age" story isn't a fable with morals and platitudes...it comes across like life comes across: ordinary. What makes this such an outstanding work of fiction is not that it transports you to another world: instead it seems to shed light on ours.

It's a reminder of what it felt like to be in that in-between stage, where you're not an adult and you're no longer a child. As a matter of fact, I'll probably recommend it to my mom: maybe she'll understand my younger brother a little better after reading it.

Utopia

Utopia Thomar More 8/10

Thomas More's Utopia is a well-known work describing a communist utopia. More lived in the Middle Ages (17th century, I believe) and was executed in his thirties for refusing to bless the king's divorce and subsequent remarriage (he was an adviser of some sort for the king). I think knowing a little about More can help one understand the book - More loved humor. He joked about everything, and was even accused by a friend of putting forth everything he said in a joking manner...as a sort of safety net so that he could always retract the statement, saying it was merely made in jest. Utopia itself seems to be an example of this practice - the book seems to purvey itself as serious, but upon closer inspection might just be mocking anyone who could believe in a successful communist society. His Utopia is anything but.

Sophie's World

Sophie's World Jostein Gardner 9/10

A very enjoyable work of fiction intertwined with a very educational review of philosophy, starting with the first known Greek philosophers and ending with more modern theories like existentialism and logical empiricism. I don't know if it's more enjoyable for the fictional part of the story or the thoroughly entertaining non-fiction/educational part.