The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

Danger is the word that comes to mind.
Not from the action, which was minimal to the bewilderment of my brother while he watched the movie (“I thought this was a vampire movie!”), but from the emotional and mental implications & validations impressed into young girls’ minds.

This will be less of a revue and more of a commentary on the social implications of this novel. The actual content in the book is not what mattered anyway. For those curious, the writing was elementary and made me feel qualified to become an author of teen chick lit. As soon as I saw the word “scintillating”, I knew this woman had the thesaurus in hand while writing these novels.

So, what about this poorly written book had teenage girls and adult women everywhere making this a #1 bestseller. From my own personal testimony, I started to hate the book after the 2nd novel. But I still found myself dragging myself to the store to purchase the 3rd and then the 4th book. It was like crack, I was addicted. And I didn’t even like the high anymore. I just wanted to know what happened so badly.

The hook was that it played to a warped psyche that many girls & women have developed. Why it developed, I have no idea but I know I have it and that is why it is so easy to recognize. It’s the classic story of the “bad” boy falling open & sweet exclusively for the shy, good girl. The good girl is the one who can see him for who he truly is, not the bad boy he portrays, but the good spirit hidden within. Why do we identify with this so much? Because we all like the guy with edge that makes us wonder. And if we could get him to open up to us (where no one else has succeeded), then that makes the victory that much sweeter and that much more special. It’s twisted indeed. Why do we want the dark/bad/edgy guy? Oooh, why? Why not the good guy who is really the brave one indeed because he is not afraid to put his heart out in the open? Because the good guy does not feel like a victory; there were no obstacles to defeat; no breakthroughs to make; everything was just easy. And, to be frank, easy is boring. Older, wiser women would prefer easy to challenging and they advise us younger women to do the same. However, the cycle repeats itself. And, one day, we will become the old women advising the younger women to do the same.

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This book glorifies this good-girl-gets-edgy-guy phenomenon to the letter. The guy is a vampire! She gives up humanity to be with this guy. Is this book promoting us to give up our lives for a man? I would not be so upset or consider it so dangerous if it were not for its intended audience: young teenage girls. This is the age when they start forming their expectations of men in a relationship. The foundation they build at this young age will be hard to change in later years. This book is romanticizing this very phenomenon and is enforcing this type of relationship as the standard for a lot of girls instead of the exception that it should be.


PS. On a funny (sad) note, I think I was doomed well before my teenage years. Back when I was 7 (no my memory is not that good but my diary was great), I used to like 2 guys. Donny, the nice boy, who treated me with care and respect. And Brandon, the cute boy, who only acknowledged me when he needed help with something. Guess whom I was smitten with in the end???

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

All love is exception making.

This is not the focal point of the novel by any means. But it’s one of the phrases in the book that I keep remembering. It betrays my personal bias towards romance (not the soap opera kind but the Emily-Bronte kind).

I finally decided to read one of Ayn Rand’s quintessential novels. It’s my first look into secular philosophy. And it amazes me how quickly my views on this novel change as I discuss it with more people. Given that I do not have a solid feel or understanding of this book, I cannot review its contents properly.

I can say that I liked it and will probably read it again at some point. I’m glad I waited till now to read it because it would have definitely influenced my train of thought/principle before I had begun to form my own.

Fountainhead focuses on the supreme right of the individual. True brotherhood is respecting your brother’s right to achieve his greatness as an individual. There is no true collaboration. Collaboration only produces an average of the people and hinders the greatness that could have been if there had been just one to lead with his thought (mind you this book was written using ‘he/him/his’ but it is applied to men and women). The greatest honor you could give another man is to leave him alone. Leave him to his own genius, her own invention.

At first I disagreed with the notion that one can act as an individual with no impact or consequence to others. As a matter of nature, every act we perform has some consequence, some impact elsewhere. I cannot create more energy; if I use more energy then it is being taken from someone/something else.

However, after discussing with others about her collective work, it seems that her philosophy was that

One can act as an Individual with no negative impact on their brother.

That is something I can place faith in, although it is so hard to achieve. First it is very difficult to have individual thought, it is so difficult not to rest on the decisions of the group. But I believe the reward is greater if you can achieve this individuality.

Second, having no negative impact on their brother is difficult because man constantly tries to claim greatness for mediocrity, thus negatively impacting the true great achievements of their brothers. I call this greed. Trying to claim more than what is rightfully theirs. It does not relate only to money but that is normally the easiest way to measure it.

What is most interesting to me is Ayn Rand herself. She was raised in Russia. Her father was a prominent pharmacist before Russia became a Communist country and nationalized his business. Her family then had no claims to what her father had worked so hard for and now lived just like everyone else; they lost all that they had worked for. When she came to America, she embraced capitalism because it would have embraced ambitious people like her father. Her philosophy was directly influenced by her life, how original.

Foray into Filausofee

Why aren't words spelled the way they sound? Very recently, I discovered that colonel is pronounced "kernel" like a kernel of corn and not like the way it is spelled. I thought it was funny for someone to spell a word so arbitrarily different from how it sounds. Why are the abbreviations KFC, why aren't they CFC?

Anyway, I've picked up my first book on philosophical thought. It's not the first time I've read a book that discusses philosophy but it's the first time I did it intentionally. I'm now reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged was just far too much reading for right now and I'm already reading the Bible so I don't need to read something that's longer than that. I read another of her books, it's the only small one I think she's written, but can't remember the name right now. It was good, all about breaking the mold with individual thought, but it also highlighted how easy it is to kill individual thought with complacency. The Fountainhead, so far, seems to follow the same mold (funny that this book has the same ideal as the other book, is that hypocritical?). It's been interesting to read and it will take me a long time, I'm thinking at least a month to finish it. Which means I probably won't post about it till 2 months for now.

The reason why I don't read books such as these was because I was afraid of them altering my own philosophy before I'd even formed one. Albeit, mine is still in its stage of infancy but I wrote it down before I began this book because I know how books can take over me. It'll be interesting to see if it changes afterward. I don't think so, it took me 26 years to jot down the couple of notes that came to mind that rang true before I got down to reading this book.

Goodbye for now. Feel free to recommend other books to add to the list in the meantime.

Nichole

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

It has been some time since I’ve read the book and even more time since I’ve watched the movie. But it’s been the best thing I’ve seen/read in 2009. My mom has the book now so I will try and capture as much as I can from memory.

Recapping the story line is dulling the book for me and doesn’t do it justice. What I loved about this book is that it put a human face to Nazis. And it explained to me the paradox of German guilt. How can you love yourself as a German when you, as a German, are despised around the world? The fact is, upwards of 90% of Germans were Nazis during WWII. Some of those were by choice others were by force. You were not truly a citizen unless you were a Nazi. Couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t make a living unless you were part of the party. And I think, for some of these people, it was a choice of supporting their family versus being morally right.

However, that doesn’t absolve any of them of their crimes. And in this novel, the crimes from the past come back to cut your life in the future. It follows the time period where Germany has rebuilt itself and now has time to think about and do something about its awful past. But it is hard to find the culprits because 1) you would probably have to jail the whole country; 2) evidence was destroyed during the war; and 3) most of the victims were dead. In this particular case, though, there was a novel recording events and people. And a trial was to be had. Not to spoil the trial but it really revealed to me how deep the need for order and obedience is in German life. For the woman in question, extinguishing lives was not the moral question for her to answer. She was told to do it and, in order to keep order and obedience, she must comply. That is as far as she thought it through. That is as much as the book showed us. A simple woman following her orders simply. The very question of why did she not protest was incomprehensible to her. She signed up for a job so she must do it to her best ability.

However, there was more to this woman than her horrible past. She had a life, albeit a troubled one due to her secret that shamed her into becoming a Nazi in the first place, but she had a life. She was human to us for the majority of the book. She was real. She was not just a nameless face saluting a black, white, and red symbol. That is how Nazis have always come across to me in the past. Nameless faces of evil. But she had a name, she had a life, she had had choices to make as we all do, and she was human. Yes she had to pay for what she did, rightfully so, but she became less of a monster to me. And it made me rethink the impulse thought that all Nazis were evil. Evil is a very hard thing to be. And, I still believe, that there were a lot of monsters let loose in a Nazi uniform. But there were also a lot more of people like this woman who had made the wrong choice and her sense of duty obliged her to follow the path that that choice took.

I’m not trying to belittle the horridness of the actions in the Holocaust. But I was able to see another side of the fence that gets rarely seen. People try and dismiss the Nazis as being evil. I think it makes it easier for people to distance themselves from this horrible capability of our minds. If you write those people off as evil, then they are not like the rest of the humans on the planet, they are not normal; therefore, we, the normal humans, could never do something like this. But, The Reader makes you realize that these people were human and they were capable of doing this. And yes, for the most part, they were normal (at least at the beginning). They were one of us. And if one of us could do that then, then one of us could do it again.

And it is happening, again & again, it’s called genocide now and it is happening today as you read this. It happened before the Holocaust and it still continues after The Holocaust. To me, it seems there have been so many Holocausts since then that we have become numb to it.

Glad I didn't see the movie

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I didn’t like this book. It’s not that it doesn’t flow but it doesn’t flow anywhere quickly. It plays in the space of the psyches of an American couple that moved to the suburbs from the city to raise their growing family. As the book cover explains, “they may have married too young and started a family too soon, but they always figured greatness was around the corner. But now they are beginning to doubt…”.

To me, these people were lost before they even got married. Both were trying to fit into an ideal of what they wanted to be and not recognizing & loving the person they actually are. They played into their roles so much that they continued to play house into marriage and then into a family. They were setting themselves up for misery by never being themselves.

But that also makes you think how realistic this is. Very, I think. Maybe not to the same extreme as Frank and April Wheeler but we all have ideas of how we want ourselves to be perceived and work hard to attain that perception. Whether it is being seen as the leader at work, the loving mother at home, the in-love, perfect couple…we all care about how we are perceived. That is why it is important to have that place of true honesty in our lives. The really free ones have that place with them all the time but for the majority of us, we are not that brave (at least I’m not). For some, that place of honesty is at home where they can lay it all out without pretension or worry about how they look or sound to their family because it is their family and they love and support no matter what as a family should. Or it could be with your buddies or a lover or maybe even a stranger. At the very least, everyone should be able to be honest in the bathroom. It’s important to have and very necessary. I think everyone needs that person in their life that sees them at their basest self, without any witty phrases or charming smiles, see them with their weaknesses, failures, and successes and have that person be able to look back with love and understanding. Simply for the fact that both of you are willing to share the most intimate part of yourself and not blink (at least not too much).

It sounds like I’ve deviated from the book but I haven’t. Frank and April Wheeler never had this place of refuge. Not at what point were they ever at peace with themselves or with each other, never at one point were they truly honest. And therein, misery lies.

A Book and a Poem

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

This story is so British. And if you don’t know Brits, then you should read this book to find out. This story follows the life of a man and his family as he politely begins to lose his mind.

I like Mark Haddon books. They are always a little quirky and usually make me laugh. Granted, I’ve only read one other of his books, The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-Time, but it’s hard to be quirky and weird in a book without being exhausting. And he’s done it consistently twice.

There are no great life lessons to be learned from this book nor the other one…save some one or two phrases. But they are fun to read. And I think that always qualifies for a good book. It doesn’t need to be thought provoking to be good it can just be good for the fun that it brings to your life.

As I mentioned briefly earlier, the plot centers on a dysfunctional family and follows each of their lives individually and collectively as the father begins to lose his mind. This type of story could have been grave and depressing but Haddon has a way of making it all a little fun and absurd through the things that happen to them and how they react. I like the fact that Haddon doesn’t try and make anyone a “hero” so to speak. Yes, each family member has a distinct characteristic but they all have nuances and thoughts as well. They act and think like the confused and slightly crazy/dysfunctional beings that all of us are. And I applaud any author that can make a fictional character become real and a real human in my eyes.

It’s not a must-read but a fun read. So if anyone happens to be at my place of residence or near me when I have it, you are welcome to borrow at any time. Be warned that I will put my name in it because I will want it back. On second thought….nobody returns books, so all requests are denied.

******

Bicycles (Love Poems) by Nikki Giovanni

I haven’t read the whole book. I’m not a big poetry person. I don’t usually get it. Or I do get it but it comes too quickly. I like a novel because it paints a picture, gives background and dives deeper than a poem ever could. Not knocking poets but I just love books more.

Anyway, I went to a poetry reading she gave here in MKE. It was really cool. I actually got to meet her because we got there well before it began. I shook her hand and asked her what in the world would bring her to MKE. I found out later when she repeated this question to the audience at the beginning of her reading. Apparently, MKE has a huge book-loving community and it knows how to pamper authors.

The poetry reading was a lot of fun. It was so much better than the amateur nights at Mt. Zion and The Cove Love, where the majority of the artists would find every which way to describe every sexual encounter (read: fantasy) they’ve ever encountered. Nikki was fun and intimate but not so much that she was a hoar about it. She told us stories behind each poem, what inspired her to write them. Some were sad because the book was originally inspired by the passing of her mother and sister. And she found a way to overcome her grief by writing poems of love. But even those stories about her mother and sister’s death were told with laughter. I kind of felt weird laughing with her because I kept wondering if she was thinking, “Why are these motherf***ers laughing at my momma dying?”. It made me think about my own grandma dying and realized at some point you’ve got to move on and find some laughter in the whole sorry story (my grandma kept waking up to ask “Am I dead yet?”)…

Anyway, the poetry reading was great because it gave me the background, the painting, behind the poems. Like I said some were sad but others were funny & quirky (The point is I’m normal, so why am I so enchanted with you?) and others were interesting like Fame, dedicated to her former VA Tech student, Michael Vick. All of them were interesting and told by an interesting, funny, and quirky lady, Nikki Giovanni. I would go again in a heartbeat. And the rest of the poems in her book make me smile, laugh, reminisce, and remember.

The advantage, I realize, that poems have over books is that they allow more room for freedom of thought. Most are spare are meant to be that way so you can fill them with your own conclusions and interpretations. With a book, you can have this same freedom but it is easy for an author to confine it by detailing out the reasons, the logic, and the paths too intricately. Over-detailed books create tedium and not freedom. But without some detail, then you wouldn’t have a book. Good authors find a balance…

I’ve rambled far beyond the point of Nikki Giovanni. It’s a good book and I don’t even like poems that much. I’m probably biased toward this collection of poems because I heard them read but I think it’s worth a look if you get a chance.

******

Next book: Revolutionary Road

First thoughts: These people need Jesus :)

It's Been A Long Time

I shouldn't've left you...
I’ve been missing for a while from my book reviews. I’ve actually read 3 books since the last time I posted: The Witch of Portobello, The Sandkings, and before I die.

The Sandkings by George R.R. Martin

“Have you ever owned an animal that worshipped you?”

I started Witch of Portobello first but got sidetracked by this short story. The Sandkings is science fiction but it reads more like a horror story. Never again will I look at ants the same. This story positively had my skin crawling and I had to run away from the book a time or two. I screamed a time or two for good measure.

It’s science fiction, so of course it is set in the future. I wonder if anyone ever made a science fiction story set in the past…hmmm. Anyway, it follows the story of a brilliant, callous man named George. He doesn’t have a regular day job but gets paid well enough for what he does to have a mansion in the middle of nowhere. To pass the time in his isolated environment, he likes to acquire exotic (sometimes illegal) creatures and show them off to his friends at his parties. In his quest to always have the weirdest and strangest animals, he gets these ant-like creatures called Sandkings. So what’s so interesting about ants, George wonders. They worship. They worship whoever their master is and not in the way a dog does (that’s just loyalty anyway). If you want to be more philosophical about the book, it begs the question “Is the character of the people reflective of the god they serve?” But I just read the book for good fun and just tried to go deeper now. Either way it’s a great book and only 30 or so pages. It took me a week to read though just cause it was so painful…definite recommended read if you come across it.

The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coehlo

I keep giving Coehlo’s books another chance and always leave disappointed. I really liked 1 of his books (Eleven Minutes) and loved 2 of them (The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die) so I keep thinking I’ll find another discovery. And keep getting let down.

The book wasn’t terrible but there was nothing inspiring about it. That’s a tall order to ask of any author but I have come to expect it from Coehlo. Anything less is a failure in my eyes. The most interesting thing about the book was that I finished the book while I was in London. So I actually went to Portobello Road the day I finished the book. That’s it, that’s the coolest part.

Next book…


before I die

Can’t write something about this feeling cynical right now…tomorrow maybe or Tuesday