There is only gray…

I’m over halfway through The Host and I’m more in love with this book than I have been with a book in a very long time. On the surface it’s a lot like an adult version of the Twilight Series. It is in the most plain way about the interaction between species and good and evil and many other confusing things. But it is more different from those books than Huck Finn is different from it. 

What I’m struck the most by in this book is that there is a complete lack of black and white in this book. It’s about two species, one ostensibly good and one ostensibly bad and yet both is good and bad. It’s about good vs. bad vs. good vs. bad. It’s the unbelievable gray area in which we are all lost all the time. 

I think that’s why it’s one of the best character studies I’ve read in a long time. It takes you to the edge of certainty, the knowledge that one way is correct and then slams you back in the opposite direction without a second thought. Characters that are filled with hate are given second chances by those they plague and the good are made to suffer for those that they are most like. It’s a moral battle on an epic scale. I can’t wait to finish it, to see how it resolves. It is a glorious tale.

 

Back from Vacation

Apologies for the lack of posting of late. I’ve been in hibernation on vacation and my reading has been lulled. I will have much to write about in the near future. I’m in the midst of The Host, by Stephanie Meyer. Can I just say that whatever you have to say about the Twilight series, you should read this book? It’s heart-stoppingly good.

 

Eclipse, almost

I’m nearly finished with this book and I’m happy that I’m finally getting to the end even though it’s sad to see the series slipping slowly to the end.

I started this book about two months ago and got about halfway through before I couldn’t read anymore. I don’t know if it was the pressure of Breaking Dawn coming out and the series coming to a close and I don’t know. I just got stuck. I don’t know how or why really. It was just a crazy confluence of weird events that made me feel funky about these books that I’ve loved.

And now…well, I couldn’t be happier with the turn of events. I’m reading slowly, a chapter at a time trying to savor the sweetness that must end in some conflict as this book surely must. When will it happen? How will it end? Where is the future?

 

Annoying coincidences

I’ve been reading Eclipse the past few days in preparation for the release of Breaking Dawn in a few weeks. I had been holding off because I didn’t want to finish the book too quickly before the next one came out but now I realize that I’ll be lucky to finish it by the end of the week. I’m having a hard time reading it, not because it’s of any less quality than the first two books in the series, but because it uneasily parallels a fight I’m having with myself in my own life. Every time Stephanie Meyer edges close to the subtle decision underlying the whole book I start to mentally twitch at the thought of having to make a decision in my own life. The first two books were unbelievably moving and I identified emotionally with them as well. But they didn’t drive to the core of the most fundamental decision I’ve had to make in a long time and annoy the fuck out of me by bringing it up every 20 goddamn pages.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love the book. It’s pure poetry compared to some of the things I’ve read in the past few weeks and I feel so lucky to have discovered the series. I’m just annoyed at being stuck up on the same fence as the character, waiting as she does in the book to get an answer. Because, at least right now, I don’t want to have to decide. I want everything to be glorious. I want to be like Bella. Just without the massive choices. Can I get an oy vey?

 

New Moon

I finished New Moon and boy does it pack all the emotions in the spectrum into those 500+ pages. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that was more tense, except possibly Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which had me on the edge of my seat for the entire 22 hours or so it took me to read it. (I tried to stretch it out but I just had to know the end.) The twists and turns and the heartrending inaction of the second book of the Twilight series almost puts Harry Potter to shame. Almost.

In the second book, all your favorite characters are back and it seems almost like a kind of peaceful existence has settled on the life of Bella Swan, our enigmatic main character. Right, because that’s why the book is over 500 pages long. The magic of this story is that it leaves you feeling like the main character, torn in two, searching endlessly to make herself whole.

It’s a story about love, far more than the first book. It shows how love can break a person and make them whole; more importantly, it shows how every new chance at love can weave back the threads of a broken heart. I was moved, angry, annoyed, frustrated and eventually bowled over by the passion and love in this book. I could not put it down for the simple reason that I had to know what was going to happen. I had to heal my broken heart along with Bella’s. This is a story in tandem: the character’s and yours.

 

New Moon, Eclipse and other ways I’ve been wasting my time

I’ll have a post on the second book in the Twilight series tomorrow or the day after but I wanted to check in with my obsessive reading over this long weekend. New Moon, the second book in the series, is absolutely amazing. I’m almost finished and I was so antsy I bought the third book, Eclipse, today when I was out and about in town. I’m absolutely enthralled and so happy that the fourth (and final!) book comes out in August. I’m also gearing up for Stephanie Meyer’s other book, The Host, which I’m waiting to get from the library. (I’m trying to be good…)

At the moment I’m also reading Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld. This is another series of fantasy-esque books that were recommended to me by a friend at work. It’s quite good so far. I’m really hoping to enjoy the series, although I don’t know if it will live up to the awesomeness of the Twilight series, which takes a love story, adds a twist of modern fantasy, and cranks up every emotion possible to the nth degree. 

My brother, who has a killer reading sense, has been recommending David Foster Wallace to me for about a year. I’ve always been a fan of weirdly comic writers so I have two books from him on order at the local library. The Broom of the System, Foster’s first book, I found in the used book cellar of my local bookstore and decided that I wouldn’t spend the money but would dive into this book, which looks to be fascinating. I’ve also got his most recent collection of essays on order. I’m a sucker for nonfiction essays. I don’t know what it is, maybe my background in journalism, but stick a John McPhee or Adam Gopnik essay compilation in my hands and I won’t move for the next few hours I’ll be so engrossed with the text. 

Lastly, I’m trying to get into more classic literature. I’m going to try to read John Le Carre’s The Spy who came in from the Cold because I’ve always loved spy-related things (I’m a Bond lover and I couldn’t get enough of Alias when it was on TV) and I feel like it can’t hurt to read one of the classic spy novels. I’m also gearing up to read The Man Who Was Thursday after seeing an article about Chesterton in the New Yorker by my favorite essayist Adam Gopnik. If he’s recommending it, I’m bound to enjoy it. At least it will broaden my horizons or some such. 

And with that, a fond goodnight. I’ve got faaar too much reading to do.