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.

 

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?

 

Stuff I’ve Been Reading Vol. 1

One of my all-time favorite columnists is Nick Hornby. I know being a columnist isn’t what he’s fabulously famous for but I can never get enough of his wonderful and thrilling “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns in the Believer. He’s absolutely fabulous and righteously funny. If you don’t feel like trying to track down back issues of the Believer his columns have been collected into two volumes (so far). 

And so in the great tradition of all great writers, I’m going to sort of borrow his concept here. To write a post on every single book I read would be exhausting-for you and me. I simply read too fast and too much. But! There is hope. So here goes. 

I was reading Entertainment Weekly at work today and in their 1000th issue they have the 100 best books of the past 25 years. I have to say that I was pretty happy with the selections overall. It also gave me a lot of ideas for reading. I can tell you that my reading queue at the library will be increasing after today. 

I love the library. I haven’t lived in a place with a fabulous library in a long time. When I was in school I never much enjoyed the library at school and I didn’t take advantage of the wonderful resource of the Boston Public Library because for some reason two stops on the T (that’s we call the subway here for all you folks not from the Northeast) seemed a long walk (despite the fact that I did this walk often on my own for fun.) 

Even when I moved to my own apartment in the city I wasn’t particularly interested in the library until I moved to a small neighborhood that was around the corner from a library. The best thing about the Boston Public Library is that it’s a network of libraries throughout the neighborhoods of Boston and beyond that collectively make up one of the most awesome libraries I’ve been privy too. It doesn’t exactly have anything on the Library of Congress but it’s still quite extensive and wonderful all the same. Because of the networked design of the system I can borrow a book that is in any one of the libraries and they’ll whisk it to my closest library so that I don’t have to tramp all over the city to get it. The existence of this library system has greatly, greatly increased my reading. 

I’ve been trying (and often failing) to cut down on my buying of books and the library has been a help. My recent discovery of the Twilight series, which I’ve written about before, was due to the fact that I got the book from the local library. At any other point in my life I may or may not have bothered to get the book for years because of funds but the ease of the library system got me the book quickly and for free. I’ve since bought the two following books and I’m happy with my purchases. But it all started with the library. 

somehow I’m in the middle of two series at the moment. I just finished Pretties, the second novel in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, series, whatever you want to call it. I have the final two books at home with me at the moment, itching to be red. What amazes me about these books is the strength of the female character routinely giving up everything she’s worked to attain for the betterment of others. She’s not a perfect hero, but she is a hero nonetheless. I’ve been somewhat disappointed by some of the plot twists, but there were logical at least if not completely satisfying. 

I’m also reading the third book in the aforementioned Twilight series, Eclipse. I just started it today so I’m not very far along yet but I’m waiting for the central conflict of the book to start. Like New Moon, its predecessor, this book starts off fairly tamely. I know that in the next forty pages or so our main character will once again be in a battle for her life, fighting to save the man she loves, and trying to be a somewhat normal teenager-girl?-all at the same time. I’m anxious to see what happens but I also like the quiet periods of the book. The dramatic shift in New Moon was so heart-wrenching, I don’t know if I’m quite ready to have my heart torn apart for these characters just yet. 

Until we meet again, go to the library. Seriously folks, free books.

 

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.

 

Twilight…

I just finished reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I was drawn to the book by the movie trailer of the forthcoming movie based on the book. The male lead in the movie is played by the absolutely gorgeous Robert Pattinson who played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter films. 

Anyway, I ordered the book at my local library and I picked it up on Friday, not really expecting to find anything interesting. The book is AMAZING. I couldn’t put it down. Even though it was almost 500 pages I finished it in the middle of Saturday night because I couldn’t put the book down. Literally. I barely left the apartment all day because the book was so all-engrossing. 

I’m constantly amazed by how a good book can completely take you out of your world. I’m a voracious reader. I consider it sacrilegious to leave the house without a book and I sometimes even bring hefty tomes to the gym to read while I’m burning calories. 

Twilight won’t (can’t!) fail to impress you. It’s a love story but not kitschy, a fantasy but only in setting, a novel of choices and decisions that seem so important when one is young. And let me just say…the male lead is heartrendingly wonderful. He is beautiful and wonderful — the man who seems your beauty even when you can’t. He’s also a hopeless romantic. 

What I loved most about the book was the way it pulled me in. Within a hundred pages I wanted to know what would happen to this misfit young girl who is inexplicable drawn to the handsome but distant man. Who in the world hasn’t felt like an outsider at some point in their lives? I know I have. And so to watch a girl who is obviously more fabulous and deep than any of the other “popular” kids wind her way through love and death and life-wrenching choices is so much more pivotal than listening to people bitch about love and sex and hatred and evil. There is love in every word of Twilight, this was a novel written by someone who truly adored her characters. 

If you’re skeptical, that’s fine. Pretty much any public library should have a copy of this book on hand. Skip down and peruse at your leisure. Prepare to be dazzled.