A brief review: Up In The Air

Up In The Air

By: Walter Kirn
Setting: Mostly airports and cities around the US
Format: 362 pgs.
Verdict: SKIP
Rated: PG from what I've read. Lots of F-bomb use and whatnot, but nothing that shady.


Rare case here, I liked the movie better than the book. To tell you the truth, I couldn't finish this one. Not saying that it was BAD or anything, the writing was really good and all, it just never engaged me. After page 100, even Ryan started to annoy me with his opinions about every single little detail and every single person and that bugged the hell out of me. Since there was no Natalie as there was in the movie, knowing that he never gets the chance to redeem himself or think differently didn't help things either. 
There were scenes in the book that went on WAY too  long for its own good, there's a scene where he's with one of his clients that goes on forever when really, it should have stopped at five pages maybe. The plot just wandered around and after a while I just wanted to like it too much. Such a shame, I really wanted to give this one at least a CHECK IT OUT because it's so well written. Too bad. It had so much potential.

A "Girl with a Pearl Earring," which is less mysterious than the painting

Girl With a Pearl Earring
By: Tracy Chevalier
Setting: Amsterdam (Delft to be more precise)  in 1664-1666
Format: 233 pgs.
Verdict: SKIP IT
Rated: PG-13 (Not anything HORRIBLE, but there are some references to sex and rape. Maids are calling each other names but not anything too riske)

You know that feeling when you read a book that's incredibly popular, but it's so boring you don't get what all the hype's about? Unfortunately, that's what we have here with this book right here. 
Yes, the book which won awards that I can't even count on my own two hands, the book that inspired a movie AND a play! And yet, why? What went wrong? Maybe because it's a story about a poor helpless little maid named Greit who comes to work for the Vermeer's because their father is blind, and they need money. Vermeer is entranced by her beauty and by her understanding of art, and they both develop a relationship. And it goes in so deep that she makes paint for the paintings he paints and she even poses for him when his model is not here. When the evil patron who seduces young maids want to pose for a painting with him, the master yells "Enough!" and together they make this glorious masterpiece, his most famous one to date, to the horror of his wife, he hasn't painted her because she's a shrew of a thing. Rings a bell? Now this could be an interesting story. It could be captivating and inspiring right? What the hell went wrong with this book? Well, partly because it's dull. Dull, dull, dull stuff. 
Let me start with the characters. Catharina is the shrewish wife who needs to be dunked in the river, Pieter, Griet's love interest is the butcher's son who wants to marry her and whom she dosen't love. Vermeer has no personality, he just stares at Griet the whole time. His patron is a nasty, mean villain with no intimidating powers whatsoever, and who likes to "do" maids so that they become prostitutes. Every single one of the characters are stereotypes of other characters. That is, except for Griet, which is not saying much. She's just too shy, too polite, too panicked about certain things. (e.x: *GASP* I don't want him to see my hair because it's ugly and I look like a whore! Uh oh, is *fill in the blank* making me take off my cap?? *panic attack*) She does have flaws and redeeming qualities though, which is nice since every other character is one sided. 
The plot totally did not drag me in from the first page. A book like this should have taken me no time to read, that is a book with an interesting development of plot. There is none here, the plot takes so long to develop it's almost tedious. Half of the book is completely unnecessary. If you're wondering, the book is not developed at all. Now, I don't mind slow paced books. In fact, The Virgin Suicides was a hit for me. Granted apples and oranges don't even begin to describe these two, but at least Suicides was more interesting and thought provoking, and the plot actually went somewhere.  There was only one part of the book which I LOVED, and yet it's not enough.
I did not buy the writing either. Some of it was incredibly well written other timed it didn't impress me. It's really tedious when Griet constantly refers to her master as 'He.' Well, Vermeer isn't God. It's OK for you to say 'My Master'. *shakes head* So sad, I was actually looking forward to the writing in this everyone says it's SOOO GOOD!! Actually, the strongest point in this book was the vivid imagrey of Delft during that time, which Chevalier does such an excellent job in recreating. But the flaws are so huge, it's far from the saving grace of the novel.
There's a lot to admire here, and it's not entirely horrible, but SKIP IT. There's just not enough to win me over.


 

Their savage souls, and their dull story

Lord of the Flies
By: William Golding
Setting: An unknown island
Format: 225 pages
Verdict: (Everyone has to read it some day. But for those of you who feel like reading it for fun, you can SKIP IT)
Rated: PG-13 (Violence, killing, savegry...)

The basic premise: A bunch of shipwrecked boys with no adults in sight, start killing each other and turning into savages. Yes, I'm talking about the book that every kid of at least this generation had (or has at least) to read this book for school. I just finished it myself, and not to say it was the worst book I've ever read, but considering there has been many books about the downfall of civilization, this one dosen't reach its potential. Yes, hate me, I dared to not like this book.
Original? Fairly. But notice the PG-13 rating. The book is too kind on this violence, I say if you're going to go with savagrey, flaunt it. Golding takes this too kindly. We are talking about the end of democracy amoung a group of boys who want to kill each other. I admit that too much would ruin it, but there needs to be more to really notice a considerable, awful change. 
Which brings me to another point: Ralph to me wasn't so much as "good guy" than as a "bad." Had Jack not shown up the way he had, I would have been totally convinced that Ralph was going to be the one that's going to create all the mess that happened in this book. At first he acts like a selfish brat. Maybe Golding meant Ralph to be this way so that the reader can sense the destruction ahead I don't know, but the way he treated Piggy, and acted so selfishly, made me lose all the sympathy for him. Well, sometimes I did but I didn't feel a lot, because he continues to brush off Piggy's asthma and continues to not listen to Piggy just because he's not like him or Jack or anybody. 
Simon is the same way, SPOILER HERE!! I felt sad that he died, but only BECAUSE he died. SPOILER OVER. I never connected with him as a character, Golding didn't really develop his personality that well.  So in the end I really didn't care for him that much. Now granted there are some great scenes with him and the Lord of the Flies but there is very little for me to enjoy in his character. Actually, none of them were really enjoyable except for Piggy and Samneric, who had the most complex of personalities, the ones that I actually liked. I told you about Ralph, but Jack seemed a little too unrealistically evil, even for an allegorical novel I found no qualities that I felt, jeez I would really like to know what's going on in this character's head. 
The story itself is intriguing but again, I didn't feel like this was a major break out novel. The writing has no special quality to it, I didn't find myself ENTRANCED by it. The plot never leaps forward because of this non-exciting writing and un-connectable characters. I know some of you will comment on this post and say, "It's an allegory, you're not supposed to take it seriously!" Yes well, in all books, including allegory's, the rules of liking a novel because of character, plot and writing, the rules also apply. 
Now, it's not ALL bad. There are some wonderful scenes that I wouldn't change (The killing of the sow scene, the Lord of the Flies scene...) that were wonderfully gory and creepy. And I did get a chance to compare characters to other people in real life, it is a very original idea, you have to give Golding that. It's not totally unlikely there are no fantastical scenes save a few of course but none of it is really based in the paranormal. But at the same time, the book never really ties together, and those scenes fail to save it. 
Sorry any kids who didn't read this book yet: You are going to have to read it soon. Now, some of my friends absolutely hated this book, that's a bit of an exaggeration. And I can see, going into the Nobel Peace judges (or whatever you call them) why the author won a Nobel for the book. But can I say even CHECK IT OUT even if you want to read it for fun? No. It's not that good enough a classic. This one, I'm afraid, is going to get a SKIP.

Suicide, told in an unsusal way

The Virgin Suicides
By: Jeffery Eugenides
Setting: Grosse Point Michigan, 1970's
Format: 243 pgs.
Verdict: READ IT
Rated: PG-13 (A bit creepy to be a PG book. Plus there's mentions of sex and language.)

Suicide, is no laughing matter. Especially when it involves five sisters committing it in a course of a single year. Their suicide begged the question: Why? Why commit suicide? Most importantly, why all five? These questions cycle through four boys, who grew up in the same neighborhood, overlooking the same incident twenty five years ago. It all started with the death of their youngest sister, then a forbidden romance. Sooner than later, one girl violates the curfew, and all of a sudden, consequences start coming, and boy are they drastic.
A book about suicide can grab your attention. The originality of this book, the genius of this book, is what makes you grab the very edge of your seat with its graphic and true depictions of suicide. Eugenides doesn't make suicide just another myth, this is a wake up call. The book is gritty and realistic, not littered with cliches and dramatic soap opera-like plot points. Instead of telling you what happens, it asks you the question, trying to make you the reader figure that question out.
One of the best characters in this book are the sister's themselves. Eugenides' doesn't write them as imaginative characters in the boy's mind, but literal real flesh and blood literal characters.These girls have flaws and the best part is when the boys realize it. The most daring, Lux for example, is sexual and acts like the female version of a womanizer, while Cecillia, the youngest and the first to go is a misfit. What helps create that sense of imperfectness is the writing. The sheer poetry and brilliance comes off Eugenides' writing, which trigger vivid images with its striking, beautiful language. This factor is one of the best in the novel, and sometimes when I felt the pace too slow for my taste, the reason why I continue reading is because of the writing.
The one critique I have of this novel is that it's painfully slow at times and it wasn't abnormal that my mind was shouting GET TO THE POINT! Alright, the youngest died. It's sad. We don't need an endless account of her parents getting ready for her funeral. We don't need an endless scene about discussions of suicide. In the end I didn't mind really, you just have to just realize that the book isn't set up like a normal fiction. It reads like a memoir, and if you respect that, I don't see why anyone would have a problem with it.
I hesitated on giving it a CHECK IT OUT just because of the pace. But the writing is so beautiful and the characters are so delightful, and it's just so poignant, that I'm going to have to say READ IT. It's heartbreaking, it will make you think, it will challenge you. But beware readers who get irritated by slow paced books: This book is not for you. It will only be annoying as hell. As for the others, it's an important classic in the making.

Last sentence (just for the proof):
"It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together. "

In the Tudor period, two sister lie abed with the king...

The Other Boleyn Girl
By: Philipa Gregory
Time Period: 1521-1536 Tudor England
Verdict: CHECK IT OUT
Rated: R LOTS of sex (and talk of it), miscarriages and executions...OH MY!

Surely you know about Anne Boleyn and her relationship with the young and reckless (and later tyrannical) King Henry VIII? I bet you didn't know she had a sister who vied for his attention as much as she did. No, this is not the historical fiction version of Mean Girls, we're talking about The Other Boleyn Girl. Who is the other Boleyn girl, the book has no answer to that question. At first, the other girl is Anne, fresh from the French court and had been ordered by her family to force her sister Mary, then the lover of the king, into his bed. But Mary dosen't know that her sister can be as manipulative and ambitious, and as Mary bores him a son, Anne brushes Mary out of the spotlight. So now Mary gets the role of the Other girl, and watches her sister woo her lover and king that she had loved ever since she was a young girl of thirteen.
Of course Anne succeeds Katherine of Aragon, by then totally brushed aside by Henry, but that dosen't make her any happier. On the contrary, more sibling rivalry occurs, and the fact that Mary has had three kids while Anne only contents herself with Princess Elizabeth does not make things easier. Sooner than later, the king finds himself in the skirts of another mistress, while Mary and her brother George have to content themselves of burying dead baby corpses from the queen amoung other things. It's not until the last deformed baby comes out that the lies and the sealing of Anne's fate comes into play.
Philippa Gregory does a nice job of creating an atmosphere of the Tudor court, but that's not enough. During the first part of the book, I had no idea what the dresses and court looks like, all we know is the dresses are made out of "rich cloth" which after about the fifth time really got on my nerves. But after the beginning, the court was nicely described, and I felt in the halls of whatever castle the court moved to during the seasons. Setting aside the details, the characters were probably the best thing in this book. Some reviewers might disagree and call all of them one-dimensional, but one dimensional characters means nothing. You can still have one dimensional characters and they can still be interesting. Anne and Mary for one, have numerous flaws, Anne and her family has a particular tragic flaw which ruins her and her family based on one ambition that turned out to be a mistake.
Mary's thoughts on life, however banal (wants to marry for love and live a quiet life in the country while poor, we've all seen those before) is touching. The fact that she was a narrator really enhanced the book. Had Anne been the narrator, we would miss out on an important thought process and life no matter how historically inaccurate. She is a really interesting bystander and reminds us that she hadn't changed Tudor history, but she had been a pawn in her family's ambition and while watching Anne grow to becoming queen then falling, it had become an experience that she won't forget.
That's all fine... for a while. Does it drag? Does it read like the author has a limited vocabulary? Yes. It's historical fiction after all, the bad bunch tends to do the exact same thing. I have told you about the rich cloth, but a lot of repeated words are used in the same sentence. Not to mention that "and" is one of Philippa Gregory's favorite words. Sometimes, you will get frustrated, rooting for the characters but finding some parts dragging, there's an especially long, LONG scene where Mary is riding to the countryside where she is banished. Nonetheless, it's still a good read, I recommend it for adults, definitely, but instead of wasting your money, check it out of the library. In the end, it's a nice read.