Immortality by Milan Kundera

Can't say I liked the plot of this book or some of the ideologies but it gave me a lot to think about and I ended up marking a lot of the pages with quotes that I liked.

"Solitude: a sweet absence of looks."

Out of context it just seems like a pithy phrase full of more meaning than it actually has, but I just liked that sentence.

Like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, there was a lot of meat to the story but I couldn't help but to feel that Kundera had a personal agenda in this particular novel. It's unfortunate but the more I read him, but the more I feel like he has a really pompous self-serving attitude. Granted he seems to look over his work really carefully to properly capture the nuance of what he wants to say, he seems extremely affected (and it shows in his work). Eh. That doesn't change the fact that he has a lot of good nuggets in his novel.

I don't know if this book is accessible to all readers so I don't know how much I'd recommend it to others. Overall, I'd rate this book as "meh". Would I read it again? For analytical purposes, perhaps. For fun, probably not.

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

This book was as really easy read for a more "philosophical" or I suppose religious? text. I mean I don't think Taoists would consider their religion a religion (much like a lot of Buddhists will say that they don't practice a religion as much as a philosophy).. In the end, I still think that if you're going to follow some kind of teaching, it's a religion, no? Obviously there was ways to get into this discussion but for the purpose of this blog, I won't.

I liked this book. I'm not Taoist but I agree with some of the philosophies (not all, just some). I mean my grandpa apparently had a saying: "Lazy eyes, busy hands" meaning that when there's a lot of work to do, instead of constantly checking to see how much you have left, just keep busy and before you know it, you will have finished your work. I like that saying. I think that's basically the Taoist principle 'cept it took an entire book to say it. And obviously the idea of going with the flow, pursuing happiness, etc. Hoff was really good about illustrating his points and I really liked the extended Pooh analogy. It worked really really well.

The only thing I didn't like about the book was that it was pretty disparaging about certain things that I relish - like learning/knowledge/cleverness. I think that perhaps in this society, there is undue importance placed on knowledge and cleverness, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, right? I mean maybe it's because I'm aiming to be one of the "scholarly" or "learned" that Hoff so disparages but what's wrong with it if that's one's path to "happiness"? Or perhaps there's nothing wrong with it if that's what makes one happy... In the end, Taoists strive for simplicity and I really agreed with that - sometimes things are over-complicated in life and for no reason at all.

I don't know if I'd recommend this book to other people because I didn't fully agree with everything he said but he was able to illustrate his point in such a simple and concise manner and it was relatively entertainingly written that if someone were to ask about the book, I'd probably respond favorably. I mean you could tell he had bitterness towards those who disagreed with him because they were disparaging toward his philosophies and in that aspect, I think that perhaps he failed as a Taoist but again, that would be another discussion for another blog perhaps on another day. :D

Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

At first, I kind of didn't like this book because of the similarity in plot and character(s) with Norwegian Wood. However, the plot took a different, more surreal twist like the Windup Bird Chronicle so I suppose I can't complain. This is the third book I read by Murakami and I still think he's my favorite author but I feel like a lot of his characters are the same. I wonder if the main characters are just alter egos of himself (or thinly disguised autobiographies of himself with the surreal just being a physical manifestation of the state of the narrator's mind). I mean I suppose its hard to have multiple personalities or whatever or to take on a different voice than what you're used to but all of these characters had pretty much the same personality. I like listening to Murakami through this voice but it makes me wonder if there's more to him than just this one voice and this one type of point of view.

This book was also pretty depressing but unlike the other two, it had a happier ending, where the narrator reached some kind of reconciliation with his mind and the world (or at least he was able to find some kind of consolation in reality).

At any rate, I still like Murakami's writing style and all that but I guess my opinion of him has gone down a little. I mean it's only expected I suppose and perhaps I was just drawn to the novelty of his writing style and the way he expressed certain ideas. I'm not sure. I do want to read the rest of his books (there seems to be some noise about Kafka on the Shore so hopefully it'll be different from the others).

*update* I read Kafka on the Shore, link here.

I mean thinking about it now, Murakami is kind of like a glorified Dan Brown. I mean obviously with a much more varied plot and more three-dimensionality than Brown but the core (the characters and to a certain extent, what happens to the characters) remains the same. Eh. Again, it's only three books and perhaps it just happened that those three books all happened to have a depressed character trying to get over the death of a friend/lover and has to live on in life and spends time traveling or isolated from society. There's always a point where the narrator's life stagnates and something (music, the surreal, a dream) that brings the character back.

It's funny though, with this book, I'm almost positive that he made a cameo (well if that's possible in books). With Yuki's dad - Hiraku Makimura just seems like a play on his name and Murakami totally portrays him as this douche guy that feeds into what he calls "advanced capitalist society." Is that how Murakami sees himself? And the fact that Yuki completely hates him. I thought it was an interesting touch.

I did like the ideas (motifs?) of shoveling cultural snow and advanced capitalist society. To put it simply, he basically says that everything in life - all the stupid rules and ways we live life right now is complete bs. I can't say I completely agree with everything the narrator had to say, but he definitely has an interesting point.

I also liked the idea of one's way of living life being a dance. Most people dance to the beat of society though some may be a little off-beat and others at different stages of the dance, but some people will choose to dance to their own beat. Others will try to take the dance and create something new and different - if it is well-received, it becomes the new dance.

Anyway, the book definitely gave me a lot to think about. I like Murakami's ideologies - I feel like there's a lot of truth to it and he has some fantastic quotes. Some of his ideas are trite and if anyone else besides Murakami tried to do the same thing, they would come off as boring and cliche. But Murakami is so skilled at putting it in a new way - he gives color to ideas that have turned gray from overuse. He makes you rethink the things you've taken for granted. That's what makes him a brilliant writer, plot and character redundancy aside.

Yeah, he's still one of my favorite authors.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

So I realized that I hadn't updated the books I read in like 3 months though I don't actually know if I've read a lot many books in that time span anyway. Oh well.

So I read Norwegian Wood (don't think I posted that one) and liked it so I decided to read this one. Apparently its one of his more surreal novels or something like that.

I really liked it. Sometimes, if books are surreal or if they contain elements of the supernatural, it just doesn't seem to fit with the novel. Usually it's because it's random and inconsistent with the rest of the book. This one book by Stephen King that I read a looooong while back had that. It was about a woman trying to get away from her abusive husband and he's "taken care of" by this monster that looks like her. I might have been too young to catch the symbolism behind it (maybe it was an illustration of her mental and emotional struggle against him and his influence on her?) but I just remember thinking it was really random and really weird.

Murakami on the other hand, completely incorporates the sense of the surreal throughout the novel and it really contributes to the overall mood. The surreal aspect of the novel really enhanced the plot and made the character seem more real because it was so different. All the things that were happening to him were believable and I felt like what happened to Mr. Okada/Mr. Wind-Up Bird in real life was almost a mirror of what was going on in his mind.

The writing was fluid, the plot engaging and everything was steeped in meaning. I really like how Murakami played with that idea. In novels, the seemingly random is never random and all actions have meaning. However, in real life, such is never the case and it is up to the individual to glean meaning from the mundane. So it all goes in full circle. What seems mundane and meaningless in the novel isn't because it is a novel. Yet because it is a portrayal of real life, the meaningful seems meaningless to those involved. But it's not meaningless because it all works toward an end.

Anyway, he definitely made me think of a lot of things and I want to come back to this novel someday. I feel like this novel is accessible to most people though if I were to recommend a Murakami novel (of the whopping two that I read), I would recommend Norwegian Wood first because the plot's more "normal."

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

I really like this book. I like it because of how nerdy the characters are, the wordplay, the cheesiness of it being a children's novel, the plot and character development and.. well just about everything. This 3-book series (I think the third one was sadly the last one) is probably going to be one of my favorite books (on a complete side note, is "series" a singular noun? People say "a book series" or "a series of games" so I'm assuming it is, hence the singular usage of "this" and a singular verb. Because this is a book review blog, I feel it necessary to explain any grammatical inconsistencies if I find any. I did mention that there was going to be very little editing on my end, things that still bother me.).

Going back to the book, the plot was engaging - it kept moving and it kept you guessing. I loved the fact that there were riddles throughout the novel that the kids had to solve (that I would end up trying to solve with them). Stewart really manipulates language so that he never gives away the answer but with a close enough reading, people can get the answer (though sadly, I usually wouldn't get it). The characters were unique and it was that unique-ness that drew me to the characters. It really made them seem like real people (quirky, but real). I also liked how he developed each of the characters so that they retained their real-ness.

Overall, I would recommend this book to everyone. It's just a good read and the characters are definitely very endearing.

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

I read this one last year (2010) but I had two pages of the afterword that I hadn't finished and I just finished it.

I can't say I completely liked this book. I think that H. G. Wells really captures the chaos and reactions that people would've had if something like this really happened on Earth. I liked the realism and the way the narrator spoke to the reader.

I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I think perhaps sci-fi isn't a particular genre that I like and I felt like for a classic, it should've had more meat to it than it did. The only real themes that I got were of panic, chaos and the sanctity of life. As humans became a lesser species, all of a sudden, human life isn't worth much. Yet I felt like H. G. Wells did pose the question - is human life really worth all that much? Why is it that some people are spared and others aren't? Some live purely because of luck. It really made life seem hopeless. Or perhaps just pointless.

I think that what I didn't like about the novel was that the text wasn't really engaging. It was somewhat engaging (to the point where I eventually finished it) but it wasn't to the point where I just couldn't put it down. The movement of the plot was good enough that I wanted to know what happened next. I think because the plot was set up precisely to show how chaotic and aimless everything becomes in light of such attacks but I guess because there was no direction, it was hard for me to become completely engaged in the text. You know what I think it was? I think it was the fact that even though the narrative was in the first person, there was still less "showing" and more "telling." What I mean is that instead of "A single tear trickled down her face when she found out he no longer loved her." it was "She was really sad that her boyfriend told her that he didn't love her." I guess since the narrative was more detached it was harder to really sympathize with the narrator.

At any rate, I had a mediocre response to this book that supposed to be so pivotal to science fiction as a genre. I suppose as a forerunner fiction novel, it isn't terrible.

I don't think I'd recommend this novel to other people - it is an easy read but I just didn't think it was AWESOME.

Magicians by Lev Grossman

This was one of those books that for the first time in a while, I had difficulty putting down. I was excited to see what happened next and I really liked the way the book played out.

I'm always one for happy endings that have a semblance of reality. I feel like this particular book had too much of a realistic ending in that people die, someone gets hurt and everyone has to live with the consequences of their actions. I suppose it all makes sense and all but I sort of wish things would have ended differently. I hate it when main characters die, especially ones that I like.

Originally, I didn't like the book as much because I felt like the pacing was too fast - there were entire years that were condensed into a chapter (or was it just several pages?) and things were fast-forwarding way too quickly. It felt like there was a lot Grossman wanted to do/say but he didn't want to turn his book into another Harry Potter series. Perhaps it was just me. Maybe he skipped all the 'boring' details. I wanted to relish in that world a little more.

Although time-wise things were going very fast, I felt like there was too much 'setting' up and perhaps not as much conflict? I think that the realism factor made the story so compelling, but if you think about it from purely the point of view of a plot, you can tell something is brewing for the first 2/3 of the book but you really don't know what. This wasn't the type of suspenseful buildup where you're really curious as to what's going to happen next as much as there's a desultory nature to the way even the characters don't know what they're supposed to do.

However, I thought the ending was pretty cool with how a lot of the questions were resolved with Jane Chatwin. It really brought the story together and the whole idea of "resetting" time to try to get a better "answer" so to speak still only came up with something less than a perfect ending. I think that the realism factor really played well in that sense. In life, it's true - nothing comes out exactly perfect and that's how life just is. But at the same time I thought it was depressing and I generally don't like depressing books because they depress me.

One complaint that I would have besides the pacing is the characters themselves. I mean perhaps I feel like college students aren't that immature and maybe they are but I kept thinking that even as college students, they were still in high school. The fact that when Quentin is in school, he's technically supposed to be in college didn't really process for me. I almost feel like if the setting was in a high school, it would be more fitting. I just felt like their maturity level was too low to be college students. There seemed to be this impression that most of the students didn't know what they wanted to do after they graduated and that there was this emptiness in being a magician. There was nothing to do it seemed.

In the end, the book gave me a lot to think about, which is always a good thing. There were elements in the book that I may not have liked but I feel like those points actually contributed to the novel rather than detracted from it. As for recommendations - I would recommend the novel to non-readers because it is pretty accessible and the pacing is decent enough to keep a non-reader engaged. I'm not sure if I'd ever read it again because I know the ending and I know that I'll probably get depressed after reading it. However, I feel like there may be more to the book than meets the eye so I may come back to it waaaay down the line when I'm bored or something.