Review of Recent Literature: 2010 Reads

I'm close to finishing Franzen's The Corrections - I think I've subconsciously told myself to slow down, lest the book ends before I could let go of it - but decided it wasn't necessary for me to review it as part of this year-end book post, so. Here, a first of what I hope will be more to come: a review of this year's reads, the good and the bad.

Books I read this year:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffeneger
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers
What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell (not included in the photo, because I forgot to put it in)
The Little Black Book of Style by Nina Garcia
The Paris Review (Summer 2008)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I'm grateful to say it's mostly been good.

I started the year off with Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, a gift from Jabin last Christmas. It's about a boy named Kafka who decides to run away on the eve (if I recall correctly) of his 15th birthday and the events that follow, including the mysterious death/murder of his father, his search for his mother, his solitary confinement in a deep forest for a couple of days, and the raining of fish. Salmon, I think, unless my imagination's decided to fill in for the details I can no longer remember.

It's an interesting story mostly for how weird it is. There are appearances by Colonel Sanders and Johnnie Walker, and Murakami weaves them in in such a way that...hm, say, brings forth the surrealism of the characters' world. I don't think I'm explaining myself well, but basically, the elements in Murakami's novel are obviously unreal, but are made real enough by being placed in the real world, and interacting with the characters. As I said, it's interestingly weird, and weirdly interesting.

It's the first novel by Murakami that I've read. I've been into his short stories only since last year, when I bought The Elephant Vanishes and fell in love with his surreal stories and incredibly weird imagination. The thing about Murakami, I think, is how imaginative he could be about real life, and make use of fantastic characters or situations when delving into real-life themes such as loss and fear and love and anger. I then read Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, and After the Quake (a copy of which I now want for my own; I read the DLSU Library's copy). I also got to read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a memoir on writing, running, and his beginnings as a writer. Murakami has become one of my favorite writers; I can't wait to pick up another book by him, preferably fiction, because this year, Kafka on the Shore is the only Murakami novel I've read.

I followed Kafka with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and part of the reason I did was Jabin's insistence over how beautiful a book it is and that I should read it. One Hundred Years is about the rise and fall of the Buendia family in a mythical place called Macondo. According to Jabin, the first chapter was enough of an evidence of the masterpiece it was going to be; the idea was from one of our friends, a literature professor. So I did, and at first, I didn't quite buy the idea about the first chapter, but I later realized that it was simply because of the reading adjustments I had to make.

Murakami's writing, as profound or interesting the idea he's conveying, is very simple and easy to read. Garcia's writing, on the other hand, poses more of a challenge to read, and for two good, legit reasons: the ideas he conveys are very grand, and likewise is the prose with which he conveys them. In my readings I've found that some of the best texts are those either about grand ideas conveyed with simple writing, or simple ideas conveyed with beautiful writing. Garcia's texts, though, are an overwhelmingly beautiful combination of both: never have I put down a book with so much awe and heaviness at the same time as I've done with One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'd recommend you to read it and it wouldn't be enough until you were done; Garcia's wading through the tragic, the magnificent, and the futile experiences of human existence in and with words is just so devastating, it tears down your notions of what a good book is, it cuts your reading faculties open and raw, and tells you, this is what reading should be: a beautiful human experience.

That's what I got from One Hundred Years of Solitude. It's the only book by Garcia that I've read, to be honest. I have his collection of published stories currently collecting dust in my cabinet; the reason I haven't got to reading it is that his writing really isn't the easiest to read and digest. But One Hundred Years of Solitude - once you get yourself into the rhythm of his prose, you wouldn't be able to put the book down. It's beautiful, it's tragic, it's devastating - and all in a way that simply brings you to the core of what it means to be human.

For the record, One Hundred Years of Solitude is currently my favorite book of all time.

I followed One Hundred Years with Audrey Niffeneger's Her Fearful Symmetry (after about a month or two. I had to take a breather and digest One Hundred Years after reading it; it took up a lot of energy, after all). It's the story of a ghost, Elspeth, and her nieces, Julia and Valentina, to whom she left her London apartment to when she died. Her Fearful Symmetry, I'm sad to say, was disappointing. I loved Niffeneger's first novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, and was expecting so much from her sophomore release. But, as a Time reviewer (I can't recall who) put it: perhaps the only thing realistic about this story is the ghost.

The story also has other characters: Robert, Elspeth's lover, and Martin, who lives in the apartment below hers. It's a very plot-driven story which tries very hard at the beginning to be character driven, in my opinion. Unlike The Time Traveler's Wife, in which Niffeneger manages to fluidly weave in thoughts and ideas by the characters, Her Fearful Symmetry progresses better through its events. Whenever a though or an insight by the narrator is interjected, it seems out of place, and sometimes even forced. Unfortunately, the bulk of events happen toward the middle of the story's second half. Before that, the reader is dragged by a rope of the characters' stages of grieving, which they grip only with the expectation that something's bound to happen soon.

Another reason a reader would continue reading this would be a greater expectation of Niffeneger, as I had. Other than that, though, one would have enough reasons to put it down before reaching half the book: first, nothing much was happening, and second, it was getting quite boring.

The only way this book works, which you find only toward the end, is how haunting it turns out to be. But only toward the end. Overall, what you get is a knowledge of what it's like to be a ghost, and how scary it is to die, know how and why you did, and realize your plans to be brought back to life isn't going to work out after all, leaving you, well, dead. And aware of it.

This was the only way the book was effective, and it was so disturbing, I immediately followed it with another book that I assumed would a lighter, brighter read: Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

It happened to be the only book around then that I wanted to pick up. I had heard of Dave Eggers from a friend's blog, but didn't think I'd find his book in local bookstores. So imagine my surprise (and my luck!) when I found it in Booksale at Alphaland. It was a great buy, and later I found, a wonderful read.

AHWOSG is a memoir. It begins with the death of Eggers' parents, and the adventures that followed in raising his little brother, Toph, starting a magazine called Might, and auditioning for MTV's The Real World. Again, there were adjustments that need to be made in reading a new author's writing. Eggers likes to do a lot of run-ons, which I like (because I do a lot that myself, and then get my sentences slashed/cut), but I also found it difficult to read sometimes, as I'd get lost. In any case, it's a great read...It's new, and fresh, I'd say, at least for me. I haven't come across a writer who writes like he does, and most often his is the kind of writing that'd "get edited," I think. But I guess for his book - a memoir, at that - it works. Another reason I enjoyed AHWOSG is that I liked the "character" behind it. Eggers, through his memoir, sounds really amusing and funny. His brother Toph sounds endearing too.

Because I loved Eggers' memoir, I decided to read You Shall Know Our Velocity! next, which Jabin got me for one of our monthsaries (the boy loves me very much, doesn't he? ^_^). YSKOV! is about Will and his friend, Hand, on a journey across the world after the death of their other friend, whose name I can't recall. It's a character-driven story, and the thing with character-driven stories, I learned, is that they tend to drag. Especially if they follow the death of another person, and the main characters are trying to come to terms with something. In that sense, I found YSKOV! a difficult read. Aside from that however, it's a beautiful book, thanks to Eggers' descriptions of Africa and the other places the characters had been to, and their near-death experiences and funny exchanges.

It's not the kind of book you appreciate until you finish it, in my opinion. There is a sense of accomplishment that you get as a reader when you arrive at the end: you fall in love with the characters, you realize you've been across the world with them yourself, and you find that you appreciate the pain they've been through and with them, overcome it too.

There are a lot of things I didn't quite understand, though, and they're making me want to read the book again.

After YSKOV!, I think I took a break by reading articles by Malcolm Gladwell in his fourth book, What the Dog Saw, a collection of his pieces published in The New Yorker. As always, Gladwell's writing/reporting draws you in from the beginning, and that's what I love about him as a reporter. I'm not done with the book yet, as I took a break from the articles with a desire to read some fiction again.

I remember which came first, The Paris Review or Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower - I think it was Perks, first. I might be a little late in discovering this book; I heard about it through a piece entered in the Philippine Star's My Favorite Book Writing Contest. As you might guess, Jabin got it for me (and yes, I love my boyfriend too, very much) as a gift. It's a beautiful coming-of-age book about a boy named Charlie, written by way of letters from the character to a Friend, the reader.

I have a soft spot for coming-of-age stories; why, I have no idea. Perks is compared a lot to The Little Prince and other classics, though I wouldn't really know because I haven't read those classics (To Kill a Mockingbird; Catcher in the Rye), and I didn't quite get The Little Prince the first time I read it. In any case, Perks is beautiful for what it is. Charlie (or Chbosky) writes with simple language, and his tone is full of innocence and discovery, as would be expected of a child. I love how the book is so quotable on a lot of things, and how it puts so simply a lot of truths that we tend to miss, overlook, and forget as we grow older. Interestingly, the character keeps reminding me of my second brother (Matt), perhaps because of his curiosity and his demeanor, at least through the book. It's a book I'd recommend he read (we're the only two in the family interested in books), too.

The Paris Review, I was lucky to find at Just In at MoA. It has some beautifully written prose, and a very interesting interview with Umberto Eco, whose work I'd like to read next year. I've read a short memoir and a journal chronicling a forest fire watcher's workdays, and I'm very impressed. Since immersing myself in the stories, I've been on the lookout for more back issues of the Review whenever I drop by Booksale or Just In. I'm not done with the whole collection just yet, but that just leaves me with something to turn to when I feel like reading something short.

I read Nina Garcia's The Little Black Book of Style sometime in between AHWOSG and YSKOV!, I think. It's a great go-to book for fashion; it's direct to the point, and it's interesting, too. I love the illustrations and how the book touches on history and the icons for each trend or basic throughout history.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, which I'm about to finish, is one of this year's top reads. My initial response to his writing style was whoa, he sounds like a Gabriel Marquez writing about the 21st century. But I take it back; the two are too good on their own to be compared as if they fall under the same category. Their styles come close, in that Franzen writes concisely and powerfully. Perhaps because his characters are of modern-day America, though, I'm not getting the same strong, raw emotions I found myself with when reading One Hundred Years. Nonetheless, it's a book with characters I could feel for. And instead of relating to them, I found myself learning more about them and what they're going through, which is an interesting new experience, too. For instance, how some women may be attracted to married men or, how some men can just screw up as much as they've got great things going for them. It's an eye-opener, or at least a perspective-broadener; not so much to increase one's tolerance for things that are morally wrong, but to understand where such actions come from. This isn't completely what the book is about, but it's something you get from it.

Overall, this year has been a great one for me and books. I hope to read more books next year, start taking down notes - noting the wonderful quotes for when I need them - and, well, digest the books better. I've been telling myself to read more of the classics, though in all honesty, I don't know if 2011 is the year for that. I'm looking forward to more Franzen, Eggers, and, please, Jonathan Safran Foer, whose books I still can't locate. I've also been missing Murakami, and since I've read only one of his novels, I've many of his other works to select from.

I've also been telling myself to be familiar with Philippine literary figures...maybe I'll begin with Michael Syjuco's Illustrado.

Now I've still got The Corrections to finish, but I have no doubts over the kind of ending it will be. I have no idea how things are going to work out, but I'm sure it will be good, and this is a good sign. A great year started with great books, and will likewise end with a great book. I'm happy.