Cannonball Read #33: When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

Like Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Isihiguro infuses When We Were Orphans with a sense of measured nonchalance. While reading, I could imagine Christopher Banks sitting across from me and just talking his thoughts out, just him and I having an easy conversation. But his words, the events that he speaks of, are a slow, gradual build up - like he is carefully trying to tiptoe around the real point of his story.

In the beginning, Christopher leads us through his high-society life in London and early success as a detective. He befriends a young lady, Sarah, who is also an orphan. He never talks about the cases that he is solving - there is almost a sense of, "But you already know, so why should I boast about my achievements?" - but fills us in on his childhood in Shanghai. He had moved to England after his father and mother disappeared, and in the second half of the book, he travels back to his old home country, now changed irrevocably by the Sino-Japanese War, to try and find out how he became an orphan.

It certainly says something about Ishiguro's craft that I can simultaneously be bored by his words and intrigued by the meaning behind his writing. I was curious about Christopher throughout the book. He may present himself as a very adaptable and intelligent person, but there are hints offered that this is not a universal perception. Early in the book, an old classmate referred to him as an "odd bird," while another later said that he was a "miserable loner." Christopher took offense to these characterizations because he felt that he had always been able to mimic his classmates in their normalcy.

There was also the impression that if he solved the case of his missing parents, the Sino-Japanese War would stop raging. At certain points, I wondered if we were in some alternate universe and that Christopher was being an unreliable narrator by neglecting to tell his that he was the Prince of England or something. Other times, I thought the other British expatriates were making fun of him and his self-importance by fawning over him and the extremely unlikely return of his parents.

In the end, I'm not sure these things matter. At first, I saw the story as a mystery with the discovery of Christopher's parents to be the end point. Throughout the book, I was disturbed by how his perception of himself and the perception that people had of him seemed incongruent. How could we trust his memories of his childhood and of his parents' disappearance? What is ironic is that his profession brings to mind an image of objectivity; the man has solved many difficult cases and been lauded as one of the brightest minds in London society. Yet his existence - the way he sees himself and sees the world around him - is such a fragment to me. Though I trust that he thinks his version is the truth, I do not believe it is the truth.

Does that even make sense? All I know is that after I finished the book, I was left feeling sad for Christopher. Not because of his parents or his missed chances with Sarah, but because he still managed to hold us at arm's length even after revealing the saddest events in his life. Is this the result of having lost his parents and never quite being able to come to terms with their disappearance? There are no answers about that, and Christopher is more than happy to ignore his unhappiness. However, for me, there remains a sense of a wasted life.

Cannonball Read #32: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Everyone's been raving about this book and I've been seeing it all over the subway, so when my friend lent it to me, I figured, why not?

Well, let me count the reasons why (not):

1) It is slow. I was promised a thrilling ride of mystery and intrigue. What I got was 200-plus pages of exposition before it actually got good.

2) I know that this book was translated from Swedish, but they really should have gotten a second English-speaking editor to look over the translated text. Because it just read so awkwardly - like it's been translated. (An example: "...kicked his backside" instead of "kick his ass/butt." Anything would have been better than "backside.")

3) I was at my local bar chatting with random people and mentioned that I was reading the book. They asked me which part I was at, I told 'em, and they said that I haven't gotten into the weird sexual parts yet and that it gets really good. I got to the weird sexual parts and I thought, "It took him 200-plus pages to get to this?" To say I was disappointed is a big understatement.

4) I wanted to know more about Lisbeth, and less about Mikael. Mikael annoyed me, and Lisbeth intrigued me. However, by the end, they had both aggravated me so thoroughly that I can safely say that I do not care about the rest of the trilogy.

For those who don't know the plot: This rich old man wants Mikael Blomkvist to study his huge household and find out what happened to his niece, who disappeared years and years ago. Mikael takes way too long to learn all the relatives' names and a couple months into his "investigation" (I call what he did in the first part of his year "crammed reading." I did it in college... during a weekend before finals) he makes some breakthrough and decides to hire Lisbeth Salander, a skilled researcher, to help him solve the mystery of the Missing Niece. Because obviously he realizes he did not have the skills to move ahead since it took him so effing long to get to a plot development.

Lisbeth is some enigma because she has lots of tattoos and doesn't like smiling or talking (Swedish people should come to New York. We are full of "enigmas" here). She has a checkered past and there are things referred to as The Bad Time. I assume this will be explored in the next two books but I honestly do not care. (Swedish readers, did Larsson really call it "The Bad Time" in Swedish? Seriously?) Lisbeth also freelances for some company that basically does background checks on people and her boss thinks of her as a friend/daughter/lusty object - but that's only because of her lack of talking/smiling and lots of tattoos.

During the course of this book, Mikael gets laid by three different women. I simply do not get it - he was a bore.

Look, I know this isn't supposed to be a great, important novel. But the plot dragged, and by the time I was ready to give up on it, it got exciting, so of course - since I had invested all that time on it - I had to finish it. And when I finished it, I was just annoyed. Because the payoff was really not worth it. Everyone disses Dan Brown books because they are stupidly written (they are) and there are some plot holes (oh God, so many) but at least his books are fast-paced and it gets into the action immediately.

Anyway, I just do not get the craze over this. However, I can see how it would make a great movie because they would (hopefully) gloss over all that BLAH BLAH BLAH SHOOT ME THIS IS SO BORING and get straight into the action.

Note: I am so annoyed at this book that I will not give it a header picture.

Cannonball Read #31: The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

When I was in college, I took an international reporting class taught by this unforgettable woman. She began her reporting career by covering the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, and has since traveled all over Europe and the Middle East as a freelance journalist. I remember her recounting a story about getting caught in crossfire and catching a bullet on her leg while trying to interview a dictator. They kept telling her that she had to leave, get out of there, take care of her leg – but she insisted on completing the interview because she was worried she wouldn't get the chance anytime soon. The only reason why the dictator even answered her questions was because he was so impressed by her, she said.

Though I admire the career that my professor has and thought she was a fantastic teacher, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that she was nuts. And that was what I kept thinking while reading The Forever War by Dexter Filkins. The man is an amazing reporter and writer, and I am crushing on him so hard right now. But he has to be so incredibly fucked up to be able to do what he has done for so long.

Picture a soldier who comes home from war and who has lost soem of his friends in battle. He probably has some form of PTSD and is, understandably, withdrawn from his former life. What Filkins experiences seems so much more insane and unfathomable. Not only is he caught in its crossfire, he has to put himself at an emotional distance from the deaths and mayhem so that he can write about it for the paper. Filkins may not be shooting anyone, but he's certainly seen many people go down, and he has even had a soldier die because of him. He has come so close and escaped death so many times that he sometimes has a dangerous sense of recklessness. During his moments of arrogance, he believes that he is invincible – he will never be shot down/snipered dead/kidnapped for a ransom.

The craziest thing? Filkins is able to gather all these memories and pull them together into a beautifully moving account of one of deadliest wars in our recent history. If you have read any of his pieces for The New York Times, they are often very straight-forward, journalese articles of who, what, when, why. This certainly exists in his book, but the gravity of the war is enhanced by how very human all the players are. The marines that he and his photographer, Ashley, followed in Falluja; the insurgents who never quite know how to handle an American who is not in the military; the people who plead to him to tell their stories; the suicide bombers who might not have known what they had signed up for; Filkins' Iraqi translators and drivers, caught between their world and their work, who have saved his life more times than he can count – I read it all with a knot in my throat.

This has been the most affecting book so far during the Cannonball Read. Each time I got to my stop while reading it on the train, I always felt like I was being slapped, jolted into full-consciousness. How is it that the world I live in is real, and thousands of miles away there can be people fighting and dying and hurting and pleading – and that's real too? The disconnect is just too great.

(PS. The New York Times Magazine published an article that was adapted from book, if you're are interested in taking a look at it.)

Photo Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times.

Cannonball Read #30: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I went through The Book Thief so quickly, just zoomed right through it and it completely broke my heart in the end.

Narrated by Death, the story traces the life of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living in Nazi Germany. Death has met Liesel three times in her life, starting with the death of her little brother as they were being trucked to their foster parents in another town. Stopping at a nearby town to bury her little brother, Liesel managed to snatch up a book from the young undertaker filling up the small grave. The book is The Grave Digger's Handbook. Her foster father teaches her how to read the book during the night whenever she wakes up from her nightmares of her little brother dying. During the day, Liesel plays with her friends, especially with Rudy, who is in love with her. Her foster family are also hiding a Jewish man in their basement who eventually becomes Liesel's friend.

I'm really not sure what else I can say about this. Nazi Germany is seen in the point of view of a young girl. This means that we are able to feel her joy when she gets to joke with her friends or when she reads a book; it also means we feel her pain when she loses those friends and her family. Liesel is easy to identify with, but there were points when I wished I could be more removed from her emotions.

Death also has no qualms about telling you how the story ends. He makes it clear in the beginning that it's not about the ending, but about how Liesel, and us readers, arrives there. This sounds cliche, but though I knew what was going to happen, I was still deeply affected when I got to the event. Zusak had me wishing that Death would be lying about certain things, even though I knew that there was no "trick ending."

*****The Book Thief – Last Line*****
I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Cannonball Read #29: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

This review is so over due and it’s for a book that is really difficult to describe, so it’s not going to be very good/clear. I read this for the June book club but didn’t finish it until much later. I had previously read it in high school and though I found the use of language to be formidable, it started feeling like a slough toward the end. Reading it this second time around, I had the same problem. However, I think I was able to get more from it this time than before.

Most people have read this so I’ll go over the synopsis very briefly. Our narrator starts out by telling us about where he is and telling us that he is invisible. The entire book a recount of his journey from the South, where he is from, to his underground home in New York. In the beginning, our narrator is willing to just follow authority blindly despite how degrading and menial some of his tasks are. He inadvertently gets into trouble in his college and moves up to New York to find work. In New York, he becomes a part of the Brotherhood, an organization that, on the surface, seems to be fighting for equality for black people.

Reading back on what I’ve written, I realize that reading Invisible Man gives me more of an emotional journey than something that is tightly based on plot development. That is not to say that the plot isn’t interesting – it is. But I cannot really recall specific events happening. When I think about the emotions and realizations that the narrator experienced, I am able to tie that to an event. I remember the disgust I felt at the narrator in the beginning when he was unable to see how he was being demeaned by being asked to participate in a boxing match in front of screaming, rabid white people. I remember the frustration I had because he wanted so badly to please Mr. Norton, who did not even consider black people to be their own individual selves, but were instead “his destiny.” I also remember the slow creeping shock I felt when Jack tells the narrator that the goal was to keep the people of Harlem under the Brotherhood’s control, and all their work was performed under the guise of empowering the black men.

Though I wanted to give up on it many times (since the book club discussion was over), I’m glad I made it through. There are some things that Ellison make very self-evident – like all the overt motifs of darkness and blindness – but other themes and characters are not so easy to understand (Bledsoe, and what he represents, simultaneously outraged and intrigued me.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am thankful that Pajiba – or more specifically, Snuggiepants – made reread this even though I started out not wanting to.

Image taken From The Vault.

My Hero

City Room: Jetblue Flight Attendant Uses Emergency Slide to Escape Dispute

I wish that my restaurant/office building has an evacuation slide attached to it. "You want me to 'keep your mimosas coming' even though you just made me run to bring you three in 10 minutes? EVAC BITCHES!!!"

My week thus far in pictures...

On Tuesday, I went to Bryant Park after work to unwind with my crossword. I had this mental image of myself lying sprawled on the lawn with all the reflective buildings gazing down on me as I raced through the empty boxes with my pen, finishing the crossword before dusk. In my Bryant Park fantasy, I was intellectual and content.

The reality: The lawn was closed so I sat on a hard, butt-numbing wooden bench with no back. I was almost stung by a bee. A couple sitting in front of me seemed to think that they were in a cheap motel room. I gave up on my crossword early – I'm not even smart enough to get through Monday's very-easy edition – and almost fell asleep doing it because 3:30 a.m. was the time I went to bed the night before. At least I got the "reflective buildings" part right.

On Wednesday, I decided to go to Central Park to try and catch the Black Keys on SummerStage. I didn't have tickets to the concert (that would have required spending money) nor did I really have a plan. I tried to get someone to go with me but no one really wanted to stand outside a concert venue looking in, trying to get a glimpse of a band they don't really care about. So I went by myself. I found a giant rock outside the concert area that had a ton of people on it and there was a spot on it with a clear ("clear" is a relative term) view of the stage, so I was just perched there. This would be the second day in a row that my butt lost feeling.

I don't have a photo of this, so this will have to suffice:

Yes, I'm cool - why do you ask?

I actually didn't think it was that weird for me to be there by myself, but other people did because they asked me why I was there by myself. I had zero expectations for this, did minimal planning, and in the end felt blessed that I was able to hear everything, much less see 'em.

Here's my view:

They sang a lot of stuff from their new album, which I don't really know but it was still really good. Toward the end, they played "Your Touch," and it was great. I don't usually go to concerts because I just don't really know music, but when I do know and like a song at the rare concert that I attend (peer in from outside of), I feel like the band is playing that song just. For. Me. It feels fucking awesome.

All in all, The Black Keys rocked, even from a distance, and I think next time I'll actually shell out money to see them.

Finally, I saw this today:

Media rivalries always strike me as petty, but they are also hilarious. Probably because they are so petty. Although, this message probably would haven been more effective if it wasn't parked right outside the Times building. "Ooh, yea, you really told 'em, NYT."

Cannonball Read #28: The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie

This book is a bit of a cheat for me because I've actually read it several years ago. I think I bought it at an airport because of Hugh Laurie, read it during my flight, and then promptly misplaced it. When I saw it at the library, I decided to revisit it since I really don't remember much about it.

So I'm happy to say that it's just as satisfying a read the second time around. Laurie's voice is very humorous and dry throughout the novel so even at the high-intensity parts, I was still smiling to myself. His hero and narrator, Thomas Lang, seems like a pretty ordinary guy except for the fact that he's a total bad ass; Laurie writes him as so nonchalant a character that every time Lang manages to squeak past trouble, even he seems surprised at his own skill and luck.

Though there seems to be a twist in every chapter, I think this book is definitely more character-driven. We rely a lot on the narration of Lang to keep us focused on the details of his situations, and it's such a good thing that Laurie, and therefore Lang, is hilarious. If not, I think the plot might have been a little convoluted.

It begins with Lang being offered a job to assassinate a rich American industrialist. Being a good man, he refuses, and then decides to take the further step of warning the American industrialist of the assassination. From there, he falls into a giant international conspiracy that involves the CIA, MI6, and an evil billionaire whose name sounds like "murder." Lang is pulled into this because he seems to be a hopeless and hapless romantic, in love with the beautiful daughter of the American industrialist. Yet he also seems unable or unwilling to stop the proverbial wheels from turning, and is just swept along for a long, fast-paced ride where he's beaten up on, shot at, forced to take on and shed identities, improvise on a high-speed swerving motorcycle chase, and maybe partake in the occasional sexy time with a femme fatale. It is to Laurie's comedic credit that Lang is able to eke out the sarcasm and wit during this insane plot and still be believable as a character.

I wish I could end with some quippy quote from the book, but I feel like I would be short-changing the humor so inherent throughout the entire novel. If it is possible, Laurie's comedy on the page is just as successful as his performances. It also helps that I kept picturing House (Yes, Gregory House, not Laurie), except less of a curmudgeon, as Lang – which made for a very pleasant read indeed.

Quick Ones

As I said in the previous post, my best was in New York for two weeks. A more detailed post of her visit will come soon.

I caught Inception opening night and it was amazing. Despite my high expectations, I was still impressed. I cannot wait to rewatch it when it comes out on DVD. I am also nursing a serious crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt - it hasn't been this bad since Brick.

I also watched Top Gun for the first time - it was projected onto bedsheets tacked up in the yard of a friend's place in Bushwick. It was fantastic and I'm so glad I live in New York in the summer.

Things I am not glad about: this insane heat wave.

Last bit: One of journalism's greats just passed away. I wish I knew more about Daniel Schorr and his work when he was alive. Thankfully, my ignorance can countered by all the great stories being told about him all over the Internet.

Guess who's coming to New York...

That last picture was taken at prom. The reason why it is so small is because we were actually on an upper level of the ship (Yes, our prom took place on a boat! It was really cool! And then I discovered that I get sea sick) and our friends were on the bottom deck. This was at the end of the night as we were inching toward the exit, and our friends snapped a photo of us from afar. Good thing we were camera-ready! The photo was cropped, and I don't even have the original anymore.

Two more days!