Cannonball Read #12: The Alienist by Caleb Carr

I'll make this quick - Boyfriend is making dinner and I want food... Also, I am lazy.

Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be 'alienated,' not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were known as alienists.

The Alienist is a thriller set in New York City in the 1800s. It begins with the narrator, John, attending the funeral of his old friend, Theodore Roosevelt. After the funeral, he and a mutual friend, Lazlo Kreizler, reminisce about the times that they've had with Teddy. He then begins to look back on the memory that stands out the most, which is when a serial killer made his first known appearance in 1896.

At that time, John is a police reporter for The New York Times, and he is summoned by Kreizler, an alienist, to a crime scene where a young boy, dressed up as a girl, has been murdered and mutilated. The description is horrifying, and since it was close to the beginning of the book, I did not yet know what I getting into and therefore had no time to mentally prepare myself. The first murder is most deeply engrained in my mind, out of the many others that happen throughout the book.

The police are indifferent to this crime because the young boy is a prostitute for gay men, and also because he is part of an immigrant community. Roosevelt, who is the police commissioner at that time, knows that the case will be swept under the carpet by the corrupt police force – so he decides to give the case to Kreizler and John. At that time, the study of human psychological ailments was not a real science, and any admission of knowledge of mental conditions was considered shameful and scandalous. Roosevelt decided to give the case to Kreizler because he believes in "progress" (mentioned a lot in the book) and it marks a step towards the modern way of profiling a serial killer. There is a lot of talk of the killer's childhood and his environments that has formed his current actions and motives. For example, since a lot of these murders take place near a body of water (on a bridge, or by a reservoir), Kreizler thinks that the killer might have grown up in a religious household, since the murder near the water might signify a sort of emotional baptism.

This book is not deep, nor are there any hidden meanings. But it completely delivers what it advertises, and more. It is fascinating, fast-paced and so scary. My favorite parts of it are the descriptions of old-time New York City. As someone who loves this city, I really don't know the history of it, and it was so interesting to see the Lower East Side painted as such a circus show for prostitutes and decrepit tenements. I loved reading about a part of New York described, and then picturing what it looks like today in comparison.

Cannonball Read #11: Brave New World by Aldlous Huxley

Brave New World is one of those "high school" books. You know what I mean, right? Most Americans read this in high school in their literature class, and as a result, there are typically two camps of responses when you talk about it. The first is "Oh my God, I love it! It's so insane and beautiful etc etc." (For me, East of Eden by John Steinbeck gets this response.) The second is "I remember only hating this in high school." (Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger gets this.)

I never got a chance to read this when I was in school, and I decided to pick it up because I wanted to compare it to 1984 by George Orwell. I read it last summer and I absolutely loved it, though I could not figure out why and Cliff Notes was not much help. But all the book reviews and the Wikipedia entry had always referenced Brave New World, so I thought, "Why not?"

Finishing it, I can only say that I wish I had read it in high school. At least, with all the discussion that the teacher will (try to) generate, I could have some strong opinion about it. Huxley has created a incredible world, and the details of his inventions just blow my mind. However, the world in which the civilized people live in thrives and prides itself on being empty – nothing has meaning. And because of that, I find it hard to empathize with any of the characters. Even the most human character of all, John the Savage, I cannot seem to really care for, because his humanity is really a result of his upbringing, and contrasted against Bernard and Lenina, he is a caricature.

If you haven't read this book (I doubt it), here is the brief summary: The book is set somewhere in the future, and the mass majority of the people are united in the name of "Ford." Things are peaceful and stable because every single human goes through conditioning ever since they are babies. Before the humans are born, they go through some baby engineering process whereby they are awarded qualities according to the castes they belong to: Alphas (the best and brightest... also the tallest), Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. The conditioning consists of repeated phrases during the baby's slumber, like "Everyone belongs to everyone else," or "ending is better than mending." Basically, the conditioning gets humans to never want to be alone and dissatisfied with themselves, and always want to serve the main cause ("Ford.")

Midway through the book, John, who is considered a savage because he lives in "uncivilized" pockets of the Earth and believes in ridiculous concepts like family and love, comes into the story. He had pictured the civilized world to be a "Brave New World," and is initially excited about it. But eventually, he realizes that he is the only person there who has any original thought and feeling, and he is disturbed by how inhuman humanity can be.

I understood the main concepts of the book, and I definitely think it is a masterpiece. I'm just not sure if I completely got it, and I wish I had read this in a classroom. With 1984, I was thinking about it for days after I finished it. With this book, I felt that everything that should have happened happened. I did not really see a serious conflict. The civilized people acted as they should have; John the Savage acted repulsed and disturbed, as he should have.

Because the characters in 1984 still had the capacity to make a choice, it was heartbreaking when Winston eventually succumbed to his society's mindset. In Brave New World, the people had no way to realize that they didn't have a choice. It's a terrifying world that Huxley has created, but it's only terrifying to us because we are able see the alternative.

There's a reason why this is not a travel blog.

I tried to take pictures in Singapore, but I guess I didn't try hard enough because the only photos I have are of my family and friends. I don't have a single (use-able) shot of Singapore. You're just going to have to take my word that it's an amazing country. I grew up there, so I always feel silly when I take photos that seem tourist-like because it's not like I haven't seen any of those sights before. I only have a couple, but they aren't that great...

Ok, here's one shot I found pretty interesting:

I was riding the bus somewhere and there was a Hindu temple outside. It was a very tall building with colorful Indian deities on its edge staring down at us. You only see part of it here (a blurry part - sorry) but you get the idea. I was pretty wowed by it because it was the most colorful building on the block.

I spent my New Year's Eve with family. One of my aunts works for the television station in Singapore, and she had organized a variety show that counts down to the New Year for the Indian TV channel. We sat in the audience and we clapped and cheered whenever it was required of us.

Here's a shot of the stage before the show started:

The show had lots of awesome dances (though there were also some awful ones too - my high school bhangra team could do better) and two hours passed quickly enough. I pulled little poppers when midnight came and blew on my noisemaker.

I got really excited about this:

TIME OUT SINGAPORE!! Like Time Out New York, only without the Gay Nightlife section!

I'll leave you with this picture:

This is my aunt and uncle. They have been married about 40 years, and they still hold hands wherever they go. It's one thing to see a young couple holding hands (that one thing is nauseating. Sorry, all you hand-holders out there... yes, me included.) It's something else entirely when you see that it's a couple who have been together that long.

Anyway, I noticed them doing it when I was 16, and I always thought it was really sweet and cute of them. When I was 18, I finally made a comment about it to my mom one day. She looked at me like she thought I was kidding. Or stupid. She said, "Your uncle is close to blind. Your aunt holds his hand because he can't see where he is going... not because they are so in love."

That stunned me, and then it cracked me up. Even though what I originally thought had an "awww" factor, I like the true version better. Her wanting to help him, after all their years together, makes it sweeter.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Cannonball Read #10: The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

Cannonballer's note: This is not going to be an easy review to write and I have been putting it off for about two months now. The Emperor's Children is an amazing book. Unfortunately, I had to return it last month (why didn't I renew it? I'm still beating myself over the head with that.) so I will be doing this review by memory, and I will not do it justice.


The tricky thing about The Emperor's Children is that I did not know what I was getting into when I started it. With most books, I feel like I would a general sense of what I am going to get - maybe not in terms of plot, but definitely with what you might take away from it: a good story. Or a bad story. The Emperor's Children completely sucked me in, had me going along with the plot and the characters and all their doings, and after I was done with it, I kept flipping through random pages to reread it, to relive the feelings I got when reading a specific passage. I could not help but be affected by it, by the pervasive sense of entitlement (or lack of) in the characters, and it made me rethink how I really saw myself, and how the way I saw myself affects the world around me.

Messud's story is multilayered, and there is a wealth of interesting and seriously messed-up characters. When I say "messed-up" I really actually mean normal, because all these characters, like people in real life, appear very normal (not weird, not messed-up) outwardly; but if you were to look in their heads and really listen to their inner babble, they are just so self-absorbed and their entire world view is held together by their self view, yet they aren't even aware of them selves. We are all that way, of course. Only Messud is astute and talented enough to properly put it into words, and make it even kind of humorous.

There is Danielle, the most practical of all the characters perhaps because she is from the Mid-West (this is often referenced) who works as a documentary producer and unwillingly develops frivolous shows such as the dangers of liposuction; Julius, gay and half-Vietnamese, who used be New York's it-boy for incisive (and scathing) cultural reviews but is now hiding his face in offices as a temp; and Marina, the beautiful daughter of a celebrated journalist and columnist, Murray Thwaite, who has just moved back in with her parents after the end of a long-term relationship. These three were best friends since they attended Brown together, and now at 30, feel like their futures of been cheated out of the promising potential initially presented on graduation day. The novel's title comes from Marina's manuscript for a book that she has been working on (read: struggling on) for ten years, The Emperor's Children Wears No Clothes, about what the clothes that children wears tell us about the period's cultures and their parents.

Set in New York, the inner dialogue for these characters are surprisingly spot-on for the narcissism and entitlement that can only be bred by those who live in the city (Yes, I arched my eyebrow at myself several times while reading this.) Murray Thwaite, Marina's father, is perhaps the epitome of the lack of self-awareness that comes from having been celebrated by many as an independent, liberal, self-made man with high morals. He is the person most likely as the titular Emperor, as he has built himself up as a man who is ethical and wise, yet his actions contradict the mantra he espouses. As he sits behind his desk preparing to write what he considers to be The Book That He Has Been Preparing To Write His Whole Life, Murray debates whether if How To Live is too grandiose a title. A minute later, he is considering how he should start an affair. Messud doesn't make any judgments in her writing, though the view in which Murray's hypocrisy is shown is often laughable, as is Marina's blatant narcissism and Danielle's holier-than-thou attitude.

The entire story happens during the year of 2001, and mid-way through, two characters appear as the shaker-uppers. Ludovic Seeley, an ambitious, snake-like editor from Australia arrives in New York with his mind set on Revolution (in metaphorical New York terms of course) as he pursues the hand of Marina. The other change agent is Bootie Tubb, Marina's cousin from Watertown, NY, who recently dropped out of college because he believed that college is a farce, just a way to chase passable grades using the least amount of intellectual effort (he's somewhat right). He arrived in New York with the promise of Murray Thwaite as a mentor, and as the months tick by, he is sorely disappointed to find that Murray himself is also a farce.

One of my favorite parts in the book is when Julius is listening to Marina chatter on and on about her life and how her friend's problem has somehow became her problem, and she never once asks about him or his life (they haven't seen each other in ages.) At the end of that, he mused that the difference between him and Marina is that he has to work to feel entitled, to feel good enough. But for Marina, it's such a part of her that she does not even think about that. She is so ensconced in her inflated sense of worthiness, perhaps taking the cue from her father, that she cannot even stop and re-examine her life.

Please, please read this book if you get the chance, especially if you live in a city much like New York. I recognize so many people in it, myself included. It does not paint humans in a particularly flattering light, but by the end of it, I still wanted them all to figure their shit out (for the lack of a better phrase) and be happy.

Cannonball Read #9: The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

To say that this book was a disappointment would be a gross understatement. I read The Lovely Bones several years ago and loved it so much. So it was natural that during the Cannonball Read, I would try to find other stuff of hers to love. Yea, bad idea, because now I'm wondering if The Lovely Bones was just a lucky fluke and I'm afraid to read her memoir, Lucky.

The Almost Moon begins in the same shocking way as The Lovely Bones. “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." This first sentence in the book came from Helen, the main character, who had just suffocated her sick, senile elderly mother. The entire book takes place over the course of two days (or three?) and it follows Helen as she deals with the death of her mother and her hand in it (that is a purposefully morbid pun. Sorry.) In Helen's mind, the murder was not malicious because she felt like she was only trying to end her mother's non-existent existence. If this was done in a hospital with a doctor present, it would be called euthanasia. But since Helen held her hand over her mother's face in her own home (breaking her nose in the process), it's murder.

There are many flashbacks that reveal her relationship with her parents. Her mother was mentally ill - she never left the house, and there were times when she had "spells" and was nearly unfunctionable.. Her father was so in love with her mother and so attentive to her needs. Their neighbor had remarked to Helen, when she was young, that her mother was not the only one crippled by her fear. Her father was also crippled by his need for her mother.

The history of their family was most interesting to me, but even there, the writing is contrived and painful and slow. I found myself having to reread whole chapters because I just could not get myself interested in Helen's motivations, or her next stupid action.

What stupid action? you ask. Well, Sebold has written Helen in such a stupid way that there seems to be no way for us to identify with her. The problem is that she has her main character begin the book by committing what some might think is a heinous act. However, as readers (and fans of Sebold), we are willing to learn more about Helen's thoughts and past and motivations. Instead, Helen does something else that seems completely out-of-character... but what do we know? We barely know this character yet. So let's wait and see... and then Helen does something else that makes no sense whatsoever.

I never got to identify with Helen because Sebold never gave me time to come to terms with each of her (stupid, silly, irrational, rash) actions. By the end of the book, I just felt like I was dealing with some schizophrenia. The ending wasn't even mildly satisfying for all the trouble it took for me to waddle through the painful prose. It was just so badly written; the characterization was... just trying way too hard to shock, I think; and honestly, I just didn't care about anyone in that book by the end of it.

Here's what's been going on

So I'm in Singapore for the next week and a half. It's mostly a family trip - they already roped me in to some family parties, and for New Year's Ever as well - but I'm going to get to see my old friends as well, which would be nice.

Before I got to Singapore, I was regularly pulling doubles at both my jobs, so it's been a really crazed period for me. Even though I'm away now, I'm still clocking in hours at one of my jobs and constantly on email for them.

I am also starting to lose steam on the Cannonball Read in terms of writing reviews. If you look at my book gadget on the sidebar, I'm still doing the reading. It's just really difficult for me to write a review. Perhaps while I'm here, I'll be able to get to them.

Other than that, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and ate lots of delicious holiday food. The end of 2009 is near, and I am so excited for it. I am so over 2009.

Cannonball Read #8: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Cannonballer's note: Writing reviews are hard, especially since now that it's started getting really cold here, all I want to do is curl up in bed and watch movies on my computer. I read this a week ago, and am writing it only now, when my memory of it is fuzzy. Not good.

I couldn't say anything about the movie because I have never seen it (yet. Really gotta remedy that situation because I love John Cusack) but holy cow, this book is completely neurotic. The best thing about it is that the main character, Rob Gordon, is completely honest about his neurotic-ness, so it doesn't seem like a big whine fest. Instead, it seems like he is genuinely confused with his behavior around women, with women's behavior around him, and just confused about the type of person that he wants to be.

There doesn't seem to be too much of a plot because most of it takes place in Rob Gordon's head (which makes me wonder how they managed to adapt this into a movie - again, I'm gonna have to see it soon.) Rob Gordon is 35 years old and the owner of a failing record shop. His girlfriend recently left him, and this break-up left him going through all his past relationships and wondering why these girls rejected him. It's interesting to see a guy ruminate so obtusely over his personal life, because a) we usually expect girls to do that (please don't scream "sexism." You know it's true) and b) Rob's actions and thoughts were so incredibly contradictory and myopic.

For example, he would go on and on wondering why girls reject him, then he would insert this innocuous statement about their past relationship, which reveals so much about the way he treated her. I would think, "Well... no wonder." But then he would continue rambling on and on about his rejected feelings, and I'm thinking, "DUDE! You just skated past the reason why she left you, you dumbass." So I veered from being very frustrated at him to completely understanding his point of view. And I think what's authentic about his ramblings is that I've gone through that same irrational thought process. I suppose it takes one neurotic to understand another.

Anyway, I really liked the book, even though Rob frustrated me several times (A good British way to describe him is "thick.") After I was done reading the book, I told my boyfriend about the book and how neurotic he is. I guess I was trying to indirectly ask my boyfriend if his mind operated that way, but to be honest, I'm not sure if I want to know.

I should name my Kindle...

I'm having a little bit of trouble falling asleep tonight* so I figure I should entertain a request of Blakspring, who asked me about my experience using a Kindle. As I mentioned in my previous post, my uncle and his girlfriend gave it to me as birthday gift, and I was pretty excited about it. The first thing I read on it was Stardust, and one immediate observation was how... the lack of pages really affects my reading experience. It seems an obvious lack ("What? A Kindle doesn't have pages?") but I honestly did not factor that in when I started the first chapter of Stardust.

If you are like me, you anticipate the turning of the page by holding it between your two fingers. I found myself unconsciously doing that and feeling nothing. Instead, when I first started using it, I had to keep looking down at the "Next Page" button before pressing it. It was not an automatic action.

Once I got the hang of it however, I was just clicking through the pages. It's not hard for your brain to get used to and I can see why there might be many converts out there. You can also highlight a passage, or make a note in your reading by using the typing area. Then later, if you want to go back to that passage, you can go to My Notes, and just click through it until you finally get to the passage you crave to remember.

The other fantastically convenient thing is the Kindle shop, which you can access from your "hand-held device." (When I was reading the instruction manual for the Kindle, those words kept reappearing, which I found kinda funny because 10 years ago, a "hand-held device" was a euphemism for the new-fangled cellular phone.) You can subscribe to newspapers and magazines on it. I didn't, but I wondered if there can be colored pictures if I do subscribe to it. As far as I have been able to tell, everything that appears on my Kindle is black-and-white.

This reminds me of something I read, possibly from Jess and Josh (but I'm just going off memory here), about how if The New York Times bought every one of their subscribers a Kindle, and their readers started getting their news electronically transferred to them, the company could save a fortune on not printing millions of copies everyday, and probably avoid all the layoffs and buyouts we see announced in the paper.

If we are fast approaching a time when we would have to seriously consider giving up on certain items for the sake of the environment, I sincerely hope (very selfishly, I must point out) that it will be a long time til newspapers meet their demise. I love the feel of paper in my hands. All that stuff the old-fashions say about feeling more connected to the news/story is true: As stupid as it sounds, the inability to flip through pages to get to a certain part of the book, and instead having to click click click click to that part, makes it harder for me to feel like those words I'm reading – the story that I am absorbing – is something that should be remembered. Imagine clicking through a PDF document to find a certain piece of information. Does that feel like you are reliving your experience of having read that document?

This could all very well be nostalgia speaking. I don't want you to think that I dislike using it – I get really excited when I find a book worthy of purchase on the Kindle. But I have definitely narrowed my Kindle-reading to books that I hope that I would really like (Stardust, Heat Wave) but that I don't really care if I love yet. When I decide that I love those books, I will buy them in book form.

One more super cool thing about the Kindle: Whenever it goes to power save, a portrait of a famous author will appear. So far, I've had Virginia Wolf, Ralph Ellison (he comes on a lot), Jules Verne, Jane Austen, and John Steinbeck. Probably more, but those are the ones that I remember. Steinbeck has only appeared once so far (we can't choose, unfortunately. If we could, I would choose to have Ellison taken off the sleep screen) and I got so excited about him that I didn't want to "wake" it. Maybe I should name my Kindle Cal, just to psychically encourage it to go to the Steinbeck screen saver.

*I am currently reading a novel about a serial killer in New York in the 1800s and it is so, so interesting and keeping me up with its gruesome facts.

Cannonball Read #7: In A Perfect World by Laura Kasischke

The beginning of Jiselle's life, before her marriage, reads a little like George Clooney's voice-over in Up In The Air. As a flight attendant who is required to live within driving distance of the airport, her work is a big part of her life. As a result, she does not have any close friends whom she can confide in, nor much of a chance to meet a lover. She does not have a lot at home, and most of her belongings are souvenirs from other countries. Once, when her friend was anxiously fretting over her runaway teenage soon, she said to Jiselle, "Never have children. You are so lucky you have no one."

That changes quickly when she meets Mark Dorn, an airline pilot, at an airport bar. He is probably what George Clooney was like in his younger days - handsome, suave, and he just swept Jiselle right off her feet. In three months, they were married and she had quit her job to play stepmom to his three children while he continues to pilot around the world. Suddenly, Jiselle has a husband who is constantly in the air or delayed in countries due to a health epidemic, known as the Phoenix flu; or she has to worry about taking care of his children, Sara, Camilla, and Sam. Sara and Camilla pretty much hate her and try to make her life as difficult as possible by stealing her clothes, dressing slutty, and just generally acting like teenagers. Sam, the youngest, is nicer to her. He plays board games with her, or they go on walks together... but Jiselle suspects that it's probably because he knows she has no friends and is lonely.

The interesting thing about Kasischke's novel is its direction. At various parts, I thought I knew where it was going, and then I'd be completely wrong. I thought the beginning made it sound like a fluffy, better-written romance novel; then in the middle, I thought it was going to be a Stepmom kinda thing, where Giselle eventually becomes Julia Roberts; many, many times, I really believed that Kasischke was going to go the apocalyptic route, where everyone dies because of the Phoenix flu (no one knows how it's spread or caught) and Giselle has to make the Ultimate Sacrifice.

In the end, the Phoenix Flu may have propelled certain events to happen, but Kasischke always focuses on Giselle's quiet resolve and her reaction to the world around her. Reading the book, I realized that Giselle did not really have much of a discernible personality. Her self really isn't evident in the beginning of the book. It isn't until she has people to love and to care for that she starts developing a self and a purpose. I started rooting for her when I realized that she was capable of more than just reminiscing about her and her husband's escapades.

"In A Perfect World" is incredibly melancholy, with a pervasive sense of dread through it, like you feel the author is foreshadowing something and you are just waiting for the worst to happen. Even when there is a happy event, it is difficult to feel like the troubles are over. But I think that Kasischke's point is that although her world is much more uncertain in the end, and something bad may happen, what's important is that Giselle now had a family, even if all she does is worry about them.

Cannonball Read #6: Heat Wave by Richard Castle

I decided to pick up Heat Wave after Tereasa reviewed it on Pajiba, saying that "if you like the show you will like the book." Well, I really like the show, and I was really bored during my Thanksgiving vacation back to California so I figured, why not?

The book is exactly like an episode of Castle. There is a murder and Nikki Heat (a female detective modeled after Kate Beckett from the TV show) tries to solve it with the help of journalist Jameson Rook who is currently following the NYPD for an article. They run into some false ends, red herrings, and actually end up having sex with each other (I chuckled when I read that because I thought, "Of course Castle wrote a sex scene for himself. Of course.")

The crazy thing was that while reading it, I could very clearly picture all the characters as their alter egos on the TV show. It got to the point where I actually believed that I saw the book's plot as an episode. The murder du jour comes when a real estate tycoon breaks the concrete ground with his forehead by falling to his death from his luxury apartment. He has a trophy wife who lies through her teeth, a financial consultant who seems a little too benevolent; and enemies in the real estate industry who are not sad that he has broken ground (Yes, that is a construction pun. Shut up.) Needless to say, Heat and her gang of minions have a bunch of leads to follow up on.

One thing that people often complain about the show is that they know who the murderer is from the very start. Well, that was the case for me in the book, but I absolutely could not figure out the motive, and even after it was revealed, I had to read backwards for some clues. And I guess that's why I like Castle (besides the fact that Nathan Fillion is on it): I know where the story is going, I just don't know how we get there.

A big difference between reading the book and the watching an episode is how much more thorough the book is about the grunt work involved in investigating a murder. There are some parts which I thought were simply borinnnngggg and unnecessary because I knew that once the case went a different route, all that evidence that was dug up will be tossed out. My other quibble is Castle's character, Jameson Rook. Throughout the book, he is shown as a celebrity journalist (really an oxymoron in my opinion), but he has also interviewed war lords and been a war reporter of sorts. However, he behaves more like a novelist than a journalist. As a novelist, Castle can get away with not getting specific answers to specific questions because he can fill in the blanks himself. As a journalist, Rook needs to paint a clearer picture than what he is able to observe from shadowing Heat. Maybe he got all his questions answered just by watching her do her job... but no, there are still a million questions he should have been asking her and her detectives. So typical for a celebrity journalist.

That was a very dorky journalism quibble huh?

The having sexual relations with the source is pretty spot-on though.