13 Reasons Why

Another one about suicide. Jeez. I wonder why I do this to myself.

However, this one's kind of funny, without devaluing the human pathos attached to this kind of subject. The suicide victim sends an old acquaintance 7 audiotapes, each describing an incident which led to her decision to take her life. Each is a person. One is said acquaintance. After he's done, he has to mail the tapes to the next reason.

The ending will stun you. Honestly. It's amazing.

Suspenseful, witty, and very very human. Highly recommended.

Damage

Another A.M. Jenkins masterpiece. Here, however, there's next to no humor, which is appropreate as it's about depression and suicide but also makes for an amazingly depressing read. It's also written in second person viewpoint, bringing the drama that much closer. Seriously. It's depressing. Well written, brilliant, but a total and complete mood killer. Very compelling, though. I could barely put it down.

Recommended for anyone who likes that sort of thing.

Magnificant Bastards

A collection of perfectly ludicris short stories, Magnificant Bastards by Rich Hall is a fantastic read. You can skip around from chapter to chapter or read the whole thing straight through. All of these stories are very funny and have a little bit of social commentary tucked away, some more than others. My favorite is the one about the American who has to teach Brits baseball and inadvertantly causes an international incident.

Highly recommended to anyone looking for a quick read.

Blue Avenger Cracks the Code

Yes, the title's silly. Very, very silly. But it talks about parental separation, teen pregnancy, and predestination versus free will. So shut up.

The book follows the adventures of a teen who's renamed himself Blue Avenger. He goes to Vienna in the hopes of proving Shakespeare's true identity. His girlfriend Omaha is afraid of making things official because she doesn't want to become attached to anyone since her dad left.

Okay, the plot leaves a little to be desired. The characters are larger than life. But I've been reading some heavy stuff recently. I need something a little lighter.

Let's be fair. This isn't high literature. The language flips back and forth from high-art and sophisticated to, erm, "common", but doesn't miss a beat. It's very funny, and even the characters admit a lot of this stuff is implausable. It also contains a good deal of trivia, which is nice. You learn something.

I like it. I think you'll like it too. Good books don't have to be depressing.

Out of Order

I'm on a serious A.M. Jenkins kick right now. She's written four books and I've read three of them.

Here, Jenkins proves that she can pull of a mean realistic fiction piece as well. By far it is the more accurate high school story I've ever read. With no work at all, she creates believable characters although--as is the usual flaw--only the main character gets any real focus. (You want to punch the narrator in the face halfway through, though this is to the book's merit rather than its detriment.) The prose is fantastic, not flowery and totally believable, which is fine since the narrator's a few steps away from functional illiteracy. You can practically feel the thoughts going through his head with every move he makes.

Very good, highly recommended. If you like the narrator until the last fourty or so pages, you're probably an asshole.

Repossessed

Another amazing book by A.M. Jenkins, this one follows a demon--the original, fallen-angel New Testament types, not these weird-ass horned beasts you've got running around now--who decides to find out why people sin by taking over the body of a teenage boy who had two seconds left on the clock. As he learns more about human nature, and fears "The Boss" will come after him, he gains a new-found appreciation for mankind.

The plot is well-written, though character development for all but the demon is lacking. To be fair, the book's about him from his point of view and there's not much to do with other people. However, it's more than made up for with some great metaphorical imagery and ponderings on life and it's fair share of humor as well. The language manages to find a balance between realism and flowery, Shakespearean tone, and it's very consistent.

Night Road

A gripping and compelling thriller/coming-of-age story by A.M. Jenkins, it follows Cole--a "hemi", or blood-sucker--as he tries to train the newest member of this immortal race, Gordo, with the help of another hemi whose name escapes me at the moment. The two travel cross-country, and along the way Gordo learns the ins and outs of his new lifestyle.

Having a central cast of three really helps develop the characters, as we learn who they are through their interactions with each other and their doubts and fears. There are some lighthearted moments, some of which are funny, but for the most part it leaves you digging your fingers into the dust jacket and refusing to let go. It's also ridiculously compelling. Seriously. I defy you to put this book down once you start reading.

An Askew View (follow-up)

Having finally had the book delivered and read it cover-to-cover, I have to say I quite enjoyed it.



It was pretty filled with insight, not just into the meanings of the films themselves but into their effect on film in general--Mallrats, for example, would've been nothing special had it been released in the era of films like American Pie or There's Something About Mary, but instead sets a precedent for these sort of films (although Mallrats has a certain emotional sincerity those films lack.) He also takes a look at Smithian language--"You can't look at one of my films, the way you can look at a Quentario flick, say, and tell it's mine...but if you close your eyes and just listen you'd be able to tell," Smith once said, and it's undeniably true. Brian O'Halloran, Clerks's Dante and a View Askew frequent, says "His dialogue becomes very story-like, and you can almost feel the peaks and valleys. It's very song-like and melodic..."

Being a man of self-depreciation, this book takes time and effort to lavish the (well-deserved) sort of praise on Smith that Smith would never lavish on himself. Anyone who's seen his flicks and wants insight not just into the mind but the filmmaking process of Kevin Smith should take a look.

An Askew View

A book of in-depth analysis of Kevin Smith's first five films. I ordered it online and read a forty-page preview, and while I have to admit that most of it's information any die-hard fan already has, I also haven't gotten to the analysis yet. I only know it's there because of book reviews.

In any case, I am wondering what deeper meaning the author found in the 1980s-teen-movie-homage Mallrats, or the up-its-own-ass-with-in-jokes Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. While both of these are great films, they are much less suited to deep, scholarly analysis than Chasing Amy, Dogma, or even Clerks. It also gives us a sneak-peak at Jersey Girl--something that confused me until I realized the book was published in 2002.

It also covers Clerks: the Animated Series--by far the least sophisticated of Kevin Smith's works, if you could call them sophisticated (and you could, most of them at least, if you look past the vulgarities there's a good deal of substance underneath that Smith's greatest critics tend to overlook.) The series was a complete 180 from the movie: Clerks was bizarre, but subtly (almost realistically) so; the animated series was loaded with impossible insanities and off-the-wall antics.

All in all, this should be a very interesting read. Anyone who's not a die-hard fan and loves the Smith films because of their appearance as lowest-common-denominator fluff rather than in spite of it might want to stay away.

Just Desserts

A "novellah" by Carl Reiner (the interviewer of The 2000-Year-Old Man), this book chronicles the adventures of Nat, a perfectly sane author who talks to himself. He hit a slump after his last novel, but when he jokingly CCs an emailed book pitch to God he finds God enacting some of the book character's recommendations for a better world. Clever, sharp, and very very meta (the publisher notes that a Reiner parody has already submitted the book idea), I think that anyone with a good appreciation for comedy and a massive suspension of disbelief--as well as the stomach for a very warped version of the Literary Agent Hypothesis--will find it highly enjoyable.

I Am the Messenger

The gunman is useless. I know it. He knows it. The whole bank knows it.

Meet Ed Kennedy. He is nothing.

His dad's dead, his mom despises him, his dog's decaying, his job's dead-end. His friend Marv's a cheapskate, his friend Richie's unmotivated, and he has a hopeless crush on his friend Audrey, who avoids love like the plague.

And his life? It's about to change forever.

It starts with a playing card in the mail, with cryptic instructions on the back. From then on, Ed finds his way into the lives of various people, and does what he can to make each of their lives just a little bit better. But the tasks quickly begin taking a tole on his own life...

The story reads like a mystery novel, but the book itself reads like a comedy. Yes, there's thrills and suspense, but all that takes a backseat to character relations and good humor. The dramatic and emotional moments--and there are some--are as well written as the comedy, and author Markuz Zusak shifts gears between the two seamlessly. My only complaint is the ending, which sort of pulls you out of the book, but boy, are you in for a ride.

Highly recommended.

Losing Joe's Place

Revenge. Retribution. Rental.


Jason Cardone, Don Champion and Ferguson Peach have--miracle of miracles--been allowed the use of Jason's brother Joe's Toranto apartment for the summer. On the condition that the three do not get Joe evicted.


Guess what happens.


It is a great talent for any writer when he can divulge the outcome before telling the story, but Gordan Korman pulls it off brilliantly. Things like damaging the building, injuring the landlord, and unemployment are nothing compared to how Jason and his friends eventually get evicted, and Korman clearly has fun taking us--the audience--along for the ride. While the language is (for lack of a better word) simple, it aids the storytelling and the humor more than harms it.


And what a story it is! It twists and turns wonderfully, making impossible events seem almost plausible. The characters are relatable and at the same time bizarre (Jason might just be the only sane man in this entire universe), and the quality of the writing is consistent.

I recommend it.

Clerks and Chasing Amy: Two Screenplays

Delightfully vulgar, realistically absurdest, and great fun for repeated viewings, Clerks and Chasing Amy are two of Kevin Smith's finest works. I bought the screenplays over the weekend, because apparently they're the versions with deleted scenes and annotations.

A quick background: Clerks is the story of Dante Hicks, a twenty-two-year-old nothing who gets called in to work at the local convenience store on his day off. He and his best friend/worst enemy/neighboring video-store clerk Randal spend the day debating the mundane as Dante pines after his ex-girlfriend, who is getting married. Chasing Amy is the story of a comic-book writer who falls in love with a close friend of his, a woman named Alyssa who identifies as a lesbian.

Clerks is my favorite of the two, and as I hoped the script is packed with goodies such as extended scenes and more time dedicated to minor characters as well as a few lines that were tweaked here and there. It's something like three hours long in this primordial state, and admittedly loses a little something without the line deliveries (Dante's horrified reaction to his girlfriend's past promiscuity especially), but overall it's very tightly written and more-or-less what could be expected. Even early on Smith knew what he was doing with the characters, and had an unmatched ear for dialogue.

Chasing Amy is more or less the film in it's final phase, and besides a humorous scene between Holden & Banky and Mallrats characters Steve-Dave and Walt the Fanboy in which Steve-Dave, word-for-word, quotes Mallrats's harshest review to describe the comic Holden and Banky write. That aside, there's really nothing gained from reading the script that watching the movie doesn't give you twice-over. The impassioned speeches fall short (again, half the magic is in the acting), as does the dialogue in general.

So, what is to be gained from this book? An issue of Bluntman & Chronic, Holden and Banky's comic, which is as silly as to be expected. The comic represents how Smith's harshest critics see his work--nothing but profanity and sex jokes, with very little hidden depth and characterization--which is very, very far from the mark. There's also an introduction from Smith, which details how a single review of Mallrats inspired him to write Chasing Amy--the review, which is reprinted, is as harsh as most of the reviews are but demonstrate an understanding of what Smith was going for rather than the usual knee-jerk reaction. That alone is worth the price of the book.

My advice? Watch the films. They're better.

Discworld Recap: The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Mort

QUARTER TWO BEGINS HERE!

The Colour of Magic, as it turns out, was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Pratchett clearly has as much fun coming up with the physical laws of the Disc as he does developing the characters, and does both with increasing talent. The Colour of Magic flows seamlessly into The Light Fantastic, and Fantastic in and of itself flows a lot better than Colour. In the second book, Pratchett has done away with typical book structure, with no chapters, which lets the work flow freely and without pause.

While reading of the details of the creatures and laws of the Disc are endlessly amusing, Pratchett sacrifices neither plot nor characterization for the sake of world-building. Rincewind develops believably from a shriveling coward to a shriveling coward with a sense of honor, and Twoflower slowly becomes aware that being uninvolved with the plot does not make him invulnerable. The more episodic nature of the first book hinders this only slightly, but once the main plot takes over the characters get thrust more center-stage.

Mort is something a bit different. Rincewind makes a mere token appearance, and Twoflower none at all, while a new character named Mort takes center-stage. He unwittingly becomes Death's apprentice, but Death has other plans for him. And falling in love gives Mort an agenda all his own, one which very nearly tears reality apart. This book is simply outstanding--the plot is more compelling, the characters developed, and Death is actually a fleshed-out, sympathetic character. The plot is loaded with twists, turns, and clever wordplay, as well as--like the previous two--a fairly satirical and always interesting look at how fantasy works from a (slightly more) logical standpoint.

All three are great reads and highly recommended.

The Colour of Magic

I've just started this book. It's by Terry Pratchett, who I've heard wonderful things about. I really like his Discworld series, so I am trying to read it from the beginning, starting with this book. It's a tad hard to follow, and really not much like his more recent books (although his fondness for long, rambling footnotes makes an early appearence, to explain the geography of the Disc. It's on the back of four giant elephants, which in turn are marching across the back of a gaint turtle. It's really just that sort of book.) Still, it's rather clever, and Rincewind's in it, so I'm enjoying it so far. On that note, I can't seem to find it at the moment...

Unwind

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is a good book. It was a tad more disturbing than I was expecting from the guy who wrote The Schwa Was Here, but still a great read with strong characterization. Though it is something of a science-fiction book, none of it feels contrived and the situations and perils feel genuine. You actually get attached to the characters, even the perceived villains, and there are a few unexpected deaths that heighten the drama while at the same time not undermining the human value of those who die. All in all, it's a good book and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a good deal of heart with a healthy dose of suspense.

And Another Thing...: Hitchhiker's Guide, Book 6/3

It's been sixteen years since Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian Astra and Random Dent were vaporized, turned into carbon particles and sent drifting through space for the upteenth and final time.

Or so it was thought.

The above fact has a little something to do with the fact that the creator of the aforementioned characters, Douglas Noel Adams, died a death that was slightly less dramatic about nine years ago, without getting the chance to bring them back from oblivion as he had wanted to.

Now, it seems another man, Eoin Colfer, has done the deed for him.

There are a few things that are a tad off in his installment, such as the usage of "frood" as a verb and the capitalization of the word zark, but these things have no baring on the novel's literary merit or how well it fits in with the rest of the Hitchhiker's trilogy--the flamboyantly random and satirical first volume; the even more random and satirical Restaurant at the End of the Universe; the epic Life, The Universe and Everything; the uplifting and humorous So Long, And Thanks For All the Fish; and the darkly humorous and occasionally depressing Mostly Harmless.

First off, it seemed that this volume existed solely to bring our heroes back from the dead, which is probably entirely related to the fact that this volume existed solely to bring our heroes back from the dead. And it does--not by acknowledging, as previous books have done, the existence of the afterlife and reincarnation in this universe, but rather with a deus ex machina that would've made the softest sci-fi writer blush. Apparently, the very machine sent to destroy them obeyed Random's wish for a better life before the Earth goes foom, and after keeping them in an alternate, wish-fulfilment reality for half a century it brings them back to the to the moment of Earth's destruction due to its battery dying. Just as they're about to die again, Zaphod shows up to save them. Unfortunately, he can't do jack squat, and just as it looks like all is lost Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged shows up, and all is saved.

What follows is a romp through space-time to save some backwater human space colony from Vogon distruction, some romance, a bit of angst, the return of Thunder-God Thor, and a little character development. Arthur, Ford and Trillian are written up to standard, although as far as Zaphod and Random go it seems Colfer needed a little time to find his footing. The Guide is still very much a major player, with more entries than we've seen for the past three installments. In fact, Colfer's better at weaving them in than Adams ever was. As time went by, the books became more literary than literate, and in that respect Colfer has definitely succeeded.

So, how does the book overall fall in the pantheon of Hitchhiker's? It's not as bitingly satirical as Resteraunt, although it definitely makes a few points on religion and society Adams would've liked. This volume is a tad more epic than Everything, and the mood is less defined than in Fish or Harmless. Overall, it's not nearly as good as any of them. And yet is still throughs in a few good one-liners, it flows a lot better than the earlier books, and the ending is so ambigious it practically begs for a seventh installment. I guess what says the most about And Another Thing is that a seventh book might not be so bad.

Go Ask Alice

...when she’s ten feet tall...and if you...go chasing rabbits...

Sorry about that. I'm taking a decidedly less formal tone for this post, because I feel it's the best way to address this book. When I'm done, I'm sure you'll agree that the Jefferson Airplane song is much better than the book that takes its name.

This book is about a girl who starts hanging out with stoners because she has straight hair (and therefore looks like a hippie), accidentally starts taking drugs, goes on and off them multiple times, quits for good, almost gets roped in by stoners who try to keep her in their group as though it was a cult, accurately describes in her diary the experience of thinking worms are eating her alive while her fingers gradually become barely usable, and dies about six months after swearing off drugs for the final time and the only one that actually sticks. The protagonist, "Alice", is at first enjoys being on drugs, goes on and off them, falls in and out of love, runs away from home, becomes a sexual deviant, starts wallowing in self-pity, and decides that her parents don't deserve her before finding acceptance and the road to recovery.

This alone is implausible enough, but then I told my sister this story. She was amazed, because she had recently read a book called Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets, about a kid named Sam, who at first enjoys being on drugs, goes on and off them, falls in and out of love, runs away from home, becomes a sexual deviant, starts wallowing in self-pity, and decides that her parents don't deserve him before finding acceptance and the road to recovery.

Wow.

Further investigation revealed that both of these books were "edited" by a woman named Beatrice Sparks, who apparently is a child physiologist who published these and other "diaries" and "studies" based on her work with young children, and asserted that they were true. Although Alice is now listed in libraries as a work of fiction (Sparks admitted to mixing and matching patient stories to put it together), her other works are still considered non-fiction and Alice is still sold in bookstores as such. This is especially jarring as all but two of the alleged journals allegedly edited by here have Sparks listed as the sole author in the US Copyright Offices.

However, no discover shocked me as much as the following segment from a Wikipedia entry (which is backed up by this article):

In 1973, Marcella Barrett, a Pleasant Grove, Utah woman whose son Alden had committed suicide at the age of 16, read a newspaper interview with Sparks and became convinced that she was the right person to bring Alden's diary to the public. The result was Jay's Journal, which tells the story of a teenage boy drawn into Satanism. Barrett's family were horrified by the book. They insisted that Alden had never been involved with the occult and that Sparks had used only 21 entries from his journal (out of 212 supposed entries that appeared in the finished book).

Wow. Just wow. There's also A Place in the Sun: The Truth Behind Jay's Journal, which tells the true story. Not to mention that the details of Barrett's cult do not match up with the actual practices of any existing Satanic cult.

I could go on and on about the atrocities this woman has committed, such as claiming to be a child physiatrist who spoke to many of her subjects and providing no evidence she even has a doctorate. But I feel that, seeing as I read this book for entertainment and not preachy morals, I should say something about its literary merit and how much I enjoyed it. It has none, and I didn't.

The story came off as preachy, poorly written, unrealistic and vaguely predictable (she quits drugs halfway through, so obviously she falls off the wagon or else the rest of the book has no substance). Alice as a character is vaguely bi-polar and impossible to relate to, and her morals and blind condemnation of the 1970s peace movement and homosexuality piss me off (she breaks up with her boyfriend not because he cheated on her, but because she cheated on him with a guy, and calls anti-Vietnam protesters "misled" and "militant", probably because Sparks admittedly felt similarly about these topics.) Moreover, the idea that Alice would both remember enough about her drug-induced hallucinations to write them down, and even be able to write about a bad trip as it's inadvertently causing her fingers to become bloodied and useless, is implausible in and of itself.

In short, not only does this book fail in pretending to be fact, it epically fails at being realistic fiction. I would not recommend it to anyone, not even the author.

Epilogue

Three weeks after resolving never to recommend this book to anyone, the author of this blog post died. Police suspect Beatrice Sparks pushed him off a cliff. This is implausable, but hey, so is dying of a drug overdose after being sober for half a year.

Waiting for Godot

A play in which two men wait by a tree for a man named Godot they think will better their fortune. And talk.



That's it, really, as far as plot goes.


Except, of course, that Vladimir and Estragon--our protagonists--are implied to be waiting for him every day. They're not sure if they're at the right place, they're not sure if they've got the time right, they're not even sure who Godot is. But they wait, nevertheless.


Incredibly funny, and with long bouts of conversation and nonsense. However, read deeper and there's clearly something else going on here. This is a story of fate, of optimism versus pessimism, of the endless tedium of it all, about challenging the way we perceive the world, about mixing things up on occasion, all depending on how you read it. We know nothing about these characters outside of the two days we spend with them, and they're wide open for interpretation, especially because the author--Samuel Beckett--won't let on anything besides the fact that Godot is not a metaphor for God and the play for faith. (He later remarked that he regretted naming the titular character as such.)


So yeah, sure, this could be about a man and his Alzheimer's-riddled friend sitting by a tree talking about how disgusting carrots are and whether or not Jesus saved a repentant thief before his crucifixion. But I--and anyone who's reviewed this thing--think there's something deeper here. This play is like a treasure chest--the outside's cool to look at, but opening it up is the great part.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet's uncle brings in two of Hamlet's closest friends to find out why Hamlet is now insane. These two guys are in two scenes, sent to England to deliver Hamlet and and have him killed, and the next we hear of them--mere moments before the end--is that there was a slight mix-up and that Hamlet's friends were killed instead.

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But who are these guys? Are they really just a couple of interchangeable companions for Hamlet to ramble to for a couple of scenes? Or is there something more to them, something deeper?

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This play answers both questions with a resounding "yes." Guildenstern is contemplative, philosophical, and curious as to life's inner workings; his friend Rosencrantz is quite satisfied to leave things be. However, playwright Tom Stoppard doesn't delve any deeper into the characters than their personalities. Shakespeare left their pasts ambiguous outside of the duo being childhood friends of Hamlet's, but Stoppard makes even that ambiguous--"Ros" and "Guil" lack even the most basic memories of their past, where they're going or why they're there. They merely know that they are spying on Hamlet on behalf of his uncle, and even that basic fact is thrown into doubt.

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Filled with subtle wit and a stunning use of language which is almost, but not quite (thank God) Shakespearean, Ros & Guil Are Dead is a brilliantly chilling take on the nature of the past and human memory as well as dwelling on fate and other philosophical issues. Not recommended for someone without basic knowlege of the plot of Hamlet.