The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed
Ursula K. LeGuin

Shevek is brilliant young physicist working on a theory that will allow instantaneous space travel (teleportation!). He's also an Odonian, part of a socialist anarchist society living on the harsh moon of his peoples' home planet. But moneyless settlers fighting dust and famine for survival are not overly interested in teleportation. For the sake of his research and to bridge the gulf between the society they left and the one they created, Shev takes an unprescedented journey to earth, hoping to tear down walls and trade his theory for mutual cooperation and freedom.

Woven into Shev's experiences with earth technology, style, customs, and depravity are chapters about his youth, family, culture, and the events which led to leaving his home. LeGuin's descriptions are creative and compelling, and the characters are memorable, but the best part of this book is seeing the world through the eyes of an outsider.

The childlike simplicity and trust that Shevek has, his expectation that people will do right by each other and his surprise at being cheated and manipulated harkens to the stories fondly told of Soviet times. "See, Soviet people were very kind to each other, and did not expect to be cheated. It was easy to scam them, because they didn't even think of such a thing." "In Soviet times, people helped each other, shared what they had with their neighbors. It was a community." Even so, this is not a romantic anarchist utopia; LeGuin does not sugar coat the harshness and flaws of the Odonian society. We are left with a startling picture of what happens when people focus on one aspect of human nature and stretch it into encompassing morality.

I am afraid that if I keep writing, I'll degenerate into rambling. But first, I have one last thing to say: I really want Shev's teleportation technology.

Anil's Ghost

Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje's stories have the feeling of a sepia photograph; they're rich, real, and yet hallowed by lack of color. His prose lives in sparse details. A water drop falls from a leaf, a woman sighs, a headlight blinks a man into consciousness for a second. The world turns. Evil in chaos, scientists and artists struggling to create. Risking their next moment in a sepia photograph to show up in truth.

He haunts me, flashes of a ghost barely not seen. And yet the story is very solid, gritty, terrible and beautiful and full of soil as well as soul. Anil's Ghost is a mystery, a mystery about government killings in Sri Lanka, a mystery about an unsual skeleton, a mystery of choices, conscience, and survival. It's about Anil, who left. Sarath, who retreated into cynicism and the archeology of ancient temple ruins. Gamini, who hides in drugs and twenty-hour shifts in the ER. And whether it is possible to do anything but survive in the face of constant murder and betrayal.

Oh, Dear

A two week long roaming vacation with one's brother all over the UK is fantastic for the soul, but not for reading. Particularly since we each had only a small backpack as luggage. And then work ate me. So.

I will do my best to review these books in the next couple of weeks...

January booklist:

To Swim Across the World, Francis and Ginger Park
*The Firstborn Advantage: Making your birth order work for you, Dr. Kevin Leman
*Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller
The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt
Anil's Ghost, Michael Ondaatje
*The Kingdom by the Sea, Paul Theroux
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin



*denotes a book I read for the first time

Degenerating into lists

Well, I decided to handmake all my Christmas gifts this year. Since I decided it at the end of October, and NaNoWriMo ate my November, Christmas gift making took up all my free time in December. (Plus I needed something of a break from writing after NaNo.) I have been reading, though (I still commute on the metro/tram/bus at least 2 hours a day).

You'll probably have to wait until I re-read (or re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read, as the case may be) these books, but here's a list of most of what I read in November and December (in the order they are piled on my shelf, not the order in which they were read):

Another Fine Myth Robert Aspirin
*The Wanderer Alain-Fournier
*A Doll's House and Other Plays Ibsen
Myst: the Book of Atrus Rand and Robyn Miller
*Sinning with Annie and other stories Paul Theroux
Captains Courageous Rudyard Kipling
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje
Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome
Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
The Railway Children E. Nesbit
The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkein
Gifts Urusula K. LeGuin
*Dubliners James Joyce
Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
*In Cold Blood Truman Capote


Right now I am re-reading To Swim Across the World by Frances and Ginger Park. I have not decided what will get to come on my UK trip. (On the one hand, I want to just buy books THERE! but I will need something to read in the airports on the way there. We'll see.) So there will probably be at least two more books to add to this list.

* = first time I read this book

Note to the Faithful*

This is a bit late, but you knew this anyway: I am doing NaNoWriMo. Which means all my words are being sucked into the endless black hole of my novel this month. I am still reading, and the stack of books to review is piling high on my end table, but I haven't time at the moment. So watch out for a tumbling avalanche of reviews in December.


*Faithful, here, means the three of you who read this...

The Angelic Darkness

The Angelic Darkness
Richard Zimler

When Bill Ticino's wife moves out, he is beset by insomnia and childhood fear of spirits. Hoping to reassure himself, he rents part of the house to a mysterious Portuguese diplomat. Called Peter, the new tenant brings his pet hoopoe, piles of bizarre relics, pointedly important stories, and new experiences with spirits and mystics.

As an emotional Bill starts to piece life back together, he finds that things are far from what they seem. From the feminine transvestite prostitute he interviews for an article just before his murder to the pixie-like Indian singer who seems to know far too much about the world, Bill's normal way of framing things are bent. But are any of these things really happening?

Although I was initially intrigued by the characters and their stories, the point of the book was disappointing. I expected the mysticism to reveal the deep overlap between myth and reality, perhaps breaking the boundary altogether in a step into urban fantasy. But it was about figuring out how to be gay in a straight world. Oh, well. Ok, then. This was a letdown not because I deem it an inappropriate struggle to portray, but rather because the beginning, the stories, the tone, were not well tied in to the conclusion. I was left feeling like I had started one book and finished another.

The Shack

The Shack
William Paul Young

This tale of how God responds when bad things happen to people who want good lives has been discussed all over the place. Copies of it have even made it to Russia, which is saying something. So, now it's time for my three cents.

The scene is set with Mac losing his baby girl to a brutal serial killer. His depression grows gnarlier, his relationships falter, and he doesn't trust God anymore. After all, if the ruler of the universe were actually good, He wouldn't let people kill adorable small children. And then, God invites him out to the shack where the last bloodstained traces of Mac's little girl were found. Desperate, he goes.

When he's given up all hope, the shack is transformed into a beautiful house, and God the Father walks out of it to give Mac a big hug. The idea of God manifesting as a big black woman whippin' up great meals is delightful to me, and I am thrilled that someone finally portrayed Jesus as being Middle Eastern. The Holy Spirit as a mystical iridescent Asian woman is a bit more cliche, but still entertaining. The three of them work together to show Mac that his view of life, God, and tragedy are skewed.

Hang'in out with members of the Trinity for one-on-one chats about free will, omnipotence, forgiveness, and justice, Mac finds his depression lifting and worldview radically changing. He leaves so impressed by the truths he's learned that his friends and family eventually believe his incredible story.

Thanks to this book, I now believe in the importance of an editor and understand why self-publishing is such a bad idea. It took long, conscious effort to turn off my internal writer/English teacher/editor and actually pay attention to the story. Young uses far too much passive voice and makes sentences and ideas overly complicated, bogging them down with multiple extraneous metaphors. It's a great story, but the writing - oh dear.