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defrogReading books, writing book reports. It’s what I do.
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
By the strangest coincidence, I was in the middle of reading this when Lou Reed passed away. Of course the book inspired Reed’s song of the same name, which is part of the reason I picked it up. The other reason, though, was Hunter S Thompson’s reference to it in Hell’s Angels – taking Algren’s description of the Linkhorns as the metaphorical origin of nomadic American white trash, and suggesting that the Hell’s Angels were the logical extension of that lineage. Anyway, the book chronicles the adventures of Dove Linkhorn, an illiterate Texas hick who leaves home barefoot and ends up in New Orleans, where he finds work as a dodgy salesman, a condom manufacturer and a peep-show stud in a brothel, among other things. But while Dove is the protagonist, he’s really more of a vehicle/tour guide to introduce the memorable characters that collectively form a grim picture of the seedy side of Depression/Prohibition-era America, the desperation that drives people to it, and the hypocrisy of Decent Society that condemns them. Sometimes Algren’s lyrical prose gets the better of him, and the ending is a little anti-climatic, but overall it’s a great book.
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Murakami’s three-volume epic which follows two main characters: (1) Tengo, a math teacher, is caught up in a plot by a shifty editor to rewrite the fantasy novel of a teenage girl and market her as a prodigy, only to realize that the original manuscript may not have been fiction, and (2) Aomame, a fitness trainer who moonlights as an assassin who targets wife-beaters, suddenly finds herself living in a slightly alternate reality. As the plot unfolds, Tengo’s and Aomame’s worlds start to interconnect as Aomame is tasked to kill the leader of a powerful religious cult that is also trying to track down the true author of the fantasy novel, which contains secrets it doesn’t want revealed. It sounds like typical Murakami, and in many ways it is (except perhaps for all the explicit sex – which I don’t object to, but Murakami doesn’t usually go into this much detail or get this imaginative). But it’s also a frustrating read at times, partly because Murakami has a tendency to underdevelop the more fantastical elements of the story, but also because the prose is so full of repetition that it’s hard not to feel 1Q84 could have been half the length and still gotten its point across. On the plus side, the trade-off is a collection of very well-drawn characters, which does help sell the ending better.
Glasshouse by Charles Stross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoy Stross, but I’ve been avoiding this title mainly because of the jacket blurb, which basically promotes it as a man-loses-memory-and-now-people-are-out-to-kill-him yarn. Which it is, but count on Stross to (1) set it in a post-human universe 700 years in the future and (2) use that as a springboard for contemporary social satire of gender politics and conformity via an experiment in which subjects are placed in a Stanford Prison-style panopticon polity meant to explore the “dark ages” of human history (i.e. the late 20th century). Even with all that, Stross is covering ground familiar to anyone who has read Philip K Dick or John Varley. On the other hand, Stross never pretends otherwise, and at least he does it with style and imagination.
The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay, this is not the kind of book most people would expect me to read, but I have my reasons – one of them being that I’d come across excerpts from it, and they whetted my curiosity. The book is basically an in-depth look at the four Gospels in order to get a handle of just who Jesus really was and the message he was trying to get across. And the object of the book was for Yancey, a Christian journalist, to reconcile the “real” Jesus with the various versions that churches and religious leaders tend to present him – i.e. the perfect Anglo-Saxon one you see in paintings, or the All-American one often invoked by the Christian Coalition, and so on and so forth. Whether yr a Christian or not, or whether you think Jesus was the Son Of God or just a guy trying to say let’s all be nice to each other for a change, it’s worth reading, if only to understand why a lot of people (especially politicians and televangelists) who throw around slogans like “What Would Jesus Do?” really have no idea just what he actually would do. It’s a fascinating exploration of not only what Jesus accomplished, but how humans tend to hear what they want to hear. That could well include this book, of course. But I will say this book gave me a healthier respect for Jesus than people like Jerry Fallwell ever did. Also, credit to Yancey for acknowledging his own doubts, skepticism and qualms about his own faith, instead of pretending he has all the answers.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve never actually read Stevenson before, and one reason I’ve never read this specific novella is because, between all the movie adaptations and its iconic pop-culture status, I already know the main plot twist central to the story. Consequently, it’s hard to judge the story objectively. It doesn’t help that I’m one of those uncultured people who find Victorian prose somewhat cumbersome. Anyway, it’s interesting to read the original story, and to compare it to the various screen versions. To be 100% honest, the main thing I really got out of it was being able to say I’ve read it, but I wouldn’t deny its status as a groundbreaking classic in the mad-scientist genre.
Hecklin’ Jekyll,
This is dF
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson AlgrenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
By the strangest coincidence, I was in the middle of reading this when Lou Reed passed away. Of course the book inspired Reed’s song of the same name, which is part of the reason I picked it up. The other reason, though, was Hunter S Thompson’s reference to it in Hell’s Angels – taking Algren’s description of the Linkhorns as the metaphorical origin of nomadic American white trash, and suggesting that the Hell’s Angels were the logical extension of that lineage. Anyway, the book chronicles the adventures of Dove Linkhorn, an illiterate Texas hick who leaves home barefoot and ends up in New Orleans, where he finds work as a dodgy salesman, a condom manufacturer and a peep-show stud in a brothel, among other things. But while Dove is the protagonist, he’s really more of a vehicle/tour guide to introduce the memorable characters that collectively form a grim picture of the seedy side of Depression/Prohibition-era America, the desperation that drives people to it, and the hypocrisy of Decent Society that condemns them. Sometimes Algren’s lyrical prose gets the better of him, and the ending is a little anti-climatic, but overall it’s a great book.
1Q84 by Haruki MurakamiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Murakami’s three-volume epic which follows two main characters: (1) Tengo, a math teacher, is caught up in a plot by a shifty editor to rewrite the fantasy novel of a teenage girl and market her as a prodigy, only to realize that the original manuscript may not have been fiction, and (2) Aomame, a fitness trainer who moonlights as an assassin who targets wife-beaters, suddenly finds herself living in a slightly alternate reality. As the plot unfolds, Tengo’s and Aomame’s worlds start to interconnect as Aomame is tasked to kill the leader of a powerful religious cult that is also trying to track down the true author of the fantasy novel, which contains secrets it doesn’t want revealed. It sounds like typical Murakami, and in many ways it is (except perhaps for all the explicit sex – which I don’t object to, but Murakami doesn’t usually go into this much detail or get this imaginative). But it’s also a frustrating read at times, partly because Murakami has a tendency to underdevelop the more fantastical elements of the story, but also because the prose is so full of repetition that it’s hard not to feel 1Q84 could have been half the length and still gotten its point across. On the plus side, the trade-off is a collection of very well-drawn characters, which does help sell the ending better.
Glasshouse by Charles StrossMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoy Stross, but I’ve been avoiding this title mainly because of the jacket blurb, which basically promotes it as a man-loses-memory-and-now-people-are-out-to-kill-him yarn. Which it is, but count on Stross to (1) set it in a post-human universe 700 years in the future and (2) use that as a springboard for contemporary social satire of gender politics and conformity via an experiment in which subjects are placed in a Stanford Prison-style panopticon polity meant to explore the “dark ages” of human history (i.e. the late 20th century). Even with all that, Stross is covering ground familiar to anyone who has read Philip K Dick or John Varley. On the other hand, Stross never pretends otherwise, and at least he does it with style and imagination.
The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip YanceyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay, this is not the kind of book most people would expect me to read, but I have my reasons – one of them being that I’d come across excerpts from it, and they whetted my curiosity. The book is basically an in-depth look at the four Gospels in order to get a handle of just who Jesus really was and the message he was trying to get across. And the object of the book was for Yancey, a Christian journalist, to reconcile the “real” Jesus with the various versions that churches and religious leaders tend to present him – i.e. the perfect Anglo-Saxon one you see in paintings, or the All-American one often invoked by the Christian Coalition, and so on and so forth. Whether yr a Christian or not, or whether you think Jesus was the Son Of God or just a guy trying to say let’s all be nice to each other for a change, it’s worth reading, if only to understand why a lot of people (especially politicians and televangelists) who throw around slogans like “What Would Jesus Do?” really have no idea just what he actually would do. It’s a fascinating exploration of not only what Jesus accomplished, but how humans tend to hear what they want to hear. That could well include this book, of course. But I will say this book gave me a healthier respect for Jesus than people like Jerry Fallwell ever did. Also, credit to Yancey for acknowledging his own doubts, skepticism and qualms about his own faith, instead of pretending he has all the answers.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis StevensonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve never actually read Stevenson before, and one reason I’ve never read this specific novella is because, between all the movie adaptations and its iconic pop-culture status, I already know the main plot twist central to the story. Consequently, it’s hard to judge the story objectively. It doesn’t help that I’m one of those uncultured people who find Victorian prose somewhat cumbersome. Anyway, it’s interesting to read the original story, and to compare it to the various screen versions. To be 100% honest, the main thing I really got out of it was being able to say I’ve read it, but I wouldn’t deny its status as a groundbreaking classic in the mad-scientist genre.
Hecklin’ Jekyll,
This is dF
