Short Fictions and Wonders: Fragile Things

'Fragile Things' is just as original and creative as all of Neil Gaiman's work, meaning very. I was excited to come across his book of short stories because I love the instant gratification of short stories. They take no commitment to read but give all the satisfaction and excitement of the ending. Often, they are wilder, more daring than full books as well. Neil Gaiman gives short stories his own twist.

His books are never planted firmly in reality, and his short stories soar away from it. One story is told from the point of view of October, one theorizes that the demons who torture in hell are simply the full circle transition of humans who have been sent there and tortured into the demons themselves, and another tells the story of Narnia’s Susan, who wonders why she was kept from Narnia in her old age. Neil Gaiman is the tricky sort of writer who plans out every word to later have relevance.
The only downside was that they’re in book format, and I inhaled the whole book in 2 days, and missed all those subtle Gaiman nuances.

My favorite story, which I did re-read, is entitled 'Harlequin Valentine' It begins with the trickster 'Harlequin', from the Italian Commedia dell'art, literally pinning his heart to the door of his obsession, the lovely Columbine. She pockets the heart in a Ziploc bag and Windex’s her door, and then proceeds to run errands and run into the disguised columbine throughout Valentines Day. She at last enters a diner, and requests a bottle of ketchup, hash browns and sneak knife, and eats poor Harlequins heart. She then pulls Harlequin into the street and claims his mask and cane, becoming harlequin as he fades into a bewildered human busboy only taking a smoke break outside the diner. I was pretty devastated at this point, but all's well that ends weird, apparently: he is ushered back inside and notices a plate with just one bite of meat left, and for reasons unknown to him, eats it, dropping one splatter of ketchup on his sleeve which forms a perfect red diamond, the harlequin trademark. And whistling, he goes to work.

I plan on re-reading all the stories when I have the chance, and am being Harlequin for Halloween. In conclusion, I never had a chance not to like this book, its Neil Gaiman. He does get a bit melancholy at times though, his stories rarely end on the fantastical note he uses throughout his fiction, and Gaiman seems to have a phobia of happy endings.
Next up: Octavian Nothing, The Best Book in the Known Universe
Aka
Should I Start Choosing Books I Can Make Up At Least One Complaint For?

A Movable Feast

I realized that I have only done one non-fiction so far, so I chose Ernest Hemingway’s 'A movable Feast' which actually, I read this summer. I was in a bookstore on a trip with my grandmother, who was already becoming suspicious of the quality of books I read (shed spotted my Sandman graphic novel) and when I held up Sedaris's 'When you are engulfed in flames' hopefully, she decided officially that id been reading 'immoral books' and cleaned the store out of its Hemingway selection. I don’t really know what her reasoning behind that was, but I know better than to argue with it. She later found out I had read 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand and was pleased, so I have to wonder if by 'immoral' she might have meant 'unimpressive'. The purpose of this paragraph is not to question my grandmother’s motives, as it may seem, but to explain that I really would never have read any Hemingway at all if my grandmother had not, um, 'encouraged' it.

So I started reading movable feast without a lot of anticipation, but once I opened it, I actually didn’t put it down. I read it in one afternoon, because Hemingway is an easy guy to read. Not easy as in unchallenging, easy as in very good. Probably it was all the hype, but he just struck me as a really great writer. Also, as the most impressive drinker EVER. And kind-of annoyingly self righteous, but GREAT WRITER. I think. A movable feast is a Hemingway’s auto biography of the time he spent in Paris with his first wife, his 'starving artist' years, although it has been proved that he was well off during those years.

The truth is, I’m still unsure of how I feel about this book. First off, I really don’t feel qualified to judge Hemingway on any level, and second off...He annoyed me. His writing didn’t annoy me, but the oh-so-effective and descriptive prose didn’t do much for me when I wasn’t sure about the main character. Literally, Hemingway himself annoyed me.
Maybe I’m just sore about how he treated F.Scott Fitzgerald, whose characterization I for some reason became attached to during the book.

This is probably the most superficial book review of any Hemingway novel ever, but what I really came away with was a sense of awe and disbelief in Hemingway’s drinking ability, and love for the title itself 'A Movable Feast', a very creative and beautiful metaphor for Paris.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

As it is printed on the cover, 'so long and thanks for all the fish' is the fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy. I had read the first two Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, but not the third, when I started the fourth, and I was a little afraid of being lost in the plot. Luckily, the reader can flip any of the books to any page, any paragraph and have about the same level of comprehension and confusion as someone who’s read the whole series religiously. About every other paragraph is satirizing some common issue, in fact the entire premise, that earth is destroyed and Arthur Dent, normal and unobtrusive descendent of the apes, must fend for himself as hitchhiker in the Galaxy. The day earth is destroyed Arthur is protesting the demolishing of his house to put up a bypass by laying in between his house and the bulldozer meant to destroy it, though the demolisher Mr.Prosser points out:
"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"

"How much?" said Arthur.

"None at all," said Mr. Prosser.

Arthur’s house does get demolished, and later that day, so does planet earth, on account of a hyper space bypass that really needed to go straight through where the earth was. Arthur escapes with his best friend, the alien Ford Prefect, my favorite character, Drunkard and experienced Hitchhiker. Every character is memorable and sympathetic, though the inanimate objects tend to have a lot more character and vigor than the actual characters. The best way to read these books is without any expectations or judgments at all, and all the faith you can muster up. The absolutely impressively, creatively random insanity that Douglas writes always manages to have a purpose, and tie mind-bogglingly (a very useful phrase in describing the hitchhikers trilogy) around to close up the story. Douglas tackles the greatest questions man kind has ever asked, from 'is there life outside of earth?' (yes, duh) to what is the answer to the meaning of life?' (The number 42,) to gods final farewell message (sorry for the inconvenience).
Despite being the most illuminating book ever written, 'so long and thanks for all the fish' also happens to be utterly without meaning, and arguably without a certainly cohesive strand of thought. This is acknowledged appropriately in the last line of the book: "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind."
I love Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" because it is the most feel-good series I have ever read, without any doubt one of the funniest, and ill admit it; they always leave me feeling a little enlightened, with a happy-Buddha smile on my face. So if I'm incomprehensively late on this book blog, it’s because I’m finding it hard to really care about grades when I've made my peace with my world being demolished to make alien transit easier.

Farenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 surprised me by being more character driven and accessible to the reader than id expected. Fahrenheit reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell in that it’s famous for its message, but the fact that it is a wonderfully written in all other aspects goes unmentioned.
So I loved Fahrenheit 451, but Ray Bradbury’s black and white, good and bad view of this dystopian future bothered me. When the three women sat around talking about pregnancy tie author sounds forced when he clears up any of humanity in these women. One defends having children with " ". She has to mention that her doctor says she doesn’t need a c-section when she chooses one? I found that sort of characterization unrealistic, which made it harder for me to really get into and believe in the books message, but overall the author does an amazing job of writing a believable dystopian warning.
I enjoyed the first few chapters the most, in which Montag meets Clarisse, and the transformation of Montag from brain dead to caring. My favorite part of the book, and the part where I decided I was going to like this book, is when Clarisse asks "Have you ever noticed that rain tastes like wine?" and leaves, and Montag tastes the rain himself. I think it is a perfect initiation for Montag into the role of protecting instead of burning books.

Sharp Teeth

I picked up 'Sharp Teeth' by Toby Barlow mainly because Nick Hornby and Christopher Moore gave it good reviews, but also a little bit because it is about werewolves. I cannot resist werewolves. However it follows much more in the footsteps of 'Steppenwolf' by Herman Hesse than traditional werewolf fare, the were bit being a metaphor for escapism. Once again having stumbled into a book focusing on humanism I was proud of myself for my uncanny ability to pick books about humanism, until I realized that very few books do not revolve around human problems as most writers and readers, are human. And that if I were to find one it would probably be in my stupid werewolf book. That was my revelation of the day.

I realized I was going to like 'Sharp Teeth' before I started the book, on the authors quote page. The quotes were as follows:

'There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.'

By Walter Benjamin, and

'His hair was perfect.'

By Warren Zevon.

These quotes sum up 'Sharp teeth' well, the 'werewolves' interact in every way (enemy, lover, best friend, betrayer, etc., most play more than one of these roles) their wolf selves immolating the actions of their human selves. Their struggle is much more the internal fight to care that what they fight for is immaterial and let go than the gang wars between the packs themselves.
Toby Barlow writes in free verse, which helps emphasis his rhetoric, I caught the main metaphor many more times than I would have had he not devoted entire lines to a single word, etc. The story line flows.

All the characters live in Los Angeles, most are Mexican immigrants. The werewolves form multiple gangs, "Packs", that fight each other for territory and survival, and Barlow spares the reader no pain from the deaths. The book is told from a rotating perspective of most of the characters, and culminates in a giant battle that leaves two survivors (who they are a big surprise). 'Sharp Teeth' shatters the usual villain-hero archetype, be3cause the reader is forced to see from every perspective I sympathized with all the characters and wanted all of them to win. The kicker is that the only way they survive is by killing the other side. This no-win scenario drew me in and broke my heart multiple times, but I wouldn’t change it.

When You Check In The Hotel Room

Note: I was reading "When You Are Engulfed In Flames" by David Sedaris when you first mentioned an independent reading book so i thought 'hey, non-fiction too! (sort-of)' and i picked it. Unfortunately i also finished it before i began blogging, so for now I am going to break the book up into three parts for each blog and talk about what i expected to happen as i was reading, etc.

Much like his other work, 'Engulfed In Flames' is a series of shorts of David Sedaris's life.I had read Sedaris before i read 'Engulfed', so i had some idea what to expect, namely, anything. Also to never, ever read him in public. Because as anyone who has read Sedaris will tell you, he is a very, very funny man. What really made me choose David Sedaris for this particular occasion is that his writing is all about the human experience. Reading his stories you will rarely find a moral, but there is more there than humor. David Sedaris has the guts to write about pieces of the human experience that most people are to ashamed or unobservant to admit even exist, and if they do, they certainly don't apply to themselves. That's why Sedaris rings true, that's why he is so funny, and that's why i should get a great grade on this reading blog even though its a day late and i chose a kind of inappropriate comedy as my independent reading book.

emo(tional)

Born & Breathed, healthy seed.
Too tall for my age, head wound up in clouds.
Enraptured by might, impeded my sight.
Lucky; there's more to detour said plight.
Hopeful, ecstatic.
Vengeful, dramatic.
and shed be beautiful if she werent so ugly,
Desperate in her aloofness.

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