In the last two months, I've read quite a few books, but I'm afraid I can only right now remember four of them: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King, 1984 by George Orwell, and, finished today, So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld. Because half of these books were sadly read some time ago, I'm going to keep my discussion of each of them limited and, instead, promise to do better next time.
As I mentioned, I took a trip to South America in the middle of April; I went to Peru and spent a few days in a very small village and helped repair destructio
n from an earthquake three years ago. In packing, I somehow got the idea in my head that I'd have plenty of free time, so I brought three books and, of course, only managed to get partway through one of them. That one was Kevin by Lionel Shriver. An epistolary novel, this book records letters written by a woman to her estranged husband a few years after their son, Kevin, kills a dozen people one day at his school. It's a harrowing read, if I can use that cliche term, and extremely emotional. Whenever I picked the book up, I had a hard time setting it down but, I admit, once I did, it was three or four days before I set to reading it again. It was a hard read at times because of the honest realism of the woman's struggle to be a loving mother and figure out how to react to the horror that was her son's life. So far, I think this book might be one of my favorites of the year.Nightmares and Dreamscapes took a while for me to get through, as well, but not because it was difficult or too emotional: it's just a large book. A collection of King's stories, I read these
during my lunch breaks at work and, in fact, received some gentle ridicule for that. My boss joked that it seemed even I needed some light "beach" reading once in a while, and while I laughed and agreed with him at the time, I've since decided that even King's short stories aren't necessarily light reading. Images of a lone, stray eye pulling itself out of a drain, of a woman stalked by her late husband turned zombie, of towns that suck you in and never let you leave... Perhaps King hadn't created a literary masterpiece, but he's certainly a master of horror, even when locked into only a few pages. His timing is perfect and his imagery stunning. This isn't my favorite work of his, but that certainly doesn't mean it's not worth while.There's a few books I like to read every year or two to see what themes and images stick out to me this time. Ender's Game is one, To Kill a Mockingbird another. And one that constan
tly calls out to me is Orwell's 1984. I first read this book my freshman year of college, just for fun and in order to start filling out my literary canon knowledge. Now it's become one of my regular reads; as soon as it's been long enough for me to start to forget what it's about, I pick it up and am yet again amazed. This time it was the torture scenes nearing the end of the book that chilled me the most. O'Brien's cool and collected personality in the face of the horrendous acts being done to Winston... And most of all, Room 101. Perhaps I had blocked Room 101 out of my memory from when I last read it, but the horrors there shook me anew and I had a hard time continuing. I love this book (cue gunshot to the head).I had the house to myself this Memorial Day weekend, and while others might use that opportunity to host a few wild parties, my first instinct was to stock up on books and use the solitude to my best advantage. Unfortunately, as I get older and have more responsibilities, I can no longer devour books the way I did when I was young, so I only got through one book (so far!): So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld. A young adult book, I'm a somewhat fan of Westerfeld's novels. His Uglies trilogy started out strong and interesting but lost me halfway through the second book. (Then again, I did read all three, so that might say something for Westerfeld after all..)
Like a lot of Westerfeld's works, So Yesterday takes ideas common to the youth of today and adds a little twist. What if all the fads and hip ideas coming down the grapevine were actually controlled, hunted out, and specifically targeted at different demographics? That doesn't sound too strange: it's what PR firms do every day. But what if kids known as "cool hunters" were a part of that? This story follows one of those cool hunters as he gets involved with an "Innovator" (one of those rare people who make up something cool all on their own and then shortly see it everywhere from Youtube to the six o'clock news); the duo shortly realize that maybe not everything about forced consumerism is working as well as it should.
While definitely a fun, interesting and at times easily philosophical novel, unfortunately So Yesterday sometimes reads ... well, a little yesterday. The amazing technology described by the narrator is a little dated (his phone can take ten whole seconds of video!) and the idea that a seventeen year old has a full time job running around NYC looking for cool things might be a little unapproachable. Nevertheless, Westerfeld does a good job of making his characters realistic despite their unreal surroundings. This book fits nicely into our modern culture obsessed with fashion, celebrities and technology and provides a slightly off way of looking at life. Recommended!
