I don’t often think about this, but reading is a fundamentally strange act. Getting to know the mind—the cravings and humor—of someone else so thoroughly, only to yourself remain invisible in the margins… Reading is an act that is both solo and shared, where the self is subsumed, temporarily, into another person’s flood of ideas—only to reemerge afterwards more defined.
I can’t get enough of that feeling. I’ve never been able to get enough of that feeling—I’m a book junkie. Seriously: if books could only be bought in dark alleyways from guys with rotting teeth, bloodshot eyes, and mermaid tattoos, I would still have majored in English.
I haven’t done a post that was solely about a work of fiction since I gave a crash course on Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. This week, however, I finished three books that I want to blurb.
Let’s not dilly-dally, then. Numero Uno is Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine.
No, not Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of treachery on the high seas. Treasure Island!!!(the exclamation points are crucial) is the story of a girl (twenty-five, no goals, no job) coming across the original Treasure Island and obsessing over it. She attempts to remake her life according to its four cardinal virtues: Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and Horn-Blowing. She’s accompanied in her anticlimactic adventures by a parrot who should be saying “Steer the boat, girlfriend!” but will only actually say, “It’s big, it’s hot, and it’s back!”
The back cover of Treasure Island!!! said that it was “equal parts hilarious and terrifying.” I don’t really understand the terrifying part, but it was worthy of a few womanly chuckles. It was also one of the only books I’ve read recently with an intrinsically flawed narrator. That kind of narrator—the type who just can’t help screwing her life up—was popular in the 1800s (especially with the Russians), but doesn’t make as many appearances in our twenty-first century world. Maybe we’re not brave enough for what she has to teach us. For that reason alone, though (even if it wasn’t for the awesome title), I would recommend this book.
Numero Dos: Within the Flames, by Marjorie Liu.
Marjorie Liu is one of the authors who will be instructing me during Clarion. For that reason, I ventured out of my usual comfort zone, into (dah dah daaaaah) the Paranormal Romance section. And yes, the books had half-naked men on the covers. They also had creases on the spines from being well-read.
I chose Within the Flames from Liu’s pantheon of works, honestly, because the title made me laugh. While reading it, I discovered an author who can laugh at herself, as well as command an incredible versatility of description. Every single one of her characters felt like a real person, and the settings were visceral and easy to picture (even for someone who’s never squatted in an abandoned subway tunnel in New York).
I can totally imagine someone picking up Marjorie Liu’s books, looking at the half-naked dudes on the covers, and explaining dryly, “I read them for the gritty urban fantasy.” And that might, after all, be perfectly accurate: there were psychic dragons, blood-licking witches, and shapeshifters with split-personality disorder. Gritty urban fantasy was the name of the game.
Numero Tres: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami.
This is only the second Murakami book I’ve read (the first being a copy of After Dark that I snatched from my brother before he could return it to the library). Half cyberpunk, half Tolkien-esque fantasy…aside from Out of Oz, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is my favorite book I’ve read this year. It’s enigmatically gripping from the very first chapter, when a girl wearing all pink mouths “Proust” to the narrator and expects him to catch her drift.
The book tells a segmented story, teetering between two realities: one in a modern-day Tokyo rife with information wars, and the other in a walled town inhabited by lackluster citizens, their severed shadows, and the unicorns that carry their dreams. Gradually, the reader comes to understand that these two halves are profoundly interwoven, and actually tell a single story…but I won’t explain how. That would be like handing you an ice cream (pick your favorite flavor: mine is Mexican chocolate), and then shoving it onto your shoes.
Well, then (rubs hands together). That’s what I managed to read in between investigating forbidden planets and alien princesses (or, less metaphorically, working at the bookstore). Off you go, then, readers! Return to your regular lives. Leave your anonymity behind, and find strength of identity in either agreeing with me, or saying, “That girl is into some serious shite.”
Scoff if you like. Scoffing is part of the joy of life.
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