On the Road by Jack Kerouac

On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.

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This book is a study in the ridiculous. The characters were ridiculous and the plot line was labyrinthine and pointless. This book is similar to a train wreck - you should look away, but you can’t. The narrative made me laugh, but not necessarily because the situations were humorous. I think I laughed because I didn’t really know what else to do. At first, I hoped that maybe it would get better, but even a quarter of the way in, I knew it wouldn’t. In the end, I was left completing indifferent to the whole thing. I’m not sure why this book is considered a classic.

2016 Reading Challenge: A book about a road trip

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member, including Addie, and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.

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I know as a self-professed “book nerd” I am supposed to love this book. I mean, it’s written by William Faulkner, one of the greatest American writers. Of course I should love it, right? Right? Unfortunately, I cannot say that I do. I didn’t hate the novel, but I didn’t love it either. I found the basic plot horrifying. This family spends the entire book trying to bury the recently deceased Addie, which takes days upon days to accomplish. The corpse is almost lost in a river, almost burned in a barn fire, and is delayed so much that the sink is undeniable by anyone who passes near it. While I get that Addie’s family was trying to fulfill her dying wish, at some point enough is enough.

I did like how Faulkner continually changed perspective throughout the novel. Each of his characters is unique and had their own parallel story, each I assume represents a way of living or dying. The language takes some getting used to, as he employes a heavy Southern dialect. This book is very “Southern,” not just because of it’s setting, but also because of its religious connotations and ideas of “proper” behavior. This naturally leads to rampant hypocrisy, all done covertly, of course. Nevertheless, the story is at times confusing. Some events lack context, at times the thoughts of characters are jumbled or refer to things that happened but not explained, and I was often left with the feeling that I missed something. I don’t mind having to think about a narrative while I read it. I guess I just prefer to think about it because it is thought provoking, not because I’m trying to put a puzzle together that is clearly missing a few pieces.

While I feel that Faulkner’s writing has merit, it’s just not my cup of tea. Like I said, in the end I am indifferent to this book. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it either. I think this novel falls quite nicely into the “to each their own” category. Some people will love it, others will not. You will need to decide for yourself which side you fall on.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.

Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Imbued with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion — and movingly read in his own voice Angela's Ashes is a glorious audiobook that bears all the marks of a classic.

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I am the type of reader who ALWAYS finishes a book once I have started it. Even if a book is horrible, I always hold out hope that it will somehow get better. I suffer through to the end, so I never have to wonder "what if?" Angela's Ashes was the one exception to this rule. No matter how I tried, I just could not get through this novel the first time I attempted to read it. Having grown up in a large, Irish-American family, there were many things I could relate to in Frank's story, but I just couldn't get past what I perceived as endless whining. I got it. Your life sucked, you were poor, your father was a drunk and unreliable. Join the club! I failed to see how Frank's experience was so different from my own and the millions of other's that came before him.

Because of my predilection for finishing books, no matter how terrible they are, there was only one option available to me if I was going to complete the 2015 Reading Challenge. I knew that I would have to finally get through Angela's Ashes. I decided to go with the audiobook, thinking that when my frustration level got too high, I could distract myself with the author's accent. I'm a sucker for accents. It worked, and I was finally able to get through the book.

I still don't love the novel, but I don't hate it as much as I did the first time I tried to read it. It didn't feel so much like a "woe is me" tale as it did the first time around, and I was able to appreciate the humor, disappointment, and determination of Frank's story much more. It is unlikely that I will ever recommend this novel as a "must read," nor am I likely to seek out its sequels, but I am happy to say that I made it through it and no longer have it hanging over my head as an unfinished book. I have a new appreciation for the novel, but it will still never make my favorite books list. 

2015 Reading Challenge: A book you started, but never finished

Slaugherhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, an ill-trained American soldier and his experience in World War II

War is inevitable, and it is absurd. The main theme of the book focuses on this. Billy Pilgrim is a prisoner-of-war at the hands of the Germans. He is captured and put in a disused slaughterhouse, which eventually proves to be a safe ‘shelter’ when his life is spared during the bombing of Dresden.

Billy is a fatalist. Barely out of childhood, his lack of enthusiasm for war and the eventual consequences of the war on his life is what makes up the story of Billy’s life. Vonnegut uses Billy to show that war is unnecessarily glorified, due to which people overlook the real tragedies and trauma that war actually brings with it.

Billy’s journey through time and space, his accounts of the bombing at Dresden, and his life as a prisoner of war, all highlight the central theme in the novel, war is nothing but another form of hell. Dark humour and irony is what makes Slaughterhouse-Five unique and a perfect example of creative accomplishment. It conveys the bitterness of war, while providing comic relief along with crucial understanding of the working of the human mind.

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This was an interesting read for me. It is definitely in the same vain as Catch-22 in it's use of irony, humor, and an almost senseless story line, although I enjoyed this book much more than Catch-22. The story is borderline absurd, and yet Billy Pilgrim is an interesting character. He is hardly the typical leading man, yet one can't refrain from feeling sorry for him and his plight to do the best he can with the hand he has been dealt. 

There are of course many parallel's between the absurdity of Billy Pilgrim's life and the war itself. It's lack of structure mirrors the chaos of war. There is no real central story line and the story jumps back and forth between past, present, future, Earth, and Tralfamdor. In a word, it's...pointless. Just like war. The phrase "so it goes" is repeated after every mention of death in the novel, seemingly to point out that death is inevitable for us all and that the universe couldn't care less about the death of any individual. Another parallel. It's an anti-war novel, but even the story itself can't seem to pin down it's exact identity. Is it a Science-Fiction novel? A war novel? Something else entirely? 

But perhaps that's the point. Trying to wrap your head around something so incomprehensible as war, is like finding yourself trapped in an endless, inescapable time loop, leading nowhere (except perhaps death). So it goes.

2015 Reading Challenge: A banned book

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that "every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section".

His family is another inspiration. "You Can't Kill the Rooster" is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

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This is my second David Sedaris' book, and I have to say that I am becoming quite the fan. I find David's writing to be quite humorous, and his use of irony fantastic. I also have a very sarcastic sense of humor and I often felt that David said exactly what I would have been thinking had I found myself in the same situation. He paints very lively caricatures (or maybe portraits is a better word??) of himself, his friends, and his family. Many of the stories in this book are laugh-out-loud funny, and I think it is easy to dismiss them as just another funny story, but often there was a deeper meaning. 

Through humor, David explores the issues of acceptance, identify, love, relationships, etc. I think humor is often used to make less savory things more palpable or easy to digest. Stripped of their humor, some of these stories are truly heartbreaking, and I think it's the humor that allows us as the reader (and maybe David as the writer) to explore and share these experiences. An overall good read.


2015 Reading Challenge: A book of short stories

The Shining by Stephen King

Terrible events occur at an isolated hotel in the off season, when a small boy with psychic powers struggles to hold his own against the forces of evil that are driving his father insane.

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Confession: This is the first Stephen King novel I have ever read. I have purposely avoided reading any of his books until now. 

Why? Because I've seen several of the movies based on his novels and they freak me out! The Shining still ranks as one of the scariest movies I have ever seen in my life. Not because there is tons of blood and guts, but because it is a normal enough situation that it could almost happen. The story borders just enough on the edge of reality to make it truly terrifying. I always said that Stephen King's head was not a place that I would ever want to be lost in, nor is he someone I would want to come across in a dark alley. This is grossly unfair to Stephen King, because I am sure he is a very nice person, but his imagination scares me. 

This book was no different from the movie and there were some nights when I truly regretted reading it just before bedtime. It is fairly similar to the movie story line (probably because King wrote the screenplay too), but certainly not a carbon copy. The book was everything a good thriller should be, and if you are a fan of the genre, then King is certainly right up your alley. I can't say that I "enjoyed" the book, because honestly, it creeped me out big time, but I did like it for what it was.

2015 Reading Challenge: A book that scares you

Moby Dick: or, the White Whale by Herman Melville

“Call me Ishmael.”

Thus begins one of the most famous journeys in literature—the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod and its embattled, monomaniacal Captain Ahab. Ishmael quickly learns that the Pequod’s captain sails for revenge against the elusive Moby Dick, a sperm whale with a snow-white hump and mottled skin that destroyed Ahab’s former vessel and left him crippled. As the Pequod sails deeper through the nights and into the sea, the divisions between man and nature begin to blur — so do the lines between good and evil, as the fates of the ship’s crewmen become increasingly unclear....

Melville’s classic tale of obsession and the sea, one of the most important and enduring masterworks of nineteenth-century literature, Moby Dick is a riveting drama, exploring rage, hope, destiny, and the deepest questions of moral truth.

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Wow, does this book have everything! Including the kitchen sink! I would call this novel a cross between an adventure story and a whaling handbook and encyclopedia. Melville tackles anything and everything related to whaling in this book - geography, history (both Biblical and Ancient), whaling traditions and folklore, types of whales (down to their minute details), anatomy of whales (specifically the Sperm and Right Whales), whale art, whale cuisine, whaling tools and tricks, the laws and etiquette of whaling, and lots more (there are over 100 chapters, after all!). 

Interspersed between these informative chapters is the story of Ishmael, an experienced merchant sailor, who decides to try his hand at whaling. He enlists on the ship, Pequod, unaware of its captain's ulterior agenda. The narrative is a mix between poetry and prose, and introduces us to some wild and unique characters. The narrative portion of this novel is definitely an adventure story with plenty of suspense, action, and conflict. 

Moby Dick remains a mixed bag for me. It is almost Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in nature, housing two unique and separate books within its covers. One part essentially focused on educating the reader on all things whale related (the informational side), and the second encompassing Ishmael's narrative (the narrative side). While I found some of the informational side interesting (namely how a whale was captured and what they did after capturing it) and relevant to the narrative side, a lot of it seemed superfluous to me. Why do I really need to read several chapters on depictions of whales in art, and how they are or are not accurate? What about whale cuisine? Is this a novel or food blog? At times I felt like I was reading a textbook, rather than a novel.

These tedious chapters amounted to nothing more than tangents (at least in my opinion) that often seemed to interrupt the narrative just as it was starting to gain momentum. This gave the narrative side of the novel a very stop-and-go, jerky flow. I really wasn't expecting the majority of the book to be made up of general whaling information. If you were to remove all but the chapters related to the narrative side, you wouldn't be left with much. I was also surprised that the White Whale, perhaps one of the most famous animal antagonists, doesn't appear "in person" until the very end of the novel. He is frequently alluded to throughout the novel, but doesn't actually become part of the action until the last few chapters. I find this interesting, especially since the novel is named for him. I just thought he would play a more integral role in the narrative. I also found the ending to be rather abrupt. All the build up throughout the novel, and the story was over in what felt like a blink of an eye.

Overall, I liked the book. I found some parts to be tedious and textbook-like, but enjoyed the action packed narrative side of the novel. I can appreciate why this book is considered a classic and I am excited to be able to cross it off my Classics To Read list. 

2015 Reading Challenge: A book with non-human characters