Taking "Read or Die" a bit too literally.

[rax]

I think I might have read five books in the last seven days. Graduate school is kind of insane. I just keep reading. I take the train so that I can read on my commute, I read when I get home, I read over dinner, I read when I wake up. Yesterday I did three things: go to work, go to class, and read a novel from start to finish. I'm hosting a party tomorrow (you should all come, if you're local: Catgirl Goth Rave!) and I'm sort of afraid that I am going to get up and dance for four hours and then sit down in the midst of flashing lights and thumping beats and keep reading. For extra bonus points, I'm reading at least one apocalyptic book a week, sometimes two. All of humanity dies inside my head on a weekly basis. It can stop now.

Here are some mini-reviews of some of the books I've been reading:

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart: Apocalyptic novel written in 1947. Totally made me cry, and gave me nightmares too! But brilliantly written, especially in how it weaves through time at different speeds. It's set up as a triptych much like Leibowitz is, but with something in between to sate my desire for continuity a bit more than Miller is willing to give me. Genuinely suspenseful while thought-provoking; genuinely sympathetic characters that I nonetheless wanted to reach into the book and smack around. The pacing had me a little suspicious from a realism perspective but I was happy to forgive those little doubts to embrace the book as a whole.

Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller: Post-nuclear apocalyptic novel written in the Fifties. Also engaging, and with a fascinating treatment of a post-nuclear Catholic church and the quest to rebuild knowledge. Essentially three related novellas; harder to swallow than most apocalypses without acceptance of the supernatural. While a couple of the devices felt like Miller was trying to make a symbol and not showing me where the symbol pointed, it's still a book that will stick in my head for quite a while. It's also a breezy and pleasurable read that I would recommend to anyone who is really into books. (Books as objects or symbols, as opposed to reading texts.) If I wanted something that really dug into what language and religion would be like after the collapse of civilization, though, I'd pass on Canticle's too-familiar Church and Earth Abides's comfortable familiarity as well, and go directly to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald: Heavy-handed nuclear apocalypse novel, written as the diary of Push-Button Operator X-127, who is trained to push buttons that launch nuclear missiles and lives in a bunker 3500 feet below the surface of the earth. A little on the didactic side, but genunely engaging, at least in part because it makes such good use of the diary form. I don't know that I'll re-read it --- I've gotten the message that nuclear war is bad and that mutually assured destruction is crazy fragile --- but it makes me want to re-read A Handmaid's Tale to compare the diary forms, and pushes me to finally get to We.

Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth: I read this book purely for pleasure. Not for class, not for work, not for the class I'm teaching, nothing. Just curious about it. Well worth the time spent --- it's a number of stories striated together like heart muscle, all of them interconnected but independent, overlapping but discontiguous. I think she shares a lot of my influences and admirations from how she considers names and labels and careful descriptions secondary to tricks of language and trying to cut into motivations and compulsions. [1] There's a little Pynchon-Wallace conspiracy nut in here, too, just enough to satisfy the taste without getting lost inside a Mason & Dixon or somesuch. Her flash fiction is hit or miss for me, though the hits are way on target; this novel was definitely a solid hit. Apparently she's reading in Boston in December, I'll probably go.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto: Featuring a minor passing character, this was technically not entirely for pleasure, though I mostly read it because liquidjewel  recommended it more than anything else. It reminded me a lot of Norwegian Wood by Murakami, though more compact, feminine, and careful. Apocalypse in microcosm, death before its time, the unexpected sloth of desperation. Murakami caught the sloth and just the slowness better, but Yoshimoto's characters were much more engaging to me. It comes with a free short story, 1/3 the words and with extra magical realism!

McSweeney's 19: This is the box with a bunch of old propaganda and then some stories and a novella by T. C. Boyle. The novella, Wild Child, is wonderful and I highly recommend it. For the most part, the fiction in the collection seems to be actively chafing against realism, working against the boundaries of the completely absurd with a chisel. In some ways this is awesome, and the shorter bursts of it are actually rather pleasant, especially Adam Golaski's three-page reinterpretations of classic paintings. (He's now an editor at Flim Forum press; I bought a couple of their first anthologies, I need to read those. Also, around ten years ago, he opined at a poetry slam that he couldn't stick his dick into another dimension. Remembering this allowed me to totally embarrass him at Readercon. :) One or two of the pieces of short fiction just bounced off of me, though; I'm actually working on a paper focusing on this issue of McSweeney's, [2] along with Issue 17, right now. I had previously started this issue but given up when two stories in a row bounced and never made it to the novella; I'm glad I came back.

OK, I'll stop at six. If you're local and want to borrow any of these, let me know!

[1] At least, these are things I try to do. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily as successful. :)

[2] LJ's spellcheck says that McSweeney's might have meant "Waxwings." Sadly, the band name is already taken.

Comments

[laura47.livejournal.com]

Kitchen i read that for class last year! oh, i think i never gave the prof his copy back.

did you get my sms yesterday?

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oh hey! Well, the answer doesn't really fit in 140 characters, but I'll try anyway :)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I still do not understand why the _Read or Die_ TV series was not called _Better Read than Dead_. I may have complained about this before.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Earth Abides and Canticle? In one week?

Time for some printed prozac. Take 2 Pratchetts, stat!

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Canticle is one of my faves.

To elaborate

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

When my brother says something stupid I call him "A simple tomater woman."

[rax.livejournal.com]

Not to me! That's brilliant.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the next thing on my list is Cormac McCarthy's _On The Road._

Re: To elaborate

[rax.livejournal.com]

But will you baptize him?

[oonh.livejournal.com]

A. I should be at the catgirl goth rave this year (with the three ear dealie again)
B. I haven't been reading as much as I like: though I've been listening to some bad scifi audiobooks lately.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read that for my class last year. It's actually a pretty quick and enjoyable read. I had trouble putting it down.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

I read Canticle for Leibowitz randomly for fun in college. The interesting mix of Church and Physics was comforting and familiar.

[ab3nd.livejournal.com]

Quick, yes. Enjoyable? I found it to be unremittingly bleak, and enjoyed Canticle a lot more.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

You haven't read We yet? You're gonna love We.

Let me know when you've read We and I will as I have been threatening to do for years post the entirety of Zamyatin's Greatest Short Essay Ever Written to my LJ.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I am odd? Also, the class discussions may have influenced how I felt about the book. I liked Canticle as well, and it would have fit right into this class since we were talking about religion and literature, but that wasn't one of the books we read. Comparing the two might be interesting though.

Dear raxvulpine, please read this book soon so we can talk about it in more detail on your journal.

[rax.livejournal.com]

OK! In theory I have until Wednesday the 26th to read it, but I'll probably finish well before that.

[rax.livejournal.com]

OK, read it, go ahead.

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

Me for Canticle for Leibowitz! I tried to just add it to my bookswim (http://www.bookswim.com/) pool but I have filled my 50 slots again and they haven't shipped my next package yet. (Whoever decided that the book pool should have a maximum of fifty slots is an idiot.)

I guess I might see you tomorrow, though lying on the couch watching media is awfully tiring.

[jackbishop.livejournal.com]

Huh. Level 7 seems to get around an awful lot for what is, AFAICT, a pretty obscure book. Not bad, though, as nuclear-war fiction goes.

maybe useful for your paper

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/golaski.htm

http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/worse.html

http://www.flimforum.blogspot.com/

http://www.rosemetalpress.com/News/news.html

[ab3nd.livejournal.com]

I rather liked We, despite it having been recommended to me by Ayn Rand-worshiping Masons.

[ab3nd.livejournal.com]

50 books? Pshaw, I measure my unread book queue by linear feet of shelf space. I'm now so far behind on my list that I can either do nothing but read for the rest of my life, or never die. As to which option is more tempting...

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I *also* have yards of shelf space of unread books. In fact, when I first joined bookswim, there was a 200-book pool limit, which I *also* filled with essentially no effort. Who on earth do they expect to use a book rental service? It is not people who have only fifty books they intend to read sometime in the future.

Netflix does this right--I currently have 375 movies in my queue and counting.

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

P.S. I bet this describes so many of us! http://wondermark.com/442/

Re: To elaborate

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

No, he's not enough of a two headed radioactive mutant second coming of Jesus.

Re: maybe useful for your paper

[rax.livejournal.com]

Wow, I think that might have been the easiest paper research I ever did. Thanks, anonymous commenter!

[rax.livejournal.com]

My professor thinks the three best nuclear war novels are Level 7, Canticle for Leibowitz, and Riddley Walker. Personally, I'd replace Level 7 with On The Beach, but I hadn't read the Roshwald, so I suppose it's for the best. I think part of the problem is that it's put out through an academic press, rather than through "We Sell Millions Of Cheap Paperbacks Inc." Assuming, anyway, you consider its lack of popularity to be a problem. :)

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the bleak.

Re: To elaborate

[rax.livejournal.com]

He's just not trying hard enough. He clearly needs to sew gamma sources into the shoulders of his shirts! All the cool kids are doing it!

[rax.livejournal.com]

Come to the party! You can always sit around reading if you want. :P

Re: To elaborate

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

No way, voluntary incineration for those who've been exposed to too much radiation is for the cool kids. Stuffy old monks just don't want people to have all that fun.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

The word that I was purposefully not using in my response was hope. We talked quite a bit about hope, and how hopeful or hopeless the story was. And, yes, the story itself is written to be utterly hopeless. This is the end of all things. Everything is dead, humanity is becoming less and less human, and very soon everyone who is still alive will either freeze or starve to death. But on the other hand, the whole thing is shot through with hopefulness. Of not quite dying yet.

We spent quite a bit of time trying to put a name to this “fire” the father and son are carrying, and hope was one of the possibilities. Also, humanity, and goodness. There was one student who was also quite sure that it was Christianity. Very very sure. I don’t know if the idea is supposed to be able to be reduced to one certain thing, I expect it’s meant to ambiguous.

Canticle is also hopefully, but in a different way. The feeling of hope is replaced by the reality of hope. Humanity isn’t going to die off. They’ve survived this all before, and some of them are going off into the safety of space anyway. The Road doesn’t have any road map for what happens next. Most likely we all die, but holding on to hope is the only thing possible. The other choice is death.

The class I read The Road for was a religion class, so we talked quite a bit about what the various religious imagery throughout the book meant. Especially the overall absence of god. Basically, humanity got themselves into this mess, and it is their own fault, not some act of god. I was also interested by all the interaction between fire and ice.

Anyway, I didn’t find the book altogether depressing.

[streetmakarov.livejournal.com]

:)
can quote in my blog?

[rax.livejournal.com]

I read We a while ago and failed to follow up here, oops.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Go right ahead. :)