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davramlocke's Reviews (777)
A dystopian society that masks itself as a utopia in a book shelved in the children's section of your local library. I suppose that's what you'd call this. It's light on violence, shows the world through teenage eyes, and tries to teach a lesson about life and love and...whatever.
The cynical side of me wants to scoff at the lessons imparted in The Giver. Half of me thinks, why not embrace the Sameness, a life without color, without love, without the things that some would argue make life worth living. As someone always on the outside, this seems positive to me. No more mockery. No more heartache. No more pain. No more feeling like there isn't a place for you because genetics and science have ensured that you indeed have a very specific, proscribed place.
And of course the other half of me says, I'm not living in a world where I can't see a blue sky or feel rain fall or taste cold beer.
But who really knows. The Giver is fiction. We can't say what a world of carbon copy individuals with strict time tables would be like. In the book, the main character Jonas is exposed to the truths of the world, given memories of the past by The Giver. His advantage is a knowledge of what's on both sides of the fence. But as readers we don't benefit from a pre-ignorance of colors and family and love. We see the Sameness and it immediately bring out feelings of negativity because it steals our individuality, something we in the West particularly prize. But who can say whether it's right or not? We don't have an experiment to measure how right or wrong being the Same could be.
This is definitely the type of book that anyone can read, and it does not matter if you're assigned it in high school English or if you just pick it up off the shelves as an adult. It's a thought provoker, and so few books published today seem to be that.
The cynical side of me wants to scoff at the lessons imparted in The Giver. Half of me thinks, why not embrace the Sameness, a life without color, without love, without the things that some would argue make life worth living. As someone always on the outside, this seems positive to me. No more mockery. No more heartache. No more pain. No more feeling like there isn't a place for you because genetics and science have ensured that you indeed have a very specific, proscribed place.
And of course the other half of me says, I'm not living in a world where I can't see a blue sky or feel rain fall or taste cold beer.
But who really knows. The Giver is fiction. We can't say what a world of carbon copy individuals with strict time tables would be like. In the book, the main character Jonas is exposed to the truths of the world, given memories of the past by The Giver. His advantage is a knowledge of what's on both sides of the fence. But as readers we don't benefit from a pre-ignorance of colors and family and love. We see the Sameness and it immediately bring out feelings of negativity because it steals our individuality, something we in the West particularly prize. But who can say whether it's right or not? We don't have an experiment to measure how right or wrong being the Same could be.
This is definitely the type of book that anyone can read, and it does not matter if you're assigned it in high school English or if you just pick it up off the shelves as an adult. It's a thought provoker, and so few books published today seem to be that.
Murakami's first book...the one he decided to write after coming home from a baseball game where he suddenly had the epiphany that he could, in fact, write a book, despite never having real aspirations to do so. The book that launched the Rat Trilogy, and a career that would touch millions of people all over the world. This is monumental to me, particularly as this book isn't that easy to come by.
But is it good? Murakami has claimed several times that his first two books were warm ups, and that going back to them now, he finds them to be amateurish and it wasn't until Wild Sheep Chase that he started coming into his own. I can see why he would think that, after reading through Hear the Wing Sing in the span of a day. It's more of a novella than a novel, but that doesn't mean it isn't good, and if this is what amateur writers should be shooting for, then it's going to be much more difficult to get published than I'd have ever thought.
So yes, Hear the Wind Sing is good. It's not his best, certainly, but it's his writing through and through, and that makes it pure quality. It's more disjointed than any of his other work, and the idea of a story is never really present here. The novel follows its protagonist basically through one summer of his life, jumping around seemingly at random. We meet several different characters, all of them somewhat strange and important to the protagonist. And what's really kind of remarkable is that this book sets a tone for nearly every one of Murakami's later works. The protagonist is kind of odd, likes music, likes beer, doesn't fit in to the norms of the day necessarily. He meets an equally strange girl who isn't beautiful but who has something that catches his eye and heart. He often reminisces about former girlfriends. He has a strange friend with whom he exchanges banter and often more meaningful conversation. These are the things that make up a Murakami novel, often with something supernatural thrown in for good measure. You would think after a dozen or so of these that the writing or structure would start to bore me, but it never does. I continue to revel in the words and images that Murakami blooms in my mind, and I'll continue to do so until one of us dies. That's not meant to sound grim!
But is it good? Murakami has claimed several times that his first two books were warm ups, and that going back to them now, he finds them to be amateurish and it wasn't until Wild Sheep Chase that he started coming into his own. I can see why he would think that, after reading through Hear the Wing Sing in the span of a day. It's more of a novella than a novel, but that doesn't mean it isn't good, and if this is what amateur writers should be shooting for, then it's going to be much more difficult to get published than I'd have ever thought.
So yes, Hear the Wind Sing is good. It's not his best, certainly, but it's his writing through and through, and that makes it pure quality. It's more disjointed than any of his other work, and the idea of a story is never really present here. The novel follows its protagonist basically through one summer of his life, jumping around seemingly at random. We meet several different characters, all of them somewhat strange and important to the protagonist. And what's really kind of remarkable is that this book sets a tone for nearly every one of Murakami's later works. The protagonist is kind of odd, likes music, likes beer, doesn't fit in to the norms of the day necessarily. He meets an equally strange girl who isn't beautiful but who has something that catches his eye and heart. He often reminisces about former girlfriends. He has a strange friend with whom he exchanges banter and often more meaningful conversation. These are the things that make up a Murakami novel, often with something supernatural thrown in for good measure. You would think after a dozen or so of these that the writing or structure would start to bore me, but it never does. I continue to revel in the words and images that Murakami blooms in my mind, and I'll continue to do so until one of us dies. That's not meant to sound grim!
I was excited when I saw this graphic novel compilation. I love stories about imagination and delusion and people who...well, kick ass. I Kill Giants appeared to be right up that particular alley. It stars a pre-teen girl named Barbara who is geeky and nerdy and proud and who also, in her spare time, kills giants with her great hammer Covaleski.
Barbara isn't a normal pre-teen girl, a fact that the writers somewhat shove down the readers throats by constantly pointing out the vacuous, chatterboxes lining the halls of her school who incessantly talk about celebrities and cute boys and etc etc etc... Barbara, on the flip side, likes to play Dungeons and Dragons and conconts strange mythologies. It's difficult to say that she's different in an age where different is often considered chic, a term that renders the difference of different completely invalid. But at her school, Barbara is a black sheep, and her exclusion from popular society is evident. This makes her both likeable and naturally brings about a sense of pity because she doesn't get along with the other girls. Nevermind the fact that most readers of this graphic novel would probably be in the same boat. I suppose had it not felt so contrived, this mechanic could have worked better, but it feels a little cliche at this point. Yes, Barbara is an outcast. We get it.
The giant-killing thing is the obvious draw here, but there's frankly not enough of it. Barbara kills one giant in the entire series, and it doesn't even end up being a real giant but rather a metaphor for something else that also feels cliche and over-used.
Mostly, I'm disappointed by I Kill Giants. I expected something more than one long and disappointing metaphor for a girl's struggle against dealing with reality. And even if such a message is to be conveyed, it can be done in a less obvious manner. The style is great, there is plenty of comedy and personality to the cast of characters, and there are plenty of asian influences that make it lovable, but the manner in which the actual story, the part that matters, is told is too blunt and in a way misleading for this to be a great comic. Perhaps we can expect more from Kelly later on. I'd certainly give his next effort a look.
Barbara isn't a normal pre-teen girl, a fact that the writers somewhat shove down the readers throats by constantly pointing out the vacuous, chatterboxes lining the halls of her school who incessantly talk about celebrities and cute boys and etc etc etc... Barbara, on the flip side, likes to play Dungeons and Dragons and conconts strange mythologies. It's difficult to say that she's different in an age where different is often considered chic, a term that renders the difference of different completely invalid. But at her school, Barbara is a black sheep, and her exclusion from popular society is evident. This makes her both likeable and naturally brings about a sense of pity because she doesn't get along with the other girls. Nevermind the fact that most readers of this graphic novel would probably be in the same boat. I suppose had it not felt so contrived, this mechanic could have worked better, but it feels a little cliche at this point. Yes, Barbara is an outcast. We get it.
The giant-killing thing is the obvious draw here, but there's frankly not enough of it. Barbara kills one giant in the entire series, and it doesn't even end up being a real giant but rather a metaphor for something else that also feels cliche and over-used.
Mostly, I'm disappointed by I Kill Giants. I expected something more than one long and disappointing metaphor for a girl's struggle against dealing with reality. And even if such a message is to be conveyed, it can be done in a less obvious manner. The style is great, there is plenty of comedy and personality to the cast of characters, and there are plenty of asian influences that make it lovable, but the manner in which the actual story, the part that matters, is told is too blunt and in a way misleading for this to be a great comic. Perhaps we can expect more from Kelly later on. I'd certainly give his next effort a look.
I've liked nearly every Palahniuk book, but this one wasn't nearly as good as any of his others. The only one of his I haven't read, aside from that Portland tour guide thing, is Tell-All, which was so strangely written that I couldn't get into it. I'm not sure who has changed. Chuck or myself. One of us has, and I'm not sure the gap is reconcilable any longer.
Damned is about a 13 year old girl who dies and goes to Hell. It's written from her perspective, and while she's smart as 13 year olds go, she has her fair share of colloquialisms and it reads like a lot like Christopher Moore's "Bite Me" in its "omg" style tone.
The usual suspects in a Palahniuk are still there: gruesome descriptions that hold nothing back, satirical observations on popular culture, and biting retorts about racism/sexism/class-ism. And the story is fine in a Dante-esque way, but the thing as a whole just doesn't hold up for me.
Like I said, I'm not sure who has changed over the years, but regardless, Damned didn't push my buttons the way nearly every other Chuck Palahniuk book has, and it makes me sad to say it. I feel like an era has passed.
Damned is about a 13 year old girl who dies and goes to Hell. It's written from her perspective, and while she's smart as 13 year olds go, she has her fair share of colloquialisms and it reads like a lot like Christopher Moore's "Bite Me" in its "omg" style tone.
The usual suspects in a Palahniuk are still there: gruesome descriptions that hold nothing back, satirical observations on popular culture, and biting retorts about racism/sexism/class-ism. And the story is fine in a Dante-esque way, but the thing as a whole just doesn't hold up for me.
Like I said, I'm not sure who has changed over the years, but regardless, Damned didn't push my buttons the way nearly every other Chuck Palahniuk book has, and it makes me sad to say it. I feel like an era has passed.
A year ago or so, I was introduced to a book called Peeps that promised to read unlike any vampire book I'd ever come across. At the time, I was in the middle of a vampire reading craze, only, I wanted books about the bad vampires. No more sparkly, homo-erotic vamps. I wanted the gnarly, malformed types that fed on humans with wild abandon. Peeps gave me a little of both, vampires that fed and those that were in control and hunted down the bad ones. It worked, and I enjoyed reading through it. It took the now-common disease-based theory regarding the spread of vampirism, melding it with a bit of history and a bit of folklore into something quite different.
The Last Days is a sequel to Peeps, though in many ways is a completely separate work. It's set in the same timeline and even has a few characters that make the transition across books, but its story is mostly at odds with the entire theme of Peeps, which was one of parasitic disease and how to combat it. Instead, The Last Days is mostly about a band, and maybe about the power of music and cooperative humanity, etc. etc. The heroes of The Last Days are Moz, Zahler, Alana Ray, Pearl, and the mysterious and dangerous Minerva. For the first two thirds of the book, vampirism is rarely mentioned, no characters from the prior book are seen, and the main impetus of the "series" is completely absent. Then for about the last third of the book it's just one quickly spun web about the was against the enemy...the end. The logical part of me wants to say that this was a poorly written way to tell a story. If he'd wanted to write the tale of a band forming and succeeding, with drama along the way, maybe he could have left the peeps (Westerfield's chic term for vampires), out of it entirely.
But the truth is, I enjoyed the underlying threat of what I knew would eventually happen, and despite the rushed ending, I think that on the whole, the book works, and the more I read through it, the more I wanted to finish it. Maybe that isn't the perfect way to write a story, but I think getting someone to finish is probably a pretty good goal, and getting them to enjoy the story is icing on the cake.
Plot weirdness aside, Westerfield knows how to write. He uses expressive metaphors, details his characters enough that they feel like characters, and manages to weave everything together cohesively despite the apparent chaos. In The Last Days, he switches character viewpoints every chapter. Not only that, but he does so in the first person the entire time. This seems like a very good way to tank your career as an author, and at the start I found it nearly too jarring to continue. However, once I settled in, I began to respect his ability to distinguish each character's viewpoint. The advantage of third person writing is that even though you can jump around into a dozen different characters' heads, you can always keep your general style and mood the same. With first person writing, seeing through the eyes of a specific character, thoughts and actions and viewpoints and even metaphors have to be catered to how that person would view or relate them. If you were looking through a dim-witted characters eyes, you could not write in a style that felt elegant and smooth. You'd have to dumb it down. Though none of Westerfield's characters are dim-witted, he does manage to filter the world through each of their different eyes successfully. This seems like a difficult task to me, and while he may not have done it perfectly, I think it an impressive accompishment that he succeeded at all.
It's strange anymore to see a series of books come crashing to a halt after only the second installment, and part of me wonders if Westerfield was under some type of contractual obligation to write two vampire books given the mostly rushed wrap up to the saga. Do I feel like any loose ends were left? Not really. The conclusion wrapped things up nicely, and I didn't have much to guess at afterwards. But it did feel rushed, like something that been building for two novels and then was suddenly over. But that's all right, I guess. Who says a series has to be a trilogy? The great thing about being an author is that you decide. Readers beware.
The Last Days is a sequel to Peeps, though in many ways is a completely separate work. It's set in the same timeline and even has a few characters that make the transition across books, but its story is mostly at odds with the entire theme of Peeps, which was one of parasitic disease and how to combat it. Instead, The Last Days is mostly about a band, and maybe about the power of music and cooperative humanity, etc. etc. The heroes of The Last Days are Moz, Zahler, Alana Ray, Pearl, and the mysterious and dangerous Minerva. For the first two thirds of the book, vampirism is rarely mentioned, no characters from the prior book are seen, and the main impetus of the "series" is completely absent. Then for about the last third of the book it's just one quickly spun web about the was against the enemy...the end. The logical part of me wants to say that this was a poorly written way to tell a story. If he'd wanted to write the tale of a band forming and succeeding, with drama along the way, maybe he could have left the peeps (Westerfield's chic term for vampires), out of it entirely.
But the truth is, I enjoyed the underlying threat of what I knew would eventually happen, and despite the rushed ending, I think that on the whole, the book works, and the more I read through it, the more I wanted to finish it. Maybe that isn't the perfect way to write a story, but I think getting someone to finish is probably a pretty good goal, and getting them to enjoy the story is icing on the cake.
Plot weirdness aside, Westerfield knows how to write. He uses expressive metaphors, details his characters enough that they feel like characters, and manages to weave everything together cohesively despite the apparent chaos. In The Last Days, he switches character viewpoints every chapter. Not only that, but he does so in the first person the entire time. This seems like a very good way to tank your career as an author, and at the start I found it nearly too jarring to continue. However, once I settled in, I began to respect his ability to distinguish each character's viewpoint. The advantage of third person writing is that even though you can jump around into a dozen different characters' heads, you can always keep your general style and mood the same. With first person writing, seeing through the eyes of a specific character, thoughts and actions and viewpoints and even metaphors have to be catered to how that person would view or relate them. If you were looking through a dim-witted characters eyes, you could not write in a style that felt elegant and smooth. You'd have to dumb it down. Though none of Westerfield's characters are dim-witted, he does manage to filter the world through each of their different eyes successfully. This seems like a difficult task to me, and while he may not have done it perfectly, I think it an impressive accompishment that he succeeded at all.
It's strange anymore to see a series of books come crashing to a halt after only the second installment, and part of me wonders if Westerfield was under some type of contractual obligation to write two vampire books given the mostly rushed wrap up to the saga. Do I feel like any loose ends were left? Not really. The conclusion wrapped things up nicely, and I didn't have much to guess at afterwards. But it did feel rushed, like something that been building for two novels and then was suddenly over. But that's all right, I guess. Who says a series has to be a trilogy? The great thing about being an author is that you decide. Readers beware.
In one word, Blankets is bittersweet. It's a story about love and religion and family, and how at different points in a life these things can change a person, for better or worse. It centers around the narrator's teenage years and his relationship with a girl, but it flashes back to his childhood often and even takes him past those years and into the present. It's maybe these twists in time that makes it so reminiscent of travelling around in one's own memories, and what makes it so bittersweet.
The story of Blankets is engaging and interesting and sweet and sad, but it's also complemented by its style, with art that's often full of dreamlike imagery and hidden messages that require a careful eye to catch. The overall package is a beautiful story with beautiful artwork that's well worth reading and will leave most readers with a sad smile on their face when the last page is turned.
The story of Blankets is engaging and interesting and sweet and sad, but it's also complemented by its style, with art that's often full of dreamlike imagery and hidden messages that require a careful eye to catch. The overall package is a beautiful story with beautiful artwork that's well worth reading and will leave most readers with a sad smile on their face when the last page is turned.
The story told here is pretty simple, and at first I was not a fan of the almost Popeye-like method of sketching, but the more I turned the pages the more it grew on me. Text is sparse, but the images presented manage to tell a story more thoroughly than most people can with words.
It also resonated with me because it's about a poet who is shanghaied into a ship's crew and made to work manual labor, though for the character in the book it seems to work out better, despite a few traumas.
It also resonated with me because it's about a poet who is shanghaied into a ship's crew and made to work manual labor, though for the character in the book it seems to work out better, despite a few traumas.
