2011 Chunkster Reading Challenge #5...Catherine The Great

    I've always been interested in Russian history and in particular the Czars themselves, so when I stumbled on this book I jumped at the chance to read about one of the two most important Russian rulers of all time and the most unlikely.
    Catherine The Great, or Catherine II, was a German born princess and married into Russian royalty after Elizabeth I, daughter of Peter The Great and then Empress of all the Russia's, chose her to marry her nephew and chosen successor, Peter III.  When Elizabeth I died and Peter III came into rule he tried to divorce Catherine in favor of his mistress, but what he did not account for was that Catherine had used her time wisely and built up her mind, her reputation with the people, and most importantly her reputation with the military leaders and Governors.  When time came to act, she did so, swiftly and smoothly, and stole the throne from beneath Peter III, who grossly underestimated her, so much so that the gravity of the situation did not hit him even after receiving the news from St. Petersburg, but only after he'd already been incarcerated.
    I call her one of the two most important of the Czars because I can only compare her to one other, the father of the Russian Empire more or less as we know it today, Peter the Great.  Where Peter the Great's rein was all about the expansion of the Empire, and entrance into the world as a power to rival any on Europe, Catherine the Great's rein brought Russia into the modern world and made it a rival to Europe in matters of culture, education, majesty, and appreciation of the arts.  Where he conquered through military might and strategy, she conquered through legislation and wit.
    This book is not without its flaws harping on the pomp of courtly life, but I feel that was just an inconvenient reality when writing about any great royalty.  Altogether a great read for any history buffs or anyone fascinated by the Royals personal lives.

2011 Chunkster Reading Challenge #4...A Tale of Two Books

    Gravity's Rainbow will go down as one of the most challenging books I've ever read, and as this review goes on it's really about two books both within the same cover and on the same pages.  One is a brilliant experiment in fiction, filled with news ideas, new metaphors, jarring imagery, and unrelenting honesty. The other is disjointed, unconventional for the poor excuse of unconventionality, and completely loses the already tenuous grip of cohesiveness in enraging drug fueled stream of consciousness nonsense.  If you look up the history of this books reception by critics you'll see a sharply divided crowd, one side loving it and festooning it in the laurels of a masterpiece, and the other deriding it as drivel and unworthy of praise.  In fact, it was up for a Pulitzer, and all 3 members of the fiction board supported it receiving that award for that year but they were overturned by all 11 other members of the board, or so the story goes.  TIME placed it on its 'All-Time Greatest Novel' list, and it did receive a few other accolades, all of which Pynchon ignored.
    Now, I cannot speak as to why Pynchon disregarded those awards, but I do have my suspicions.  My opinion is that this book was pure experimentation.  On its wikipedia page it is referenced that there are some 400 characters in this book.  I didn't count, but I also don't question that number.  It also says that '...the novel subverts many of the traditional elements of plot and character developement...'.  That I absolutely agree with.  While there is a story in this book I cannot say its at the center, that it is what the rest of the book revolves around, because this book doesn't 'spin' around anything, it is chaos encapsulated.  Which makes this book something of a rorschach, you will only see in it what you've brought with you, because there is quite literally a little bit of everything.
  So, I guess my last word on this book is that its not for everyone, nor do I think that it was the writers intention for everyone to read it.  I will be reading this book again, because I may have scaled many mountains reached their summits, this one beat me, but one day I'll be back to take another shot at the top.

2011 Chunkster Reading Challenge #3

    It's been awhile since my last entry, and thats because I've been lost inside the labyrinth of a book I've been meaning to read for a few years (not this one, more on that next time), but I'm back and happy to tell you that this book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, was phenomenal, so much so that half way through it I ran out to the library and borrowed The Einstein Theory of Relativity just to add that extra dimension to my experience of this great mind and life.  Written by Walter Issacson, a well respected biographer whose other works include a very well received bio of Benjamin Franklin simply titled Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, this book is an attempt to show a complete Einstein that I found extremely successful.
   The book is written like any other conventional biography, very 'David Copperfield' (Dickens, not magic), 'he was born...' 'he grew up...', and so on.  But, it avoids becoming dry and boring by the virtue of its subject who would grow to become one of the defining personalities of the 20th century, quite literally reshaping not just the world but the universe around us.  First thing we learn is that contrary to popular belief Einstein did NOT fail math as a boy, in fact the first stumble he had was in college with very advanced math (the likes of which most if us have never nor will ever deal with) because he found it dry, bland, and boring, and this was a consistent problem for the rest of his life until his last forays into unifying his two most important theories, those of Quanta and Relativity.
    I think one of the successes of this book is its warmth, partly because of the jovial, sage like, character of Einstein, but also because Issacson didn't dwell in just the man's achievements but on his relationships with family, friends and collaborators.  That's where the book really shines to me, and lends weight to his work as we find that it was his haven from any emotional turmoil or trauma such as the death of his mother or the drama his first marriage devolved into.
    Who Einstein was is far more fascinating to me than his theories.  We find he was perhaps as much philosopher as physicist, who defined elegance as simplicity in both his religion and scientific views.  For instance, when troubled later in life by the uncertainty of prevailing theories including his own 'Quantum Theory', Einstein is quoted as saying 'God does not play dice', which for me conveys just as much of his religious as scientific viewpoints, as he felt the universe was explainable through order only because it was designed that way by its architect.
   Finally, his political views are perhaps the most interesting simply because of the world they were shaped by as a German born jew of the first half of the 20th century.  He had a great antipathy toward any sort of 'Nationalist' movements, including the founding of a 'Jewish' state, or militaristic societies.  He spent the first half of his life as a devout pacifist, going so far as to use his fame to advocate refusal of any military service and draft dodging.  Many, including the F.B.I., believed him a communist for this support of pacifist movements and he was investigated thoroughly racking up a file of over 100 pages, but Einstein had no liking for communism either because he felt its implementation stifled discovery and creative thought.
    Einstein's views on pacifism and his jewish identity (for which he had a great apathy for most of his life, never fully embracing it) evolved for obvious reasons in the late 1930's and early '40's thanks to the ascension of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party going so far as to write a letter to then president Roosevelt about a new sort of bomb.  That letter was the impetus for the 'Manhattan Project', though he was never allowed to be a significant part of it because of security clearance issues thanks to the F.B.I.  This was probably a good thing for Einstein because of how unsettled he was by what he termed the 'whimsical' use of the bomb, and had he been actively a part of it he may have suffered more morally.
    In the end what we're left with is the portrait if an imperfect yet brilliant man with ever evolving political beliefs, a complicated relationship with his religious identity, a perennial non-conformer in all things who was in awe of the world around him and later conflicted by the light his theories cast on that world.  A fantastic look at a brilliant man and his mind.

2011 Global Reading Challenge Europe #2

    Double Jeopardy is the second book by Jean Echenoz that I have read, the first being the 1999 novel I'm Gone: A Novel which won the Prix Goncourt the most prestigious literary award in France.
    The best way I can think to describe this book is to posit that it would be the spy/intrigue novel Le Carre would've written if he were born 20 yrs later as a contemplative cafe'd Frenchman.  The core of the story is about a half baked insurrection at a Malaysian rubber plantation, spearheaded by an Ex-Pat frenchman, a self titled 'Duke', and two native brothers, and of course the Duke and the brothers have different priorities.  During this Echenoz gives us several other stories that all coincide and eventually intersect, a la "Pulp Fiction", one being an Odyssean chronicle of a homeless wanderer through France going underground to meet 'cannibals' and on a long ocean journey to battle.  As I write this thinking back it almost seems an intentional tribute to Homer, making me want to revisit it already.
    Surely more meandering than casual readers would be familiar with, Echenoz writes in what I'd describe as a 'French' style, looking out at the world with patience almost as if sitting at an outside cafe sipping coffee and eating a croissant.  Obviously I'm romanticizing, but in my defense, when speaking of Echenoz, it is so easy to romanticize because of the ease with which he weaves poetry into his prose, describing what many of us would see as wonder-less and mundane he injects with beauty and symmetry.
   So, find a copy, pick it up, take your time with it, and enjoy.

2011 Global Reading Challenge Asia #1...The Other Murakami

    I've known about this author for some time now as he shares the last name of one of my favorite writers Haruki Murakami, but have never before gotten around to reading him.  Popular Hits of the Showa Era: A Novel is Ryu Murakami's latest available English translation, and if its any indication of his other works he is one strange dude.
   The story revolves around two groups of people that have latched onto each other in hopes of staving off the harsh isolation of their Japanese society.  The first group is a collection of six socially awkward sexually frustrated loners who've each developed similar ticks of bursting into bouts of laughter who get together weekly traveling to an isolated location and sing karaoke, usually cross dressed.  The second is a group of what are called Oba-sans, 30 something single women, some divorcees, that are a sort of curmudgeonly type.
    Each one of these people evoked very real sympathy from me when not committing the horrendous (and absurd) acts that begin to unfold starting when one of the young men, hungover from one of their nights of Karaoke, ventures out from his isolation and sees one of the Oba-sans carrying grocery's home, and though he finds her all but revolting walks up behind her and begins to 'poke her' with his 'tented' pants.  Of course she is scandalized and begins to walk quickly away.  He continues and when she turns around to object he stabs her in the throat.  These two groups then begin to go tit for tat, building to the use of explosives.
    If your upset because you think I've revealed to much, you're wrong.  There is still plenty more violence and odd sexual awkwardness left, enough to fill 200 pages in fact.
    BUT, before you turn away in abject disgust, understand what Murakami is trying to say.  He is not glorifying random violence or sexual assault or even cross dressing for that matter, nor is he condemning any of these things.  What he is trying to say is that these oddities, and many more, are symptoms of a broken society, a society of crowded loneliness, deafening silences, and isolated alienated citizens.
    When taken at face value this book is at worst offensive and at best a freakshow, but once you make the attempt to understand why and how those horrible things are taking place and what sort of circumstances could grow them you (or at least I) begin to see the profound quality of Murakami's prose.

2011 Random Read #7...Wondrous & macabre happenings in 1890's Chicago

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America is two stories, one the mad construction and wonders of the Chicago's World Fair of 1893 and the other the terrible career of conning and killing by a young man going by the name of H.H. Holmes, juxtaposed in order to give the full picture, light and dark, of a certain time in a a certain place.
    Erik Larson, the writer of this book, has proven himself capable of adequately handling this sort story.  I use the word 'adequately' because at times the complicated score of characters involved in the building of the Fair becomes jumbled and occasionally the artistic license necessary to convey the story of Holmes becomes a bit heavy handed and overly evident, but with that said he was able to illustrate the wonders the Fair held and the horrors that Holmes committed evocatively.
   Just to talk of the Fair for a moment, to learn of all the amazing innovations that it presented was astounding.  Firstly, as a person raised in Florida, to learn that the bedtime stories of this Fair told by his father may very well have been what inspired the vision and drove Walt Disney to create the wonderland that is Disney World is amazing, and truly self-evident once you look closely, everything from the purposefully laid landscaping to the intentional uniform planning all echoes back to the Fairs execution.
   Also, that this Fairs choice of alternating current over direct current, chosen so based on the bids given by the respective contractors, is what may have won the war for AC current and shaped the way all of us power our homes is fairly fascinating.  Lastly, the centerpiece of the Fair, what the architects of the event chose as their way to 'Out-Eiffel Eiffel' and his tower in Paris, was the worlds first Ferris wheel, a monstrous marvel of engineering which stood at over 260 feet with 36 cars each of which could accommodate 60 people each for a max occupancy of 2160 people.
   A fun book for history buffs, Chicago lovers, or serial killer nuts, and on related note this book is said to be soon made into film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the killer himself Mr. H.H. Holmes.

2011 Gothic Reading Challenge #2

    I was having a hard time deciding what to read next, and I was searching through my goodreads.com account reviewing what I've been reading recently when I saw they were holding a book challenge, to read Jane Eyre, take a 5 question quiz, and pick your favorite line from the book.  By doing those things I've been entered in a chance to win a new Kindle, so I figured what the hell.
    Well, am I ever glad to have stumbled upon that contest because 'Jane Eyre' stands as one of the single best books that I've read.  A Bildungsroman in type, simple enough, a story telling the tale of a young Jane Eyre grown to young woman and the roads she traveled thus, though it is the writing itself that makes this book something special and made me thirst for more Charlotte Bronte.  It is striking how obviously this book has influenced so much of what we read in fiction and see in film today, the subtle touches of heartbreak and the aching pangs of regret have echoed from these pages and have reappeared countless times, though unfortunately rarely if ever as effectively as Bronte herself did.
    A pleasantly unexpected element of this book were all the subtle touches of the supernatural, some explained away and some not, that litter these pages.  Strange and haunting apparitions and distant psychic communication.  Again, not expected in what I expected to be a stodgy tale of the Victorian era.
    Another mark to how well this was written (in my opinion, of course) was how intensely the complex and heartfelt emotions of these characters' relations resonated with me.  I couldn't help but to physically react toward certain passages.
    All said I greatly enjoyed this book and cannot more strongly recommend it to all, both young and old, both well read and not, simply put, for any wishing for as good a reading experience as is at all possible.