Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman (1997)

The plot of “Here on Earth” closely follows that of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”:  Boy with a dark, mysterious past is adopted by the Man-of-the-House; Daughter of the Man-of-the House and the Dark Boy get into some cosmic-defying relations; Son of the Man-of-the House hates the Dark Boy with venom that consumes him; Man-of-the-House dies leaving his progeny scattered to the winds to fend for themselves; the characters all meet again sometime in the future to torture each other once again; and these characters have brought forth sons and daughters fated to replicate their parents’ dark stories.

The main problem with “Here on Earth” is that one cannot avoid comparing it to Wuthering Heights. Hoffman’s Hollis manages to merely look like a deranged, cruel man who physically and psychologically abuses women and children as opposed to Bronte’s Heathcliff who somehow is able to elicit sympathy notwithstanding all the darkness surrounding him.  Hoffman’s March feels inconsequential and flimsy compared to Bronte’s fiery Catherine who was a force to reckon with. Hoffman was not able to fully develop certain of her characters and to explain their purpose in the story (What was that triangulation of Mr. and Mrs. Justice and the deceased Judith Dale all about?). Whereas Bronte was able to elevate the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine to something almost spiritual, Hollis and March are nothing more than irresponsible, selfish, unthinking individuals.

“Here on Earth” is much more graphic, especially the sex and violence scenes, but is still unable to reach that level of pathos, darkness, and malignancy that “Wuthering Heights” was able to achieve.

Or perhaps this is none of Hoffman’s fault. As Wuthering Heights has always been one of my favorites, any writer who attempts to scale the heights reached by Bronte’s opus will feebly fall short of my estimation.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)

“He’s a wallflower.”

“You see things.  You keep quiet about them. And you understand.”

Stephen Chbosky’s first novel is able to credibly give voice to a 15-year old, precocious, socially awkward young boy named Charlie that you’d start thinking that Chbosky himself invented letter-writing in novels to tell a story.

“The Perks of Being A Wallflower” is a series of letters written by Charlie in an attempt to explain and figure things for himself.  The recipient of these letters is unaware as to who Charlie is as there is no return address indicated. Charlie just “needs to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with people even if they could have”. 

You will want to hug this boy and tell him everything will be all right as he pours his heart out letter after letter recounting his first year in high school.  He grapples with issues of girls, dating, friendships, family life, honesty/dishonesty, smoking, teenage sex, and drugs.  He probably thinks at some point that it is easier to get straight As compared to putting himself out there to “participate”.

Charlie’s teachers know that the boy is special.  In fact, Bill, one of his teachers, has been giving him extra reading assignments on top of his regular work load (On the Road, Naked Lunch, The Stranger, This Side of Paradise, Peter Pan, A Separate Peace, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, Walden, and The Fountainhead).

“The Perks of Being A Wallflower” is not only about teenage angst but also touches upon seriously sensitive issues of teenage suicide and child abuse without turning the book into one big horror show.

The book, painfully poignant in some parts and funny in others, manages to convey the message that notwithstanding teenage turbulent years, young people will be able to come out of this tunnel with the guidance of family, help from persons in authority, company of good friends, and even look back at those years and say, “And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

POSTSCRIPT: A movie of the book is in the making. While I adored Emma Watson in the Harry Potter series, I think she's miscast as Sam in “The Perks of Being A Wallflower”.

a kindle is making my heart go tingle...

I have capitulated.

I have decided to give e-books a chance for several reasons:

1. I have been moving again and packing up more than two decades of accumulated books is no joke (ask the haulers).

2. I have tried out a colleague's Kindle and I was amazed at how light it was, how similar in size to a regular pocketbook, and how its resolution is so close to that of a paper-printed page.

3. (I think) it could cut down my book expense. Most classics are now downloadable and new writers are striking it out in the web waiting for publishers to get to them.

4. I don't need to wait for the local bookstores to come out with the works of my favorite authors (I never  attempted to take that marshmallow test; I already know the result).

5. I can still read in bed.

6. My entire library can fit in my purse.

7. I need to be prepared for the Little Pebble. I have observed that more and more schools are now  using tablets in lieu of textbooks. I wouldn't want my child to classify me together with the dinosaurs nor include me in discussions of Darwin's survival of the species or the Big Bang theory.

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt (2008)

Is it not amazing how certain writers are able to come up with a believable and vastly entertaining story involving persons who have actually lived (Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse), much-retold sci-fi and still manage to give these a fresh spin (time travel and Martians!), a talking animal (a certain pigeon at the Bryant Park), a sappy love story (Louisa from the present and Arthur from the future), an undying declaration of love (Walter and his affection for his wife Freddie who has passed away more than two decades ago), and a long-standing friendship (Walter and Azor)?

The book opens with introspections of Tesla in his old age. Gradually, Hunt introduces her other characters one at a time and they at some point, manage to connect their personal histories with that of Tesla’s.

We get to know Tesla better – his childhood in Serbia, his eccentricities, his aversion to company, the myriad inventions in his head, his frustrations at how several of his ideas failed to come to pass for lack of financial support, his antipathy toward Edison and Marconi who he believed stole his ideas, and his decline towards senility when in his eighties he has started talking to pigeons and to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) who has long been dead. In his old age, Tesla would also suffer from his dire financial position and political persecution.

Hunt is an absolutely clever novelist who can teach writers like Audrey Niffenegger a thing or two on how to come up a tale wherein readers tacitly agree to suspend their disbelief instead of sniggering over the sheer ridiculousness of the tall tale.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (2003)

The memoir, set in Tehran in the mid-1990s, manages to achieve several things: narrate Nafisi’s personal story in the turbulent years when the Iranian government stepped up its censorship in the universities; depict life in Tehran with the stricter imposition of Islamic laws, particularly on women; discuss the value of literature in people’s lives; and analyze specific works, e.g. Nabokov’s Lolita, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, James’ Daisy Miller, and Austen’s Mansfield Park.

The book is split into four chapters under the headings, Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. Nafisi cleverly interweaves her story and that of her students while discussing the various points of books she has chosen for her classes. The book feels like a class lecture in literature (a very good one!) in some parts that one is enticed to read more of Nabokov’s books, go through Fitzgerald again with a fine tooth comb, and re-read James no matter how tedious and belabored he sounded in one’s first reading of him.

One also can’t help thinking while “Reading Lolita in Tehran” how we take for granted certain simple pleasures like reading. While we give no second thought to picking up a book from the shelf, whether it be Wuthering Heights or Fifty Shades of Grey; in certain places, even in this day and age, a person’s choice in a reading material could land him in jail.

This is how much I loved “Reading Lolita in Tehran”: If I see Nafisi’s name in any class lecture, I will be one of the first to sign up.

great weekend reads!

I am looking forward telling you all about these wonderful books I've read the past weekends (in between those Steve Berrys haha).

The Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry (2009)

I’ve got to hand it to Steve Berry. Just when I had his formula for his books down pat, he comes up with something totally unexpected in The Paris Vendetta.

Granted, the usual elements are there: (1) a search for a lost treasure (Napoleon Bonaparte’s cache of wealth which he purportedly hid for his son); (2) a group of greedy wealthy financiers with little qualms as to the consequences of their actions (The Paris Club); (3) a highly skilled agent who executes a series of dastardly acts for said group of financiers (Peter Lyon, an international terrorist); (4) the US Government not far behind (once again, Stephanie Nelle of the US Justice Department is assigned to monitor the conspiracy; (5) Cotton Malone, retired agent of the US Justice Department turned Copenhagen bookseller, finds himself in the middle of the search for a lost treasure and battling wits with the wealthy financiers and their hired gun; and (6) friends who come to Malone’s aid (Sam Collins, a dismissed American Secret Service Agent and Meagan Morrison, publisher of a website known for financial conspiracies). Berry however, manages in this book to show that he is capable of springing a surprise.

There’s one thing I appreciate with Steve Berry’s books which I’ve failed to mention in my previous reviews. At the end of each of his books, Berry explains the research he’s done on his opus and separates fact from fiction. If there’s one thing which annoys me no end, it is people who swallow hook, line, and sinker, the (tall) tale that’s been sprung on them and go around telling whomsoever cares to listen that such and such thing has indeed happened.

The Paris Vendetta also showed a good point of Berry: He knows where to tread lightly. Berry, in this book where he tackled financial conspiracies, chose to discuss the same through Sam Collins and Meagan Morrison, who he painted as earnest young guns but may be a bit addled in the head. So if any economist or financial analyst points out the absurdity of some of the points raised in The Paris Vendetta, Berry can easily say, “Hey, don’t point that finger at me; that was Collin/Morrison speaking.”

I have a feeling The Paris Vendetta won’t be the last Steve Berry book I’ll be reading. Not because of superb writing or extraordinary plots but because of the guy’s ability to give his readers a pleasant enough diversion from the everyday vagaries of living.