Hey friends,
The next book on our list shall be (drum roll please!) Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. Sound good? Let me know if you have all read that and I'll pick something different.
Happy reading,
Caitlin
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Yiddish Policemen's Union
I'm only halfway done with the book, but I thought I would blog about my thoughts so far to give the site some love and give my friends something to read while they're bored at work.
So at first I really didn't think I was going to like this book. Which is not surprising, because it is true for like 85% of books that I pick up having never read anything by that author before. But I powered through the initial disinterest and now I am totally into it.
Just like with Rabbit, Run, I am finding the supporting cast to be just as, or even more interesting than the protagonist. The down-on-his-luck noir detective is a pretty worn out plot device (see Roger Rabbit, Tracer Bullet, the 1930s) and I thought at first that the character was going to be two-dimensional. Swig from a flask, make a comment about a "dame" or a "broad," run off a string of one-liners, and solve the case. I thought Landsman was going to be simple, basically. But turns out he has a detailed past rife with complications and tragedy, his motivation to keep going is unclear but seems rooted in a general desire to do good work, and he is dirty and gritty without becoming a parody. He's pretty balanced.
Berko the sidekick is pretty awesome too. Pretty much anyone who carries around a giant hammer to scare the shit out of some gangsters with has got my general approval. I think he and Landsman pair very well. Again, at first I thought that as a duo they would be pretty flat, the typical big/little, clean/dirty, Jewish/Alaskan Native dichotomies, but I think they are funny together.
And the idea of a giant Jewish colony in the middle of Alaska is pretty awesome too. Chabon does a really good job of dropping little bits of information about the alternate reality so that you have a little bit of a hint of these past events, but don't get the full story. Like mentioning that the a-bomb fell on Berlin. It gives you a brief, fleeting glimpse. It's like when you're reading Lord of the Rings and Tolkein suddenly drops a reference to Ancalagon the Black, baddest dragon of all time or whatever, but doesn't go on to fully explain it or give the details of events. It's a great author trick that allows them to create this big world but also allows the reader to use some of his or her own ideas to fill it in. Just well done.
The plot, in typical page-turner fashion, is sucking me in. Without giving anything away, I just want to say that I like the twists and turns and the (sometimes excrutiatingly) slow revelations.
So those are my halfway thoughts.
So at first I really didn't think I was going to like this book. Which is not surprising, because it is true for like 85% of books that I pick up having never read anything by that author before. But I powered through the initial disinterest and now I am totally into it.
Just like with Rabbit, Run, I am finding the supporting cast to be just as, or even more interesting than the protagonist. The down-on-his-luck noir detective is a pretty worn out plot device (see Roger Rabbit, Tracer Bullet, the 1930s) and I thought at first that the character was going to be two-dimensional. Swig from a flask, make a comment about a "dame" or a "broad," run off a string of one-liners, and solve the case. I thought Landsman was going to be simple, basically. But turns out he has a detailed past rife with complications and tragedy, his motivation to keep going is unclear but seems rooted in a general desire to do good work, and he is dirty and gritty without becoming a parody. He's pretty balanced.
Berko the sidekick is pretty awesome too. Pretty much anyone who carries around a giant hammer to scare the shit out of some gangsters with has got my general approval. I think he and Landsman pair very well. Again, at first I thought that as a duo they would be pretty flat, the typical big/little, clean/dirty, Jewish/Alaskan Native dichotomies, but I think they are funny together.
And the idea of a giant Jewish colony in the middle of Alaska is pretty awesome too. Chabon does a really good job of dropping little bits of information about the alternate reality so that you have a little bit of a hint of these past events, but don't get the full story. Like mentioning that the a-bomb fell on Berlin. It gives you a brief, fleeting glimpse. It's like when you're reading Lord of the Rings and Tolkein suddenly drops a reference to Ancalagon the Black, baddest dragon of all time or whatever, but doesn't go on to fully explain it or give the details of events. It's a great author trick that allows them to create this big world but also allows the reader to use some of his or her own ideas to fill it in. Just well done.
The plot, in typical page-turner fashion, is sucking me in. Without giving anything away, I just want to say that I like the twists and turns and the (sometimes excrutiatingly) slow revelations.
So those are my halfway thoughts.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
sand county, sad country
the edition of the book that i read was supplemented with photographs by gentlemen who retraced aldo's footsteps and lived on the land where he lived. seeing the landscape as he saw it made it all the more real for me. there were these really haunting images of aldo's grinding stone, laying broken under a tree in different seasons. he died of a heart attack fighting a brush fire on his neighbor's land, did you know that?
living in a city is weird and alien to me. reading this book made me really homesick for a place and time that maybe really only exists in my memory. i grew up on about 50 acres of wooded farmland and feel like i keep moving farther and farther away from that life as i grow older. as i grow older, i romanticize the old farm more and more. i get involved with the local green movements and urban beautification projects, but parts of it seem so masturbatory and filled with this weird sense of self-satisfaction. i feel like some people join these local conservation movements because of the image of it and just spout off this meaningless rhetoric. i appreciate anybody who is involved, but it's a strange, sad simulacrum of the real experience.
being in the country is quiet and leads your mind down quiet roads. i feel like leopold's conservation ethic is borne out of this experience. he focuses on the harmonious co-existence of man and nature, something that a city by its nature defies. i guess the book made me feel dissatisfied with my half-acre plot of city land and small raised vegetable beds. i definitely started feeling like the grass is greener everywhere but here.
living in a city is weird and alien to me. reading this book made me really homesick for a place and time that maybe really only exists in my memory. i grew up on about 50 acres of wooded farmland and feel like i keep moving farther and farther away from that life as i grow older. as i grow older, i romanticize the old farm more and more. i get involved with the local green movements and urban beautification projects, but parts of it seem so masturbatory and filled with this weird sense of self-satisfaction. i feel like some people join these local conservation movements because of the image of it and just spout off this meaningless rhetoric. i appreciate anybody who is involved, but it's a strange, sad simulacrum of the real experience.
being in the country is quiet and leads your mind down quiet roads. i feel like leopold's conservation ethic is borne out of this experience. he focuses on the harmonious co-existence of man and nature, something that a city by its nature defies. i guess the book made me feel dissatisfied with my half-acre plot of city land and small raised vegetable beds. i definitely started feeling like the grass is greener everywhere but here.
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