Cannonball Read #7: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger

Despite my first impressions, I really enjoyed reading this book. I saw the commercials for the movie adaptation first and I thought it looked like utter drivel. I figured that it would be just as bad as the Notebook was. ( I can say this even though I wept through that entire movie the first time. shhh! )

Anyway, the time traveler, Henry, is a man who uncontrollably travels back in time, but only to places he had already been or already will be. He travels back in time to see his future wife , Claire and meets her first at age 6. In essence, she grows up with a strange man constantly telling her that he is her husband and that they are soulmates. In a world where time travel doesn't exist, this isn't a romantic, wonderful thing, its more like indoctrination. That was , in essence, a big problem that I had with this book, Claire never had a chance to develop and explore other men. She constantly compares all other men to this (literally) unattainable man who keeps popping in and out of her life at random moment.


BUT..... she was in love and so she put up with him disappearing on their wedding day, reappearing bloodied and bruised from wherever he went. If you think about it, he could have been cheating on her with some woman from 1976 and she would never know.
Anyway, theirs was a wonderful and poignant love story. Claire spent most of her life waiting on Henry to show up but in the end she thought that their love was worth it and I supposed love knows no bounds.

Cannonball Read #6: Anna In-Between by Elizabeth Nunez

Growing up I absolutely hated reading Caribbean literature. I guess it as something to do with it being required reading and not something that I did especially for pleasure. But I picked up Anna In-Between when I heard that the author would be appearing at the Boston Book Festival in 2009. I don't know that I expected to enjoy it but I certainly wanted to give it a try. To my pleasure, Anna In-Between was a great read. Anna Sinclair, the main character, left Trinidad to attend college and became a successful editor with a publishing company that specializes in black literature in New York. She and her parents grew up as middle to upper class during the colonial times and were expose to alot of the racism inherent in that era.

This book explores familiar themes such as the relationship between a mother and a daughter and returning home. But it also uses the backdrop of Trinidad from colonial times forward to explain the tensions that exist in this family. The idea of Anna's 'inbetween"-ness existed all the way from childhood. Anna grew up alongside the "English" children but couldn't belong due to the inherent racism of the time and her family coped (as many Trinidadian families in the same situation) by adhering to the ideals set forth as proper by the British strictly.

Upon Anna's return she finds out that her mother has breast cancer but instead of going to the doctor, she has resorted to praying over her rosary in an effort to make the cancer go away. The book tries to reconcile Anna's belief in the power of America over her mother's insistence that Trinidad's ways are just as valid.

Having lived in the US for about 4 years, I can relate to Anna's concern over the seemingly "backwards" or inefficient ways in which some things are done in Trinidad. You have to come to terms with the fact that the culture and way of doing things is quite different from one country to the other. Nunez wove a story that really captured Trinidad cultural contradictions and the love that Trinidadians at home have for their country. She also captured the yearning that all emigrants feel when they leave their home country for another and how things really can never be the same once you leave.

Cannonball Read #5: The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafron

 I know that this has been a long time in coming, but between the holidays and starting a new job I've gotten somewhat sidetracked. All I have to say that I love Carlos Ruiz Zafron. Although his books take me twice as long to read, I think this is just because his imagery is soo complex and so dense that you can get lost in the world. Somehow I just imagine Barcelona in this time as a dark and dank world with occasional burst of brilliant sunshine. That's just me though.

Anyway.... The Angel's Game explored the paths into one lonely writer's mind. The thing that I love about this writer is that you leave the book asking as many questions as when you arrive. Following young writer David Martin through his growth as a writer, we explore Barcelona in the same era as his previous book "The Shadow of the Wind". Zafron writes about writers and books and literature and the exploration of life through the eyes of a reader. The way in which he really addresses this issues of love and happiness are very realistic and at the same time fantastically romantic. Unrequited love is a classic storyline in the novel but I feel that while he addresses it, it is only really exists in order to make his main character's loneliness and (seeming) descent into crazy-dom more poignant.

 The only thing I would say is that while I enjoy books leaving me with questions, this one did not answer perhaps the biggest mystery in the story. I just wish I knew more. But all in all, it is greatness. That's all I can say.

Cannonball Read # 4: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

I started reading this because it is on my list of "books I should read for my general enlightenment". I confess that I didn't know much about Achebe's work prior to reading this book but since I wanted to expand my bookshelf outside the realm of science fiction, I thought that this would be the perfect time to stop procrastinating and just do it.

This book starts off quite slowly for me and slowly builds momentum. At first we meet Okonkwo, and he is a man's man. He holds a high status in his village, he has proved his physical prowess time and again during the village wrestling matches and because of this, is quite famous at an early age. He has multiple wives and children and in general has a very severe demeanor. Most of the first part of the book concentrates on developing Okonkwo's character and as we follow his life, we get to learn much about the village, clan hierarchy and Okonkwo's family structure. Suddenly we see the introduction of Anglican missionaries and the entire clan system slowly but surely begins to fall to pieces. Okonkwo's son joins the missionary church and Okonkwo's mourns the loss of his eldest son to the church. Since Okonkwo's entire life has been about proving his masculinity, he feels keenly the loss of his son to "these effeminate men of the church".

You can see that initially the men of the village tolerated the missionary as a joke, thinking that no one would take them seriously and therefore when the white men set up a judicial court and start hanging villagers for offenses against the Church, they are all taken aback. But of course by then it is too late.

Initially I didn't like Okonkwo as a main character because he seemed to be completely intolerant of change but as the book went on I began to see that he was the eyes through which we began to see the complete and total destruction of an entire village culture. At the end of the book, Okonkwo has committed suicide in disgrace after killing a District messenger. The Anglican Church has completely taken over the area and superceded Okonkwo's peoples' own justice system because they are teaching the "heathens".

The part of the book that actually spoke most to me was the last couple of paragraphs.

      "The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which    he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. "

Although I didn't LOVE the book, I understand the importance of a work such as this one. We need to see the subjugation of the African people from their own perspective.

Cannonball Read #3: Wit'ch Fire by James Clemens

"Wi'tch Fire" is a classic epic fantasy story that must be told over the course of 3 -4 books. Too bad I didn't know that when I started reading. In this book, it is mainly about the "let's get to know all the characters" part of the game. I guess given the length of the book, there was literally only time to take the main character and say, "these are the people that are going to travel with you on your quest". Because of this, the entire book felt extremely unfinished, kind of like I was reading chapters 1 and 2 of the entire story. 

Basically, the book begins in the land of Alasea where they are in the middle of a battle to remain independent from the evil forces of Gul'gotha aka The Black Heart aka the Dark Lord. (and p.s. why are all the evil ones dark and black? Lets get another evil colour representing the enemy forces for once!) Anyway, we meet Er'il who helps his brother Shorkan forge a Book that wille eventually save them. Cut to an unmentioned amount of time later, and we meet Elena who bears the mark of the lost power of her people, ie. a crimson hand. In essence, the usual happens, someone tries to kill her, her power gets away with her and she burns up some stuff thus creating the essential hero's moral dilemma of "my power is destructive I don't want it. but I'm The ONE. Oh what a responsibility!". At the end of the book, her band of merry travellers has found their way to her side, all of them for various and sundry reasons. 

1. Er'il - yes he's still alive hundreds of years later, oops. 

2. a nymphai (tree spirit) the last of her people. 

3   a elv'in who is searching for their long lost king. Guess who it is? (that's right sexist elv'in, your king is a girl)

4 a half shapeshifter half ogre who is on a quest to rid his og're clan of a curse. 

5. A pair of shapeshifter twins, one stuck in human form and the other stuck as a wolf. P.S. the human one is completely craven and whiny on top of everything else.

Blah Blah! Somehow this book had all of the elements of a great story and I found myself struggling through it  and even in writing this review, I don't really care. Somehow Clemens managed to write a book that was both interesting and forgettable at the same time. And did I mention that the plethora of apostrophes in all the names are quite annoying. Like the difference between Gulgothra and Gul'gothra is really all that significant?


I will be taking a break from fantasy from now on and concentrating more on different types of fiction. So next on my list is "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. Wish me luck!

Cannonball Read #2:The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

So for those of you that are unfamiliar with Robert Jordan's work, this is the twelfth book in the Wheel of Time Series. After Jordan passed away, Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson picked up where Jordan left off.
      Anyway, most of this book is based around the main character Rand's struggle to maintain his sanity in the face of the incredible stresses that come with being the Dragon Reborn. His intense distrust for all those around him, even people that he previously thought had his best interest in hand, fuels the world's fears that he will not be up to the task of facing the Dark one in the Last Battle.
     I do not know if this was a stylistic choice made by Sanderson or if Jordan dictated it be so, but the best part of this book was delving into the hero's psyche. In most fantasy books, while the hero may be superficially conflicted about his journey, he doesn't really seem all that affected psychologically. With Rand, he's damn near driven himself crazy and most of the book is his psychological journey through the crazy; controlling his powers, trying to shut up the voices in his head.
   I appreciated that in this book, unlike the last 3 that Jordan wrote, the plot actually moves along swiftly and even the characters that don't make much of an appearance still manage to do something significant. My problem with the last couple books that Jordan wrote is that they seemed like filler. When a lot of nothing happened over the course of 800 pages and it gets tedious.
  All in all a respectable sending from Brandon Sanderson, and I know we who grew up on the Wheel of Time series are just excited to finally get the story moving again. 

Cannonball Read #1: Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake"

SO.... let's talk about the end of the world. What a dramatic opening. I chose Margaret Atwood's book because a friend of mine recommended her other novel "the Handmaid's Tale" to me and I enjoyed it. This book however was a particularly difficult slog. It is written from the perspective of Snowman, one of the last humans on Earth (as far as he knows). All that is left are the genetically altered creations of his childhood best friend, Crake. Some of these creatures are the snat (snake and rat combination) and the wolvogs (cuddly little dogs with vicious wolf tendencies).

Now my first pet peeve with this book is that Oryx doesn't play a really crucial role in the whole plot line. She just serves as a stand in character against which Snowman can play out his fantasies. Whereas we get to know him in obsessive detail, she remains somewhat of an enigma. I would say that this book is like that insufferable Tom Hanks movie where he talks to a beat up volleyball for 75 minutes. Yea, that was awful and in some ways this book was too. I guess my problem is that this guy whines on and on about how apathetic he was, and how regular, and how un-special as compared to Oryx and Crake, and it left me wondering why do I want to listen to this self-proclaimed "normal" person talk for the entire book.

Having said all of that, there are some cool sci-fiesque, end-of-the-world ideas in the book that I enjoyed. For example, Crake talks about how civilization can never be rebuilt if it collapses. And his reasoning is that the discovery of metal and its uses was crucial to the development of the civilized world. I mean, where would we be without the axe? But in this reality, because all of the surface metals have been used already, in the next civilization cycle no one will be able to invent these handy tools. That really struck me because in all the end of time science fiction that I've read in my lifetime, no one has really come forward with such a simple deterrent to the actual end of civilization forever.

At the end of the day, I understand the point of the book, ie. the increasing emphasis on the material and general human dissatisfaction with their lot in life but I couldn't really get behind her on the way it was put across.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: The Epic Read-a-thon

So, I've completely lost my mind and decided to enter 2010 Cannonball Read where I will be reading and reviewing one book a week for a whole year. I mean, its not like I don't read anyway... I might as well do something productive with all that commentary in my head. It should be fun at any rate and my friend Anhelo  will be doing it along with me. Let the wild rumpus start!

One of the great things about this is that I officially have an excuse to tell everyone about all the books that I think are awesome. So lets have a breakdown of what my favorite genres are:

1. Science Fiction
2. Fantasy
3. (Secretly) Sappy Mystery Romances
4. Other random things that I pick up in bookstores.

I will be trying to read outside of my genres in a effort to broaden my scope so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!