pileofgreybooks: a book ring

Although The English Patient has all the fanfare from the movie, its prequel, In the Skin of a Lion is as if not better than its lovechild. Although one can easily read the Patient without ever touching the Lion, you’d miss all these little insights that you’d only get from reading the Lion first. Patrick, the protagonist in the first novel, doesn’t ever appear in the second one, but he has a palpable presence (through his adopted daughter, Hana, the nurse of the English patient)—like an ink stain that has bled through fifty pages faintly but there nonetheless. Ondaatje whirls around these novels, caressing them and turning them around and sometimes talking to you, the reader, in a slightly postmodern (gasp!) Victorian way. He is a very messy writer, but I’m sure it’s controlled messiness. Although I would be happier if it wasn’t. I like messiness. I like feeling lost. Right now I’m only half way through the Patient, but I have also read it before. I’m liking it a lot more than the last time. Though right now is the romantic/violent parts between the patient and Katharine, which frankly is not my favorite section, though from what I remember of the movie it is the main focus. In the novel it is much more about Hana, and makes very strong anti-war comments. When I heard Ondaatje speak a couple of years ago (this was the time I was sitting in front of Salman Rushdie and didn’t know it), during the Q&A, this young, thin Indian-descent man asked him why the movie was so different from the novel. Ondaatje replied. And I paraphrase: “Well, a movie experience is so different from a book experience. There really cannot be a movie about a burned man lying in a bed for two-and-a-half hours.” Everyone laughed.

If I was able to write as good as Edward P. Jones, I would...I don't know what. Gladly accept the Pulitzer and rest on my laurels, perhaps. This book is amazing. Gorgeous. The story is told in this complex, linear way that confuses you but you don't mind being confused. You just let it glide through you and trust the understanding will come. I am tempted to write him a letter. I haven't been this moved to write to an author since I first came across Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev and Davita's Harp. This desire to write him came to me even after he had gone to the great beyond--when I saw the Asher Lev YMCA near Menno House I at first was amazed that they named a gym after a character in a book; then I realized it said Asher Levy. Lev means "heart" by the way in Hebrew. But back to E.J., as my dear professor Carolyn calls him. It ends in such a way that you do expect and don't at the same time. Some of the people in my craft class pooh-poohed it because of the non-linear story, but I love non-linear-ness.

this has to be, without a doubt, the most depressing book I have ever read. It is a ghost of a Braughtigan novel that reads like he just wasnt trying. or maybe couldnt try.

I loved this book. It was beautiful in its simplicity. Through the narrow focus of the main characters eyes the characters (his crazy dysfunctional family) come alive, but the true beauty is that he, being autistic, does not really understand the complexities of human emotion and drama. He truthfully says what he sees, without truly understanding totally what he sees, but still manages great insight. I felt it was kind of a resurrection novel, every character in the book does knucklehead things to each other (like “real” people do everyday), but the book is so well written that you the reader can come to terms with what each of the characters and come to a kind of reconciliation and understanding. A marvelous book!

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world…

Snow Crash is the book that put Neal Stephenson on the map. It is a typical Stephenson novel in that it manages to blend Sumerian mythology, linguistics, hacking, skateboarding, pirates, samurai sword fighting, harpoons, and the mafia.
It is not my favorite NS book (that would be a tie between the Baroque Cycle novels and The Diamond Age) and it tended to get a bit overly involved in ancient religious discorses, but when this book was hot it was scalding. The kind of book you fly unconsciously through, an action novel of substance. You just might actually learn something. And as always the badass quotient is high.

This book was an all-time favorite when I was a young, wishful time travel girl. It's about a boy named Jefferson Davis Bussey who goes off to fight the good fight during the civil war. For the North, of course. He's also from Kansas, which is of course dear to my heart. His folks' horses are stolen and his father's life threatened by some dirty ol' Bushwackers (Missourians), so he heads out and enlists. What I like so much about this novel, on my 26-year-old mind, is that it shows the humanity on both sides. Jeff meets people on the North and South side, and realizes that the Southerners have just as much desire to survive as Northerners. There are some scenes of heartbreaking betrayal of trust, a love affair between Jeff and a Southern Belle, and deaths of close friends. My only problem with the book is the fact that the author says, through the eyes of Jeff, that the war was only about slavery and abolishment. I know that is not true. Some of the writing is a bit archaic (like lots of elipses...), but for the most part it's still a great novel.

This book is glorious. About a woman-turned-priest who loses her memory of playing piano and goes to serve at a mission on a reservation in Minnesota, the novel moves in circles about the life of Agnes/Father Damien and the Native Americans who touch her life. The book's writing is so beautiful, one of my classmates at SLC said, "I just wanted to rub it all over my body--maybe it would improve my writing." My thoughts exactly.

I never read reviews until I am either done reading the book or so deep into it, the reviews have little power over my opinion of the book. The only reviewers I trust when it comes to books are friends. Most of the good folks who write reviews for Amazon are morons and I only read their reviews for entertainment value, not for informed decision making. I rarely find a review that I agree with, either I have bad taste or I am just too damn easy to please.
That said---I liked this book, while the Amazon crew did not. Maybe they were just too much in love with Time and Again, I don’t know.
Jack Finney did a great job immersing the reader in turn of the century New York and I think he is one of the few writers who can realistically tackle the intricate paradoxes of time travel and the what could have been. It is an elegant book of ideals and morals and the attempt to change the world for the better. Any way any book that mentions the Flatiron Building is alright by me.

It took a long time for me to get around to this book, too long actually. No less than two people had recommended this book to me and for whatever reasons I never read it. One was quite possibly one of the nicest most giving interim pastors I have ever had the fortune to live with, Stan Bohn. The other was my much better more well read half, the amazing Jessica Penner. Well having finished Live from Golgotha and in the middle of Burr but not really getting into it (I love Gore Vidal, but I like his American Histories less than his other books) I looked over our leaning alter of books and thought "Man I should finally read this one" so, not to belabor the issue, I did. If you have ever visited new york, hell even looked at a picture of or at the very least heard tell of this city, you should read this book.
In it a the secrets to time travel have been discovered and a super secret government group recruits several promising recruits. The best recruit is Simon Morely and this book is about his journeys to, of all places, 1880's NY. It is a NY of horse power, elevated steam railways, farms on the upper west side, and the lady's mile. There are no skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty is just the torch sitting in Madison Square. Simon Morley is attempting to discover the meaning of an old letter pertaining to a close friend's old family mystery. It is a smart elegantly written book that brings life to a relatively little known age.