Books I Read This Month - July 2014

Room by Emma Donoghue

Whoa. This is a hugely powerful novel about a woman who was kidnapped at nineteen and held in a room for several years, repeatedly raped by her captor. It is told from the perspective of her five-year-old son, Jack, who was born in the room and has never been outside and never met anyone other than his mother and the kidnapper (from whom his mother fiercely protects him, never allowing the captor to speak to him or touch him). The writing perfectly captures what you’d expect to be going on in his mind, since this is all he’s ever known, and it’s evident that the author did a lot of research about developmental psychology. The first half of the book is creepy, since the reader gets hints of what's going on based on narrator Jack's observations, and the second half is heart-wrenching. Through Jack's eyes, we are shown some of the things in our world, often socially, that are strange and constructed rather than psychologically innate. It’s fast-paced and emotionally moving. Very much recommended.

The Abominable by Dan Simmons

Three men are sent on a mission to climb Mount Everest to uncover the body of a man who went missing on a climb the year before. But when they get there, they realize their mission is not quite what they thought. The book is very long and split into three sections. The first part details their preparation and is interesting, though it made me impatient wondering when they would start the trip; the second part details their climb, which is also interesting but doesn't yet include the suspenseful elements that the description of the book claims; and the third part details a scary chase up and down the mountain by creatures which the climbers must identify and attempt to escape from before they are killed. The legend of yetis is used here in a terrifying way, and the historical details in all three parts (especially the first and third) add a lot of depth and meaning to the plot. I found this to be an adventurous (albeit long) book, and I'd recommended for people who like big travel stories.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

I’d been meaning to read this for a while, since Upton Sinclair was in his twenties when he wrote this (and I am also in my twenties), and it contributed to economic and environmental social movements. I can definitely see why it is considered a classic, as it follows an immigrant’s journey from his arrival in the US through his adulthood, which consists of many up and downs through poverty, success, tragedy, happiness, and more. His life is a roller coaster, which at times seems unrealistic, but the plot works perfectly for conveying Sinclair’s political and social messages. The narrative is also largely "told" rather than "shown" in its writing style, making it extremely plot-driven and lacking in emotional depth (except when discussing the main character's family, who goes through some heart-breaking experiences). Otherwise, it is a fascinating look at poverty, immigration, and labor unions in the US.

The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma

The front cover of this book and the description make this sound like a steampunk novel, with a lot of sci-fi elements, but it’s really not. It’s an extraordinary and fun adventure in the vein of Jules Verne or Charles Dickens. Set in Victorian England and following three main characters who each deal with time travel and romance in some way, this book is seriously fun. It’s split into three parts that each can stand alone as individual stories, but when straight through, they create a tapestry of a story where all the parts fit together. The characters and their dilemmas are unique, often hilarious, and sometimes over-the-top romantic. Anyone who loves a good time travel story will adore this.

My Short Story "Choice" Was Published Today!

My short story "Choice" was published today on S/tick magazine's blog. I'd love to hear your comments! S/tick is a feminist magazine based in Canada. My story fits with their mission because the subject of the story is a contemporary feminist topic. I feel like I should mention that my story is not based in experience, as it is a sort of controversial topic. I hope you enjoy it, if you venture over to read it.

Thank you!
Aimee

Books I Read This Month - June 2014

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murkami

More Haruki Murakami, of course, because he is easily one of my favorite authors. This book is one of his earlier works, and it's less supernatural and surreal than his later books. It's more straightforward and clear in its writing style, but it still has Murakami's quirky sense of humor and introspectiveness. In this book, a young man who's a bit dull (again, classic Murakami) takes on a task that's a bit more than he can handle: literally a wild sheep chase. A man contacts him in search of a sheep with a star on its back that, according to legend, enters people's souls to make them immortal (but leaves them and makes them mortal again if it deems them unworthy). There's a creepy man who dresses up as a sheep, there's another creepy guy who hates his son for no reason but who claims that the sheep was once inside of him, and there's a girl with beautiful ears. Weird and wacky and unexpectedly insightful (or not unexpectedly, if you know Murakami's works at all). This book certainly has not hanged my overwhelmingly positive opinion of Haruki Murakami.

Bad Teeth by Dustin Long

If you like literary allusions (and I do), you'll definitely like this. It's very layer-y, more than a cake or an onion or other cliches, and follows a college-age man who's looking for a mysterious Thai author. He goes from Brooklyn to Berkeley to Bloomington to another town that starts with a B that has slipped my mind in search of any information he can find on this man. Several characters he meets are also tormented writers, and the relationships he makes with them reveal a lot about modern literary culture. I'd recommend this book for people like me (well, I mean, I did read this and enjoy it) who are well-read, and mostly young writers. It's a fun read, if you just read it along the surface like any other novel, but if you follow closely to the metaphorical language and what the characters are saying about their states of being, you'll discover some interesting analyses of the self and what "self-consciousness" means.

Drood by Dan Simmons

Told in the style of Charles Dickens, this epicly long and winding novel details (in a fictionalized manner) the last five or so years of Dickens's life, after the Staplehurst accident that killed several people and left Dickens mentally scarred. The book is told in a Watson-like fashion from the first-person perspective of Dickens's author friend Wilkie Collins. The layers of the narrative are extremely satisfying to read and uncover, especially with the voice of the story, which is immensely Victorian. It's Gothic, creepy, and very suspenseful; even at over 700 plus pages, I found myself whipping through it, wanting to know what happens in the next chapter (although, obviously, Dickens is dead by the end of the book). The book asks some fascinating questions not only of Dickens's life and motivations but also of the afterlife, the supernatural, and the divide between good and evil (as so many excellent books tend to do). The character of Dickens is, well, very like Dickens. Author Dan Simmons did a fantastic job making him act and sound like the image of Dickens we have today, only as a more full person revealed through the narrative. I will definitely be reading more by this author, and soon.

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

I'm not entirely sure I've read anything by Annie Dillard before, but I have to say that this book is one of the most thought-provoking and deep books I have ever read. It covers a range of seemingly unconnected topics (China, Israel, clouds, birth defects, sand, and more), but she is somehow able to connect them through an analysis of how they reflect what God is like, while constantly asking of the universe if there is a God, what our world says about the nature of God, and how miraculous and uniquely awesome our world is, with or without God. It can sometimes be boring to read about a random topic and strange facts in some of the sections, but overall, this book is extremely fascinating and made me think deeply more than any other book has. If you venture into this one, be prepared to skip over some dull, boring parts but to find yourself thinking about the universe in a new way at the end of it.