Year 2015

Books I actually finished reading, not in any particular order

* Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
The more things change, the more things stay the same.  Why not read a classic?  A Chinese classic.  I bought this 2-book edition way back when I visited Taiwan many years ago.  Then it took me still another few years to actually begin to read it from beginning to end.  This epic of a novel is credited to Cao Xueqin, a Qing aristocrat who wrote it in the 18th century and is believed to be largely semi autobiographical with characters and events heavily drawn from his own family's decline.  This edition comprises the usual 120 chapters.  By some account, the last 40 chapters were written, allegedly by, someone other than Cao.  Or some argue they were compiled and edited from lost and found Cao's manuscripts.  I will leave the detective work to the Redologists to figure that out.  This is an encyclopedia of sort of all things Chinese.  You can find nuanced accounts on anything from feast to funeral, occult to opera, and everything in between.  Not to mention the rich tapestry of characters, the achingly beautiful, the comically vulgar. the perennial scheming, and the incorrigibly licentious. Despite my shortcoming of the language, history and everything in general, I find the novel not as difficult as I imagined, at least on the surface.  The writing, maybe except the poetry, is not too difficult to understand even for someone like myself.  The premise of the story is laughably ridiculous and oddly fascinating as once upon a time there is a stone who got left out and left behind from mending the sky.  The stone turns to some demigod and saves a withering plant in heaven by watering it.  The plant survives, prospers and takes the form of a female body.  To return the benevolent act of watering, the plant vows to pay back the stone with all her tears when they reincarnate as humans on earth.  And reincarnate they do, and hence the beginning of the story of the stone.  It's redundant and utterly under qualified--that's a truism and of itself being redundant, on my part to heap praise on the novel that is considered one of the the four best classics ever written yet it doesn't stop me from saying this:  I found the novel emotionally engaging, utterly fascinating and ultimately a joy to read.

* Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee

*World War Z, Max Brooks

* Little Failure: A Memoir, Gary Shteyngart

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The latest movie adaption was released some time December 2011 with the nutty Gary Oldman playing George Smiley, the fatty, shorty and mouldy super spy whose lethal specialty is to bore his enemies to death, and the readers or audience as collateral along the way.  In John le Carre's meticulously constructed spy world, Smiley is like the Kate Moss of super spy, he is kind of old, kind of short, kind of retired but he's nevertheless proven to be the best that is out there and hence always in demand.  OKAY, not exactly Kate Moss but neither is Gary Oldman as far as physical resemblance is concerned.  The film is a reinterpretation and reimagination of the book, as such  I can easily over look any physical difference between the character in the book and in the film.  Unfortunately I overlooked way too much, I slept through the entire movie save for the very beginning and the end while being a captive audience on board of a Cathay flight over the Pacific.  I had no idea how good or bad the film was.  More importantly, the chance of better understanding the book via the movie was totally squashed.  So it was with utter disgust and dismay, I proceeded to read TTSS one more time, back to back in immediate succession.  Am I a masochist or what?  The book is a perpetual dread with confusing characters that have multiple worknames to compound the confusing factor, complicated plot lines with many tangled knots, and a timeline that goes forward, backward and sideways.  To understand the story, one must be exceptionally lucid because the story is anything but.  One is easy to get lost in le Carre's spy world in the best sense and worst sense of the word "lost."  The story, in a nutshell, is a simple one rather: Smiley is brought out of retirement because he is good, remember Kate Moss good, to hunt down a mole in the Circus.  And of course the devil is in the detail, and there are plenty of them.  In the end, the mole Gerald or Tailor as codenamed by Control the head of Circus, is caught and bored to death by George Smiley by his accusatory and lethal silence treatment.  Tailor is such a colorfully complex character personally (a bisexual painter who was born to inherit the Earth!) and professionally (a double agent, duh!) that it's impossible to know when and why (the decline of England as a world power and the hatred of America, really?) exactly he became a double agent for Smiley's nemesis Karla, the Russian spy master whom Smiley met when he was caught and jailed (boo boo boo ...) and probably felt some kind of kinship towards his archenemy--he let the man have his monogrammed lighter, a gift from his unfaithful wife Ann, the illusion of the illusionless man, Smiley.  Perhaps Karla gained Smiley's admiration because he never wavers his adherence to Moscow Centre even when returning to Moscow means death (Karla survived).  Gerald, on the other hand, chooses to betray his country, friends and lovers.  But the sin of all sins for Gerald, being a double agent is,(no, not screwing Ann, his cousin and Smiley's wife) he couldn't simply let his friend/lover die after he betrayed and "orphaned" him, which ultimately brings upon his own demise.  Fool.  In the end, the story is as much about espionage as it's about a yearning to connect, to make sense, to not to be lonely and to be loved--just like any other books or the movie The Avengers.

Steve Jobs

I was somewhat intimidated by the thickness of the book and spooked by Jobs' infamous death stare and enigmatic Mona Lisa-like smile.  The cover portrait, by Albert Watson who is kind of blind and bears an uncanny resemblance to his subject, was taken using an analog large format camera of which Jobs was duly impressed.  I took the dust cover off before started reading.

The authorized biography by the renowned Walter Isaacson clocks in more than 600 pages with never seen before obligatory pictures of Jobs and families in the middle and notes in the end.  I thought it would take me some time to finish it but no, it only took me more than a week even though I had been extremely busy between eating my meals and using the bathrooms.

The book chronicles Jobs' personal and professional life, warts and all, through and through with vivid recollections from Jobs himself as well as from others and often time interspersed with Isaacson's own take on the events.  The Book of Jobs certainly confirms Jobs as an enigmatic dichotomy.  He couldn't code like Gates, not a brilliant engineer like Wozniak, but what he lacked he more than made up for with his intuition, his belief in himself being special and his relentless drive demanded from himself and others for perfection.  And of course being exceptionally intelligent helped too.  Isaacson is even handed and sometimes even goes overboard to expose Jobs' dark side or quirks.  He insinuates that Jobs was too busy to flush toilets in addition to his more well-known infractions: Job soaked his feet in the toilet bowl to unwind, cheated Wozniak, abandoned his own child, had no qualms took others' ideas as his and totally lacked social grace.  Despite or perhaps even because of all his faults, it makes Jobs even more fascinating or human--apparently Jobs reality distortion field is at work here, death or alive.  In the end, Isaacson sheds his biographer role and let Jobs have the last words, which are intelligent and thoughtful as always but also uncharacteristically graceful: summing up who he is, what he wants to do and what drives him, all directly from the horse's mouth.   The book is compelling and easy to read, because number one Jobs was a compelling person on so many levels, with spectacular successes and failures, and you will have to make an effort if you were to try to make him less compelling and number two Isaacson's chronological recounting of events is easy to follow and not get in the way of the flow of the story.  It's not easy to sum up anybody's life in a book especially one as fascinating as Jobs' but I believe Isaacson's "Steve Jobs" has done it.

The Pale King

What surprises me is The Pale King actually is intended to have a plot as enumerated in the end notes that are included in the unfinished novel by the late David Foster Wallace.  From my reading, which sadly was mostly done on my commute, I couldn't find a plot, something remotely resembles a plot maybe but not in the traditional sense that I understand it.  In fact it's more like a collection of short stories, those that have no beginning or end at all.  I find it difficult if not impossible to make any sense out of the characters, who come from and go nowhere, in the grand scheme of things such as the story of the novel.  But once I accepted the novel was probably written by a mad man who happened to be smart, articulate, pedantic and very good at moving words around then I kind of came to the conclusion that I could enjoy or even admire it, all these were of course done without me realizing it--the novel is so hypnotic that it either puts me to sleep or totally engrosses me during my daily commute to and from work.  His use of footnote is somewhat annoying to say the least.  I am in the opinion that if you cannot incorporate your thoughts in the body of a sentence or a paragraph then you should leave it out otherwise just write it in, that is, unless you are writing a research paper or you are DFW who tends to write extensive footnotes whenever he feels like it (of course being a wordsmith he can absolutely write anything in a sentence or paragraph, it's just that he makes a conscious literary choice not to and instead happily writes footnotes in the length of a chapter or a section).  There are a few chapters or rather pages (out of more than 500 pages) that I particularly enjoy and am duly impressed.  One being how an agent got an epiphany and turns himself from being a wastoid at college to an accountant; the other being how a father got killed in a busy subway platform.  I personally think the detail and the psychological landscape presented are pretty out of this world.  And above anything else (and despite his fixation on footnotes or rather my own fixation and displeasure on his writing footnotes), I find his writing touching and deeply sincere, which turns out to be the real surprise for me.

Backbone

I enjoy reading stuff that is written in earnest, if not in earnest then in irony, if not in irony then in style.  David Foster Wallace's feast is he can achieve all of this, and more, at the same time.  Backbone published in the current New Yorker is an excerpt of his soon to be posthumously published The Pale King.  Backbone is such a weird story--a boy trying to kiss every inch of his own body since he's six, with even more weirder writing style.  Personally my favorite line is:

The written evaluations of his socialization described the boy not as withdrawn or aloof but as “calm,” “unusually poised,” and “self-containing” [sic].

I have seen grade school teacher confuse "every day" with "everyday."  So I can relate and do enjoy the humor and irony.  Backbone is peppered with anatomy vocabulary and interjected with historical anecdotes of which I find interesting.  Reading "Backbone" would have never prepared me what the Pale King is about, at least superficially.  According to Little, Brown, its publisher, as reported by The New York Times, The Pale King is about "a crew of entry-level processors and their attempts to do their job in the face of soul-crushing tedium."  Wow, that sounds interestingly boring to the max.

American Pastoral

Whenever I feel like I need to pretend to be some kind of intellectual I pick up a Philip Roth. And they never disappoint. I started reading American Pastoral in 2010 and couldn't finish it until 2011, mostly done on the train. I'm just glad I got it done. And I guess in 2011 I will spend less time reading crazy shit like that and begin reading like more pragmatic stuff. Adieu.

About Books

Culled from the comments I have written . . . .

Never buy a book you don't intend to or can't finish. It's a waste of natural resources, a waste of your living space and in the end a reminder of how pathetic you are.

Borrow from the library.

Owning books don't make you an intellectual, reading them may.

From the hopelessly illiterate.

Usually I don't have the above problem or what I perceive as a problem, as I don't buy books for decor reason. I just bought some lately for reading, probably inspired by other bloggers I come to aspire to.

On my recent book buying experience . . . .

I don’t even trust myself, usually what people say and what people do are different if not totally opposite. Let me tell you how and under what circumstances I bought my most recent books . . . .
I was on my way to McDonald’s having my dietary equivalent of a slow suicide and I passed the street vendor who usually sell books there. The man is in his 50s with questionable personal hygiene selling mostly popular titles. Regarding the source of his books, we share the Clinton military gay policy–Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. I decided to have some adventure and totally judged books by their covers and titles. I bought “Indignation” and “The Last Lecture,” totally on the strength of its title and cover. I didn’t even know “The Last Lecture” was on the best seller list and the fact that the backstory of the story is bigger than the story itself. The first one turns out to be an excellent short story at least in my mind. The Last Lecture is a book that can make a manly man like yours truly wells up in the train, more than once. Usually I avoid reading any self-help and preaching book at all cost because no manly man can tolerate people telling him what to do with his life, but The “Last Lecture” turns out to be a very fine read. There is nothing like an intelligent dead man talking to you.
Then I bought Ansel Adams’ “The Picture” from a library booksale, it cost $3. It was almost like an insult to the master, because we are talking about greatest American photographer Ansel Adams here. But I guess we shouldn’t judge a book by how much it was sold, Jane Austin was like 3 for $1, so there you have it. I also picked up “Bag of Bones” by the King, $1, just, it’s hardcover and an inch and a half thick, it looks tremendous and substantial.
If you still don’t know whether I would buy or read your book, don’t despair, I don’t either.
With warmest wishes and best of luck.
. . .
Jane Austen was once spelled like Jane Austin in the 1800s, basically Austen and Austin are interchangeable or so many people say. . . . Never mind.

My blog really sinks to a new new low, in parallel with the latest stock market trend, as I have to resort to recycling my own stuff. No amount of verbiage can deflect my own deficiency for lack of imagination. But it is what it is hope you enjoy it in the early morning.

Beach Reading

I was at the Sunken Meadow State Park beach this past weekend, again. This is one of the cheaper way to enjoy the summer. The gas is now $4.40 a gallon and the park admission is $8 per car. We bring our own food. Cheap entertainment is fun too.

Between yelling at the kids and playing in the water (also eyeballing bikini clad chicks too, but by and large, the beach is really a family beach with mostly overweight adults like myself, not many killer bods to look at, so I am mostly minding my own business ... ), I was actually able to read something, half naked under the sun.

I didn't know what David Carr looks like until I got this week's New York Times Magazine. I was appalled at how skinny he looks now and how overweight he was ... so I guess something major must have happened in between these years. I knew I wanted to read the article so I brought the Magazine to the beach. The article was adapted from Carr's soon to be released memoir "The Night of the Gun."

This is addiction literature, arguably popularized by James Frey, except Frey's memoir "A Million Little Pieces" turned out to be a fraud. Carr, in his own words, seems more careful in tracing his days of addiction some twenty years ago, with interviews from family members, rehab staff, friends and with family pictures and mug shots on the cover to back his story. His tumultuous relationship with women, drug abuse came to an end, albeit slow and gradual when his twin daughters were born more than two months premature. Carr doesn't fall into the trappings of victimhood or in any way romanticizes his abuse, at least I don't read it that way. Things were presented as a matter of fact. The chronicle of his addiction is a mix of gravitas, humility and humor, which makes it a great read on the beach or I imagine at home too. Carr might think "we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds," but his reportage on his darker years is anything but frauds.

Me and My Girls by David Carr, published July 20, 2008.