The Reluctant Fundamentalist

To be honest, I didn't think I was going to like this book. It was short but it also isn't my normal fare. Still, the idea of it, that of a young immigrant's experience in America changing after the September 11 attacks, held interest for me.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Moshin Hamid, is the story of Changez, a young Pakistani man who, in May of 2001, has just graduated from Princeton, found a great job, and has met a girl. Life seems to be going very well for him and he looks to be on the way to happiness. Of course, the September 11 attacks happen and, in his home country of Pakistan, war with India seems increasingly possible and eminant. All of this drives Changez to look around and reassess his life.

One of the best things about this book was the narrative style. Changez is telling his story to a mysterious American as they eat dinner in a Lahore cafe. We hear it from Changez's point of view.

There is also a good deal of suspence in the novel and there are definitely questions remaining at the end of the book. Sometimes I like that and sometimes it annoys me. I am not sure whether I like having these questions left but the device has made me think and ruminate on the book.

End thoughts: this is a good, suspenceful read that is very relevant to the current world situation. I am very glad I picked this one up and I recommend it to people who aren't put off but current issue type reads.

Rating: 5.0

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis wrote about a book he found on a train station when he was a young man. This book, written by George MacDonald, left such an impression upon Lewis that when he wrote The Great Divorce, his guide through Heaven is MacDonald himself. With such a recommendation, I felt that I simply had to try reading it myself.

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance chronicles the travels of a young man, known to the readers only as Anodos, who found himself in Fairy Land the morning after his birthday. In Fairy Land, he meets many beings, from the kind Beech tree to the evil Ash who seeks to devour him. Soon though, he is followed by his own Shadow, a dark, malevolent creature that he cannot escape. All the while, he is traveling through Fairy Land, seeking his white woman, a woman he loves.

I will admit that I found Phantastes rather difficult at times but that is probably due to the language used and how descriptive MacDonald gets at points. It was written in 1856, so some of the words and usage are archaic but once the reader gets past that, this is a wonderful tale.

I also found my favorite quote in this book:

Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stopping and wan, and flingth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.

Isn't that just lovely.

Rating: 4.5

The Fourth Bear

In the world of The Fourth Bear, characters from novels, nursery tales, and other ideas are made real. In fact, those characters originating from nursery tales have their own police department, called the Nursery Crime Division. The NCD is headed by Jack Spratt who was last seen solving the mystery of the murder of Humpty Dumpty, in The Big Over Easy, along with Sergent Mary Mary, and Constable Ashley, an alien from Rambosia. Now, Jack has had a few bad breaks (letting Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother get eaten isn't good for a inspector's career) and Goldilocks goes missing, followed by the escape of the Gingerbread Man, a psychotic killer. Add to that a car bought from a man named Dorian Grey and the fact that Punch and his wife, Judy, have moved next door, and Jack's life is going to be interesting.

Jasper Fforde authors wonderfully amusing reads with his quirky style and his visions of many of our favorite childhood characters. Talking bears who have won the right to live among men and use honey and porridge as a euphoria-inducing substance and seven foot tall cookies (or is he a cake?) that tend to murder random people are stand-out examples of Fforde's anthropomorphication efforts. The characters understand that they are in a story and often ask what plot device they will use. Will they decide to go with number twenty-six, garnering glory by solving the mystery behind the backs of their superiors, or number thirty-eight, waiting until they are begged for help and then saving the day? There is also a point at which a joke is finally fully revealed and Spratt and Mary comment that they don't know how the author gets away with such lame jokes. All of it works well towards making a good detective story that also amuses till the very end and makes you look forward to the next Nursery Crime novel.

Rating: 5.0

Manual Labor - BTT

It's time for another Booking Through Thursday and the question this week is:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

Let's see... If I haven't thrown it out, I believe I have a small guide from college but that's it. Well, other than a dictionary and thesaurus, also from college. That's if you are only counting books on English. I have several guides, dictionaries, and workbooks on French but that is to help me continue to learn the language and not forget the little that I learned in school.

Tangled Webs

I have a really bad habit of opening a book, with no intention of reading any more than the first page or so, just to see how it looks, and getting sucked in. Like yesterday. I started one book and then a friend lent me Tangled Webs, which takes place in the same world and with the same characters as the Black Jeweled Trilogy, a series which I love and have posted on before. I meant to read Tangled Webs after I had finished the first book but I wanted to see how it started. And then I couldn't stop reading it. One of these days, I will learn that this is what happens when I so much read the first sentence of some books.

Anyway, this book really was good. If you haven't read the Black Jewels Trilogy, you might want to read them before trying this one out, as most of the characters are fleshed out in the series and a brief reintroduction is all that is found in the narrative. I love the characters, though some of the ones I love the most have very little time in the main story. Surreal is one of the main characters and though we see a good bit of Jaenelle, Daemon, Saetan, and Lucivar, I wanted more time with them and less with Surreal. We have little or no time with most of the old coven and that made me sad too. Personal preference, surely, but it annoyed me a little to have no Karla (Kiss, kiss.) and so little time with the kindred.

We are also introduced to an author who was raised as a landen (non-magical people) and has now found out he is a member of the Blood (the people with magical abilities who rule the land). Add to that some arrogance and pretensions, a healthy dose of disappointment with his reception by the rest of the Blood, and a good deal of stupidity and you have the recipe for a man who is probably going to have some very bad ideas and make some bad decisions.

I enjoyed this story but there were problems with it. Some of the dialogue, especially near the beginning felt a bit wooden, like Bishop was trying to reintroduce the characters quickly and didn't want to waste time with it so she could get back to the story. Also, the sexuality that was in the series but not seen was brought out more, which was disappointing to me. Little things like that lessened the book for me but only a little. I still enjoyed this foray back into the world of the Black Jewels and I am only too eager for anything else Ms. Bishop may write in the future concerning this world and it's characters.

Rating: 4.5

Mayday! - BTT

Another Thursday and another question from Booking Through Thursday:

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember...

No book? In the waiting area and no book? I usually have as many as I can pack with me so I don't have to worry about finishing one. But in this case, I would probably end up checking the bookstore for anything decent looking or just grab a pencil and a puzzle book.

Of course, I would also be concerned with the fact that I didn't get to pack clothes amd it looks like I'll be shopping even more when I get to my destination...

Till We Have Faces

I always loved Greek mythology. One great myth is that of Cupid and Psyche. The myth tells of a beautiful woman, taken as a wife by Cupid, but commanded that she may not look at him. Her two sisters see her beautiful home and her wonderful husband and, out of jealousy, convince her to break her promise to her husband and look upon him in the night. When she does so, Psyche is exiled and her sisters pay the price with their lives. Psyche's journey continues from there as she must complete several tasks. In Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

Lewis' story is narrated by Orual, the eldest daughter of the King of Glome, who is terribly ugly and who helps raise her step-sister Psyche, the youngest of the three princesses of Glome. Raised by a violent king in the ancient world, Orual finds herself trying to balance between the superstitions of the people of Glome and the advice given by the Fox, a Greek slave bought to teach the young princesses. As Orual comes of age, events come about which will change her life and the way she sees her world and the gods. Orual is writing her story as a charge against the gods and explains her side of the story. She is not the most reliable of narrators but it is easy to see what she is avoiding saying. Her masks tend to be as obvious as the veil she soon wears to cover her face.

There is so much I would love to say about this book but I am afraid to give too much away. This book has some very strong symbolism in it, most of which is understandable, though I confess that I am still scratching my head over one bit. The story is beautifully told and this is probably my favorite piece of Lewis' fiction. All in all, it is a novel I would recommend to any who enjoy mythology or fiction. While Orual may lie to herself in the beginning, she comes to a degree of wisdom by the end which will provoke thought about our own assumptions and beliefs.

I saw well why the gods so not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Rating: 4.5