I finished Love by Toni Morrison this afternoon. I’ve been wanting to read it since it came out but didn’t want to buy it in hardcover, so it’s been a while. I got it out of the library this last trip, and just picked it up a couple days ago. It’s a short book, so the fact that I just now finished it is a testament to my slackitude in the reading department.

Maybe it was all the buildup, the anticipation from having to wait so long- because I love Toni Morrison- but my expectations exceeded my experience on this one. It’s a good book, don’t get me wrong. I just wanted more somehow.

The construction of the narrative is interesting. At the beginning, a character new to the main characters arrives. All she, and we, know is that the two main characters hate each other. Nothing else. No sense of their relation to each other, their history, nothing. As the story progresses the reader learns things about the main characters at about the same rate as the new character, but the two main characters aren’t terribly forthcoming, so that rate can be kind of slow. It’s an interesting way to do it, but definitely confusing at times. I found myself going back over pages because I thought I missed something that was keeping me from keeping the family relations straight. It wasn’t until the middle of the book that I realized that I wasn’t really supposed to know how they were all related yet. The other flaw in the execution of this method was that although we as readers identify with the new character, she doesn’t end up learning what we know by the end of the book. So we get the point, but she doesn’t, and that felt kind of strange. In fact, the whole introduction of the new character and her storyline felt like just an excuse to talk about the two main characters, she felt tacked on in a way. The core of the story was the two main characters, and I wanted more about them.

But despite my misgivings about the construction, I liked it. The story itself was sad and beautiful, dealing with the same idea from The Shadow of the Wind; that the stories we tell and the secrets we keep bind us in incredibly unpredictable ways. It’s an interesting look at the many faces of love, and at exactly what that love can do to you.

Current total: 25
Just Finished: Love by Toni Morrison
Next Up: Sock by Penn Jillette or Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I finished Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames, which was quite funny and good. It was clever without being pretentious about it, and I enjoyed it. It’s the story of a 30 year old alchoholic struggling writer, who, after the death of both his parents and recieving a substantial monetary settlement for slipping on some ice, decides to hire a valet named Jeeves. Well, he doesn’t set out to hire one named Jeeves, that just sort of happens. And so do a lot of other things as he stumbles through traveling to a writers colony, dealing with the theft of a pair of slippers, and numerous blackouts on his way to sobriety. The question of Jeeves (like so many other Questions in the book) is handled really well, and while the book ended where it needed to, I wouldn’t have minded if it went on for chapters and chapters more.

I got partway through The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and then the similarity between it and Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button got to me and I stopped. I’m not accusing anyone of anything, they’re obviously different stories- I just felt like I’d read it before, which is an uncanny feeling when you know there’s no way you could have.

Now I’m reading A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, which a number of people have been telling me to read and I just now got to it. It’s good so far.

My reading count this month is really low, but since I got ahead earlier in the year I’m right on schedule.

Current total: 24
Just finished: Wake Up, Sir by Jonthan Ames
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

I finished Alba, which was as good as I remembered it being. Delacorta rules.

I also finished The Shadow of the Wind, which has the distinction at this point in time as being the best book I’ve read this year. I just looked, and there’s really a strong possibility that it’s the best book I’ve read in the whole of last year too. (If you haven’t read my previous post about it, jump down and read it so you’re all caught up. It’s just the next post down. We’ll wait here.)The writing is gorgeous, in that frustrating “I could never, ever, in my entire life write a book like this” kind of way. I almost cried four different times while reading it, and when I got to the end I was close to tears simply because I was overcome by the beauty of it all.

There’s a quote from the beginning of the novel, as Daniel describes reading the book that will change his life, that in turn describes my experience with this book.

“As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections. The minutes and hours glided by as in a dream. … I was plunged into a new world of images and sensations, peopled by characters who seemed as real to me as my room. … My eyes began to close, but I resisted. I did not want to lose the story’s spell or bid farewell to its characters yet.” p 7

I know I’m about to sound all hippy here, but there’s something magical about this book. It’s one of those dream books, the kind you want on a desert island, the kind that sucks you in and doesn’t let go as you live in someone else’s life. The mysteries in it are so tangled, so circular and reflective, that at every turn there’s a suprise, something that sends your thoughts spiraling in another direction in an attempt to make the connections needed to solve them. The characters are so vivid that they’ll break your heart, and if you make it all the way through the book without feeling at least nervous for a number of them, if not downright terrified, we really have nothing to talk about.

The moral of the book, and the reason I had such a strong reaction to it, is that stories have immense power. The stories we tell, and the ones we don’t, bind us together in unimaginable ways. Books have the power to influence the course of our lives, and in some cases, posess a saving grace. I really can’t recommend this book highly enough.

I know I was doing really well at alternating fiction and non-fiction, but Eleanor Roosevelt ruined my streak. I have a couple novels due back to the library soon, so I’ll be reading those next: Wake Up, Sir by Jonathan Ames, and The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. I’ve heard great things about both of them.

Current total: 23
Just Finished: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Next Up: Wake Up, Sir by Jonathan Ames