EPTThe Final Book Report* subject to change
Here is the chronological order of the books I read
- Infinite Jest
- The Selected Works of Appolinaire
- Bonjour Tristesse
- Taipei
- The Counterfeiters
- Tristes Tropiques
- The Horseman on the Roof
Here is the order in terms of how much I enjoyed them
- Infinite Jest
- Taipei
- The Selected Works of Appolinaire
- The Horseman on the Roof
- Bonjour Tristesse
- The Counterfeiters
- Tristes Tropiques
The best book was, by far, Infinite Jest. It's hard to believe that before reading that book, I was in the DFW thread on TL (which is pretty dead lol) and said that I didn't know if I'd say he was one of the best writers of the century. To me, at least, it's clear that he is more than that. Wallace's book has changed the way I see reading a book; before, reading a book was sort of like an adventure to be had, after reading Infinite Jest, books are more like a code of what the writer wants the reader to experience. The book was fabulous, and I enjoyed all of it, despite not understanding about half the jokes and 90% of what is below the surface. It's funny, more for me than anyone else I suspect, that when I read the book, I had no idea that O.N.A.N. was a joke about onanism and was a biblical reference (lol masturbation jokes). The one qualm I have with the book is where he leaves Joelle van Dyne and Hal Incadenza. Inc deserved a bit better than Pemulis's bullshit at the end of the book and maybe an explanation of the first 50 pages, and Dyne deserved a better last couple words than her passive watching Don Gately go through a ridiculously magically real hallucination/dream deal.
I wrote a small blog on Taipei a bit earlier, but the book was a short, simple bildungsroman, which I can respect. The book was a bit dour, and the somberness of the setting accompanied by the level of stupid that the writer was describing his drug use to make out to was an interesting dichotomy. The end relationship actually left me feeling great about his future, but also felt a bit more capricious than anything else in the protagonist did in the book. That said, I liked Erin as a character, I also thought she was well written.
The rest of the books bordered between nearly incomprehensible due to bad translation or simply issues with cultural differences in how people address each other or what the French consider high class or low class. In The Counterfeiters, the biggest issue is that Gide never explicitly said that any of the characters were or were not gay, nor did he use his Cubist style to make anything short of the fact that people do bad things to get ahead any more clear to the reader. Bonjour Tristesse was a chick-flick novel, and while I feel bad giving it such a low rating - it's more like everything past Appolinaire are the exact same on the rating system - it left me feeling more like the author just wanted to ruin my happy day by making the lead character make terrible decisions; I'll admit that at times I saw a lot of myself in Cyril though (except he was tanner lol). Tristes Tropiques had no central idea and was just a ton of stuff thrown together about one Anthropologists somber attitude of the world. The Horseman on the Roof had a fantastic story, but the ending really threw me off, and the reader's expected knowledge of the geography of France along with cultural mannerisms made the book a bit of a trial; some parts were bathed in French polite society and felt out of place, while others seemed to be like scenes tossed in as filler. In the end, the plot never really came about and the book was just the remarkably exciting adventures of Angelo running around Cholera stricken France, trying to get back to Italy.
Usually I say the books I'm going to be reading next, but in this case, that seems out place. I have a list of books I want to read, on and off the big Le Monde list. I can say that the next book I'm going to read is a book on leadership by Lee Iacoca, and then I'll see about retrying Lolita. I had previously read the first 30 pages until I wanted to puke, and it seemed like the book wasn't that well written, and was mostly made to be a grotesque picture of what pedophilia looks like when put into it's most domestic terms; I just couldn't read it because I wasn't getting anything out of it except a bunch of shittily-awkward feels. I'll retry that. After that is Witz by Joshua Cohen, which is one hell of a book according to the people who have read it. After that is Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute. After that, I'll see, maybe I'll read 1q84 or The Pale King/Broom of the System or more Le Monde books mixed by some Time News's top 100.
On a sidenote to this blog, I've created two wordpresses and a tumblr, so I'm gonna be working at that stuff too now. I'll be participating at a daily writing seminar hosted by my college and will be using that + a daily writing topic feed to just write stuff. If I ever write something I find really good, I'll post it here, but this will always be my go to place to talk to you guys, because I love TL
. Second sidenote, anyone here read Gravity's Rainbow or Witz? I read Infinite Jest and loved it, and wanted to try the other two postmodern epics, but I heard that Infinite Jest is the only one of the three that leaves the reader with some idea of what the fuck is going on at halfway through the book, consequently, it's the longest. Any tips?
