The Mark of the Golden Dragon

By L.A. Meyer

★★★☆☆

Release Date: October 3rd, 2011

Three Things I Liked About The Mark of the Golden Dragon:

1. Higgins

2. Ravi 

3. The Black Highwayman

The Mark of the Golden Dragon is the 9^th installment in a series I’ve been reading since I was about 11. Unofficially dubbed ‘Bloody Jack’ (after the title of the first book), the series follows Mary “Jacky” Faber, a girl who started her illustrious (and sometimes infamous) life at sea as a woebegone London orphan who, desperate for steady food and a safe place to sleep each night, disguises herself as a boy to take up as a ship’s boy on the HMS Dolphin. Since then, Jacky’s adventures have earned her numerous nicknames (Puss in Boots, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, & etc.), taken her all over the world from the Cape of Good Hope to the northern Atlantic, and required such flexibility of loyalties that they’re blurred almost beyond distinction. Over the course of 9 novels, she’s defeated pirates and dabbled in piracy, won a medal of honor at Trafalgar, attended the prestigious Lawson Peabody School for Girls in Boston (briefly), traversed the Mississippi on a river boat, swum for shipwrecked treasure in the Caribbean, served as a spy on the French lines, met both Napoleon and George III, and been the protégé of a fearsome Chinese pirate queen… just to scratch the service. Nonetheless, though her predicaments and allegiances vary by book (and sometimes even by chapter), Jacky has always endeavored to remain true to two things: Her betrothed, Jaimy, whom she met on her very first voyage and hasn’t spent a consecutive five chapters with ever since, and doing what’s right by her friends. And she’s mostly succeeded. Usually. And she fails with the best intentions.

The Mark of the Golden Dragon sees Jacky safely rescued from a lifetime sentence to the penal colony in Australia and reunited with Jaimy, only to be washed overboard with Ravi in a typhoon off the coast of Southeast Asia. Presumed dead by her crew and loved ones on board her beloved ship, the Lorelei Lee, Jacky and Ravi manage to stay afloat until they wash up onshore. After a few months of navigating the foreign world of the East Indies followed by a fortuitous rescue by trusty ‘ole Higgins (I’m not spoiling anything; readers of the series will know Jacky is ever indefatigable), Jacky hastens back to London, where she infiltrates the London ton with the goal of procuring full pardons for both she and Jaimy (who was wrongfully convicted in the previous novel and sentenced to the same penal colony as Jacky herself), as well as rescuing Jaimy from the life of madness and revenge he has descended into since her presumed death.

Speaking of Jaimy, his vendetta against the two men he holds responsible for Jacky’s putative death has earned him a place on my list of favorite things in The Mark of the Golden Dragon, as well as the nickname “The Black Highwayman” for holding up carriages in search of his quarries, robbing rich occupants Robin Hood style. With his billowing black cloak and mask, and tortured obsession with avenging his (presumed) lost love, he cuts a very dramatic and romantic figure, quite a departure from the relatively unexciting upstanding Lieutenant of the Royal Navy and – pardon my French – whipped fiancé of Bloody Jack, infamous on both sides of the Atlantic, he’s dutifully been for the last few books. It was refreshing to see him break lose.

Jacky has personality and charisma in spades, which enthralls readers and fellow characters alike, and is one of the many reasons I’ve stuck with her for 8 years, in spite of the fact that the recipe for the books grows a bit more stale and contrived with each installment. Yes, the constant cat and mouse game between Jacky and her betrothed, Jaimy, is getting a little tiresome, as are her incorrigible flirtations during their periods of separation. Not to mention her necessary but increasingly implausible resilience and ability to worm her way out of the most dire of circumstances. But on the whole, these are flaws I put up with the way you ignore or tolerate the quirks of an old friend – because you love them, because you’ve known them forever, because their good qualities more than make up for the less so.

Read this book, I say. But first, start at the beginning. (It’s a very good place to start…*)

Conversation Starter:
Which Jacky installment has been your favorite, and what do you think of how the series has developed? How many books do you think she has left in her?

* Forgive me, I watched The Sound of Music on a daily basis as a child.

Books Read This Year: 36

Top 100 Progress: 42/100

The Last Little Blue Envelope

By Maureen Johnson
★★☆☆☆

Release Date: April 26th, 2011*

Two Things I Liked About The Last Little Blue Envelope:
1. Rainy New Year’s in Dublin.
2. English uncle.

Another sequel review, I’m afraid. I’m in the mood to keep it short and sweet, though. So bear with me.

The Last Little Blue Envelope is the sequel to 13 Little Blue Envelopes, which came out several years ago. Ginny’s aunt Peg, an eccentric artist, traipsed off to Europe two years ago, and hadn’t been heard from since. That is, until a letter arrives unannounced from the recently deceased Peg, informing Ginny of her secret battle with brain cancer and her final wish that Ginny follow the instructions in the 13 envelopes enclosed with the letter, as well as a few rules: no cell phone, laptop, company, or plan. Never one for adventure, Ginny nonetheless embarks on a European tour directed by clues in the 13 envelopes. The letters lead her from England to Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, and Greece, and help Ginny forge a farewell connection with her beloved aunt as the letters paint a picture of Peg’s final years and introduce Ginny to many of Peg’s friends and loved ones scattered across the continent. Unfortunately, Ginny’s backpack gets stolen in Greece before she can read the last letter, and so her trip comes to a premature end. But before she goes home, she stops off in London to discover and sell a collection of her aunt’s paintings left behind as Ginny’s inheritance.

The Last Little Blue Envelope picks up a few months after 13 Little Blue Envelopes. It’s December of Ginny’s senior year, and she’s wondering how to turn her summer experiences into a college essay, why her summer romantic interest – Keith, a harmless bad-boy poseur artiste she met in London – isn’t communicating as much as he used to, and what ever happened to her 13th letter and her key to closure. A couple weeks before Christmas break, she gets an email from someone in England, informing her that they have her letter and want to meet up with her. So, on a whim, she flies to London to spend the holidays with her British uncle (who married Peg before she died) – only to be faced with a couple of back-to-back setbacks: 1] Her romantic interest has a new romantic interest, and 2] Oliver, the devastatingly handsome bearer of her letter, isn’t about to just hand it over. The letter contains instructions to obtain the parts to a final piece of Peg’s art for Ginny to sell, and Oliver wants a finder’s fee of half the proceeds. Instead of spending the holidays cuddled up with Keith with mugs of tea in front of a cozy English fireplace (or something), Ginny finds herself crammed into the backseat of Keith’s dilapidated automobile with Keith, his new girlfriend, and Oliver, driving across Europe to complete Peg’s final project.

The Last Little Blue Envelope wasn’t terrible, and it had its moments – I especially got a kick out of a scene where Keith’s girlfriend, used to driving on the opposite side of the road, has to navigate the infamous Arc du Triumph traffic circle – but overall it had that stale sequel aesthetic, as if perhaps Maureen spent a little too much time away from the characters before going back to tie up the loose ends from the first novel. Oliver’s bad boy standoffishness as a mask for financial and emotional insecurity was a little too predictable, as was Ginny’s transition of romantic interest from one bad-boy to another, without enough swoon-factor to compensate, and the story in general was a little too much more of the same of the first 12 letters. Maureen said she only decided to write this sequel after getting a multitude of requests for one, and it shows – The Last Little Blue Envelope reads like an afterthought, not a planned finale.

Books Read This Year: 34
Top 100 Progress: 42/100

* I received an advance copy of The Last Little Blue Envelope through NetGalley.com

Where She Went

By Gayle Forman
★★☆☆☆

Two Things I Liked About Where She Went:
1. All-night private tour of NYC.
2. Intense impromptu cello/guitar duet.

Can we just start with a collective “ugh!” for the cover? UGH! Who approved this? It’s an eyesore! I really despise when publishers put actual human faces on covers. Drawings: okay. Profiles: if you must. Faces: abort!

Where She Went is the sequel to a novel that came out last spring and made waves on the young adult circuit, called If I Stay. If I Stay is part love story (romantic, of course, but also familial and musical) and part tragedy. In the aftermath of a car crash that kills her parents and younger brother, Mia – comatose and barely stable in the ICU, while her spirit somehow (it’s fiction, after all) roams the hospital, observing the chaos of grief for her family and fierce hope for herself amongst her remaining loved ones, including her boyfriend, Adam – is faced with the ultimate decision: should she let go, or should she stay? The story is wrenching, but it is also beautiful and moving. I read it in one sitting, tucked into the backseat of a car speeding along the autobahn in the dark, with the melancholy melodies of classical music (fitting, as music is a powerful theme in If I Stay, Mia being a Juilliard-bound cellist) sealing me into my own little bubble of story and sound, which only made it all the easier to be swept up by the emotional currents of the novel.

Not so Where She Went. I will allow that the fact that I couldn’t read it in one sitting may have impeded some of the story’s emotional momentum, but I don’t think that can be held wholly, or even mostly, responsible. Where If I Stay was a deeply felt tale of love, loss, and the ties that bid (to each other, to life), with a cast of characters, a plot, and a point of view that were refreshingly and captivating original in a genre prone to cliché, Where She Went made up for that originality in spades by conforming to clichés of the genre, the characters becoming nearly unrecognizable for the generic corruption wreaked on them. If If I Stay was as piercing and individual as a personal experience of loss, as hauntingly beautiful and melancholy as a cello solo, then Where She Went is the Hallmark card you receive from your coworker a week after the funeral.

Where She Went shifts from Mia’s point of view to her boyfriend – now ex-boyfriend – Adam’s. If I Stay explored the onset of Mia’s loss, and Where She Went explores the ongoing burden of Adam’s. Not only did he also lose Mia’s family – who had accepted into their fold – but a few months later, he lost Mia as well, when she left for Juilliard and inexplicably stopped communicating. He turned his compounded hurt and confusion into music, writing an entire album in 2 weeks, an album that gets him and his band, Shooting Star, signed and chart topping in a matter of a few whirlwind months. Now, 3 years later, he’s a bona fide rock-star with a celebrity girlfriend, constant attention from the paparazzi, a world tour – and a new smoking habit, anxiety meds, and a falling out with his band mates to show for it. He may have millions in the bank and thousands in the audience, but he’s a sad, lonely, and strung-out soul who can’t remember what he loves about the only thing he used to care about as much as Mia.

Then the night before Adam flies to London to kick off a 67-show world tour, when his manager gives him a night off to pull himself back together (he’s on the verge of a mental and ideological breakdown), he stumbles on a poster outside Carnegie Hall, advertising a concert that evening for a promising young cellist – who is, of course, none other than Mia. After the concert, Mia has him called backstage, and thus begins a night spent touring Mia’s New York and tending to old flames – to be extinguished or rekindled, depending on what the night brings.

I had a few deal-breaking issues with this book. The biggest is that I really wish Gayle hadn’t made Adam and Mia such rock-stars. This book would have been exponentially better if Shooting Star had retained its relatively anonymous indie status, and Mia was just an above average but not headlining Juilliard student. One of the fabulous things about If I Stay was the normality of the characters and their lives. The story was so affective because the characters involved weren’t so much different than you. The moment Gayle decided to make Adam a rock-star and Mia a renowned cellist, she axed that accessibility. I just couldn’t really relate as well to them anymore, especially to Adam, who spent a significant chunk of the novel hiding and running from fans, whining about his impending world tour and clingy celebrity girlfriend, and losing his temper with paparazzi.

Other qualms: The lyrics at the start of each chapter, supposedly from Adam’s career-launching record, were melodramatic and cheesy; I wish more of the novel had been spent in the present, rather than switching back and forth every other chapter to the past; Mia needed a stronger presence, because even though the novel was told from Adam’s point of view, it felt entirely too Adam-centric, compared to If I Stay, which gave a rounded portrayal of Adam even though it was told through Mia’s lens.

All things considered, I’m not sure I would even recommend Where She Went to fans of If I Stay. I felt more satisfied by the open end of If I Stay than I did by the resolution of Where She Went.

Books Read This Year: 34
Top 100 Progress: 42/100

Howards End

By E.M. Forster

★★★☆☆

Three Things I Liked About Howards End:

1. England! (It never fails to excite me.)

2. The dialogue.

3. The imagery, especially music.

It's been too long. My apologies. School infringes on my reading/reviewing time. I don't approve. Happily, I'm on spring break now, so my reading rate will be amped up for the next week (yessss!).

Three days ago I spent about eight hours tucked into a corner of the library, the light of my laptop burning into my eyes as I furiously typed out a dissatisfying 5-page paper on this book. Consequently, whenever I think about it now I feel like I’m pressing my nose into the crease of the spine and trying to read. My brain goes a bit numb, so forgive me if this entry is on the short side.

Howards End is a story of two families, and the house that entwines them. The Schlegels: Margret, the eldest, a mix of pragmatism and idealism; Helen, the younger sister, passionate and full of ideals; and Tibby, the ascetic younger brother, who perceives life through self-constructed bars of knowledge and Oxford. The Wilcoxes: Ruth, the matron whose spirit is the life-force of both Howards End and Howards End; Henry, the patriarch, a stoic businessman who fails to appreciate his wife’s passion for a house; and their sons, Paul and Charles, the former sent off to Nigeria to further imperialist ventures, the latter a carbon copy of his father. The families meet on holiday in Germany, and their acquaintance is renewed when the Wilcoxes move into a flat across the street from the Schlegels’ London residence, Wickham Place. The passionate and cultured Schlegel sisters spin through the ordered lives of the Wilcoxes and through their carefully preserved status quo into upheaval.

Howards End reminds me of Jane Austen, as far as the English setting and the focus on interpersonal relationships. It has a wider scope, though, addressing not only personal relationships, but also class conflicts, imperialism, the stretching of societal gender roles, and the chafing of the industrializing modern society against the quaint pastoral lifestyle of old England.

Howards End isn’t quite a page-turner (hence only three stars; I just struggle giving anything top marks if it's not both readable AND well-written), but it’s an enjoyable read, and Forster’s dialogue is so convincing and his descriptions so poetic that one can’t help but admire them. My paper required that I watch the movie adaption as well as read the book (in order to compare and contrast them), and having done so, I really recommend them as a package deal. The movie isn’t a replacement for the book (I would never advocate so), but it’s a lovely companion, not to mention a wonderful movie in its own right, with beautiful set design, a fitting soundtrack, and outstanding acting performances*.

* Hey, Emma Thompson didn’t win her Oscar for nothing.

Books Read This Year: 21

Top 100 Progress: 39/40

Before I Fall

By Lauren Oliver

★★☆☆☆

Two Things I Liked About Before I Fall:

1. Thinking about appreciation for the simplest and most important things in your life.

2. Butterfly effect.

I didn’t like this book. I thought it was inexpertly and unsubtly written – the themes and morals were heavy-handed to an extreme, holding up signs that read, “Look at me! I’m important and meaningful!” in sloppy black sharpie – and the characters, oh boy. Talk about unsympathetic.

Samantha Kingston is your average* high-school girl: she skates along in her classes, has 3 best friends and a boyfriend she’s crushed on since middle school, overcame her un-cool former self, and spends her weekends at parties with the high-school upper crust. Everyone envies her, her life is perfect**, yadda yadda … And then in one split-second on the ride home from a typical Friday night, her life as she knows it comes to an end – literally. That is, until she wakes up again in the morning. Now Sam has seven chances to relive her last day, to untangle the knot of actions and inactions that led to that last moment, and make sense of a senseless tragedy.

This is one of those books where you’re supposed to grow with the character as they learn what makes life beautiful and how to be a better person. Okay, fine. I often like those books – even love them. The problem is that the whole book aimed to add substance to a character that was by nature substanceless, a collection of stereotypes more than an actual person.

Perhaps you think I am not being fair. Perhaps you’d like more evidence.

Samantha and her best friends Elody and Ally are basically the minions of their ringleader, Lindsey, and are apparently so grateful to have been chosen into popularity that they’ll follow Lindsey’s every whim, no matter how reckless or shallow or even cruel, no questions asked. Samantha’s transgressions range from the (relatively) minor: isolating herself from her family, ignoring the (wonderful) boy who’s been in love with her since the 3rd grade, dating an (decidedly un-wonderful) idiot just because he’s hot and popular, and belittling underclassmen and peers alike; to the contemptible: frequently skipping class, smoking and drinking, and flirting with her math teacher; to the unforgivable: relentlessly tormenting a girl to the point of suicide because of some vendetta Lindsey has against her, without ever questioning why.

The kicker? Samantha closes the prologue with the line, “Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does? Is it really so much worse than what you do?”

Well, yes, actually. Yes it is.

Uggghhh. I know I’m supposed to sympathize with these characters – I mean, Samantha’s dead, after all, and via a means I wouldn’t wish on anyone – but they’re just so inherently clichéd and unlikeable that instead of sympathizing I just thought, “You brought this on yourself.”***

* Read: Generically stereotyped popular girl with "Real Thoughts" and "Substance" buried deep down under her cruel and conformist façade.

** Rule #1 of character development: never, ever tell me your character is perfect. Seriously. It will turn your readers against you and undermine every attempt you make to give the character substance later.

*** And she did; misdeeds aside, Samantha’s fatal mistake was being stupid enough to get in a car with a drunk Lindsey at the wheel, who’s a dangerous driver even when she’s sober. I mean, come on. It’s sad, of course, but it wouldn’t have happened if she’d made better choices. I get so mad when people end up throwing their life away for stupid things like underage drinking.

Same Story, Different Review:

The Crooked Shelf

Books Read This Year: 18

Top 100 Progress: 38/100

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

By Alan Bradley

★★☆☆☆

Two Things I Liked About Sweetness:

1. Flavia’s extensive morbid knowledge of poisons.

2. Flavia’s bike named Gladys.

You know those books you pick up every time you’re in a bookstore, read the back blurb, ponder, and then ultimately put back down? Sometimes, when you finally give in and buy it, you kick yourself for not having done so earlier because it so exceeds your expectations. Other times, it falls as flat as you feared it might. This book falls into the latter category for me.

It seemed promising enough: Flavia de Luce is an eleven-year-old mad chemist with a specialty in poisons. She lives in an old English manor house in the 1950’s with her father and her two older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and has a penchant for the dramatic. Much to her delight (“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”), she finds a man sprawled in the garden and witnesses his last breath as the sun rises the morning after a dead bird showed up on their doorstep, a stamp mysteriously pierced on its beak. Flavia determines the two events must be connected, and she’s not going to relent until she finds out how.

It seemed promising enough, but… I don’t know. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it (except for an annoying overuse of nicknaming; case in point: Ophelia became ‘Feely’). It just didn’t excite me. It lacked that essential and difficult to define spark necessary to really kindle my interest. Flavia should have been spunky and fresh and engaging. She didn't quite succeed. The mystery should have been quirky and suspenseful and engrossing. It wasn't. The whole thing was better as an idea, as the possibility contained in the promise of a black cover blurb.

See? I can’t even get worked up enough to carry on about it in an impassioned and detailed bad review. I’m just… eh, apathetic about it.

Books Read This Year: 17

Top 100 Progress: 39/100

Never Let Me Go

By Kazuo Ishiguro

★★★★★

Five Things I Like About Never Let Me Go:

1. The pervasive aura of bittersweet nostalgia.

2. The quiet, melancholic beauty of the prose, reminiscent of English countryside.

3. The dynamics between Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth.

4. The setting.

5. It lingers.

I saw the movie adaptation of this book last fall at the arts cinema close to my house. It was gorgeous, a poignant, somehow bittersweet tragedy. I say tragedy, and I suppose that’s true – it is tragic – but tragedy seems like too… I guess too loud a word to use. Even though the story’s sad, it’s never brazen with its sadness. The sadness creeps up on you, like a high tide coming in, building and building. And then it washes out, leaving behind the empty stretch of sand.

The book is the same way, but better (of course) because it’s more stretched out. Not by there being more to the story, but just by nature of it being a book – it’s unlikely you’ll read it in a single sitting, so the story stretches out over several days, waiting patiently in a pocket of your mind until you pick it up again. And even when you do finish the book, like I said, it lingers.

Never Let Me Go is a story woven of Kathy H.’s memories of growing up at a place called Hailsham in the English countryside with her best friends Ruth and Tommy. It’s like boarding school – the students live in dorms separated by gender and age, they go to lessons, they spend lazy afternoons playing games on the lawn, and they weather the ups and downs of their relationships with their peers. Yet the students are aware, without ever thinking too carefully about it, that they at Hailsham are special. The Hailsham children will grow up to be donors, in an alternate world where cloning is a successful cure to humankind’s incurable killers. Their fate is inevitable, but as they leave Hailsham on the cusp of adulthood (and with it, donations), Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth begin to question things about their time at Hailsham – how they submitted artwork to win a place in a special gallery, how certain topics had an unspoken taboo – and what role they might play in truth of certain rumors circulating amongst Hailsham graduates, rumors of deferral. Never Let Me Go is partly a science-fiction novel, partly a novel about the ties of love and friendship and shared experience, partly a novel about growing older and entering “real life”, and even partly a novel about ethics. But mostly it’s a novel about the human soul.

Though essentially linear and never hard to follow, the narrative moves fluidly backwards and forwards in time throughout the novel, much like the meandering memory process it mimics. I think this tone is one of the things that makes the mournful poignancy of Never Let Me Go so calm and understated without subtracting from its impact – instead of being inundated with the acute flares of emotion aroused by the events as they happened, the reader experiences the contemplative reflection of someone recalling their life knowing their time is soon and realizing that regret will only embitter the memories they have left.

Ah. I can’t go on and do it any justice. Just read it. And then see the movie. Not necessarily in that order – for once I can see a benefit in reversal, in gleaning the visual mood from the movie before reading the book.

Books Read This Year: 12

Top 100 Progress: 39/100

Possession (Top 100 #39)

By A.S. Byatt

★★★☆☆

When my roommate first noticed this book sitting on my desk, waiting to be read, she laughed and thought it to be some kind of mass-market paperback caliber romance novel. With a title like Possession, I don’t blame her! But in fact, Possession resides in a completely different realm of literature. It won Byatt the Booker Prize – England’s highest literary honor – in 1990 and is included in the BBC Top 100 list I’m slowly but surely working my way through*.

I think the fact that the title is so misleading is largely due to the connotations of the word ‘possession,’ which first conjures up notions of obsessive romance. While romance is an integral aspect of Possession, the novel does not limit itself to it but spans the word’s multifaceted connotations.

Possession, n. The act or state of being possessed**; the physical control or occupancy of land, property, etc, whether or not accompanied by ownership; domination, actuation, or obsession by a feeling, idea, etc.

Contemporary scholars of the Victorian poets Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte, Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey are united by academic intrigue when Roland discovers a letter hinting at a hitherto unknown connection between the two poets. The academic investigation that ensues not only overhauls Roland and Maud’s understandings of the poets they’ve devoted their lives to, but overhauls the lives of the academics themselves as the unveiling of the connection between the presumed devoted husband and lifelong spinster becomes increasingly high stakes and personal. As far as that pesky word ‘possession’ and it’s multifaceted connotations, Possession explores the obvious possession rendered by love, as well as the possession of historical documents and artifacts, and even the possession of historical figures by the people who study them – and vice versa.

Depending how you look at it, Possession is either the most theatrical novel about academia you’ve ever read, or the dullest and densest mystery novel you’ve ever read. 

My problem with this book is that Byatt interrupts the narrative to insert excerpts from the poets’ epic poems, drafts of their personal letters, and even blurbs from biographies and analytical essays that often went on a bit too long and were – let’s face it –just plain dry. I get why she did this, I really do. She wanted the reader to feel they were immersed in the investigation too; she wanted us to feel as though we knew the poets as intimately as Roland and Maud. But the end result was disruptive and would disengage me every time I really started to be drawn in to the story – and it was a compelling story. I just thought it went on a bit too long.

Now, metaphors and themes and foreshadowing aside, the point of writing a novel – any novel, chick lit, classic, or otherwise – is to tell a story, is it not? And thus it follows that a successful novel is one whose story draws the reader in, whereas an unsuccessful novel fails to do so, resulting in a novel which is an effort of diligence and toil to read. The question, then, becomes: Is a novel successful if it is literarily admirable without being engaging? Conversely, is it successful if it’s engaging without being particularly literarily admirable? I’ll leave you to ponder. If you come up with anything decisive, let me know.

* There's also a movie based on it, but I watched the trailer and I don't think I'll bother watching it. Partly because Aaron Eckhart bothers me, and partly because it just doesn't look good.
** Illuminating, no? I hate definitions that use a different conjugation of the word to explain the meaning of the form in question.

Books Read This Year: 10

Top 100 Progress: 39/100

The Sixteen Satires

By Juvenal

★★☆☆☆

I wanted to be super clever and start this off by saying, “Juvenal is juvenile,” but that’s not exactly the right word. What’s a word for “inflammatory, self-righteous, ranting, bitter old man*”? If you think of one, let me know.

Juvenal’s satires are a commentary on what he characterizes as the degradation of Roman society, for which he holds all his contemporaries responsible while upholding the moral and political purity of his forebears. He’s poisoned with nostalgia and thinks the golden age of Rome has come and gone; observing his city makes him feel the way I imagine I would if I were stuck in front of a TV with no remote and forced to watch MTV or South Park 12 hours a day. Or if I were trapped in a modern art museum.

Part of me almost pities Juvenal, because at times his tirades come off sounding more like those of an aging man unable to let go of his glory days or keep up with a fast-paced and transforming society than those of a sanctimonious blowhard. But then Satire VI came around relentlessly ragging on women and with its cruel pettiness cured me of any sympathetic twinges.

What I take from these satires is that, just as human nature has remained constant throughout history, we perceive our societies to be in a constant state of decline. Why is that? It seems that every generation balks at the behavior of the next while glorifying that of their predecessors. But are really we in a downward spiral of corruption that began when Eve bit into that infamous apple? Or are we simply skittish of change? Is this a phenomenon of degradation or evolution?

*Okay. So I don’t actually know if he was an old man. But that’s how I picture him.


Books Read This Year: 7
Top 100 Progress: 38/100

The Fountainhead

By Ayn Rand

★★★★★

The Fountainhead is not so much a novel as it is a treatise on the innate power of the undiluted Self; a trial of society that strips the majority bare and finds them wanting; an anthem to the individual, stoic in the preservation and perseverance of their Self. It’s no stretch to see why Ayn Rand and her work have surpassed mere literature to become a movement. Though it might be more accurate, perhaps, to say that Howard Roark is the source (one could even call him… the fountainhead) of the movement, the infallible and unfaltering integrity of his Self being the movement’s inspiration, aspiration, and very core.

To say that Howard Roark is an architect is to say that J.K Rowling is a writer or that Mozart was a composer – technically accurate, but they are all so much more than their profession that to identify them by it alone seems a gross understatement. Nonetheless, Howard Roark is an architect. An architect who designs wholly original, somewhat austere and unnerving buildings that refuse to conform to popular style. An architect who would – and does – endure menial labor, scapegoating, unemployment, ostracism, forfeit of love and happiness, and criminal trial rather than commit even the most minor betrayal of his principles. He is uncompromising, indefatigable, and utterly without self-doubt – and for that, society seeks to destroy him. The Fountainhead is, essentially, Howard Roark vs. the World. (Of course, you have to remember that this is a 694 page book we're talking about, so it's possible I might be over-simplifying a bit. But you get the gist.)

Roark’s actions, or in some cases, lack of action, in response to this lifelong conflict showcase him to as the embodiment of Rand’s ideal person – wholeheartedly selfish. The word carries strikingly different connotations as used in The Fountainhead than we’re used to, however. Or rather, its definition is the same – self-centered, un-altruistic, close-minded, unsympathetic – but the implications differ. Where by standard usage ‘selfish’ is an insult, denoting a negative or derogatory personality trait, to Ayn Rand it implies full realization and devotion to the Self, a concept integral to the philosophy she was developing whilst writing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Selfishness in The Fountainhead is not a vice, but the greatest virtue. It’s putting the undisguised Self forward as one’s character in society, while simultaneously shielding it from any influence of that society. It’s the refusal to lend any components of one’s Self (thoughts, talents, opinions) to others, thereby protecting their integrity from the corruption of collaboration, which compromises each individual’s contribution. It’s the derivation of self-worth, ambition, and satisfaction from the Self, not entrusted to the fickle favor of the outside world – a world which too often converts admiration into condemnation after the passing of some ambiguous, fluctuating expiration date. Above all, it’s the doctrine that an individual is at their best when living in and of and for themselves.

Just as The Fountainhead does not settle for being just a novel, its characters do not settle for being just characters. They become archetypes, vessels of ideas larger than any one characterization or plot function. The ideological intercourse that occurs when the characters interact in various permutations weaves the subtle but sturdy fabric of motives, actions, and pretensions that so thoroughly establishes Ayn Rand’s philosophy. The ideologies behind the archetypes are not so clear, however, that is possible to read The Fountainhead passively. Many of the characters’ personal philosophies become muddled or convoluted at some point or another, requiring the reader to be actively engaged in unraveling them as they read, constantly connecting the dots between actions and the motives they manifest – sometimes contradictory, when characters cannot or will not risk the effort of living up to their beliefs or their Self. The only character, in fact, whose actions and motives are never muddled or counteracted, but remain pure and focused, is Howard Roark – apt, as he is the paradigm of Ayn Rand’s idyllic selfish man, intransigent and unambiguous in the upholding of his principles.

I have a feeling that this is one of those versatile books that ought to be read at intervals throughout one’s life, because it's a novel of ideas, and we react differently to ideas depending on myriad variables to do with our personalities, knowledge, and experiences. We'll extrapolate different meanings and understandings from the text with each reading based on what we bring to it. As a college student, my reading instructed me to “go confidently in the direction of my dreams and live the life I’ve imagined*,” but I expect that if I were to read the book again in as few as four years from now I may well take something entirely different away from it. For those of you who’ve read it, I’d love to know when, what you gleaned from it, and what you thought/think of Ayn Rand’s philosophy!

*Quote adapted from Henry David Thoreau.

Anna and the French Kiss

By Stephanie Perkins

★★★★★

Ado:

Before I begin, let’s clear the air by acknowledging what we’re all thinking: the title is lamentably lame, the cover affectedly cute, and the whole package insipidly cliché. In a bookstore setting, I probably would have dismissed this as one of countless similar books marketed to pander to the generically sentimental demographic of teenage girls. If it happened to snag my attention as I scanned the shelves, it would probably have been quickly forgotten as I moved to stroke the spines of beloved books that had already proven their worth several times over, who’s only shortcoming was their inability to spontaneously generate new releases in response to my longing.

“So what happened?” you ask. John Green (an author who’s work I avidly enjoy and admire, and whose word and opinion I respect highly) happened, as he’s wont to do. In fact, I had not even heard of this book until John enthusiastically advocated it in a recent vlog post*. John does not recommend books very often; this was clearly not to be taken lightly. I went directly from Youtube to Amazon (without passing Facebook or collecting notifications) and Anna and the French Kiss arrived in my student P.O. box two days later.

Without Further Ado:

If I could rescript my own senior year spent as an expat in Germany, it would probably go a little something like this: Anna is enrolled in the School of America in Paris (SOAP, for short) against her will (?!) because her Nicholas Sparks wannabe of a father thinks she could use some culturing around the edges. Cue The Boy: he’s fluent in French, speaks in a British accent, and has an American passport. Sound too good to be true? It probably is; but that’s what fiction is for – giving us a taste of life’s extremes, the better and the worse than our everyday lives. The book being what it is (and I can’t deny that on the surface, it is exactly what it seems), we know the moment she bumps into him – literally, of course – her first night on campus, that when it comes to Étienne St. Clair, Anna is doomed. But the road to that inevitable end is as charming, intricate, candid, and chic as the streets of Paris.

I have three favorite things about this book. One: the setting. Stephanie never once forgets that she chose to set the novel in Paris. The city is not just a backdrop, it’s a character in itself, intrinsically woven into each scene. She also doesn’t forget the nature of Anna’s presence in Paris. As an expat not speaking a word of French, Anna feels at times alienated both from the foreign city around her as well as the familiar world she left back home, feelings that ring especially true to me, having experienced them myself last year. Two: the realism. One of the ways Stephanie extricates hers story from the stereotype is by not smothering it in the perfection drivel common to so many young adult romances. Not only are the characters not perfect, they’re actively flawed – to the point that it’s their flaws alone, rather than fatalist outside forces, that forestall the Happy Ending. Three: the romance. Of course. But with a unique twist of depth. Anna and the French Kiss is as much a journey of friendship and self-understanding as it is of romance. Even as you’re swooning with Anna and Étienne atop Notre Dame (possibly praying you won’t topple off mid-swoon), picnicking in Père Lachaise cemetery, braving the crypt of the Pantheon, or reveling in springtime in the Luxembourg gardens, you know the romance owes its resonance and sincerity to the friendship founded first.

This is one of those books that so immerses you in its story and its characters and its world that you almost want to commence furious blinking when you’re forced to surface, as if emerging from a movie theater into harsh afternoon sunlight. And then you want to crawl back inside and stay for a while. If you’ve been to Paris, you will be overwhelmed with nostalgia, and if you haven’t, I’m quite sure you’ll long to book the next flight, perhaps settling to console yourself with some frozen pain au chocolat instead.

Concluding Ado:

Here’s where I meet with a dilemma I’ve sort of subconsciously wrestled with throughout my teen years, ever since my reading repertoire began to see recurring appearances by both classic or literarily acclaimed works and popular modern bestsellers. Maybe I’m the only one who struggles with this dichotomy, but I doubt it. How do you reconcile giving both a book like The Shadow of the Wind and Anna and the French Kiss five stars? Ought you to reconcile it? Should Anna be delegated to only three on the grounds of lacking the scope and innovation of Shadow? By what standards ought you to appraise them, anyway? Or should they even be judged based on the same set of standards, given how wildly different they are? I’ve come to a working conclusion that the authors put pen to paper with such different intentions of storytelling in mind that it’s not fair or even constructive to make a direct comparison. But consider this a non-rhetorical question: According to what criteria should literature be measured, and should the standards be universal amongst genres?

* Incidentally, this is pretty much every aspiring author's dream come true (or at least mine), because John Green was an idol of Stephanie's long before she had even begun Anna, and he ended up becoming of fan of hers. Wow. If you're as jealous as I am or just plain interested, she explains the story here at her own blog.

Books Read This Year: 1

Top 100 Status: 38/100

The Mischief of the Mistletoe

By Lauren Willig

★★☆☆☆

You’ll have noticed the “secret” clause up there in the blog tagline, no doubt. Maybe you’ll even have wondered about it. (Have you?) Well, agonize over the secret no longer, readers. The clause refers to the periodic appearance of tomes so ambitious in scope, so universal in theme, so majestic of prose that they are seldom discussed save in select company, sotto voce. Yet I, your devoted and audacious reviewer, have made a commitment to go where few literarians* own up to going, and bring these most furtive of volumes out into the light.

I’m talking, of course, about chick lit.

Perhaps you’re wondering, “Why such secrecy?” I do I have an image to uphold, after all. I’m an English major. I read books like Anna Karenina for fun (fact). My tastes are far too sophisticated to be satisfied by fluffy chick lit disguised as historical fiction and mystery. Right? Right. Ish. The fact is, it’s the holiday season. Fluffy novels are as standard of fare as warm cookies, hot cocoa, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Holidays are a package deal, my friend. A package deal! Anyway, I just finished my first round of college semester exams; I deserve a little fluff reading, if you ask me.** (And no, Aristophanes does not count, funny or not.) Which brings us to The Mischief of the Mistletoe.

The gist: Against her dear friend Jane Austen’s advice, Miss Arabella Dempsey takes on what she anticipates to be a tame, respectable position – schoolteacher at Miss Climpson’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Never would she have expected to be proven so wrong. One day on the job finds Arabella embroiled in an decidedly unconventional investigation spanning castle ruins, drawing rooms, Yuletide balls, and grand estates with the help of a dashing, if somewhat bumbling, young gentleman. But nothing surprises this former wallflower more than the possibility that in the process of nabbing the elusive culprit, she may just nab herself a romance, too. (What did I tell you about holidays and package deals?)

Okay, so… what exactly does The Mischief of the Mistletoe have to offer, you ask? What doesn’t it have to offer would be a better question. Covert messages transmitted via Christmas pudding (inscriptions penned on the inside wrapping – ingenious, no?), schoolmarms held at fake-sword point by rogue Christmas pageant wise men, a lavish twelve-day Christmas celebration riddled with overwrought waistcoats and intrigue, a thorough versing in authentic British slang (‘bloody’ is just the beginning; read this and you’ll soon be spouting off such genuine Briticisms as ‘bally,’ ‘jolly good,’ and ‘deuced’ with ease), a music master with an Italian accent as dubious as the mustachios adorning his lips, an elaborate and dangerous plot spun by an infatuated schoolgirl in pursuit of an ill-gotten pseudo-dowry to compensate for her impending disownment on the grounds of scandal and elopement (try saying that in one breath, I dare you), extensive vegetable-related humor at the expense of the male lead, Reginald “Turnip” Fitzhugh, and said male lead scaling the trellis of a girl’s school at midnight with his reliable groom Gerkin standing watch.

Phew. That was exhausting. Did I miss anything? Oh, but of course – how I could I forget the deft, effortless linguistic stylings of Lauren Willig? The Mischief of the Mistletoe will wow you with such innovative wordplay as “deep, shallow breaths” and “in accord as an accordion.” Before you ask: No, your eyes aren’t fooling you; those exemplary feats of figurative language really are preserved in print. The noble endeavor of better exhibiting the elegance of the English language is one no author can resist.

That being said, I can’t rag on Lauren too much. I’ve been enjoying her Pink Carnation series since it debuted so many years ago*** with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, despite the fact that they’ve gone steadily downhill since. After all, what’s not to like? Intrigue, feisty heroines, floral spies, romance, Britain… they’ve got it all. I relish a new Carnation installment the way one relishes sleeping in, a Starbucks pick-me-up, or re-watching a favorite movie: it’s comfy, familiar, and a little indulgent. Whatever else one could say about it (the words ‘silly,’ ‘farcical,’ and ‘over-the-top’ come to mind), reading The Mischief of the Mistletoe was a fun, frivolous, and festive way to unwind after finals.

*Literarian, n. One who engages in literary pursuits.

**The blogger doth protest too much, ye thinks? Okay, okay, I confess: I like my occasional chick lit. There, I said it. Now can we get back to the review?

***You know, back when I was a wee little pre-teen and we read books on paper, not screens. (I'm looking at you, Kindle. You too, Nook.) And walked to school uphill both ways through several feet of snow, of course. Oh wait, I do that now. *I love Minnesota. I love Minnestota.*


Happy reading and happy Christmas!