Asleep at the Wheel

November is over. Which means NaNoWriMo is over. I reached 50,129 words on the 29th, a day before the deadline. (Do I get a medal?)

I am, however, no where near finished writing my novel. Today, I'm at 61,001 words and just getting to the really meaty parts, which are the most frustrating and most exciting. There's like, plot happening. Though I have no idea if any of it makes any sense.

That's the writing.

Here's the reading: I've finished eleven novels since my last blog post. Which is a lot of reviewing.

I do this to myself.

It
By Stephen King

Remember when the miniseries came on TV, and Tim Curry's clown face was the scariest thing your seven year-old brain had ever seen in the history of time? I remember locking myself in my grandmother's bathroom because I was so freaked out, and then thinking "oh my god, there are so many drains in here." I don't think I actually watched the movie; I just had nightmares about the promos.

With this history of terror in mind (plus all the ample hype), I expected to be terrified reading this novel. It's 1100 pages of evils clowns, insane bullies, secret pacts, crawling around in sewers, and people just getting killed in nasty ways. Except... it wasn't all that scary.

But, one of my favorite annoying hobbies is going on and on about how tuned-in Stephen King is. He knows popular culture; he knows human psychology. This book had all of that. Despite not being all that scared, I really got sucked into the world of Derry, Maine, and into the characters' lives.

Here's the breakdown: the first 800 pages are pretty much worth it. No spoilers here, but I found the ending cheesy and sort of disappointing after all that intense buildup. I highly preferred Carrie or The Stand.

(Disclaimer: I've heard a number of people say this was the scariest book they've ever read. Mayhaps I do not not know what I'm talking about.)


This is How You Lose Her
By Junot Diaz

I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to write something about this one. I may have mentioned about 150 thousand times before that I have a fondness for Junot Diaz that is deep and wide and filled with kittens and lightening bolts and wild stallions. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the reason I went to grad school for English. When I read it, I wanted to talk about it for three hours around a big conference table filled with other nerds (wish granted). I may also have mentioned that when I told Mr. Diaz that in person, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek (brag). Which basically made me want to be a better human in every single way.

That being said, I've read a lot of reviews claiming that This is How You Lose Her is an even better book than Oscar Wao. It's not. But I'm biased. And that's a very high bar. It is, however, an incredible, heartbreaking book and better than many of the books I have read this year. It's a novel written in short stories, from the point of view of Diaz's recurring character and kinda-alter ego, Yunior. Yunior is deep, he's charismatic, he's interesting. He's also tragic. There is no woman on earth who hasn't fallen for a man like him at one point or another and lived to regret it later:

tragic

+ good-looking

+ deep

(x) cheater

__________

one out every ten ex-boyfriends in the world

But who wants to be the sort of man whom women regret? The novel succeeds in that it is both unusual and highly relatable. These are stories about the kinds of difficult relationships we've all had--with our parents and siblings, with our exes and friends. Familiar, yet deeply moving.

The Imperfectionists
 By Tom Rachman

Here is another novel in short stories. It's impossible to over-emphasize how well-written this book is. It's also hard to describe what it's about. Each chapter is one story from the life of one employee at a small English-language  newspaper in Rome. Each of the stories is interconnected, and each is anchored to the past. Each of the characters is unique, but not so unique as to become unbelievable. Most of the stories are moving.

This is just a good, solid, well-written novel.


Pulphead
By John Jeremiah Sullivan

Even if you have no real interest in reading essays, there is almost certainly something in this book for you. Pulphead is a fine collection of essays on such various subjects as caves, the Blues, what happens to people from MTV's The Real World, Christian Rock festivals, Hurricane Katrina, Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, and other awesome topics which I was thrilled to read about. The piéce de résistance is an essay titled, "The Violence of the Lambs" which also happens to be the very last essay in the book. It's weird and shocking and totally brilliant. It's about the recent trend in animal-on-human violence. It's friggin' insane, as they say.

If you do enjoy essays or pop culture, or know someone who's into any one of the above topics, I highly recommend this book.

(Disclaimer 2: Not all of the essays are awesome. Some of them are kind of a drag. But there is the beauty of the essay and skipping around.)