Reading

Being without a computer means I’ve spent the better half of my week trying to go through the backlog of books that have piled up over the years. I keep buying more books despite the fact that I have about 20 that are unread sitting on my bookshelf. I used to plow through books as a kid, at least one a week, but have since slowed down. Anyway, without a computer I’ve picked up the pace a little and am now on my third book in a week.

The first up was finishing Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus. I’m glad I saved this book for now because when I started reading it in 2nd year I didn’t have a clue what they were alluding to half the time. It’s got references to popular culture, music, American history, Greek mythology, and great literary novels, that I wouldn’t get two years ago, but since I’ve taken many of those courses since, the book has become much more enjoyable. I still miss many of the allusions that it makes, but this book is so dense that I could probably spend a year annotating it and still not get anywhere close to the end. Half the fun is in unraveling what he has written and the other half is in seeing how he weaves it into the text and into the story. It’s a pretty good read, but is very heavy handed in the way it handles some of its themes. If you took a shot every time the novel said the “ground beneath her feet” you’d be drunk by the second chapter. I guess that’s his way of giving us a break after we’ve racked our brains trying to wade through the density of his novel.

After that I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which was freakin’ awesome. It’s on a very short list of books that have wowed me from beginning to end (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and A Clockwork Orange are the other two), and I only pray that the movie that is coming out will do it justice. Apparently it’s starring Viggo Mortensen (as the main guy), Michael Williams (Omar from The Wire), Guy Pearce (!!!!!), Robert Duvall (It’s Tom Hagen bitches!), and Charlize “Hubba Hubba” Theron. It’s not written like a conventional narrative, where you’re basically following the action every step of the way, but instead it’s pretty sporadic, written episodically in short paragraph spurts. This takes away focus from the journey itself and directs it towards The Man and The Boy (the unnamed father and son in the novel), and their relationship with each other in a post-apocalyptic world. I found it interesting that they were unnamed, maybe McCarthy is suggesting that their experience in this world isn’t unique, but rather reflective of what would happen if society was to break down like that. It was very interesting and to be honest, a big reason why I liked this book was that it mirrored many of my experiences in Fallout (which is the greatest game I’ve ever played).

The book that I’m reading now is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff by Christopher Moore. It chronicles the life of Jesus from when he was a child to when he becomes the messiah (since those years are noticeably absent in the bible), as told by his best friend at the time: Biff. My coworker recommended this book to me saying it was one of the funniest books he’s ever read, and judging from what it said on the back of the book (Jesus learning Kung Fu?!), it really seemed to be headed towards complete absurdity. Surprisingly, it’s a very touching novel. It’s got some pretty funny moments in there, and pretty stupid ones at that, but it doesn’t necessarily make it stupid. It’s nicely written and so far I seem to be enjoying it so I’ll keep everyone posted on that.

I should be getting my computer back tomorrow and if that’s the case I’ll be hooking it up to the Internet ASAP so I can download all my codecs again and go back to watching movies in the middle of the night. I really want to keep up with all my reading though, so hopefully I’ll be able to make time for both the reading and the movies. Until then!

*turns around and whips cape over my face and flies off into the horizon*