Book Recommendations for Your Reading Lists

Currently (Re-) Reading: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

So I know I’ve overloaded everyone with blog posts in the last week, but I’m absolutely determined to meet this goal of nine posts in November! Probably because I have a bad record for following through on goals I set for myself. However, I’ve decided to use this last November post to give some recommendations and summaries of my favorite books as an easier read from which you will hopefully benefit.

Or maybe I’m just copping out because I have actually caught up with blogging on all the books I’ve read since I started Novel Ideas and I didn’t leave myself enough time to write a worthy post on another book-related topic… You can be the judge.

Here are three book recommendations for you with the summaries from their back covers.

1. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets – an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.”

Yes, I’ve mentioned this book recently and yes, it is so good it’s worth bringing up once again. Like I’ve said, it’s a gripping story that has one hell of a shock ending. Plus, Zafon’s writing is just beautiful! He has an unbelievable ability to create imagery that’s so vivid and originally described. It makes me pea green with envy because I will never be able to write that well. His writing is even more impressive because this book was originally written in Spanish. That’s right. You’re reading a translation. Makes me wish I could read Spanish just so I could get the full effect of his writing. I highly recommend this book and the other novels in the set, The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven.

2. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

(My copy doesn’t have a summary on the back cover so this is my brief summary)

Jacob Jankowski is a student at veterinary school about to finally earn his degree when he receives the devastating news that both his parents have been killed in a car accident. His life is further turned upside down by the discovery that they left Jacob with a mountain of debt that forces him to sell his father’s veterinary practice and his childhood home. In the midst of a breakdown, Jacob drops out of school and runs away, eventually jumping on a train. He is surprised to find the train belongs to the circus troupe called Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. The ringleader, Uncle Al, learns Jacob has veterinary training and hires the dropout to treat the circus animals. While traveling with the performers, Jacob discovers that behind the colorful, fanciful and spectacular show lurks a dark and dangerous world and Jacob unwittingly places himself in the thick of it when he falls in love with Marlena, the show’s star and the wife of the hot-tempered head-trainer, August.

It’s a fascinating look into the circus culture and a beautiful love story to boot. Furthermore, Gruen’s writing is effortlessly smooth, making it easy for the audience to become thoroughly absorbed in the novel. Another excellent read to add to your own list.

3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

“By her brother’s graveside, Liesel Meminger’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Grave Digger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of out time.”

The last sentence really says a lot about what it so wonderful about this book. It truly is intense and “superbly crafted.” Zusak also makes one of the most unique writing choices I’ve ever encountered and tells the story from the perspective of Death. It sounds like it should be incredibly morbid to read a story told by Death, but he’s a surprisingly entertaining narrator. Warning, this is one of the most amazing, beautiful stories I’ve ever read, but it’s also one of the saddest. If you’re emotional at all, have a box of tissues ready while you read.

These are just three books to add to your own reading lists. Happy reading!

A Real Horrorshow Post About A Clockwork Orange

Currently (Re-) Reading: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

The “Currently Re-Reading” section today is technically not true… I’m not sure I can say “currently” if I haven’t actually cracked the book open yet. I guess I’m in book limbo since I just finished 1984 last night and haven’t started The Hobbit yet. Either way, here’s hoping I finish re-reading it before the movie comes out.

I have a second somewhat tangential topic to discuss before diving into my A Clockwork Orange experience. Between Jane Eyre and A Clockwork Orange, I actually read two other books. These books were pseudo sequels to one of my all-time favorite novels, The Shadow of the Wind. They center on the same characters and the same mysterious library called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in Barcelona, but supposedly they can stand alone i.e. you don’t have to read the others to understand or enjoy one of them. Following The Shadow of the Wind, the author, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, wrote The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven. After reading all about the epic romance of the passionately moral Jane Eyre, I thus entered the mysterious, dangerous streets of Barcelona with the tormented David Martin in The Angel’s Game and then The Prisoner of Heaven.

I’ve opted not to dedicate an entire blog post to either of these Zafon novels, despite how thoroughly I enjoyed them because the topics I wanted to discuss would have revealed far too much about these keep-you-guessing, twisted stories. I’ve used spoiler alerts, but I don’t know how effective they are and frankly, most of the time I expect the people reading my blog to have already read what I’m discussing since they are classic English class reading. With The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven, I don’t expect as high a readership and I absolutely would not want to ruin these books because if you haven’t read them or The Shadow of the Wind, you definitely should. They are gorgeously written and are intriguing, compelling, lovely, and disturbing stories with lots of surprise twists. I would hate to deprive anyone of the experience of reading them without knowing what will come next.

That being said, if you have read any or all of these books, I would love, love, love to discuss them!

Moving on…

WARNING: this post contains spoilers for A Clockwork Orange. If you haven’t read it, you should probably stop reading.

Now, there is a reason I mentioned the Carlos Ruiz Zafon novels even though I don’t intend to spend a full post on them. Besides wanting to recommend them to the world, these books definitely colored my reading of A Clockwork Orange.

Allow me to elaborate.

With most popular or classic novels, it’s hard not to hear something about them before reading them. In the case of A Clockwork Orange, everything I heard about it was how disturbing a story it was. I was actually fairly nervous about reading it because I don’t have the strongest of stomachs nor do I have nerves of steel. Therefore, I was convinced that A Clockwork Orange would be more than I could handle, pathetic a confession as that may be.

However, I was both relieved and disappointed to discover that it didn’t live up to my gruesome expectations.

I firmly believe that I wasn’t as appalled as most by the atrocious acts in A Clockwork Orange because I had just finished The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven. Crazy as it may seem, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s story was so twisted and messed with my head so much that Anthony Burgess could hardly top it. However, I don’t know if this was one of those instances in which the reality couldn’t possibly live up to the horrible imaginings I had envisioned or if I was somewhat robbed of the real experience of reading A Clockwork Orange.

Admittedly, A Clockwork Orange was really disturbing, even if my previous reading lessened the level of disturbance. What surprised me was that it wasn’t so much the gratuitous violence and sexual abuse that appears primarily at the start of the novel that was upsetting. I mean, it was upsetting, but the truly disturbing part of the story was the idea driving the protagonist’s “reformation.”

In some ways, the theory behind the protagonist’s tortuous process of “reform” sounds reasonable. Plus, the end result is certainly desirable. I mean, why is it so unreasonable to condition a person in such a way that they are physically ill at the sight or even the mention of violence or depravity? After all, isn’t that the “normal” reaction of a person we would consider sane? And it’s just an intense learning technique, right? Why is this so much more horrible than something like putting foul-tasting nail polish on to condition yourself to stop biting your nails? Plus, don’t the ends justify the means? The end result, in theory, is a peace-loving society that literally finds brutality and aggression revolting; everyone would behave like a “good” person in this world.

So where’s the bad?

Sure, it all sounds great… until you find out more about the means to the end. The method of “reformation” is both horrifying and dehumanizing. The reformers strap the person being reformed into a chair and restrain him entirely, including his eyelids, and then force him to watch the most awful, gruesome images available while he’s induced with a medicine that makes him physically ill to the point of torture. The reformers condition the reformed to a point where he will castrate himself at the foot of an aggressor rather than fight or even think about fighting. He’s in so much anguish that he literally throws himself out the window to escape his torment.

Is this really a solution? And more importantly, if someone simply behaves well in society out of a desire to avoid physical pain rather than out of a desire to behave well and do good things, is he really considered a good person? What makes someone good? The good actions/lack of bad actions he does or the choice he makes to do those actions? It’s a fascinating question to examine and I think Anthony Burgess does a great job looking at all the angles.

One of the most interesting and controversial components of A Clockwork Orange, though, is actually connected to this integral question. This is the final chapter of the novel.

As some may know, the final chapter of the book was not included in the American publication of it. Weirdly, the movie adaptation of the novel was based on this incomplete version despite the fact that the director was British, so many people believe that this was how the book was intended to end. The final chapter was also another aspect of the novel I’d heard about and that turned out to be quite the surprise for me. I’d always heard that the final chapter completely changes the message of the whole book and this is, in fact, true. What stunned me, though, was that I firmly expected the extra chapter to leave the novel with a depressing and dark ending and that the American version left it out because it was too awful to subject the more conservative American population to. I honestly always thought the final chapter was the reason for all the censorship of the book.

I could not have been more wrong. In fact, the final chapter was completely the opposite of what I expected. Instead of leaving the reader with a dark, gloomy feeling like A Brave New World, the final chapter proposes a more positive outlook on life. Without the final chapter, people are fundamentally evil and there’s no hope of changing them. With it, an obsession with violence and aggression is simply a childish pursuit and eventually people grow up and recognize the fundamental goodness that’s been dormant in them until then.

I was so surprised that the American editor thought the book was better without it!

Finally, I have to say that I’m surprised this whole post wasn’t mean ranting about the made up slang. Although it initially read like a MadLib gone terribly wrong, I really did get used to it and actually came to find it impressive. So don’t let it turn you off to the book!