it is my personal belief that everyone should read. whether you have time or not, you should always make time for it. honestly, i don’t get why it is so hard. the joys that come from being well-read or even semi-well-read, seriously! anyways… the way i pick out books to read is somewhat interesting to me. it’s all haphazardly chosen. i end up reading things now that most people have read in their elementary or middle school years (daniel quinn’s ishmael). other books, i pick up on whim (steven hall), word of mouth (anita diamant, alan weisman), or i’ve read the author before and found the writing style good enough for a second/third/fourth pick (laurie halse anderson, ellen hopkins, christopher buckley). usually, i have a penchant for picking out interesting and good reads, not that i claim that i have a notion about what constitute a good book, per se. out of the twelve books that i have read thus far, only two books really stand out to me: steven hall’s the raw shark texts and anita diamant’s the red tent.
the latter is kind of controversial, although i don’t see it. i suppose the thought of a red tent is the source of controversy but even then, it is still weird. the red tent is a first-person narrative of dinah,the girl from the old testament who was unspeakably “known” and the shame that came from the event. the red tent, for those who do not know already, is the dwelling which women of jacob’s tribe stay while menstruating or giving birth. the story speaks of the tremendous strength of women to overcome obstacles, while the men do stay as two-dimensional characters, even the ones praised in the old testament. diamant weaves an imaginative tale about dinah, the lone daughter of the four wives of jacob and the great responsibility she carries as she is expected to carry on the narrative of the women in the family so their stories are not forgotten in the male dominated weaving of history. this recreated history shows the possibility of the life that dinah could have lived. quite fascinating. B+
now, the raw shark texts can be described in short as thought-provoking. i say this because the intricacy in which steven hall deals with the problem of language and the mere probability that there is a whole world where concepts live between dialogue, the forgotten and letters, well, this is my kind of book. here is eric sanderson, the protagonist, who wakes up face down on a floor and he cannot remember a thing. nothing. as he analyzes his situation, sanderson discovers little notes and photos of what to do and what things are, a la christopher nolan’s memento. he is directed by the first eric sanderson to a doctor from whom he finds out that this is his eleventh complete memory lapse. life is relatively okay for him until he is attacked by a shark in his living room. a shark made of words and thoughts, who devours memories and essence. the story is then of unraveling what happened to the first eric sanderson, leading the second eric sanderson into a world of deciphering word maps into a land of un-space where words provide the strongest protection one can get. there are times where hall’s writing gets a little murky and convoluted, however if you think a mash-up of jaws, memento and random pop cultural references make for a good read, i highly recommend this. B
P.S. parenthetical asides are examples of recent reads. that is all.
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