Won't read

• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Two friends of mine read this and both really, really liked it, so I picked it up. Outlander is the first of seven books in a series, soon to be eight possibly, about a nurse from the 1940s who travels back in time to 1700s Scotland and meets one of her husband's tanned, kilt-wearing ancestors, whom she is then forced to marry. She then does nurse stuff and people think she's a witch. I like the concept of a time-traveling person with medical and other modern skills (um, Doctor Who?) and am disappointed in what this novel actually turned out to be like. This is supposed to be a romance/historical/fantasy (I refuse to call it science fiction; time travel does not sci-fi make!) sort of read. My main objection to this book is that it made my brain feel like trash from the first paragraph onward. It's also packed to the gills with smut, not that smut is necessarily unpleasant to read, but I'm simply not interested in hearing about girls sort of enjoying almost being raped by guys who speak in strong dialect. Not into it. Okay. Off to think about actual literature.

• A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind. Rant warning. "Common Read" for UMass Amherst this summer so I read the first third or so and skimmed the rest. Please, what is the point of this book? Okay, maybe the story of high schooler raised in DC ghetto, who goes to Brown University, is conventionally inspiring. Maybe it's amazing for this student to have been pushed by his brave single mother and their shared faith, as expressed through attendance in a very emotional-sounding church and through the sermon the boy made of his salutatorian speech (more ranting about Pentecostal religion as moral of book below). But it seems like something's off, to me, that either something of what is being shared about the characters is excessive, or that the style in which the story is being told is iffy. As a biography, this drags; perhaps if I was black I'd sympathize more? I don't know. I don't like how the female student who was valedictorian of this guy's class, who had straight A's and worked hard and didn't get in trouble, is described thus: "She will go on to an unremarkable institution-- Marymount University, nearby in the Virginia Suburbs, which offered her a full scholarship. Never thought much about big, renowned universities. Never had a reason to." (127) Oh COME ON. What's with the tone?! You don't have to put down the other high-schoolers to make this main character look good, if he's special enough to write a book about! I am tempted to say, hey, what if this kid didn't by some chance get to spend a summer at MIT during high school, get accepted to Brown, get a scholarship to Brown (is it less virtuous to get a scholarship to a state school than an Ivy League? Argh...), receive support from a caring teacher or two, have a mother with a strong personality, have a Supreme Court justice as his personal mentor, etc? It's a fine line between believability and fairy godmother/deus ex machina, and if one detail had fallen through we might have had another drug dealer on our hands. Okay, now about the deux ex machina thing: the corniness is supposed to be taken literally, in A Hope in the Unseen, and this is why: the title of the book is an acknowledged psalm misquote that main character boy takes on as his mantra, adjusting the definition of "faith" to mean being able to believe in attending a university that nobody thinks he'll make it to. I guess Brown is Heaven now. This mindset is very protestant-work-ethic, in the sense that worldly success is supposed to reflect your dedication to your religious calling, and in our protagonist's case the formula works. It doesn't always, and college students need to know that. I do believe that grace and religion help, but what about Job and all the rest of us who don't get off easy? My basic opposition to this book's mindset would therefore be, in a nutshell, that sometimes bad stuff happens, and you have to deal with it without the help of wordly blessings. But in A Hope in the Unseen, the exact opposite is being, yes, preached.

• The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch by Ladislav Klima. Written by a Czech philosopher who liked Nietzsche. I don't dislike all that Nietzsche wrote, so that's not entirely relevant, but I did not like where this book was going, the story and the way it was told, and the whole thing was depressing to me personally, so at that realization I put the thing down. Half regretfully, since this was a book lent to me by a friend to whom another friend had lent it, but... tant pis. Better review, including actual plot details, and by a much more willing reader (okay, the publisher), can be found here.

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. In defense of Alcott, as though my opinion means much, I loooved An Old-Fashioned Girl and still reread it every year or two for comfort. But this? I don't know, I had memories of it seeming to be all right when I read it in fifth grade or whenever. But as soon as I began it the thought I'd heard somewhere, that Alcott didn't like kids at all and just wrote this book for money, couldn't leave my mind, and then the preachiness started. My standards are probably altered from living in this and not the nineteenth century, but when a character says, "I am not going to preach," and then goes on to preach, and all the other characters listen cheerfully and with the apparent certainty that they are not being preached at, I get a little bothered. Sorry, Alcott, I'm used to more subtlety. 

• Prep: a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld. Thought it would be kinda interesting, but it just made me feel like I was in high school and stressed out. Episodic in a way that Aristotle would not approve of.

• Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch. A couple years ago I had this Iris Murdoch thing where I read her biography by her husband, watched the Iris movie, and read her novel The Bell and thought it was just beautiful. Murdoch has written so much but I am still seeking some other work of hers that I am able to get through. I'd heard so many good things about this one, but unfortunately, I just couldn't take it. I still have hope! Sigh...

• The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. This one I borrowed from a Hellenic College prof, didn't know if it would be good, and for a while I thought it a quite enjoyable mid-twentieth century sort of travel book about Greece, in which Greeks are described as pure, passionate, noble, resigned, and not to be trusted. Started reading it in January, quit shortly thereafter because I didn't like the style. No offense to Greece.

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I am getting a pretentious vibe from this book that doesn't make me hate it, it just keeps me from getting absorbed into the story, so maybe I will finish it one day, only I'll have to have nothing else around to read and a lot of spare time. I feel a little sad about this because I asked a librarian for a recommendation and this is what she told me, and unfortunately the book and I just don't mesh.

• Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by Davis Sedaris. I like Sedaris's writing in general, it's funny and he's great on the radio, but this book was not funny to me. It contains a bunch of common human social situations with roles played by animals. Must have been fun to write. I started it and couldn't finish.

• The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories. In which the authors make a strong effort to not sound sentimental. Lots of little dark details and miserable guys employed as Santa Clauses. Sorry, I actually was in the mood for something sentimental... I guess I'll just stick to my Louisa May Alcott moralistic short stories in which children give to charity and imaginary lives are changed for the better.