Good reads 2007

I was watching Margot at the Wedding when I realized I failed to blog the good reads I had for the last half of 2007. In one scene in Margot, Nicole Kidman's character, a writer-novelist, is being cornered by fellow writer Ciaran Hinds (if you've seen HBO's Rome, he plays Caesar) in a Q&A forum about her book in a local library. At their backs, were shelves of books where I saw a familiar white-and-maroon colored spine that resembled closely that of Joyce Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys. It was. And I remembered that I bought the book last year for 35 pesos and must have hidden it in the box inside my makeshift cabinet. I bought it along with Richard Russo's Pulitzer-winning Empire Falls. I haven't read both, just like a handful of others I bought at local booksale shops here. Which doesn't goes to show I lazed around gazing at their spines, it's just that there's lots of them I need to catch up with.

And so here they are –the ones that moved me and offered momentary escape from this world of inanities.

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. One more read and this will probably go down to my Top 3. Well, I actually love it already. Vineland is not the type you'd easily grasp. I'm tempted to compare reading it to watching a David Lynch film, not that I watched many Lynch films, but the quick and hallucinatory shifts in time, mood and character POVs reminds of such Lynchian aspect. One moment it feels like a love story, the next it feels like it's some old sci-fi episode. Vineland supposedly captures the 60's or whatever that's left of it in the minds of its generation. The 60s was a great period and it's also the decade that changed America in every aspect you could think of. What I love is how Pynchon melds various cultural references, even taking out bygone film titles. The denouement was kind of sudden and vague though it's just probably me. Oh, and it has one of the funniest, perhaps the funniest, joke I've ever read or heard. Dig this. What is the similarity between the Mafia and licking a pussy? Answer: One slip of the tongue and you're in deep shit.

Modern Baptists by James Wilcox. If it's anything comic or satiric and then you have The New York Times or The New Yorker saying how great it is, I'd probably pick it up. Modern Baptists is an easy read and a delight. It tells the story of Bobby Pickens who has just learned he doesn't have this funny cancer. Just when he thought he is given a whole new life and meaning, in comes his ex-convict brother FX who also happens to become an ex-actor and hell breaks loose every step of the way. It's a mad comedy all throughout and you'd laugh at the human foibles the characters seems to always get into because it kind of mirrors the way we are really as humans.

Atonement by Ian McEwan. Well, its one of the most talked about 2007 films and I'm sure glad I was able to read it first. But believe me, read the book. When I was deep into the introspections of Briony and the sensuality and deep longing in the letters of Robbie and Cecilia, and knowing that there is a looming adaptation, I knew it would be difficult. If I was Joe Wright and Christopher Hampton, I wouldn't have the guts. It's a profound novel about the lies that we tell- no matter how trivial or innocent it may seem- the enormous price that has to be be paid, even at the attempt of trying to take it all back.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling. I don't normally read Harry Potter books unless there's the movie coming soon. Watching I think the first or second installment and having just a slightest idea what the friggin' socerer's stone is for or what the heck the basilisk is doing in chamber of secrets, I find it useful and perfunctory afterwards. My favorite HP book is still Prisoner of Azkaban, but this one is still a delight. Harry has to deal with issues of loss and I think book 5 is an appropriate milieu for the road to eventual maturity.

Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard. Like the drug on its title, Cocaine Nights is addictive and unstoppable. By Crash and Cocaine Nights alone, you'd get a glimpse of a different world -the way Ballard can only see it, though not entirely impossible, by showing us facets of depravity and deviancy. In Estrella de Mar, the seemingly out-of-touch world of too much comforts is the perfect place for disruption. Crime is the perfect tranquilizer. The story spins when Charles comes to the place to possibly absolve his brother Frank from a despicable crime he couldn't commit yet he so willingly surrender himself to. When you almost think it's a whodunnit, the explosive yet all-too abrupt finale sucks and grips in you in a state of shock.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. So much has to be learned about Afghanistan, or for any country pictured as the roots of Islamic fundamentalism, or which we conjure images of terrorism and extreme violence. Part of the satisfaction in reading The Kite Runner is the fact that the great story is resonated by the importance of its subject matter. It is a groundbreaking novel for the fact that it is written by a son of that nation whose rise to fame is courtesy of 9/11. Through the story of Amir, we see an entirely different landscape, we hear the voices of those whose old-age struggle is to break free from the chains of violence, and like him, we sense from that timid smile of Sohrab, a flicker of hope and the great amount courage to hold on to that.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. The cover alone should prepare you of what is to come. This is one of Jap's faves. He liked it so much probably, he wanted me to experience it myself. Illumination is not what you get especially if you don't get the hang of Foer's style. It's so unique and fresh that you wouldn't mind getting a headache reading the first three chapters. Told in different perspectives, it is about a young Jewish-American, who happens to be named JS Foer, who travels to Ukraine to find a woman who saved the life of his grandpa during the Holocaust. He is accompanied by Alex, a defective translator, Alex's grandpa who is also named Alex and a dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. who farts a lot. The journey is punctuated with letters (in present time sent by Alex to Foer) deficient of punctuations. It is a great story about the Holocaust, both extremely funny and tragic, made rich by the passages from a supposed novel written also by Foer about the early life in the Jewish shtetls, which resonates tremendous loss and love.

(Wala na nako gi-post ang mga pics sa books kay gikapoy ko hehehe)