Year: 2009

Oh, the drama!

It took me over a year to go and read Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (also avoiding the movie like the plague) because I have a built-in aversion to books that are overly hyped or foisted on me by other people.

I dragged my feet for about six more months, then I decided to bring it along on a trip after Christmas. That’s another book-related habit of mine: whenever I go on trips, I always take books I have trouble starting, or books I have been hedging on for a long time, just so I’ll be forced to read them.

I’m not going to summarize it anymore, as most people have probably read it, and if not, it’s easy enough to look up on the internet. But despite the fact that I have never met anyone who’s read the book and not raved about it, I would have to say that it wasn’t particularly groundbreaking for me.
While the writing was fluid, I felt like I was reading something out of Chicken Soup for the Soul. The book seemed to be engineered to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. How can it not, with the cast of characters that are designed for the perfect tragedy? The flawed Amir who is weak and prone to doing things you just know he’ll regret, the meek and devoted Hassan, the gruff Baba who turns out to be a sad man with a lot of secrets, the equally meek and devoted Ali, the father-substitute Rahim who serves as his moral compass, and the tyrannical Assef who seems to come straight out of a B movie!
Each plot device read like a cue for the waterworks to start, and I, who can cry at the drop of a hat, was tear-free for most of the book. I’m all for catharsis, and I love books that give me a good cry, but The Kite Runner was a shade too melodramatic for me.

It wasn’t a bad read, in total, but I could have passed on the book and I wouldn’t have felt the difference. In no hurry to read A Thousand Splendid Suns.

***

My copy: trade paperback, mooched from Cheche

My rating: 3/5 stars

Ahh, Casablanca…

The big 2-0!

Book #20 for 2009: The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson

After my first illustrated novel of the year turned out to be a dud, I was wary of reading another one, lest it turns out to be a disappointment again.

To my pleasure, I warmed right up to The Tattooed Map, a beautiful squarish book full of maps, photos, scribblings, and other ephemera.

The Tattooed Map is the journal of Lydia Usher, a Canadian traveler who explores North Africa with her friend and former lover Christopher.


She wakes up in their hotel room one day to find what she thinks is a cluster of flea-bites on her hand. Days pass and she realizes the marks have formed into a map spreading from her hand to her body like a tattoo.

Lydia suddenly disappears and Christopher takes up her journal in the hopes of finding her, or at least a clue to her whereabouts. He soon discovers that it is no prank of Lydia’s, and as he is drawn deeper into the web of mystery, he realizes there are strange forces at work.


I really liked this book because it was the right blend of travelogue, art and mystery. Lydia leads such an enviable life. Her research takes her to exotic places, she takes off at a moment’s notice, and never seems to run out of pocket money. Her compulsive habit of taking scrupulous travel notes take you right there with her, and her candid observations allow you to visualize the places she goes to and the people she meets.

The other half of the journal is continued by a befuddled Christopher, up until the tumultous ending that makes you want to cry out “Sequel! Sequel!” after reading that last sentence.


For a first novel, The Tattooed Map doesn’t disappoint, and I am eagerly adding Barbara Hodgson to the list of authors whose works I am collecting. It’s good I have one more book of hers in my TBR: Hippolyte’s Island. I think I’ll save that for a time when I’m in dire need of a good read.

***
My copy: hardcover, about P140

My rating: 4.5/5 stars

Picture books make me smile

Books 18 and 19 for 2009


Got two new books for my picture book collection – I Hate to Read! by Rita Marshall, illustrated by Etienne Delessert, and the 1991 Caldecott Medal awardee Black & White by David Macaulay. I tell myself I collect them for reference in illustration, but I can’t deny I have fun reading them too :)

I mooched I Hate to Read! from fellow Flipper akaShy because the title was intriguing, and the illustrations appealed to me.

The story is about Victor Dickens, a kid who hates to read. One day, as he pretends to read a book so that he could watch TV, characters start jumping out to invite him to read: a crocodile in a white coat, a field mouse, a peg-legged parrot, a white rabbit wearing black boots, a frog with a broken feather in his cap, and many more.
And then his visions get stranger and stranger until he felt sad that all the characters’ stories would be lost if nobody read them.

The story didn’t quite work for me, as it didn’t build up sufficiently to the conclusion. Victor’s transition from non-reader to reader was abrupt and confusing, and so it’s not very convincing.

Etienne Delessert’s illustrations, however, save the book from being just another picture book. The watercolor illustrations have a whimsical quality that charms from the get-go, and breathes life to comical characters. I especially love the field mouse with a cat in its backpack (it’s like the Totoro Catbus with mouse headlights!)

Check it out on google books

The second book in this selection is David Macaulay’s Black and White, which I’ve been in search of for some time now (I am collecting the Caldecotts).

It’s a po-mo picture book that was given so much thought to that it boggles the mind.

The title page greets you with a cryptic note: “This book appears to contain a number of stories that do not necessarily occur at the same time.”

Then, each spread is divided into four frames that tell what appear to be four different stories, illustrated in different styles: wash, comic, inked watercolor, and chunky paint.

The first story, on the upper left hand, is “Seeing Things,” depicting a boy on a train, whose trip is interrupted by a long delay. On the lower left is “Problem Parents,” showing a family’s life turned upside down when the kids’ perfectly normal parents come home wearing newpaper clothes. On the upper right, the third story is “A Waiting Game,” where a crowd of commuters waiting on the train platform get bored and decide to have fun with some newspapers. Finally, on the lower right, “Udder Chaos” follows an escaped convict hiding within a herd of cows.

The overlapping elements reveal that the four stories are part of another story — the convict hides in the cattle, which cross the tracks and cause the train’s delay, which the boy witnesses. At the station, waiting for the train makes the crowd desperate for entertainment, causing them to play with the newspapers. Among those in the crowd are the parents, who come home wearing newspapers, to the surprise of their children.

It’s not easy to decipher, and who’s to say these are the only interpretations of the story, as it depends on the reader’s imagination. I love how the book makes you think and pay attention to detail. In “Waiting Game” there is even a hidden story of a squirrel (smaller than my thumbnail) who joins in the merrymaking.

It’s an amazing effort, and a very nice way of opening up your mind to various possibilities.

***
My copies: I Hate To Read, hardcover, no dustjacket – mooched from akaShy. Black and White, rummaged at Book Sale for P95.

My rating: I Hate to Read, 3/5 stars; Black and White, 5/5 stars

2009 Newbery Medal: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I would be the first to admit that I’m no Neil Gaiman fan (I find his books to be an acquired taste), but The Graveyard Book is one of the best books I read last year, and I’m glad it won the Newbery Award.

The story unfolds in a house at the foot of a hill, where a family has just been murdered. The cold-blooded killer methodically executes the sleeping family, except for one – the toddler, who manages to escape his family’s fate as he crawled out of his crib, up the hill, and into an unlikely refuge: a graveyard.

The book pays tribute to Kipling’s The Jungle Book, where Mowgli is raised by wolves in the jungle. In a similar fashion, The Graveyard Book tells the story of finding love and family in an unexpected place: the toddler, who grows up to be Nobody “Bod” Owens is raised by the graveyard ghosts and the mysterious caretaker Silas.

Bod finds plenty of room to grow within the graveyard, but the soon longs for the the world of flesh and blood. Little does he know that his life is still in danger, as the man who killed his family has been waiting thirteen years to finish the heinous task.

The book is a bit like a slightly more sinister version of Eva Ibbotson’s books, which usually have ghosts in them. I loved the characters in this book: they’re quirky and humorous and endearing. Other than Bod, my favorites are Silas (who reminds me of my favorite HP character Severus Snape) and Miss Lupescu, who turn out to be more than meets the eye.

The highlight of the book for me was the danse macabre, because it perfectly expressed the book’s major theme: the juxtaposition of life and death, and the celebration of both.

Of course, Dave McKean’s two-tone illustrations deserve special mention, underscoring the eerie atmosphere they helped create for the entirety of the novel.

Neil Gaiman announced on The Today Show that a film adaptation is in the works; that should be something to watch out for.

Perhaps I shall read another Gaiman book after all. I do hope this has a sequel.

***

(images from www.thegraveyardbook.com)

My copy: US trade paperback (harr, the UK edition looks much better)

My rating: 5/5 stars