Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale tells the story of an oppressive, patriarchal society in what's known as America. As one read it from a Western point-of-view in the 21st century, one would see that this tale and the Republic of Gilead are completely fantastical. How could this happen, you'd say, how could anyone let this happen?

But I could easily name several politicians that would espouse the same views expressed by the Gileadean elite even now, in the 21st century. What makes the Handmaid's Tale so chilling is that the danger is still present, that the subjugation of women still lurks in the dark corner. How can it not, when there are politicians that can say that there's a thing called 'legitimate rape'? How can it not, when a teenage girl is gang-raped society gives her less sympathy than her rapists? How can it not, when there are people who legitimately believes that marital rape does not exist? How can it not, when women march to oppose a bill that would give them equal pay with men? What makes Gilead so chilling and scary is because we can easily see it coming to fruition. Hell, if you can see in the world now, there are many places where women are subjugated to Gilead-like draconian laws, maybe not as extreme as it's depicted in the novels, but still pretty bleak.

Mrs Atwood has a way with prose. The peculiar nature of the novel's narrative - that it is mainly a woman recollecting her experiences as a Handmaid - makes it easy for the narrator to jump time from her time with the Commander's family to her time with her own family to her time in college to her escape attempt or to her childhood. Because of the "reconstructive" nature of the novel too there are a lot of ambiguities, and even we cannot be sure of the names of the narrator's friends or even the names of the narrator herself. The plot device of it being a collection of recording that is assembled by a team of future archaeologist trying hard to be chronologically faithful can also be a way to account for the disconnected, almost episodic nature of the novel.

There are a lot of allusions with the subjugated women of Gilead with the plight of the slaves during the Antebellum. The narrator tried to escape to Canada, like what most slaves did in the pre-Civil War era. There's a mention of the Underground Femaleroad, no doubt meant to allude to the Underground Railroad used by Black slaves to escape to the North or "friendly" states. Quaker families are often mentioned as being friendly to women and tried to help them escape, just like how several Quaker families helped slaves escape by becoming active in the Underground Railroad. There are mentions of organized protest in the UK to help "Save the Women" as they say, no doubt meant to evoke the abolitionist movement that emerged earlier in Britain. The recordings of Offred's tale are usually preceded by several minutes of music, no doubt meant to evoke how music came to be an important means of communication in helping slaves escape, although the catch in here is if the songs of the Underground Railroad are spiritual in nature, the songs of the Mayday Resistance and the Underground Femaleroad are secular in nature to contrast with the Gileadean theocracy. There's also a nice contrast between the repressive Gilead (located in what is ostensibly USA) and the passive but freer Canada.

There has been a debate whether or not The Handmaid's Tale belongs to the speculative fiction genre or to the science fiction genre, partly because of the fundamental question: can the world described in the novel exists? Even if I shelved it in the science-fiction shelf, I believe that Gilead can exist in our world; there're enough ingredients for it. But thankfully, due to divine intervention or some other way, Gilead hasn't yet come to fruition. The Handmaid's Tale then serves as both a horror story and a warning to us, to not let rampant intolerancy and religious fundamentalism run its course.

Review: For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale

THIS BOOK. Oh my god, this book. It's like someone gathered all of my favorite tropes and rolled it in one neat book-package.

This book has everything I want: a stoic tortured knight, his cunning and equally tortured lady, Medieval politics, courtly intrigue, knightly devotion, courtly love, pining, and loyalty. AND THE LOYALTY. My god, let me tell you all about the loyalty.

Loyalty is one of my assured catnips. Any book that has the hero being quietly loyal and devoted to the heroine that he will do anything, even sacrifice his own life, for her happiness and safety, and I will be rolling in the floor, squealing like a happy cat. And Sir Ruck, the hero of this book, is pretty much slathered in all the good knightly devotion and courtly love tropes. He is like succulent braised pig in terms of satisfying my hunger for loyalty kink.

Sir Ruck is my favorite kind of hero: quietly tortured and utterly loyal and devoted to his lady. He's been through a lot: his house's not truly his due to some legal entanglements and his first common-born wife entered a convent and then "donated" all of his money and horse and armor and arms to the Church. A mysterious benefactress helped him get himself a horse and armor and arms by giving him a pouch of emeralds, and he had pledged himself to her forevermore. Little did he know, thirteen years later, that he would see his benefactress again. The Princess Melanthe is cold and calculating, nothing like the perfect, saintly lady that had sustained him in chastity for thirteen years. He was shattered at first, and yet he grew to love her still, despite her ruthlessness, despite her demons.

The Princess Melanthe had gone through a lot in her life. She was wedded, when she's twelve, to a man old enough to be her father. Her husband had taught her everything she knew about surviving the deadly intrigues of the Italian court, but when he died, Melanthe found herself suffocating there and conspired to be installed in her father's lands in Bowland, England, her childhood home. To achieve this gain, she must tell lies upon lies, break promises upon promises, and woo dukes and knights and princes and nobles. She was always guarded and cold in the continent, for fear that anyone who is dear to her will die, but in England, far away from the vicious court of Italy, she had let her guard down and allow herself to fall in love with a lowly runisch knight.

Both Sir Ruck and the Princess Melanthe are haunted by the demons of their past. Both of them are lonely, alone in the cold hard world. Both of them found love and companionship in each other, when they thought they couldn't. I love that Sir Ruck remains utterly loyal and devoted to Melanthe, even when he doesn't quite know what's in her sleeves. He had pledged himself to her for life, first as her knight, then as her husband, and by god he will upheld that pledge and vow, come rain or hellfire. The Princess Melanthe too, slowly but surely allowed herself to open up to this rough Northern knight, despite her fear for his safety if he got close to her.

The Middle English language employed in the dialogue can be quite disconcerting. I confess, sometimes I don't even know what Sir Ruck is saying, rough-speak as he is. But that's what I love about this novel, it doesn't feel like a pastiche, like some historical novel are. The narrative is very much grounded to the period. Sir Ruck and Princess Melanthe all act like Medieval people in a Medieval world, not modern people in a Medieval world. So there are some of their actions that to us might seem vile, for example Sir Ruck raping his wife for a week straight until he grew tired of her screaming, but they're perfectly reasonable for the characters. As in the Medieval times, religion plays an important role in the story, and the reason why Sir Ruck stayed chaste with Melanthe before they're wed is because he believed he would go to hell for committing the sin of adultery and fornication.

But I love this book and the characters, partly because they are so vivid and full of life. The side characters too are given their own plots and characterizations, not merely some two-dimensional paper-dolls. Sir Ruck and Lady Melanthe's relationship is like catnip to me, but the language can be disorienting, so that's why I gave it a 4.5 star, rounded down to a four star.

Review: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

What is the importance of A Room of One's Own? Perhaps because it, maybe for the first time, exposes the treatment women face in academia and the literati, these so-called sacred liberal place where anything is permitted in the name of knowledge and art, glorious in its supposed progressiveness, turned away a woman from a library because she did not have a (male) Fellows with him or a letter of introduction from the (male) Dean. Perhaps because it talks about the importance of material things in creating literature, that if we see the biography and history of great poets and writers we shall see a history of privileged men educated in the best schools meant to foster their genius. Perhaps because it emphasizes that for a woman to be truly free, then she must have a room of one's own i.e. an income independent of her husband or any one in her life, an income that is truly, wholly hers.

The theme of A Room of One's Own is classic. It is about women's emancipation, about women and fiction, about women and history. Mrs. Woolf predicts that in a hundred years, more women will take on traditionally male profession such as stockbroker and barristers and soldiers and doctors. In some ways, she is true: there are more female CEOs, female lawyers, female doctors, female stockbrokers, female soldiers now than there were in 1928, but that is not high praise, for any number is greater than zero. Even with this progress, women still face sexism in everyday life. Despite the fact that any field now welcomes women if she pleases to enter it, the "glass ceiling" still exist, and women were still paid less than men. Mrs. Woolf pointed out an essay that espouses women's inferiority in her book. She said that due to its antiquated ideals, we may be excused to think that it was written in 1868 and not 1928. Sadly, as I read the essay, I think it's similar to many other essays written by "well-meaning" (male) academia and religious leader that I have the misfortune to read in 2015.

A Room of One's Own then remains relevant even a hundred years after its publication. Like when Mrs. Woolf pointed out how "drawing-room" novels were derided because most often they're written by women about women and how "battlefield" novels were praised because they are written by men about men, so does now, when women who watch romantic-comedy films are said as silly chits while films who have explosion and guns were given high ratings. Women who read romance are ridiculed yet no one ridicules men who read those awful Tom Clancy thrillers and its derivatives. Sexism is still alive, even when women are granted the vote, even when there are women barristers and women stockbrokers taking up office in the City. The cards are stacked against us, but women will always find their voice. As Mrs. Woolf said: "lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

Of Princess and Politics

A very common character found in young adult books of the fantasy genre is the "Rebellious Princess". Often, it is the main character who is a rebellious princess or, if the main character is a male, his love interest. Although there have been many Rebellious Princes in literature, most of the character with this archetype is female, someone nobly born (despite the name, she needn't to be royal) from a good and important family who chafes at having to learn embroidery, manners, the piano-forte, and all of the things that are socially acceptable for a young lady of her birth to learn. She instead yearns to play swords and ride horses unchaperoned, wear breeches instead of gowns, openly insults the noble guests who have come to her fathers' hall, generally talk in an uncouth manner. I don't have anything against anyone that wants to defy gender expectations and wear breeches and ride horses; you do you. However I've observed that these types of characters often dismiss politics and diplomacy as fripperies, preferring to solve problems with force and swords. As a pacifist with keen interest on diplomacy and politics, I take offense in them being dismissed as "fripperies".

A lot of fantasy takes place in worlds resembling Medieval or Renaissance Europe, so one must take account the role of a noblewoman relating to diplomacy and politics in our Medieval/Renaissance Europe. Contrary to popular opinion, princesses do not sit around all the day doing nothing but embroidery work. A princess or a noblewoman in Medieval/Renaissance Europe, especially those who live in the Continent, certainly would have been busy receiving noble guests from all over the continent, particularly female relations of their husband/father/brother's guests. Yes, they do sit around and drink tea and talk about fashion, but noblewomen in those era play an important part too in spreading information or (mis)information. In a period where neighboring countries war frequently, information is vital to the success of military campaigns or peace accords. Gossips, literally, can change how wars end.  Scandals, hearsay, and rumors can shatter pacts and alliances or form new ones.

Etiquette and manners are thus important. Frayed relations means that people would jump at the slightest opening to undermine you. A false remark blown out of proportions. A wrong gesture to the wrong person. An imaginary or not-so imaginary snubs. Dresses that are too fashionable or not fashionable enough. Any of these can be a reason for turning away would-be allies or incensing old friends. It is important for a princess, indeed for any noblewoman, to learn how to best present themselves for the advantage of her house. Embroidery too is not a mere trifle hobby. In an age where most women are illiterate, embroidery is sometimes used to code secret messages and tell stories for those who do not have access to words.

Politics and diplomacy of nations are delicate matters yet they affect millions of people. Almost all of the rulers and decision-makers are men, yes, but women held powers too, albeit in the background. In the form of wives, mothers, and sisters, women played their part in politics through influencing the menfolk. It would be an exaggeration to say that women have enough power to completely influence their menfolk, manipulating them to follow their desire, but they still have power nonetheless. And this power they achieve without swords or force.

While I'll support any girl who prefer swords over sewing, I find that the attitude some books have, deriding girls who love sewing and etiquette lessons as mindless bimbos and dismissing the importance of manners and diplomacy, to be annoying and not to mention disingenuous. Power can be achieved through force and power can be achieved without force. Power taken by force is not superior than power taken through peaceful means. In fact, as a pacifist, I shall say that power taken through peaceful means are inherently superior than those taken by force. Dresses and etiquette are not fripperies and those who indulge in them are not less just because they conform to the then-socially acceptable notions of feminine pursuits.

Review: The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer

The Nonesuch is the first Georgette Heyer I read, and I must admit, it's a really good book for a beginner to Ms. Heyer's world. I like it so much that I'm in the midst of reading my second Georgette Heyer and set out for a third.

Ms. Heyer has quite an eye for detail, and although I cheerfully do not know what a phaeton and a gig is, or the difference between the two, years of experience in watching historical BBC miniseries and reading Regency-set bodice rippers have provided me with just enough knowledge to paint a broad picture. Ms. Heyer, too, has a wit that reminded me a little of Jane Austen. There's romance and humor in her beautiful prose.

Her characters too are very colorful Ancilla Trent is a very sensible, elegant, and humorous woman. She is genteel, becoming a governess because of her family's strained circumstances, but despite her position, she is very much well-connected, with a General as an uncle. Despite her accomplishment and excellent manners, she is treated poorly by some of the neighborhood matrons when they perceive she has 'put a cap' on Sir Waldo Hawkridge, the Nonesuch in question. It's laughable that the matrons would treat Ancilla so poorly, considering in birth and manners she is far superior than any of them. Ancilla has lived in London, and her uncle is a General acquainted by the Nonesuch, while the matrons live in the middle of nowhere, Yorkshire.

Sir Waldo is also a very dashing romance hero. He is called the Nonesuch because he excels at sports, horse-riding, has a considerable fortune, excellent manners, and an air of fashionable elegance around her. Sir Waldo is a true gentleman who cares for orphaned children in his spare-time, which has put his relatives to consider them as an 'eccentric'. He quite enjoys the rustic country society, although he lives most of the time in refined London. A good part of that enjoyment has something to do without Ancilla, of course. Her elegance, sense, and humor endears her to him. Now, if he can only convince her that it is not above her station to fall in love with him.

There are other characters too: Lord Lindeth, Sir Waldo's young cousin; Miss Tiffany Wield, Ancilla's charge and a very beautiful heiress; Mrs Umbridge, Tiffany's good-natured but befuddled aunt; etc. The cast of characters meant that we do not get to see our hero and heroine together as much as we want, but rest assured, when we do, it is evident that there's an attraction between them. Despite having other characters, the romance is still very much real and satisfactory.

However, I must admit that Tiffany's many tantrums are starting to get on my nerves. And I hate that the very sensible and intelligent Ancilla suddenly gets a case of stupid-itis that leads to the Big Misunderstanding near the end of the book. Besides creating unnecessary conflict, it also leads to an unsatisfactory ending. But, being my first Heyer, I shall relent and give it four-stars, just for Sir Waldo and Ancilla's banter alone.

You Deserve Better, Girl

[WARNING! MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES]

Have you ever felt, when watching a TV show or reading a book or enjoying fiction and pop culture product in general, that that one female character that you really like, is getting shafted by the often-male writers? You know the one; everybody knows one. Maybe in the middle of the book, something really shitty and nauseating happens to her. Maybe in the middle of the show, her character gets written off and dies in a very undeserving manner. Maybe in the middle of the story the writer(s) decide to get her a lobotomy that completely changes her personality into the very opposite of what she's before. And you want nothing more than to get her and protect her from all the bad things, but all you can do is sit in front of your TV and whisper, "You deserve better."

This all occur to me often, so I'm used to the rage and disappointment, and pretty much prepared for my favorite female characters to succumb to the disaster at any time. However, nothing could ever prepare me to the fury that I felt when I saw what happened in HBO's Game of Thrones' latest episode.

[WARNINGS FOR MASSIVE SPOILERS AND RAPE]

I haven't watched Game of Thrones since Season 3, a season where, I felt, everything started to go downhill. I enjoyed the first and second season, but I hated the third season and found nothing in me that could compel me to continue. Still, I'm an avid fan of the books, so I sometimes tune in to recaps to see where the show is heading and how they handle particular story-line. Part of the reason why I abandoned Game of Thrones is I can't handle all of the rape and female nudity. Now, it's not that I'm against nudity in general, but I'm not comfortable with the way the show handles female nudity. It's like, naked women all day, every day. Where my dicks at, yo? We get to see titties and pussies, but where's my close-up shots of glorious male asses and dicks?

The way they treat female characters in the TV show is also an issue to me. Almost every female character is sexualized. In the books, for example, Margaery Tyrell "seduced" Tommen with kittens, but she never had sex with him because Tommen is nine and Margaery is (technically) considered a grown woman. In the show, Margaery is much older, probably in early-to-mid twenties, and Tommen too, but it's clear that he's meant to be in his early-to-mid teens, so when show!Margaery actually seduced Tommen and had sex with him, I had to throw up. They (D&D) did her so wrong. Margaery changes from an older sister figure in the books to a sexual predator in the show. They change an innocent relationship to a sexual one, all for the sake of getting Natalie Dormer naked. Tommen's innocent, familial, brotherly relationship with Margaery is supposed to highlight how young and unfit for him to be king; to have that relationship sexualized is disgusting. Margaery, girl, You deserve better.

Although that's deplorable, it happened a few episodes ago, and I'm not here to discuss that. Oh, no.

I'm here to discuss how Sansa was raped.

Yes, you heard that right. Sansa Stark was raped. By sadistic psychopathic douchebag extraordinaire Ramsay Bolton. In the confines of Winterfell, her old home and the only place where she'd felt completely safe.

Book readers will know that Sansa's storyline is taken directly from Jeyne Poole's, where she's forcibly married to Ramsay (as fake!Arya), raped repeatedly (sometimes by dogs!), and generally tortured. So that kind of thing happens in the book, however D&D has made it clear that they will not hesitate deviating from the novels, like how they completely erased Arianne Martell from the show. Arianne is a POV character in the book, which makes her quite important, so her omission will bring quite a big change to how the plot works in the show. The show has deviated greatly from the book (not bringing Lady Stoneheart, for example), so they can, in theory, choose not to incorporate the whole "Ramsay rape" storyline. So why do they choose to incorporate it, using an in-story underage character when her actor conveniently turn eighteen?

The show has been criticized repeatedly for overly-sexualizing female characters and for repeatedly showing rape, sometimes only for titillation and male gaze. Consensual sex scenes in the book turn into rape/non-con in the show. This has been a grievance for many fans and fandom blogs, but I think most fans drew the line on Sansa's rape. The Mary Sue, a prominent women-oriented fandom blog, has decided not to promote the HBO show anymore. They felt that the rape is unnecessary, because we've already seen Sansa overcoming abusive men and we know that Ramsay's a sadistic asshole. Sansa's and Jenye's storyline generally serves, both in the book and show, as a vehicle for Theon's character development, by acting as a catalyst for his resistance to the 'Reek' identity. Note how, in the show, that the rape is off-screen; the camera pans to Theon to show his reaction.

A female character's rape is used to show a male character's manpain. We don't see how Sansa feels about this; we see Theon's horror. Sansa is distant, unimportant, in her own rape - it's all about Theon.

I have great distaste for 'rape as a plot device' trope. Most of the time, I would drop a book/show immediately if there's such scene. Sometimes, I feel like it's used insensitively, only acting as a reason for angst and manpain between two characters, or as a way to code that "this character is sad! you should feel bad for him/her!" Often, it's all about how their significant other found out about the rape, and how they feel and not the victim themselves. Besides, sometimes the rape adds nothing to the plot, unnecessary, and it only serves to brutalize a female character (because it's always female characters that gets raped in fiction).

In this case too, I feel like the rape is very much useless. We've already seen Sansa go through so much - assault and abuse from Joffrey and further assault and abuse from Littlefinger - so we really don't need to see her brutalized further. It's already established that Ramsay is a sadistic asshole by how he treats Theon and everyone around him. In fact, due to the show's history for sexual violence in the show, rape is pretty much expected. As soon as Sansa's brought out of the Eyrie and Sophie Turner turns eighteen, everyone knows that Sansa will probably have some sort of sex scene forced upon her.

Furthermore, the rape happened in Winterfell, and from a narrative point of view, this is a bad move and an unnecessary cruelty. A good part of Sansa's plot in the books is that she sees Winterfell as the only place where she's always been happy. Where nothing bad happens to her. When her family is still one and her dad and siblings are still alive. She sees Winterfell as the light in the end of the tunnel, a source of hope. Winterfell and memories of her family are why she remains Sansa, why she keeps going even after all she's been through, and why she doesn't break, though she's thrown repeatedly.

One of the overarching mystery arc in the A Song of Ice and Fire is whether or not the Stark children can go back to Winterfell. Can they come home, and thus achieve their happy ending, or will they die without ever seeing Winterfell again? Some fans predict that the Stark reunion, if it does happen, would happen only at the last books, as a way to bookend the series. The Starks are together in the first book, at the end of summer and the start of autumn. Come autumn, they're scattered from their homes and from each other. Now winter is coming, their enemies weakening, and the Stark children start to fight back after being downtrodden for so long. It is only proper that come spring, they would be reunited once again in their ancestral home, as a way to signify how the Starks have regain their powers.

Sansa's premature homecoming ruins that narrative. She has come to Wintefell, but without her siblings and the Starks are not restored to power. If the big homecoming does happen in the show, it will feel hollow, because Sansa has come home, and she's brutalized. Winterfell is not a comfortable memory for her, Ramsay's assault destroy that. Even her home isn't a safe space for her.

Sansa, girl. You deserve better.

Review: To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han

I don't normally read young adult books, much less contemporary romance young adult in first-person. I find that most of them tend to be vapid and shallow, not to mention a bit sexist since the protagonist is almost always a bookish girl who's not very popular while the antagonist is the makeup-wearing cheerleader, and there's almost always a hefty amount of slut-shaming thrown in.

But this book intrigues me. It's written by a Korean author with a biracial Korean protagonist! Siblings and familial bond play an important part in the story! The protagonist writes the letter to help her move on! And even book reviewers who doesn't really review YA recommends it! I must check it out, of course. I don't have much hope starting out - like I said I don't really read YA after several bad runs - but I finished pleasantly surprised. This book exceeds even my wildest expectations: it's actually good and it doesn't have an annoying protagonist for once.

Lara Jean is a teenage girl and yes, she has crushes on boys as straight teenage girls wont to do, but she acknowledges that her crushes are shallow and pretty much not going to happen. She thinks about boys, but she thinks about her family too - her sisters and her father - and it's pretty clear that she puts them first before any boys. I like her relationship with both of her sisters. The camaraderie between them is something I find familiar, having a sister myself. However, I am a bit cautious when reading the first few pages, since in my experience with YA the first boy that the protagonist said she had a crush on will inevitably be the end-game pairing, so when I read that Lara Jean has a crush on her sister's (ex) boyfriend, I have to pause for a bit because I think that pretty much breaks some sort of Girl Code: never date your sister's ex. Especially if your sister may or may not have lingering feelings from him. I say to Lara Jean, "Lara Jean, no boy is worth hurting your sister, so I want you to think long and hard before you do anything, girl." And what I like about Lara Jean is that she understands.

The protagonist of the past YA book I read will almost definitely throw caution to the wind and start flirting with the guy immediately, but Lara Jean understands and she doesn't. She keeps her distance and resists. And that's probably the first time I smile and think about a YA protagonist: "I like you. You're smart." One of the other reasons I love this book is because it contains one of my favorite tropes of all time which is the Let's Pretend to Fake Date/Marriage Because You Are the Last Person I Will Fall in Love with and I Have to Impress/Make Jealous of this Person But Oh Noes, Now I'm Falling in Love with You For Real! trope. Any book with this trope, I devour it like a cat devours catnip. Of course, the caveat is that the relationship between the pretend lovers have to be written well and they have to have sizzling chemistry, which are all present in this book.

I like that the male lead also have flaws too; he's not as bookish as Lara Jean and normally I'm all for bookish guy/bookish girl pairing but something between them clicks in a way that's not really present with Lara Jean and Josh. It's obvious that the male lead, even though he's not "smart" in a way that Lara Jean is, is still a good, decent guy, despite the fact that the whole high school population thinks he's a total ladies' man, he's only ever had two (real) girlfriends and one he stays for four years and he obviously still care a lot about her. I'm tempted to give the book five-stars, but I don't like the ending because I think it's too abrupt and Lara Jean suddenly gets a case of stupid-itis which perpetrates the abrupt ending. Fortunately this is her only case of stupid-itis in the whole book and she recovers from it in the end, but alas that means I have to wait two weeks I can see where the story goes next.

Review: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

20 pages into the book, only five percent in, I can feel tears swelling in my eyes and dread filling my heart as  I read. Like a fortune-teller, years of being a bookworm have taught me how to read plots and characters even only a few pages in. Most stories follow patterns based on genres, and I enjoyed them mostly to savor the words and details, not to know how it end, because in the end, most stories follow a predictable pattern. I knew, only thirty pages in, which characters were going to die. As I flip the last pages and finished my sobbing, I cross-checked my list with reality. It came in a 100%. All of my predictions came true.

Yet as I turn the pages, I couldn't stop reading. Mr Doerr had a way with words, the chapters are short, but beautiful and you ache for the characters, you ache for their plight and unrealized potential. More than six hours I spent reading this book, and in the last three, I prayed to god every minute that my precious babies are safe and sound and unhurt even though I know they are going to be hurt anyway. But still I prayed, going against what the literary gods have dictated, hoping, hoping that there's a twist at the end of the book, that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, that everything, everything is miraculously fine.

Alas, it did not happen. But this book, this book has sparked something deep in me. Over the years, I've become a bit bored by the stores and novels which I read, however, reading this has brought me something fierce that I hadn't felt in quite some time. I am exhilarated. I feel alive. I feel like I was there, in Saint-Malo, crouched in a cramped chimney, listening to the crackle and the hums of the radio. My guts twisted when we got into Werner's part with the Nazi Youth. I cried, praying to god to keep Marie-Laure safe please, please, please. Pity and dread churned in me as I read Werner's plight in the Wehrmacht, the German Army. I sympathize with the characters. In front of me, they become more than words on papers. I feel like a god, looking down on my own miniature Saint-Malo and the Academy, watching wooden figures of Marie-Laure and Werner go about their lives, until finally they meet that fateful day in the walled city of Brittany.

I am Matilda again, sitting in a library chair with a book, travelling all around the world while not moving a single inch - right at the time when I felt that I was too old to be Matilda, that the magic's gone. But it's not gone - it never will go out. All it takes is to light it again is the right kind of story, one that this novel fits perfectly.

Review: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

The fortieth Discworld novel and Sir Pterry's last before his death, Raising Steam is a treat, not as good as some books in the series, but a treat nonetheless. Truthfully, any novels with Moist von Lipwig is alright with me, as I dearly love the government crook and all the political hijinks he got into. Government procedural and political satire is one of my favorite types of novels, so it's no wonder that Mr von Lipwig's adventures making Ankh-Morpork a better place under the watchful eyes of the Patrician interests me. However, I must admit, even though I love Mr. von Lipwig, I have to admit that this book is not as good as I'd like to think it is.

I have high hopes for Raising Steam. Any novels in which the Patrician drags Ankh-Morpork screaming into the future is always good in my opinion, but even I must contend that Raising Steam does not feel as much as a novel as it is a book full of summaries. Don't get me wrong, it is still okay-ish, but in this book I feel that Sir Pterry is more of a summarizer than a narrator. We'd only get summaries of things happening, with plenty of humorous asides still. When he wrote this, Sir Pterry was very ill, Alzeheimer's, and it clearly shows. 

The recurring characters feel a bit odd. Maybe this is because it's been such a long time since I've last read a Discworld novel, but as I read this book, I feel that there's something off with our friends Moist von Lipwig, the Patrician, and even Commander Samuel Vimes. In the previous books, a big show is made of Moist von Lipwig's very average face, so average that most people couldn't recognize him were it not for his big gold hat. Yet in this book various characters have said that they recognize Mr. von Lipwig's face from the papers, even though he was evidently not wearing his gold hat when they meet him nor was he mentioned wearing the hat when he's photographed in the papers. This was only the first in a list of things that nag me about the characters when I read the novel. One of the most cherished thing about the Discworld series was its continuity and its ability to make long-running brick jokes, so this inconsistencies bother me greatly.

I really like the plot about the trains and the dwarf terrorists however I feel like the pace can be at times stilted again for the fact that the narration felt more like a summary to me. The bit about the wonders and progress new technology can bring is very well written, and I like all the diplomacy and politicking that took place, but again, description was sparse. The plot can feel disjointed, and there are some unnecessary parts that would do well sitting on the cutting room floor. 

At first I'd like to give this book four stars, but upon consideration, the character inconsistencies and the disjointed, stilted pace is much of a bother to me and so I lower it a full star. This novel is good, and I'd still recommend it for Discworld fans, but I wouldn't recommend new-to-Discworld fans to start with this as their introduction to the wonderful world of Discworld, as I don't think it's a great representative of Sir Pterry's writing. There are many other Discworld books that are far, far better than this.

Reading More Women Writers

One of my New Year's resolution this year is to read more books, however as the year progress, it's become harder as I simply do not have time, what with law school and moot courts and all that legal texts I have to read. Insufficient time is also the reason why my blog has been dormant for four months. However, if you noticed, I seem to become more active these past few days, posting three book reviews in as many days, which I'm extremely happy about. I sometimes have trouble getting through a book, but yesterday I finished a 274-page book in less than a day and now I'm halfway to a Discworld novel which I start yesterday, so I'm going to take this as a good sign.

One of my other goals this year is to read more books by women writers. It does not mean that I will stop reading male writers altogether, indeed in my TBR pile there're books by Michael Chabon, Terry Pratchett, and Anthony Doerr, so I'm not abandoning male authors altogether. It's just apparent to me that in the previous years, a significant chunk of my book reading time is spent reading books by male authors. At the start of the year, I thoroughly enjoyed Alice Munro and Malala Yousafzai's books, so I know that it's not a matter of quality. After all, there's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.

Review: Euphoria by Lily King

This book is one of the most refreshing that I had read in a while. Normally, I found 1st person narrative to be suffocating and unbearably shallow, but Ms. King twisted the narrative on its head, bringing about other narratives so that the story does not feel confined. And in a novel about anthropologists studying native cultures in remote lands, the setting can be quite isolating.

This isolation is felt deeply by our narrator, Bankson, who's fresh out of a suicide attempt when we first meet him. From previous accounts, we are led to believe that Bankson is an arrogant man, carving up a space in the Sepik River for himself, and him alone. But when we meet him, he's tortured, driven suicidal by his isolation and ghosts, and seizes the first chance he gets to have company nearby when a pair of anthropologists is looking for a new people for them to study.

At first, I was quite disturbed by how these anthropologists treat these tribes as scientific subjects to study. I'm afraid that I will encounter one of those "mighty-whitey" tropes that I loathe oh-so-much where white people lord their supposed cultural superiority to the savage, primitive tribes. But none of that happened here. It is clear that Nell and Bankson (no word on Fen, still fuming) cared about the tribes and community they studied, although Bankson is unsure how to approach them at first, because he was a proper British man of science whose training taught him that he must be aloof to his "subjects". Nell wasn't like that; she was a maverick American who freely interacted with the community, moving among the women and children, making personal relationship with them. Bankson at first was cautious of Nell's approach, because he was afraid that it would muddle up the power imbalance and samples, making it quite not "pure" but over the time he warmed to it - and her.

I like the characters. Nell, at first, seemed like the stereotypical extroverted American who shook up a British man's life, but her extroversion was the quiet of sorts. She was, indeed, the quiet sort, even though she was fierce and she would do anything to get what she wanted, she was always the quiet sorts, the proper wife, yielding to her husband but in a way move independently of him. Fen knew that she was better for him, and resented her for that. Bankson knew that too, and loved her for that. Bankson wasn't the typical socially clumsy, brooding British man, as he was eager and passionate about his work with the natives, but family discouragement and his own insecurities made him see failures in all aspects.

The romance of this book is my favorite kind of romance: one based on a meeting of the minds. Bankson and Nell doesn't get many interactions alone without Fen, but from the interactions we get, you can see that they are perfect for each other. They are not necessarily identical copies, but they complement the other well, sharing the same interests while remaining different enough for them to work. They found support in each other: Nell, someone that honestly appreciates her work; Bankson, someone that soothes his fear and gives him encouragement when all he could see was failure.

The prose was exquisite too, beautiful, poetic, but not too purple. I read this after I finished On the Road and the difference between them was astounding. Whereas I had to spend 2 hours slogging through the last 80 pages of Dean and Sal's incoherent, drug-fueled, misogynist ramblings, I scarfed through 241 pages of Euphoria in five hours, savoring it.

I gave this four-stars instead of five purely because I think the ending is very much upsetting for personal reasons. I wouldn't say anything further, but rest assured, it was enough to warrant a full-star downgrade. Otherwise, this novel is perfect as a palate-cleanser, as it is short enough but nevertheless still engages the mind.
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Book information:

Author: King, Lily
Edition: New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 2014 (Hardcover).
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2255-1

Review: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

[Cross-posted to my blog: paquetdevie.blogspot.com]

My feelings for Jack Kerouac's On the Road can be summed up in a saying by the ever-truthful Ms. Paris Geller



I don't understand the obsession with Mr. Kerouac's "masterpiece". While I found some of the passages here hauntingly marvelous, scarfing down two-hundred pages of Sal and Dean's endless trips across America and back in less than a day, over time I see Sal and Dean for the men they truly are: hypocrites, trying to get down with the common American man, but at the same time deriding them in their own incoherent, racist, misogynist, pretentious drug-filled haze of a "novel". The book becomes a behemoth to me, even though it's only three hundred pages long, because I don't feel any sympathies for the characters after I realized that these two are bums, worse than bums really, because at least bums are willing to work for money and they generally are a-okay with calling themselves bums. All these two do is mooch off from their aunt, wives, relatives, and friends and still have the gall to present themselves as independent American men and make fun of, in their own patronizing way, poor people who don't know any better.

I vent my frustration about this book to a friend who likes it. She admitted that the book is hard to read, probably because Mr. Kerouac wrote it while he was high on cocaine, and yes, Sal and Dean are misogynist pricks, but she encouraged me to finish it because in the end it's a good story. I'll admit that on the surface On the Road tell a good story. I can see why some people like it because I do sympathize with Sal and Dean's plight, I do, really: losing yourself on the road, having an adventure of self-discovery, generally giving society a big middle finger, I'm all for that. But the way it's written in this book is so caked with middle-class white male entitlement that I basically rolled my eyes every time I turn over a new page. Their plight and experience has become childish to me. How can I muster any sympathy for a middle-class white heterosexual male who wants to be as free as a Black man in the antebellum South? To me, they are nothing but man-children instead of the heroes they think themselves as.

Not to mention, the way women is written in this book is vile. We exist, apparently, only as the motherly aunt who supports her good-for-nothing nephew through everything, or the gullible hot girlfriend who swooned and giggled at Sal and Dean's "charming" ministrations and declarations of love only to be abandoned when they decided to hit the road again very impulsively. The way Sal and Dean goes about "gurls, gurls, gurls", how they commented about the breasts of every women they encountered, and how "fresh" sixteen-year-old girls are (even though they are grown men probably in their early thirties) is honestly sickening and it's one of the reasons that it took me nearly six months to finish the book. Sal and Dean doesn't treat women like human beings; they treat them as trophies and treasures that's an extension of themselves. And don't even get me started with how they treat POC (see: the entirety of their Mexican trip).

I can see this book's appeal, why it resonates to so many people, but in the end, its pretentiousness, misogyny, racism, and general entitlement, sours me. That, and the fact that I have to incur a massive library fine for returning the book nearly six months after the due date.

Review: Mythology by Edith Hamilton

I love this book. I have always been interested in mythology, but the way some reference book told them is very dry. These stories live through riveting poems and plays throughout centuries; it is by its very nature theatrical. The Greeks and Romans use the stories of the gods to terrify and inspire all kinds of emotions in their subjects.

So I am very pleased with Ms. Hamilton's Mythology. Ms. Hamilton, while still maintaining a respectable distance with her subject-matter, also inserts her own opinions and views in the stories. She is clearly passionate about her work, knows the stories very well, and cares for the characters. She laments the fates of innocents who were needlessly and absurdly brutalized by the gods. She sympathizes with Medea, the wife who was cast off by Jason, but acknowledges that she was cruel in her actions. Though I like Roman mythology, I LIVE for her distaste for Roman writers (she can throw amazing shade). You can clearly see her opinions and sympathies, but she does so subtly, weaving it in her beautiful prose, so that it does not feel patronizing or preaching.

Though the book focuses too much on Greek/Roman mythology and little on the other world mythologies, I still think this is a must-read for any mythology buff.


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Book information:
Title: Mythology
Author: Hamilton, Edith.
Edition: New York: Little, Brown and Company. First Bay Back paperback edition (reissued). 2013. (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-316-22333-1