Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary 1: SUM is an exploration of funny and unexpected afterlives that have never been considered–each presented as a vignette that offers us a stunning lens through which to see ourselves here and now.

In one afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and is unaware of your existence. In another, your creators are a species of dim-witted creatures who built us to figure out what they could not. In a different version of the afterlife you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple struggling with discontent, or that the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember, or that the hereafter includes the thousands of previous gods who no longer attract followers. In some afterlives you are split into your different ages; in some you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been; in others you are re-created from your credit card records and Internet history. David Eagleman proposes many versions of our purpose here; we are mobile robots for cosmic mapmakers, we are reunions for a scattered confederacy of atoms, we are experimental subjects for gods trying to understand what makes couples stick together.

Summary 2: A clever little book by a neuroscientist translates lofty concepts of infinity and death into accessible human terms. What happens after we die? Eagleman wonders in each of these brief, evocative segments. Are we consigned to replay a lifetime’s worth of accumulated acts, as he suggests in “Sum,” spending six days clipping your nails or six weeks waiting for a green light? Is heaven a bureaucracy, as in “Reins,” where God has lost control of the workload? Will we download our consciousnesses into a computer to live in a virtual world, as suggested in “Great Expectations,” where “God exists after all and has gone through great trouble and expense to construct an afterlife for us”? Or is God actually the size of a bacterium, battling good and evil on the “battlefield of surface proteins,” and thus unaware of humans, who are merely the “nutritional substrate”? Mostly, the author underscores in “Will-’o-the-Wisp,” humans desperately want to matter, and in afterlife search out the “ripples left in our wake.” Eagleman’s turned out a well-executed and thought-provoking book. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

My Thoughts: I was very impressed by Eagleman’s creativity and reach here. I really like his style of writing and all the ideas he came up with about afterlives that I had never even considered before. Really cool short story collection.

There were some really great thought-provoking ones, and of course there were a few doozies too. I still admire his originality. 

Sum really gets you thinking.

Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary:Seventeen-year-old Josephine Alibrandi is no stranger to conflict. If she’s not caught between her strict single mom and her even stricter grandmother, then she’s trying to choose between wealthy good boy John Barton and working-class bad boy Joseph Coote. Josephine is always in trouble with the nuns at her Catholic school (who everyone calls “penguins because of them wearing wimples and all that Sound of Music gear”) because she fights with native Australian kids over her mixed Australian/Italian heritage. Just when she thinks her situation couldn’t possibly get more complicated, her mysterious, long-lost biological father comes back and Josephine must decide if it’s worth getting to know this person who abandoned her and her mother. But through it all–including a startling revelation from her grandmother and the suicide of a close friend–Josephine manages to hold on to her sense of humor, as in this reflective moment: “I could have been a model for Hot Pants. Except that when I finally put my glasses on, reality set in. Hot Pants would have to wait.”

Summary 2: A scholarship student at a tony Catholic girls’ school, Josie is aware that she is different from her affluent “Aussie” classmates: she’s illegitimate, and she’s closely tied to her Italian immigrant community. She feels periodically rebellious against her classmates’ snobbishness, against the nuns’ authority at school, against her community’s mores. Even so, Josie clearly regards the women in her life–her single mother, her grandmother and even some of the nuns–with affection as well as exasperation. Josie has less experience dealing with guys until senior year, when three members of the opposite sex complicate her world. Her father, who has not previously known of her existence, arrives on the scene unexpectedly, and she can’t help feeling drawn to him. She also becomes involved with two boys her own age: the upper-class but desperately unhappy John Barton and the wilder, iconoclastic Jacob Coote. (both summaries from amazon.com)

My Thoughts: I think this is the third time I’ve read this book–I get something different from it each time because the first time I read it I was quite young–probably elementary school, and the second time I was in middle school, and now I am graduating from high school. I remember being extremely confused when I was younger because of the cultural/geographic differences between Australia and the U.S. Several times in the narration it talks about how July is the coldest month, and school ends in September or something, or it’s hot during Christmas… I was so confused, hahaha.

Some of the plot points and characterizations might sound cliche and stupid from the plot summaries, but Marchetta has a way of making everything very multi-faceted–the characters aren’t just two dimensional cardboard cutouts.

I liked the way the author developed Josephine’s family and relationships, and the way she changed as a person throughout the novel. There were funny aspects (Josie has what most people would call a big mouth), but there were serious and somber aspects too. It ended well. A good “coming-of-age” novel.

On Books

The good book news first:

Book From Heaven (Tian Shu) is an artistic installment by Chinese artist Xu Bing four years in the making.

From idlethink

Out of the three or four thousand Chinese characters used in these volumes and scrolls, not a single one of them is a real Chinese character.

They are made up of recognizable radicals and typical atomic components of Chinese characters, but Xu laboured to ensure that while they all retain the unmistakable look of Chinese script, they are all, so to speak, nonsense. They do not exist in any dictionary, and do not mean anything. Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers alike approach the books with the same sense of wonder at their beauty, and the same sense of incomprehension at their content — though, for Chinese readers, the frustrated impulse to read might detract somewhat from their aesthetic enjoyment of the art piece. I’ve heard that some Chinese readers have spent days attempting to locate a character they can read — to no avail. It’s a piece of art whose meaning is to be found in its meaninglessness.

More here.

The bad book news next:

If you haven’t already heard: an archivist’s and historian’s nightmare has transpired in the city of Cologne.

A treasure trove of 65,000 original documents dating from the year 922, including a clutch of Karl Marx manuscripts, letters by Hegel, the personal papers of West Germany’s first Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and an unbroken series of Cologne’s carefully preserved town council meetings dating back to 1376, was destroyed in minutes when the archive building collapsed some days ago.

…Archives are destroyed quickly in war and conquering: when a new power seeks an erasure of the old, in the upheaval of battle and destruction, in bombings and air raids. Or else they are destroyed slowly by time: crumbling, fading, disintegrating — the gradual, inevitable entropy of all living things, including memory. But in Cologne, and in other tragedies of this sort, so much vanished in so little time, and in such an absurd, absurdly preventable manner (some think that the Cologne building, state-of-the-art and less than 40 years old, collapsed only because a train line was being built right underneath it) that my reaction is more one of bewilderment than anything else. A kind of chasm has opened up in German history now, and time will tell how deeply the loss will be felt.

Quoted from. Original article

Midnight Predator by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Rating: 7 out of 10
Summary 1: Though she was once a happy teenager with a wonderful family and a full life, Turquoise Draka is now a hunter, committed to no higher purpose than making money and staying alive. In a deadly world of vampires, shape-shifters, and powerful mercenaries, she’ll track any prey if the price is right. Her current assignment: to assassinate Jeshikah, one of the cruelest vampires in history. Her employer: an unknown contact who wants the job done fast. Her major obstacle: she’ll have to mask her strength and enter Midnight, a fabled Vampire realm, as a human slave. Vulnerable and defenseless, she faces her greatest challenge ever. 

Summary 2: An up-and-coming star mercenary in a world of shadowy creatures and naive humans, Turquoise has been offered the task of eliminating a bloodthirsty vampiress named Jeshickah. As a bounty hunter, Turquoise is ready to accept any challenge for the right price, especially when Ravyn — her competition for the leadership of an important Bruja guild — is given the same offer. To accomplish the job, Turquoise and Ravyn must do something unheard of: enter Midnight, a treacherous domain where vampires rule over human slaves, and act as servants until one of them can finish the job. When the two are sold into Midnight, Turquoise is given to the realm’s protective master, Jaguar. But while Turquoise moves closer to him and looks for the right time to complete her assignment, she unexpectedly comes face-to-face with a horrific part of her past — Lord Daryl, an evil vampire who killed her family and was once her master. Now, as Turquoise faces the dark creatures before her, she must deal with the ghosts in her own mind and make a decision that could change her life.

Commentary: It sucks that when you become older and re-read a novel you loved as a younger child, you find so many more flaws and mistakes and it distracts from the magic that made you like that book so much when you were little.

That’s what happened with Midnight Predator when I re-read it yesterday, but I was kind of expecting that. I wasn’t as pulled in by Atwater-Rhodes’ writing this time around (in fact, I was distracted by her purple prose and awkward writing in several spots) but it was still a good read. There’s a lot of new contemporary and urban fantasy out there right now that follows this basic plotline, but what usually turns me off from urban/vampire fantasy is the “kick-ass, snarky, sarcastic, sexy, smart, and clever!” heroine type that is so popular right now–I’m not saying that’s a totally bad thing, but it seems like very single urban/vampire fantasy novel out there has that female protagonist personality, and often it’s not done very well.

What I do like about Predator is that Turquoise is nothing like that–she’s much more grounded, real, and she doesn’t piss me off or annoy me like the aforementioned character stereotype does. I really like her as a heroine. Atwater-Rhodes also focuses less on the steamy, hot, passionate sex scenes (which actually aren’t so steamy, hot, or passionate) that a lot of recent urban/vampire fantasy features, and I like the way she dealt with the attraction between Jaguar and Turquoise. Kind of there but not there, more intriguing.

I thought it had quite a mature ending and I liked where Turquoise ended up.

Anyway, good read. I haven’t liked her recent stuff as much (Wolfcry) and I’ve stopped reading her except for the old stuff.

Three books for $13! That’s only $4.30 per book!

I love a good deal.

I haven’t been very good about updating this blog recently… I have been in a bad-book-slump. Where it seems like all 6 of the books you checked out from the library are all boring and you can’t get past the first two chapters in each. That’s been the last month for me, I’m not sure why.

Well, since I read Jellicoe Road in 2 hours last night, I think my bad-book-slump is over! In addition, I went to Half-Price Books today and bought 3 books that I have all read before but never reviewed here, as I read them when I was much much younger.

Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta (since Jellicoe Road reminded me of how good an author Marchetta is)
Midnight Predator by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Redwall by Brian Jacques (I loved these books in the 3rd grade… I’m excited to re-read it.)

After I re-read these childhood goodies hopefully I will have more things to write about.

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Rating: 8 out of 10
Summary: ”What do you want from me?” he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More.

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn’t a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all. In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.

Summary 2: Taylor Markham has been living at the Jellicoe School since her mother abandoned her at a gas station when she was eleven. Taylor’s whole life is a mystery to her-from what happened to her mother and who her father was to why certain people in town are so interested in her well-being. As the Jellicoe School students begin their annual territory wars with the Townies and military school cadets, Taylor is thrown together with Jonah Griggs, the leader of the Cadets. Although they are sworn enemies, Taylor and Jonah have a history and find themselves drawn to one another. Together they begin to unravel the tragic story of the five teenagers who started the territory wars a generation before and how their lives are tightly linked with Taylor’s own. (both summaries from bn.com)

Commentary: Neither of those summaries I provided above sound all that great, at least compared to the actual story Marchetta has written. 

I have read her two previous novels, Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. While Marchetta does tend to have a sort of formulaic plot and characters that kind of show up in all her books, she does such a good job that I don’t mind it. 

Jellicoe Road was a little confusing to start out with at first, I almost stopped because I didn’t really get what Marchetta was going for or what kind of tone she was trying to set up in her first few chapters. I had to re-read the beginning. But it got moving right after that and I started to really enjoy it–I didn’t like the double, intertwining storylines at first, but when it started making sense I thought it had some good twists and surprises. 

Marchetta’s books are very “teenage-girl-coming-of-age-discovering-new-things-about-herself-sentimental-heartfelt-hmmm.” It’s nice though, and I really like the way she does the budding teenage romance thing. As a young adult myself, I wouldn’t say that the teens in this book are completely realistic… but it’s enjoyable, in the “i wish i could be as cool and mature and fun as these guys” way.

Good read, recommended.