Book Learnin'

I've mentioned Doc giving me a bunch of books and I don't update this thing as often as I should, so let's go through them.

The first one is the Springsteen bio. Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock and Roll by Marc Dolan. Apparently Doc tries to read a biography once every semester, so I'm not entirely sure if he really is a big Springsteen fan, or if it just kept coming up because this just happened to be the biography he was reading at the time. But anyway. I still have about a hundred pages left, but I've already read 300, so I think I can talk about it. Everything up to Born to Run and just after was pretty interesting, but shortly after that it started to get into politics and I kinda lost interest. I'll finish it, but it's a long book and I needed a break from it.

I'll admit I don't know how to approach this one. I don't usually pick up biographies; they just don't interest me that much. There's too much boring stuff in the middle of living life XD Reading this one probably would have been easier/ more entertaining if I was familiar with Springsteen's discography, but as it stands, it wasn't a bad read at all for someone who doesn't really consider themselves a fan. The author goes into some technical details on the songs, which went way over my head (I made a 1 on the AP Music Theory exam - I am completely lost when it comes to analyzing music), but other parts like poking around at the lyrics were interesting.

Onward: Bento's Sketchbook by John Berger. Doc gave me this one because he was reminded of my own notebooks with the sketches and doodles (he told me off not long ago for not drawing in my notebooks more XD). This one isn't exactly a collection of shorts, but it's not quite a linear story either. It is very much like one of my notebooks - a collection of thoughts and sketches.

The philosophy of Spinoza, including lots of quotes from his work, is spaced throughout though I didn't get that much out of those segments. Most of the thoughts revolve around drawing and where the impulse to create comes from. He often presents a sketch and then the story behind the sketch - where he was, who/ what he was drawing, why he chose to draw that particular thing or person. I thought the approach was pretty neat. There's something clinical in the way he writes it all out, but not boring or sterile. He writes about the world very much as a philosopher might, in clean, rational lines. It's probably one of those things you either like or hate, but I enjoyed the book.

Office Girl by Joe Meno. I'd actually thought about picking this up once - Doc has recommended a different Meno to me in the past, though this one was the only one I could find in the bookstore. I'll probably give his work another shot if I ever run into one of his books again.

Office Girl focuses on two hipster teens, Jack and Odile, and takes place just before the new millennium. I like his writing style a lot, which made up for the fact that I really didn't like the characters. Jack grew on me, but Odile - well, she comes off as one of those people who likes to be spastic and random for the sake of "being unique." Which I think was the point, but I'm not quite sure. I can't tell if the book is satirizing their lifestyle or celebrating it. Or both I guess.

The story begins with Odile who has worked 17 jobs in the last few years and probably has some sort of complex because she sleep with anyone so that they'll like her. That's not analysis on my part, she literally says that later in the book. We follow her around for a while and then the story jumps over to Jack for some time. He is going through a divorce in all but name and is working on a soundscape project. He rides around the city on his bike with a tape recorder and captures the sounds of whatever he finds interesting (this includes the usual city sounds and also things like a balloon flying away and a green glove lying in the snow).

About halfway through the two meet while working in the same office that sells elevator music. They do random things together. Though it's more Odile doing and Jack letting himself get dragged along because he really wants to sleep with her.

I don't know - I did like the book, I just can't stand these two, or at least Odile. There are lots of great lines and images and I like the fragmented thing he does when he switches to a new scene and Jack at least does seem to grow as a person even if he doesn't get any sort of happiness for it or whatever. I'm just not sure what to make of this one. I like the sense of longing and desperation and the hunt for meaning - he's captured the feeling well, but doesn't bother to provide any of the meaning they're looking for. I really like that Jack lays it out for Odile when he reaches the same conclusion about her that I did.

Eh. Maybe I'll like a different one of his books, one without a main character that acts like a proto-Lady Gaga.

Which brings me to Stay Awake by Don Chaon. Probably my favorite of the stuff he's given me. I really don't like horror stories, but this short story collection isn't quite horror. Much of it is almost disturbingly normal. They feel like ghost stories, even if they aren't. None of the stories are connected, but there are recurring themes and images like missing fingers, abused and abandoned children, paranoia, suicide, loss; it's a psychological study in a lot of ways.

For example; a guy named O'Sullivan is coming home from college. His degree hasn't gotten him anywhere. He hitches a ride with his brother who drives a semi-truck. Lots of awkward silence ensues because they don't really have anything to talk about. They keep seeing the same motorcyclist along the road during the drive. All of this is fragmented and told in past tense - the story begins after the two have just hit a deer and get out to make sure everything it okay. It's a perfectly normal story and there really shouldn't be anything creepy about it, but the atmosphere he creates is very tense. Or maybe it's just because it was late in the book and I knew something had to be coming (I'm not sure I interpreted the ending right, but if I did, then yeah, that was pretty messed up).

That was probably the most normal story in the book actually. It may have been the only one where I didn't get a feel for something vaguely supernatural lurking in the background. One story is about a father whose son keeps having night terrors, another about a guy who keeps finding random notes (like blown in the wind random), another about a guy who takes a boy away from his meth-addicted mother but realizes he can't handle that responsibility. I think there were close to ten stories in all.

It's a pretty dark collection is what I'm saying here. Very Gothic sorts of stories; I might even venture to call them Grotesque. Nothing you'd really care to read before bedtime.

And that's what I've been reading the last few months = )