Book 51: Pulp by Charles Bukowski

Another enjoyable book by Charles Bukowski.  It checks in at 208 pages and was another quick read.  It was also Bukowski's last novel and was published in 1994, shortly before his death.

The novel is dedicated to bad writing, which stole my heart.  It is a sort of pulp novel but really plays with the conventions of the pulp novel, satirizing and almost ridiculing it.  It starts out as a detective crime novel but branches out to other pulp themes such as alien invasions, mafia loan sharks and death, hunting someone who has so far escaped her.

The characters are good, the protagonist, Nicky Belane, is a detective, a Henry Chinasky stand-in and a thinly-veiled reference to Mickey Spillane.  He is hired by several people, including Lady Death, to solve cases.  He's not a very good P.I. but he blunders and punches his way to solutions to most of them.

While not as good as most of his earlier books, this novel was enjoyable and a very funny commentary on the pulp genre.  I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that liked his other novels and anyone that likes books by authors like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins or Ken Kesey.

8 out of 10.

Book 40: Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

So, this one is cheating a little bit.  I listened to this book about a month ago as an audiobook.  Because of the start-and-stop nature and the length of time it took to finish the book in this format (I listened to it each night while doing dishes for about three weeks), I feel like I might not have gotten the full experience that I would have reading the paper version.  Therefore, I'm now reading the "real" book in order to debunk this idea or confirm it.  If, at the end of the week, I find that there are things that I missed while listening to the audiobook then I will probably stick with text.  Otherwise, hell, I might just pick up a few more audiobooks because it sure made dishes a bit more fun.

The physical version of this book is 246 pages or 36 pages per day.

REVIEW:  This was a fun read.  I didn't find that there was any difference between the audio and text versions of the book, and I didn't find that I missed anything by listening to the book rather than reading it.  It was definitely faster to read the book and I got a little surprise at the end when I saw that it said "To be continued...", but I'm not sure if that's just a joke on the author's part of if this really the first part of a series.  I really can't see where the book would go from where it left off, but hey, maybe Palahniuk knows what he's doing.

The book in general is very funny.  Palahniuk's version of hell is simultaneously disturbing, disgusting and hilarious.  I love the idea that the arch demons are really just ex-gods that nobody believes in anymore, hence making them angry and cruel.  The main character, Madison, was also very funny.  She constantly berates the reader for underestimating her intelligence and her vocabulary and ridicules the hypocrisy of her ultra-liberal yet highly materialistic jet-set celebrity parents.  I also found the parallel Palahniuk draws between the main group of characters and an analogous group of characters from a movie (I don't want to spoil it) to be very entertaining, though he ultimately didn't really do anything with this concept.

The main draw for the plot was that each character seemed to be in hell for a relatively minor offense (marijuana overdose, wearing white after Labor Day, etc.).  You know that there must be more to their stories, but the author strings you along with hints for most of the novel.  Unfortunately, after the "big reveal", there is a lot less to drive the story forward.  It feels like the narrative just starts to continue on the momentum of the first two-thirds of the book without a lot of direction.  Eventually, you get an ending without any real resolution and are stuck with a "To be continued..." to really drive the ambiguity home.

Weak, ambiguous ending aside, the book was quite fun to read and very funny in many places.  Another good Palahniuk novel though not among his top works.

7 out of 10.

Book 29: Solar by Ian McEwan

I really like Ian McEwan's books, though they are, more often than not, quite depressing.  It used to be that he wrote strange little macabre tales where something was off about the lives of his chraracters (children living alone in their house after burying their parents in the backyard comes to mind).  But lately, he's been writing beautiful books with characters that you come to love, then he stabs you in the heart with a tragic twist near the end.  You may love the characters and hope to see them end up happy, but you know they won't.  All that said, I love his writing and am looking forward to this book.

It's got 287 pages, so that's 41 pages per day... although I borrowed this one from the library a couple weeks ago and only have 5 days to finish it... so that's 58 pages per day.

REVIEW: Let me say straight away that I really enjoyed this book.  It his several elements that were bound to grab me.  The main character, Michael Beard, is a theoretical physicist who, a couple of decades ago, won the Nobel Prize for his work with light establishing something called the Beard-Einstein Conflation (which McEwan wisely does not explain).  Now, however, his marriage is in decline and his career has stagnated as he continues to coast along on his successes as a young man.

Ian McEwan's writing is, as always, completely engrossing.  I literally missed my bus stop no fewer than 3 times while reading on my way home from work.  He has a way of writing characters that is completely believable and you find yourself immersed in their lives.  It helped that he did his homework on this book, which helped to write a very convincing scientist-turned-scientific administrator, without making him a stereotype.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this book, McEwan typically has a tragic twist in his books.  One would think that this would get formulaic and predictable, but he has a way of introducing these twists that, while you may expect them, you are always surprised by them.  I don't want to give away the plot in this review, but I will say that, near the end of the book, I knew something was going to happen, but he gave such a complex range of things that could happen that I didn't know which it would be.  That sounds confusing; suffice it to say that Ian McEwan is an excellent writer and, despite the fact that you may suspect that his plot will include a tragic twist or surprising turn, you won't see it coming until it has already happened.

Overall, and as usual, I really liked reading McEwan's latest book.  It wasn't one of his best and the ending was a little lacking, in my opinion, but it was expertly written, completely engrossing and even comic, in a grim sort of way.  8 out of 10.

Book 20: Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

While reading a lot of older books, I have found that I really like stories about the old sailing ships.  There's just something fascinating about wooden ships, canvas sails and the sense of adventure needed to take one of these things out on the open ocean.  I've read quite a few books from the Age of Sailing Ships:  Lord Jim, Robinson Crusoe, The Sea-Wolf, Treasure Island.  I'm hoping that this one lives up to it's reputation and gives me some great high seas adventure.

Only 464 pages means 67 pages per day but, if it is as good as I hope it is I'll probably finish in about 3 days.

REVIEW:  This book really hit the spot.  I was looking for a good sailing ship adventure and it was perfect.  I knew I was on the right track when I saw that there was an illustration inside labeling all the sails on a typical ship of the time.  If the publisher thinks it might be useful reference to know which is the maintopmast staysail or the mizzen topgallant then, chances are, you’re in for some good nautical adventure.

The book is the first of a very long series of books with the two main characters.  It covers their meeting and events on their first ship together, with Jack Aubrey as the Captain of the ship and Stephen Maturin as the ship’s doctor.  There’s a good deal of ship’s activity that is documented as well as the exciting parts of ship to ship combat.  The combat scenes are fast paced despite the minutiae of which sails are being pulled in and which others are being raised. 

I found these details to be engaging, especially in a genre that tends to gloss over details in favor of action.  This book had both.  I’m definitely going to continue with this series and have already placed the next volume on my reading list.

Approaches being a classic-worthy novel and is certainly one of the best sea-stories that I’ve read.  9 out of 10.

Book 7: "Diary" by Chuck Palahniuk

My sister-in-law is a big fan of Mr. Palahniuk but I've never read any of his works.  I decided to include one of his books in my little project here and picked one fairly randomly from her shelves and now it's time to dive in.  It's not the one that my sister-in-law thinks is the best (Choke) or his most famous (Fight Club) so I think it might actually be more representative of his work than the others.

By reading the last couple books in 5 days instead of 7, I have completely caught up with my schedule and have a full week to finish this one.  At 272 pages I only need 39 page per day and, after two weeks of 100 pages per day, it should be a nice, leisurely read.

UPDATE: My first impression, after reading a lot of classic literature was, "My goodness, modern literature sure is vulgar."  But, after I got used to the changes in style this book really grew on me.  It went from that initial revolting to intriguing to very interesting.  I'm not sure that I was happy with the ending and this was one of the only times I can remember hoping for an unhappy ending... though it's difficult to figure out what that would actually mean with this book.  My favorite  line was, after spending an entire chapter describing what different paint colors are made of (crushed beetle shells, crawfish ink, charred bone), that: "The more you know about art, the more it sounds like witchcraft."  Very nice.