Reading Ritsuka

So, because I am a lucky person who happened to preorder Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters Remix, I have already finished reading it. Haha, take that!

I was really impressed with it. Even though I am a fan, I wasn’t expecting much of a difference. I basically imagined it as a hardcover re-release of the original, but this new edition has tons of new content! Several chapters that must be read with a mirror, which yes, I sat at my desk with my compact reading them. Luckily, my desk is pretty isolated so no one questioned my sanity.

Also, some personal stories from Chuck are scattered throughout, and I was really interested in these. The last one was especially wonderful, recounting some experiences of the filming and promotion of the Choke film.

The coolest thing about it is that it actually does the skipping around thing that the original version said it would be! Each end of a chapter directs you to the beginning of another chapter, and as warned, you feel like you’ve missed something.

HINT: YOU HAVE

That’s where the backwards chapters and personal stories come in, along with some new info on our favorite princess. The majority of the book happens while completely missing these chapters. After reading the main part, I flipped back through for anything I may have missed and found some gems.

This makes the entire book quite an adventure, more than I expected it to be. Those who aren’t already fans of Chuck might not want to pick this up right away. The flipping to different chapters takes some extra time, and might annoy the less devoted. Personally, I was blown away, and will definitely re-read it at some point.

Well done, sir!

I finished reading Gregory Maguire’s Out of Oz a couple of days ago and have spent a considerable amount of time since then deciding what to say about it. All I’ve really come up with is “Eh”. I hate to say that. I truly love the series up to this point, and it wasn’t truly horrible. Unfortunately, Out of Oz just fell a little flat for me. Rather than being a page turning climax to the series, it was quite slow at times, and the reveals felt a little forced.

There are sections of the novel that I very much enjoyed, but there were too many intervening sections that were incredibly dull. Of course, plenty of strange and interesting things happened. The problem was that they were largely disjointed events. I could see very little tension driving the action. There was the standard stuff, bad guys are searching for this magical book we’re lugging about, we have to protect our daughter, etc. For most of the novel, the danger did not feel present enough. A couple of near misses weren’t really sufficient for me to be worried about the protagonists. Now towards the end, there’s a kidnapping, but even that didn’t cause too much panic for me. After one beating, the captors realize that they shouldn’t harm their prisoner and begin to be more careful. Suffering takes place, but no lives are really in danger. In fact, it seems that more characters encounter accidental injuries, such as Nor’s fall.

Dorothy returns, “Elphaba” returns, and Ozma returns, basically all at once, and for no reason that I can see. Dorothy again falls from the sky. Rain’s disguise is lifted, and Ozma, well…Ozma. For that reveal you really must read the novel. There’s a fine line to this discussion. Reader’s want reveals like this to be a surprise, but probably not to this degree. After reading the reveal, I was saying “huh?” and had to revisit an earlier section to see what I missed. Except that I hadn’t missed anything. This was just a bizarre and sudden reveal. There were a couple of teensy hints earlier on, but none of them created the “Aha!” moment I really wanted.

All things considered, Out of Oz was a perfectly acceptable novel. It had some wonderful moments, some beautiful quotes, and a colorful cast of characters. However, after being so in love with The Wicked Years series, this finale was underwhelming. I’m not sure if this is a result of hype or my own ridiculously high expectations, but either way, this novel just seemed average to me.

This makes me sad…
So I’m going to stop talking about it…

I started reading Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire. The other night after I mentioned it in my post, I just had to pick it up. I’m not THAT good… I haven’t finished it yet. It’s somewhat more demanding than one would imagine.

Before I say anything about the new book, can we please talk about this series for a minute? What Gregory Maguire has done is absolutely beautiful. It seems to me that instead of re-imagining Oz, he’s just expanded on Baum’s idea. Having read Baum’s Oz, I don’t believe that Maguire has violated that vision at all. Baum’s version portrays Oz as a sort of mirror to Dorothy’s daily life. With that in mind, why shouldn’t Maguire make all of Oz a mirror of our world? Maguire’s Oz is complex, political, and dramatic in ways that are difficult to sum up. It’s a beautiful exotic place, and yet, it feels so familiar and so real.

In Wicked, Maguire reinvented the Wicked Witch of the West as Elphaba Thropp, a misunderstood green girl in opposition to the Wizard of Oz and his laws against Animals (that’s Animals with a capital A, meaning talking Animals, as opposed to animals, which do not talk). In Baum’s Oz, through Dorothy’s eyes, the witch appears to be the enemy, but Maguire’s readers get Elphaba’s side of the story. We also get a lot of dirt on the Wizard of Oz, who displays some very shady behavior. Don’t worry though, true to Baum’s story, the witch is destroyed by Dorothy, but for Maguire, the story doesn’t end there.

In Son of a Witch, we spend more time with Liir, a character we met in Wicked but didn’t really get to know very well. There’s some debate over his origins, but the title suggests the truth of the situation. Following in his alleged mother’s footsteps, Liir rebels against the Emerald City with some acts of sabotage resulting in soldiers keeping a close watch on the cabin he’s been sharing with Candle. When Liir returns, he finds that Candle has fled the cabin, leaving a little bundle, their daughter, for him to find. This novel gives us a lot more insight into the darker side of Oz. We venture into South Stairs prison and learn about the Emerald City’s attempts to use dragons to their purposes. With the birth of Liir’s child, this novel ends with a perfect set up for further expansion.

So in A Lion Among Men, Brrr, a.k.a. The Cowardly Lion, tries to avoid being arrested by tracking down Liir and Elphaba’s book of magic, the Grimmerie. He does so by interviewing Yackle, a mysterious character that hovers around the edges of Elphaba’s life. Brrr gets a little more than he bargained for, however, because Yackle leads him to exactly what he needs, but then he must make a choice.

I think I’m going to avoid saying anything else, any more information might spoil it for some readers. There are so many details that I love and want to share, but in this world, so many of the details are important. It’s difficult to share them without disrupting the experience. However, I have to say that this series is amazing. I truly believe that Maguire has done something absolutely unique and interesting, without disrupting the original. Anyone with an interest in fantasy novels, in Oz, or who thinks these might be interesting should absolutely pick these up.

So far, Out of Oz fits right in with the other novels. It has plenty of mystery, suspense, intrigue, and fantasy. It’s also extremely complex, and so far has kept me on my toes. When I finish it, I’ll spend a little time crying because the series is over, and then I will get myself right over here to type up my thoughts.

Talk to you soon :)

sooooo At the beginning of the year, blah blah blah resolutions, right? This year, I’m reading more. I’m writing more. Considering my tendencies toward laziness, it seems only reasonable to make myself somehow accountable. Therefore, the blog now exists.

So far this year, I’ve finished one book… give me a break, I’ve only had three days!

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
Never has the history of English been so entertainingly delivered. Having learned of this work in a linguistics class, I was sure it would be about as fascinating as an 8 A.M. grammar course. I bought it on sale and added it to my stack of unread books. Despite my preconceived notions. I quickly began to enjoy Bryson’s prose. Bryson manages to portray the complexities of our language in fascinating and often funny ways. This book was both informative and entertaining, which is a combination that I find particularly appealing. Because I learned about this book from a professor, I was very afraid that it would be too much like a text book to be enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised by Bill Bryson’s book and hope to read more of his work in the future.

I’ll be reading Gregory Maguire’s Out of Oz very soon along with a whole stack of other goodies, and I’ll be heading off to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers live in a couple of weeks. There are many many interesting albums coming out this year (Billy Talent, Coheed, Say Anything, and many others) for which I will be checking out the tours.