Yeah, I know. Oops. I knew in the middle of February that the poor month wasn't going to get its time to shine on this blog. I could give you the blah-blah-blah excuses of how busy I was, or how little time I've had to read, or so on and so forth, but quite frankly, it really doesn't matter. I am a bit ashamed of how little I read in the past two months (only three books, which is, to me, depressing), but for what it's worth, here's my brief take on them:
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous: The infamous "diary" written/copied/fabricated/what have you by a young teenager in the 70s detailing her ordinary life's descent into the living nightmares of a drug addict after she unwittingly drinks from a soda laced with LSD. This is an extremely famous book with something like a gazillion copies sold (I checked; that's a real fact), and I've been wanting to read this book for years, so I did what one should never do about a book: I built it up in my head before reading it. Hm. I had a couple of problems accepting that this book could fully and completely be taken from someone's diary. For a journal, there sure was an awful lot of scene setting and character describing. Some entries were more believable than others. I just don't know. I even would have appreciated/been more accepting if the editor had admitted that parts had been added or fabricated for the sake of the story, but I just can't buy that the whole book is an untouched, unedited journal. Anyway, for a short book, it was a long read, and I got very tired of the whole thing and only finished it to finish it. I was hoping the book would give me a gritty insight into a world with which I am fairly unfamiliar, but I was just annoyed by the diarist. I also think it deserves mentioning that this book was written/copied/fabricated in the late 60s or early 70s, so the writing and dialogue is immensely different from what we're used to reading and hearing, and that threw me off-- though it's equally important to mention that that's no fault of the book. It was simply disconcerting for me, and distracted me from an already tired story.
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger: Nine unrelated (or are they?) stories depicting scenes from the lives of nine people/groups/families, all taking place after WWII. This is the third time I've read it; I have been meaning to pick it up again, and a question about it from my high school English teacher prompted me to move it up my reading list (I'm still working out in my head what you asked, Mrs. Jaunet). I love this book very much. How could I ever choose a favorite story? I absolutely love "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", "For Esmé-- with Love and Squalor", "Pretty Mouth and Green my Eyes", and "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" (and that's nearly half of the entire book). It's an old and familiar friend, but every time I read it, it drives me insane. I'm always so desperate to find a solid connection between the stories, as if a hidden thread that I just can't see is woven between the pages, and it's got to be more than the war, and it can't possibly be as simple as human consciousness or lost innocence or something, can it? This book simply begs you for a deeper analysis that is actually a bit frightening to me, as if the more I analyze it, the closer I am to finding out a huge secret about humanity, and I don't know if I could handle that. But then again, it could be, for all we know, just nine stories.
I highly recommend Nine Stories if you don't mind stretching those brain muscles of yours for nothing more than the sake of literary analysis and an appreciation for abrupt endings.
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan: Yes, it's a book. No, I haven't seen the movie... but from the infinite font of knowledge, Wikipedia, it looks to be immensely different from the book. The book details one long night that Nick and Norah spend together running around by themselves in Manhattan, both trying to get over previous heartbreaks, wavering back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth, and good Lord, BACK AND FORTH) over whether or not they can find an answer to all of life and love's teenage mysteries in the other. The authors seemed to be playing a delightful little game of "how many F-bombs can we fit on one page?" (Spoiler alert: page 95 wins with a total of 25 variations of the word.) Now, I picked up this book not because I'm into Michael Cera or because I'm known for my taste in punk music or anything, but because I'd previously read a book cowritten by David Levithan and John Green, and though my admiration for John Green is strong and true, I found that Levithan upstaged him in character writing, and really kept the book going. The problem I have with coauthors, though, is that I feel it's difficult for one to write the other author's character within their chapters. So instead of Nick and Norah, I felt like I was reading two Nicks and two Norahs who just didn't quite jive. And I kind of hated Norah. Once again, Levithan kept the book readable for me, and I may go watch the movie just to compare it (Wikipedia's description makes it seem like the film took the basic characters, a bit of the plot, put it in a blender, and came up with a mixed-up concoction that's sort of backwards from the original storyline...?), but I have no desire to reread or really even recommend this book. A night alone in Manhattan with two angsty teens who are desperately seeking ~true love~ despite their individual mental blocks and hang ups? Meh.
