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Library Quest: A New Feature and a First Quest (Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan)

1/29/2013

Catie drew this for us like a boss.

There's a certain excitement in discovering something hidden, even if that something was only hidden from you. A new favorite restaurant, store, view, a movie. Book blogs are a relatively new phenomenon and most of the blogs I've seen concentrate on new and recent releases, or if not that then primarily well-known books, classics, or prize winners. (of course there are outliers) In an effort to highlight different books here at The Readventurer and to help me/us out of my/our current reading/blogging/reviewing slumps, I think it might be fun to explore more random reads. I know of a few features on other blogs that celebrate older books -- Retro Fridays at Angieville comes to mind first--but I don't want to just go old-school, I just want to go lesser known. So here's how Library Quest works: a person goes into a library. She walks through the shelves and picks up a book she's never heard of, not even one iota of information. She can read the back and look at the cover but that is it. No looking up book information, ratings, or reviews online. No checking Goodreads to see if anyone she knows has read it. Give the book an honest go and then report back on the book and the experience. Together, we can read and review a larger cross-section of books and uncover some hidden gems, don't you think? I can only imagine how much buried (or semi-buried, or at-least-more-buried-than-well-known-newer-releases) treasure is out there. Let's get started uncovering some!

A few notes: We'd love to have other bloggers participate in these quests so just contact us (on Twitter (@ our blog name) or email (our blog name @ gmail)) if you'd like to give it a go. And if you can't finish the book you pick out, you can still post on the experience and what it was like having no clue whether it was going to be "good" or not, and cross-post on your own blog, if you'd like to.

Quest Date: 12/27/12 (I know, it took me a month to get my act together)

Location: King County Library System, Bothell Branch (Bothell, WA)

Conditions: Gloomy, in both outside temperature and mental state.

Expedition Notes: I had just finished participating as a judge in The Cybils, for which I'd read basically nothing but YA sci-fi and fantasy books for over two months. I was (and am) so excited to read a lot of adult stuff to cleanse my palate. I wandered around the audiobook and YA sections to see what was around. I picked up a book for She Made Me Do It, which we're doing with Maja (Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire)and a series book I haven't gotten a chance to read yet (The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde) After that, I was just aimlessly wandering around the library (which was pretty packed with people), taking out things when they looked interesting. After thinking up the Library Quest feature, I wandered with a purpose. I picked up a few different books I'd never heard of and then picked up my final choice, mostly because it didn't look too long and the jacket copy sounded interesting.

Potential Treasure Found:

Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan
Publication Date: 11/22/11 (US)
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (US)
[Goodreads | Amazon]

Value Estimation:
I definitely think this is a hidden gem. As it turns out, the author who wrote this also wrote a book Catie reviewed (and really enjoyed) recently, No and Me. I didn't realize this when I picked it up, but it still qualifies for this feature as it turns out it is much less popular than that novel. (side note: I suppose even mega bestsellers would qualify, as long as the quest-goer can honestly say they haven' heard anything about them...*raises eyebrows*)

Review:
If there's one thing this author knows how to do, it is capture hopelessness. I think going into this having no clue what other people thought of it or really anything about the author made for a really exciting experience for me. However, I'm going to spoil something for you. The blurb for this book made me feel a bit optimistic about what could happen:

Every day, Mathilde takes the Metro to her job at a large multinational, where she has felt miserable and isolated ever since getting on the wrong side of her bullying boss. Every day, Thibault, a paramedic, drives where his dispatcher directs him, fighting traffic to attend to disasters. For many of the people he rushes to treat, he represents the only human connection in their day. Mathilde and Thibault are just two figures being pushed and shoved in a lonesome, crowded city. But what might happen if these two souls, traveling their separate paths, could meet?

Two miserable people find each other and make a go of it, right? And live happily ever after? You sly, sly jacket copy writer. That is not what this book is about--actually, it is is one of the most depressing books I have read lately. Almost the entire book is devoted to descriptions of Mathilde being undermined and under-appreciated at work. She is a widow and can't even bring herself to spend time with her friends because they will ask her about work. Thibault, the male lead, is an equally miserable doctor who once dreamed of being a surgeon, a dream that was crushed when he lost several fingers in a bar fight. He is in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable woman and he is unhappy with his job traveling all around the city, visiting patients. The narrative alternates between Mathilde and Thibault, and while I enjoyed Mathilde's portions more, I don't think the story would be complete without Thibault's voice thrown in. The descriptions of Mathilde's work life provided for more instances of pure rage from me as a reader than perhaps any book I've ever read. If it was possible, I'd write myself into this story and I'd have no qualms about torturing her boss in tiny, obnoxious ways until he broke into a million pieces. But both narratives really evoke the loneliness so many of us feel, even when we're surrounded by people.

"Carried along by the dense, disorganised tide, he thought that the city would always impose its own rhythms, its haste, its rush hours, that it would always remain unaware of these millions of solitary journeys at whose points of intersection there is nothing. Nothing but a void, or else a spark that instantly goes out." (257)

Today, when I was driving downtown, I saw a young woman about my age who had crutches and a walking boot on her leg. It was raining, she was going very slowly up a hill, and she looked miserable. I asked if I could drive her to wherever she was going. While we went around the block to her bus stop, we figured out that her ultimate destination was on the other side of Lake Washington, right near my house, so I told her I'd take her the whole way. We chatted about our lives, our families, her injury, African safaris, and I'll never see her again. Or perhaps I will, but I'd have a hard time recollecting where I knew her from. It was just a moment, like any other moment, when I made a choice. In Underground Time, the entire book builds up to just one of those moments, and I'm confident in saying that the ending will not satisfy a majority of readers, but it satisfied me. Then again, I'm someone who quite enjoys when a book punches me in the stomach.

I wish I knew French so I could read this novel in its original language. Even so, the translation is wonderfully descript. Though not overly flowery, the book is filled with metaphors and turns of phrase just so perfectly apt that I found myself repeatedly impressed:

"So a moment must come when she'll wake up, when she'll grasp the division between reality and sleep, and realise that that is all this was: a long nightmare. When she'll experience the intense relief that follows the return to consciousness, even if her heart is still beating fit to explode, even if she is bathed in sweat in her darkened bedroom. A moment when she will be free." (211)

This was 4/5 stars for me. I think it will appeal to anyone who likes to read about the bleaker aspects of life, people who enjoy French literature, anyone who may or may not daydream about murdering their horrible boss, and people who like imagining what would happen if you stopped to talk to that person on the subway. All in all, it was the perfect first random pick for our Library Quest feature. Coincidentally, I'm very happy to note that another blogger, Keertana over at Ivy Book Bindings, also read this wonderful book recently and reviewed it. If you ask me, you should just skip my review and head over there to read hers.

Please let us know if you'd like to go questing at the library. Remember, it has to be something you know nothing about. And no cheating!

25 Comments

Adult Reviews: Short Books, Some Thoughts

1/27/2013

14 Comments

Just part of my short book library haul.

Once again, I find myself unable and unwilling to read full-length novels. Sometimes, it is much easier for me to process book after book, upping my Goodreads challenge numbers and patting myself on the back as I put each one in my “read and to return to the library” pile. As such, I read six books in two days last week and altogether they probably equal out to be the length of one regular book. I wandered through the shelves of two branches of my library system and only picked out books that looked like they were children’s books hidden amongst the proper adult books. Books that could possibly be short stories published on their own. Plays. Picture books. It surprised me how many classics are extremely short and I aim to keep going on my short book quest for another week or two…but who knows how that will go, considering I haven’t been very good at sticking to any of my readerly promises of late.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
[Goodreads | Amazon]

The first short book I read was Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, which is one of those aforementioned short stories that was published on its own. Originally published in 1899, the slight, 30-odd page story is one of the creepiest glimpses into the process of a mental breakdown I have ever read. Republished by The Feminist Press in 1973, the afterword of the edition I read spoke of the author’s prolific career as a writer, poet, publisher, and academic. She wrote several textbooks, opened her own school, and for several years of her life wrote, published, and edited her own magazine, which amounted to about 21,000 words per month. (Hedges, Afterword to the 1973 Feminist Press edition, 38.) In other words, Gilman was a total badass. However, the short story captures the prisoner-like aspects of the submissive role that many women lived at the time of publication, both in terms of marriage and societal expectations overall. The protagonist of the story is left in a room, with little to no social contact and no medical treatment. As the story progresses her mental condition worsens and those around her coddle her but do nothing proactive to alleviate her situation. It is scary, realistic, and her lack of choices and the guilt she is made to feel are heart-wrenching. Gilman's writing draws you right into the story and right down the slide of sanity in a way I will never forget. I absolutely recommend this work to anyone who enjoys short stories, people who like to read about mental illness, and anyone interested in 19th century feminism.

Speaking of feminism, the next book I read was The Enchanted Truth, a 2012 “modern-day fairy tale for grown-up girls” by Kym Petrie. I have to preface my comments on this book with a caveat: I truly hate the trend of tiny, inspirational books. You know which books I am talking about: the celebrations of sisterhood, and womanhood, and friendship, and cats, and God, and pictures of babies, et cetera, et cetera, that take up entire sections of the bookstore and exist in mounds at Half-Price Books, presumably because I’m sure it is hard for publishers to guesstimate how many people will be unable to move on with their lives without purchasing a book of quotes about dogs being man’s best friend. I always wonder at the readership and authorship of such books and what their purpose is. Perhaps I am just of the opinion that one perfect poem or one well-written novel would serve a reader better than 45 poems on friendship that I could find with an internet search.

The Enchanted Truth by Kym Petrie
[Goodreads | Amazon]

I think that’s just it: to show the effort of purchasing someone a gift book like the ones I am speaking of is to show no effort at all—pick one heartfelt recommendation, not 45 meaningless ones. Or pick a short story that packs a huge punch like, say, The Yellow Wallpaper (or many other shorts by masters like Graham Greene, Ray Bradbury, and newer yet similarly amazing people like Ken Liu) To that end, I enjoyed the idea behind Petrie’s book: she wrote it as a story of empowerment to a friend of hers who was, I hope, only vaguely if at all as vapid as the protagonist of this story. The princess in this fairy tale is entitled and frivolous. She bemoans her singleton lifestyle and her lack of suitors and treats her fairy godmother with the kindness of a rattlesnake that hasn’t eaten for months. I had no sympathy for the princess for much of the story, and even at the end, I’d probably rather eat my own hand than be friends with this woman, despite her epiphany that self-reliance and confidence are more important than finding someone to sweep you off your feet. If you want a single woman to feel empowered, give her role models of strong women, give her stories of women who became confident through hard work and who learned lessons that made them better people. Don’t give them 35-page stories about people who sound like characters on Real Housewives of (Some City) and that are so weighted down in adjectives that the book feels like an anvil to the face. Because the princess is meant to be a touchstone for every whiny, single woman, the author thinks up a few other ways to describe the woman instead of giving her a name. Here are some examples:

“The pampered imperial”
“The anxious aristocrat”
“The frantic girl”
“The ingénue”
“The novice regal”
“The fledgling monarch”
“The fair-haired regal”
“The lovely young lady”
“The fair maiden”
“Our redolent regal”
“The lanky lass”
“The pensive imperial”
“The spirited scion”
“The novice royal”

And let’s not forget the fairy godmother, or should I say:

“The pastel pixie”
“The magical visitor”
“The rosy winged woman”
“The glowing guest”
“The bedazzled tutor”
“The zealous zenith”
“The luminous visitor”
“Her bubbly benefactor”
“The sweet-faced winged woman”
“Her charmed advisor”
“Her mini-mentor”
“Our effervescent sidekick”
“The powerful pixie”
“The stewardly sprite”

For all the great intentions behind this book, I would not give it to any reader I know—there is no finesse to the writing and it read like a fairy tale someone might make up on the spot before putting the kids to bed. Or in this case, an attempt in telling your friend that she’s miserable and needs to believe in herself as a strong, independent woman instead of waiting for her Prince Charming.

The Willowdale Handcar by Edward Gorey
[Goodreads | Amazon]

I love Edward Gorey's artwork. I love that it is immediately distinguishable from every other artist's work and that it has a timeless quality to it. Minus the illustrations, there is very little text in The Willowdale Handcar and most readers could fly through this short book in ten minutes or less, but they shouldn't. It didn't take me much longer than that on my first go, but when I got to the end, I was a bit confused. Three people steal a railway handcar and just ride around for a few months. Each page finds them discovering a new place and seeing people they know or have heard of, some in very precarious or mysterious positions, with no explanation. There had to be more to this, I thought. After reading it two more times, I became increasingly fascinated with this book. It is a non-story. The Willowdale Handcar is not a plot told from a secondary character. Rather, it is basically about a group of people on the periphery who just happen to view small tidbits of a much more interesting drama while passing by. As someone who is constantly wondering why that woman is crying in her car, what song that man is listening to, why those two people are fighting, what led x to commit that crime, this book becomes increasingly interesting the more I revisit it. If you don't mind a story that leaves you initially unsatisfied but filled with thoughts afterward, go for it.

Next up is The Soul Bird by Michal Snunit, a 1999 illustrated release from Hyperion that, again, takes mere minutes to digest. The text is poetic if simplistic and the pictures are similarly minimalist. The cover blurb pronounces that this book "will change your life." For those fishing for any impetus for spiritual connections, perhaps this book is inspirational. For me, it was just a collection of nice thoughts. A soul bird lives inside of you and chooses to spread its wings, act up, etc. and its actions are reflected in your outward choices. I prefer to concentrate on just the idea that we all have the capacity for most emotions and for every choice we have to make, there are thousands, if not millions, of different possible outcomes. There was one image that I really enjoyed in the book that I connected with, and I would share it, had I not returned it to the library. It was the bird body with about 20 or so different drawers on its body, each filled (though it isn't shown) with a different emotion. I'd love to see some more fleshed-out artwork of a similar idea, or a novel that expands on the idea of a body made up of compartments that a person can control. Thus, again, I enjoyed the aftermath of this book more than the book itself.

The Soul Bird by Michal Snunit
[Goodreads | Amazon]

Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
[Goodreads | Amazon]

You would think they would've forced us to watch Twelve Angry Men in law school, but they didn't. After reading the play and watching the movie this week, I feel like every American should have to read Twelve Angry Men. The play centers on a jury deliberation. During several heated hours (literally and figuratively), twelve men discuss whether the verdict they come to will exonerate a young man for the murder of his father, or condemn him to a death sentence that the judge explained he had no qualms about ordering, should the verdict be guilty. Each man plays his part, from strong prejudice to neutral to easily swayed to chaotic to apathetic. I found this play to be riveting and extremely frightening. (specifically because I cannot stop thinking about the fact that most juries probably do not have that voice of reason or pay such close attention to detail. There are so many scary aspects to both human nature and the jury process, not least of which is that juries often have the life and/or liberty of another human being in their hands) The jurors are given no names, so it can be a feat to try to follow along with an understanding of which character is which, however the overall discussions are the most important aspect of the play, and a reader can easily follow the feel of the room and see whose arguments are most persuasive. This play can be read in a mere hour or so and I recommend it to everyone, especially people who want to read more classics.

The last short book I read in my first bout of books was And Everything Nice by Kim Moritsugu. In only about 120 pages, Moritsugu created a Nancy Drew-esque if predictable mystery story. A twentysomething girl lives with her mother and works in a retail store at the mall. She's on the lookout for a hobby or a way to fill her time, and her mother suggests a rock music choir to which she belongs. Stephanie joins and becomes friends with a local news anchor, who is also in the choir. It is revealed that someone at practice is stealing money from other members and the plot thickens when the news anchor finds out that the thief has also stolen her private journal. Together, Stephanie and the news anchor devise a plan to unveil the thief. While I'm not positive about who the intended market for this book is, I feel that it is more appropriate for an older teenage audience due to its simplicity. (older only because an affair plays a part, though there is nothing graphic at all) The writing is very accessible and if the rest of the Rapid Reads collection is similar to this, I think they are perfect for reluctant readers or people looking for something extremely quick.

And Everything Nice by Kim Moritsugu
[Goodreads | Amazon]

My adventures in short books are not even close to complete. Since beginning this draft, I've finished about 4 or 5 more so I'll wrap those up soon.

For anyone skipping the text or wondering about how I ended up rating these books, here's the rundown:
The Yellow Wallpaper: 5/5
The Enchanted Truth: 1-2/5 (though I can see why some people would love it)
The Willowdale Handcar: 4/5
The Soul Bird: 3/5
Twelve Angry Men: 5/5
And Everything Nice: 3/5

Hopefully we'll be back to posting more regularly soon. And be sure to let me know if you have any recommendations for short books in the comments. (preferably adult, to satisfy my tastes of late)