No Exit & The Respectful Prostitute

I read the quote "Hell is other people" a few weeks ago.  It's one of the most accurate quotes I ever read so once I found out it was from a play called No Exit, I ordered the book from the library.  I didn't know the play was not that long so the book I ended up receiving contained four plays by Sartre.  I read No Exit as well as The Respectful Prostitute.

No Exit is basically about three people who are trapped in hell.  Over the course of the play we find out why they are in hell and why they may be specifically trapped with each other.  I enjoyed it and I thought to myself that if I had to be trapped with two other people who pushed my buttons it most certainly would be worse than the traditional image of hell. I even thought about the people with whom I would absolutely NOT want to be trapped.

The Respectful Prostitute is a short play about a lady of the night who has morals. It is set in the Deep South in the late 1950s.  The night prior to the start of the play, a drunken white man murders a black man. The black man's friend runs off in order to avoid being killed too.  The prostitute witnesses all this. The drunken white man claims that the men were raping the white woman so he, naturally, had to kill.  The prostitute, however, tells a different tale and refuses to lie. She is from "up North" and thinks it's despicable how things are run in the South.  Turns out that the white man is from a political family with a lot of power and they step to try and persuade the prostitute to lie.  I enjoyed this play too.  I might even say I liked it more than No Exit. I thought it was very telling that even a man who was not American could so clearly see how America worked at the time.

Both plays are short so you could easily read both in one sitting if you have some time on a weekend and want to delve into the world of theatre.

Prep

Well I seem to be striking out when it comes to prep school books.

Let me begin by saying that by the end of this book I was completely apathetic. I was so apathetic; I didn't even care about my apathy. I didn't care about ONE.SINGLE.CHARACTER, not even the alleged protagonist.  The ending could have been that a meteor hit the school and blew everyone up and I would have just shrugged, closed the book, and placed it in my "done" book box.

Reading this book was, at times, like listening to Ben Stein's character on The Wonder Years.  He was that monotone science teacher that droned on and on. Well, this book went on and on and often lulled me to sleep.  I would not have minded that, if something were occurring. Here's the thing, though, nothing happens. Absolutely nothing of interest. The story follows a girl named Lee throughout her four years at a boarding school. She is on scholarship and most of the other students are not.  So here is what happens:

1) She is socially awkward
2) She makes one real friend
3) She thinks the rich girls are bitches and everyone is judging her
4) She avoids social contact
5) She develops a crush on a popular guy
6) She secretly messes around with this guy
7) The guy moves on
8) She finally outwardly states how unhappy she is by way of NYT reporter/article
9) The other students give her the side-eye for a few days
10) She graduates

That's it.  The author describes multiple trips to the dining hall, interactions with teachers, and most irritatingly she describes every last thought that Lee ever has. Lee is a very unhappy, self-conscious girl with low self-esteem.  Her every thought is about what others are thinking about her.  If someone says good morning to her in the hallway she spends a paragraph trying to think through whether or not the person really meant to greet her.  So in the beginning of the book, I was anticipating that she would evolve and that kept me reading. I kept waiting for something. Anything. I was on page 280 before I realized nothing was going to happen.  I was duped. She doesn't change one bit. By the end of the book, she is still thinking about what others are thinking.  I didn't want to think I was duped so I found myself trying to seek deeper meaning, but if the character stays the same where is the profundity?  Is the lesson that some of us are destined to be unhappy? Maybe it is a cautionary tale about living life in the shadow of others?  I don't know. I suppose if I wanted to spend any more time on it, I could come up with something intellectual, but I've given this book enough of my time.

This is the second book by Curtis Sittenfeld that I've read.  I am wary about reading a third.

Tenth of December

I have been on the wait list for this book as well as for my book club meeting about this book for weeks.  Finally a spot opened up at the meeting so I broke down and bought the book.  I had heard nothing but great things about it, but I purposely stopped reading anything about the actual stories so that I could come to it with a clean slate.

I really enjoyed the stories.  I enjoyed how they made me think. I enjoyed how they, sometimes, made me feel uncomfortable.  I enjoyed the strong emotions I felt while reading them.  In one short story, this author could elicit feelings in me that some authors do not do within a full novel.  That says something. The story that I enjoyed the most was The Semplica Girl Diaries. I also enjoyed the title story, Tenth of December. 

Some of the stories feel like they are happening in an alternate real world. There are recognizable aspects of our current world, but then a word or a scenario makes the story feel near-futuristic. This is especially true with Escape from Spiderhead, which involves a scientific experiment involving prisoners. Some of the stories have dark undertones about kidnapping, slavery, war, suicide, rape, and murder.  I suspect those undertones are responsible for the strong feelings that I experienced.

I don't want to give too much away with the stories and their plots, however I think if you approach the stories with an open mind and allow them to sink in, you will enjoy them.

Looking For Alaska

A friend who liked the author's writing style recommended this book to me.  Since I had been toying with the idea of reading The Fault in Our Stars (also by this author), I figured it would be a good idea to start with his first work. The book is written for young adults and has won some literature awards in that genre.  My opinion of it, though, was more along the lines of "meh".

Children all go through a pre-operational stage of thinking that is egocentric.  The world revolves around them and their problems.  This is not a slight on teenagers or children.  We all go through it as we develop.  Some people never outgrow it. So in this story we have a boy who is a high school junior at a boarding school. He makes some friends and meets a pretty girl named Alaska.  He develops a huge crush on her. Then about five months after meeting Alaska and becoming friends with her, something tragic happens.  After the tragedy, he spends the rest of the book in a self-centered circle of pity. It's all about HIM and how what happened to her affected HIM.  The book is split into two sections labeled 'Before' and 'After', referring to before the tragedy and after the tragedy.  The 'Before' section was tolerable, and even funny in parts, but Alaska is slightly annoying and was not really likable (to me).  So when the tragedy happened, I didn't really care because I didn't really like her character.  The protagonist, however, is a young boy who thinks this tragedy is all about him and some fantasy life he imagined with this girl.  I repeatedly, in my head, said, "Get over it!  You've only known the girl for five months and you didn't even know her that well. Why do you think it's all about you?"

So while the writing style was fine and easy to digest, the latter part of the story dragged on and bored me.

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

I enjoyed this book and it was a quick read (2 days). However, a lot of the current reviews allude to it being seriously funny, but I only chuckled a handful of times.  I had this book sitting around for a few days and I only picked it up specifically because a review I read in a magazine said I would be laughing so much I'd want to read it again.  It was a good book, and I'm pretty sure with the recent success of The Help it will become a film.  I just didn't really laugh.  I recognized the parts where I was supposed to laugh, but I didn't. Also, I don't feel a strong urge to re-read it.

The story is about three friends who have a friendship that spans forty-plus years.  You know the deal.  One friend has a cheating husband, the other has cancer and the third is still grieving her dead child.  Throughout the book, the past and the present are interwoven so we can see how the women met and how their lives have come to this point.  They meet every Sunday at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat buffet and hash out the drama of their lives. It is a sweet story about friendship and I can certainly see why it's getting very good reviews.  I just wouldn't classify it as a comedy.  Or maybe my sense of humor is off. Who knows? It's the kind of book in which you start casting movie roles as you're reading it.  I think the humor would come across better on film because the nuances of the facial expressions and the delivery of the lines would make a big difference.  If you need a solid summer read, I think this would be a good choice.

Insurgent

Well you know once I love a book in a series I have to jump on it the series.  So I got the second book in the series yesterday at the library and finished it today (teen book = quick read).  Now on to the review.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did I love it as much as Divergent? Not so much.  It is the same with most "second books" in a trilogy.  You get a little bit of new information in order to move the story along, but nothing too crazy happens because all of the heavy stuff should happen in the final book.  The protagonist has some angst about some of the things she saw and did in the first book so she's pretty much depressed throughout the book and is now unable to perform at her best.  You know I hate that sh*t.  Excuse the profanity, but nothing gets me more riled up than a girl who weakens under pressure and starts making bad decisions instead of standing strong in the face of adversity and giving it the finger.  Anyway, she snaps out of it a little bit so I'll give her a small pass.  However, she better be about her life in Book 3.

The redeeming quality of this book was the big reveal at the end.  It is reminiscent of one of M. Night Shyamalan's movies.  I'll let you figure out which one if you read the book.  If you don't think you'll ever read this series and are curious, though, you can highlight below for the spoiler.

Spoiler starts here---> The factions discover that they are enclosed by the fence to protect them from the outside world where apparently there is a lot of murder, madness, and mayhem going on. That's the part that sounds like The Village by M. Night Shyamalan.  The kicker is that the founder of all this faction madness is one of the main character's family members. The instructions from the founder are that the fence should be opened wide when the number of Divergent has grown exponentially (which it now has). <---Spoiler ends here

And there you have it. Insurgent was not as exciting for me as Divergent.  It also was not without its flaws, but it did what it was supposed to do, which was reveal some major new information to propel the story forward. I still plan on reading Allegiant (Book 3) when it comes out in a few months because I want to see where the author takes these characters.  I will see it through to the end!

Divergent

My whole review should really consist of the following sentence:

I stayed up until 1:30am to finish this book.

That tells you everything you need to know.  I loved this book.  It kept me engaged.  I even went to a few fansites to peruse different information about different factions to see which faction I would call home (Amity!).  I have not been this into a "young adult" novel since Harry Potter (where, incidentally, I'm completely positive I would be in Ravenclaw). I have a weird relationship with books for the youth because on the one hand you have to accept that there will be childish behavior from some of the characters because, well, they are children.  On the other hand, when done right, it is refreshing to see something with a little bit of innocence attached.  Fresh eyes.

Having said that, I seem to make poor choices for these series.  I hated Twilight and will never get those hours of my life back. The Hunger Games was a disappointing series for me because the protagonist slowly became catatonic and less empowered when she should have been going from district to district raising a rebel army.  I'm still an optimist though. So when I heard about Divergent, I thought I would give it a try because the premise sounded decent and these books are usually quick, light reads.

In Divergent, we have all the requisite elements:
1) Protagonist teenage girl: 16 years old (just old enough to kiss, but not *quite* old enough for sex)
2) Brooding love interest
3) Dystopian future
4) Sidekicks
5) Mean adult antagonist
6) Similarly mean teenage antagonist
7) Conflict between good and evil

Now you can apply these elements to a story and it can flop because one element or another is weak.  But, elemental formulas don't always mean it will flop (see: Jodi Picoult). The author uses the formula well here.

Brief description:  Main character, Tris, finds out that she is different from the other teens who test into different factions of society.  She is Divergent, which is something powerful, but she doesn't understand how powerful it is and what it all means.  She is warned to never tell anyone she's Divergent, but instead to just pick a faction she thinks she can function in and press on.  She picks a faction and begins to learn what it really means to be Divergent and why she is a threat to others.  After this first book, I'm going all in for Book 2. If that one doesn't disappoint, I'll be ready for Book 3 when it is released in October.  I really, really, really want this series to rise to the occasion. I don't want the main character to become a puddle of weak female teenage emotions at the end.  That's all I ask.  I want to believe again!

Kushiel's Scion

I feel the need to give a short back-story before I say why I didn't love this book, but I didn't hate it.  This author has written nine books based in the fictional world of Terre D'Ange, which is a parallel world similar to Europe.  I absolutely LOVED the first three (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, and Kushiel's Avatar). That trilogy had everything a fantasy novel could have, political intrigue, espionage, betrayal, war, forbidden love, unrequited love, murder, sex, swords, daggers...you get the picture.  I devoured that first series over ten years ago.  

Then I bought Kushiel's Scion probably about six years ago. I decided I would pick up where I left off.  What I didn't know at the time was that it wasn't really a continuation (i.e. it was not "Book Four" of a series), but a new trilogy where a character who was only a child at the end of Kushiel's Avatar was now older and he was the narrator.  It was a character I didn't really even care about, but I decided to give it a chance because maybe it would be as exciting as the first three books.  Well that was six years ago and I tried to start the book several times over the past few years.  Finally, I dove in and decided to read it.  It is 900 pages and it took me about 300 pages before I was well vested into the story. The story was interesting, just not put-everything-down-and-read-this-book absorbing.  So I plugged along and completed three other books along the way.  

The story is way too detailed to discuss here, but basically the first trilogy is known as "Phèdre's Trilogy" because it's mainly about Phèdre and her adventures as a spy/courtesan.  In the end of the trilogy she rescues a little boy named Imriel from a death camp.  That's not a spoiler alert because there is so much more to the story.  So the second trilogy is "Imriel's Trilogy" because he's not a little boy anymore and now he is having his own adventures, which mostly consist of him trying to avoid assassination because he is actually a prince that nobody wants to see on the throne.  See, even this review is going on too long because of all the intricacies of the story.  

And that brings me to my main problem with the book.  It went on way too long. I confess I skimmed the last 200 pages and read mostly for dialogue, opting out of the lengthy descriptions about the rocky cobblestones or the shining vambraces.  Also, the action did not interest me.  There were battles and sieges and riots and I was like 'meh' through most of it.  The redeeming quality that, in the end, kept me moderately interested was that the author rounds the characters out so well that you do want to know what happens to them eventually.  I was legitimately sad for one of the characters when he died.  I thought in my head "Aww man, poor ____ why him!?" So the book gets some kudos for tugging at my heartstrings.   Otherwise, I've decided that I'm not interested enough to finish this second trilogy or begin the third.  I do, however, highly recommend the first trilogy (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, and Kushiel's Avatar).