Book Review

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I fell in love with this book right away, as I tend to err toward darker undertones in fiction and writing. Reading it is a challenge, on account of the format and structure of the novel, but I love the playfulness and unconventionality that the author used to create a feeling of confusion and erudite profundity. It took me at least three days to read a whole chapter because of all the footnotes! Footnotes inside of footnotes inside of footnotes. It's like a literary scavenger hunt.

I really liked that aspect of this novel...it's not an easy read and its not for everyone, but if you can get through it, you definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. As a writer, I appreciate the skill it takes to craft an experimental novel such as this. The house in the novel itself is unusual and disorienting, and Danielewski is so adept at using his writing to make the reader feel just so as well. The text, at times, with its format and structure, mimics the feelings and situations of the characters in the book. Danielewski is SO good at this.

This novel is dark. It's unsettling in a way that you can't understand unless you read it. It's not a horror novel; it's not graphic in a scary way, but this book IS scary. When I read this book, I lived alone and had a hard time reading it in bed at night. Its difficult to describe, but this book just gave me the willies.

The plot is centered around a man who moves his family into a house and one day discovers that the inside of the house is actually "bigger" than the outside of the house. From there, his obsession with the house and downward spiral into the depths of the house overtake his life, his family, his sanity.

House of Leaves made me feel both claustrophobic and agoraphobic; yet compelled to keep reading. The author taps into that place in each of us that is still afraid of the dark and things that go bump in the night without ever having to "show" any of these conventionally "scary" things and concepts.

I was so impressed by this book, even when I couldn't follow the plot. It took a lot of patience to read each chapter, but was worth it. The author is a master of ergodic literature, pushing his reader to focus and really dig into the actual text, each word, in order to grasp one page after the next.

It has also been said that even the title, "House of Leaves", suggests that "leaves" is a synonym for "pages", thus making the "house" a book. You can't see the whole tree without studying each individual leaf.

Incredibly interesting, wholly challenging, and unsettingly mysterious.

I loved it.

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Book review

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you love the playfulness of language at all, you will love this book. This book was written for lovers of the English language, people who frolic in the splashy joyfulness of syntax and diction, wanderers of the doldrums of grammar, and seekers of simple, breathtaking irony.

It's a childrens' adventure tale, but it doesn't take a kid to enjoy this story. In fact, the later I reread it in my years, the more meaning it had to me. The more wit I found in Juster's words.

If you have kids, put this book on their bookshelf. They will thank you when they finally learn to appreciate it. Hopefully, it will nurture their love of reading and words as much as it did for me.

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Book reviews

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I've read it over and over and yet, I still can't tell you why it made such an impression on me.

The characters are so fully developed, so acute and influential that you want to BE them. It's glamorous and elegant, the world of Ayn Rand, graced with descriptions of stunning architecture and juxtapositions of good versus evil. I don't find myself driven by Rand's "objectivism" philosophy of the selfish man, the individual above all, but I still found the way she portrayed this theme through her characters obsessively fascinating.

From the moment we are introduced to Roark standing on the edge of the cliff...the first sentence, "Howard Roark laughed", we are pulled into Ayn Rand's world of the ideal. She makes us aware of the existence of both opulence and poverty within our own souls.

The book is beautiful. She makes the stark lines of city dwelling and the coldness of power-driven men seem not so bleak. There is a love story there, don't be mistaken. But its between the reader and the characters.

I'll reread this book a million times and never get tired of it.

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Book reviews

Reasons for Moving, Darker & The Sargentville Not: Poems by Mark Strand


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was the first book of poetry where I memorized an entire poem because it moved me so much. Here goes, from memory:

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

The absolute simplicity of this poem and the careful diction Strand chooses displays a mastery of the English language that I think only poets really possess.

If you read on, read more of his poems, you will see the theme of filling spaces and absences and voids. His words are so perfect. Every time.

For a long time I wanted to tattoo the last stanza of this poem on my body because it was the first piece of language I really, truly fell head over heels in love with.

Thank you Professor David Hamilton, University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, for introducing me to Mark Strand and for the subsequent love affair that followed.

It has been one of the most significant and lasting relationships I've ever had.

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When something's lost, I wanna fight to get it back again.

It's time to talk about Backspacer.

It’s been almost two months since it was released and I’m not lying when I say it’s the only album I have listened to in that time. I don’t have a radio in my car so this is entirely plausible.

Here’s the thing about this album. You won’t like it.

You’ll listen to it quizzically the first time through and after another stubborn run through the 37 minute long puzzle, you will wonder what Pearl Jam was thinking.

You’ll think about all the time and effort you have put into loving one band, one band alone, for the most formative years of your life and you’ll frown, knowing that this is their latest reciprocal effort.

You’ll feel a sense of disappointment, kind of like the first time you heard Yield come distinctively stumbling through your 90’ Pontiac Grand Prix speakers.

Then, during Track 7, “Unthought Known”, right before the chorus comes crashing through, you hear the words, “Feel the sky blanket you, with gems and rhinestones…” and somewhere inside the gravel and raspy sincerity in Eddie’s voice you will begin the process of falling in love.

It will happen just like that.

For me it happened after three times through the album. It was Tracks 5, 6 & 7.

“Just Breathe” is easy to love. It’s simple acoustic guitar and that voice. A love song, in its own right. Poignant in its lamenting. And, of course, I am just a pushover for love songs; but that is not a big surprise to anyone.

“Amongst the Waves” didn’t interpret for me right away. At first I thought it was a song about regret, but after several listens, it smacked me right upside the head.

This is a song about hope, much like “The Fixer”, and of confidence in the future. That is a notion I have recently distanced myself so much from that I couldn’t listen to “The Fixer” for a few weeks. I wasn’t about hope, I was about darkness and “The Fixer” only served to pull me out instead of wallow in and that’s not what I wanted.

In fact, many of the tracks on Backspacer are woven with glittery, immutable threads of hope; optimism even. The dissonance and dissent from their last self-titled album are curiously absent.

And no, I don’t think it was because they are going main stream to sell more albums. I know a lot of fans do, but I didn’t feel that with this album.

What I felt was a less self-conscious effort to music-making. I felt a band more comfortable in their own skin, and more up-beat than ever before. I don’t know if this is a product of where they are at in their own lives, or the mood of the country, or anything, really, but I know I liked it and I believed it.

Ten and Vs. were epic. There is no denying that. But Backspacer is wholly different. Fundamentally and characteristically, it sounds nothing like anything that came before it.

In the course of listening to only this album I experienced some strong emotions in the wake of a particularly tough break-up. If you are looking for an angry, edgy song like “Black” or “Whipping”, perhaps this isn’t the album for you. Backspacer gave me no pent-up, aggressive release. Instead, it turned me inward and contemplative. It made me nostalgic in not a wistful way, but in a reflective way.

Lyrics like, “Amongst the Waves”, “Love ain’t love until you give it up/Gotta say it now/better loud/than too late” really sliced through the misty, false reality I had been forging ahead into, and “Force of Nature”, "Makes me ache/makes me shake…/is it so wrong to think that love can keep us safe?” finished the process by bringing my head back down from the clouds.

Eddie never lets you forget that above everything else, he's just a guy with a screwed up past who is trying to heal, just like the rest of us. There's something earnest about him. He makes you feel like you're a part of his private relationship with the music. And it does matter. To me, at least.

Don’t get me wrong, “Supersonic” will rock your balls off and has enough energy to power Tokyo with its electricity. “Gonna See My Friend” is equally ferocious, and an adrenaline shot right into your heart, right off the bat.

I just didn’t expect so many insightful pockets of joy from a Pearl Jam album.

For once I had to turn to other bands to fulfill my rock needs. That is not to say that Backspacer is not a rock album. That is plainly not the case. Pearl Jam cannot help but rock. Mike McCready won’t allow anything less.

But during those moments when only the slow, angry build up of “Why Go” or the cold-cocked recklessness of “Spin the Black Circle” will do, I found myself turning to other bands, other songs.

Because there isn't an angry, cynical note on this album.

And that's what made Backspacer a memorable album for me. I will always remember that listening to it helped me through a particularly hard time in my life, pushing me forward, urging me to rethink my future when I could only see one outcome. And then confidently patting me on the back, reassuring me that my past mistakes are not who I am. That I could shatter all my old expectations and create the potential for possibility, to reinvent myself in a way people don't expect.

And, ultimately, that's why music is so important.

I went from "And now my bitter hands/chafe beneath the clouds/of what was everything" to "Riding high amongst the waves/I can feel like I/Have a soul that has been saved/I can see the light/Coming through the clouds in rays."

And that’s why we needed to talk about Backspacer.