Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

I just like Neil Gaiman. I think I once had the impression that he was a very dark writer, and it turned me away from picking up his books for a long time. But while it's true that even his children's books have dark themes, he is also funny, playful, and a bit absurd. In my mental categorization of books, Neil Gaiman goes with Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, but he's darker than either, and his absurdness is not quite as over-the-top.

So Neverwhere didn't blow me away, but it was a delightful read. It was the kind of read where you skim over a sentence and then laugh two seconds later because you just caught the joke - not because it was obscure but because it was written in absolute earnestness. It was also the kind of read where you are surprised to find that events that seemed written for the joke or the play on words actually factor into the plot in subtly important ways. It was a quick read, which made it nice for balancing out my foray into Borges territory.

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker

I read this book several weeks ago, but have had a really hard time writing the review. I just deleted what was (I think) my fourth draft because, once again, it was getting too long and complicated, and I finally decided just to make it as simple as possible. Reading over the final result here, I feel like I didn't say anything substantial. But at least it's now publishable length and I can move on with my book-blogging life.

Although the title of this book sounds like something I might have stumbled across in the BYU Bookstore, I actually learned about it from Ira Glass on This American Life. This is an autobiographical book by a young single LDS woman in New York City about her experience of being a young single LDS woman in New York City. It's written for a general audience, and her religion is not incidental to the story. In fact, it's kind of the central theme. She's very candid, and if you read this book on my recommendation I have to warn you in advance that it's not Sunday School reading. There are some scandalous bits. Just so you know.

Usually I feel like I have to review a book on two levels: the literary level (was it well-written? did it have interesting themes?) and the personal enjoyment level (did I like reading it?). One of the reasons it's been so hard for me to write this review is that I feel like I have to review it on two more levels: how did I react to this book from the perspective of my own faith? And what are my thoughts about the book's portrayal of the LDS faith and community to a broader non-LDS population? But since I keep getting bogged down, I'm not even going to try to cover all the bases, although I have much to say about each aspect (particularly the last two).

Instead, I'll first state simply that I liked the book. It was a quick read (I made it over halfway through in my first sitting) and it was entertaining. Even though the author is very unlike me (she's only a little younger, but we greatly differ in personality, life experiences, and our choices in how we live our life and our faith), I could identify with her. Sometimes I was surprised how strongly I identified with her. There was a lot in this book that really resonated with me. But knowing that most of the readers of this blog haven't read the book makes it hard to explain in more detail. There were also things in the book that bothered me, and things I wasn't sure how to react to. This is also hard to explain in detail if you haven't read the book.

More than anything, though, it gave me a lot to think about. Would I recommend this book? Honestly, it would have to be on a case-by-case basis. For some people, definitely not. For others, absolutely - I'd be interested to hear what you thought and to share more of what I thought.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

I would not have expected a dystopia novel from Jasper Fforde. His previous books have all been mostly-fantastical off-kilter police dramas with literary undertones and overtones, set in present-day worlds that are just like ours, except very decidedly not. He does this really well, and I think his books are some of the most fun and clever books I have ever read.

But after reading Shades of Grey, I think Jasper Fforde was exactly the author to do something fresh and different and interesting with what I think can be a tired genre. The distant future of Fforde's novel is as delightfully off-kilter as the present worlds of the Thursday Next or Nursery Crimes novels, but everything feels weightier. In this novel, the fate of the world is at stake, not just the fate of the next-door neighbors. Except the world also includes the next-door neighbors, and we care about them, too.

Like most dystopia novels, however, the main character (in this case 20-year-old Eddie Russett) does not think much about the fate of the world in the beginning. He is more concerned with getting through the Chair Census he has been assigned to conduct in East Carmine, a town on the outskirts of society, as retribution for pulling the "elephant prank" on a friend back home. Once finished, he can return to his life in Jade-Under-Lime and marry into the prestigious Oxblood family. There's nothing overtly sinister at the outset, other than an awful lot of rules (ranging from dress codes to a strange ban on spoon manufacture) and a dismaying shortage of loganberry jam.

The society Eddie is a part of is a "colortocracy," in which one's social standing is based entirely upon one's perception of color. No one in this society can see the full color spectrum. Eddie has a very strong perception of red, and if he can marry into a purple line that has begun fading to the blue end of the spectrum he can bump himself up in the world. But when he meets Jane, a Grey with limited color perception, but with a proclivity to question what others take for granted, his perceptions and priorities begin to change and pave the way for...well, I don't know what. Apparently there are two more novels to come.

Shades of Grey is very clearly setting up a story rather than finishing one, but I didn't feel at all dissatisfied at the end. Like all of Fforde's books, most of the payoff comes from the journey itself, from exploring the world he has created. Fforde likes to tell his stories quite matter-of-factly, as though you actually understand his premise to begin with. It can leave you feeling bewildered, but it also draws you in. You want to understand what's going, and Fforde never really tells you. You just spend so much time in his world that you eventually come to feel like you're a part of it.

I'm anxious for the next installment. I think Fforde stretched himself by going outside his normal genre, and in my opinion the result is one of his strongest efforts yet. If you have read Jasper Fforde or if you have not, I highly recommend giving this one a try. It's funny, immensely clever, and compelling all at once.

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse has been on my list for years. I've always enjoyed my run-ins with British humor, and Wodehouse's most well-known creations, Jeeves and Wooster, have the advantage of existing both on paper and on screen. I've also had several friends over the years speak highly of both the written and television versions of the duo. My bout of Anglophilia earlier this year, prior to my UK trip, convinced me that it was finally time to join in the fun.

Except I didn't get around to it until my flight home for Christmas about eight months later. But get around to it I did, and I didn't regret it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Wodehouse's characters, Bertie Wooster is a young English gentleman, and Jeeves is his personal valet and right-hand man. Code of the Woosters is only one of many stories and books that Wodehouse wrote featuring the two, and it isn't the first, but I had no trouble getting into the swing of the story or picking up on the background.

I laughed the whole way through. The ridiculousness of the situation in which Wooster finds himself is made all the funnier by the earnestness with which he explains it to the reader. In this case, it involves a marriage (not Wooster's) and an aunt and a nabbed policeman's helmet and a cow-creamer, and that's about all you need to know. And Jeeves calmly and quietly helps Wooster extricate himself from that situation with an equally-matched seriousness...and an amused smile that is never once written directly into the text, but shines through the subtext at intervals. That hidden smile brilliantly complements that earnestness with which Wooster is weaving his tale, and I think this is what I loved most about the book. Wooster is the narrator, and Jeeves is the interested onlooker, and as readers we can legitimately step into and relate to either role. Combined with Wodehouse's wit and clever writing, it makes what is really a slapstick comedy at heart into something much funnier than the already funny surface story.

I'll probably pick up another book at some point in the not-to-distant future, and I already put a hold on a couple DVDs at the local library. I'm looking forward to more.

Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

My official statement is that I like Terry Pratchett. I have several Terry Pratchett books that I've liked well enough to keep on my bookshelf at home, and I'm always happy to recommend them. They're quick reads, and a clever sort of funny, the type of quirky British humor I've also enjoyed in Douglas Adams or Jasper Fforde. I often turn to Terry Pratchett if I'm in need of an airplane book or an easier read.

But I also have to admit (sorry to other Terry Pratchett fans - in spite of what I'm about to say I really am one of you) I have a hard time saying I love Terry Pratchett. His Discworld books are intentionally over-the-top. Discworld both parallels and parodies our own world, and Pratchett relies on a lot of exaggeration and absurdity to tell his story. Usually this works pretty well, but it can be a hard type of humor to pull off consistently, and it sometimes falls into silliness that isn't really funny. Pratchett does a lot of very clever things with the plots and the characters and the rules of Discworld and the dialogue. But I'm always nagged by the sometimes-subtle and sometimes-overt silliness that I see as a cheap and easy way to get a laugh. I find it a bit distracting. Going Postal is my favorite Terry Pratchett book because, in it, Pratchett manages just the right balance that I'm not distracted and annoyed by the silliness. That's why I keep coming back.

Terry Pratchett usually chooses to satirize something or other, and in the case of Maskerade it was opera. I began reading the book right around the time of the spring opera here at the university, and hanging around Brian and Ashley and various other singers and collaborative pianists who have done their time in the Hill Street Ward has given me quite a bit more exposure to opera than I had had before moving to Michigan. So there were a few points during the book that I felt like Terry Pratchett was being just a little unfair to the genre, and few more points where I begrudgingly admitted that opera (in general) probably deserved the satirical treatment Pratchett was giving it, and still more points where I just laughed almost-out-loud because the satire was genuinely funny. It also satirizes Phantom of the Opera, but I feel less qualified to pass judgment on that one.

Still, the story is not really about opera, or about Phantom of the Opera, and you don't really have to know much about opera in order to enjoy the story. It's a story about witches and murder and parenting and running a business and finding your way in the world and finding your way back to where you came from.

Brady was the one who lent Maskerade to me. I had mentioned that Going Postal is my favorite Terry Pratchett book, so he thought I should read his favorite. I didn't enjoy it in the way I enjoyed Going Postal (sorry Brady), but I did enjoy it the way I enjoy most other Terry Pratchett books. He tells a good story, and says things in a way that no one has ever said them before, which often turns out to be really funny. I am always interested in knowing how things are going to turn out - I usually feel like I can guess the end, and then am surprised to find out that I was wrong. Maskerade was a really fun read.

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

I have waited a long time to read this book. It is the fifth in the Thursday Next series of books that Fforde originally churned out on a yearly basis. I picked up the first when there were already three published, and had to wait less than a year for the fourth to come out. But then Fforde turned his attention to a new series (which was also delightful, don’t get me wrong) for two years, and then when First Among Sequels came out last year I held myself back for a full year, waiting for the paperback edition to come out.

It was worth the wait. Trying to describe these books to other people is difficult. Thursday Next exists in a parallel universe in which home cloning kits allow people to own their own formerly extinct animals (like dodo birds) as pets, the supernatural (ghosts, werewolves, vampires) are a part of everyday life to be dealt with, Wales is a military state, intercontinental transportation takes place via Gravitubes that travel through the center of the earth, and the ever-paradoxical Chrono-Guard monitors the continuity of the timeline using time travel technology that hasn’t been invented yet, but presumably will be sometime in the future (they don’t quite know when). Most importantly, books are not just paper creations, but exist in a complex Bookworld, with characters acting out their parts and complex technology to aid in reader transferal, and intergenre disputes. Thursday Next is an outlander who can jump to the Bookword and is a member of Jurisfiction, the policing agency responsible for keeping order in Bookworld.

In the latest book the series, Thursday encounters the written (and not-quite-true-to-life) versions of herself in the Bookworld, a crisis in the Chrono-Guard who are nearing the end of time and still haven't found the invention of time travel, a recurring appearance by the ghost of her Uncle Mryon who has something important to tell her but can't remember what, and a plot to boost readership rates by turning English classics (beginning with Pride and Prejudice) into "reality book shows" where readers read as the characters engage in preset tasks, and then vote the characters one by one out of the books.

The plots of these books are complex, incredibly clever, and extremely funny. Part of the fun of the series is the literary references, even if you haven’t read the literature Fforde is referring to (I have yet to read Jane Eyre, and I still loved the first book, The Eyre Affair). I admit that it took me a couple chapters to get into the newest book, because some of the humor is downright silly and I had to remember the spirit of the books, and then let the plot unfold. Some of what seems to be pure silliness at the beginning comes to play an integral role later on.

I don’t know where Fforde gets all his ideas, but I’m glad to know he intends to keep writing them out for us for years to come, and he hasn't disappointed me yet.