Non fiction faberaction

When it comes to reading I am absolutely a fiction reader, but that isn't entirely true is it? I am a student who reads for class, I answer reference questions for scientists in my library work, and I browse the papers on my coffee breaks. However when it comes to actual books it is rare for me to pick up a non-fiction work unless it's a purely informational resource. Youtube is my major source of non-fiction where I follow a lot of vlogs on current happening and LGBTQ life stories. I seem to like my fiction in under 10 minute doses.


That being said Behind the Beautiful Forevers wasn't a bad read. Though I will still agree it is longer than what I would tolerate for my own fictional interest. I honestly think reading more narrative non-fiction would give me a better view of events and things I don't understand, if I could dedicate myself to it. I am not the brightest crayon in the box and having a story that outlines some key concepts of reality immensely helps me grasp complicated world politics, history and global issues with not only a better sense of understanding but the important function of vivid recollection for later reference.


Non fiction's biggest bother to me is the focus on truth and authenticity. When I am reading fiction, and largely fantasy, often even simple rules like gravity are ignored without a thought, so I don't think I'm the most skilled fact hunter when I get wrapped up in a story. Knowing this maybe offsets some of the damage, but I would probably be less likely to spot inaccuracies wrapped up in a story than the average bear. That being said I come from a small community where gossip has always been the preferred source of non-fiction, so to say I don't have a basic ability to spot blatant fabrication when I see it would be doing myself a disservice.


I really liked Behind the Beautiful Forevers for the fact that it was narrative. A narrative format of information has always been easier for me to absorb than other formats of information, and while I could not relate to characters who were in such a different life situation than myself, it opened me up to a glimpse a perspective of the psychology, interactions and reactions of people in a state of poverty. I had hoped upon thinking on these concepts that it would give me information to draw parallels between poverty in my own country, and maybe understand things better, but I'm not sure it went that far for me,  or perhaps I just need to mull over the concepts a little longer to make connections.

The sense of place in the novel was also a huge asset to the book and contributed greatly to my positive reading experience. Something for me that would have helped better my reading experience would have been expanded character description. I am used to having more than just a name to draw on to identify a character, especially in fantasy reading characters often have odd weapons, costumes, hair and eye colour that help you keep track of them, the characters in this book were at times rather thinly described, even with the cultural similarities I feel the author was capable of better character descriptions a I vividly remember her description of Meina in the book and it is the only one that stands out in my mind out of the host of characters.

If you see fairies ya just might be crazy, or at a gay bar

 


Among Others by Jo Walton... eh... in all fairness it's difficult to be objective about a book you don't particularly like, and I'm pretty sure it's entirely scientifically impossible to be objective about a book you don't like where the main character reminds you painfully of an ex girlfriend. However let's give it a shot shall we?

 
The characterization of this book can be viewed as somewhat interesting since in my (absolutely non educated guess) Morwenna has a text book case of Asperger's Syndrome, however this also makes her a somewhat unlikeable character to those with a fairly steady psychological profile as she comes off as high strung, selfish, unreliable, and many of her social problems seem painfully self inflicted. Although Morwenna's musings on Lesbians are highly amusing since I've personally only ever had men share with me their thoughts and musings of how lesbians see communal woman’s showers and change rooms it's rather interesting to gain a straight girl perspective on the matter. I laughed.

The setting of the book lends itself to the fantasy aspect of the novel, bringing in aspects of folklore. As we discussed in class the time frame the book was set in to be per technology to convey the isolation of loneliness before computers allowed us to reach out to a larger pool of people to interact with to those who can't muster the social conviction, have a hard lot of being a social outcast. While I can agree with the perspective I just found that this theme detracted from my reading experience because I don't agree with it. Since internet interactions in and of themselves are a good percentage of fantasy and extremely malleable to personal perspective, I'm not so certain that what technology does to rectify loneliness isn't outweighed by the escapism of it. In the technology age it is perfectly acceptable to have imaginary friends as long as someone happens to be typing them out on the other end. It's not that the difference between real and imaginary bothers me so much, but the alarming and increasing amount of people who can seem to tell the difference irks me because personally I'd love to be that far in denial, however I'm not sure the end result makes you a better person.

Personally what I did like was the time setting of the book on the points that it is an adult novel. Thebook is written a time period that is going to be more relate-able to an adult audience and I think it is one of the factors that define it as an adult novel. Given the nature of Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, and Borderline Personality Disorder, I can see how adults that this book would appeal too relating better to a young adult character and people with a normal psychological/mental profile are willing to be more sympathetic to an immature young character than to an adult one. The time setting and age of the character up the relate-ability and likeability of the character to an adult audience.

The tone of the novel comes off more depressing based on the slow pacing of the book, not that I have a problem so much with depressing but are all good adult novels depressing? The tone of the book just really detracted from the reading for me because when I think of fantasy I'm looking for more of a back and white, with upbeat story line, and I think I kind of had that expectation when I saw the genre on the reading list then when I got to it, it so clearly wasn't what I wanted. I just don't understand why award winning books have to be so depressing. I do get the aspect of conflict but isn't their some creative way to be upbeat that is worthy of an award?

The language of the novel threw me a bit because it's not really written in the accent I would imagine the character to have given the setting, however every now and then regional slang pops up at random like an actor falling in and out of an accent. It makes the book harder to read with out adding all that much to it and personally I found it distracting.

At the end of the day Among Others was not my cup of tea. I can see why certain people would relate to it, I on the other hand like most lesbians my age who are not Wiccian or do not have a Wiccian partner probably think that if ya see faeries ya might just be a little bit crazy, based on personal experience, and unfortunately when you are a lesbian you have to make the conscious decision you don't actually fall into that circle (since that particular profile is pretty common). So perhaps I've just been a little to close to the book to get the fantasy enjoyment out of it or find it all that amusing/insightful to meditate on. Thanks to Ellen for being on my team here.

East Meets West, a New Reading Perspective

I have never read a story told in a collective voice and while I realize that Buddha in the Attic is an exceptionally well crafted example of the writing style I have to say I like it a lot more than the common switching characters perspectives at chapter intervals. It allows you to get a cohesive story with out feeling interrupted in in your reading or fragmented. It was kind of a mind blowing experience that someone could even write a perspective like this, capture all the elements of a story and keep track of it. I have a feeling that if I even tried to write a short story like this I would be constantly forgetting all the details and it would unravel and get away from me. It really allowed me to read in a context that brought things alive for me in the way having a conversation with actual people brings things alive. I remember vivid aspects of the book as I would remember having a conversation with someone from a day gone past.

When it comes to the characters I actually felt more connected to them but in a different way than my typical reading. When a book focuses on one character or a small group of characters you get to know in-depth about them as if they were a personal friend, however you are only getting to know them in the context of the story. When you read Buddha in the attic you get to know characters like you get to know members of your community. You know details about them but not necessarily their innermost thoughts and over all personality. I think personality is the thing people feel the disconnect on, while I do feel that the characters very much do have individual and strong personalities you're not getting to know them in the way you would get to know the personality of a friend. However the story spans a much larger and encompasing experience of their existence you so do in another context know them even better than you know a real person you know now because many people I know in the now have not experienced a lot of what they will face in the future. You get to see a good chunk of how these characters react to events in their life and that's a different way of knowing someone then by knowing them for a defining part of their life like a high school friend you don't talk to anymore, or Bilbo in the Hobbit who the whole book is facing something very out of context with his regular life experience. In Buddha in the Attic you get the bigger picture of the characters but not necessarily they drawn out detail.You get to know them in the perspective of a community sense. Like the way everyone in my home town knew Mrs. Cuttie in Selkirk was a strong woman because her husband died of cancer and she raised a sickly daughter on her own, the Mrs. Goodman raises strong sons, has a sense of faith and knows more about the local church than anyone else in town, how Mrs. Nordal always knows all the town news before the paper does and the name of the best Doctor you should visit based on what's bothering your health. I know all of these people they are residual parts of my life but we're not close friends. I know aspects of their personality, some of what they have been through in life. Seeing characters portrayed in the same collective manner that people refer to members of their own community in, somehow made they whole story come alive and every character seem intensely real in the sense of reality as we actually perceive it, and remember it not how the entertainment industry tells us we perceive reality in more readily used story telling styles and perspective books and movies are made available in. tTe collective manner in the book really strongly impressed the characters upon me.

As for envisioning the characters I actually did envision them quit readily, I think I would have had a harder time doing so if I didn't have some background learning in the culture. The name of a Japanese garment or religious object that they kept tucked away didn't throw me off in picturing them. I had an easy time with the country side characters more so than the city characters because my family and community have told me stories of generations of farmers past. I can't say I had the individual detail where I can recall by name an individual character but I had an easy time envisioning their experience in a “wide lens” sort of way. A group of women in Kimonos standing around on the boat flustered and flitting about talking to an American, farm workers in the field, a mother working on the farm while her kids play in the country side, a servant in a white household going about her work. Yes might not have been the kind of detail that requires one page of writing to describe that characters dress kind of visualization, or a full face movie moment close up, but considering my immediate response to the question was “Of course it effected my ability to visualize the characters their wasn't that much individual detail...” however when I think back to reading the book I can recall seeing the characters very very vividly and I'm really at a bit of a loss on why that was but I was fully captured by the book and the visual nature was absolutely part of that.

And then they ate biscuits...

My first thought of reading The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt evoked memories of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, which is about the only ongoing relationship I’ve had with the western genre, and it was a forced one being that it was the only thing on the four channels of TV I grew up with, that had a plot and showed Sunday evening. While I knew just from the title that the context of the book was likely to be very different than my childhood memories of westerns, I cannot say I was very excited or captivated by thought of reading a western book.


When I actually got into the reading I have to say the author does an excellent job of creating the “head space” of the main character. I like the internal dialogue and narration of the character. The story made me crave food cooked over an open fire, and it was a gem of a reading experience to see a cowboy struggle with weight loss with all the conviction, resolve and mentality of the average woman and experience pretty much the same issues and utter defeat in the challenge. Also had fun inserting gay cowboy subtext between Warm and Percy as I was reading but I’m not sure that was an enjoyment the author intended the reader to take away from the novel.

On the downside the plot did not grab me at all. The characters seems so real it was hard for even a fantasy lover like me to grasp the pseudoscience/alchemy chemical part of the plot, I was actually quite surprised when the substance turned out to be “real” in the book as I thought it was going to turn out to be a con. In the end we are left with a pretty typical bounty hunter plot line. Make money then lose money, end up broke. Joss Weedon’s Firefly show, Outlaw Star the Anime, Cowboy Beebop the Anime all have the exact same concept, while being unoriginal isn’t the worst crime in writing (after all I love a basic clear cut good vs evil good for the win plot over and over again personally), but I guess given the clear skill of the writing in this book I was expecting more originality in the plot. It wasn’t bad it just didn’t grip me. It was typical.

Did the characters really change in the end? I don’t think so, so much as the world they occupy changed. Eli speaks toward the end of the novel about a change in how he and his brother conversed after their last adventure, how they were never quite as open with each other after their bounty hunting days (did I mention the foreshadowing in this book totally wrecks the suspense.) it shows more a change in social expectations I think rather than actual change in character.

When I was in the closet and to an extent still when I am around my parents, family and anywhere else that seems to be required a level of blending in with the norm, while it may be perfectly all right during a football game for my mother and sister to make causal comments about the football players butts, it would come off as pretty awkward if I made comments about the cheerleaders. However when I am with a group of lesbians then it’s pretty abnormal not to comment. Likewise I think the characters in the novel would find themselves out of context of their new life back with mommy dearest if they were running around trying to drown and shoot people in the head.  I think at least for Eli he pretty much got tired of being something that wasn’t his natural state, like I got tired of “being straight” and he just up and went home. I just up and came out the closet, it’s not a change so much as a survival of what you are not.

Charlie on the other hand may have changed more as a character if we decide to infer that he goes on living a non-violent life and dials back the substance abuse. That being said with the loss of his hand in real life I wouldn’t bet on someone with I fondness for morphine and alcohol to turn their life around after the loss of his hand, even Elie as much as admits in the novel Charlie was at his most magnificent as a killer. He has yet to survive being something he is not, sadly (although seriously if you're a killer I have a hard time feeling sad about it) he doesn't have much of an option being that he lost his hand.

To sum it up the Sisters Brothers,  is a character driven literary western that hosts a standard bounty hunter plot line.