The Invention Of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic, 2007)
February 23rd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
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The Invention of Hugo Cabret is an odd book. It is part prose and part graphic novel and the illustrated parts are not there to lend a visual clue to the reader’s imagination but are in fact part of the narrative themselves. The odd feeling lessens once the reader understands what the story is about and without spoiling too much, it is about movies or to be more precise silent movies, a heritage that had been lost by the time the story begins (early 1930s).
Hugo Cabret is an orphan who lives within the walls of a Paris train station. He secretly keeps the clocks there running on time, a duty his alcoholic uncle trained Hugo to do. Hugo also has a hobby or perhaps an obsession. He is trying to fix an automaton rescued from a burnt museum in which his father perished. Hugo believes the automaton contains a message from his dead father and is determined to make it work again so he can find out what the message is. To acquire the gears and thingamajigs for the machine, Hugo steals windup toys from the toy booth opposite his literal hole-in-the-wall. The toy booth is manned by a grumpy old man who surprises Hugo one day and catches him red handed trying to steal one of the man’s toys. Thus begins the story.
And it isn’t a bad story but nor is it a good one either. Billed as a children’s book, the writing is so stilted I’m not sure what age group author Brian Selznick was aiming for. Here’s an example:
From his perch behind the clock, Hugo could see everything. He rubbed his fingers nervously against the small notebook in his pocket and told himself to be patient.
The old man in the toy booth was arguing with the girl. She was about Hugo’s age, and he often saw her go into the booth with a book under her arm and disappear behind the counter.
I’ve read better from my daughter’s Wimpy Kid books. The prose is simply not fun enough for a child to get into and isn’t sensitive enough for a young adult to appreciate it. None of the characters, neither Hugo, the girl nor the old man are given any depth to their personalities. While reading the book I realized that Hugo and the girl he spies from his hideaway are interchangeable if it wasn’t for their genders. The old man who starts out as an ornery sourpuss becomes a loving father figure by the end of the story and that all happened just because he was rediscovered as the genius that he is? No in depth explanation as to why he was bitter in the beginning other than disillusionment? That’s it? Perhaps I’m asking too much out of a children’s story but parents might have to read this to their kids and they have to enjoy and understand what they read first and in that department Selznick’s writing does not help. Then there was the contrived way it all wraps up: Hugo’s father’s favourite movie just happened to be directed by the old man (who was an actual person so this book falls under historical-fiction), the key necklace worn by the girl just so happens to be the missing piece Hugo needs to power his automaton which, wouldn’t you know it, was actually invented by the old man. It all fits rather too nicely and the writing felt so lacking in any kind of ‘heart’, it makes it difficult for the reader to care for Hugo (well, I didn’t in any case). Nice artwork though.
I understand this book has been adapted into a movie. Wonder if it’s any good. Wait, I don’t care!
The Invention of Hugo Cabret has nice illustrations but sadly is partnered with poor prose that downgrades this book from a ‘wow’ to a ‘it could have been better’.
Victor Lee’s Notes To My Older Self Visits Familiar Territory
February 21st, 2012 § 3 Comments
I received this manuscript last week when its author, Victor Lee, emailed me asking if I could read and review his soon to be published book in my blog. That’s one nice thing about a book blog. Occasionally you get to read books (or a manuscript in this case) for free and say some nice things about it.
Unfortunately, Notes To My Older Self: A Young Man Questions The Values Of His Misguided Generation just did not do anything for me.
As one may have guessed from the title, it’s one of those self-help, how-to-live-a-better-life books that always crowd the shelves at the book retailers. This one however, opens with a caveat: “This is a highly opinionated book. Seek your own truth.” Now that just seems wrong to me. If you want people to sit up and pay attention to what you wrote, telling them to seek their own truth may not be the wisest advice to write. If right off the bat the author tells the reader that the contents in this book are just his opinions and they may not work for the reader, then it’s chutzpah of the highest order to ask them to pay him money for the privilege of reading his book.
My enthusiasm fell after reading that opening line.
Perhaps my bias already set in after that first line but the rest of the book wasn’t any better. The problem with it is that there is simply nothing new here. Victor Lee tut-tuts at the folly of youth and their obsession with conformity, keeping up with their peers, staying obedient and basically not rocking the boat in their pursuit of material happiness. He advises practising our individuality, learn to give instead of take, be free of the shackles of what others expect of us. Feed our spiritual needs rather than our material ones. Only then, Lee believes, can we truly be happy.
I admit that is some good advice there but it took him over 230 pages to get the message across? The same message that has been delivered by prophets, gurus and thinkers before him? The path Victor Lee shows us in this book is a well trodden one and bears no surprises.
Here’s my advice: Notes To My Older Self should be published as a series of blog posts instead of as a book. A blog is at least free to read and someone stumbling upon it won’t feel cheated of his or her money if the person finds, as I did, nothing new or interesting in Lee’s work.
Oh wait…he does have a blog called Victor Life List. Well, there you go. Should have just written his ‘notes’ there.
Fantasy Middle Eastern Style In Throne of the Crescent Moon (DAW Book, 2012)
February 20th, 2012 § 3 Comments
Popular modern English fantasy is largely the result of “white” meeting “bread”. The authors were/are more often than not very WASPish and their stories clearly have a medieval European feel to it. Nothing wrong there. After all, you should write what you know about. Still, it would be nice to read something not set in thinly disguised 12th century Europe where the only swarthy characters are the villains. That’s why Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon went straight to my must-read-now list when I first learned about it (thanks Omnivoracious!) The author’s name and the title were enough to make me pre-order it even though I’ve gone off fantasy novels lately. I’m impulsive and fickle like that.
Being of Arab descent (not sure if he’s Muslim though, not that it matters) Saladin Ahmed chose to set his Crescent Moon Kingdoms in a distinctly Middle Eastern landscape with Arabic-like sounding names for his characters and the walled city of Dhamsawaat where most of the story takes place reminds the reader of Marrakesh or Baghdad in the 13th century.
The usual fantasy tropes are here: The wise, old teacher is Doctor Adoulla Makhslood. He is the only ghul hunter left in Dhamsawaat and he wants to retire but finds himself facing perhaps the biggest threat of his career when a former lover asks him to investigate the mysterious and seemingly supernatural murders of her family. His young assistant, Raseed, is a devout Master Dervish who doesn’t understand why his body goes all funny when he sets eyes on Zamia, a tribeswoman of a desert clan that was annihilated by perhaps the same supernatural threat that killed the Doctor’s old flame’s family. The characterisation is nice. None of the three are perfect as they all have their own personal demons to conquer and they evolve as characters as the story progresses. Raseed and Zamia are the two that, to me, were the best developed simply because they annoyed me at the beginning but by the end I was rooting for these two crazy kids to beat the Big Bad. I was annoyed with Raseed for his holier-than-thou attitude and Zamia for her us-desert-people-are-so-much-better-than-you-city-folk stance. When a character annoys me because of his or her behaviour and then manage to make me like them by story’s end, I take that as good writing.
Throne of the Crescent Moon is atmospheric. Perhaps it is partly because of me tiring of the usual medieval European style fantasy but also Saladin Ahmed’s talent as a writer should be given due credit in creating a fantastical yet at the same time believable fantasy setting. He also doesn’t show his readers every single detail of the world he created, preferring instead to leave it to our imaginations. A difficult balance to achieve but the author pulls it off here.
This is the first book in The Crescent Moon Kingdoms series and if this book is anything to go by, I for one is looking forward to Book II.
Oh and unlike most fantasy novels out there, this one is only 274 pages long so it’s clearly not a door-stopper. Even that is a refreshing change!
The Book of Sith: Secrets of the Dark Side Or Nerdgasm II: Electric Boogaloo
February 15th, 2012 § 1 Comment
Two years ago Star Wars fan went all sweaty when the Jedi Path book was released. Not only was there an obvious effort to make the book look cool to read but the entire presentation itself was amazing (see my review here) . With the Jedi book out, the fans figured it was only a matter of time before the Sith version with the same high, if not higher, quality of contents and casing was released. That time has arrived.
I was going to write a review but since this thing with its bells and whistles is best viewed, I decided to make a review on this blog via VideoPress.
MARVEL as the Sith holocron buzzes and whirs to reveal the book!
ASTONISH as I proudly claim that I hardly pay any attention to the Expanded Universe (EU) books and still claim to be a huge Star Wars fan!
GASP as I manhandle the extras in the Sith book without gloves!
WINCE as I refer to the footnotes in the book as “from Luke (or Sidious or whoever)” instead of “by Luke (or Sidious or whoever)!
Death of Grass (Penguin Modern Classics, Reissued edition 2009)
February 13th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Well, this one’s a downer. Written in 1956, Death of Grass tells the story of a world gripped by starvation when a virus strain that kills rice has mutated and begins to eradicate all other crops like wheat and barley. Our British protagonists weren’t too concerned when only East Asians were dying (one character quipped,”There’s an awful lot of Chinks in China. They’ll breed ‘em back again in a couple of generations”) but when the virus arrives in Albion, all of a sudden it’s the end of civilisation as we know it.
It starts slow but the horror really picks up when John Custance decides to flee London with his family and travel to his brother’s farm in the north. Along the way they encounter the swift decline towards violence among the British people who justify it as the only way to survive seeing as how Law and Order had given up and left everyone to their own devices. Soon enough, even the protagonist and his family succumb to the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’. It’s a pretty grim, pessimistic, post-apocalyptic story that pits moral dilemmas at the protagonists again and again and the outcome is always the same: morality loses all the time. Even when the group reaches the safe haven of the farm, they are faced with an issue because John’s brother refuses to admit all of them in. It’s not a spoiler to say that it didn’t end well for everyone.
The problem is Death of Grass isn’t very well written. The early chapters are one big info dump and the protagonists seemed all too willing (at least to me) to turn to savagery when the chips are down. No hesitation, no second thoughts. Perhaps it was the author’s way of saying that when released from the confines of law, man will go back to his caveman roots. John Christopher (who died February 6th by the way) must have had a low regard for his fellow man.
It’s a slim novel with just under 200 pages and it’s a gripping read but some patience may be required to go through the clunky 1950s dialogue.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 ¾ 30th Anniversary Edition (Penguin, 2012)
February 5th, 2012 § 2 Comments
I was about Adrian Mole’s age when I first read his secret diary and though I didn’t get some of the references at the time (Malcolm Muggeridge? Who? The SDP? What?) I thought it was the funniest thing I had read up till then. Adrian Mole lives with his bickering parents and dog, sees himself as an undiscovered intellectual and gets funny feelings when he sees his classmate Pandora’s chest bounce when she plays netball. Also when he sneaks a peek at the top shelf magazine, Big and Bouncy.
I admit I’m reading this reissued edition from rose tinted glasses. Stuck in the 1980s (at least the first two books are) I don’t know how attractive this book will be today to someone who has never read it before or did not grow up in that decade. But I don’t think it matters though. You don’t need to be British to appreciate it either. Adrian Mole chronicles his life in a vicious deadpan wit: When Bert Baxter, an old age pensioner and lifelong communist, shows Adrian a photo of his dead wife, he later writes in his diary, “Bert showed me a picture of his dead wife. It was taken in the days before they had plastic surgery.” It’s funny because Adrian wasn’t being sarcastic. He actually meant it.
I could relate to Adrian back then despite the differences in our cultures because he was, for lack of a better word, “real”. He was a teenager who thought he knew better than everyone around him because he read War and Peace and Madame Bovary but he couldn’t even repaint his bedroom without the Noddy wallpaper showing through (it took him about three coats of black paint to cover it up).
The Adrian Mole diaries went on for a total of eight volumes. I’ve only read the first two but now with Penguin reissuing the entire series with brand new covers, I look forward to reading about his life from teenage to adulthood and chuckling at his honesty (or maybe even crying, it’s been hinted to me that the last book has him contracting cancer. Damn).
Love, InshAllah (Soft Skull Press, 2012)
February 4th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Browse the shelves at your local bookshop and look for books on Muslim women and chances are you’ll find many titles on the subject. You will also find that most if not all of the books have one recurring theme: the victimisation of women in Islam. Disgusted with this stereotype, two American Muslim women invited other American Muslim women, many of them writers themselves, to tell the world about their experiences finding love that is totally different from the preconceived notion that most westerners have and in fact is just the same as everyone else. The result is “Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women“.
There are stories of arranged marriages like Aisha Saeed’s “Leap of Faith” who was so adamant against the idea that when the boy’s family asked for a photo, she did her best to pose with an annoyed look. Far from driving him away with the look, it intrigued him. “Love In The Time Of Biohazards” is an endearing and humorous story about a spouse taking care of his wife, Melody Meozzi, who is suffering from pancreatic cancer and “A Prayer Answered” is about a Muslimah looking for love from another Muslimah. Gay love. I’m half expecting this book to be included in Malaysia’s 2012 list of banned books. Or maybe it won’t be sold here at all. I bought mine from Amazon.
Most of the stories are by women of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent and a few converts to Islam but there’s one from Malaysian-American Aida Rahim whose journey to find her one true love prompted her husband to say, “we plan and God laughs”. True that.
Star Wars: Darth Plagueis (LucasBooks, 2012)
February 1st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Despite being a Star Wars nerd, I don’t really bother with most of the Star Wars novels or affectionately known as the Expanded Universe (EU) books. Most are nothing more than glorified fanfiction, insipidly written for fanwank purposes and to mint more coin for Lucas. But I picked this one up because for one, it’s about the bad guys (in fact the bad guy of Star Wars even though the book is titled after his master) and two, it has lots of political maneuvering which may bore some but interests me a lot.
The political machinations in this book transformed the confusing plot of Episode I into one that totally makes sense. In the movie, the Trade Federation imposed a blockade around Naboo which if you think about it is weird, because why would an organisation built around trade blockade a planet and prevent said planet from conducting trade? George Lucas could never plot properly. And don’t give me the excuse of “the books help flesh out the movies“. If the prequels were plotted properly, there wouldn’t be any need for a book to flesh it out.
Anyway, rant over. Darth Plagueis was referred to in passing in Episode III and it was hinted that he was the one who instructed Palpatine in the ways of the Dark Side of the Force. Hint no more, it’s true. He was the Master to Palpatine and also a Muun, one of those gangly bankers from the Clone Wars. A financier as a Dark Lord. Makes perfect sense actually. But reading this book is like watching the prequels, the sense of tension isn’t really there because we already know what will happen and who between the master and the apprentice will eventually gain the upper hand. Star Wars: Darth Plagueis merely connects the dots.
Still, it’s not a bad book. It’s close connection to the movies help to make it interesting enough but it is still, like the other Star Wars novels, a glorified piece of fanfiction. Strictly for fans only. Everyone else should not bother.
Empire in Black and Gold (Tor, 2008)
January 29th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Well colour me disappointed. I hardly read any fantasy nowadays (the last one was The Song of Ice and Fire but George Martin is taking his time finishing the series I just don’t give a damn anymore) mainly because I think the genre has been played out. The medieval European setting, the Dark Lord, the orphan boy/girl destined to save the land with a big ass sword, the motley crew of friends to help him/her. Yeah, it’s been done. But occasionally boredom hits the soul and I think, “what the heck, let’s read some fantasy today” only to have the book crush my hopes like a salivating wolf crushing the neck of an injured raccoon. Empire in Black and Gold is such a book.
This book was the debut for Brit author Adrian Tchaikovsky and he has since written at least six books in the ‘Shadows of the Apt’ series. I won’t be there to enjoy the ride. You want to know what this book is about? Go read about it at the Fantasy Book Critic blog. I dropped it like a hot potato after it failed the 50 page rule. After 50 pages, I still didn’t care about the impending crisis faced by the protagonist. After 50 pages, I still didn’t care about any of the characters introduced in the second chapter who probably would play major roles in the story. And after 50 pages I still didn’t care about the concept of the insect totems most of the characters had which gave them special abilities (Ant-kinden can operate in a hive mentality, Wasp-kinden can fly, that kind of thing). That concept seemed interesting until one is reminded that it’s been done by another author in another fantasy series (Steven Erikson, Malazan Book of the Fallen if you must know). This book has 600+ pages and the first 50 could not grab my attention? To the reject pile it went.
Is the fantasy genre today strictly for teens and young adults? Aren’t there any written for jaded, approaching middle-age dads like me? I want to be challenged, intrigued, entertained, grabbed by the collars and refused any reprieve until I’ve finished reading the story. The closest is Martin’s series I mentioned above but I dislike reading an ongoing series whose author is taking his time to finish (and no, I’m not going to watch the HBO adaptation). The only ones I have enjoyed were written over 50-60 years ago. Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser adventures remain favourites among fantasy fans. And of course JRR Tolkien but that’s a given.
But today’s fantasy novels? BAH!
A Short Review of The Hunger Games (Scholastic Inc., 2010)
January 23rd, 2012 § 3 Comments
Yeah, comparisons to Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale are inevitable (and when that one first came out, it was compared to Golding’s Lord of the Flies, so you know, the premise isn’t actually original) but since I’ve only heard of Battle Royale and its many adaptations and have not actually bothered to read the darn thing, I won’t say which one is better. As young adult novels go, Hunger Games is tightly plotted enough for this ‘old’ guy to read it all the way to the end. It’s set in a dystopian future where the 13 Districts of North America are ruled by the Capitol and when the Districts were defeated in a failed rebellion (with District 13 reduced to ashes), the remaining 12 have to send a pair of teens every year to the Capitol so these kids can compete in a televised match to the death in the Games. All in the name of entertainment and to remind everyone not to ever mess with the Capitol ever again.
The violence is competently written, something that I did not expect from a modern young adult novel, and impressed this reader enough to make him want to read the rest of the series.
