Quick book reviews
A couple of weeks back, my (roughly) semiannual Amazon.com order arrived, some 30 books this time. I figure I’ll try to review at least some of them here, so here are my impressions of the ones I’ve read so far.
His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman (Dell Laurel-Leaf Books box set)
This is very interesting, a trilogy of dark fantasy for “young adults” which is outspokenly anti-religious (or at least anti-organized religion), and is quite heavy on metaphysics based on or extrapolated from modern particle physics. Philip Pullman has been on record criticizing C.S. Lewis for the moralizing and christian propaganda in the Narnia books, and although I remember the Narnia books fondly, I have to say that Pullman is a much better writer than Lewis, and has much more interesting things to say.
It’s fantasy, of sorts, and steampunk, and some SF, and alternate universe fiction, and several other things, and it works quite well. The criticism of organized religion is right on, although it gets a bit heavy-handed and obvious in the third book. The third book in general has a few problems, especially the second half of it, where the ending seems anticlimactic, and the loss forced upon the protagonists by fate seems unnecessarily cruel. But all in all, it’s quite good, and far better than most things written for young adults, including the Harry Potter series (which I like, but it’s not as interesting or well-written). There are some awesome ideas here, from knives that can cut between universes to armored sentient polar bears, but also very well-written sentimental passages, and meditations on destiny, free will, loss, and death.
Black Hole, Charles Burns (Pantheon)
I bought this mostly because Sean T. Collins has been constantly raving about it, and it’s an interesting book. It’s a graphic novel, but bound in a normal novel-sized hardcover, which makes the art smaller than it would be in the hardcover or trade paperback bindings usually used for longer graphic novels, but it’s fine, the art is crisp and clear black and white, and looks gorgeous on the heavy paper.
The story itself is a sort of body horror concept, teenage alienation in seventies Seattle manifest as “the bug”, a sexually transmitted disease that brings about bodily transformation that varies wildly from person to person. That sort of psychological state manifested in the body story sounds like something Cronenberg would have written, and it appeals to me because of that. The story isn’t really about that, though, the bug is the backdrop against which the characters work out their lives and relationships. There’s also a serial killer picking off infected kids, but that subplot didn’t seem particularly necessary or interesting to me. All in all, it’s interesting and quite good, but I’m not going to be raving about it like Sean has been.
Teach Yourself Film Studies, Warren Buckland (Teach Yourself)
My formal knowledge of film studies is lacking, so I decided to get a few books to try to remedy that. This is the first and most basic, and while it’s a good introduction and high-level overview, it was really too basic for me. It introduces core concepts, the main directions of film studies (mostly the difference between genre theory and auteur theory), has a chapter on documentary film, and one on film reviewing, and that’s about it. If you’re more or less in the dark about the whole thing, and want to see if it’s interesting, this is probably a good book, but it is very basic indeed. For me, it mostly confirmed and refreshed my memory of things I already knew, like the fact that I mostly disagree with auteur theorists, and think their priorities are misguided.
Coming up next, Carlos Ruíz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind, which I just started reading. I got it on the urging of my girlfriend, and so far, I have to say it’s very promising. I see it’s been compared to Focault’s Pendulum, Auster’s New York trilogy, The Club Dumas, Borges and Márquez, so this should be right up my alley.