Lolita

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Delores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."



This quote I came across online one day compelled me to borrow this book from the library. The book began innocently enough, but as the story progressed, I discovered that this book's protagonist is not in love with a short woman (four feet ten) but with what he calls a "nymphet". This basically means he was a pedophile. "Nymphet" was the term he used for girls in their tween years; still innocent like children but growing into women. This book chronicles his thoughts, his methods for meeting these girls and the success and defeat that he encounters in his sexual pursuits of them. The concept is so chilling, I had to return the book just as he was meeting Lolita, a 9 or 10 year-old daughter of the lady from whom he was renting a room. His initial, hungering description of the girl signaled the end of my desire to read the book; the novel praised by Vanity Fair as "The only convincing love story of our century" left me longing for the romances of yesteryear.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

*SPOILER ALERT*



This book is more serious than what I usually read. It takes place in Afghanistan from the 1950s to the present (well 2005 anyway). The title is actually an except from a poem that is mentioned in the book. Basically the poem conveys the idea that Afghanistan is so beautiful that it's worth enduring all the hardships in life there because of the beauty of life there. I can't say I agree. The characters in this story experience every hardship imaginable and there are only a few happy parts to this book. Mariam is an illegitamate child of a wealthy businessman and she betrays her mother and goes to live with her father but her father, who seems so loving during his visits rejects her, sends her back to her mother but her mother has killed herself because of the heartbreak caused by Mariam leaving. Mariam's father quickly marries her off to Rasheed, a man 30 years older than she who lives across the country. Mariam's husband is rough with her and even makes her chew rocks as a punishment for a mediocre dinner she cooks, breaking several of her teeth. Mariam also suffers several miscarriages which make Rasheed more and more distant as time goes by. After 20 years of surviving, Mariam is insulted by Rasheed taking another wife (he is 60 by now) who is 15 years old. Laila is beautiful, but her heart is heavy - she was orphaned by a missile that struck her house. While recovering from the attack on her house, she learns that her childhood sweetheart was wounded and died while trying to escape into Pakistan. Laila gives birth to a girl and Rasheed wants nothing to do with the child. Laila and Mariam become friends and try to escape their terrible life with their abusive husband, but they fail because they are not allowed to travel outside the country without a male relative. They are returned to Rasheed and he abuses them even worse than before - beating them and denying them food and water to the point they almost die (this is not even a crime). Laila becomes pregnant again, but when she goes into labor, they have to go to the new women's hospital (for treating only women), which is so ill-equipped they don't have clean gloves or even anesthetic for a c-section Laila has. Eventually Rasheed becomes too much for the women to bear; Mariam kills him with a shovel to the head to protect Laila and her children and she is executed by beheading in front of a stadium full of people gone to watch the punishments given to people who break the strict rules of the Taliban. Laila finds out her childhood sweatheart was not killed (a man was paid by Rasheed to tell her that so she'd marry Rasheed). They mourn Mariam together and Laila becomes pregnant again - if it's a girl she will name her Mariam. The ending wraps things up nicely, but the book is just so laden with sorrow that the ending hardly makes up for all the things that go wrong. I know that people in America suffer hardships, but I do not believe that someone in America would have suffered all of these problems in their life (and if so then it certainly happens less frequently than in Afghanistan). This book really opened my eyes to the faces behind the Iraq war (which is in Afghanistan too). It's more than counter-terror; it works to protect people and their future. I am not making a pro-war stance with this blog - I am simply stating that the war does have some good facets.

The Host

While I was on vacation I found several free hours to occupy by reading. Luckily I took Stephenie Meyer's newest book "The Host". This book is really long, and I don't know if it needs to be as long as it is. Some parts, especially toward the beginning, drag on and are very repetitive. If this book were a movie and some of those parts were edited for time constraints, when I played the deleted scenes on the DVD I would probably mutter something like "I can see why they were deleted". Another issue I have with this book is the same issue I had with the Twilight series (see previous blog). *WARNING: DO NOT READ PAST THIS PART UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW PLOT DETAILS*

Stephenie Meyer seems to live in a wonderful world, the opposite of a popular Beach Boy's song: There are two boys for every girl. Now I know that Melanie has had a hard life, running from the alien invasion and living as a vagabond for years to protect her and her younger brother and the love of her life. When she is captured and a Soul is "implanted" called Wanderer, it looks like a pretty grim future - to be a prisoner in her own mind. But luckily Wanderer begins to understand Melanie's life and she grows to be friends with Melanie. They search for and find a settlement of humans who have not been "implanted" with Souls. Among these humans is her younger brother (Jamie) and her love (Jared). Jamie accepts Melanie/Wanderer at once, but Jared finds it more difficult to accept, although eventually he comes around. That's when the trouble starts: another human in the settlement, Ian, also falls for Melanie/Wanderer (who has by now adopted the name Wanda). Ian loves Wanda for her personality (and not just her physical appearance). Jared is strictly in love with Melanie, Ian loves Wanda, but since Melanie and Wanda are in the same body, it complicates things. Neither can fully express their love for the man in their life because the other objects. Thus, 2 boys for every girl. Just once I'd love to read about a homely girl with a good personality who is spurned by the popular/cute boy who is shallow. It would be more life-like. It would speak directly to all of us lucky girls who aren't cursed by being too beautiful and left with the problem of having several boys desire them. With respect to a happy ending, Stephenie Meyer gives the people what they want: Melanie is freed from Wanderer and ends up with Jared and Wanderer (Wanda) gets a beautiful body that is so desirable that she is no longer required to pull her weight (not that it's much weight to pull) around the settlement and she ends up with Ian after all. Thank goodness by the end of the book we're back to one boy for each girl, but one can't help but wonder if there is a sequal on the way...

Good Omens

At long-last I am blogging again. I've finally read a blogable book: "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Niel Gaiman. This book chronicles the end of the world, with some variations. The Antichrist is switched at birth and raised by a nice middle-class family, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride motorcycles, and the two angels orchestrating the whole thing have grown attached to the world and don't want it to end. Like Pratchett's other books, there are several one-liners that make one laugh out loud. A few of my favorites (but not enough of them to spoil the book):

"God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

"It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime."

"Mr Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious."

"The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly."

This book also has some of the less-appealing aspects of Pratchett's work in general. The plot runs slowly in some parts, the climax in the plot is a bit confusing, there are several groups of characters to keep track of, and the ending is anticlimatic. However, the characters are well-developed, and the British Satire is at its finest. I recommend Terry Pratchett's other books as well as "Good Omens" to anybody who enjoys a humorous read. I hope I've done it justice in my review.