Very Short Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Audrey Niffenegger has broken my heart.

The Time Traveler's Wife could be one of my favorite novels of all time; Her Fearful Symmetry could be one of the worst novels I've ever read. The beauty of Wife was in the way Niffenegger took an hackneyed concept (time travel) and made it new and heartrending. Symmetry revolves around two equally trite ideas (ghosts and twins) and... Well, it's just bad. It's choppy and filled with deus ex machinas and one-dimensional, archetypical characters. It's an ode to a cemetery that Niffenegger loves, with a poor plot devised to showcase it. It reads like a story written by a 20 y.o. creative writing student. Niffenegger's prose is pretentious, ambitious, juvenile, etc., it's filled with unbelievable 'quirky' characters, and one gets the impression that she ends on a melancholy note to try and impress the reader with a sense of literary significance or whatever.

Why, Audrey? Why?

In other news, Love in the Time of Cholera makes me want to write letters. Anyone want to be pen-pals?

More 'mores', less 'lesses'.

Resolutions:

1. Eat more vegetables.
2. Drink more tea*
3. Be more social**.

That's it.

* (and, inherently, less Diet Coke.)
**(Though, at the beginning of the week, this was "Stop being social altogether", so...)

2009 Reading List (Final)

Here it is: the end of the year tally. I'm starting my 2010 Reading List now, though it's technically still '09.

53. The Forever Kiss by Angela Knight (12. 5)

52. The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody (12.3)

51. Wavesong by Isobelle Carmody (12.1)

50. The Keeping Place by Isobelle Carmody (11.30)

49. Ashling by Isobelle Carmody (11.29)

48. The Farseekers by Isobelle Carmody (11.28)

47. Talking to Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (11.24)

46. Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (11.23)

45. Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (11.23)

44. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede (11.22)

43. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody (11.20)

42. Castle in the Air by Dianna Wynne Jones (11.13)

41. The Princess Bride by William Goldman (11.3)

40. The House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones (10.25)

39. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (10.22)

38. Beauty's Release by A.N. Roquelaure (10.12)

37. Beauty's Punishment by A.N. Roquelaure (10.11)

36. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice) (10.6)

35. Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland (10.1)

34. The Destruction of Atlantis: Ragnarok, or The Age of Fire & Gravel by Ignatius Donnelly (9.13)

33. The Alchemists: Fathers of Practical Chemistry by Richard Cummings (8.27)

32. We Thought You Would Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro (8.10)

31. The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (7.31)

30. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (7.25)

29. Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (7.23)

28. Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (7.20)

27. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (7.18)

26. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (7.17)

25. Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (7.17)

24. Septimus Heap, Book Two: Flyte by Angie Sage (7.16)*

23. Septimus Heap, Book One: Magyk by Angie Sage (7.13)*

22. The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book One: The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud (7.8)

21. City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau (7.4)

20. In a Sunburned County by Bill Bryson (7.4)

19. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (6.30)

18. A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (6.25)

17. Dubliners by James Joyce (5.11)

16. The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith (5.6)

15. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton (5.5)

14. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith (5.2)

13. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (4.30)

12. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters... by J.D. Salinger (4.9)

11. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (4.4)

10. The Will To Whatevs by Eugene Mirman (3.27)

9. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (3.25)

8. Bowl of Cherries by Millard Kaufman (3.24)

7. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July (3.21)

6. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (3.19)

5. The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball (3.13)

4. The Fall by Albert Camus (3.11)

3. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (1.26)

2. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut (1.20)
1. Hairstyles of The Damned by Joe Meno (1.12)

(*= denotes books I read for research purposes only and promptly burned after reading.)

Reading, Writing, and Resolutions.

In January, Dallas resolved to read at least 52 novels before the end of the year. In a well-intentioned-but-fallacious attempt to 'improve her mind',* she planned to read a lot of musty, canonical "masterpieces."

Around the same time, she also started seriously working on her novel, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy story for Young Adults. Her goal is to finish said novel by the end of January, 2010.

In April, someone helped her remember the name of the series of books she fell in love with as a child (The Obernewtyn Chronicles), but was too broke to order them. Instead, she decided to try and actually finish** Ulysses because:

1. it's widely hailed as THE definitive work of Modernist Literature;
2. Lots of authors, musicians, and films she genuinely enjoys are somehow inspired by Ulysses; and, most importantly,
3. she already owned a copy.

It took her a month to finish 110 pages, at which point she realized that:

1. she is a college drop-out, which means that she doesn't even need to know what a literary movement is;
2. her enjoyment of things inspired by Ulysses in no way hinges upon her having actually read Ulysses; and, most importantly,
3. she fucking hates Ulysses.

Somewhere in this mess, Dallas lost the notebook with most of her novel in it, and had to try and rewrite it from memory.

This proved to be incredibly frustrating. In lieu of actually writing, and 'in the name of research,' she started reading popular YA novels written by other people--some of which were pretty good, and some of which were very, very, very bad.

Also in the name of research, she read a fair chunk of non-fiction. She read a book about how Tolkien created the exhausting mythology of Middle Earth. She read books about comets destroying the earth, about the sinking of Atlantis, about expeditions to Hollow Earth, and about the apocalypse. She read books about how to identify rocks and gems, about how the Earth's crust was formed, and about volcanoes. She accrued dozens of National Geographic magazines. She read books about alchemy, mythology, chemistry, and archery. She read ten different books about the technique of writing itself, as a sort of refresher course in the basic protocol of plot, dialogue, etc. For various reasons, most of these books aren't listed in her Reading Log, either because the book was so picture/illustration-heavy that she didn't feel like it counted as actually reading, or because she only read the parts she felt relevant to her story.

Sometime in July, her story started coming together, so she pretty much stopped blogging in an attempt to focus her energy into her novel. Unfortunately, she was caught in a vicious cycle: she would write thousands of words, then delete all of them upon rereading. The tone was inconsistent and erratic, the narration rang false, the characters were unbelievable, and the plot seemed forced.

So, she went back to reading 'kid's books'.

About a month ago, she noticed that her writing was consistently stronger when she was reading other YA Lit.

She also noticed*** that if she tries to read, say, Tom Robbins, the tone of her writing changes drastically; suddenly, her characters are alternately telling each other to fuck off and waxing philosophical about what it means to love. So she puts Robbins down, and picks up Murakami; now her characters are obliquely symbolic, constantly finding themselves in surreal, non sequitur situations, and obsessing over another character's clubbed thumb or something.

So, until she has a satisfactory first draft finished, she's only reading YA Lit. If Daniel Day Lewis can write love notes to Fergie to stay in character, Dallas suspects it's probably okay for her finish up the year exclusively reading books targeted at the age group she's writing for.†

Which works out just fine, because she only has five books to go.

And the last five books of The Obernewtyn Chronicles arrived in the mail today.

So, to recap: with a month and a handful of days to complete her reading goals for 2009, and two months to finish her first draft, Dallas has

47 out of 52 books read &

27,451 out of a projected 75,000 words written.

Seeing as how this will be the first time she's ever followed through with her New Year's Resolutions, she's feeling pretty good about herself right now. She's bursting at the seams with self-satisfaction and just about ready to tell 2009 to go fuck itself.††

* Those were her exact words, which just goes to show that she'd already been spending too much time with the likes of Austen and Tolstoy.
** Marking her 3rd attempt to read it

*** Finally.

† She is in no way trying to justify a Reading List predominately composed of books targeted at tweens. She feels no shame in reading YA Lit, and therefore does not need to defend it. She's merely observing.

†† (Almost) Another year wherein she managed not to:

get diagnosed with cancer, get hit by a car, get in a car accident, go to jail, knock her teeth out while walking up or down stairs, run over a dog, spill a vat of acid on her face thereby horribly disfiguring herself and marring her soul, contract conjunctivitis, or get eaten alive by ants.†††

††† And for all that, she's grateful. Happy Thanksgiving.

You know that period between the day someone dies and the day their family finally changes the answering machine, when you can call & pretend they're just on vacation? So you call, just because you know in a week or so, you'll never hear that person's voice again, and there is something horribly final in that thought? Even if you weren't very close with that person, but remembered him or her fondly, as someone who was always... well, always so fucking nice?

That's a weird period.

It's Mine. You Can't Have It.

I love my cat. That's all.

Bitch & Moan.

Am stuck in a Greyhound station. They overbooked the bus by ONE FUCKING PERSON (me), and I have no connections to make, so I'm the lowest priority. There you go.

Of course, this is par for my life, so I'm not really surprised...

This week sucks.