Catching Fire

Original image at suzannecollinsbooks.com/

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year: 2009
Genre: Teen/thriller/popular
Rating: 2

The second installment of a trilogy is almost always the best of the three. Take for example The Two Towers, which captures the soul of the whole story, or The Empire Strikes Back of Star Wars. Because the central story doesn't have to introduce strangers into a brand new world or say goodbye, it nearly writes itself. The tension strings the two together, and the book can act like the climax of the whole.
Catching Fire, the second novel of the acclaimed Hunger Games series, acts like the first. After the choppy, rushed introduction of the first book, the second flows much more naturally and freely.
Suzanne Collins brings us back into her futuristic country of Panem, where Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have returned to their home district and prepare for their forced tour of the districts. Their relationship is forced and awkward now that the games are over and they must go back to their original, simpler lives. However, the world has changed since Katniss's explosive presence on the Hunger Games. The twelve districts are on the brink of revolution, and the remarkably revolting President Snow approaches Katniss to enlist her to defuse the rebellions steadily growing in the country.
But Katniss has other problems. And as her personal life spins out of control, so does the feeling in the country.
Collins has clearly realized that in the face of the immense popularity of The Hunger Games, she needs to refine her writing for a larger audience. The syntax of this novel is much cleaner and more mature, and the characters think in much more logical, mature manner. Peeta, who was borderline childish for large sections of the first novel, is suddenly an adult and full of much more relatable pain. Gale, who was pointless and flat, suddenly folds out like origami into something far more complicated and able to stand on his own. He remains a little cliche in places, but his interactions with the citizens of District 12 glow far more than those with Katniss.
Better yet is the unpredictability of the novel. While The Hunger Games is both somewhat predictable and even a touch corny at times, Catching Fire pitches a continuation of the story in a familiar direction with the touches of Suzanne's overall goal for the story. Katniss, Haymitch, and Peeta are pitched into a sort of dysfunctional family relationships because of their one horrid commonality-- they were forced to kill their peers for the entertainment of those around them.
And yet, despite the improvement of the entire novel, there is a hollowness, as if Collins has written the body of the story but sucked the marrow out of the bones. It has a skeleton, but the bones are empty and there's no blood in its body. She tried to make up for it with the gratuitous amount of violence, but this does not stop us from feeling a certain emptiness for a true meaning in the story. One of the themes that screams to be explored is also the most obvious: what does it mean to kill another person? What has to change inside of us to be able to face someone just like us and kill them to save our own life?
Sadly, Collins skirts these great questions for the entertainment value. Not that it is lacking-- the story is fast-paced, gripping, and tear-jerking in places. Great new characters are introduced, and the relationship between Katniss and Peeta changes into a form both more complicated and more simple. Katniss does all she can just to survive, even when that means hurting the people she thinks she might love.
The title is a double entendre and refers to the first Games, which takes about half the book to figure out. However, the scene in which she fulfills it is strikingly unforgettable; even if she is no Dickens, she has the visuals of a master.
Altogether, though, Suzanne Collins has done that thing that authors dream of: writing a sequel that improves on the original. Available for $5.99 on the Kindle or $9.87 for the hardback on Amazon, Catching Fire is worth the read for anyone, but read the original first, because otherwise confusion is inevitable.
The film is due out in September 2013, with a much larger cast (including Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee). Look for the long line of screaming teenage girls outside the movie theatres.

The Hunger Games

Image credit to suzannecollinsbooks.com/

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year: 2008
Genre: Sci-fi/thriller/teen
Rating: 2

Action! Danger! Tragedy! Oppression! Romance!
You couldn't ask for more on a movie poster. Perhaps, in fact, if any book could have skipped the written phase and gone straight to film, it would be The Hunger Games. Rapid-paced action and visceral imagery make this book a top-notch story, and even if the language leaves something to be desired, it hits its target crowd exceptionally well. After all, sometimes all we need is a good story, right?
Suzanne Collins is an experienced children's writer; she has written multiple episodes for 1990s TV shows like Little Bear, Oswald, and Clarissa Explains It All. She has also written a five-book series for children known as The Underland Chronicles, which are an interpretation of the classic Alice in Wonderland.
However, with The Hunger Games, she takes a step into the gritter world of teen fiction, leaving behind squeaky-clean genres for a heftier tale. The novel tells the story of 16 year-old Katniss Everdeen, a poor girl living in the 12th District of a post-apocalyptic North American country called Panem. She is content to lead a quiet, meager existence by illegally poaching off of government land to feed her family until her younger sister, Primrose, is called out to be a participant in the bloody gladitorial contest known as the Hunger Games. In desperation to save her sister's life, Katniss volunteers to take her place, sealing her fate to kill or be killed.
To make matters more complicated, a boy that Katniss owes her life to, Peeta Mellark, is named as the other participant, obliging her to kill someone that she feels indebted to. Thus, she explains, is the horror of the Games: in order to survive, you must give up all your dignity, which is the government's aim. As the book progresses, the relationship between Katniss and Peeta becomes much muddier and more complicated, and even she is not sure how she feels about the boy who saved her life, the boy she is obliged to kill.
Told in the first person, the book places the readers firmly inside Katniss's mind. We hear her thoughts, her gut reactions to things, and see the grossly unfair world of Panem as she sees it. Grammar fanatics will squirm and squawk as they read turns of phrase (think high school language, written down) and the truncated fragments of thoughts are jarring, but the argument stands that they do place you into the mind of a coarse teenager.
Collins has created a marvelously dark, creative world replete with extensive details and logical, ordinary, yet beautiful characters. Although some of the people we meet are rather two-dimensional (Prim and Effie are exceptionally flat, and Cato runs a close third) Katniss and Peeta are fully fleshed out, and blend together beautifully. As time progresses, we understand more of the darkness and complete victory that the Games are to the Capitol, dehumanizing their victims and their audience in one blow.
The story is a thinly veiled allegory for the evils of socialism, what with the rigid rule controls on each district's product and the omnipotence and omniscience of the government. Katniss and Peeta represent the young capitalists defying the shackles of governmental regulation, shaking off the social expectations of submission and fear. Collins has essentially created a effective propaganda piece for republicanism with a action-packed, fast-paced, driven plot filled with believable people and graphic imagery.
The target audience is most definitely teenagers and young adults. The language is easy and flows much like an average American talks, and there are few moments without some sort of action or plot-centric exchange. Collins draws in a female audience with the sweet, innocent romance between Peeta and Katniss and the male audience with the sheer horror of the Games that she describes. (Cato's death is particularly horrifying, and will shock anyone with a visual imagination.) Intuitively weaving all of her different articles together to create one enormous, lumpy tapestry, Collins introduces us to a plot that we can love and remember, cheer and grieve for, and step easily into with the tightly-woven words she has written.
Because it is told in first person, the book stays with Katniss nearly every waking moment for a few weeks, but at just over 300 pages is surprisingly short. While that style necessitates some dull moments, some of the scenes are exceptionally poignant, such as the reaping (where the participants, known as "tributes," are named) when Katniss throws herself forward to save her sister. Rife with passionate language and the impulsive nature of the action, we are gripped throughout the telling and tied tightly to the brave girl as she sacrifices herself for love of family. Because it is told in the present tense, the readers experience the events in hypothetical "real time," which places us even more inside the mind of Katniss, lending us her emotions and distractions. Perhaps it is because we nearly become her, but our heroine is one of the most complete characters in popular literature.
The film, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss and Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, came out in March 2012 and drew an enormous audience for its extended run. Catching Fire, the next film, is expected in September 2013.
The Hunger Games is available for a meager $5.00 on the Kindle (it's free if you join Amazon Prime), or $10.89 in hardback. The entire trilogy, which includes Catching Fire and Mockingjay, is available for $18.99 on the Kindle or $29.50 in hardback. Because of the popularity and timeliness of these books, they are probably taken out of most libraries most of the time; if you can't borrow them, they're worth the purchase. Mine were given to me by some wonderful people as a Christmas gift, and I profusely thank them. It's taken me a really long time to jump on the bandwagon.
Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you got or gave at least one book today. Enjoy your break and keep reading!

A Reenchanted World

Original image at jameswilliamgibson.com

Title: A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship With Nature
Author: James William Gibson
Year: 2009
Genre: Non-fiction/environmental/sociology
Rating: 3

Tree-huggers have a negative connotation in today's culture. Somehow, they've acquired this stereotype of long-haired, smelly, poor, bleeding-heart liberals, and we look down on them as a handicap to progress. They strap themselves to bulldozers for the sake of a few trees, and that's ridiculous, right? Why defend a few trees?
It's more than the trees. It's a kinship with nature itself, according to James William Gibson's book A Reenchanted World. With detailed journalism and observations on sociology, Gibson explores the modern yearning for a connection with nature amidst the expanding suburban world of chain-link fences and asphalt. While he does address the whole world, he mostly focuses on America, which deserves all the discussion it gets.
The book begins with the story of John Quigley, who received national attention for his two-month-long tree-sit in California in 2002. The local developers wanted to tear down the tree in order to expand a road into a subdivision, and the local environmentalists howled in protest. Quigley climbed into the tree and refused to move, much to the chagrin of the developers, and was supported by other environmentalists in the LA area. "Old Glory," as he named the tree, remained standing.
This fierce love for nature is not new to the world, but it's new to us, according to Gibson. For nearly 200 years, Americans have been recklessly and aggressively taking hold of the New World, blazing fields and drilling oil rigs in the name of progress, and the victims have been endangered species, our natural environment, and the climate. Odd, considering that the Native Americans are some of the most naturally-connected people on the planet, and it is from this that Gibson draws his beginning.
Native Americans believe in the spirituality of nature, and the environmental movement in the 1960s and 70s stemmed mostly from a revival in tribal traditions amongst Native American chieftains. As we know, it spread quickly through the youth because of the anti-war sentiments at the time, taking the world in great strides with movements like "flower power" and Greenpeace. Yet, despite all the positive effects that a more natural environment has been proven to have, these hippies have been blacklisted by modern society as radical, liberal, and dangerous.
Gibson takes this movement in hand and explains the desire for a connection with nature in both scientific and spiritual terms. The very title refers to attaching a holiness to the natural world, which seems ridiculous to us. But if you look at it, we do anyway. Gibson's primary example is our reverence for whales. People come from around the world to the great oceans to take a cruise liner out into the middle of the sea just to see whales surface for a moment, and it changes them. This doesn't just apply to biologists or whale experts; ordinary people have been reduced to tears by simply watching a whale surface out of the water for a moment, blow water at them, and disappear majestically once more. Any whale stranded on a beach makes national news as hundreds of people rush to its rescue, and there was recently a film entitled Big Miracle based on the true story of the drastic attempts to rescue a whale family marooned in the ice. Shamoo, the performing whale at SeaWorld, is more famous than many humans.
Gibson's point is not that we are coming back to nature worship, or that people will soon revert to worshiping ants or grass. No, instead, he outlines the reasons that we are still attached deeply to our world, and that environmentalism is merely an expression of the love and responsibility that we must bear for our planet.
This book was remarkably similar in topic to The World Without Us, which I reviewed earlier this year. However, Gibson doesn't have Weisman's writing charisma, and A Reenchanted World reads like a scientific article. The facts and points are well laid-out, the theme is relevant, and the ideas that he shares are true and thought-provoking, but it still feels dry. Scattered with words like "dispensationalism" and "counterculture," Gibson might have reached a wider audience by simplifying his ideas into layman's terms.
Addressing environmentalism's place in politics is necessary for any ecology book, but because of the stiff relations between the two, the discussion can become awkward. Gibson devotes two chapters for politics and religion, and while they make excellent points, they both feel a bit like rants against the right wing and conservatism. Although the men he refers to are radicals and usually known as such, he does not address the moderate right wing, nor the average American view of environmentalism, which leaves a big gap in our ideology. It is easy to pick out the red threads in the weave, but all the ones that blend together make the big picture and are equally important.
Altogether, this book makes an important contribution to the picture of today's environmentalism: it's not just a sense of misplaced duty, but a pure connection to the world that motivates us to save it. Rife with excellent examples and pithy quotes, Gibson has provided us with a guidebook for why we love nature and how to responsibly go about conserving it as long as we can. There are more details about the book on his website.
The book is only two years old, so it's available for $9.99 from the Kindle store or $10.80 in hardback from Amazon. The library might have a copy, so check there first, but do read this. Even if you're not an environmentalist, it can't hurt to understand what drives them, and it might help to make you understand our world and its people a little better.

We, the Drowned

Original image from stevementz.com.

Title: We, the Drowned
Author: Carsten Jensen
Year: 2010 (English)
Genre: Historical, exploration
Rating: 1

What do we base our identities on? Does the shape of the whole define the shape of each individual, or the other way round? Perhaps both.

W.B. Yeats once wrote, 

              The finished man among his enemies? 

                    How in the name of heaven can he escape

        that defiling and disfigured shape

 the mirror of malicious eyes 

          casts upon his his eyes until at last 

                 he thinks that shape must be his shape?

                            And how in the name of heaven can he escape

            if honor find him in a wintry blast? 

--A Dialogue of Self and Soul

  Carsten Jensen's seafaring novel We, the Drowned not only explores the ending days of sailing ships and the Danish world, but also delves into the heart of those questions that purse us every time that something ends. Where do we go from here? What am I without it? 

Told from the perspective of no particular character, only the we of the town, the novel tells the story of a Danish seafaring town called Marstal off the northeastern coast of Denmark. For generations, men and their sons and their grandsons have gone to school until confirmation, then taken to the decks of ships to sail around the world, only returning once every two years or so. Those left behind, the mothers and children and parents, wonder if they will ever see their sons again, but have to learn to live around it-- Marstal is a seafaring town. The men take pride in it, and don't care if they drown. To them, that's just collateral damage in their line of work.

The book tells the story of Marstal from 1848 until the end of World War II, sharing the lives and adventures of several people along the way, but never from their perspective. It is always the townspeople sharing the story from the outside, as if they were reading diary entries or sharing the tales over beer in a pub. We begin with Laurids Madsen, the heart of Marstal seafaring, a man who trusted nothing save his own skills and his sea boots. He disappears into the South Pacific, and fifteen years later, his abandoned son Albert goes looking for him to give his family some closure. We trace Albert's life from beginning to end, and we meet Knud Erik, a boy who was denied the sea by his mother, and wanted the adventure with his whole heart. Dozens of other names float by, like acquaintances we only knew a little, living their lives and passing away as time goes by.

The first chapter is a bid muddled, as you are walking in on a complex world that you know very little of, but everything soon falls into place. The crew is the "we" in this case, and they tell the stories of the legendary Laurids Madsen, like a hero that they all knew, who did nothing more than survive. That is the legacy of Marstal-- those who survive are the heroes.

The greatest majority of the book, though, involves Albert. After becoming a hero for sailing the South Pacific and returning with tales of cannibals and shrunken heads, Albert watches his friends die and his town grow old, and he can do nothing to stop it. He watches his own life drift idly by after he comes ashore, constantly longing for the danger of the sea, and conflicted by his own desire. After all, who is he without the sea? He is a sailor, and if he no longer sails, he's drifting.

Knud Erik, too, is an vividly living character, full of latent desire, suppression, and longing, pursued by his own dreams. He was shaped from a young age to love the sea and sailing, and once he reaches it, it's so different than his expectations that he's not sure what to do. His whole life has been about sailing, and when his desires change as he ages, he falls stagnant, trapped by his achievement.

Jensen is brilliant. Even though We, the Drowned has been translated from the Danish, it reads smoothly and beautifully in English, even the idioms and quotes falling into place. He clearly has a passion for this town and its history, and as he grew up there, he understands the dreams of the people and the things lost. Marstal comes to life in its biography, fraught with danger and very real characters.

The novel is gritty, dark, and gruesome where it needs to be, but no more so than necessary to be real. Many times adventure novels become romanticized, and while this book has its fictional elements, the core of it is so deeply human and real that even the words of the characters come to life. Every Marstaller walks the streets, warm with the blood of their ancestors that we knew, full of the dreams that they know will never come true.

The core is all about identity. We all know that nothing lasts forever, even if we hope it will, and life is all about learning to say goodbye and change ourselves. Marstal faces the extinction of its way of life, and even though the men are the greatest sailors in the world, they cannot stop the end of the sailing ship as they had known it for centuries. Laurids' identity is in his thirst for adventure, and it ruins him; Albert's identity is in his skill and experience as a sailor, and once he retires, he is forced to change himself. Knud Erik's identity is in his dreams and ambitions as a sailor and defiance of his mother. There is a drawing point where each man must face failure or change, and some do, but some fade away.

The second chapter is the most strikingly poignant. We are placed amongst the schoolboys of Marstal, tortured by Isager, the abusive schoolteacher. He teaches them to accept pointless abuse, because that is what they will get aboard ships their whole lives, and the readers recoil against it. And rightly so-- it is horrific, but real. In the middle of the chapter, the boys have a quiet moment, and they say poignantly,  "We committed appalling acts and only realized the horror of what we'd done when we stood gathered around the evidence of our atrocity. Violence was like a drug that we couldn't relinquish. He planted a thirst for blood in us. One that could never be quenched."

In addition to the brilliant main characters, every side character is unique and colorful. Jensen has painted a full picture of a town, leaving no one out and nothing corrected. For example, Lorentz, a contemporary of Albert, is constantly seeking acceptance and only learns to accept himself by years of rejection. Another striking character that is nearly impossible to sort out is Herman, a darkly suspicious man who does what he will, but he is still a Marstaller and therefore "one of us."

At 678 pages, We, the Drowned is a hefty novel, but it wastes no time on unnecessary moments. Capturing the very real parts of life is the challenge to the novelist, but Jensen has done it so poignantly that his work will survive amidst names like Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Odyssey.

Available for just $9.32 from the Kindle store, We, the Drowned is one of the best books I've ever read. I have a deep fondness in my bones for seafaring novels (stemming from a childhood copy of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch) but this one goes even deeper. Because of its raw emotion and beauty, this novel will live forever in the hearts of those who quest for adventure and identity. We all want to know who we are, and we belong to each other just as much as everyone belongs to us.

To the End of the Earth

Title: To the End of the Earth: Our Epic Journey to the North Pole and the Legend of Peary and Henson
Author: Tom Avery
Year: 2009
Genre: Non-fiction/memoir/history
Rating: 2

Foolhardiness often overlaps with bravery. Oftentimes, it's not until after the success that we dub it as brave; the most famous accomplishments were often accused of being ludicrous when they were first proposed. From the top of Everest to the bottom of the ocean's trenches, we are constantly encroaching on that legendary phrase-- "to boldly go where no man has gone before."
Tom Avery has dedicated his life to doing just that. In his young life, Avery has made expeditions to both poles, in the Andes, to a remote mountain range in Kyrgystan (don't ask me to find that one on a map) and various other places on earth. What's most interesting about these trips is not that he has done so many, but that he survived them at all. Some people might call him an adrenaline junkie for his numerous, at times reckless, brushes with death. In his 2009 memoir To The Ends of the Earth, Avery recounts dozens of moments where he thought he might have just missed the mark and sentenced his team to death on his daring expedition to the North Pole.
The adventure wasn't a passing fancy. After returning from his 2002 pursuit to the South Pole, Avery was surprised by an offer of sponsorship for his next trek, which he decided on the spot would be to the North Pole. Over the next two years before the actual trip took place, he would discover how monumental that idea actually was. The simple reason is that the North Pole is in the middle of an enormous, malevolent, frozen ocean, and Avery wanted to sled there. On foot.
The subtitle of the book alludes to a 100 year old mystery, the voyage of Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the North Pole by dogsled in 37 days. Upon his return, his claim was decried by the arctic exploration community as ridiculous, impossible, and false. For a man who had forever held aspirations of reaching the Pole, this was a crushing blow, and to this day Peary's assertion is doubted.
 With his 2005 expedition, Avery's goal was to prove once and for all that Peary was telling the truth. The most difficult part of organizing the mission was to recreate Peary's exploration team, composed of the nearly-extinct Eskimo dog (no, not a husky, an Eskimo dog) and two turn-of-the-century sleds. Not only did he want to do this whole 413-mile trek with 5 people and 16 dogs, he wanted to make the entire run in 37 days. To any onlooker, Avery was asking for death.
His memoir of the trip is gripping, with an expert's wry sense of humor. Readers come to know each of the dogs' names as well as the explorers do, to laugh at the little anecdotes of their antics, and to feel their pain as they struggle for life on the hostile plains of the Arctic. The explorers themselves keep a friendly, co-dependent dynamic, companions in this strange world where no man has ever lived.
We also come to know the landscape as well as Avery did, with his ardent descriptions of what could only be described as an icy wasteland. To him, it is a wonderland, and that love is communicated in his writing. As the book progresses and the conditions grow more desperate, we see that love grow briefer and more passing, but never entirely fades: here is a man obsessed, and come face to face with his deepest passion. No matter the hardships, Tom Avery pursues the poles, and that in itself is admirable, albeit the daredevil nature of his exploits.
Structurally, To the End of the Earth flows very easily, the history intermittent with the narrative, creating one cohesive story, in the purest sense of the word. Avery has even reconstructed dialogue between himself and his companions, which lends the book a feeling of personality rather than a dry historical memoir to be logged away at the Royal Geographical Society.
Taking another step back, the sheer topic of the book is incredible. So few men make the trip to the North Pole and live to tell the tale, let alone on foot, that the idea of it is incredible. Avery deserves applause for his incredible bravery and ambition for taking on a task that so many have failed to do, and for increasing our true knowledge of the planet that, day by day, it becomes apparent that we know very little about.
Because it's such a specific book and not of wide interest, To the End of the Earth is available in paperback for as little as $6.36 from Amazon, and $7.99 on the Kindle. However, even if you are not familiar with the story of the Arctic, take a look at this one. Avery's website gives a little more information on the background of the book if you are interested, and gives a list of his expeditions as well.

American Rust

Title: American Rust
Author: Philipp Meyer
Year: 2009
Genre: Crime/drama
Rating: 4

Okay, we get it. America has no jobs, the Rust Belt felt the worst of it, our youth is flailing without a direction, and we need to reach inside ourselves to find a future. Anyone who has lived in America for the past five years knows that, and while the situation in the old industry centers is pitiable, we need to move on now, kay? Thanks.
Philipp Meyer's novel American Rust attempts absolutely nothing daring. Novels of the times are all too common, and it's not like any of us don't know what's happening in the factories and mills of the old production towns. We've all stepped inside what it means to be an American in these times, when the American Dream is dead and we need to find a new dream to pursue. Meyer is not touching any new ground here; in fact, he may even be wallowing in the past, depending on how you look at it.
The novel runs like the ripples in a pond-- a story of aftereffects. At the very beginning of the story, twenty year-old genius Isaac English has already stolen $4,000 in cash from his crippled father and strikes out into the dark with his best friend, Billy Poe, to make their way out of their economically crippled Pennsylvania town of Buell. However, a run-in and subsequent fight with some homeless men leaves one dead, and the two boys must face how that small act of desperate, poorly considered violence will change their lives forever.
Poe's mother Grace, police chief Bud Harris, and Isaac's sister Lee also tell chunks of the story from their perspective, but all speak from the same voice: stagnant hopelessness. Even Lee, who has escaped from Buell and married into a rich family in Connecticut, has little direction and feels trapped by her past. Grace has slid into her present with little ambition, and now regrets her choices, and Bud has tried his hardest to prevent Poe's inevitable time in prison. The novel plays out in bad choice after bad choice, all of which make sense at the time, but have negative consequences in the long run.
Shadows of the Great Depression are nearly tangible throughout the novel. The most omnipresent wound in Buell's wallet is the closure of the steel mills in the 80s, which shut down the entire Valley where the town is located. Poe, Isaac, and Lee often comment on how beautiful the landscape is despite the heavy air of economic suffering on the town, but they talk about little else. Meyer certainly understands what it's like to have little money and no job, but he doesn't seem to understand much else.
The one interesting facet of this novel is writing style. Told in stream-of-consciousness, the style is evocative of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In fact, Meyer is probably a Joyce fan, as he slips in a subtle mention of the author in one of Lee's segments. The format lends the novel an element of sensitivity, like stepping inside the minds of the characters, bringing them to the human level the reader sitting in their heated home with enough to eat and an alarm system.
However, that is the only humanizing thing about American Rust. Very little of it seems real, and the author may argue that that's how it really is, but having lived in America all my life, this seems rather romanticized and farfetched. None of the characters is relatable, or even realistic: Isaac the genius, removed from society, Poe the jailbait, Lee the nostalgic rebel, and Grace the regretful waiting mother. All of them neatly fit into stereotypes that we expect in a novel about a crumbling society, and though they may exist somewhere in the world, people tend to be a great deal more complicated than Meyer makes them out to be.
Bud Harris the only interesting bright spot. He is conflicted about his life, stagnated, and unsure of why he does what he does. His chapters, rife with a kind of sadness about the state that both his country and his life are in, bristle with a resigned anger, and that is the only unique thing about this book. If the whole novel had been about Bud, it would have been time better spent.
American Rust is available for the Kindle for $11.99, or $10.20 in paperback from Amazon. It's three years old now and 367 pages long, so skip buying it if you can and check your library. Overall, a pretty dull read, and dragged out far longer than it should have, but the writing style is worth a shot if you want something simple and gritty to get you through your Thanksgiving break.
On that note, happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Read a book. If you're looking for some good ones, try An Imperfect God, or if you're in a fiction mood, The Whiskey Rebels is fantastic. Or, I've heard The Jefferson Lies is great, but I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. Enjoy your break!

River of Darkness

Title: River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon
Author: Buddy Levy
Year: 2011
Genre: History
Rating: 4

Few people know that the name of the Amazon is actually Greek in origin. Most of the time, the Amazon is automatically associated with the enormous river commanding the northern part of South America, with a possible secondary association with the mythical all-female colony hidden deep in the thick jungles. If the person is really well versed in Greek literature, they might come up with Hippolyta, Euripides's fictional queen of the Greek Amazons. But isn't it odd how disparate the two are? The faraway women sequestered in ancient Greece and the indomitable tropical river.
That's the air of Buddy Levy's new book on the conquest of the Amazon, River of Darkness. Though he pours thick, vivid details in, constructing a true story of an incredible event, it seems marginalized by the structure of the book and the writing style. In fact, the topic of the book feels like it just doesn't belong.
 Despite the scale of Francisco Orellana's fame in the 16th century, he seems to have slipped away from conquistador canon in favor of characters like Francisco Pizarro and Hernan Cortes, who toppled empires and killed thousands. Levy brings his journey back to us, though the telling leaves something to be desired.
The book opens with a gritty, visual narrative of the moment Francisco Orellana embarked on his fateful journey down the Amazon, destined to make him the first man to cross the entire continent of South America. Orellana originally came with the youngest Pizarro (fun fact: there were five Pizarro brothers, all notoriously cruel and effective conquerors) to the new Spanish land of Peru and began an expedition to find El Dorado and the Cinnamon Valley, two myths common throughout conquistador lore. Unfortunately for Pizarro, the intended conquest goes as wrong as possible, and he is forced to split from his trusted captain, Francisco Orellana.
Orellana takes the group's boat and goes in search of food for a great distance down the river, and rather than return, he continues down the river to explore and reach the sea on the other end. For a poorly outfitted, uninformed, and unprepared group of men, the journey has often been greeted with incredulity and accolade, for the dangers of the Amazon are legendary. Orellana managed to avoid poisonous fish and plants, enormous snakes, hostile natives, and tricky rivers to guide his men back to civilization on two islands north of modern-day Venezuela.
Levy relates the tale with remarkable amounts of research and commendable detail. He has unearthed the narrative of a priest who accompanied Orellana and made notes along the way, relating the man's remarkably diplomatic approach to the natives of the area. Most conquistadors would rather slash and burn their way into kingdoms, but Orellana had a gift for linguistics and managed to learn the rudimentary parts of the local language and even secured a month's room and board for his men with a local tribe.
Levy relates all these details with the cool, academic air of a historian, which turns the book into a dry pile of incongruous dust. It's horribly unfortunate, because such a remarkable piece of obscure history could be told in such a gripping way. The Amazon captures all our imaginations with the vivid beauty of a nearly untouched world, and Orellana was seeing it for the first time. Levy, however, take the clinical approach of not stepping into the captain's shoes and relies solely on documents. His purist attitude is admirable, but boring.
What's more, the book claims to be the story of Francisco Orellana, but spends much of its time telling the general history of the conquest of Peru. At 250 pages, Levy is short on space for this huge topic, and chooses to spend much of it talking about Gonzalo Pizarro and what happened after Orellana succeeded rather than the actual journey. In fact, only a little more than half the book is actually spent on its topic, which is bitterly disappointing. There is so much to discuss and so much to research, and Levy chooses only to scratch the surface. Perhaps he should have instead written a book about the Spanish conquest of South America-- he would have had more to talk about.
Altogether, the story is interesting, but very superficial. After reading Levy's book, readers who are interested will have to go out and pick up another book on the same subject for more detail.
Because it's only about a year old, River of Darkness is $13.99 on the Kindle and $17.82 for the hardback from Amazon. My library had a copy, so if you live in a city, yours might too; if not, skip this one. It's tantalizing, but there have got to be better books out there on this same subject that delve more deeply into Orellana's fascinating, groundbreaking journey.