November 2016 Wrap Up: Romance! Crime! Angst! Anna Kendrick!

I had a lot of plans for my November TBR and I got to only…1 of those. This is why I don’t do TBRs. There are two that I will have a mini review for in December so look out for those but the rest I’ll mention my thoughts here.

‘Night Mother by Marsha Norman (2/5)

This month’s play selection was a little disappointing even though the premise sounded so interesting. It’s about a grown daughter who has decided to commit suicide so she goes over to her mother’s house to tell her this and to set things in order before she goes. At first, I thought the mother-daughter dynamics were really interesting especially with the mother knowing her daughter was going to commit suicide that night but as it progressed, it just became more generic and bland.There’s a backstory that is slowly revealed throughout but the characters were not engaging enough for me to really feel the need to know that backstory.

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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (4/5)

“Fun” Storytime with Carolyn: To put a hold at my local library, I have to pay 25 cents. I put a hold for The Sympathizer and couldn’t read it until a few days before it was due and when it was due, I couldn’t renew it because someone else had put a hold on it..So I had to return it and put another hold on it because it’s so popular, it was the only way I could get it -_- so basically I put

a hold on it the first time for no reason. But enough of my first world-problems, the good part is that I really liked this book and I have a full review here.

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The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson (3/5)

Jeannette Winterson is quite the name in literary fiction but I thought The Stone Gods was just ok. The best part of the book was her writing as it was probably some of the best writing I’ve read this year. It’s a literary scifi novel set far off into the future where Earth has been destroyed and we have moved to another planet. It follows a woman named Billie and she’s a reporter who meets a robot named Spike and it’s their love story essentially. But the book is more like 3 novellas packed into one because each section of the book follows a reincarnation of Billie and Spike and their subsequent love story. Her writing feels very modern but this book is also an ode to nature so the writing also feels ethereal and references old myths and legends. It’s a humorous satire on the damage, we as humans, do to our planet and the
same mistakes that we inevitably make over and over again. The scifi aspects with the plastic surgery and all were a little gimmicky to me and felt too obvious (if that makes sense) and sometimes it felt as if her writing was just jumping from one place to the next without any cohesiveness.

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Smut by Karina Halle (3.75/5)

If you’ve been following my blog the past couple of months you’ll know that I’ve been looking for a light and fluffy romance read that I could actually finish from beginning to end. I was having no such luck because true to stereotype romance is so saturated with the same cliches and carbon copy characters just with different names. This month I finally found a cute NA romance read that wasn’t offensive and didn’t bore me to tears. It’s about a woman named Amanda who dreams of becoming a published author. She’s in the same writing class as Blake, the hot and (arrogant of course) guy who gets paired up with her for a project. And things go from there. I really appreciated the slow burn haters-to-lovers trope executed very well. I also appreciated the minimal description of the other person’s physical features. The story was adorable, the heroine actually has a professional goal and works for it (!), the side characters were all fun and quirky, there was no contrived drama for angst purposes, so many nerdy references, and of course, my favorite–witty banter between our two main characters. Love it.

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So for these next few books, I’m going to have separate reviews for them in December but they were definitely my favorite reads of November.

Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick (audiobook) (4/5)

Signal to Noise by SIlvia Moreno-Garcia (4/5)

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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Doestoevsky (3/5)

For some reason, I thought this classic was basically going to be a guy meditating in jail for the entire story. And I was totally off..so off..In terms of the story, I definitely liked the individual parts more than its sum. There are some really thought-provoking ideas in this like what makes a criminal or even if certain criminals have a right to commit crimes. The main character had such an interesting dichotomy. He wants to be a part of society but at the same time transcend society because he has such a disdain for it. Everyone else was pretty bland. The stream of consciousness is really well done.

 

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Graphic Novels

Sensation Comics: Wonder Woman Vol. 2 by various authors and artists (3.5/5)

So I’m completely obsessed with Wonder Woman now. I recently watched the 2009 animated movie which I have some mixed thoughts about it but that’s gonna be for my movie wrap up. This comic is different from other comics I’ve read because it is essentially a bunch of short stories about Wonder Woman (flash fiction if you will) each by a different author and artist. I really like that because if you don’t like the art or the story, it will only last for a few pages. As with any medium like this, you’re gonna get some you like and some you don’t but overall I thought this was a really good introduction to Wonder Woman and what she stands for. I particularly enjoyed Noelle Stevenson’s story.

 

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Harrow County by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Cook (3/5)

This is my favorite graphic novel in terms of artstyle. It is drawn using watercolor and the colors are blended in a sort of mosaic fashion that just blends so well. But it has this “scritch-scratch” that stil has those crisp lines that I really like. I can’t describe it!! I’m not an art person! What is art!! Anyways, the story was only ok. It’s a light horror story about a girl who is believed to be a witch reincarnated. I felt like the story lacked a strong plot and moved too quickly for me to become invested in the characters.

 

 

I have a lot of books I want to get to before the end of the year (ah!!) so hopefully December reading is just as good or better than November’s. December is also exciting because I’m reconstructing my blog!! So if you see a lot of changes in terms of look, you’ll know why. I’ll keep you updated! Otherwise, let me know what books you read in November and what your reading plans are for this last stretch of 2016!

 

Book Review: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Title: The Sympathizer

Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Genre: Literary, Historical Fiction

Pages: 371

Rating: 

 

 

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As a lover of stories, I think it’s always surreal but fascinating to meet an author of a book you like and it was no different with Mr. Nguyen. I got to hear him speak at a Critical Refugees panel a few months ago before I had even read this book, although I had heard of it. He served as a moderator for this panel and I was struck by his reflective, introspective questions. I suppose I was also fascinated because he was a Vietnamese immigrant who is an associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, usually Vietnamese people pick careers in math and science in my experience.

Left: Rapper praCH; Middle: Poet Mai Der Vang; Right: Viet Thanh Nguyen

From what I recall, he was very interested in asking the implications of being a refugee. The feeling of not belonging to either ideology. That contradiction is explored in our main character. He is a communist spy, half Viet and half French, who moves to the United States after the fall of Saigon and spends time with the General and his servicemen in order to send back information to his communist commander back in Vietnam.

I really liked reading about post-Vietnam war America and the attitude towards Americans for withdrawing from the war when the South still needed them. It was never more clear to me how much loathing the Americans instilled from the Vietnamese. He talks about Vietnam’s role in world history as cursed and bastardized, passed from Indochina to the French to the US and then to civil war. It parallels our own main character’s role in the book. Both are never really allowed to form their own identity. So the political atmosphere of the book really interested me. What also interested me was theme of being the Sympathizer. Our narrator is constantly torn between two sides, between his fealty between his two friends, between his half heritage, between the North and the South. Even as he is feeding information about the revolution’s side to the communists, he secretly feels sympathy for the Left. Even as he kills revolutionaries so he won’t be discovered, their deaths still haunt him forever. Seeing that dynamic made me see the merits of both sides, but also the failings and as you go on through the book, that juxtaposition can also be found with the bigger themes of the book like the relationship between America and Vietnam.

Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?

His character is a double-edged sword however because he sympathizes with both sides so in the end, I don’t know what his stance actually is, what he actually believes in although I did see more leaning toward the Left as most Viet people living here would lean towards. But I suppose maybe that’s the point.

Last evacuees from Saigon before Fall; Picture from Time

Most of the time is spent in our narrator’s head so there is little room for other characters to develop and shine but they were colorful enough and served their purpose enough so that the book didn’t feel like it was missing something.

The writing was a little too quippy at times but I didn’t mind it. It had splashes of Kurt Vonnegut with somewhat dream-like sequences and hints of 1984 by George Orwell in it. I really like some of his turn of phrases where he turns sentiments you already know and turns it into something quotable.

“To live was to be haunted by the inevitability of one’s own decay, and to be dead was to be haunted by the memory of living.”

In the end, this book is really an ode to the Vietamese. And I think Nguyen captures the very essence, the “Vietnamese-ness” of Vietnamese immigrants which is probably not that helpful in describing this book but it’s true. It’s always in touch with the subtle similarites but also alienating differences between the two like the cultural barriers between immigrants and Americans, the inherent conservativeness versus the so-called looser ways of Americans. To see this brought up in a well-written style and to see this book receive the Pulitzer Prize gives me a lot of hope for more representation.