The Fault in Our Stars Will Break Your Heart, and You Wouldn't Want It Any Other Way (#Read26Indy Book 4)

"So, okay," he said. "Okay. Name some things that you never see in Indianapolis."

"Um. Skinny adults," I said. 

* * * * * 

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. 

I think those two quotes sum up this reading experience nicely. The Fault in Our Stars is funny, sad, and sweet, each in ways that hit you in the gut.

You know what you're going to get when you start reading this book. The main character is Hazel, a 16 year old girl that has a type of cancer that is incurable, but which she could live with for some time. She meets a boy named Augustus at her cancer support group. You know where this is going.

It's a book that doesn't have a lot of twists and turns, but it doesn't need them. It was a relief, actually, to have the freedom to get to know these characters instead of having a gimmicky plot. The humor is sharp - I read most of the book sitting next to my girlfriend while she worked on the computer, and I would laugh loudly, and then say, "cancer humor", as if that explained it. And I'll admit to shedding a couple of tears while reading as well (that's just between you and me, though). The writing is clever and poignant, without being cliche or schmaltzy.

The other thing I loved was that the book was set in Indianapolis. This must be how people in New York feel reading half the novels out there. I enjoy imagining a place from a book's description, but it's something special to have scenes set in the IMA's 100 Acres, or even the Castleton mall, and to be able to really picture the scene in my mind. Having stories set in our home cities, whether its books or films, contributes to our sense of place. I'm making a effort this year to seek out books that are set in Indiana, or are written by Indiana-based authors. I want to see my home in great literature, because I know that outside Indiana, people often don't see it as a place worth visiting, or worth writing about, but I know differently.

The Fault in Our Stars film will be coming out this summer. I'd encourage you to read the book before then so you can really get to know the characters before you see it on the screen.

#Read26Indy Book 3: Out of Sight

Karen hoped she'd be able to tell about it later. The conversation in a trunk full of handcuffs and tactical gear with a bank robber escaped convict who wondered if it would be different if they'd met in a bar. Like a first date, getting to know one another. Her dad would love it. "And then what happened?" 

That was a good question.

All these years, and I'd never read an Elmore Leonard novel. I worked in a bookstore all through college and I would see the covers in the mystery section and wonder for a moment if they were any good. But I never got around to picking one up. I took a class about writing dialogue a few months ago, and the teacher recommended Leonard's work highly. My very nice sister then purchased me two of his novels for Christmas - this one, and Get Shorty, which is now in the stack of to-reads.

It's a plot straight out of a romantic comedy crime movie - boy breaks out of prison, boy meets girl who is a federal marshal, boy kidnaps girl, and falls in love with her while they're both stuffed in the trunk. Will the boy turn to the straight and narrow to win the girl? Will the girl chuck it all and run away with the bank robber? Or will she just arrest him?

I went through a period of reading every Carl Hiaasen novel I could get my hands on (except the one about golf - not even Carl can get me to read about golf), and I see why Elmore Leonard is usually considered to be in the same category. Bumbling criminals who aren't really that bad, even if a little nutty, an improbable love story, and plenty of humor. At the moment, though, Carl is still my favorite in the genre. 

The only problem with this one was that it wasn't quite convincing. I'm willing to suspend my belief for just about any story - bank robbers, ghosts, unicorns - but I never quite saw the point in the book where Karen Sisco turns from being afraid of Jack Foley, or of simply wanting to arrest him, to falling in love with him. Maybe I just saw it from the point of view of a woman - if I'm locked in a trunk with a guy who busted out of prison, who keeps running his hand down my leg and talking about how it would be different if we had met in a bar, no matter how witty and charming he is, I'm out of there the minute I can run. It was just a given that she would fall for him, but there wasn't anything there to say why - what was it about this guy? 

What I said before about this being the plot of a romantic comedy crime movie? It was made into one, starring Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney in the late 90's. I have it on reserve at the library. It must be one of the lesser Lopez films, somewhere after The Wedding Planner and The Cell (which is one of the most twisted, visually beautiful movies I've ever seen) - so I hadn't heard of it until I read this book. I'll check in after I watch it and let you know if she manages to do Leonard proud. IMDB says Catherine Keener and Don Cheadle have parts in it, so it can't be all bad, can it? 

I look forward to reading some more of Elmore Leonard's novels. His work is widely renowned, and I'm hoping Get Shorty will be the one to convince me. 

Book Nerd Confession: I Hated Gravity's Rainbow (#Read26Indy Book 2)

A million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it.

A couple months back, at the end of November*, I joined my first book group. I’d always wanted to be in a book group. I’ve been a book nerd my whole life, but haven’t always had people around to really discuss them with. I saw online a book group aimed at “Better Readings of the Best Books”. Yes! I was excited to really dig into some serious literature. I always enjoy hearing others' viewpoints on literature and art, particularly when they make me see things I wouldn’t otherwise have thought of.

Our first book was to be Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s 760 page (single spaced, tiny type) WWII epic novel, famed for being nominated for, nearly winning, then being rejected for the Pulitzer Prize, causing no book to win the award in that year. I’d read Pynchon’s much smaller novel The Crying of Lot 49 many years back. I couldn’t tell you now what it was about, but what I do remember was that all the threads that didn’t seem to connect throughout the book all came together perfectly at the end in such a way that I sat back and marvelled at the writer’s skill.

Gravity’s Rainbow was not like that.

I feel like there should be a support group for people who hated Gravity's Rainbow. There seems to be this consensus by those who love that book that if you read it and didn't like it, that you just didn't "get it".

I'm not a literature scholar, I just like a good book. So I wasn't really that familiar with postmodern literature, which tries to show that the "search for reality is pointless". If that was the book's goal, it met it admirably. 

I knew from the start of GR that it was not a book to try to make too much sense out of. I didn't realize that it would be nearly entirely nonsensical. It was like reading a writer's drug-induced dream. I more or less enjoyed the first 100 pages, as it read like a challenging, but possibly interesting story. But after that, Pynchon veered off toward the nonsensical, and the passages grew harder to process. Very rarely was I drawn into the story, except for a few short interludes, such as one that involved mistaken identity and a pig suit. But those were few and far between. I found myself reading pages out loud to try to focus enough to get through them. I like challenging writing, but this went past challenging to ridiculous, like a literary practical joke on the reader.

As I read, and found myself growing angry at the author, I wondered, is it necessary for a writer to take into account the reader’s experience?

On one hand, a writer should be driven by what s/he feels called and compelled to write, getting that story in your head out onto the paper as fully formed as you can. On the other hand, once you put your work out there as a piece to be read, do you owe something to the people taking the time to experience it? Do you need to care if it sends a message, creates an experience, offers something to the reader? (Several times while reading I felt very sorry for Pynchon's editor. That could not have been an enviable task.)

I’m not saying literature has to be pleasant, or fun. I definitely don’t want every author to be a mass market fiction writer, putting out linear plot-driven story lines that wrap up neatly with a bow at the end. I want literature to make me think, to make me uncomfortable, to put me inside the heads of characters I wouldn’t normally choose to inhabit.

If you have read this book, and enjoyed it, I applaud you. I wanted to enjoy it, or learn from it, or have an experience other than boredom and frustration, but I just couldn’t make it happen. The book ultimately ended my brand new book group, because only the leader and I ended up finishing the whole thing. Others decided they didn't have time, or that the book was too foul to continue reading.

If you have not yet, but want to read this book, here are some things to be aware of before you take it on:

1. There is no plot. It pretends to have one in the beginning to draw you in, then it falls away in a drug-induced haze.

2. Don’t bother trying to remember anyone’s names. Some have more than one name, many characters you will read about for 30 tiny type pages and then never hear from again. You can find maps online of how the characters are related, to try and make some sense out of it, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to.

3. It’s effing disgusting. I had read, before I really got into reading the book, about this book losing out on a Pulitzer Prize due to a scene involving a man performing a really foul act on a lady that would normally be the role of a toilet. I won’t describe it here. That scene is pretty early on in the book. It was gross, but was only a few pages long, and I figured ew, but let’s move on. But no, the book is full of detailed descriptions of bodily wastes, pedophilia, S&M, and a metric ton of the author being obsessed with his junk, and the junk of other dudes. And it doesn't seem to really contribute anything to the characters, other than to make you not care about any of them.

4. There is no real ending. There is no conclusion for anyone but one minor character who you’ve completely forgotten about by the time he’s reintroduced. The rest just disappear, or their plotlines dissolve. This may be the goal of post-modernism, to show that there is no real point to anything, but if that was the goal, 300 pages would have been plenty to get that point across.


I was hesitant to admit how much I truly disliked this book, because I know that puts me in the category of people who just aren't intelligent enough to "get it". But maybe, just maybe, the Emperor truly has no clothes at all?

*Note: I started reading this book at the very end of November 2013, which should make it ineligible for my #Read26Indy list. But since I read over half of it this year and spent numerous hours wasting my time wading through it, I’ve decided to count it.

#Read26Indy Book 1: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“How old are you, really” I asked.

“Eleven.”

I thought for a bit. Then I asked, “How long have you been eleven for?”

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was the first book I read in 2014, and the first of my #Read26Indy books. I didn’t mean for it to be. I was trudging through Gravity’s Rainbow when I caught the flu. Not just any flu, but the worst illness I’ve had in years. I couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t even really walk around, and I definitely could not concentrate on Pynchon.

After watching Sharnkado on Netflix (sharks flying through the air actually did make me laugh and feel a little better) I decided to put the frustrating doorstop of a book aside and read something likely to be more enjoyable: Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. While buying Christmas presents for other people during the holidays, somehow this book had ended up in my online shopping cart and made its way to my house, where it was added to the top of my “to read” stack on my bedside table. It’s funny how that happens sometimes.

But before I get to the book, this is my opportunity to tell my Neil Gaiman story. I’ve met him a couple times, very briefly, in events surrounding his writing. I’ve always been a book nerd (I'm still proud of the "Bookworm Award" I received in kindergarten), so meeting Neil Gaiman was, for me, like meeting a movie star. The first time I met Neil was during a reading and book signing he did at a bookstore where I worked in Charlotte, North Carolina. His voice floated through the store as he read Anansi Boys and I served coffee to the religious book group that asked me if I could please go ask whoever was talking so loudly to be quiet. I was impressed that Neil stayed until every last person had their book signed, good naturedly smiling at even the man who had brought his entire portfolio of artwork to show him.

The next time I met him was after I'd moved back home to Indiana, when the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library invited him to give the annual McFadden lecture, and afterward I joined friends who knew him for dinner with Neil and about 15 other people. He told marvelous stories in his British accent that makes everything sound more interesting. 

The next time I met him, I went up with the same friends to Wisconsin for a Neil Gaiman-themed weekend at the House on the Rock, which is an incredibly weird, sprawling house that no one has ever lived in, and which has no bedroom, with pathways and tunnels leading to warehouses full of the oddest collections of objects, like imitation gem tiaras and hundreds of Santa Claus figurines. It also has an underground carousel that typically no one is allowed to ride. The House on the Rock was featured in one of Neil’s novels, American Gods, so the weekend was a perfect fit for his fanatic, quirky, fans. Hundreds of people traveled there to hear him read and speak, and to see if their vision of the settting described in print would match the reality (it was much stranger than fiction, as the expression goes).

Through my friends, I went to dinner with them and Mr. Gaiman. And it is true, he really is as nice as he seems. I’m pretty much the opposite of outgoing when I meet new people, particularly ones whose work I admire, so I didn’t say a whole lot during the meal. My friends, on the other hand, are boisterous and fun to be around, and of course he loved them. We ran into him several times throughout the weekend, and when it was time for us to head home, he hugged each person and wished them well. I could tell when he got to me that he couldn’t remember my name. I don’t blame him, he met hundreds of people that weekend. So instead, he gave me a little hug and said, “Oh, you”. I thought it was funny, and sweet that he didn’t want to give away that I hadn’t quite registered. My friends called me “Oh, you” the whole way home. And so on to the novel.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the story of a boy who doesn’t have many (or any, really) friends and reads books constantly, which reminded me of myself as a child, who finds himself drawn into otherworldly occurrences that introduce him to neighbors, and other creatures, who are not usual. There are parents who just don’t understand, new friends who do, and creatures that try to give people what they think they want with disasterous consequences. It was just today when I started writing this post that I realized that the boy is never named, all the better, I think, to put yourself in his place. The boy has to risk everything to save what he loves.

I attempted to explain the plot to my girlfriend and she told me, “That sounds like one of your dreams”. And maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much. It was dreamlike, ethereal and outside normal life, but still believable. There is danger, and magic, normal, and extraordinary, all living together. It makes you wonder if, perhaps, back in your childhood, where you can't remember it, there really were fantastical events and creatures that you just can't remember now through your adult sensibilities.

I won’t go any further into the plot, because my recounting of it would not do it justice. But I encourage you to pick it up, if you like a novel that is outside normal adult life. And if you ever run into Mr. Gaiman, please tell him “Oh, you,” says hello.