Book 25: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Title: Fight Club

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Length: 218 pages

Year Written: 1996

Why I chose this book: I love Palahniuk but always overlook this book, because in all its acclaim, the story still never appealed to me.

When I first started reading Fight Club, I knew the story, more or less. I thought I'd never seen the movie, either, but had caught enough cable re-run snippets of it that I couldn't be surprised by anything in the plot. Turns out that the more I read, the more I realized I could see Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter acting out each scene. I guess I saw more of the movie than I remembered. It kind of ruined the reading experience for me just a bit. 

The basic story is that an insomniac starts a fight club and mischief gang, with the help of his evil friend Tyler Durden who is actually his schizo alter-ego. The book may have been better if I'd read it blindly, not knowing that Brad Pitt is really Edward Norton. 

I've read several books by Chuck Palahniuk, but this was his first. I appreciate the fact that he is incessantly, reliably disgusting, and never shies away from the most grotesque descriptions possible. It wasn't my favorite Palahniuk book, but I already knew it wouldn't be. It seems that he has only mastered his craft of yucky fiction brilliance in the 18 years since his debut novel. It's not a bad book, and I'm sure in some rights it's a classic, but I didn't care for it all that much. 

Rating: 7/10

Book 24: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

Title: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Author: Raymond Carver

Length: 159 pages

Year Written: 1981

Why I chose this book: This is my roommate's book, and the title interested me. I love reading what people write about love. 

This is the first book of the year that has actually been a collection of short stories. Generally, I don't enjoy short story collections, because I have abandonment issues. I can't stand the idea of investing in characters and a plot for just a few pages before being yanked into another completely different scenario. And if this is what I hate, then I truly hate What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. But strangely, I don't. I liked the book's incompleteness, failure to deliver answers to some of your most important questions, and cryptic realism. My roommate called it a "total snoozefest." She didn't like it because she was left wondering most of the time. But this is the type of book that won't appeal to all readers. Some people read for information, others read for the joy of reading. Carver's stories deliver a short-lived experience packed with startlingly real emotion. I think the point of his stories are simply to feel, to read and absorb ordinary (yet extraordinary in their own right) moments that usually go undocumented.

One example of a story in What We Talk About drops you immediately in a kitchen with two quarreling lovers and their young baby. The woman kicks the man out, and he won't leave without the baby. He grabs for it, and they yank the infant back and forth between the two of them. The story is only three pages long, but fills you with enough discomfort to make it feel like you just saw it happen in real life. There are many cringeworthy moments in this book, and though none of them are particularly dazzling, they are all quite real. The title was a little misleading, because although this book does have much to do with love, it's not in a very romantic or typically pleasant way. Carver is an obviously talented writer, however, and it came as no surprise to find out he started his career as a poet.

Rating: 8/10

Book 23: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Title: The Alchemist

Author: Paulo Coelho

Length: 172 pages

Year Written: 1988 

Why I chose this book: My friend Kevin told me that this book was similar to Siddhartha (novel by Hermann Hesse), and on top of that, I know it's a classic that most people read in school (but again, I somehow didn't). 

I read that Paulo Coelho wrote The Alchemist in just two weeks, because the story was already written in his heart. If you've read The Alchemist, that just makes the most perfect sense. This book transported me to such a pure place, and touched my heart like only a simple, majestic allegory can (read: Siddhartha). It's about a young Andalusian shepherd named Santiago who decides to follow his dreams (literally) to the Egyptian pyramids. All the while. the world is conspiring to help him achieve his destiny. I admit, it sounds a little corny when you describe it to others, but reading it, it completely enchants you. There are so many life lessons to be learned in this book. No wonder it's been referred to as "more self-help than fiction."

If you've never read this book, now is the perfect time. It's a very fast, enjoyable read that is bound to stick with you in one way or another. There are many, many notable quotes in this book, but this one pretty much sums up the feel of the novel:

"The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation. All things are one. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

Rating: 9.9/10

Book 22: Written On The Body by Jeanette Winterson

Title: Written On The Body
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Length: 190 pages
Year Written: 1992
Why I chose this book: I was assigned this book in a Women's Studies class I took in college. Even though there are notes in the book (in my handwriting), I couldn't remember actually reading any of it.

This was an unexpectedly difficult read, especially coming off the heels of a few more traditional novels with straightforward story lines. Written On The Body, the story of a person and their affair with a married woman, often seems more like poetry than prose. And I use the word "person" because the narrator in this story is genderless. Rather, they do have a gender, but it is never mentioned. This was the only thing I knew about the book when I started to read, and so I caught myself searching for clues as to whether this was a man or a woman. And there really is no way to tell, but that's kind of the point. Jeanette Winterson is telling a story of love and passion beyond gender. Written On The Body is a story about the way love can consume you, get you into ridiculous situations, and run your life so far off course that you don't know what's what.

This book was so fucking quotable, too. It's a Tumblr dream. Winterson has such an ethereal way with words, that even when you aren't quite sure what she means, you feel it anyway. Here are a few of the quotes I marked:

"The day before Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you?" 

"Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them."

"When she bleeds the smells I know change color. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun." 

Rating: 8.5/10

Book 21: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Length: 367 pages
Year Written: 2007
Why I chose this book: It was recommended to me by my friend Aria!

When I was little, I was big on the Dear America series—these were basically fictional diaries of young girls who lived through slavery, or the Trail of Tears, or the Titanic, or other historical times. They were great books, and educational in a kind of roundabout way. Not since third grade have I read a really good piece of historical fiction, until A Thousand Splendid Suns. It is his second book, published four years after The Kite Runner, indisputably his most famous novel. I haven't read The Kite Runner, but if the storytelling technique and writing style is anything like Splendid (which I would bet a lot of money on), it's probably coming up very soon on my to-read list.

Splendid is a story spanning thirty years, set in Afghanistan against the backdrop of the real-life war and violence that has gripped the country for decades. It is divided between the perspectives of Mariam and Laila, two women with very different upbringings who find themselves in a similar situations of helplessness and captivity. For me, the novel brought to light a perspective I can't imagine I would have come across otherwise. It's astonishing to think that everything we have been told about war with Afghanistan has been filtered and edited so that we are blind, or perhaps numb, to the atrocities the Afghan people have endured—at the hands of the military, the rebels, and the Americans alike. I cried during one part of the book, audibly groaned at others. One scene involving a Caesarian section made my limbs weak and my eyes blur. That's what a good book can do to you.

Khaled Hosseini is a very talented writer with a gift for simple yet illustrative storytelling. Though his characters can at times feel predictable, you always feel that these people are real. And it's probably because, in a way, they are.

Rating: 9.8/10

Book 20: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruku Murakami

Title: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Author: Haruki Murakami

Length: 386 pages

Year Written: 2014

Why I chose this book: Because I fucking love Murakami!

I fucking love Murakami! I just realized I sort of have a thing in general for Japanese (and even Japanese-American) authors, but when it comes down to it, nothing really beats Murakami. This is the second book by him I've read so far this year. The other day, I tweeted this: 

It sounds like I'm criticizing him, or emphasizing his topical limitations in a negative way, but the fact is that Murakami truly owns the writerly space he occupies. Reading a book by Murakami is like eating a piece of sushi that Jiro made. It's like drinking a cappuccino made by a 10-year barista veteran. Colorless is one of the less complex novels in Murakami's repertoire, but it still involves many (if not all) of the same themes that are found in all of his other novels. When reading Murakami, expect to encounter dreams, fantasies that are realities (and vice-versa), strange spiritual occurrences, and some type of graphic, if not also deviant, sexual activity. It's kind of like Murakami is a chef with just a few ingredients, but can mix them a million different ways to create many uniquely enjoyable dishes.

The main character of Colorless is (no surprise here) Tsukuru Tazaki, a 36-year-old man who has lived his entire adult life in the shadow of something that happened to him in college—his four closest friends cut him off completely and without explanation. As the title suggests, Tsukuru goes on a pilgrimage, or rather, realizes he has been on one for years. It is a very simple story, almost childish at first, before it develops into quite the layered yet placid plotline. It is a book for wanderers, for observers, for special people who don't realize how special they are.

Rating: 9.6/10