Book 28: The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

Title: The Celestine Prophecy
Author: James Redfield
Length: 246 pages
Year Written: 1993
Why I chose this book: This was lent to me under high recommendation from my young Henry Miller-Murakami, better known as my friend Kevin.

In all caps, the back cover of this book boasts: "A BOOK THAT COMES ALONG ONCE IN A LIFETIME TO CHANGE LIVES FOREVER." This might seem a bit corny or pretentious (corntentious), but after finishing this very spiritual novel, I can't say it is inaccurate. This book is similar in content and attitude to others I have read (Siddhartha, The Alchemist), but delivered in a way that is more modern, much more specific, and perhaps more relevant.

The narrator of The Celestine Prophecy never goes into much detail about himself, his life, or even his appearance. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure he ever gives his name, either (though if I missed that completely, I'll feel pretty foolish). The first chapter throws the reader into a dinner with a longtime, rarely-seen woman/friend, where the narrator is informed about a secret, widely-debated Manuscript circulating in Peru. This Manuscript deals with our understanding of ourselves, our purpose on Earth, and what we must do to achieve enlightenment and move towards our destinies. It all sounds cheesy, but I swear, it's not.

The rest of the book follows the narrator as he discovers the different Insights of the Manuscript one by one as he voyages the jungles of Peru, now made dangerous by government officials and police seeking to prohibit dissemination of the document. The Insights are the heart of The Celestine Prophecy, because they actually make sense, and answer a lot of the questions that we have, and ones that we forgot we should have. The Insights discuss things from the proper way to interact with children, to the importance of speaking with every person you make eye contact with. And, of course, the book's content heralds highly the meaning of coincidences. This is the first thing we've got to start paying attention to, if we ever hope to (Andre 3000 voice) vibrate higherrrrrr, and evolve into really kick-ass super-sentient beings.

This book was very interesting, though a bit lacking in the creative style of the language. Every character seems to speak the same way, and deliver information on-time and in full as the plot progresses. I have a sneaking suspicion that before writing this story, James Redfield wrote (or stumbled upon some version of) the Manuscript in question. Nevertheless, it's worth reading, though it may take a while. Redfield packs each sentence with need-to-knows. It's no lazy read.

Rating: 8.8/10

Book 27: Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

Title: Not That Kind of Girl
Author: Lena Dunham
Length: 262 pages
Year Written: 2014
Why I chose this book: I am a huge fan of Dunham's HBO television series GIRLS. I've always been curious to read the memoirs Hannah is working on in the show, and I imagine that this book is essentially it.

Not That Kind of Girl is only the second non-fiction book I have read this year. However, after reading Lena Dunham blather about her self-centered, vaguely unstable, privileged, prosciutto-eating childhood, and her colorful adult life (that runs virtually parallel to that of the character she plays on GIRLS), you wonder just how reliable of a narrator she really is. At one point in the book, Dunham actually says "I am an unreliable narrator," before proceeding to explain how she retells details about other people's lives as if they were her own—before she even realizes she is lying.

Remember when Hannah's literary agent read her work and asked, "Where's the pudgy face slick with semen and sadness?" It's here, in NTKOG. There's a lot more, though. Behind the pudgy face is what is and always has been a brilliant mind (something Dunham both knows about herself and proves simultaneously). It's clear that Dunham has no qualms about looking or sounding like a jackass, and frequently redeems herself with her special brand of intelligence and wit.

One particularly high point in NTKOG. 

This book reads less like a how-to manual and more like a how-never-to. Never let someone continuously fuck you and fuck with you. Never forget that we are all destined to die. Never underestimate the audacity and spite of a pre-pubescent daughter of crunchy granola types in Brooklyn. Dunham is a piece of work. And she's transformed her life into a pretty entertaining and cleverly written piece of work.

She is morbid, the physical embodiment of the acronym TMI, and her self-deprecating style is as much charming as it is pathetic. I think the moral of the Dunham story is that she doesn't give a fuck. But she really, really does. She wants to make it, to be heard, to have her experiences documented and digested by the new generation. She reminds me that everyone is crazy and unstable. But if you can write about it intelligently and make others laugh while doing so, you've hit the sweet spot. We can't take ourselves so seriously, and it's good to know that Lena is true to her attention-seeking brat of an inner child.

Rating: 8.5/10

Book 26: The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

Title: The Sirens of Titan
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Length: 319 pages
Year Written: 1959
Why I chose this book: I really liked Cat's Cradle and dig Kurt Vonnegut as a human (RIP).

I hate to admit that this is a science fiction novel, but it really is. Most of the plot revolves around space and time travel, and a Martian invasion on Earth. But it really doesn't read as Star Trek as that all sounds. [Quick side note: this is the first book I've read on my phone using iBooks. Thought I'd hate it, but I didn't. I've always been a traditional paper-page-turning reader gal, but reading on my phone was surprisingly convenient and even enjoyable. Yay technology!]

Anyway, The Sirens of Titan is really a very deep book presented in a witty, almost goofy way. It is about a vapid playboy named Malachi Constant who becomes a brainless soldier on Mars named Unk, and eventually returns to Earth as a prophesied wandering space traveler. The plot is wildly imaginative and would seem like a coleslaw of non-sequiturs if not for the fact that everything eventually ties together seamlessly and beautifully.

Vonnegut really has a knack for making you examine not just yourself but mankind altogether. The central themes of this book are, in my opinion, free will and purpose. What if our bigger picture is just a speck in a bigger picture? What is the biggest picture? Reading this book made me smile. It reminded me just how much we really don't know shit about life. Vonnegut, like every good writer, writes about the same things in many different ways throughout his works. He has a brilliant, almost sacrilegious sense of humor, and what seems to be quite the lovely take on life and death. It makes me feel so at peace about his being dead (RIP again).

"Luck, good or bad, is not the hand of God. Luck is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by."

Rating: 9.8/10

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