re jane. patricia park. (301)

i picked up re jane after seeing it in a post on book riot.  a retelling of jane eyre with a half-korean, half-white/american protagonist!  i was in!

oh and if you read my previous post, and wondering why i was am okay with this retelling and not the last novel i read, was because park did take all of her storylines directly from bronte, instead, she took the overall structure, but wrote her own book.

before i start, if you ever read my post on jane eyre, you know that i loved it, but i did have issue with rochester being the only person ever talked with so i felt bad that she had no other experiences other than him.  though i mean their love was true, i still always wondered you know.  i didn't have this issue with re jane though i was shocked at times by how sheltered jane was but while during bronte's time all women were that sheltered, park made sure her jane was aware that she was.

just like jane eyre, re jane, started off with an orphan named jane that lived with family members that treated her poorly.  jane hoping to escape her uncle, sang, went to to work as au pair for a family.  the rochester of this work was ed farley, the father of the adopted girl, jane was in charge of.  and just like jane eyre there was a wife, but while rochester's was locked away in the attic, this wife, beth, was not crazy (well not in the same way as rochester's first wife) that worked in the attic.  i have to say the fact that ed and beth were married, made me very wary of jane falling in love with ed.  whereas i gushed over rochester and jane's budding romance in jane eyre, i was really uncomfortable about ed and jane's, though it did make me hungry for heroes.  even though park set up beth as an insensitive and overbearing wife and mother, i still was upset with jane for trying to be a homewrecker.  i was grateful that park stopped ed and jane from having sex (the tip doesn't count for me), because i would not have been able to go on with the book.  as you know from other books, i don't like cheaters.  anyway, that is really where the parallels between the two books stop.

i will add that park did include nods to jane eyre, having jane address the reader as a reader and jane's first job was to be at a company named lowood.  i thought these little details were cute.

back to the story, the climax of the novel, is when jane and ed decide to finally have sex, as i mentioned before it didn't happen.  on the night that they were to meet and try it again, jane decided to go to korea to see her grandfather on his deathbed.  the day she decided to leave . . . 9/11.  so as i read, i couldn't really gage the era, i figured it was now.  however, after a mention of the twin towers and the backstreets boys and of course this, i knew.  i have to add, i feel like a lot of books have been alluding to this, which is fine, it must be mentioned especially if a work is set in new york.  however, i feel like it shouldn't be used as a device to cause a drastic change, i think jane could have left on any day and the novel would not have lost anything.

okay, so jane went to korean.  she learned more about who she is, which she needed.  she even became engaged to a guy, but thanks to her aunt and this soap opera realized that she still loved ed.  so she came clean to everyone, ed about her love, beth about their affair, and returned to nyc.  however, once back, she realized just how different she and ed really were, and yes, dear reader, they broke up.  which i actually appreciated, i mean they were at different stages in their lives and also there was so much more she needed to experience.  i mean i was fine with jane eyre ending up rochester, because i mean what else was there for a single girl to do, then to be an old maid.  luckily, though nowadays, we have so many options.  it was great to see jane end up as an independent woman!

a greater part of the novel, aside from this kind of love story and self-discovery, was race, culture and identity.  to start jane was mixed, her mother was korean and her father was america, due to this she felt like an outcast.  people spoke and thought poorly of her mother.  in addition to this, she never felt like she fully identified as a korean.  it was the same situation for the child she was in charge of, devon.  devon was a chinese girl adopted by two american parents.  at school, she felt like an outcast due to her mixed cultured background.  her mother, beth, tried to keep her immerse in chinese culture but she still was not accepted by her fellow chinese students. being mixed and being americanized culturally, i understood how both of them felt uncomfortable among people with the same racial identity as them.  there was a scene in which jane and devon got moon cakes and devon became uncomfortable because although she looked chinese, she wasn't culturally chinese and couldn't speak the language.  i used to feel the same way as a kid, i look filipino but was not raised culturally filipino and did not learn the language, so when i am around alot of filipinos i do not know, i feel uncomfortable.  like jane and hopefully devon, you reach a point where, it doesn't really matter if your own people judge you, you have to learn to be happy with who you are.

in addition to this, i have to add that at the beginning i had mentioned how jane's family was mean towards her.  in jane eyre, her family was outright abusive.  however, in re jane, it was more of a cultural difference which made the reader and jane initially believe that her uncle hated and took her for granted.  its tough because as an outsider, we tend to judge without really knowing, this is what occurred when beth and ed tried to tell jane that she didn't have to obey her uncle (ironically, ed was doing the very thing he critiqued jane's uncle of doing, being controlling).  however, we gradually begin to see that jane's uncle is not a bad guy at all, he made sacrifices for her and he always made sure that she was taken care of even when she tried to push him away.  and in the end, the reader realizes when jane does that some things were lost in translation that maybe what she took as an insult was actually him trying to help her improve or actually meant as a compliment.  in the end, it was great to see her make peace with her uncle and culture.

dept. of speculation. jenny offill. (278)

i requested jenny offill's depart. of speculation after seeing it on bj novak's instagram.  he called the novel, "funny and heartbreaking", and this is the perfect description.

a short novel, it is written like random thoughts but end up giving us a complete story of marriage that has had it ups and down. the story was told from the perspective of the wife (we never learn anyone's name) and she oftenreferred to herself and her husband in simple terms of wife/husband,and woman/man.  she was a writer and like every woman struggled with being a mother, a wife, and also an artist.  it's a honest portrayal of how tough it is for women, everyone assume motherhood comes naturally, it doesn't.  it also addressed the internal agony women face when choosing to put their family first and their work second, demonstrating it is okay to want to put your work first.

there is an affair.  her husband cheated on her.  his affair foreshadowed by an anecdote about carl sagan and his wife, ann druyan and how he asked him to marry her while they working on "the golden record" project for nasa.  however, i like the intern, was confused because carl was married and ann was engaged.  my heart broke when he explained the other girl was easier and of course when he used pronoun.  

i like every situation for cheating, want the woman to leave.  but they went to therapy or what they called "the little theater of hurt feelings."  she confronted the girl which i think she deserved and completely freaked out.  in the end, the moved to the country and the things got better.  however, i felt bad for the daughter being so isolated.

a beautiful and honest tale about marriage.  also, offill is a wonderful writer. some of my favorite instances were:

that one was so beautiful i used to watch him sleep.  if i had to sum up what he did to me, i'd say it was this:  he made me sing along to all the bad songs in the radio.  both when he loved me and when he didn't.

we applied our muzzy intellects to a theory of light. that all are born radiating light but this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not.) the most charismatic people--the poets, the mystics, the explorers--were that eat because they had somehow managed to keep a but of this king that was meant to have been dimmed.  but the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish.  it hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and the almost always the eyes went dark.

i decided to make my class read creation myths.  the idea is to go back to the beginning.  in some, god is portrayed as a father, in others, as a mother.  when god is a father, he is said to be elsewhere.  when god is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

(this novel is filled with random facts that shed light on the narrator's life. however, when i related to this to myself, it rings true for those raised by a single mother.)

my very educated mother just served us noodles.  this is the mnemonic they give her to remember the left of the planets.

(i can't recall how i learned this, but i love subtle dig at gender roles!)

researchers looked at magnetic resonance images of the brain of people who described themselves as newly in love.  they were shown a photograph of their beliefs while their brains were scanned for activity.  the scan showed the same reward systems being activated as in the brains of addicts given a drug.

(ke$ha was right, your love is a drug.)

this novel is filled with little facts that have deeper meaning for the story, which i adored.  i really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it.  it reminded me of one of my favorite novels, the lover's dictionary.

the descendants. kaui hart hemmings.

i picked up kaui hart hemmings' "the descendants" at the beale library book sale for $1.  i am not one for movie cover books but figured for a $1, i'll give it a go. i am glad i did.

i didn't see "the descendants" the movie in theaters but i wanted to, especially after all of the awards it won.  i did see it a couple of weeks ago and loved it.  i was surprised by how sad it was, i was in tears at the end.  the trailer was misleading making it seem like a comedic drama with clooney running to his friends house and the little sister in the older sister's underwear.  but it wasn't.  but it was still a wonderful movie and i couldn't wait to read the book.

and of course the book did not disappoint.  it gave more depth to the story and characters but the movie was a great adaption and did the book justice.  i will add that i enjoyed the added bonus of reading it in george clooney's voice since he played matt king.  and random little note, loved how in the book, scottie wore a mrs. clooney shirt which matt did not understand.  i wish they put that in the movie.

of course like any book turned film, i enjoyed the book more, primarily because i enjoyed king's narrative.  he was witty, wise, and utterly clueless at time about how to get his life together.  he was so honest about life, family and love that his faults were endearing instead of tragic.  i enjoyed reading about his dealing with his daughters.  i'm not parent but it must difficult to raise kids today.  i found it sweet yet comedic    how he read up on the blogs and googled for the best child-rearing/dealing with teens methods.  i can imagine myself doing this as a parent and hope that most parents do because let's face it, all parents are clueless.  kids don't come with instruction manuals. he wanted to give his daughters the best and though his methods were odd ie the banana game, letting alex smoke and teaching scottie how to flip off people; he wasn't the worst parent or guardian, i have ever read about. 

 

though i will add that i was worried about scottie.  she just seemed too mature for her age.  i don't know if it was due to her older sister alex or the fact that kids nowadays are exposed to too much sex.  but i was shocked by what came out of her mouth.   i have a 10 year old brother and can not imagine him knowing or saying anything that scottie did.  it was sad that she though she was 10, she wasn't really a child.  i also worried about scottie's desperation for a good story.  her man-o-war story was unbelievable and scary, but then again she had a mother that demanded attention and can lead one to be delusional about life.  i felt bad but was grateful that matt was on track to giving her a more stable environment.

a character i liked more in the books was sid.  i did enjoy reading about his stoner philosophic ramblings in the car but there was a lot more depth to him than in the movie.  we discover that though his father had died he saw it as a blessing because his father had molested his friend.  his ability to forgive his dead father is one of the factors that helps matt forgive his wife for cheating.  even as young as he is, he understands you can't hate the dead but you also can not be ignorant of how they really were.   as a result, in the novel, it is sid that contacts brian's wife to tell her what happen.

it's interesting because though he seemed like silly stoner kid, sid really did help matt through all of this tough time.  what an unlikely source for wisdom on life and death but he provided it.

in the end, matt forgave his wife for her infidelity and was ready to begin a new chapter with his daughters.  i won't go into anything more because hopefully you have seen the movie.  if not, you should and definitely check out the book.

i will add this novel totally made me wish i was in hawaii.  it also gave me a craving for malasadas.  

   

the last tycoon. f. scott fitzgerald. (115)

i have read all of f. scott's fitzgerald's novels with the exception of "the last tycoon".  i skipped it because it was published posthumously.  novels that are published after an author's death seem incomplete to me.  sure there are notes and outlines that can help complete it but what if while the author was writing a new idea struck him/her than those outlines and notes would be pointless.  a novel should have the author's stamp of approval before it is released to the world.  

however, after reading nancy milford's "zelda", i decided to give in and read "the last tycoon".  while reading "zelda" i realized that all of fitzgerald's novels are pretty much autobiographies so i needed to read "the last tycoon" to get a glimpse into his life when he was in hollywood and zelda was institutionalized.  also milford mentioned that the love interest in "the last tycoon" was not based on zelda but fitzgerald's mistress at the time, sheliah graham.  due to this i felt i had to read fitzgerald take on his affair.  in addition to this it would also help give some background for my next fitzgerald read "beautiful fools" a novel by r. clifton spargo about a trip scott and zelda.  the trip takes place during the time period scott was living in hollywood and graham was his mistress.

though zelda did not know of graham, she knew kathleen was not modeled after her, as all of the previous fitzgerald female characters had been.  milford explained in her book that zelda did not like the heroine of "the last tycoon", kathleen.  and maybe all of my recent zelda reading has made me biased but i also did not like kathleen.  kathleen was unworthy of stahr's love, there was no piazza or wow to her other than her resemblance to his dead wife, minna.  oddly enough, milford explained that graham had a striking resemblance to zelda.  (i will expand on this in a bit).  there seemed to be no real chemistry between stahr and kathleen other than a physical attraction.  also kathleen seemed to have no backbone or heart, she didn't read as mysterious but a coward.   i didn't like how she kept her engagement a secret from stahr. i felt like  she played with stahr's emotions because she liked being in proximity to power.  the narrator explained how kathleen was "un-hollywood" but she still played games like she was part of the hollywood set.  kathleen was also a bit of a bore, she had relationships with interesting men but was not interesting herself.  maybe fitzgerald would have developed her more but as kathleen is, she does not deserve to be the object of stahr's affection.

however, if you read "the last tycoon" as autobiographical than the lack of actual chemistry between stahr and kathleen is a good thing because it demonstrated that fitzgerald's love for graham was superficial.  in the novel, stahr is a widow and his initial attraction to kathleen is because she looked like his dead wife.  as mentioned before, in real life graham looked like zelda, though zelda was not dead, her institutionalization must have felt like her death to fitzgerald.  stahr does not seem to be in love with kathleen but rather with the sentiment that she arose in him based one her likeness to minna.  it must have been the same for fitzgerald and graham.  as shown in milford's book, zelda's institualtionalizations was a burden on fitzgerald but he still loved her.  and though i do not condone fitzgerald's infidelity, i do not think he really loved graham.  i think she was a placeholder for his actual feelings for zelda, just as kathleen was for minna.  fitzgerald like stahr was not content with life and grasped onto a girl to hopefully find fulfillment.  even more odd, fitzgerald died without resolving his novel just like stahr died so we never get a resolution on his affair with kathleen.  however, i am going to say that stahr and kathleen's relationship would have amounted to nothing because like zelda for scott, minna was stahr's true love.  (i can and will admit that my interpretation of stahr's superficial love for kathleen is my need to have scott and zelda be the true love i think of it as, i mean i know they were a mess but there was something magical about them.)

"the last tycoon" also focused on hollywood and it's politics, not only in terms of the country (their is talk anout who is "red") but also within studios.  it was interesting to read about it though i didn't find it completely enthralling.  i also liked the narrator, cecilia, she reminded me of nick from "the great gatsby" both have an endearing naivety to them though cecilia does have a bit of a conniving streak.  

i also enjoyed reading the notes f. scott fitzgerald left for it.  it's amazing to see all the prework that goes into writing a novel.  i was shocked that he gave himself a word limit.  he wanted to keep it short like "the great gatsby".  i also loved how his characters have such depth backgrounds though we might not be shown all of it, fitzgerald at least saw them as a complete person.

i do wish fitzgerald was able to finish it.  i am not sure it would have been on the level of "the great gatsby" but i think not would have made for an excellent film.  one was made in 62, i think, i want to see it but it probably would have been better if it was based on a completed novel,

this is how you lose her. junot diaz (86)

i wanted "this is how you lose her" to be my last book of 2012 but it ended up being my first book of 2013.

this has been on my radar since september, i loved "the brief and wondrous life of oscar wao" and so debated buying this book or checking it out. i went with the later.

"this is how you lose her" is a collection of stores in that demonstrate how you can lose a girlfriend, wife, fiancée, lover, by simply following the example of narrator, yunior. the last story is actually titled "the cheater's guide to love" in which he gives instructions on how to royally fuck up your life after cheating on your fiancee. there is also some random story from the perspective of a woman, yasmin, who worked in a hospital laundry room and the lover of a married man. i'm not sure why it was included other than the fact that she and yunior are both dominican. (maybe its to show the perspective of the "other" woman.)

the stories are tales of yunior's lovers and how their romances left him with a brokenheart. and before you pity him please note that his love life always went to shit because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants! the pendejo was always cheating! (if my language was too vulgar for your right now you might want to skip to book.) his lovers blamed his infidelity on his heritage. dominicanos are cheaters, his cheating was genetic; his father, his brother and he were all sucios (i googled and according to various sites it means a man who treats women poorly, a dirty man, sinful). though genetic may be the wrong word, it's more cultural, i mean stereotypes have some starting point. i don't know any dominicanos, so can not deny or verify this but all of the women avoid yunior like the plague, simply based on his race. but let's be honest, they reason they cheated most likely had to do with the fact that they are men.

we all know the whole men need to spread their seed.  but i have to add that women are not the better sex by default.  and the women of these stories do their fair share of cheating too.  i mean it does take two to tango when it comes to having an affair.  but in addition to that, they also use men for their money.  yunior's older brother gets screwed over by a woman who married him than took off with his money and his car after he died from cancer.  (now that is one fucked up bitch.)  yunior's best friend was swindled into believing he fathered a son in the dominican republic.  even yunior gets suckered into paying bills when he thinks he's a baby daddy.  it's horrible but kinda understandable considered they did it to provide for their children.

but back to the cheating.  i do not understand infidelity but at the same time i don't understand commitment. though i have to admit that i have tried to homewreck twice in my life though neither attempts were successful. plus one was in high school so it doesn't really count. i remember reading in this novel, "love monkey" that it was easier to get someone already in a relationship to fall in love with you because you only had to be better than that one person, their partner versus single people where you have to be better than all the infinite possibilities of partners in the world. which i found to be some good logic. but cheating is still wrong. and before you think i am throwing stones from a glass house, i never did anything with the people i was trying to homewreck, and wouldn't have until they broke up with their girlfriends.

the problem i have with cheating is the lying. i understand that love is finite, forever is a long time to love someone.  i mean even god has his off day with mankind. and yes it is hurtful to discover that someone has fallen out of "love" with you and in with someone else. but it's better to know about it versus having someone cheat and lie to you before it is exposed. it's bad enough knowing that you are unloveable why add extra lies on top of it. and yes, my reactions to cheating is all theoretical, i have never had to deal with a cheating partner. i have had to deal with a cheating stepparent, and was okay when i found out my stepdad was cheating on my mom. i wasn't hurt but then again never really loved him as a father in the first place. (this may sound harsh but when your first dad screws you over, you have low expectations for any other man that tries to follow suit). nor was i willing to forgive him, and found my mother stupid (this might sound harsh but really is the best adjective) for attempting to mend things. my view on the cheating is that once you cheat you are unworthy of my love, and i will no longer give it to you.  and for those who think, but s/he was my soulmate, that that is bs too because a soulmate would never cheat on you.  don't cheat people, have respect for your former lover and let them know what is going on. and if you are looking for a fling than your ass shouldn't have committed in the first place because you obviously are not ready for it.

so this is going to sound really harsh but after looking at junot diaz's photo on the inside cover, i can't imagine anyone wanting to cheat with him.  in my world, only hot people cheat, because how could one person, let alone two people want to sleep with an ugly?  btw, he's not ugly, just not my time.  i mean i guess i would sleep with him because i enjoy his writing.  i love his style of writing.  it's like elevated street talk, filled with pop cultural references, spanish slang, geek speak and clever imagery.  one of my favorite lines was "has a mouth like unswept glass when you least expect it she cuts you." it's a perfect description of those bitches that know how to cut your down just with their words.

with all of this great imagery, of course his stories are great (well sad because it's all about how he fucked up his love lives)  but as i read his stories, they felt way too autobiographical.  i mean i get that most of the time writers write about what they know best, themselves, but in this case, it's seems as if this works are really just his life and he changed names.  i felt the same way when i read "the brief wondrous life of oscar wao", oscar wao just him growing up.  it felt like i was reading a diary versus a novel.  however that could just be a testament to his writing, that it's so raw and real that you can't imagine it being made up.  so i guess kudos to him for making his stories so realistic.  (random digression:  but the premise of this book reminded me of a book, i wanted to write about my college years called "the asshole magnet" about how i attracted nothing about assholes in college.)

and in this new light, i highly recommend it, (i would have recommended it regardless, it's just that as i read i was like really dude this is just your life!).  it was a great start to my new year of reading, i just hope it does not foreshadow the kind of year my love life will have.