Book 48: It Was the War of the Trenches

It Was the War of the Trenches
Jacques Tardi

The First World War may be largely forgotten in the United States, but it still looms large over the French mind, or at least the mind of graphic novelist Jacques Tardi, whose brutal, stark It Was the War of the Trenches explores the plight of those suffering in the madness of the French trenches throughout the war. The nonlinear narrative is effectively composed of several brief stories, several only a few panels long and many occasionally interconnected through layers of association. Tardi mixes narrative voice and style both in the text and in his visual language, with wordy panels often accompanied by a run of silent, evocative panels, and though he jumps around in time, location, and theme, any incoherence seems born of the utter confusion and nihilism the war itself brought to western Europe and to the world. Each of the stories is personal, haunting, and ultimately effective, often told through reminiscences, though many are tragically broken by an omniscient voice offering details of the previous narrator's death. The tales are stark and often intoned in a dry manner, as devoid of emotion as the faces who offer them. These faces, poised between cartoons and more complex portraits, stare blankly ahead, offering a muted despair and haunting air of nonchalance to the reader, as a grayscale palette effectively sets the tone for a bleak, depressing conflict. The author intrudes occasionally with overtly political comments, but even these could plausibly come directly from his soldiers themselves, forced to fight in a war they never even believed in and facing execution for a display of the far-too-sane survival instinct. Both authors and characters are appalled at the circumstances of the war, yet trapped in a mess of illogical and inhumane decisions, the tragedy of war invading every line of every panel.

Tardi's drawings are crisp, but often portray a kind of confusion, a jumble of shell holes and barbed wire strewn across a desolate landscape, often punctured by impressionistic scenes of newly exploded, flying dirt, motion often appearing in brief bursts, perhaps in only one of the three large horizontal panels that dominate the book's pages. Yet the photographic quality of the work, sparse though it is, somehow heightens the emotion of the moment, allowing the story to feel as stagnant as the western front became. Transitions are scarce but never missed, as Tardi glides from one experience to another, the soldiers given names and acting in very specific scenes yet still retaining an everyman quality, representing the millions of tragedies of the war without overwrought moralizing or dehumanizing generalities. These are very human, very sincere stories, all the more tragic when played against a relentlessly gray landscape and with the futile desire to escape what readers know to be almost certain death, often delivered heavily in a single, brutal panel. Tardi knows how to render the bleak scenes of war, utilizing just enough gruesome details to be effective while focusing most of his imagery on the people and on the front; the book is never graphic for its own sake, and instead uses those panels sparingly, accenting the illustration of war as hell rather than composing it alone. It Was the War of the Trenches is a complete package, not quite a collection of short stories but also not a history of the war; instead, it is a brilliantly composed meditation on the horror of the First World War, at once intensely emotional and brutally cold and removed.

Grade: A

Book 47: Steel and Other Stories

Steel and Other Stories
Richard Matheson

I often find short story collections fairly hit-and-miss, with a few gems, a few clunkers, and a bunch of stories that fall contentedly among the middle. This collection, however, seems to fall almost entirely within the realm of mediocrity, with nothing glaringly terrible but only a few hints of magic. The story selection seems a bit uneven and, at times, downright odd; while the collection displays Matheson's remarkable range with convincing attempts at science fiction, fantasy, and westerns, each morsel appears suddenly, and the effect can be a bit jarring when any two offerings are read in sequence without a break. Again, however, the failure is only partial, and the collection's last story, "Window of Time," while a bit awkward in itself, provides a fitting ending, tackling the emotional state of a man traveling through a window of time to his younger self. This kind of introspection pops up occasionally throughout the collection, most notably perhaps in "Steel" and rather frustratingly in "Dear Diary," which has an interesting core concept but which plays it as a joke rather than exploring its potential as a penetrating glance at contentment and desire. The twin themes are similarly dealt with at only a surface level in most other stories, with the exception being "Descent," an absolutely brilliant story that blows the remainder completely out of the water, excelling in ways that the other serious tales do not and achieving a complex emotional effect while taking a slightly different tack than the reader might expect. Here the simple language displays despite its simple fashion a complex longing, and a simple portrait expands to consider some elements of what makes humanity tick- all without desperate moralizing or the distinct thuds of the Obvious Hammer. The story, though brief, is achingly complete despite the plot's seeming irresolution, offering but requiring only few specific details, appropriately chosen and well-deployed.

Much of the collection, however, appears to consist of elaborate jokes- amusing, sure, but somehow pedestrian and often failing to achieve any kind of depth or greater meaning. While Matheson mercifully avoids the overt moralizing that would seem appropriate in a story such as "To Fit the Crime," it feels nonetheless a bit empty and fleeting, though cute. "The Wedding" and "The Splendid Source" suffer from the same ailments, with the former offering a tantalizing hint of meaning or even deeper humor, but sadly failing to capitalize on its own potential; the latter plays as a farce, but the satire misses the mark and the story just kind of exists, memorable and with some chuckle-inducing puns but sadly without actual substance. The most infuriating of these half-realized visions is "The Conqueror," an otherwise convincing western that seemingly aims to tackle the role of carpetbaggers in the Wild West, but which falls flat as an otherwise intriguing and well-written story abruptly ends in an entirely expected manner, rather than attempting a character study or even a particularly thrilling climax. The disappointment is almost palpable, particularly when other stories such as "The Doll That Does Everything" and "Lemmings" can come so close to actually exploring a theme, only to wade off into the expected and retain a surface-only level of interest. Aside from "The Descent," the only one that comes close is "A Visit to Santa Claus," which is well-constructed, offers unexpected plot twists, and maintains an effective air of clouded suspense until the expected, yet strangely effective, ending. Likewise, "Dr. Morton's Folly" demonstrates that even the sillier stories, meant to be digested quickly and only on a most basic level, can be filling without being base, a mark most often missed here. Much in a similar way, the majority of Matheson's stories entertain but fail to enthrall, the science fiction satisfying but rarely revealing, and Steel and Other Stories usually close to, but not quite hitting, the mark.

Grade: B

Book 46: Nothing to Envy

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Barbara Demick

Oral histories are, of course, always to be somewhat suspect, but in a country as paranoid and aggressively secretive as North Korea, they may be the only way to even come close to a realistic depiction of the country. The results, as presented in journalist Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy, are indeed grim as expected and, in some ways, far worse. It is easy for Americans to presume that the country is full of automatons who praise the Dear Leader(s) with every ounce of sincerity, but these stark accounts will force readers to re-assess their own preconceived notions of life in the oppressive dictatorship. Though these stories, which originate from defectors, naturally represent the viewpoints of those who grew disillusioned with the regime, Demick approaches her task with an eye toward journalistic credibility, and for the most part avoids sensationalism. The account, based on the experiences of six defectors now living in South Korea, does rely heavily on an elementary human interest angle, but it is hard to find true fault in this technique when the story concentrates on a famine that ravished its characters' families and the homeland they show a lingering affection for. More importantly, Demick's eye for tenderness, though occasionally deployed with an unnecessarily heavy hand, forces readers to put themselves into her subjects' positions, to peer into their lives and to realize that, even for a society relentlessly pounded with brainwashing propaganda and other stuff of Orwellian nightmares, there are simple human emotions like hunger, skepticism, and love. It is no accident that the main story here revolves around two lovers pursuing a romance made impossible by the strictures of society but enabled by the persistent blackouts simultaneously grinding the economy to a halt and allowing the lovers to maintain the requisite level of secrecy and concealment.

Just like the line that explores this arrangement- and fiercely challenges Americans' convenient ability to dehumanize the residents of the country- there are points in the story where the raw emotion overpowers the often pedestrian prose and unnecessarily tangled narrative arcs. Though their stories through time more or less collectively, jumps between them are frequently jarring, offered with no transitions, leaving readers suddenly immersed in only vaguely familiar waters, reacquainted only after some vital points of the story have been missed. Likewise, some of Demick's prose reads in a stunted, simple-sentence, simple-sentence cadence that quickly becomes tiresome, though there are moments of deft insight that break through the tedium. For all its simplicity, the prose does allow the story to shine through nearly unimpeded, and what a story it is, told with compassion and bolstered by incidental information and history that, while sometimes awkwardly located, helps flesh out North Korea from both bird's eye and street-level views. Nothing to Envy is a moving and detailed account of life in a seemingly impenetrable land, hampered occasionally by slight authorial missteps but retaining an insightful humanity throughout.

Grade: A-

Book 45: The Amber Spyglass

The Amber Spyglass
Philip Pullman

Alas, the momentum begun within The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife, interrupted as it is by sometimes botched love stories and wanderings, comes to a halt in the beginning of the final His Dark Materials book, The Amber Spyglass, which seems to suffer from a kind of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows syndrome, wherein the characters wander around in the woods awaiting the plot to advance. Though the second installment, like the first, ended with a cliffhanger, Pullman is again unable to adequately recover the thread of the plot, and flails around with his main characters either encountering convenient plot device characters who can conveniently fill in the missing pieces of the books' philosophical core or sleeping endlessly in a cave. And while, yes, Lyra oscillates between annoying and charmingly brave, to have her doing nothing is a bit maddening, particularly when the other stories of import move at similarly glacial paces. This is a shame, because the story is well-plotted, if a bit transparently anti-religious even for the most fervent of atheists, and does have philosophical depth, making some interesting points if blatantly so and unabashedly attacking the role religion plays in human affairs. Pullman is clearly full of interesting ideas, but seems to be somewhat lacking in his prose creation, or consistency, or even in bringing these elements together. Regardless, The Amber Spyglass satisfies overall on a page-turning basis, even if it takes a while to really get going, and though pivotal battle scenes are related in jumbled confusion, the adventure will keep readers hooked through the end, even if the character development is, again, sorely lacking. An unsatisfying, unconvincing conclusion mars an immediately preceding moment of heartfelt honesty that shines through and forgives much of Pullman's authorial missteps, but The Amber Spyglass is a perfectly adequate final volume in a highly entertaining, surprisingly addictive, and competently, if not wonderfully, written series.

Grade: B+

Book 44: The Subtle Knife

The Subtle Knife
Philip Pullman

Though The Golden Compass, the inaugural offering in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, ended with a cliffhanger (nearly literally), The Subtle Knife picks up the strains of the story in a different world altogether, embodying the central literary conflict within this book. Though all is explained as Pullman's heretofore fantasy story becomes a work of science fiction, the switch is handled a bit clumsily and the book seems to grope a bit in the dark before finally finding its footing, though it is simultaneously evident throughout that Pullman does have a plan. The story itself, though a bit of a departure from the first novel and occasionally seeming jumbled, plays out predictably enough, offering more surprises in its specific locations, fantastic elements, and philosophy, if not its characters, who are unconvincingly pulled through a familiar hate-to-love arc. Despite the frequent clunkiness of Lyra and newcomer Will's relationship, however, Pullman does achieve a few moments of subtle clarity, particularly when the pair come to realize the similarities between their experiences; the effect is surprisingly powerful in a series otherwise plagued with the Obvious Hammer in all of its facets. Though the Hammer makes its frequent cameos, however, some elements of the story are unexpected, such as a modern science angle that oscillates between being cute and insightful, and Pullman's imagination more than makes up for his lack of serious literary talent. The book, like its predecessor, certainly has many flaws, but it is nonetheless endlessly fascinating and will captivate all but the pickiest of readers. The characters, narrative, and scenery rise above the sufficient prose and predictable plotting, and when the book does connect to the overall narrative of the His Dark Materials series, it provides a nice centerpiece, neatly setting up several elements of the third book while explaining and expanding upon confusing pieces of the first. The Subtle Knife is far from a great book, but it is a wonderful, fast-paced read.

Grade: B+

Book 43: The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass
Philip Pullman

This book presents a conundrum for me, and not just whether it should properly be termed science fiction or fantasy; rather, it was one of those books whose writing left a bit to be desired, yet became immediately engrossing that it proved nearly impossible to put down. Though Pullman throws readers unapologetically and at once into his fantasy world, its revelations are seldom overwhelmingly disarming. Instead, he throws a world-explaining mystery into the heart of the plot, and while his revelations could be more slick and better-timed, they are fascinating nonetheless and draw readers into a plot that otherwise seems like a normal coming-of-age-discovery-type-deal. And while he is, again, far from subtle in his clearly anti-Church approach to knowledge and humanity, he at least presents a compelling case, though fans of autocratic strangleholds on free speech and thought may not appreciate his thinly veiled disdain. Alongside this backdrop of a familiar, yet clearly distinct world, Pullman keeps the plot reasonably unchallenging yet oddly compelling, complete with a few too many acts of deus-ex-machina that are almost justified by some aspects of the Big Reveal. He also manages to work in some nice references to the real world's more accepted fantastic creatures, such as witches, and adds in other sly nods to our shared reality. Despite his penchant for over-writing and conveniently explaining huge plot points with a wink and a carefully-overheard, improbably detailed speech (and this from an occasionally omniscient narrator, to boot), he can also be quite effective and, at times, downright disturbing. Though the complete implications of the book's dæmons aren't quite set at this point in the trilogy, the idea of rendering them from their humans is horrifying, conveyed with an unlikely subtlety. The Golden Compass, then, isn't terribly well-written but, despite awkward plot revelations, sometimes over-wrought prose, and a mostly unlikable main character, it does have an intriguing, if frequently transparent, ideology behind it and makes for compelling and adventuresome reading.

Grade: B+

Book 42: Atlantic

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
Simon Winchester

I picked this up both based on the author's reputation and on my own belief that it would be a nice, well-written history of the remarkable Atlantic Ocean from a number of different perspectives and, to some extent, that's what Simon Winchester delivers in Atlantic. To another, however, he talks about this bit without actually defining what it is about the Atlantic Ocean that makes it, well, the Atlantic and not the Pacific or Indian or either of the polar seas; his text is littered throughout with references to a kind of Atlantic-ness, but never once does he address this contention, and the book suffers, condemned to flail rather than cohere. Without the appearance of this much-needed overarching theme, the chapters, arranged in a somewhat bizarre homage to Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" speech (no, really) make little sense in relation to each other and even less within themselves. The idea of casting the waters as a being with several stages of life is less clever than cutesy, and while grouping developments such as exploration, war, and environmentalism into their own chapters makes sense, the cuts Winchester makes between them are divisive, and the individual parts are never allowed to coalesce into a single, intricate picture. He misses the ocean for the individual molecules of di-hydrogen monoxide. Even these, however, frequently become misplaced, and the book is littered with irrelevant anecdotes and irredeemably uninteresting, disruptive, and downright pointless footnotes that often have nothing at all to do with the subject at hand.

A lack of greater strategic planning is evident on a paragraph-by-paragraph level, as well, as the author seems to introduce an idea only to discard it entirely after the next indent, without so much as a line break or, heaven forbid, three dividing asterisks. All of this makes the book slightly maddening before its information is even digested, and repetition, likely borne of the deceptively haphazard organizational scheme, makes the book even more cumbersome. With all of this said, however, the book isn't all bad; it certainly contains quite a lot of interesting, if not entirely riveting, information, and Winchester does touch on several different aspects of life in, around, and on this mighty ocean. For all its faults, the book has a sense of grandiose perspective, and when the author turns his attentions to geology or the effects of modern industrialism, this sense of magnitude helps him create a persuasive argument for respect; it is also quite evident that this is, fundamentally, a love story between man and water.

Unfortunately, however, these pure instincts are also corrupted throughout the text, which is woefully anglocentric. While it seems a reasonable bet that the reason the Atlantic so captivates our intrepid author and, indeed, his intended audience, is the fact that European and North American countries (currently) exert such international prowess, there seems little excuse to ignore Africa when it isn't, you know, spawning civilization or, more criminally, the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas when Great Britain isn't fighting to retain that shadow of its former empire cast in the Falkland Islands. Even worse, he makes assertions that are patently untrue and which offended even my far-from-delicate sensibilities; at one point, Winchester seriously suggests- no, asserts- that the Atlantic was the first of the world's oceans to be crossed. This is mind-numbingly stupid at its very best, as the Pacific Islands were discovered, explored, and settled long before Columbus. And it is not only this galling lapse that betrays a myopic devotion to the Atlantic that hampers Winchester's ode and actually works to diminish the Atlantic as readers frantically search to undermine the author's interminable single-mindedness. Here, then, is a case of tragically wasted potential, a book that I wanted to be engrossed by but which only served to frustrate and actively foil my attempts to like or engage with it. There is good information here, to be sure; there are excellent stories, and despite Winchester's mishandling, the idea of telling the story of the Atlantic as a, or perhaps even the, formative ocean of the modern world remains compelling. It's just a shame that Atlantic can't quite do the subject justice.

Grade: C+

Book 41: Wishful Drinking

Wishful Drinking
Carrie Fisher

After spending a month on the battlefields of the Civil War and enjoying a rip-roaring ride through the fanciful catacombs of Bookholm, I figured it was time for something of a different, er, caliber: the celebrity memoir! And after finishing the Star Wars star's look at her own inner turmoil, I find myself in two minds; but first, a word of warning. If you've seen the stage show, there isn't much that's new in the book, and unfortunately the oral nature of the original work comes through clearly; so clearly, in fact, that many of the jokes fall flat because the comedic timing peculiar to live performance loses its pace in print. Within the book, this has the effect of making the jokes come by at such a rapid pace that they are often difficult to properly digest before another bombardment begins. It's a shame, too, because the material is often very, very funny, as Fisher pokes fun at her star-crossed, substance-fueled life with remarkable honesty, though she does tend to lose the plot occasionally and the last few chapters are a confusing jumble of anecdotes rather than a deliberate narrative. Regardless, however, the book is a lot of fun; there may not be anything earth-shattering within, but for a tell-all celebrity memoir the book is a light and fun read, a refreshing change of pace from more calculated moves. After all, as Fisher says, if life wasn't funny, it would just be true. Wishful Drinking is, despite some missteps, funny, and basically accomplishes what it sets out to do without any particular exceptionality.

Grade: B+

Book 40: The City of Dreaming Books

The City of Dreaming Books
Walter Moers

There are books, the rare few, that so sharply and irrevocably shape our worldview that we can rightly say we were not the same person at page 1 that emerged, forever changed, on the other side of the back cover. The City of Dreaming Books is not that book; nor, dear readers, do I think it aspires to be. This is a book that is unapologetically and relentlessly fun, a true joy to read that only rarely becomes entangled in its own cleverness, a book that can take willing readers along for a hilarious and thrilling ride while offering just a bit of depth behind its otherwise trivial pursuits. The plot itself, along with the fantastic setting and the characters that populate it, is filled beyond the brim with fantasy clichés and tropes that transcend genre, and sometimes it can be difficult to see the distinction between Moers playing with these ideas and relying too heavily on them. The delightfully named Optimus Yarnspinner, a budding author and narrator of this tale, receives some lovely advice from his authorial godfather (on his deathbed, naturally) about the lovely cliffhanger created by a mentor imparting advice while on his deathbed, only to have that same situation arise, overtly commented upon by Yarnspinner himself, at a pivotal point in the novel. The whole thing is certainly well executed, and the joke enjoys a long, effective setup, but readers still leave with a clichéd deathbed hangover, however metafictional it has become in the author’s hands. Self-awareness, then, becomes the book’s greatest strength but also ultimately represents its most glaring weakness; it’s smart, but it may be too smart, too cheeky, to really be effective. The book’s many anagrams are, for example, occasionally executed with a stroke of sheer brilliance (see Perla la Gadeon’s hilarious pastiche of “The Bells” or Gramerta Climelth’s Gone with the Tornado), but lengthy lists of cleverly-named authors very perilously tread the line between amusing and indulgent.

This tendency toward the overwrought does not, strangely, prevent the book from being fun. Though some plot threads get inexplicably dropped at various points within the story, the novel just barely manages to hang together, and though the ride is predictable its fundamental silliness allows willing readers to sit back and, much like Yarnspinner, be carried along for the ride. There may be a suspension of serious literary criticism that must accompany the traditional suspension of disbelief, but readers willing to provide Moers the benefit of the doubt will be richly rewarded. Some of the recycled ideas in the book also shine with a ripe freshness, as his Fearsome Booklings become much more than a borrowed extension of Bradbury’s famous ending to Fahrenheit 451- along with memorizing the works of famous authors, they absorb the relevant personality traits, subtly asking deep questions about literature disguised as unimpeachably lovely little characters. This, too, is an overriding theme throughout the book, a tension between seriousness and play, between a loving satire of the literary world and serious critique of humanity’s relationship with art. The idea of long-buried tomes dreaming of their resurrection is coupled with the terrifying feats of the often-illiterate Bookhunters, bounty hunters for a city absolutely obsessed with literature.

These ideas, and more, prove that there are some deep philosophical underpinnings to the work, but the extent to which they are explored can easily be debated, as they are often buried under a mess of overly-polished humor or lost amongst a tangled web of side-plots. Then too there is the plot’s utter predictability, which can become as wearing as it is playful (a character endowed with divination showing up at precisely the right moment is either a hilarious subversion of the deus ex machina or an unoriginal re-hashing of it), and the swashbuckling plot becomes inexplicably boring even in the midst of rapid-fire action. It’s hard to gauge what this book may be going for either at any given moment or as a whole, but overall the experience is a good one, buoyed by a plethora of appropriate cartoons and a stunning use of immersive illustration. It is not a book for all readers or for all moods, but it does offer a rip-roaring getaway plan from the humdrum- clichés and all, it is anything but boring. The City of Dreaming Books may not permanently change your life, but it will likely improve the time you spend reading it.

Grade: A

Book 39: The Last Full Measure

The Last Full Measure
Jeff Shaara

From Gettysburg to Appomattox (and a slight ways beyond), thus concludes the Shaaras' Civil War trilogy, and the younger of the pair has penned a fitting conclusion, though overshadowed by its predecessor. Because, by now, the general idea of the series is familiar, and because the book follows successfully enough the example of its predecessors, there is little to add. This particular installment of the series displays many of the problems evinced in its opener; that is, the timeline is unevenly spaced and occasionally poorly marked, with the additional frustration of misplaced maps appearing far before, or slightly after, their optimal position with regard to the text. This can make everything a bit confusing for non-Civil War aficionados, but the in-depth portraiture continues throughout the novel, and Shaara truly excels when channeling the emotions of Robert E. Lee as his army inevitably embarks on a disastrous final cat-and-mouse chase across central Virginia. This is some of the most effective, riveting, and moving characterization in a series who takes personalization as its, well, point, and because of this the novel is one of the most effective looks at the final excruciating days of an excruciating conflict. That said, however, there are some grammatical quirks that mar Shaara's emotional achievements. His over-use of ellipses is only rarely effective and more often simply becomes…stunting, as does the unfortunate application of "gotcha" gimmicks (on the day of his death, Lincoln makes a point of telling Grant he's going to the theater- cute, but poorly executed). The deliberation this evokes is even more striking in contrast to the author's near-religious avoidance of the use of "and" when describing several actions undertaken by a person. The effect can cause the action to become unnecessarily jumbled and, at its worst, makes the writer seem inexperienced and can dull the reader's ability to clearly picture what is taking place. This, then, is the embodiment of the crucial contradiction within the series: while it so clearly portrays character and emotion, it still must rely on action, and Jeff Shaara's contributions miss some crucial pacing both within the technical aspects of the prose and across the larger movements of the army. Regardless, however, the Shaaras' Civil War series is a remarkable achievement, and in both its strengths and its flaws, The Last Full Measure creates a fitting conclusion and solidifies the books as an important tribute to those who witnessed the horrors of the nation's worst days.

Grade: A-