book club: 1Q84, gone girl, let's pretend this never happened, wild

This is will be my first installment under tags “Book Club.” This is my blog version of Reading Rainbow. I am in a book club and we call it the Lazy Book Club, LBC for short. I love my book club because just as the title suggests, it is lazy. It’s nice if you read the book, but it is not a requirement to attend. I personally like books for book clubs that are 200 pages or less, but I can’t get my way all the time. These posts will contain books I have read or currently reading either through book club or on my own and give you my half-assed critique.  

I like to typically read one audio book and one regular book at the same time. I’m a member of Audibles (which is fantastic) and I’ve come to love audio books as much as I do reading regular books. I do find them to be a different experience.

Here are some books I’ve read in the last couple of months and why I think you should or should not read them ('cuz my opinion is money and you should accept it).

1Q84

Haruki Murakami

Audio book

I don’t mean this to be an insult (and I may sound like an ignorant American) but the Japanese come up with really weird but kind of really awesome shit. Just watch any anime (like Vampire Hunter D or Spirited Away). Those animes geared towards adults always leave me with a weird impression but they definitely make a big impression because I can’t get the stories out of my head. That is how I feel about this book. I digested this via audio book (all 46 hrs and 50 min of it. It was originally published in three volumes). This book is told mostly by two characters, Amame and Tengo. They have separate stories that eventually merge. Amame is an assassin who loves sex and Tengo is a math professor who helps a strange teenage girl write a novel that becomes successful and turns out to cause a lot of problems. Without giving away too much this book involves: religion, sex, a parallel universe, murder, cults and at the center of it is a love story. I would not categorize this book as Sci-Fi or fantasy but it does have elements of both. I don’t read a lot of Japanese literature. Their culture and way of thinking is so foreign to me, I am intrigued. I highly recommend this book.

Note on the audiobook: At the end of the audio book there’s a bonus interview with the translators of the original book and their thought process. I thought it was fascinating to hear how they translated the book from Japanese to English and making sure nothing was lost in translation.

Gone Girl

Gillian Flyn

Book

This is one of those best-sellers and is on every popular magazine or newspaper’s current top ten lists. I don’t have much to say about this book except that I enjoyed it. This book is like watching 48 Hour Mystery or a Lifetime Movie and who doesn’t love watching those! This book isn’t as complex or the characters as well developed as that of 1Q84, but once I hit the first twist in the book, I had a hard time putting it down. I won’t spoil it for you but I will say this: The characters are batshit crazy – yes both of them.

Let’s Pretend this Never Happened

Jenny Lawson

Book

This was the most recent book for my LBC and it was a laugh out loud book. I guess the author was some blogger who decided to write a book because she comes from a crazy-ass family and lived in a rural town. She has great stories and one involving raccoon pets in 80’s pajamas with photos to prove it. The only downside of this book for me is that I think it’s too long. I think 300 pages for an autobiography is too long unless you are someone like Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. or even Hitler. Also one of the downsides of this book for me is that I can only digest so much of it in one sitting before I got sick of listening to her voice (her literary voice). It’s like hanging out with your funny friend who you love listening to but after an entire day with them you need a little break. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I picked up the book again, I literally laughed out loud when I read. It’s an easy, fun, light hearted read.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed

Audio book

Another LBC book and I think this book is ok. When I first started reading it, I hated it. In fact, I kind of hated it most of the time. I am automatically put off by books where the characters are sad for no apparent reason so they use being sad as an excuse for bad behavior. This is about a woman who got married at a young age, her mom passes away, she gets even more sad, cheats on her husband, gets divorced, starts doing heroine then suddenly decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself with absolutely no hiking or outdoor experience. So, my initial thought was, I’m suppose to praise this woman when she finishes because she has been through so much except 90 percent of her hardships were of her own doing. I think we as a society have a problem with idolizing people like that. Anyway, I digress. The interesting parts of the book to me were when she got into trouble on her hike, how she would try to make it with no shoes and in the end I did not hate her as much as I did at the beginning of the book. I think it’s because she recognized how selfish and clueless she has been. Also, for a story that took place outdoors, I don’t think the author did justice to the California landscape (and other parts of the trail. I say CA because most of the trail is in CA). My favorite travel book (or book in general) is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, not that I am comparing that book to this one. One of the reasons why I love Kerouac’s book so much is how he described the land and being on the road. You could sense his awe and appreciation for it. It made me and still gives me wanderlust when I think about that book. I did not get that sense in Wild when she describes the scenery. Perhaps, that is how it was meant to be since she was not an outdoor person to begin with. Anyway, I give this book a “meh.”