I hate having more than one book going at a time. It feels suspiciously like unfinished business, things hanging over me. Unfortunately, it seems to always happen to me. Especially here lately, when I have far more good intentions than I have time. So very recently, I was reading, if you count schoolwork, four separate books at the same time. Last night, however, I finished the last one of four. In that they were finished, they are:
~Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John LeCarre. You may remember, from this post dated January 2. Well, anyway, I finally got it back, and managed to finish it.
As much as I hate to admit it, I'm either not old enough or just plain not smart enough for John LeCarre. Tinker Tailor was published in '74, so I'm hoping it's the latter. Either way, I had a hard time keeping up, and a number of pop culture references and what I'm sure must've been jokes sailed over my head. That aside, it was a fantastic book. It's a different kind of spy novel, no car chases or explosions here. Most of the "spying" happens in back rooms and nondescript hotels, and consists of poring over files and papers years old, instead of back-handsprings through laser grids and using laughable gadgets. The plot is slow to get going, but once it finally comes to a point, it's impossible to put down. What kept me reading through the dry spells, though, was the characters. It takes an outrageous amount of focus to keep all the names straight (Wait a minute, which one's Percy again?), but those characters that do actually get developed are great. George Smiley is a hugely endearing little man, and Peter Guillam is impossible to not sympathize with, and so on and so forth down the line. My favorite thing is that each of the characters exists on more than one level. On the surface is the level that's dealing with the plot, rooting out the mole in the midst of their ranks; that's where the excitement and the conflict and the action happens. But running beneath that, for each of them, like a completely separate train of thought in the background, they have their personal struggles. They've each built this wall between their professional and their private lives, but they each struggle to fulfill their tasks with their personal lives screaming for their attention. Smiley, whose wife, everyone knows, is cheating on him; Guillam, for whom middle age is sneaking up fast, and who finds himself far more attached to his much-younger-than-himself girlfriend than he's used to; even little Bill Roach, dealing with the guilt of his parent's divorce. So we get this sense of their all being real people; and of the real story happening beneath the surface.
On a side note, I'm hugely looking forward to getting to see the movie. It's well (very well) cast, all around; and I've heard good things about it. Except for the fact that I'm furious that they took my favorite character, Peter Guillam, took away the thing that he's actually struggling with (his dear, enigmatic Camilla) and turned her into a . . . boyfriend. Not only am I mad about what that will do to the story, I Do Not want to see my favorite actor in that sort of roll.
~A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Yes, like, "It was the best of times..." School assignment, or I never would've read it, believe me. Bit of a confession, I've always hated Charles Dickens. I've never managed to actually finish one of his novels. Seriously, I got halfway through Oliver Twist, halfway through The Pickwick Papers, halfway through A Christmas Carol. So I was sort of behind the eight ball starting A Tale of Two Cities. However, I figured out what I've been doing wrong. I've been trying to read them to myself. Staring at a page, his style felt dry and dull and weighty to me. Then I met the love of my life, Librivox.org. Tagling: "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain." A gentleman, name of Paul Adams, I believe, recorded A Tale of Two Cities. Lifting the words off the page that way, bringing them to life (with a lovely accent and excellent expression, besides) let me experience it in a different way, and helped me appreciate the beauty of Dickens' language and word choice. And it let me keep my sanity by having something to do with my hands while I read, erm, listened. In this case, knitting (which you can appreciate the irony of if you've read the book). And, completely to my surprise, I loved it. I had the house to myself one night, and got through the majority of the book, and found myself cheering and crying and laughing and, well, I loved it. (and really need to go write the character analysis and five-page essay that are both due Friday).
~Where She Went, by Gayle Forman. Sequel to If I Stay, which I read several months ago. I loved the first book, I don't hesitate to say that Gayle Forman is the most talented author out there right now. In a world slowly being eaten up by a score of Stephanie Meyers and Lauren Conrads, Gayle Forman's writing, her actual prose, might as well be Shakespeare. However, I wasn't looking forward to Where She Went. It was a sequel, and rather a needless one, or so I thought. If I Stay was heartbreaking, and to tell the next leg of the story, I felt, absolutely ruined the self-sufficient beauty that was If I Stay. I actually wrote, on my to-do list, the day I picked up Where She Went from the library, "Pick up useless sequel. Ugh."
I was proved wrong, though. Where She Went is beautiful by its own right, and the direction it takes the story that If I Stay started really was worth the telling. It's sad and sweet and not easy to read at all, but has a fantastic ending. There's a vast amount of foul language, though, so I don't recommend it to anyone under fifteen or sixteen, frankly.
~And last, but Certainly Not Least, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Whenever I hear that a book is somebody's favorite, I want to read it. And someone whose tastes I, usually, respect, lists Catcher in the Rye as the one book, above all others, that changed their life. So I got pretty excited about this one. I finally managed to pick up an old, beat-up copy at the second-hand bookstore I frequent. I don't entirely know what I was expecting. I hoped to enjoy it, I guess; reading the Wikipedia article about the book seemed to think that it was all about teenage rebellion, which is, kind of whatever; I don't even know. What I wasn't expecting was for the book to have an effect on my life.
It was slow-going. It's from the point of view of a teenage boy, and written as you would imagine a teenage boy would write his memoirs. The swearing alone made it hard for me to keep on, and there's some pretty shocking content. I got through it, though, although it took me almost two months to do it. It's downright depressing, at points, but I found myself identifying with the main character, Holden Caulfield, a lot more than I'd like to admit. Equal parts lost and stuck, frustrated with the present and no ideas for the future, disgusted with most of the humanity, with the way humanity works, and unable to picture a future that doesn't involve a solitary cabin in the woods (or a cottage by the sea, in my case). And the desperation Holden felt was starting to get me down. Then day before yesterday, I came to the two portions that are, I think the whole point of the book.
The first one comes when Holden is sneaking a midnight visit with his little sister Phoebe, one of few human beings he isn't disgusted with. She's confronting him with the fact that he doesn't like anything, doesn't want to be anything, demanding that he tell her one thing that he thinks is worth living for. Trying to make him find a point to existence. Pretty smart for a little kid. And after thinking for a good long while, he replies,
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? ...I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over a cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
Weeding through what's figurative, and what's nonsense, there, I think what he's saying is that he wants to do something that really matters. He wants to help people who there's nobody else around to help.
The second part that I felt was speaking directly to me, I realized when I went searching in the book for the quote, is about four pages long and doesn't lend itself to being abridged, so I won't try to quote it here. Basically, Holden receives some very wise advice from a very wise person. Advice about finding his place in the world, and what to do when he found it. Advice I can, I think, apply to my own life in some way. So, I wound up enjoying (and getting more out of) Catcher in the Rye than I'd hoped.
So I'm feeling pretty accomplished. You know, like, maybe trying to finish all the other half-finished projects in my life. Ehh, maybe tomorrow.
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