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Review: The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World

The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World
The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World by Nancy Jo Sales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What struck me most about the people and the incidents in The Bling Ring was alien it all was. Here’s a book that reports on a series of crimes, and contextualizes it all with some pop-sociology: discussions on fame, voyeur culture, teenage sexuality, the changing tides of fashion, and so on. None of it could I relate to. None of it. This was as familiar to me as any gossip rag or celebrity bio-pic.

But then, I’m a 41 year old middle-class white guy with a literature degree, a job, and a house in Seattle.

Nevertheless, Nancy Jo Sales has done a good job building as much of a narrative as possible out what’s really not much of a story at all. Some kids robbed some celebrities. I just don’t care—so why did I read it? Was it schadenfreude? Some kind of catharsis? Probably it was just the architect lover in me- I like seeing the structures behind the stories. Crime rings and the mafia and the complication of long, drawn-out political maneuvering. It’s all intrigue.

And since I plan on seeing Sofia Coppola’s film version of these events, I wanted the back story.

The thing of it is, though, there really isn’t much back story. Some kids robbed some celebrities, I said above, and that’s pretty much everything. So Sales’ book isn’t interesting for the intrigue, but for that alien aspect I also mentioned. I don’t feel sorry for Paris Hilton, nor am I glad that anything happened to her. Reading this was like watching a child poke a stick in an ant hill.

Interesting, though, how the kids got away with it while they did: none of the celebrities though to secure their belonging, and they didn’t even know what all they’d had that had been stolen in the first place. I’m not saying this justifies the theft. But it certainly suggests why I have no empathy. It shows how I can’t relate.

Indeed, my wife and set an alarm on our house when we leave, because we know it will make us feel better if we are robbed—if someone is so motivated as to overcome our best efforts at security, there’s larger forces in play than just random victimization.

You see, we all seek meaningfulness in things—and random kids stealing designer shoes from celebrities has no real meaning at all.

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Review: Talulla Rising

Talulla Rising
Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If The Last Werewolf was a novel about love as antidote to ennui, than Talulla Rising is a novel about motherhood as antidote to feminism. I’m not trying to suggest feminism is bad or wrong. Rather, I’m suggesting that the contexts which require a feminist approach can be mitigated by motherhood. In an ideal world, would there be feminism? Would people be, perforce, defined by gender at all? That’s not an easy question to answer. However, biology requires a difference between the sexes, and so, if that division results in inequality, feminism is an attempt to reassert equality. Motherhood, too, asserts the necessity of sexual difference.

Which is not to say a woman is not useful unless she gives birth. Rather, a person need not be defined by genitals until reproduction is at stake. The female werewolves—and vampires—in Duncan’s two werewolf novels are in no way the weaker sex. Their desires and capabilities are no different from men’s. Until, that is, motherhood is their main identity. This makes them vulnerable—but it also gives them the strength and perseverance to overcome any will that would otherwise thwart their desires.

The question that Duncan raises: is the motherhood desire innate, or is it also a matter of will? Talulla’s lacuna would seem to free her from the obligations of motherhood. But she chooses to overcome them, chooses motherhood. The kidnappers of Lorcan use her motherhood against her, and she chooses to use her motherhood to recover her son. And in the process, she defeats the forces that would dismantle her. Talulla uses reproduction as a weapon.

This is how Duncan is able to write a thriller, filled with sex and gore, philosophical musings, and witheringly self-indulgent self-awareness, without coming across as trite or hackneyed. Talulla Rising is a hell of a ride, but also a deep meditation on how feminism and motherhood are necessary in a world that would use a woman’s sex as a means by which to take away her free will. At its core, Talulla is a tender, uncompromising, inspiring.

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Review: The Abomination

The Abomination
The Abomination by Jonathan Holt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Feminism and war crimes and politics, conspiracy theories and cyber space and corruption, Venice and Croatia and a tiny haunted island, the mafia, the Catholic church, and sex. The Abomination has it all.

I saw the cover of this book in a shop, was intrigued by a blurb that said it was about hackers in Venice, put it on my to-read list, and was surprised when the library had it ready for me almost immediately. The point is, there was some momentum involved in getting me into the book before I had time to know better.

Because for all those subject I mentioned above, The Abomination doesn’t really go very deeply into any of them. It’s a meager treatment of any of them at all, although Jonathan Holt, to his credit, balances them all out and makes them work together.

As thrillers go, The Abomination nearly satisfies. It’s sort of like Dan Brown mixed with Stieg Larsson. But with better sentence craft than Brown and fewer sexual deviants than Larson. And it’s the first book in a trilogy, so for book-eaters looking for a drawn-out feast, as least there’s that.

Personally, I’ll probably pass on the sequels. Maybe I’ll watch the film versions when they come out.

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Review: The Last Werewolf

The Last Werewolf
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second reading of The Last Werewolf. The first time I read it took me a month. This time, four days. That’s still too long—this book should be devoured in one sitting. I blame only myself, a recent minor illness breaking up my ability to concentrate.

Hopefully I am back in the saddle, as I have the sequel to read, Talulla Rising. Indeed, that’s why I reread The Last at all, so I could better appreciate Talulla.

Duncan is a writer to be reckoned with. His literary style is dense, flowing, beautiful. The kind of writing that’s almost too excquisite—I found myself shaking my head more than a few times, thinking “damn, this guy’s good,” which unfortunately took me out of the narrative. Again, I blame myself. Otherwise, Duncan’s writing style is immersive.

And he handles the subject matter with so much grace and wisdom it defies classification as any kind of genre fiction. This is not horror (although there’s horror). This is a literary novel that has as its subject a man who turns into a beast, and revels in his own self-hate and bloodlust.

There’s an additional layer, too, to The Last, a kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that pokes fun at genre fiction in general, vampire fiction in particular, and post-empire British ennui. This thread is not overt, and can be ignored if you like. But obviously, Duncan’s got more to offer, for those who want it, than just a monster feeding on viscera.

However, if you like, there’s plenty of offal as well. Dig in.

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Review: House of Holes

House of Holes
House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ambivalence. On the one hand, I was endlessly fascinated by Baker’s easy and surprising inventiveness in House of Holes. On the other hand, I don’t think I would have missed a thing if I had never read this book. And yet, to know that I would not have missed anything requires me to have read what I would have missed. I don’t want to suggest that I regret reading it—it was over too fast for it to have been much of a waste of time. And it’s not like my time’s all that important anyway.

Why to women and men jill and jack off? To assuage sexual urges, certainly, but sometimes, other times, because they’re bored, nothing meaningful to do. We are, at our very cores, being designed to want to have sex, and in our hyper-modern world, that urge has been sublimated a thousand different ways. So this book is just a kind of bored act of jerking off for Baker, I guess.

Language, too is integral to our identity as humans. We’re born to it. Baker, here, mixes the two. He’s undoubtedly talented with the written word. So I guess, in as much as I would rather see some people jill off over others, because they’re beautiful or good at it or seem to just do it so well, so too would I rather read Baker’s wording-off over some other author.

But, as I said, the novel’s more or less meaningless. House of Holes has no spirit, no soul, no substance. It is indeed a hole, a thing defined by what it isn’t. I am not trying to be all metaphysical and deep here, not saying that there’s a message in a Baker’s magico-porn. It’s just a tug-book for your Broca area.

Take it or leave it.

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Review: Sign of the Unicorn

Sign of the Unicorn
Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Exposition! But not in a bad way. One of the things that I love about The Chronicles of Amber is how rich and deep Zelazny has built this Amberverse so far. Amber itself, its shadows, and the reflections Rebma and Tir-na Nóg’th, the Jewel of Judgment, the Trumps, the Pattern.. and hints of The Courts of Chaos; it’s all so involved, one can easily fantasize see oneself roaming about, having adventures. But then there’s the politics too, the back story, equally as rich. In the first two books we had the what, but here in Sign it’s time to get to the why.

Almost. Zelazny doesn’t tip his hand completely, but you should know, as frustrating as what’s held back, Sign is mostly just an explanation of who’s involved in the fight for Amber’s throne, and where their motivations come from. (For example, the action in Guns covers years. In Sign: days). You’ll want to take notes, as it’s not easy keeping this family straight.

Which just adds to the depth and the richness. Brand and Bleys and Fiona, Julian Caine and Eric, reflections of the same desires, with Corwin… well, I don’t want to give everything away. Let’s just say there’s analogies, Amber’s places and her people playing similar parts.

So yes, The Sign of the Unicorn is mostly exposition, with a nice chunk taken up by Random’s adventures in a far-flung shadow, trying for a daring (and rather uncharacteristic—or is it?—rescue of one of his brothers). The intrigue that forwards the plot has come home to roost—or should I say, come home to rear, like a unicorn does.

Corny? Sorry. I’ll tell you what—how fans, back in the day, waited three years between The Guns of Avalon and Sign, I have no idea. And another year for book four, The Hand of Oberon? Suffice it to say, I won’t be waiting that long.

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Review: The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How about this: fractal punk. I mean, if Steam-punk is a future based on Victorian industrial-age technology, and Rock-punk is a modern society with technology like the Flintstones, and Vampire the Masquerade can call itself Goth-punk, and Gibson gave us Cyber-punk, then why can’t we call the rendering of an aesthetic through the lens of a narrow paradigm “-punk”? Leyner’s writing is self-reflective, self-iterative. It’s the literary consequence of recursion. He can start with nothing and via hypnogogia achieve a hologram. Shatter a hologram and any one piece is the hologram. Zoom in on fractal and you’ll have a fractal. Decimal dimensions. Irrational in the mathematic sense and not the logical one.

I am not trying to write like him in this review, for what it’s worth. Hypnogogia, for example: you know how when you sort of doze off while reading, and your pre-dream brain starts throwing up a chaos of images? Do that while reading The Sugar Frosted Nutsack and you will not be able, upon snapping awake, to know which was the book and which was your own brain.

This is NOT stream-consciousness writing. This is not “merely” random. This is not chaos. This is not “merely” sensitivity to initial conditions. This is not “God in the Machine.” This is not even “God IS the machine.” This is just “God.” Or Gods.

Not religious Gods. Not exegesis Gods. Leyner starts with nothing, tosses in some random bits, and big-bangs into existence a story that folds in on itself. The book is a book about the book it is about. The writer is the God of a universe created by writing. And it is artistic and genius and, “Even those who consider this to be total bullshit have to concede that it’s upscale, artisanal bullshit of the highest order.”

If you love Leyner, you will love The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. If you hate Leyner, I feel sorry for you. You’re the phlegm that Ike whispers to, out of which a God is created. Leyner is not post-modern, or modern, or anything. He’s Leyner.

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Review: Under the Dome

Under the Dome
Under the Dome by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Took me two days to read this behemoth, of which I am proud, and crowing about. You could say four days—after I got it from the library, I was too shocked at the size of it to read anything for a whole day, and then the second day of reading bled past midnight by a few minutes. But I’m calling it two, if only to give others who are also afraid of 1000+ page books some hope. You can do it!

Let’s just go ahead and call Stephen King the Tolstoy of Horror. He takes dozens of characters and finds a way to balance them out, from the main characters all the way down to those little snapshots of minor characters. King realty does write like what you’re reading is a movie transcript.

Or the Tolstoy of Maine, if you want. Which is to say, I don’t know that I’d call this novel a horror novel. Certainly horror is King’s bailiwick, but then this novel is mostly people dealing with people (you know like what, for example, most zombie or disaster novels are about).

Or even the Tolstoy of King, if you want. (Can you tell I’ve not read much Tolstoy?). He’s written, what, like, 60 novels so far? And even retired a few times? He’s created a universe through his 40+ years of writing, with different icons and bits and pieces running thematically through much of his work. For Stephen King fans, Under The Dome is right where they want to be.

Under The Dome is a mixture of The Tommyknockers, The Regulators/ Desperation, and Needful Things. It’s got bits of It and The Dark Tower and The Talisman / Black House. It will remind you of The Stand. If you want to go out on a limb, you could make that case that Under the Dome does for many other Stephen King novels what The Cabin in the Woods did for many other slasher films. It explains them.

Taken alone, I have to say, though, the novel was a bit thin. The ending a bit of a let down. The plot a bit predictable. The characters a bit one-dimensional. But placed in the King multiverse? Under The Dome is exquisite, essential King.

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Review: The Finkler Question

The Finkler Question
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s difficult to pass judgment on a book (for what else is a review) without coming across as biased, or prejudiced, or when the book is about race, racist. In fact, maybe it’s impossible. And nothing’s worse for a middle-class white man than to be judged “racist.” A man who is racist has no authority on any subject, even if race isn’t a factor. (He’s a brilliant mathematician you say? But he’s a bigot, so who’s to say his maths are even that good?)

So it’ll be hard to say anything about The Finkler Question without sounding like an anti-Semite. Still, I refuse to say “oh well” (that’s the middle-class mantra) and just say what I got to say, and judgments be damned. I want to walk the fine line, if I can.

Overall, I liked the book. The ending was damned depressing, and although there were a few chuckles, I could only survive the read by holding its characters at arms’ length. But Jacobson’s writing style is engaging, provocative in the right places without being showy, expository in that way that makes telling, not showing, a pleasure to read.

But this idea that “everyone hates Jews, and no one hates them more than Jews themselves” I just couldn’t accept. As a concept (and here’s me being racist, sorry) it was just too stereotypically Jewish. Personally, I don’t hate Jews. I don’t even know that many. The few I know, I like, but not because or despite their Jewishness.

So what I did was, I took the message as a trope, not a truth, and applied it to one of the main characters. Everyone hates Treslove, and no one hates him more than himself. That made the whole novel work for me.

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Review: The Book of Three

The Book of Three
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can’t recall exactly the first time I read The Book of Three, but what a fortuitous day that was. It was a school library, I think, me just wandering the shelves. The title was intriguing. And the book was so good, it instilled in me a joy for browsing books and picking up random ones. I won’t say its better or worse than anything else, but I was too young for Tolkien back then, and Harry Potter was still 20 years away.

I’ve been binge reading, lately, interspersing more random library finds with stuff from my past. I thought I’d give The Chronicles of Prydain another go. Rereading it brought back no memories, because I was too immersed, back then, to have noticed anything else. Taran’s swashbuckling adventures are fun, exciting, with lessons to be learned.

Sure, it’s a bit thin in places, but then, it’s a kid’s book. This is important: kids don’t need to justify things with a lot of exposition and explanation., Just get on with it. And I think that’s why adults read young adult fiction now and again. Not because want to be kids again; we just want to get on with it. Swing a sword, fight evil, resist triumph without a lot of pseudo-philosophical moralizing.

A fun, quick read. First in a series of five.

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