Book Talk

Can we talk about books for just a sec?

In the summer, I usually devour books. Many years I find a wonderful, inspiring piece of literature that makes me a little more who I am, and I look forward to this experience when school lets out every year.

This year, however, has been a disappointment.

Let me begin at the beginning. When school let out, I finished Gone With the Wind which I had been reading for several months during the spring semester. I loved this book, and I can see why it's a classic. It's an epic tale with characters that surpass their time period. It was good.

Then I read The Last Child. This is a book I picked up on a whim because, well, there were killers in it and I enjoy reading about killers from time to time. The book itself is okay. The only real issue I can find with it is that the plot isn't as well produced as it could have been. For me, the plot of a story needs to either be believable or so well-constructed and mystical that I don't care that it's not believable. This book was neither. There was a kid, whose ancestors were Native Americans, who killed an eagle for its feather, who put on war paint to find the killer. It was just kind of "eh."

Then I read Rhett Butler's People, the sequel to Gone With the Wind that was commissioned by Margaret Mitchell's estate. It was good, too. Not as good as the original (that would be blasphemous), but good nonetheless. Rhett Butler is the perfect man in that he is perfectly imperfect, and reading his side of the Scarlet O'Hara affair was a pleasure (even if Melanie became a suspicious, catty little thing).

Next I began The Picture of Dorian Gray. I say began because I didn't finish it, although I probably will some day. It's just not what I was looking for in a summer read.

So I started reading The Doctor's Wife thinking it would be a good, quick, fluff read. As I got into it I realized it's about a doctor who performs abortions in his free time but doesn't have time to spend with his family, his wife who rationalizes having a physical relationship with someone other than her husband because he works too much, and some wildly crazy fundamental Christians who want to blow up everything that isn't pasted with a Jesus bumper sticker.

Early on, when I realize the doctor's beliefs regarding abortion, I start hoping this thing doesn't get too preachy. I'm firmly against abortion, but don't be offended because I don't think you're a malicious idiot or anything if you disagree with me. In fact, I felt more convicted to keep reading because it's often good for us to read about people and ideas we disagree with. It's sometimes called education, and I'm strongly in favor of it. So I kept reading.

But I don't like these people.

I realize yet again that I'm addicted to characters that I either love or hate. I need a book with someone I can root for. Someone I can watch grow and change for the better or worse. But I've happened on this book with mediocre, morally-depraved people who rationalize their physical relationships with people other than their spouses because he/she doesn't pay enough/pays too much attention to them. In short, I don't like them at all. Not because I don't agree with them, but because they're, well, pedestrian.

(Hey, I just realized a little irony from Fahrenheit 451 where they arrest people for being pedestrians but encourage people to be commonplace. hmmm)

Anyway, in the words of Bonnie Tyler, I need a hero. I need Amir from The Kite Runner, a boy who makes mistakes he must pay for well into his adulthood as he learns how important it is to find redemption and forgive himself. I need Edgar Sawtelle, a young man whose life as he knows it is ripped from him and he has to use every faculty he has to save his mother and himself from a family past they don't even know is haunting them. I need someone to love or hate as he or she travels life's weary road and finds beauty and gritty sadness along the path.

So, dear blogfans, please recommend a book for me before summer is over. I think it's sufficed to say that I am, indeed, a book snob, and this summer is proof. Give me something good.