The Night of the Iguana

Tennessee Williams was a playwright famous for such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie and this one, The Night of the Iguana. I read The Glass Menagerie in high school and seem to remember liking it. I read Streetcar Named Desire earlier this year and really liked it a lot. As such, I thought I would like this one too, but I didn't.
The Night of the Iguana won some awards and earned lots of praise, but I just couldn't get into it. The story is about a disgraced preacher named Shannon who now gives tours after giving up church service. He is tightly wound and always seems on the verge of mental breakdown. I suppose readers are maybe supposed to sympathize or empathize with him, but I just found him kind of irritating.
In the play, he is touring a group of women around Mexico and takes them to stay at a resort run by an acquaintance of his, Maxine Faulk. The women do not like the appearance of the place and spend the majority of the play angry at Shannon and his disinterest in them. They are also upset because he had 'improper' relations with a young girl who is part of the tour.
At the resort, Shannon meets a woman named Hannah with whom he forms and instant and unexpected bond. Maxine, who wants Shannon's attention gets jealous and does not treat Hannah and her grandfather well.
That's pretty much of it. The play focuses on human suffering and the like, topics which can definitely make for good stories. But this play just didn't do it for me. I was unable to sympathize with the characters because I thought it was their own faults that their lives were they way they were. They were bondage in but they were the ones who'd put themselves there.
Despite my opinion of this play, I still consider Tennessee Williams to be a playwright of great talent, I would just recommended his other plays, especially A Streetcar Named Desire, before this one.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway is often considered one of the century's best writers and while reading his work his immense talent is apparent. My experience with Hemingway started with his short stories. I liked the way that he could use such simple language to describe such grand ideas. Often, his stories have much more meaning than appears on the surface.
Such is the case with The Old Man and the Sea, the book for which he won the Nobel Prize. The book tells the story of a poor fisherman, Santiago, and his long battle with a giant marlin. His struggle to bring the fish in represents the struggle of all mankind against the things that bear against it. Likewise, the way in which Santiago faces this immense challenge exhibits Hemingway's idea of the way men should deal with adversity--they should never give up or complain. Instead, like Santiago, mankind should respect adversity and face it with diligence and courage.
If you've ever wanted to read Hemingway but haven't yet, this is a good place to start. If you already have, then, well, good.

Ethan Frome

In the last few months I've been finding some really good deals on used books at the D.I. Not all the books there are in great condition, but I've been able to find some older classics for cheap that are in great shape. Because of this, I've been reading some books lately that I found there. A lot of them are books I'd always heard of but never actually read. Such was the case with Ethan Frome. Ethan Frome was published in 1911 by Edith Wharton. Wharton is most well-known for her books about upper class society like The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, neither of which I have read. I read somewhere that Ethan Frome is Wharton's least characteristic book, which is too bad because I think it is one of the best books I've ever read. I was really surprised by how much I liked it.
I wouldn't say its a happy story. In fact, its probably one of the sadder books you could read. I suppose there is some humor, as sad books often contain at least a little. In this case, I would say there is some humor in the ending, although its quite bleak also.
I don't want to reveal too much of the story because it would ruin the surprising, ironic ending. But the basic outline is that a narrator, who remains unnamed, comes to a small New England town. He is struck with a local man named Ethan Frome, who everyone in town seems to know but doesn't really want to talk about. Everyone just makes cryptic remarks about how its 'too bad' what happened to him. The narrator gets curious about this man and eventually is able to go his house. Once he enters Frome's house his whole life story begins to make sense and the narrator begins to understand why he has become such a shell of a man, devoid of any joy or hope.
The first and last chapter are told in first person by the narrator. The middle chapters are all third person and tell the story of a younger Ethan Frome and the events that led him to where he is when the narrator meets him.
Throughout the book, Wharton's use of language is masterful. Her descriptions of winter, isolation, love and disappointment are spot-on. Its hard for me to think of a writer who has done these topics better.
Frome is also a short book and can be read in one or two sittings, if you have a little extra time. I started reading it and couldn't put it down, especially toward the end when the tension builds and builds.
I highly recommend this book and I think its made it onto my top ten list of favorite books.

Noli Me Tangere

The jacket of this classic book by Filipino author Jose Rizal says that it 'sparked the Philippine Revolution.' My wife, who is from The Philippines, suggested that I read it. I think the book can help anyone who wants to understand the culture and history of the country more. But I don't think it is exclusive to one country, it can be applicable any country or people that has experienced oppression under the hands of seemingly unstoppable forces.
Written over a hundred years ago, the formidable book introduces and tells the stories of several characters who are all influenced in some way or other by the Spanish presence in their country. A little history lesson: Spanish officials lived in and attempted to colonize The Philippines for over three hundred years. They brought many things with them, not the least of which was the Catholic Church, which is still the predominant religion in The Philippines.
Although the story tells the injustices and cruelties of the Spanish against Filipinos, it deals primarily with two young lovers named Ibarra and Maria Clara. Ibarra is a man from a wealthy upbringing who has just returned from college in Europe. Upon returning, he wants to help his homeland, and if he's lucky, win the heart of his childhood sweetheart, Maria.
For awhile things seem to go okay, but Rizal favors reality instead of fantasy and things go from bad to worse for the doomed lovers. However, their story is but one among many Filipinos who's lives were irrevocably altered, and in most cases ruined, by the omnipresent powers of the Spanish government and leaders.
Rizal picks his targets out in his legendary book and takes merciless aim, exploiting them for all their hypocrisies and sins. He spends much of the book satirizing and demonizing the fathers, priests and friars of the Catholic Church in The Philippines, people who he believed, and as history has shown rightly so, to be the cause of nearly all the suffering.
One example is a story about a woman named Sisa and her two boys, Crispin and Basilio. The boys work at the parish house in town, where they are constantly accused and beaten for crimes which they did not commit. When the priests want to inflict punishment, they don't even need to prove a crime, they need only make something up and in order to continue their inhuman torture. All the while, people continue to laud the priests as holy servants of God.
Rizal seems to have picked out one-by-one the personalities he disliked or found serious fault with and exposed them through his writing. One example is the character Doña Victorina. Victorina is a native Filipina who is married to a European doctor. Because she has married a foreigner, this social climber feels that she is better than her fellow countrymen and has a condescending attitude toward them. Like the Catholic leadership, she refers to them in a derogatory as 'indios.'
Despite her incessant bragging and belittling, the truth is that her husband is a near cripple who has no real money, power or social stature, the main things that she consistently brags to others about possessing. In one humorous scene in the book, she meets another woman similar to her and the two almost get in a fistfight over who is more important in in her respective social circle, both of whom claim to include nothing but 'important' people.
Noli Me Tangere is a powerful lesson in history, political and religious cruelty and injustice and the negative effects of European colonialism.
In the conclusion of the book, the protagonist Ibarra is exiled and forced to leave his true love behind. Things didn't work out much better for the book's author and in the end Rizal's bravery and boldness did not come without a price--he was exiled, only later to be sentenced to death and killed by a firing squad because of the truth he wrote about. Like so many others who speak up against tyrannical governments and institutions, Rizal had to back up his beliefs with his life. In doing so, he became a national hero whose works continue to be studied by university students in The Philippines and scholars around the world.

One more thing, the book was originally written in Spanish. I read an English translation.

As I Lay Dying

Before I read this book I had heard a lot about the infamous William Faulkner. Considered to be a quintessential Modernist, Faulkner can sometimes be a bit hard to digest. This book, like several of his others, is written in stream-of-consciousness.
At first, I found the story a bit hard to follow. It is told through the words of several different narrators, seventeen or so as I recall, with every chapter switching from to another. Instead of revealing the plot or characters in a typical, straightforward way, Faulkner gives you bits and pieces through each of their distinct voices.
The story centers around the Bundren family and their journey to bury their dead mother in the place that she had requested. Hence the 'As I Lay Dying' refers to her.
The longstanding problems of the Bundren family are revealed as the family journeys across the Mississippi countryside. The reader comes to like some of the family members and really despise some of the less honorable ones, particularly the father, who step-by-step unveils how selfish he really is.
The voices range from the main family's nosy, self-righteous neighbor to the mother's youngest son who cannot understand that she is really physically gone. In fact, it is his words that comprise the book's most famous chapter: "My mother is a fish."
I would be lying if I said I understood everything in this book, but from what I got, I did like it quite a bit. One thing that helped me was looking at some plot summaries online. This really helps when trying to make sense of the fragmented plot.
I also studied this book with a very good professor at my school. He made the interesting observation that As I Lay Dying is realistic in the sense that it is told in bits and pieces, with time jumping around and the reader never really sure who is telling the truth. Readers have come to expect authors to tell them how things are and how they, as the reader, should feel about the events happening in the book. Faulkner doesn't do this. Instead he presents pieces of the family's life and inner thoughts and lets the reader decide what he or she thinks. This is similar to real life--we hear bits and pieces of conversations all around us, and most of these have their own personal spins and biases. We then take these things in and put our own spin on them and decide what we think.
That Faulkner was able to do this and still produce a meaningful, humorous book is what amazes me. It seems to have impressed a lot of other people as well, as this book is often considered one his finest and often makes lists of the best American novels.
Faulkner can be a little difficult and I think you have to be in the right mood to read it and enjoy it. But when you are, he has a unique way of storytelling that is worth looking into.

Getting Even

This is a book of short pieces by Woody Allen. Yes, it's that Woody Allen. I like a lot of his movies so when I found out that he had a few books I was curious. His books are somewhat similar to his movies, I suppose, but I think they are also different in several ways. They tend to be sillier and less focused on relationships, although his interest in history and religion are still apparent.
Like his older movies, his short stories are funny stuff. Most of the pieces here were written in what may be considered Allen's best 'funny' period, the late 60's and 70's. Like his older movies, one can expect slapstick humor and lots of non-sequitir jokes. As may also be expected, Allen proves in his short pieces that he is the king of the one-liner. There are a lot of them I like in this book, one example being: "Helmholtz spends most his time writing, and is currently revising his autobiography to include himself."
The stories typically have ridiculous concepts such as the memoirs of Hitler's barber or a chess game played out by two people through letters, each of whom seem to playing a different game. Another story explores the way the inventor of the sandwich, The Earl of Sandwich, slowly researched and developed his idea into what we now call the sandwich. His failed attempts include mistakes like putting the meat outside of the bread or stacking three slices of bread on top of each other.
Allen does this a lot. He takes a funny idea and stretches it out to get as many laughs as he can. When I read these older stories sometimes it surprises me that Allen was this funny in his younger years. Although he was a stand-up comedian so I guess this makes sense.
The stories in the book are short and you can read a few in one sitting. Sometimes I like to read a few before I go to bed because they make me laugh and take my mind off things.
So whether or not you're a fan of Allen's movies, you may still like these funny short pieces. He has two other similar books titled Without Feathers and Side Effects.

Holes

This Louis Sachar novel is one of my favorite books of all time. If you've only seen the movie, don't compare or judge the book by it--the book is way better. (You probably knew I was going to say that.)
The creative plot of this easy read centers around an overweight boy named Stanley Yelnats. Stanley, after having been convicted of a crime that he did not commit, believes himself to be a part of curse that was long ago put on his family. He is sent to Camp Green Lake in Texas to dig a hole every day, which he is told builds character. As the plot unwinds the camp warden's ulterior motives for digging are revealed.
I love the way this book is written. Sachar tells several stories at once, which at first seem to jump around from one to another. But by the end of the book they all come together and we see that they are all part of the same grand story. I really like this aspect of the writing and the way that Sachar is not only able to jump from character to character, but from time period to time period. I wish more books were written this way.
This book won the Newberry Medal in 1999. I think this was a well-deserved award. Holes combines several issues smoothly; things like justice, racism and teenage interaction are just a few.
Like with all of Sachar's books, Holes is written in simple, easy-to-understand language. There are a lot of jokes and most of them are quite dry. I think simplicity this well done is the sign of a great writer.
I try to read this book every so often and I highly recommend it to anyone else. Like I said, it is easily one of my favorite books ever. I think its writing style is creative and unique, its jokes hilarious and its themes important. I hope Sachar continues to put out quality literature like this because this is what the world needs.