Treebeard

I'm on a roll! I just finished King of the Trees by William D. Burt. My friend lent it to me, saying that the book series were her favorite in middle school. I don't really know why I didn't question that statement and took it eagerly. I guess I was having flashbacks of Alanna and Ella Enchanted and all of the other fantasy books I couldn't put down in those days, and figured this was one of those things I just missed out on.
I should have been tipped off by the fact that the author had the time to write a thoughtful note to my friend inside the front cover. Or by the fact that on Goodreads, the people who adored it seemed to be of the homeschooled variety. Or by the fact that the first review on the books' website was literally written by a ten-year-old. And I'm more convinced it's a book report than a book review.
I had so much to say about this book I had to take notes to keep track of it all, so bear with me. First off, I love that it's made in Oregon. That usually warrants a thumbs up from me. Especially since the main character lives in a log cabin in the woods in an Oregonian type environment. Also, loved the premise. Any book where trees play a central role is fine by me. Especially when the trees serve as a portal to other mystical lands with elf like creatures. Finally, I love that for the first half of the book I was kind of oblivious to any religious connections and was more focused on how cool it was that I could sync up scenes in the book with images from various Zelda games. I was seeing Kokiri forest's hollowed out tree houses and boulders with dank pits beneath them, green cloaked tree dwellers, town markets and wise old talking trees. The main characters dad was named Gannon? I'm going easy on this book just because of these 3 points, which is saying a lot.
However, I'm now pretty desperate to become the author's editor/illustrator, to make up for the sloppiness of both. I've pondered over the narrative mode of this book. Is it third-person limited or is it just really dumb? Can it technically be considered an unreliable narrator, simply because it doesn't really seem to be paying attention to what's going on in the book? The author seems reluctant to use anything but basic descriptions for everything, perhaps in some strange paranoid attempt to avoid flowery and unnecessary descriptions? He makes up for it by relying on the characters to give elaborations on what's going on, and it ends up sounding messy and weird. For example, rather than having the narrator simply observe that the main character, Rolin, has freckles, he has one character proclaim, "He looks harmless enough, though he's got more freckles than ten lads and lasses." ...What does this mean? What does this imply? What does this have to do with the situation at hand? Not entirely sure, but on the next page, Rolin repeatedly demands to know what the creature they just fought is. The narrator has already determined that... it has teeth, so one of the characters steps in to explain that it is a wolfbat or a wolf with bat wings or a bat with a wolfs body. First, wouldn't that be obvious to Rolin since the creature is laying dead in front of him? Second, there was no need to rearrange the words 3 times to understand what the creature is. I had you at "wolfbat". Thirdly, this awkward conversation would never have happened if the narrator had been paying the slightest bit of attention.
Another issue I had with the book was the ridiculous amount of made up proper nouns. I really don't need to know the name of every made-up species of tree or every less than minor characters. A servant would flit through a room and their name and lineage would be pronounced. It made everything so confusing when a new term would be introduced each page. The glossary didn't entirely help either, especially for sentences such as "Aren't all ashtags Gundul torsils?" You know, I don't know, and no one else in the room seemed to know either. The language barrier in this book was on par with A Clockwork Orange, and that isn't a compliment.
Now back to the brief mention of my obliviousness to any biblical themes for the first half of the book. It's not that I didn't notice, it's just that they were really subtle, as I like it. However, the second half of the book was so overwhelmingly preachy and weird that it was almost unbearable. At one point the author gave up writing an original story all together, and entirely forgetting about his characters starts quoting the bible. It was like seeing Jesus in a homemade cardboard tree Halloween costume. It was so obvious, it took away from the book and started sounding like the monotonous drone of a Sunday morning.
Also, all of the characters were entirely flat. This would be fine, (it's a kids book and I wasn't really anticipating any revolutionary coming of age bullshit or anything) if the other characters hadn't pretended that Rolin had overcome some sort of change. They kept lying to his face, telling him how courageous he had become, as though they were trying to convince the reader that an actual change had happened. Rolin shows no action or observation to indicate that he had grown at all as a person throughout the entire book.
Another thing, the action at the end of the book was really just a bunch of characters scrambling around jumping from world to world killing bad guys. I think I was supposed to be on my toes but really I was dispassionately observing as the characters shouted "To the Batmobile!" type statements so that I could follow what was going on while the narrator was sleeping. There was no real tension, and I couldn't really care less whether the bad guy died. He doesn't really do any killing or personal attacks on Rolin, just a lot of mustache twirling threats and chasing townspeople into corners accompanied by a lazy dragon and a flock of irritating wolfbats. I didn't really sigh with relief when he was finally banished to the Sacred Realm- er, Hell- uh, Gundul?

If this review seems harsh and makes me seem smug, trust me, I'm very aware that I'm a twenty-year-old on Vicoden, listening to the Smiths, on a "break" from college to rattle on about books written for people half my age. I don't feel good about myself for putting this book down, it just had to happen.

Monstrous

So, I just read Grendel by John Gardner. I picked this book up (not entirely sure why..) from Borders in middle school, probably recommended someway or another by browsing through Barnes and Noble's website. I would always read about 4 pages and then get bored or uninterested, which pretty much sums up my whole experience with the book. I finally forced myself to read it, because I'm trying to knock books off of my "to read" shelf at home.
Basically, I have no background knowledge of anything to do with Beowulf. I never read it or saw any movies about it and the only knowledge I have of it was gathered through Wikipedia when I was about 3 chapters through this, because I figured it would bring me up to speed. I think maybe at a later time in my life, I'll read Beowulf, and perhaps I'll have a deeper appreciation and patience for postmodern novels, but that really isn't now. I'm glad I didn't read it in middle school when I bought it, the entire thing would have gone over my head. I got it, parts of it befuddled me, it wasn't easy to drift through the surreal fog of a fucked up monster.
I just wasn't interested, at all. I wanted to stop so bad, but I kept going just to get it off that dang shelf once and for all. It was well written, beautiful at times, and it really made me think. Unfortunately some parts made me think in the sense that they dragged me down with Grendel and I felt as entirely isolated and angry as he did. I too laughed at the sickness of men and the dreariness of it all. I too shuffled my feet straining to pay attention when the dragon rattled off his philosophical bullshit. I related to him far too much, and it really killed me. Mainly because I'm not entirely sure whether the reader is supposed to feel a kinship with the protagonist.
So I'll set it on my "read" shelf in hopes that one day, when my brain is in a happier state, I can reread it and understand it without the same feelings of self-loathing it tried to plant in me this time around. And hopefully move on to something more lighthearted and inspiring because that's all I need after this mess.

I'm Confused

I just finished Water For Elephants by Sarah Gruen. I wasn't really interested in reading it, but I saw the trailer for the movie, which doesn't really look that good, and I thought I might as well read the book since I love reading books and then watching the movies.. Plus it reminded me of the circus phase I went through in middle school and thought it can't be that bad.
To sum it up, it was easy to read and hard to put down. I can't really explain this either. I know I liked it, but I really can't figure out why. Maybe I liked the setting, or the fast pace, or something. Something drew me in and I enjoyed reading it, I guess that's all there is to say about how I liked it.
However, reading the passages where the main character is a 90-something year old man in an old folks home were really upsetting to read. It did a great job of making me dread growing old, and value my youth. But mostly dread, and make me feel thoroughly depressed.
Also, I didn't really like the main character. Throughout the book he kept making increasingly worse decisions, and was incredibly impulsive and overprotective. I'm sure it was meant to come off as somehow "romantic" in an Edward Cullen kind of way (great casting for the movie right?), but I just see that type of character as insensible. I mean, he was in the Great Depression and had nothing going for him, and he's literally risking his life (and those of his friends and the poor animals he cared for) for some pretty girl because she's good with animals? I just didn't believe it, and it got really annoying.
I liked the ending though, and like I said, I somehow liked the book. I'm not sure whether I want to see the movie anymore though if it's just going to be more of that unemotional surface level lust filled romance with a cute elephant in the background charming everyone else who doesn't give a shit.