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Where the Book Reviews Best
Dec. 30th, 2014 10:04 amHi,
So, I finished up the last two books of the year (and one is a re-read).
Earlier this year I saw The Dance of Reality by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky has a knack for making odd, arty films and this was no exception. It was supposed to be an autobiography of his childhood in Chile, but the whole thing was shot through with surreal symbolism and a sort of fairy-tale lens.
Jodorowsky apparently has a long interest in psychopomp and shamanism and it influences a lot of the stuff he does. He's even written a book about mythologizing your family tree.
In Where the Bird Sings Best Jodorowsky applies genealogical myth-making to his own family tree. The result is something beautiful and strange. Both sides of Jodorsky's family were Jews living in Russia (or soon to be part of Russia) and both of them migrated to South America where eventually his parents met and had him. The book recounts the triumphs and failures of his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents that led to his being born.
The book is crammed full of the strange and wonderful. Ghost Rabbis, magic bees, magic lions, epic quests, circus people, inspiring revolutionaries, and on and on and on. It's not an overly long book, but it is very dense with people riding up and down on the wheel of fortune at a breakneck pace.
I'm sure the book makes a lot more sense to Jodorowsky since he knows exactly what the symbolic references are, anyone looking for an actual accounting is wasting their time, but people willing to be swept up by the story might find it as fun and thought-provoking as I did.
The book was translated into English by Alfred MacAdam and while I can't compare the original to the translation, I felt pulled into the book and it seemed to capture the spirit of Dance of Reality in print so I'd have to say it's a pretty successful translation.
Anyway, a good read.
I've been meaning to go back and re-read some books that I enjoyed in the past -- I don't do as much of that with the firehose of new material I have thanks to e-books, a larger inter-loan library system and a steady paycheck. But books that resonate with you probably should be re-read.
So I went back and re-read Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury. I read this back in 2009 and the story of a family living on the harsh world of Geta really stuck with me. Geta is a harsh world where the native life is largely poisonous without a lot of preparation and only a few crops from Earth are grown there. Drought conditions cause crop failures and famine and at that time, people are rated for their survivability and those who don't rate high are killed to feed those who do. There's a lot of interesting world-building going on and it actually includes a pretty interesting look at polyamory (group marriages are fairly common and forms a plot point in the book).
I did notice this time around that the book has a real hate-on for Lenin (the heroes find a "magic crystal" that tells them all about violent conflict back on long-forgotten Earth and decide Lenin is History's Greatest Monster). Kingsbury is apparently something of a Libertarian and some of that comes out when characters discuss how to best administer their growing empire. However, I'm pretty sure on my first read-through it came across as some sort of Anarchist utopia and I didn't give it too much thought.
Despite being a bit more sensitive to political screeds, the book remains an interesting read and is well worth checking out.
later
Tom
So, I finished up the last two books of the year (and one is a re-read).
Earlier this year I saw The Dance of Reality by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky has a knack for making odd, arty films and this was no exception. It was supposed to be an autobiography of his childhood in Chile, but the whole thing was shot through with surreal symbolism and a sort of fairy-tale lens.
Jodorowsky apparently has a long interest in psychopomp and shamanism and it influences a lot of the stuff he does. He's even written a book about mythologizing your family tree.
In Where the Bird Sings Best Jodorowsky applies genealogical myth-making to his own family tree. The result is something beautiful and strange. Both sides of Jodorsky's family were Jews living in Russia (or soon to be part of Russia) and both of them migrated to South America where eventually his parents met and had him. The book recounts the triumphs and failures of his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents that led to his being born.
The book is crammed full of the strange and wonderful. Ghost Rabbis, magic bees, magic lions, epic quests, circus people, inspiring revolutionaries, and on and on and on. It's not an overly long book, but it is very dense with people riding up and down on the wheel of fortune at a breakneck pace.
I'm sure the book makes a lot more sense to Jodorowsky since he knows exactly what the symbolic references are, anyone looking for an actual accounting is wasting their time, but people willing to be swept up by the story might find it as fun and thought-provoking as I did.
The book was translated into English by Alfred MacAdam and while I can't compare the original to the translation, I felt pulled into the book and it seemed to capture the spirit of Dance of Reality in print so I'd have to say it's a pretty successful translation.
Anyway, a good read.
I've been meaning to go back and re-read some books that I enjoyed in the past -- I don't do as much of that with the firehose of new material I have thanks to e-books, a larger inter-loan library system and a steady paycheck. But books that resonate with you probably should be re-read.
So I went back and re-read Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury. I read this back in 2009 and the story of a family living on the harsh world of Geta really stuck with me. Geta is a harsh world where the native life is largely poisonous without a lot of preparation and only a few crops from Earth are grown there. Drought conditions cause crop failures and famine and at that time, people are rated for their survivability and those who don't rate high are killed to feed those who do. There's a lot of interesting world-building going on and it actually includes a pretty interesting look at polyamory (group marriages are fairly common and forms a plot point in the book).
I did notice this time around that the book has a real hate-on for Lenin (the heroes find a "magic crystal" that tells them all about violent conflict back on long-forgotten Earth and decide Lenin is History's Greatest Monster). Kingsbury is apparently something of a Libertarian and some of that comes out when characters discuss how to best administer their growing empire. However, I'm pretty sure on my first read-through it came across as some sort of Anarchist utopia and I didn't give it too much thought.
Despite being a bit more sensitive to political screeds, the book remains an interesting read and is well worth checking out.
later
Tom
