Chapter One Hundred Thirteen: Feed

So Feed by M.T. Anderson is a book I've been meaning to read for a while for several reasons.  I had been vaguely meaning to read it because in the school library where I worked last year, there were several copies, so it seems like a big YA title and I wanted to know what it was all about.  Then, this year, a teenager I know recommended I read it.  (This was months ago!)  And I've honestly been meaning to read it since, but I just kept being busy.  But finally the time was ripe for me to read Feed, which is a book that really has nothing to do with food--I don't know about you, but to me the title conjures images of huge piles of animal-grade dried corn off the cob sliding around industrial farms.  This is totally misleading.  Basically, the feed in this book refers to a sort of computer implanted directly into the brain, so it's a feed in the sense of a web feed, like an RSS or like the push notifications on smartphones.
Feed  is written in this really convincing slangy prose--I can totally imagine teenagers of the future (and of today) talking how Anderson has written Feed.  In this way, but in no other, it reminds me of an updated Catcher in the Rye (a book of which I am not at all fond, I will note).  And this grim future is fairly believable--that's what makes it, at heart, so depressing, at least to me.  Feed provides a creepy and pretty bleak view of a potential future of the U.S., providing what almost amounts to a reducto ad absurdium of fears about the increasing role of computers in everyday life.   It is done really well--it never feels like a lecture or like there's too much exposition or description at the expense of plot.  Anderson just slips in all of these little details that you have to pay attention to about the state of affairs in this bleak future U.S. and world, so the enormity of the situation only ever creeps up on you from the side, making it much more powerful than if Anderson described it directly. But it's not depressing in a way that makes me regret having read the book--the aforementioned recommender was right to suggest it to me, and I similarly urge anyone to read it, whether you're usually into YA sci-fi or not.  Give it a chance even (or especially) if it's not your usual scene, because it provides a lot of food for thought, as it were.

Chapter One Hundred Twelve: Boy: Tales of Childhood AND Going Solo

Boy: Tales of Childhood and Going Solo are Roald Dahl's autobiographies, intended for children--the audience he is perhaps best-known for writing for, although he also wrote works intended for adults.  Anyway, I don't know why I'd never read these autobiographies before, because I love everything by Roald Dahl that I've read so far (which is not all of his work, not by any means, but I'll get around to it all eventually).  So Roald Dahl actually had this really fascinating life!  I guess that's not surprising--he had to get all those fantastic story ideas from somewhere, so it makes sense that he might have done a lot of interesting things to get those ideas.  Boy focuses on his childhood, up to the age of 18; mostly it relates his days in various boarding schools, which sound fairly miserable (especially the beatings), but also fun times like summer family trips to Norway, and some hairy medical experiences (having his nose almost ripped off his face in a car crash; having his adenoids out without general anesthetic).  Going Solo focuses on his life after he left boarding school: he decided he wanted to see the world, and the best way to do that was to go and work for a large company with many foreign branches.  So he ended up getting a job with Shell Oil that sent him to eastern Africa, to what is now Tanzania.  And then while he was there, World War Two broke out, so he joined the RAF as a pilot and had all sorts of adventures and a horrific injury as well, which he obviously survived or he wouldn't have been able to go on to become a famous writer.  Going Solo ends when he finally returns back to his mother's home from the war, and it is quite possibly one of the most moving ends to a book I've yet read.  Mostly Boy and Going Solo take a humorous or at least light tone, even when the content is a bit heavy--Dahl is a master of that sort of thing, after all--but the end was quite moving, which I wasn't expecting but which I really appreciated.  For anyone who wants to learn about Roald Dahl as a person, or about one man's experience growing up in Wales in the 1920s and 1930s, or about his experience as a fighter pilot in the RAF during WWII in Egypt, Greece, and Palestine, or for anyone who just wants an interesting story about an interesting life, I'd highly recommend Boy and Going Solo.

Chapter One Hundred Eleven: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is fantasy author Neil Gaiman's most recent novel (or one of them--I had trouble in my brief search finding a chronological and up-to-date list of his publications).  I've been meaning to read it since it was published, and I finally had the time for it, and now I'm very glad I did.  It is not as heavy as, say American Gods felt to me at times, despite the fact that its plot is largely driven by a creepy and mysterious event buried deep in the narrator's past.  Gaiman does a great job in The Ocean at the End of the Lane at bringing in enough elements of fantasy to satisfy at least my appetite for the fantastical without causing any confusion about what he's describing.  (Again, this is unlike American Gods or Anansi Boys, which I enjoyed but in which I felt I was missing something due to my very shallow knowledge of mythology and folk tale characters.)  Still, if you don't like fantasy this probably isn't the book for you, grounded as it is in realistic-feeling descriptions of a boy's life in 1960s rural England.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fairly fast-paced novel whose action is fairly quick to start, and it had no problem gaining and holding my interest, so if you want a fun little fantasy read, I'd heartily suggest it.

Chapter One Hundred Ten: The Lake

The Lake is a fairly short novel by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.  I've read some of her work before, for one of my undergrad classes, and I enjoyed it then, so when I came across some of her novels in the library, I thought I'd check one out.  While the plot and characters are interesting, I think my favorite aspect of the book is actually Yoshimoto's writing style, or at least how her writing has been translated into English.  (Not speaking Japanese, I can't compare it to the original, of course.)  Her prose is not simple, but very straightforward and direct, clean and purposeful.  I'm not sure I'm describing it well, but I really enjoy the way she just says things without any fuss.  Of course, the main characters in The Lake, a new couple in their twenties, are interesting themselves, with their own quirks and, in the case of one of them, a mysterious and traumatic past.  The slow unveiling of that past as their relationship progresses is the main plot element to this story, and when the mystery is finally revealed, it is done right--it isn't overblown or corny, but believable and matter-of-fact.  I found this novel to be a very interesting read, and if you're looking for contemporary, realistic fiction, this would be an excellent choice.

Chapter One Hundred Nine: Bossypants

I've been wanting to read Tina Fey's autobiography for a while now, because it looks hilarious.  I am happy to say that in this case, my expectations were exceeded: Bossypants had me totally engaged and even chuckling aloud at times.  And I should say that, which I have no problems with Tina Fey, I wouldn't say I'm a fan of her work (not that I don't like it--I just haven't bothered to watch it enough to form an opinion).  Even so, with hardly any knowledge of Fey at all, I still thoroughly enjoyed Bossypants and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a laugh and an interesting account of how someone normal ended up being famous.

Chapter One Hundred Eight: La mécanique du coeur

I read La mécanique du coeur by Mathias Malzieu in its original French, and I'm not sure if there's an English translation widely available, so I won't make this a long post.  I was not a huge fan of this novel, at any rate.  While its premise is very interesting--a little orphan boy whose adoptive mother fits his defective heart with a clockwork prosthetic--the potentially cool steampunk atmosphere just falls back on typical tropes with a few distracting anachronisms.  (For example: the book is set in the late 1800s.  Why is the protagonist talking about airplanes?)  The protagonist himself, who narrates the story, veers between sympathetic and irritating as he finds himself bullied at school and obsesses about his love for a girl he saw one single time, singing on a sidewalk.  Still, despite the tropes and the narrator, I felt okay about the story right up until its end, which I did not like at all.  I won't reveal the ending in case any of my readers are planning on reading this story, but I found it totally unsatisfactory.  Still, it was great to read a book in French again; I haven't done that in a while, and it's good practice.

Chapter One Hundred Seven: The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is a novella that comes to us from South Korean author Sun-Mi Hwang.  This little book doesn't take long to read--I read it in one sitting--but it is definitely a case of a good thing coming in a small package.  The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has a sort of traditional, fable, or fairy-tale feel to it, possibly because its protagonist is a hen who talks.  All of the animals in this story can talk, in fact, but not to humans, just to each other.  Anyway, Sprout is a plucky hen who escapes the egg-laying coop where she's spent most of her unhappy life to live as a free hen so she can accomplish her one great dream: to hatch one of her eggs and raise a child.  She faces both dangers and joys outside the coop--not everything about her new life is as great as she hoped it would be.  This story could end up feeling a bit too heavy-handed in its possible allegories, but Sprout is such an endearing and engaging character that the story feels natural and is able to focus on her at least as much as the messages being conveyed about the importance of love and family.  I found it to be a very moving piece of writing.  If you're looking for something quick to read but long to linger in your thoughts, I'd highly suggest The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.