Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Fat Charlie Nancy isn't fat. All the stories are Anansi's. Don't talk to spiders, unless it's something you really mean.
Oh, and Neil Gaiman's still incredible.


These are the lessons I take away every single time I read this novel. It's probably my favorite of Gaiman's books--including any of the Sandman series. I know, I know, American Gods is incredible, but this is my favorite. And hey, it's in the same storyline anyway. So, shush, naysayers.

The story is about the two sons of Mr. Nancy, Fat Charlie and Spider. Before his father died, you see, Charles Nancy, nicknamed "Fat Charlie" by his father, didn't know he had a brother. And after he finds out, well, he can't wait to believe he's an only again. And that the world is as logical and boring as he'd led himself to believe, and that magic doesn't really exist.

Turns out Mr. Nancy is really the modern incarnation of Anansi, the West African spider god, the trickster. And he's not lost  a bit of his trickster ways though he's become a somewhat modern man. Fat Charlie was subjected through a variety of embarrassments at the hand of his father as a child. Like the time Mr. Nancy told him that for President's Day, all the kids picked their favorite president and dressed up as them for school that day... so Fat Charlie showed up all decked out in his presidential finery. And he was the only one. Then there was his father's habit of taking him "mermaid watching." There weren't any mermaids. Mr. Nancy was also fond of performing what he referred to as the "miracle of the loaves and fishes."


"He loafs and he fishes and it's a miracle that he makes a living."

But the most embarrassing moment was his manner of death. During a particularly fine round of karaoke, singing directly at a group of sunburned tourists, Mr. Nancy had a heart attack, fell gracefully from the stage and managed to pull the top completely off the blondest tourist.

After Mr. Nancy's death, Fat Charlie is told he's got a brother by his neighbor Callyanne Higgler, (who's in fact responsible for the fact that Fat Charlie and Spider were separated to begin with). And all he has to do to meet him is pass a whisper to a spider. But when Spider shows up, he takes over Fat Charlie's life. He steals his fiancee. He impersonates him at his job and blackmails his boss (who's legitimately up to no good). He even turns the tiny spare bedroom of Fat Charlie's apartment into a window into an alternate space with a hot tub, giant TV and tropical scenery. To get rid of him, Charlie ends up making a deal he never should've made with one the god's from his father's world, who is in league withe his father's oldest enemy. In exchange for her word and a feather, he ends up offering her Anansi's bloodline if she makes his brother go away. Turns out though, Anansi's bloodline includes him. So he has to step up and find out how much he really is his father's son to save the day.



As usual I said a lot without saying much at all. What it wraps up to is this: I love Gaiman's odd humor. I like how overtly British everything is.  I also like that it's one of the first non-Southern books I can remember reading where it's made pretty clear that none of the main characters are white. That's something I missed the first few times I read it, honestly. I don't know HOW, but I did. And I love all the stories about Anansi. I love the way he always ends up getting his, in the end. I love how matter of factly the stories are told. I love the descriptions of Tiger, so dark and bloodthirsty. I also like the casual references to American Gods throughout the narrative. And frankly, any book that has people having to flee in the face of hundreds of homicidal flamingos and then later homicidal penguins is pretty worthwhile right there.

Gaiman always seems to deal with unusual family situations, where it becomes abundantly clear that loving your family in spite of what you may view as their faults is infinitely better than losing them to something that wants to kill and/or eat them... or kill and/or eat you, depending on which you're reading. I like that. I like that his characters are often outsiders who can find a place to belong. And who hasn't felt that hope in their heart when they can't help but think there's no where in the whole wide world where they fit in?

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

I love any book about the Civil War. PLUS this is the book that inspired Joss Whedon to create the show Firefly (and the movie made from the series after its cancellation, Serenity). Needless to say, I dove into it with such enthusiastic intent.

This book was difficult for me to get into, honestly. The battle of this book is Gettysburg. Bloody, desperate, horrific. I wanted something fluffier, something less... real, I guess. It bothered me that these were based on real people, who lived and breathed and loved and died. I can't stand anyone suffering of any kind in anyone around me, so to think of the passion and belief these people had to carry through the battle to just make it through the day.

My extremely limited experience with military life has shown me the depth of the connection between the soldiers and officers who go through battles together... it's intense. I am seriously in awe of the level of emotional commitment these people have for each other. I am so apolitical, mostly because I can't make myself sit down and form concrete, objective opinions about things that affect people so deeply. That's what I took away. The pointlessness and sadness and my desire to want to make people not have to go through this. I value so much of the broken and cracked and painful in life but I've never been able to reconcile war into any of my philosophy. Some people love it... they really do. They come away tormented and scarred... and part of them wants to go back, wants the adrenaline. It's insane to read this, know people who've served and try to think about it all together.

The Wild Things by Dave Eggers

This is the adult novelisation of the movie version of the children's book Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

Take a moment. Read that twice. Think, oh, ok. And proceed.

The movie Where The Wild Things Are had its screenplay co-written by Spike Jonze (geeeeenius) and Dave Eggers (uber hipster writerman). In as much as the store penned by Sendak all those years ago is about himself.... and so the Spike Jonze movie is kind of about his version of being Max. And Eggers' version is his side of the story of being Max.

Now, I'm gonna post SOME of my thoughts here, but not all of them, as I've yet to see the movie. I promise I'll post a part two to this update as soon as I get a chance.

I loved this book. I mean, I do loves me some Eggers. He created the Haggis-on-Whey books (http://www.amazon.com/Giraffes-HOW-Doris-Haggis-Whey/dp/1932416978/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262992030&sr=8-6), such as I enjoyed what I've read of his stuff and like everyone with even an ounce of hipster street cred, I was both amused and touched by A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But I have to say, seeing him take a tiny children's story and place so much more into it made me smile a little more than I have at him in years.

For those who aren't familiar, WTWA (sendak's version) is about a little boy named Max who gets sent to his room without supper one night. Since his mother punished him, he decides to take a boat to an island where the (can you guess) the wild things live. He is fierce and wearing a wolf suit, so he is made their king. And the Wild Rumpus ensues, which involves tons of dancing and romping about. Eventually, though, he decides to return home... to find that his mother has laid a tray of supper for him in his room.

Well, the book is this, only moreso. It deals more with the loneliness and the issues surrounding his family. His sister is growing up and doesn't have time for him. His mother is dating someone, of whom he isn't a huge fan. He drenches his sister's room in water as revenge for her not defending him against her friends during a snowball fight. I don't want to go into too much detail, so as not to ruin this for anyone who is still planning on seeing the movie, so I'll just leave it at that and say that so far, this franchise (yes, it's a franchise now) did not disappoint.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire.

Let me just say, I hated this book for years. I read it when it was not available in paperback, when it was not a musical or a pop culture phenomenon. I read it and inspite of my dear love for The Wizard of Oz, I was not a fan.

I used to (and occasionally still do) have a big problem with adaptations, reimaginings or retellings of stories that I enjoy. I don't even typically enjoy remakes of movies or covers of songs. But maybe six, seven years later, I've reread Wicked and I've gotta say, it's not half bad.

It's the life of Elphaba, The Wicked Witch of the West. You can get that much just from reading the full title, I'm aware, but it's really how it is. There is so much you can say about this book and honestly, there's forty thousand other blogs, blurbs and a whole musical to say the rest and summarise, so I'm going to focus on the part that appealed to me most of all.

So, without further ado or dithering, here's a quote:
"This is why you shouldn't fall in love. It blinds you. Love is wicked distraction."

My basic reaction to this entire book was that Elphaba was betrayed by love, over and over again. The love her parents denied because of her appearance, the love of her real father, the love she felt for Fiyero was strong enough to make her try to confess to his wife, his sisters, anyone and in the end even that instinct ended up working to her detriment. If she had been treated with dignity, if she had been allowed to develop normal feelings towards herself instead of being forced to look at her life through the filter of the prejudices of those around her, maybe she would not have been in so much trouble. Maybe she never would have been the kind of person people felt they needed to defend Dorothy against. Maybe she could've been happy, and not so concerned with her lack of a soul and the need to try to correct some of the wrongs in the world. But then, really, compared to who she was, she would've been nobody.

The issue of love in relation to Elphaba's development was fairly dense. Ain't it always, though, folks? Her appearance, the questionable parentage, her mother's distance, her sister's religious leanings and the 'political' mood of Oz leave you with the feeling that it's really no surprise that the life of this heartbreakingly human character ends up being lost in the legend, propaganda and conjecture of the 'greater' (or simply more aesthetically appealing?) story of Dorothy Gale.

Elphaba was ostracized and marginalised even from birth. The obvious differences such as her green skin, uncertain gender and baby teeth lead her father to either parade her around to potential converts to display the "wrongness" of her existence or deny her as being any part of him, emotionally or biologically. And in spite of her devotion to her sister, Nessarose, the obvious preference shown as well as the issue of faith serves to futher isolate her from her family. Elphaba's disbelief in her own soul and her impatience with fantacism seems to me the only logical reaction to a system of belief that states she is either horribly wrong down to her very soul or is somehow lesser than her non-green, non-deformed counterparts. This also makes her devotion to Animal rights seem the only path her life could take.

I mean, come on. She is reviled for being less than human. So, in a very personal and real way, she understands the difficulty, humiliation and pain that comes from being told over and over, your life is worth less than others' lives. Her love for Fiyero, although immoral by the standards of the day, also seems to me the most realistic option. She does not compromise, does not change her beliefs or behaviour. It seems that a person so devoted to reason, whose personal philosophy is rooted so firmly in logic, could only fall passionately and irrevocably in love, even with someone who is taken. That being said, after his death and what she feels is her hand in it, it is only understandable that she would try to tell his wife, try to do what is right according to her worldview. Like I said before, maybe she would've cherished her son more if love hadn't betrayed her this one last time and led her to think it only leads to pain? I dunno. Maybe I'm missing the point. But this was my whirling point of view when I read this book.

I guess I don't have some great overwhelmingly intellectual response to this novel. It hit me in the gut and the heart. I can't really analyse it very well yet. I can only react to it. So forgive me if this isn't the best reaction I've ever written.