Well, and Your Humble Blogger has fallen behind in Book Reports again. This is, in part, because our computer is suffering from extreme slowness these days, which appears to be the standard for Windows, where after two years so much kludge collects at the bottom of the machine that you pretty much have to crumple it up and throw it away. The computer itself is pretty good, and mostly does what I want it to, but if I attempt to run iTunes, my mail, a browser and Word all at once, it digs its heels in and starts adding two-minute freezes any time I want to switch tasks. It did not do that a year ago. I have no real idea what to do about it, either; everything I’ve read says that gosh, Windows sucks and why would anybody use it? Which I do understand, except there is the whole standardization thing, and besides I spent several years getting really good at Windows, and I know that’s a sunk cost, but the hell anyway.
All of which is to say that writing blog notes has started seeming more like a chore than a hobby, and if I’m going to do chores, I should do the laundry. Which reminds me. Back in a moment.
Excellent. Where was I?
Oh, yes, Book Reports. Well, and I picked up The House of Paper, by Carlos Mar’a Dom’nguez (translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor), because, well, it had a Peter Sis illustration on the cover, and I always judge books by their covers, don’t you? It saves so much time. The book is another one of those novelettes or whatever they are; one hundred and three pages with lots of blank spaces. It seems like not very much book for eighteen bucks, but then I got it from the library, so there it is.
As I expected, it was the sort of—what—magical realism?—highly atmospheric, nearly plotless, evocative, metaphoric stuff that I expect when I pick up Latin American books for US consumption. Which is rarely, because as Gentle Readers are aware, YHB is a plot fiend, and magical realism (or whatever it is) doesn’t float YHB’s boat. That is, I’ve nothing against magical realism as a technique or a style, if I understand what magical realism is, and I don’t, but I like it married to a story that’s a story, and not just a hint of a story. My preference. Just me. Still. Stanislaw Lem used to be able to do that sort of evocation, that sort of unexplained stuff where a naturalistic setting takes on a tinge of the not-quite-natural through a prose style that eventually makes the non-naturalistic stuff fit in nicely, almost inevitably with the naturalistic setting, but then add in a lot of humor and some plot, too, now and then. Or I’m making it up, which is possible too, as I haven’t read any Lem for a long time.
Anyway, I quite liked the book, although I think that the twist, the goose, the payoff at the end would be better if the first half of the revelation wasn’t revealed in the front flap. And the web site I linked to above. What I’m saying is, if you want to read a nice little book about the lure of books, not even the lure of reading but the lure of books themselves, and the ways in which a love of books and a love of reading intertwine, and you like the naturalism/metaphor stuff, then you might well like this book, but if you do pick it up, don’t read the blurb.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian