Take It! Take It!

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins

I'm probably one of the last bloggers out there to have read this. A part of me has been meaning to, for the longest time, ever since I saw that Jeopardy episode years back where the Final Jeopardy question requires The Moonstone as the answer. I remember Alex Trebek commenting on it when none of the contestants got the correct answer. Ah well, what a way to pick future reads.

The story is simple enough: just another case of a stolen bauble, in this one a diamond probably as large as a Faberge egg or even larger. Instead of going the route traveled by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in utilizing just one protagonist (a detective so to speak, in the person of Sherlock Holmes) in solving the crime, Wilkie Collins chose a different route, ensnaring readers with a vibrant backdrop of how the jewel came to be in the possession of the young lady, Rachel Verinder, how every characters' lives were thrown off kilter after the theft of the diamond was consummated, and lastly, the resolution in the end that is more than satisfying.

That's practically what happened but the thing about this story is the way Collins told it. It's not a simple whodunit. There's enough meat in the story to give primacy not just to the excellent powers of deduction made by a handful of the characters (both major and minor) but also of painting a picture of those times in the eyes of a handful of observers who served as narrators or more like journalists for the whole book, which made the entire mystery more than a joy to read, what with the narrators' varying thoughts coloring the narrative all throughout.

Set in that long ago era where ladies weren't allowed to go out unescorted lest talks start of conduct unbecoming of one, The Moonstone is a detailed exposition of one family's trials through the greedy act of taking the jewel from its rightful owner from the very start of the story. With different narrators for each major chapter, one is sure to despair in one page, delight in the next, doubt in the succeeding chapters, dread for the charactes and digest the last pages for the manner by which the observer recounts the times certain incidents occur. I particularly adored Miss Clack because her chapters were a welcome respite for the seriousness of the entire mystery. She made me laugh. A lot. Still, this isn't, as a whole, a funny book. But those moments of hilarity were precious.

When the puzzle pieces finally fell into place you close the book with a satisfying smile to your face. In my case I actually used the Page Down key, hahaha. One of the great things with books such as this is that it's already part of the public domain and I can download this (and other classics) to my heart's content. I'm also sure to check out Wilkie Collins' other stories sometime in the future.

This is a sure winner of a story so I highly recommend it to anyone.

Considering also that this is a very popular book and that a lot of bloggers have posted about this, I will follow Memory and instead point you to Fyrefly's Book Blogs Search Engine for other interesting points of view.

Not A Review

I'm still reading my fifth book for the year (Koushun Takami's Battle Royale) while I've yet to come up with a post on either The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and Edward Hume's No Matter How Loud I Shout, hopefully by tomorrow if not before the end of the week. My brain's a messed-up tangle of unprocessed thoughts, premature ideas and not-quite indignation and that's just from reading the local news. Add some personal stuff in the mix and it's a wonder I'm posting at all instead of spending my time eating lots of ice cream. Oh wait, I did just that a couple of minutes ago. Kidding.

So I'll post a picture instead.



The holidays are over and done with and yet the local Starbucks in Baguio City still has lots of the Christmas cups in stock over the weekend! That's my favorite Chocolate Truffle Cake.

And I wonder why I'm having trouble fitting into my jeans lately. Uh-oh. The first month of the new year is almost over and I'm looking again at another failed resolution to uh, be healthy.

Then again, my brain's relatively ok with all my (slow) reading. And playing Mafia Wars. Tsk tsk tsk, I need a life.

I Spy

These are the first two books I read for the year. They're both rereads at that and written by Robert Ludlum. They both comprise of what used to be my go-to reading material way back in highschool until college, after I used up my bro's shelves of other Ludlums (the entire Jason Bourne series among them), Sidney Sheldon, Mary Higgins Clark, and well I also should mention my own stacks of Frederick Forsyth, Sweet Dreams, Mills and Boon plus Harlequin romances. Hahaha! Yes, I used to be a spy book junkie, among other things.

Why I picked them up is simple enough, I didn't want to go through unpacking boxes of books to quench my reading thirst in the wee small hours of after-cable-watching dawn. Both were somewhere in my drawer beside my bed. And funnily enough, both still has the sticker of the price of mass market paperbacks way back then. My bro's copy of The Icarus Agenda was bought for PhP 87.25 while my own copy of The Matarese Circle had a PhP 87.75 price tag. Nowadays, a mass market paperback costs around PhP 335 (for my copy of The Magicians). How time flies, not to mention the constant devaluation of the Philippine peso.

Let's go to the books, shall we?

In The Icarus Agenda, Congressman Evan Kendrick of the ninth district of Colorado flew to Oman in secret, to help in any way possible, the release of hostages held at the American embassy there. Everything was supposed to be undercover with even an avowal from the State Department that the government declined the congressman's request to help. You see he formerly called Oman his home. He made his millions there. But due to tragic circumstances he fled the country years previously. Now is his chance to pay back whatever goodwill he received there. Deep inside though he's looking for a man, the one they call the Mahdi, the reason for Evan leaving the country in the first place. Eventually, with the help of his former mentor Manny Weingrass, not to mention the Mossad, the hostages were released and the congressman flew back anonymously to the States.

A year after the Oman incident, Evan Kendrick is suddenly thrust in the spotlight. A group of powerful, secretive yet well-meaning individuals who call themselves Inver Brass, picks the congressman to be the next viable vice presidential candidate. And with it they started a series of events manipulating people in both media and government to focus their attention on the congressman. He's bright, he's articulate, he asks hard questions and seemed free from corruption. But when the group released the information with respect to his activities in Oman, the representative from Colorado is not just a media darling but also a target, among them by terrorists he tried to outwit in Oman, and a handful of others within the government as well.

And mayhem ensues. Oh I mean further action. Whew! When I first read this it felt like watching a movie in my head. Ludlum has that power of staging the scenes and making you see what's happening to the characters, whether their lives are in danger or not and would you please turn that page now to find out! There's never a dull moment because every page has something vital happening in them: the search for traitor, the paper trail, the broken friendships, the swarm of reporters, everything. Things happen so fast you don't actually find time to sit back and think, "Hey that's not quite possible in real time!" Yet you don't mind. That's the power of being immersed in a thriller. You're in it for the ride. You fly to Oman in an instant, Bahrain the next, and give or take a few chapters it's back in the USA or fighting assassins in Mexico.

For a while there it's also a lesson. Bits and pieces of foreign language, foreign idioms, foreign customs. Bits and pieces of politics. Bits and pieces of covert operation one can dream of. Tie them all together and you get a thriller indeed. One that will make you doubt your government more and make you hope that someone as honest as Evan Kendrick is actually out there. Or something to that effect.

And now to my favorite Ludlum novel yet.

Written in the late 70s, The Matarese Circle is a tale of two spies: one from the KGB and one from the Consular Operations. Vasili Talaniekov and Brandon Scofield. The Serpent and Beowulf Agate. I just love them both.

Talaniekov received intel from his dying mentor about a select group of assassins who belong to the Matarese, whose main focus is basically to control governments. Since both the USSR and the USA would not personally acknowledge the actual existence of the group, given that both governments used assassins from the Matarese in previous decades, not to mention that some government posts are occupied by assassins themselves, Talaniekov must uncover the people behind the group and the only way to do that is to forget personal vendetta and hope that the other best spy in the world, Scofield, would be willing to help him. Well, willingness is out of the question since both of them have been targeted by the Matarese and recently been sacked from their respective posts. Scofield should have no choice but to help him. Unless the man also known as Beowulf Agate decides to kill the Serpent first.

Basically that's just the first part of this entire chunkster of a book.

I loved this book because there's a balance between the action scenes and the relationship between the two spies. Two spies who hate each other and yet forgetting that for a moment because the directive is more important. Heck, it wasn't even a formal mission from both governments since the two spies could not trust those in the higher ups when they finally decided to look for the Matarese. They just both love their country and would not wish for a madman such as the leader of the Matarese to overtake either governments! Thing is, the Matarese is heavily entrenched in the governing halls of the two countries.

I loved the spy bits too, particularly when Scofield uncovers the last person from the circle of Matarese successors. The real icing on the cake! And you were there with him, discovering the same thing he does along the way. Ah, the masterful tricks of a thriller writer is indeed worthy of envy!

Of course a part of you worries for both their safety as well as the girl. Yes, there has to be a love interest somewhere. In all Ludlum books I've read, there's always a love interest. Hahaha!

Ah, what I didn't anticipate rereading this is the sadness again at the end. Not just for the fact that the story is over but for the entire dynamic between the two lead characters. Awww, those two fools! In a different world they would've been friends. In a different world they would've liked each other. It makes you see the Cold War in that perspective: two countries basically one-upping the other, per se. Of course I know the Cold War is not just that. I was a kid during the Cold War. My earliest memories of Russia is watching Brezhnev's funeral on tv, soldiers marching in tune to the funeral hymn. I knew what it felt like listening to Sting singing Russians. Because back then it was all too real. My earliest memories of USA is Sesame Street on tv. Ah well.

Yeah I'm a spy junkie back then. I can still be a spy junkie now. And yes, hopefully I can read all John Le Carre's earlier Smiley books. I only read one, I think.

Up, Up and Away

It's Superman!
Tom De Haven

Superman. Everybody knows his story. Everybody. He's been with us for more than seventy years already: the red cape, the blue body suit, the emblem. Heck, even hermits have heard of him, right? And yet after all those years who knew there's still something fresh, something new, something great to come out of that tale?

Enter Tom De Haven.

Oh I haven't heard of you, Mr. De Haven! I'm just another reader from a third-world country who loves books. I read almost anything I can get my hands on in whatever I can find here. And while I've read a lot of books indeed, some pretty old and some new, some trash, some way beyond treasure, I haven't heard of you! And yet, from the first moment I saw this book in the shop I knew I wanted it. It called to me. Never mind I had to come back every so often, sometimes wishing nobody else has the same longing I had for it, until I could commit myself to actually buying it (oh there goes my ritual of buying new books). And one fateful day I gave in and trusted myself into a world of your making.

This is a story of Superman as it should be.

De Haven takes us back to the 1930s: the scenery straight from sepia-tinged photographs of old, the language more so, and peopled by people who try to get by way back then. Enter a young Clark Kent who just realized he's bullet-proof. Like he knows that he's probably the fastest man in Smallville, or even the strongest. But the teenage boy just couldn't believe he stopped a bullet, rather his forehead did.

Sans the trappings of the entire Krypton backstory, Jor-El's guiding voice and a Fortress of Solitude, this is Clark at his rawest self, his alien heritage as unknown to us as it is to him. Raised simply by John and Martha Kent to be a good boy, he has to come to terms with his superpowers and well, be responsible for it. And gee, that's a lot for a boy who apparently have fallen off a wagon when he was a baby and found by the Kents along the road.

How lovely it is to watch the young man grow up, have fun, open up and then doubt himself:

For two years he's been trying to grow up, pay attention, make himself ready... and do you know what?

It was a joke.

He wonders if there's a back door he can use.

And yet it's not just Clark Kent's story. Because a superhero needs a villain. This is as much a portrait of Lex Luthor himself, this time a politician who's also a crime boss. Sinister is the word that comes to mind when it comes to Lex Luthor. He simply reeks of it. And it is quite understandable given that he knows the world is his for the taking. You feel it as well. He has power and lots of it. Power that comes from knowing the enemy and making sure that he has all the aces when he plays his cards - be it usurping another Mafia boss' territory or manipulating the mayor - a power that comes from simply knowing himself. The boy who didn't care for others growing up obviously only cares for himself later in life.

And then there's Lois Lane. Awww.

Is it obvious I'm so enamored of the book? If the hero thinks like this who wouldn't love him?

He loved them, lived among them, but was not of them.

How could he be?

Would his eyes ever dim? His body ever fail? Would he ever die?

He looks human and he tries hard, as hard as he can, to behave as he believes a human being ought to, but it is only playacting. If he isn't human, though, what is he? He doesn't know, just as he doesn't really know anymore who he is - is he Clark Kent or is he this person called Superman? Only three months and he's lost his way, lost his bearings.

There's nobody to teach him what to do, how to act, how to feel about the actions he takes. He is alone, more now than he's ever been. He hates it whenever he reads about himself in the newspaper or goes to the movies and sees himself in The March of Time. "Unique." "Unparalleled." "One of a kind." "In a class by himself."

Alone.

All by himself in the world, in the solar system, in the universe.

Lex Luthor, at least, seemed to get it.

But nobody else does.

It's a different take on Superman indeed. Just Clark, with his emotions in check, trying to be as responsible as he can, because he was brought up that way. And maybe that's all we need to become heroes as well, sans the superpowers.

Thank you, Tom De Haven. Nice meeting you.

Other interesting points of view:

Bookgasm
Bookslut
If You Want to Know About My Life
Is That Right?
Notes of a Book Dreamer
Shaking Through
Stacked
TheoCenTriC
Think About It Central
Unbound

Death and Togas

The Secret History
Donna Tartt

An interesting question: What was I thinking, as I watched his eyes widen with startled incredulity ("Come on fellas, you're joking, right?") for what would be the very last time? Not the fact that I was helping to save friends, certainly not; nor guilt. But little things. Insults, innuendos, petty cruelties. The hundreds of small, unavenged humiliations which had been rising in me for months. It was of them I thought, and nothing more. It was of them that I was able to watch him at all, without the slightest tinge of pity or regret, as he teetered on the cliff's edge for one long moment - arms flailing, eyes rollings, a silent-movie comedian slipping on a banana peel - before he toppled backwards, and fell to his death.

It takes a whole lot of gumption to write about a murder lovingly and it seems Donna Tartt has a lot of that. A murder most foul, most poetic with the perpetrators getting away with it or so it would seem. No spoilers there. That much is mentioned in the first pages of the story.

I've had this book for a pretty long time now and it's only last month that I picked it up and finally read it. I had difficulty picking up another book afterwards. That or of finishing others I already started previously. Because every page I read after that I see Henry intruding into my thoughts, begging for a piece of my time. Or of Richard in some faraway desk dreaming of Camilla, waiting for nothing. They're just characters for goodness' sake!

How to start? It's a story basically of Richard's time studying the Classics in college with a clique of rich friends. Well, that's a bit simple and yet accurate to a point. Richard you see isn't rich. He opted to study under a scholarship in Hampden College in Vermont, far from his California home. It's where he became obsessed with a group of five students chosen by a notorious professor to study Greek: Henry, Charles, Camilla, Francis and Bunny. Eventually he was admitted into the group and basically this is where the tragedy started. Again, simple and yet accurate to a point.

Tragedy. Such a classic word. When I think of the word I think about the Greeks. And the six students think and breathe Greek in Hampden College. Since we're all privy to Richard's thoughts in all the pages we understand his initial elation at being part of the group, at being part of something even, of having friends for the first time in a long time. And then we start knowing the other five students for who they are and what they have done and well, the story unravels from there. Well, early on we know this is a story about a murder. But you'll get hooked on the narrative just the same.

Because it's not just about the murder. Every character in this book has a ring of truth in them. We recognize them in ourselves, we somehow aim to be them or we are repulsed by them, well at least that's how I experienced it. Richard carving an identity for himself, recreating a new version of himself outside the confines of his home. I mean, who didn't do that in college? Henry's passions, his pragmatism, his brains. Bunny's funloving nature. Francis' generosity. The mystery that surrounds Charles and Camilla. And those are just the main characters.

And then there's the Greeks and the tragedy. I'm not explaining myself well, am I? Well I can't. The joy in reading is the unraveling of the story, of the murder and its consequences. It's where you are tested; whether your heart is in the right place after all. Because whoever walks away from a murder unscathed is simply not human.

To say that it's well-written is an understatement. I didn't find a word out of place. Gee, even phrases come with a ring of truthfulness in it like say "an expendable past, disposable as a paper cup" very early on. Let me just say that the words speak to me. I was never put off by the writing in any way. I also appreciate the fact that the Ancient Greek themes and lessons reminded me of my philosophy classes way back in college. I had a certain liking for the Greeks once even if I never knew the language.

I am reminded of The Magicians while reading this book. Both books deal with college life and eventually belonging to a certain clique to propel their own stories forward. The main difference for me is that Tartt's story picks emotions, feelings, rawness one could easily relate with while weaving a tale of murder and complicity while Grossman's tale took another lane not to mention another genre altogether.

A truly satisfying read I'm bound to reread sometime in the future. And yes, I still welcome Henry's intrusions into my thoughts. Maybe he could put some of his practical self in me. Then again, would that mean I'd consider murder as an ultimate solution someday? Now that's a chilling thought to end this post.

A lot of gumption, indeed.

Other interesting points of view:

A Striped Armchair
Bibliolatry
Death and Taxes - The Blog
Gus23
Journey with Books
Read_Warbler
Stella Matutina
Stephanie's Confession of a Book-a-holic
The Ax for the Frozen Sea
Things Mean A Lot

Light Tricks

Ghostwalk
Rebecca Stott

I loved the cover of this one. It's the reason I picked it up from the shelves. The front cover shows a prism casting light on some buildings and yet appears torn and dripping with blood. Or wax. And the inside front cover shows a shawled woman walking a pathway. Of course it's all to easy to get engrossed in the accolades printed inside but I'm not one to dwell on that. I loved the cover and so I bought it.

Apparently the story is as complicated as the intricate cover. It's not just about the prism and the woman, Elizabeth Vogelsang, who wound up dead in the introduction alone. And she's not the only dead person haunting the pages of this book. Because this is not just a ghost story.

Elizabeth Vogelsang is a historian researching on Isaac Newton's alchemical past. It appears she drowned herself one day, clutching a prism in her hand. Her son, Cameron Brown, asked another historian named Lydia Brooke to finish the book. This is when the entanglements - between our time and the past - become apparent. Because in reading Vogelsang's note, Lydia Brooke tries to uncover the mystery of certain deaths in the past and unknowingly becoming a target herself in the present.

I cannot say more because there is a certain beauty in discovering the story for one's self. Yes it is a mystery and yet it is based on facts. Plus it's quite easy to get hooked on the story, believing every word from the past because the background is well-researched indeed. Or appears to be. I am not a Newton scholar so yes, a part of me wants to believe in the aunthenticity of the past as presented herein. Or something to that effect. Because it's a story and a damn good one.

Thing is, it's not a straightforward mystery which might put off some fans of the genre. There's the Newton angle and yet there's more. There's Lydia and Cameron's affair. There's this pressing problem on ethical animal research. There's violence, blood in the pages. And it's this violence that mirrors the past that is uncanny, as Lydia ultimately discovered:

It's only when you've pieced together a story in several different ways that you realise where the holes are, discover knowledge that is still missing, the questions you still need to ask. It's not like a jigsaw, which can only fit together one way, each piece carved out of the side of another so that it will nudge back, skin to skin, bone to bone. A jigsaw exists in two dimensions. But there were so many of these fragments, layerings of narratives with jagged edge, your story, mine, now, then, seventeeth century, twenty-first century, and all the spirits that seemed to pass or bleed - between. There were horizontal patternings, vertical and diagonal patternings, and those were just the ones you could see. If each part of this narrative of Elizabeth's was a playing card, they had to be reshuffled. So many consequences were possible. But when there are so many players in the frame, so many potential motivations in play, almost any consequence becomes possible.

It's also a well-written piece that paints a picture of an affair: of constantly giving in, of believing and not asking anything back and eventually feeling used in the end and yet still accepting the other just because. A love gone wrong and the certain obsessiveness that comes with it.

Lying to you. Lying with you. Lying for you. Can I remember the difference?

So I will not exactly recommend this to people expecting a fast-paced resolution to a certain mystery. This book needs time, devotion, a pitcher or so of coffee or tea, an open mind, as you immerse yourself in the both the present and seventeenth century. You may never see Isaac Newton in the same light again. And you might start to wonder who else is watching you as you traipse through life, particularly if you're a historian. Because there are indeed ghosts out there, somewhere, on the lookout, always protective of their past.

Other interesting points of view:

A Book a Week
Ariachne's Broken Woof
BookPlease
Fantasy Book Critic
The Luminous Page

Year Starter

It's 2010 already and I haven't posted anything! Well, until now. I only got back online a couple of days ago after more than three weeks offline so forgive me dear readers. Yes, all three of you.

Hopefully I'll be back posting about books by tomorrow. The backlog in my brain is slowly turning into a forest! Oh well, let's hope the words stitch themselves together into coherent posts sometime soon.

Have a good reading year to all you book blogging friends out there!