Richard Matheson “I Am Legend”

After watching the movie (which, even though I had some problems with parts of it, I liked a lot, mostly because of Will Smith) I wanted very much to read the book as well, if only to see how much the movie version differed from the original story. So when I found the book on Bookmooch I snatched it up right away.

When I had the actual book in my hands I was happy to see that it contains not only the eponymous story, but a total of 10 stories by the same author. So to get a feel for his writing style I decided to read the other ones first, keeping the one I already knew for last.

Written, as far as I can tell, between 1951 and 1987 some of the stories feel quite dated and the ’science’ in them is accordingly ludicrous, which for me takes away quite a bit of the reading pleasure. Also, some of them were a bit disturbing (especially “The Dance of the Dead” comes to mind). Most of them were ok, but nothing to write home about. And certainly nothing that will stay with me for any amount of time.

Thus it was with considerately lowered expectations I went ahead to finally read ‘I Am Legend’. Considering it is counted among the science fiction classics (and even Stephen King cites it as “an inspiration”), this was probably a good thing. To make a long story short: this might be one of the very few instances in which I actually prefer the movie version to the book. I ended up not actually hating the book version, but not too far from it either.

The first surprise for me was that the Robert Neville in the novel is described as a blond, blue-eyed arian type of guy. *blech* Considering the book was written in the fifties I should have seen that coming, but nevertheless it bugged me the whole time. And not only is the guy Whitey White, he also came through as a complete asshole. I can’t even put my finger on why exactly I felt this way, but I didn’t connect to him at all. I tried to ignore the descriptions of him and picture Will Smith in my mind, but it didn’t work in the least. So it was hard to feel for him in any way.

The story itself has been, not surprisingly, considerably altered for the movie, especially the end. The ending of the book made a lot more sense to me and, had the book-Neville been an even slightly likeable charcter, would have been much more poignant and moved me to tears than the movie’s. As it is I couldn’t wait for Neville to die, so the whole story was wasted on me. Shame, really.

All in all I am afraid I have read this book way too late to understand its supposed classic status in the least. Maybe in the fifties, or even in the seventies, this was a new idea and maybe back then the ’scientific’ parts of it might have seemed at least partly plausible to the average reader. But today, not only are there loads of better vampire stories out there, also lots of the supposedly ’scientific’ and ‘logic’ explanations for the myths surrounding vampirism are just plain ridiculous. Like, the vampirism is caused by a kind of bacteria, which makes them sensitive to light and therefore you can kill them with a wooden stake, because by stabbing them you open up their bodies to let the light in and the bacteria die instantly. Or something like that. In any case it didn’t make any sense at all and annoyed the hell out of me. Definitely a book I won’t ever read again.

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From time to time I like to read children’s books, especially when they deal with my favorite genre: the world after a catastrophe that more or less wiped out humankind.

Robert O’Brien’s “Z for Zachariah” is, along with Jean Ure’s “Plague” and David Palmer’s “Emergence”, one of the classics of the “dystopian fiction for children” genre. Granted, I often don’t have much luck with the so-called “classics”, but in this case I like all three of those books a lot. I am not sure if they are really suitable for children, considering the grim subject matter, but this is another topic altogether.

The book is written from the perspective of 15-year-old Ann, who lives alone in an isolated valley after her family and everyone else has died in a war that lasted all of one week and involved copious amounts of atom bombs. The world outside her sheltered little valley is a devastated deathland and she has no way of finding out if any other people survived the catastrophe. One day a man in a radiation suit arrives and changes everything. Not necessarily for the better.

I loved the way the book was written in the form of diary entries. And I am quite impressed with the way O’Brien managed to immerse himself in the mind of a 15-year-old girl, I thought her voice was very realistic. Of course, what with the book being written ages ago, for today’s standards Ann seems painfully naive and her wish to believe in the inherent good in people almost costs her her life. But maybe that can also be attributed to a sheltered upbringing.

All in all a very good book and a worthy addition to my dystopian fiction collection.

I have to admit, when I first read the title of this book, I was a bit confused. One would think that if one can read at all it shouldn’t be much of a problem to read novels. After all, I have done it for years. For a moment I even was afraid this would be one of those ‘how to interpret novels correctly and discover the hidden theme’ kind of books, which I absolutely loathe. After reading the Amazon reviews, though, I was not only reassured on that point, but also intrigued to find out more.

I found out that the title is completely misleading, for one thing. What this book is, or tries to be, is a help in picking the right novels to read in today’s world of overflowing bookstores, so by rights it should be titled “How To Choose a Novel”.

Nobody can ever hope to read all the books that are published every year and with the prices for new books (especially the hardcover versions) being quite hefty, you obviously need a way to choose the right book for you. But with all those beautiful covers, the enthusing blurbs and the hype surrounding certain books, picking and choosing is easier said than done.

Sutherland tries to give readers some pointers to the possible pitfalls in choosing their reading matter. He covers more or less any point that might influence your decision to read a book or leave it on the shelf, from reviews to reading page 69 in the bookstore, or watching Oprah and see what she recommends. He discusses the relative merits of a “book of the film” versus the “film of the book”, the question of hardcover versus paperback, the annoying phenomenon of overhyped bestsellers, the relative helpfulness of various fiction prizes for deciding on what to pick, and lots of other stuff.

Some of his tips are just plain common sense. Of course you would take the blurb on the back of a novel with a grain of salt, because obviously no publisher would put anything negative about it on there. And reading the first couple of pages should go without saying as well. As to reviews: personally I rather like the reviews on Amazon, because the people writing them usually say what they really think and have no personal store in the success or failure of the book. I just trust those reviews more than the ones of paid reviewers. But that’s just me.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book, even though I didn’t really learn anything new that would make picking my next book any easier. For the most part this enjoyment was due to the fact that I found John Sutherland a very likeable guy. Reading the book was like having a chat with him about books. He mentioned a lot of books I have read (and some others that I have just added to my wishlist) and generally I agree with his opinion of them. It is certainly not a book you absolutely have to read if you love books, but it doesn’t hurt either.

I think, I can finally say that I have fallen in love with Margaret Atwood’s writing. I just finished reading “Oryx and Crake”, which will definitely be on my top ten list for this year (yes, I am aware that it is only February).

We didn’t have an easy start, Margaret and me. The first book by her I tried to read was “The Blind Assasin”. I said tried to read, because I gave up on it not even halfway through. I can’t remember anymore what it was about, only that it bored the pants off me.

But her writing must have had something, or maybe it was only because she is Canadian and I generally like Canadians. Whatever it was, a year or so ago I decided to give her another chance. This time I picked a collection of short stories, “Good Bones”. Incidentally, the book was among the first short story collections I ever read. Luckily for me I liked them quite a lot.

Now last month I checked out another short story collection from the library: “The Tent”. To call these stories strange would be an understatement, but I am beginning to appreciate this special kind of strangeness of Ms. Atwood. I’m not sure I really got the point of some of those stories - I’m not even sure they really had a point. But again, I enjoyed them.

And now “Oryx and Crake”. What can I say? This book is incredible in every possible way. I even liked the ambiguous ending that leaves you free to imagine the following events in whatever way you like. This is the kind of book that Saramago probably tried to write - and failed miserably. Atwood not only went to the trouble to do a lot of research to get her facts straight, she also came up with a compelling and suspenseful plot (with believable characters, who do things that are actually imaginable given the circumstances of the story). And she manages to include lots of sociological commentary on today’s society into the story in such a way that it makes you think without ever pushing the story out of the way. Mr. Saramago could take a few lessons from her, I reckon.

I have to return this copy to the library tomorrow, but I definitely have to get my own copy to re-read soon. I might write a longer review then. For the moment there are just too many pictures still swirling around in my head. Next up will be “The Handmaid’s Tale” as soon as I can lay my hand on a copy. And then, who knows? In a way I am lucky that I discovered Margaret Atwood only so late, because now I have this whole list of books she already wrote to look forward to. I might even end up giving “The Blind Assasin” another try.

A book about the dangers of biological warfare. Using the example of smallpox, one of the most terrifiying viruses on earth, Preston describes the threat posed by modern bioterrorism. Not a very uplifting book, I can tell you.

I quite liked it anyway, because, as I have stated oftentimes before, I have a thing for apocalyptical tales about the demise of humankind. That this one is supposedly a true story doesn’t make it any less entertaining for me.

Smallpox were officially eradicated from nature in 1978 through a worldwide vaccination effort. But some small stores of the virus remained in several labs, ostensibly for research purposes (Yeah, right. Reading that, one has to ask oneself, what’s to study when there are no naturally occuring cases anymore?). After the end of the cold war scientists feared that the virus would fall into the wrong hands and terrorists would, with the help of genetic engineering, construct a powerful bioweapon from it. One against which no existing vaccine would work.

According to Preston, this is exactly what has happened and the question is not so much if anybody will ever use it, but rather when that will happen.

The terrifying thing about smallpox - apart from the way the disease kills, which is explained in the book in gruesome detail - is that human beings are the only host for this particular virus. This fact, which was the one that made the eradication of the naturally occuring virus possible in the first place, is at the same time the biggest obstacle to developing effective vaccines against it. Because animal tests don’t work here, and you can’t obviously just infect humans with the virus and then try out new vaccines on them. I must admit, though, I do have a problem of seeing the point of developing a vaccine if they don’t even know the particular strain of virus yet. But once more, this conundrum appeals to my sense of irony.

Preston paints a very grim picture of our future, but I don’t doubt that it is true.

Somebody somewhere has got stores of genetically engineered viruses (the book mentions twenty tons of “hot,” genetically altered smallpox that went missing from russian labs and are suspected to have ended up somewhere in the Middle East - no big surprise there).

And somebody will someday deploy it for a terrorist attack - given the human predilection for unbelievable stupidity on a large scale, it’s just inevitable. And I guess we all know which country will probably be the first target of such an attack. Not that that is much of a consolation for the rest of us on the other side of the world, because a virus like that will spread like wildfire through today’s ultramobile society.

So, our future seems to look pretty bleak. If it’s not smallpox, then it’ll probably be some other virus that gets us. It’s all just a matter of time.

But, of course, as an average person there is not much you can do about all that - so why worry about it? I suppose, the one thing you can learn from this book is to live your life as if every day might be your last. Because, frankly, this is exactly the case.

So, can I recommend this book as a good read? It certainly was interesting and entertaining for me. If you, on the other hand, do scare easily or have a predilection for paranoia, you better go and read something less depressing.

This guy received a Nobel Prize for his writing. So I guess I should be impressed by this book.

Sadly, I wasn’t. When I first heard of it, I quite liked the premise of the story: people are going blind for no discernible reason and slowly the so-called civilized society is breaking down as everybody tries to survive as best he can.

So far, so good. Of course, the idea of a total breakdown of society after a disastrous event isn’t really new at all. But since I am very fond of dystopian fiction I fully expected to love this book. Unfortunately, even though the initial situation with people going blind from one second to the next surely was scary and disturbing (even more so for me, since I am suffering from Glaucoma and am facing a very real possibility of going blind eventually), it all went downhill from there.

The story itself is easily told: since the blindness seems to be contagious, the first blind people are rounded up and quarantined all by themselves in a former mental asylum. They have to fend for themselves, which being newly blind, isn’t really possible, so they’re rapidly descending into a very sorry state of chaos. The only thing holding them together is the one person in there still able to see (the wife of one of the internees, who didn’t want to leave her husband). Subtly, she helps maintaining order, while trying to keep her secret. When ever more internees arrive, the situation gets worse and worse. Outside, order is crumbling as well as more and more people turn blind. Eventually, there is a fire in the asylum and most of the internees break out, only to find out that meanwhile everybody else has turned blind, too. The only seeing woman leads her group to their respective houses, to see if they can find relatives. In the end they end up in her own apartment, where they are trying to figure out how to go on living in a world full of blind people, when suddenly, one by one their sight returns.

So much for the story. Does it sound a bit less than overwhelming? Well, that’s because it was. Wyndham certainly did make a much better job of the same situation with his “The Day of the Triffids”back in the fifties.

But that’s not my main gripe with this book. I don’t even know where to start, because there’s so much that is wrong with this book.

One thing that really annoyed me from page one was the book’s style. There are virtually no paragraphs, dialogue is not marked as such - you have to infer it from the context. Sentences run on endlessly, sometimes changing topic halfway through. Punctuation is erratic, to put it mildly. There are virtually no chapter breaks, the story just runs on and on and on, being one big messy blob. Morevoer, none of the characters are named, which makes it necessary to cumbersomly call them “the girl with the dark glasses” or “the boy with a squint”, and - my favorite! - “the dog of tears”. Jeez. Overall, it just isn’t really readable. The whole thing feels like a hastily scribbled first draft. If that guy wasn’t an overhyped Nobel Prize winner, he never would have gotten away with that stuff.

Also, I feel to publish such a book is a slap in the face of every other writer, who makes the effort to write in a way that is enjoyable to read - no matter the subject. A really good writer can actually tell a harrowing story in a way that is touching and graphic and relentless in its intensity without sacrificing readability. To stoop to a cheap literary device like this stream-of-consciousness style of writing just tells me that Saramago is not one of those good writers.

His characters are cardboard cutouts. None of them felt in any way real, no matter how much we heard about their backstory. They all did unreasonable, unbelievable, completely stupid things all the time that left me shaking my head in disbelief. The good guys were too good to be believable, the bad guys were too steroetypically bad. The descriptions of the filth and degradation in the asylum went on for ages and seemed totally contrived as well. I just didn’t buy any of it. I didn’t feel like I was there, because I didn’t believe the way he told it was the way it would have happened. He didn’t convince me of any of it. And that alone is the worst failure an author can suffer.

The other thing that drove me up the wall was his predilection for straying off topic. He could just never stick to the plot. Instead he went off on a tangent, moralizing, or going on endlessly about one person’s faults and mistakes, or just generally blathering on uselessly for a page or two, before returning to the point. That totally got on my nerves. Not only did it interrupt the flow of the story, I also don’t appreciate authors trying to hit me over the head with their views on morality or the human condition, or anything else for that matter.

If you have something to say about humankind as a whole, weave it into your story and trust me to get your point. Don’t bore me to death by inserting your personal views on matters into a fictional story. When I read a novel I am interested in the story. If you want to share your personal opinions with the masses, write a damn essay.

I mean, I get it: the story was meant metaphorically. In a way we are all blind, because we choose just not to see certain things, and if we could just open our eyes to the truth …. bla, bla bla. I’m still not impressed. Tolkien once said that he disliked metaphor and allegory in all its forms. Once again, I can only agree with him.

So, what exactly did Saramago get the Nobel Prize for? I sure hope it was not for this book.

Finally! I’m done with it. YAY! And what a struggle it was…

Nah, I’m just kidding of course. I loved it. I finished the book in a mere 2 days - and it only took me that long because I didn’t have all that much time to read on the first one. As soon as I got into the story I was really reluctant to put it down again. Seems like Mrs. Rowling really deserves the big bucks she gets paid. I have to admit that the book is entertaining, I certainly liked it a lot better than #5 and #6. That may have been at least in part due to the fact that it is the last part of the story and things were finally coming to a definitive end, we had a nice big battle, most of the remaining mysteries were revealed and all of the loose ends were tied up.

The way they were tied up is another matter. I mean, honestly: Albus Severus? Jeez, how corny is that?

One thing that struck me over and over was the feeling that this book was clearly written with a movie in mind. I don’t mean that as a criticism, and you could probably just ascribe it to Rowling’s skilled description of stuff or whatever, but I often caught myself visualizing a scene on the big screen or thinking to myself “now this was just put in here to look good in the cinema”. It worked, though. I have no doubt that the last HP movie will be just as successful as the other ones were. (I myself haven’t watched any one all the way through so far. Especially once Quidditch is played I fall asleep immediately.)

All in all I am pretty happy with how the story panned out in the end, although I can’t say was really surprised by anything. Well, except for Harry dying and coming back (mostly it was the coming back part that had me grumbling, because you see I really had hoped he would bite the bullet in the end, but apparently that was a bit too much to hope for). It was certainly good to see Snape get vindicated, even though making him into a sad little man who was carrying a torch for a woman who didn’t love him back wasn’t doing him any favours in my eyes. ^.^ But even so the way he died just made me angry.

Rowling has a huge problem doing believable death-scenes. As if Sirius falling through that damn veil hadn’t been bad enough (what the hell does that even mean?), now she kills off Snape without even giving him the opportunity to defend himself. WTF? I mean, come on, all the time he was built up to be this badass wizard, ruthless and capable of anything and bla bla bla. And then? Just poof. And not only does she let him die drooling some strange substance, which in itself is quite disgusting (Yeah, I know what it was, thank you. It’s still disgusting.), but then afterwards she destroys his whole credibility with this “I did it all for love of Lily Potter”-crap. Really, the least the guy would have deserved was to let him put up a decent fight.

And don’t even let me get started on Hedwig! I get that Rowling probably killed her off for the same reason Joss killed Wash in “Serenity”, but then as now I don’t think it was necessary to prove a point or set up an atmosphere of doom. (And I still plan to have some words with Joss on the matter of Wash if I ever get hold of him.) And again, it was one of the worst written death scenes I have ever read. Come on, Hedwig was an important character in the series, just for the love of little kittens acknowledge that fact and don’t just get rid of her in one paltry half-sentence! Not to speak of blowing her up a minute later…

Same goes for Lupin and Tonks. We don’t even get to know how they die. And, really, I get it that some people had to die, what with it being a great battle an’ all. And I’m ok with Fred. Lupin would have been fine,too. Or Tonks. But both of them? That seems like a bit of overkill to me. And the only one I was really hoping would die (because I can’t stand him), namely Hagrid the annoying git, is allowed to stay alive. Damn. The world really is unfair, even the fictional ones.

Well, but all in all I had a good time with the book and it certainly was a worthy conclusion to a great series. Still I am glad I got to read it (and assuage my curiosity) without having to shell out money for it.