Congo by Michael Crichton (7 of 153)

One-Sentence Summary: An astonishingly thick band of supposedly smart people heads into the darkest, most forbidden corner of the Congo in the wake of the mysterious obliteration of a prior expedition.

Subtitle: Don't Do the Thing. Just Don't Do the... You Did the Thing.

First Lines (from the Introduction):

"Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Covering nearly twelve million square miles, Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe combined. It is nearly twice the size of South America. As we mistake its dimensions, we also mistakes its essential nature: the Dark Continent is mostly hot desert and open grassy plains."

I was first introduced to Crichton on the butt-numbingly hard floor of my eighth grade classroom, where my small class gathered each day after lunch to read from The Andromeda Strain. That teacher was magic, a woman who could make a math class into something that you actually regretted ending and she wove the same sort of trickery into her reading of Crichton. She made it the  best book in the world, concentrating all of her wonky and fantastic energy into making it a story that we couldn't wait for each day, and man oh man, did she succeed. I don't know if Crichton will ever possess the same sort of magic for me again. Maybe it was an experience that rested in her or maybe, maybe Congo was just a miss for him.

This book drove me crazy. The smartest character is Amy, the gorilla- closely followed by the jungle desperado type, Munro, who is indisputably crazy-pants. Anyone else who is supposed to possess a scrap of plausibility or intelligence or believable emotional responses, is actually a cardboard cut-out that topples over somewhere in the third act. Seriously though, Karen Ross? I couldn't believe her being there for so much as a second and when she literally SPOILER blew up a mountain SPOILER  in the finale, I just plain gave up. But let's be honest with ourselves. Does anyone read Crichton for his sterling character development or for a logical plot? Absolutely not. We read Crichton to be entertained and there isn't a thing wrong with that. Congo is the battered paperback copy that you bring to the beach. It sunburns your soul while you sunburn your everything else. It's absurd and even a little insulting, but I'll be damned if I could stop reading it. I was awake at four o'clock this morning, watching plot bunnies disappear into the undergrowth at previously unrecorded levels, and I was enjoying every second of it.  The LA Times review featured on the front of my copy screamed its recommendation, which stated, and I quote, "An old fashioned thriller-diller...". We can't exactly be placing too many exalted literary expectations on something referred to as a thriller-diller.

Even dumping mercy on this, I still can't forgive it its most egregious plot trenches. Beyond the basic set-up, which was appealing: a mysterious stone-hewn city, animal behavior, a conniving stone-cold fox, and a hapless laboratory stooge, there is a lot to work with there. Add on volcanoes, diamonds, gorilla kidnappings, cannibals, raging tribal warfare, suspicious pygmies, hippo attacks, and a Melville-esque train of possibly made-up field science jargon, and it starts to feel like maybe you're on an underground Disney ride with Bill Nye.  Even a thriller-diller can, and should, have some substance and, as anyone who has seen a Fast and Furious film will tell you, explosions alone can't fill that little hole in your chest that is dreaming of quality. That being said, Crichton is really very good at explosions.

I Recommend This For: intelligent apes, fans of Jurassic Park, Crocodile Dundee
I Do Not Recommend This For: Book elitists, fact-checkers, Sticks-in-the-mud

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (5 of 147)

One Sentence Summary: An awkward, innocent young heroine walks haplessly into the aftermath of the death of the lady of Manderley, only to find the poison of the mysterious event seeping into the waters of her new life.

Subtitle: Jane Eyre got nothin' on me.

Excerpt: 

"We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic- now mercifully stilled, thank God- might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion, as it had been before."

Now this is my kind of Gothic literature. My personality and tastes pin me as a Bronte sort as there really seem to be two fawning camps- Team Austen and Team Bronte. I certainly don't fall into the former, as I have never been able to push through the first chapter or so of anything Austen (although I confess, somewhat shame-facedly, to loving the films where I do not enjoy the books), but I really don't fall into the latter, either. I have never read Wuthering Heights and, while I enjoyed Jane Eyre sufficiently to complete it, something fell flat in it for me. I think it had a lot to do with this:

http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202
Click on me to make me bigger!

Appalling male characters aside, I also didn't find that Bronte possessed the same knack for creating momentum that Du Maurier had such a grip on. The way she spins out the tale is nothing short of masterful. From "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," I was totally taken in. Every time I thought that I knew what was going on, I was wrong and when it comes to thrillers- of any time period- I love being wrong.

This was the perfect end of winter book. All of the lush descriptions of spring-to-summer on the grounds of a grand and half-wild English estate had me lying in bed, washing the half-light drain from the treetops with longing. Soon, life will return to everything and all of the intrigues of nature will conspire to bring personality back to the land. I fell in love with Manderley as our heroine did, a beautiful thing to be kept at arm's length- deceptive beauty, a place for hiding things where they would be neglected for lovelier imaginings. Next, our nameless narrator- watching her grow into herself, sharing her (very familiar) daydreams, her anxieties, her child-like fits of passion, made me want to embrace her over and and over again. I felt for her, enormously, and her emotional journey struck an intense chord with me. My heart accelerated with her Belle-esque poking in the West Wing, with her horrifying failures, and her little triumphs.

This is the rare sort of book in which you can lose yourself completely. The language is absolutely incredible, the descriptions transport and turn common-place perceptions into the author's play-things:

"There was something rather blowsy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair."

In the same vein, the changes of mood, the most minute tweaks in wording and landscape, give you the best variety of literary whip-lash. It is a book for hyper-vigilance, for hearing voices in an empty room, for seeing the water move when there is no wind, and it doesn't let you go until the very last possible moment. The violin string finally snaps, and then you are alone with the trappings of the 21st century room slowly becoming concrete around you again. The world you are surfacing from seems so much more real, the world you belong in has new shadows and grades of light than it did before. 

I read somewhere that du Maurier is sometimes credited with the creation of the modern thriller. I am not in the least bit surprised. I read the whole book in a couple of days spent at home in which I was finally required to erect a strict rewards system in order to get anything done: work for one hour, read for one hour. I stuck to it... mostly. The deviation couldn't be helped. I was so desperate to get back into the story, to brew another cup of tea and sip it furtively while attempting to hold up this heavy leather-bound copy with the other hand.

Upon finishing, my wrist hurts and I am content. There is a certain impenetrable sense of calm that comes only at the end of the finely tuned instrument of agitation that is a great mystery, and Rebecca left me with that, in just the way I'm sure it will leave me upon many stormy nights to come.

Recommend this for: cast-iron gate and flower symbolism lovers, Bronte fans, Turn of the Screw fans, Downtown Abbey people
I Do Not Recommend this for: people who are into jump-scares, sociopaths

Note on this Copy: Leather-bound, gold leaf, heavy enough for self-defense- I don't really know where I got it, but it is beautiful and, according to the gently penciled in price in the front cover, only cost me $7. Whoop!

I Have a Problem: Book II

It looks like "I Have a Problem" is going to be an ongoing series because, well, I can't stop buying books.

I have been looking longingly at this one for a while and I finally just broke down and purchased it. I'm obsessed with good, ol' fashioned ghost stories, which is weird because I'm a bit of a pussycat when it comes to all things spooky. Still, back in November I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I wrote a novel that takes place in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and so I bought this for research. 

Yeah, research. 

No one believes that.

The lad and I nabbed this in an antique store the other day for three dollars and it will probably be one we read together. Is James Bond suited to cozy reading out loud nights? I think so.

These books are, respectively, 146 and 147.