I am Legend

After catching the Will Smith film version a week ago I was immediately inspired by a fellow reader friend to pick this novel up, and within 24 hours I set the book down feeling depressed, fulfilled, and thoughtful. I love a great story that not only entertains but also affects your thoughts of life in general, and after reading the story I did exactly that.

The book sets itself sometime in the mid seventies with Robert Neville, who believes he is the last man alive after a plague took the worlds population. It’s apparent immediately that Nevilles need to exist is pure instinct alone. After five months he starts his day off with a glass of whiskey and loathing the fact that his has managed to exist. He makes procautions around his home, but the reader is left in the dark as to why.

That evening we found out the existence of vampires is manifestation of something that happened with the plague, and though Neville is very safe in his home, they come every night to taunt him with the hopes he will end his life by prolonging theirs. At this point the solitude and monotony of his existence is tearing Neville apart. He has seen unimaginable horrors and has no answers as to how or why they happened in the first place. Anytime he asks questions, he only winds up with more questions after those are answered.

A few months pass and Neville attempts his own research, and it goes nowhere quickly. He begins to lament about his former life and is sure he’s ready to end himself when something shocking happens. He finds a dog that has managed to exist. Some very important things happen in the chapters with the dog and thereafter sets the finale of the book into play. The twist, the answer, the explanantion, the ending of the book is not what myself or I think anyone else would imagine. Without giving it away I will simply say it couldn’t have been more simple or more complete. After it happens you simply have an abvious understanding to something bigger than the induvidual experience. Suddenly life is much larger and evolution and nature exploit this.

As Neville said, suddenly things came full circle. An abosulutely amazing book. One of the most profound and frightening stories I’ve read since The Shining.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

by: Jeff Lindsay

Dexter is now a popular show in it’s third season on showtime, but the show was inspired by a novel written by Jeff Lindsay about a sociopath serial killer, who essentially only murdered the “evil doer”. If I hadn’t read so many of her books myself I wouldn’t have seen the parallels between vampires in Anne Rice novels and Dexter, but they do exist.

Dexter is a blood splatter specialist for the Miami forensic department. But what the department doesn’t know is they have their very own serial killer right under their noses. Dexter. At a young age Dexter and his foster father recognized his urges to kill. After a certain amount of time when it was obvious the urges wouldn’t disappear, Dexter began to utilize his talents against those whom the law had yet not caught or could not punish. And afterwards, when he’d finished his methodical and almost musical routine, he saved himself a souvenir. A drop of blood from each victim.

What makes this book so remarkable and sets it apart from other books about serial killers is the narrative by Dexter himself. Not only is he charismatic, he’s handsome, likable, and quite funny. While the book certainly maintains a serious tone, it balances the lightness and darkness perfectly. The most interesting part is Dexter’s self knowledge of his own lifeless detachment to society, but in some ways it gives him a completely clear picture of reality.

The manner in which I would compare it to an Anne Rice vampire novel is Dexter reminds me of my all-time favorite literary anti-hero Lestat de Lioncourt. He is more than aware of his evilness, but embraces it in a way that not only makes the reader adore him, but even love him. I seldom see characters so rich with charisma that are essentially so empty and dead inside. It impresses me to no end the talents both Rice and Lindsay have to make such things possible. The icing on the cake is the humour that bounces off such dark stories. And it works.

I absolutely adored this offbeat novel and would recommend to anyone who has a slightly irregular sense of humour or obsession with serial killers.

Save Me From Myself

by: Brian “Head” Welsh

Brian “Head” Welsh is the former lead guitarist from a contreversial rock band called: Korn. Sometime in 2005 he shocked the world announcing he was leaving the band to be saved and become a Christian. In this book, his memoirs, he explains the affect his addiction to speed, alcohol, and violence affected his life and eventually, after a chaotic trip, lead him to Jesus Christ.

To be honest, I had really hard time getting through the first portion of the book. I suppose I was looking for the grit, the raw detail, the honest acclaim for all the things that he did while in the band with Korn. I think because I honestly wanted to know more about Korn and their debauchery as a band. However, there is little about the band itself, practically no stories about touring, and even very little about the creation of the music. I think I understand now why. The story was about the band. The story was about the choices, and portions of his life he never shared with anyone, the band included. The private side he kept to himself. The side that ultimately lead him to be free.

There were other problems I initially had with the book. First, he wrote it himself and while never a main song writer for Korn, and never writing anything before, it showed. But after awhile I got used to the way he delivered his story and some of the amateurish way he organzied his thoughts (which unfortuantely sometimes didn’t make a ton of sense)and just appreciate the fact that he was trying to share.

The third problem I had was not his own doing, it was my own cynicism. First of all, I felt the book was probably put out to convert more people to Christianity (not that I have a problem with that, but just not for me), so I kept waiting for that, you should all stop doing this or that and come to church. That never happened and I’m very sorry I initially placed that judgement. The second thing was I didn’t believe that he had kicked drugs for good. It’s only been a few years since he’s been clean and found god, and the likelihood of a relapse????? Well, let’s say, in my mind that’s not unprobable. He was is an addict, but believes he’s been freed by Christ, and so he won’t go back to drugs again. I think he is still an addict, he’s just transfered his addictive and COMPULSIVE personality to fixate on his spirituality. So yes, on that I’m still skeptical, but here I’m getting ahead of myself.

I wanted to mention all of the initial negative energy I had towards the book and Brian himself first because by the time I finished it, he’d changed my mind about a lot of things and I understood why he was so vague and past tense on the years of partying, because that was not what his book was about. It was about him finding joy in God, but he felt he needed to share his story and what led him to that point to really understand how he got there. The time he was with Korn, he was a different person, when he was on drugs that was. Before that the idealism of being a kid, and growing up he wrote in great detail about, before the drugs. And then he wrote in great deal after the drugs. The only thing he was very specific about on the drugs was how he treated his then wife, and his daughter Jennea. I understand now why. He was not the same person who he is now when he was in Korn, and it was probably excruciatingly painful to go back to that person, when he’s in the process of leaving him behind and moving on. And that’s what I belive the other half of the book was about, moving on.

The second half of the book explained how he discovered God and the journey he took to be where he is now, and I have to say, it was really beautiful. All in all I would say it would have been much more inspiring or maybe appreciated better by someone who is on their way to finding Christ or those who already have. Some of the spiritual experience he had were amazing and I’m very happy for him and for his daughter.

The book on a whole was just, “okay”, but it’s IDEAS and it’s meaning behind all of the distractions is what really got me and I’m very glad I read it. I hope Brian stays on his path, I hope he doesn’t relapse, and I hope he continues to find the peace and freedom in his religion that he does now, because it’s beautiful.

The Heroin Diaries

by: Nikki Sixx and Ian Gittins

Cleaning out some old storage units Nikki Sixx, from Motley Crue, recently stumbled on a old diary he kept during the height of his heroin (and coke and alcohol) addiction. Now sober and recovered he decided that sharing the diaries might be helpful to someone else going through what he did, or at least help someone relate and know they are not alone. And for those of us that aren’t junkies? It was just plain and simply captivating, entrancing, and addicting in itself.

I knew a little bit about what happened to Nikki during this year because I have read “The Dirt” and “Tommyland” where the subject had been skimmed, but never really examined. Such as the raw form of a diary. With exerts from former management, friends, and family (and not all nice I assure you) Nikki’s year of hell unveiled itself in a disgustingly self destructive picture. All the while you ask yourself why he kept torturing himself, especially when he didn’t even enjoy his high. The stuff his paranoia and delusions induced were beyond me. To his little closet, to constantly flushing his drugs, his freakish relationship with Vanity, to his belief his security was out to get him and to the little men with helmets climbing his fences and the Mexicans in the bushes, it was insanity at best. I’m amazed he didn’t shoot his brains out. Things were most obviously at there worst when he began to lose his passion for the music! No matter how bad things were, Nikki always took his music seriously and with heart. Until the Heroin to ahold. If you’ve seen the movie “Being John Malkovich”, this novel was like: “Being Nikki Sixx”. That bizarre but more than that it was profound.

I always wondered how celebrities could be on the top of the world and be so miserable, how they could have their dreams come true and resent every moment of it. It all seemed so ungrateful and spoiled. After reading many autobiographies on rock stars I’m starting to see the common denominator: DRUGS And Alcohol. In the right settings alcohol and drugs can be all fun and games, but when abused they are deadly. In many cases, like Nikki’s, it just brought up unresolved issues he had with his family, that if had been dealt with may never have took him where it did. I mean that careerwise and addiction wise. But who’s to say? If there was one thing I learned about Nikki, it was that the man has vision. He has the ability to see the bigger picture, that is when he wasn’t being scandalous and self destructive. Like setting hotels on fire. Or banging his managers girlfriend right in front of him. Between the alcohol and drugs on that tour influencing him and letting him have the ability to do what he wanted because he was a rock star was no more than simply acting out. Some deep part of him needed a parental figure to tell him to stop. To make him stop. To intervene. He was not unlike a two year old throwing a tantrum. And though he kept his distance from everyone close to him, the last thing he wanted was to be alone. Nikki’s tantrumlasted years before he finally he learned to be an adult himself and deal with his addiction and deal with his past and take control of his life. It only took him dying to do it.

I adored this and want to thank Nikki for sharing his very private experience with us. It touched me in more ways than I can explain, and I’m not even sure it was supposed to.

The Bourne Ultimatum

by: Robert Ludlum

The final installment of the Bourne series has offcially been completed by me. For those that are not familiar with the novel series they are nothing like the films, in fact the main charecters barely even share an indentity. They entail much greater depth, more complex charecters, and so many twists and turns of govermental and otherwise espionage that your most quick witted person can easily be thrown off their rocker.

The last book ended with the completion of Jason Bourne as the first book began with the creation of Jason Bourne and his mission with Carlos the Jackol, this final poetic story of thirteen years finally came to a standoff. Bourne vs. Carlos. In the intro David Webb, Bournes original identity is discovered by Carlos and his family and friends lives are put in jeopardy. This requires Bourne to return, and DAvid Webb to hibernate. While his wife and children are ushered off to a remote Carribean island, he returns to his creator, the CIA for answers. As with it’s predessors nothing is cut and dry, who may be trusted and who may not be are never clear, and the real story behind Carlos and the old government group MEDUSA.

With his old adversary and his old creator Medusa returning, David Webb slowly begins a downward spiral in his split personality. His old creation, the assassin Jason Bourne is resurfaced in need to protect his family, but also to finally have his revenge on Carlos, whom he was porgramed to take out. Beneath the surface David Webb is always lingering, but the mad Bourne cannot be calmed, and so a mad former assassin vs. another old and mad assassin, mixed with others that have their own ulterior motives begins the most interesting and suspenseful of the novels.

The two aging men spend the entirety of the story trying to draw each other out with no concern for outside sources or the consequences for their actions. Madness ensues, and the story is pushed forward with a neverending of urgency and despair. By the end a very deep balance has been restored, but at what cost? How many lives lost? And will David Webb ever be able to return to his family or has Bourne done too much damage? Those questions aren’t answered and they don’t need to be.

If at all intrigued by the other Bourne novels this one is a most read. It’s the most in depth, plot twisting, charecter challenging, and entertaining of them all. Please read and enjoy.

Girlfriend in a Coma

by: Douglas Coupland

Here is a book unlike anything I’ve ever read, written like nothing anything I’ve ever seen. It starts as a normal sotry about a high school girl named Karen who slips into a coma in 1979 at the age of seventeen. Just prior to her coma she began to have dark visions about the future that she warned her boyfriend Richard about. Nine months after she’s fallen into the coma, she pops out a baby girl named Megan.

For the next seventeen years Karen sleeps while her friends, family and Richard kind of float through life without ever finding or ever searching for any meaning. When Karen awakens their lives suddenly change and amazing things begin to spiral. It seems every moment in their life had brought them to that point. And then an “It’s a wonderful life” twisted backwards, frontwards, and downwards happens. It’s then they’re own morality and basic common decency is tested. Which brings them to one final choice in the end.

The story had me locked from the get-go with Couplands fanciful tempo of writing and the questions he immediately began to pose. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say or do or even where the story would end up, but I found the portion while Karen slept to be funny in a very sinister way. My favorite line was from Richard when he said in his thirties looking back at the choices he made in his life. “I wonder if you had to right now, would you put your lives choices, the ones that would dictate where you ended up in the hands of a seventeen year old?” Read it and you will understand it’s meaning.

By the end of the story I was questioning myself, my own convictions, what my intents were in the world, my own why’s, and I actually on some level felt myself relating to what I think Coupland was trying to say. While I continued through the book, which turned more science fiction halfway through than dark comedy, I found myself being enlightened while simultaneously entertained. I can’t say enough about the pleasure this book was. I’m very curious to pick up another novel by this author. Until then I’m reading “Dirt” the Motley Crue autobiography, and will be back with it’s review soon enough.

Kumtriah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wicked

The Life and the Times Of the Wicked Witch of the West

by: Gregory Maguire

This novel immediately dove into moral ambiguity, God and free will, the nature of evil, with intense and quite obvious political references as extreme as Nazi Germany and our own Capitalist America. I found it to be not only enrapturing, but funny, and thought provoking.

To begin with Wicked takes the Oz we are all so familiar with and contorts it into an entirely different shape. The charecters and some of the events in passing in the tale “Wizard Of Oz” remain the same, but their motivations, their persons, the protagonists and antagonists are quite different. The first short chapter of the novel begins with the witch overhearing Dorothy, the scarecrow, the lion and the tinman gossiping about her, saying she was “possessed by demons” or “an abused child”, etc. Elphaba, the witches given name, is hurt by the things she overhears. This lets the ready know the same charecters will be played in the story, but they will hardly be the same.

Elphaba was born with her green skin and merciless sharp teeth, which eventually fell out and normal ones grew in. She was an atrocity to her mother and her minister father. Throughout the story questions about the significance of her skin color are raised, as is the nature of her own self. Was she truely born evil, were her actions as a person evil. Does evil itself truely exist, or was it merely created by man?

The second portion of the book spends most of it’s time plotting out Oz’s social structure and grouping while Elphaba is away at college. Her roomie, who happens to be Glinda, eventually her younger invalid sister that has no arms, Nessarose, and a few other key charecters that play roles throughout the story are set. Here is where the meat of the story begins and pushes the rest of the novel foreward. This base, being able to return to this particular moment in time is what makes the rest of the story work.

Everyone knows how the story of the Wicked Witch of The West ends, at the hands of Dorothy with a bucket of water in her hands, but how she got there and how Dorothy had her hands on the bucket to begin with are a bit of a surprise. The end question that I still have lingering is, “Was the story of the witch a tragedy or triumph?” Did she suceed in the end or fail? Was the rest of her life a failure and the end a sucess? Was the rest of her life a success and her end a failure? What of it? I haven’t yet decided, which tells me, the author did his job well.

My next novel is another In Death. I’ve read a good four in between my last three or four reviews, but they haven’t been original enough to spark enough interest for me to review them, but if I hit an especially good one, I’ll be sure to be on here with my comments. Tomorrow I should have my review for the second book in the XWing series, Wedges Gamble ready.

Read Well!

A Paper Life

by: Tatum O’Neal

Wow. The story starts with a young girl born to Hollywood royalty and great privledge and then at a very young age her royal parents divorced and she and her Irish Twin went to live with her drug addicted mother, who neglected them constantly. The young stories of her living with her mother were down right depressing, but you could see it was here where she gained her strength and her moxie. Once she moved in with her father, the great and studly I might add, actor Ryan O’Neal who was at the time in his prime and one considerable ladies man. Some of the “abuse” she acuses her father of is……well……it’s a bit strange. For example, when her father heard she was nominated for an Acadamy Award for Paper Moon and he wasn’t she said he socked her and stormed out of the room angry because he was jealous. He also supposedly did this to an eight year old. Okay, so it’s a bit out there, but I still buy it, until I see that it is a common theme of her sorrowful tale. Poor Tatum, abused and abandoned, and everyone in the world surrounding her was jealous of her.

Reading between the lines you can see the truth lies somewhere in there and her stories probably have some ounce of truth to them, but they seem to be overexaggerated either for the purpose of her victimizing herself to deal with her past or for the sympathy she is calculatingly attempting to get from her book. I believe either or, but I don’t belive most of what she says. For starters, people, even Hollywood people, or drug addicts don’t say the things she accused her father OR her former husband John McEnroe of. Even if overemphasized for the reason of dramatic presentation or entertainment purposes of her novel. She accused her father of breaking a cue over her ten year old brothers head because he beat him at pool. She also said the days of living with Farrah and her father were met by a torturous regiment of playing raquet ball everyday and his desire to always be better and always win, while continually berating his own children. Seems a little wacko? Yes, well what’s stranger is Ryan O’Neal did continue to take Tatum all over the world traveling with him and let her sleep in his bed with him until she was in her mid-teens. She even accused him of hitting on a twelve year old Vivian Kubrick, Stanley’s daughter, though she continually claimed her father was NOT a pedophile and never molested her, yet she often reverted to claims that he committed pedophile type acts, one does not mesh with the other.

Her husband John McEnroe was incredibly abusive to her and said she was the reason he began to fail at tennis and blamed everything on her. Poor Tatum again. She was the perfect wife who never did anything other than support him completely and totally submissively to do whatever he wanted and he still supposedly beat her down again and again. After their divorce he was evil enough to ask for joint custody of their children. Two weeks with her and two weeks with him. She thought it was rather awful of him to not understand that even though she began to have a Heroin problem that he not see that she had complete control over it, and it was selfish of him to take complete custody over the kids allowing her only supervised visits and he also required her to take drug tests every month. Yeah, pretty awful of the guys to take care of her kids while the next four years she was in California while they were in New York and she barely saw them. She accused him of being an awful father who never cared about their children, etc., yet he was the one there for them when the cookies crumbled.

It’s not that I don’t have any sympathy for her, it’s not that I don’t believe that her father or John McEnroe had the capabilities to being violent or verbally abusive, it’s that she hasn’t seemed to take any responcibilty for anything that’s happened to her in her life. She says she has, over and over, but all of her finger pointing and cries of victimage speak otherwise. Her entire life she has had drug problems. She didn’t believe she really had any until the Heroin, her early issues with cocaine were dismissed quickly with “I was pregnant, it was easy to give it up” which tells me she can’t see the forest for the trees. Spending the better portion of your life in a drug induced splendor hardly leaves one with the rational to compute your lifes events accurately, which is to me what makes her story sad, not everything that happened to her, not that she had such a tough life, but that she still forty years later cannot see herself. What a frightening thought.

Anyway, it was a great read, very awkward and strange at times because of the obvious inability to convey things as they more likely were. I’m sad, I had always liked her so much, and now she just seems like some other crazy Hollywood child story gone bad. She is just another example of why children should stay out of or away from Hollywood.

The Claiming Of Sleeping Beauty

by: Anne Rice
writing as A.N. Roquelaure

Ahhhhh. A sigh of pure pleasure. As much as I enjoy the good old Star Wars, Science Fiction, and In Death books I have dearly missed the commanding and graceful words of Anne Rice. It’s been well over a year since I have either read a new novel or revisited an old one and I dearly missed it and her. I read Beauty in a matter of hours simply because the warm blanket of comfort felt so good to take in. There is always an peculiar mixture of gentleness and authority in her writing, and her fervor for every subject she conquers is unmatched. I have only seen one other writer carry her same fluid prosaic ability and that is William Shakespeare. It’s almost as though the words dance to you. There is a song behind every page and the words sing and dance with it. It enraptures the reader.

Beauty is quite plainly a “naughty” book fundamentally calling upon the desires of men and women to be dominated sexually. It’s told the story of Sleeping Beauty after her Prince kisses her waking her from her hundred year rest. Instead of taking her to be his wife and reign over the world he brings her to his castle and makes her his love slave, though she is not the only one. Princes and Princesses from the world across are brought to this kingdom that reigns over the rest and they serve for as many years necessary as slaves. They wear no clothing, crawl on all fours, and serve quite like an obediant animal. It’s mans carnal desires realized fictionally. Beauty is special though, she was not given as a tribute to the kingdom, she was claimed and she is the Crown Princes possession alone.

The rest of the story entails jealousy, submission, desires, and love beyond all normal extremes, but always carries a sort of elegance and dignity about itself. There have been many reviews calling the tale pornography and that it is a massive contortment of fairy tales and destroyed Sleeping Beauties intentions. Frankly, I think it is more realistic than the idea of happily ever after, symbolic or no. Sometimes what you wish for comes in the packaging you desire, but the content within isn’t exactly as it seemed. I don’t believe this lesson was intentially tossed into the story, but there were certainly a few allusions to it as Anne Rice always manages to show herself one way or another through her writing, but always subtly.

Eventually I think I will make my way around to the second book. The story itself is not particularly my cup of tea, though I did enjoy it, I mostly enjoyed the clever words of Anne Rice and her ability to make everything beautiful and so clear. If I could see the world one day through her eyes and appreciate the art and beauty it holds I would consider myself a lucky woman.

Since Beauty so sparked my yearning for more words of Rice the next book I’m taking on will be Vittorio The Vampire. The final book written under Anne Rice that I have not read. It may be a period before I get to this one. I have much writing ahead of me in the next few days.