Rumiko Takahashi
Fiction, Manga, Romantic Comedy
Maison Ikkoku is the name of an apartment house in a suburb of Tokyo. The story begins when a new manager appears; she is young and beautiful, and the student (okay, he's studying to get in to college) Yusaku Godai falls for her, hard. Their romance, and its various pitfalls and complications, continues for seven years and fourteen volumes of collected manga (old style; they are being re-released in a new format which restores several chapters and is read in the original right-to-left.)
Takahashi is one of the contemporary masters of manga in Japan today, and this series, one of her earliest, shows why. Her characters are not only extremely expressive and distinct, but her humor translates well to English, partly because she does not eschew physical comedy. (Many new readers of manga are often baffled by certain conventions that do not translate. While there are certain Japanese customs apparent in Takahashi's work, they are often clear to American readers through their context, instead of merely being baffling.) Americans can sympathize with her characters and their shyness without having to know that, for example, circumlocution is more common in Japan, or that a kiss is considered far more serious and intimate.
For people who want to introduce people to manga, and to let them know that this isn't just a kids' medium, Maison Ikkoku is a good entry point. It deals well with the difficulties involved with loving someone who might not love you back, and for whom you feel inadequate, and how it might just work out in spite of it all. And it does it with people you might know yourself - though if you know someone like Yotsuya, I am sincerely sorry.
*****/*****
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Man In the Iron Mask
Alexandre Dumas
Fiction, Classic
You know the story of The Man in the Iron Mask, right? Decadent, tyrannical boy-king imprisons man with identical face behind an iron mask, that man is eventually broken out, and replaces tyrannical boy-king with no one the wiser, while the real king is imprisoned in his stead?
Well... no.
It's actually impossible for the great amount of lore accumulated around the legend of the man in the iron mask to have come from the book of the same name, because the subject of the title is dealt with in a few short chapters at the beginning of the novel, and then abandoned entirely. The plot to have him replace the king is completely UNsuccessful, and is mostly used to point out how rigid one of the Musketeers is in his old age.
Yep, one of those Musketeers. This is the fifth book in the series, and could more accurately be called The Four Musketeers Get Old and Die. Porthos, Athos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan all feature in this book and all - you guessed it - die in various manners. The major problem with this book is that it is heavy on plot and short on character interaction between the Musketeers, which is what made the series enjoyable in the first place.
In terms of long novels, this feels much longer than other ones of comparable length. Read it if you've enjoyed the Musketeer saga, but don't expect to enjoy it by itself, even with imagining Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.
**/*****
Fiction, Classic
You know the story of The Man in the Iron Mask, right? Decadent, tyrannical boy-king imprisons man with identical face behind an iron mask, that man is eventually broken out, and replaces tyrannical boy-king with no one the wiser, while the real king is imprisoned in his stead?
Well... no.
It's actually impossible for the great amount of lore accumulated around the legend of the man in the iron mask to have come from the book of the same name, because the subject of the title is dealt with in a few short chapters at the beginning of the novel, and then abandoned entirely. The plot to have him replace the king is completely UNsuccessful, and is mostly used to point out how rigid one of the Musketeers is in his old age.
Yep, one of those Musketeers. This is the fifth book in the series, and could more accurately be called The Four Musketeers Get Old and Die. Porthos, Athos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan all feature in this book and all - you guessed it - die in various manners. The major problem with this book is that it is heavy on plot and short on character interaction between the Musketeers, which is what made the series enjoyable in the first place.
In terms of long novels, this feels much longer than other ones of comparable length. Read it if you've enjoyed the Musketeer saga, but don't expect to enjoy it by itself, even with imagining Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.
**/*****
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
Fiction, Classic
Let me begin with an explanation of why I prefer unabridged to abridged versions. An abridgement is a version that is shorter, usually heavily edited to streamline the narrative. The problem with abridging is that the parts that are excised are usually the parts that give the book its unique feel. While a plot is important to a story, when we buy a novel we are not buying a story; we are buying the way it is told.
Victor Hugo is the king of digressions, diversions, tangents, and red herrings. He would seem to be a prime target for abridgement. However, once you have done that, you remove the history, the societal context, and much of what makes his novels unique. For example, I once picked up an abridgement of Les Misérables, and discovered that the version started several chapters in. The first part of the novel does not deal with Jean Valjean, but instead with the kindly Bishop of D-- (usually assumed to be Digne). The part the abridgement had skipped dealt entirely with narratives illustrating the Bishop's charitable nature, which is essential for understanding his interactions with Jean Valjean later.
If you have seen the musical, the interesting part is that most of the actual plot of the novel made it in. Hugo's digressions last for chapters and are not often directly related to the plot. (A particularly memorable one is his twenty-odd-chapter explanation of the battle of Waterloo, a part I regularly skip on re-reads but something that might be of interest to the military scholar.) However, it's the little bits that slip out, such as the very fact that referring to Napoloeon as Buonaparte marks you as of a particular fashion, that bring the sense of mid-nineteenth century France to life. One could almost use the novel as a snapshot of the culture of the time, illustrated by the lowest components of society, the 'misérables' of the title.
I do, however, wish that my version of the novel (in two books!) translated all the French. I took Spanish instead, and wish I knew what some of those enticing couplets meant. Still, this is one of my favorite novels of all time, and if you are not the sort to be put off by length, I can highly recommend it.
*****/*****
Fiction, Classic
Let me begin with an explanation of why I prefer unabridged to abridged versions. An abridgement is a version that is shorter, usually heavily edited to streamline the narrative. The problem with abridging is that the parts that are excised are usually the parts that give the book its unique feel. While a plot is important to a story, when we buy a novel we are not buying a story; we are buying the way it is told.
Victor Hugo is the king of digressions, diversions, tangents, and red herrings. He would seem to be a prime target for abridgement. However, once you have done that, you remove the history, the societal context, and much of what makes his novels unique. For example, I once picked up an abridgement of Les Misérables, and discovered that the version started several chapters in. The first part of the novel does not deal with Jean Valjean, but instead with the kindly Bishop of D-- (usually assumed to be Digne). The part the abridgement had skipped dealt entirely with narratives illustrating the Bishop's charitable nature, which is essential for understanding his interactions with Jean Valjean later.
If you have seen the musical, the interesting part is that most of the actual plot of the novel made it in. Hugo's digressions last for chapters and are not often directly related to the plot. (A particularly memorable one is his twenty-odd-chapter explanation of the battle of Waterloo, a part I regularly skip on re-reads but something that might be of interest to the military scholar.) However, it's the little bits that slip out, such as the very fact that referring to Napoloeon as Buonaparte marks you as of a particular fashion, that bring the sense of mid-nineteenth century France to life. One could almost use the novel as a snapshot of the culture of the time, illustrated by the lowest components of society, the 'misérables' of the title.
I do, however, wish that my version of the novel (in two books!) translated all the French. I took Spanish instead, and wish I knew what some of those enticing couplets meant. Still, this is one of my favorite novels of all time, and if you are not the sort to be put off by length, I can highly recommend it.
*****/*****
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
James and the Giant Peach
Roald Dahl
Fiction, Fantasy, Children's
James Henry Trotter is a happy little boy in a house by the sea until his parents are eaten up (in broad daylight, mind you) by an escaped rhinocerous. Prepocerous? Of course! Dahl's storyline does not require logic or any other of those tiresome adult strategies for turning a simple novel into a literary exercise; it merely requires something horrible and shocking that is out of the experience of children. After his parents' death, James is sent to live with his miserly aunts Sponge and Spiker, who resemble their names. And after four years of misery (in the original editions, James is depicted in exactly the same outfit at four and at eight, with it obviously outgrown and worn in the latter case), a chance for hope occurs in the shape of a bald little magician, who gives James a bag full of something which will make wonderful things happen to him. However, when James spills the bag, the peach tree (with assorted insects) is the beneficiary, which allows James a chance for adventure and happiness at last.
As in most Dahl books, those who are good-natured are rewarded in the end, while evildoers get their comeuppance (in Sponge and Spiker's case, that comeuppance is a well-deserved flattening.) It is a classic through and through.
*****/*****
Fiction, Fantasy, Children's
James Henry Trotter is a happy little boy in a house by the sea until his parents are eaten up (in broad daylight, mind you) by an escaped rhinocerous. Prepocerous? Of course! Dahl's storyline does not require logic or any other of those tiresome adult strategies for turning a simple novel into a literary exercise; it merely requires something horrible and shocking that is out of the experience of children. After his parents' death, James is sent to live with his miserly aunts Sponge and Spiker, who resemble their names. And after four years of misery (in the original editions, James is depicted in exactly the same outfit at four and at eight, with it obviously outgrown and worn in the latter case), a chance for hope occurs in the shape of a bald little magician, who gives James a bag full of something which will make wonderful things happen to him. However, when James spills the bag, the peach tree (with assorted insects) is the beneficiary, which allows James a chance for adventure and happiness at last.
As in most Dahl books, those who are good-natured are rewarded in the end, while evildoers get their comeuppance (in Sponge and Spiker's case, that comeuppance is a well-deserved flattening.) It is a classic through and through.
*****/*****
Monday, June 26, 2006
Danny, Champion of the World
Roald Dahl
Fiction, Children's
This is the story of a wonderful father and his relationship with his beloved son. Danny's mother is dead, so his father is the sole parent, and it is obvious that he lives for his son and wants to do right by him. Danny is not his only love, however... it develops that his father is irresistably drawn to poaching pheasants from the land of an extremely obnoxious landowner nearby. Once this revelation takes place, the plot spirals out of control as it becomes evident that everyone in town knows about the poaching... and are, in fact, in favor of it! Several poaching dodges are described, and eventually Danny comes up with one of his own to put into practice the night before the local landowner has everyone up for a pheasant shoot.
This is one of Dahl's lesser-known books (as it has not yet been made into a movie) but rightly deserves a place in the canon.
****/*****
Fiction, Children's
This is the story of a wonderful father and his relationship with his beloved son. Danny's mother is dead, so his father is the sole parent, and it is obvious that he lives for his son and wants to do right by him. Danny is not his only love, however... it develops that his father is irresistably drawn to poaching pheasants from the land of an extremely obnoxious landowner nearby. Once this revelation takes place, the plot spirals out of control as it becomes evident that everyone in town knows about the poaching... and are, in fact, in favor of it! Several poaching dodges are described, and eventually Danny comes up with one of his own to put into practice the night before the local landowner has everyone up for a pheasant shoot.
This is one of Dahl's lesser-known books (as it has not yet been made into a movie) but rightly deserves a place in the canon.
****/*****
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Roald Dahl
Fiction, Fantasy, Children's
This sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is full of wildly implausible adventures, space stations, magical youth pills and Vermicious Knids. It also has Charlie Bucket's entire family, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing Charlie's parents, who only have a few lines in the whole book. Willy Wonka is in full manic form, and with the help of the great glass elevator, they're going back to the factory. With a slight detour to the USA's new Space Hotel.
This book never grabbed me the way the first did. The first had a veneer of plausibility; if an eccentric candymaker wanted to mix his chocolate by waterfall, or to have his walnuts shelled by squirrels, why not? This book, however, has trips to Minusland, where those waiting to be born go, and huge subterranian tracts of candy mining (despite the fact that the first book clearly states that chocolate comes from cacao beans, they are seeking out chocolate wells in this book), and the belief from the first book that this place could possibly exist is stripped away by the lack of logic in this book. Plus Grandma Georgina is whiny and greedy, not at all like the loving grandparent described in the first book.
Not a bad sequel, but it loses its luster compared to the first.
***/*****
Fiction, Fantasy, Children's
This sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is full of wildly implausible adventures, space stations, magical youth pills and Vermicious Knids. It also has Charlie Bucket's entire family, though you'd be forgiven for not noticing Charlie's parents, who only have a few lines in the whole book. Willy Wonka is in full manic form, and with the help of the great glass elevator, they're going back to the factory. With a slight detour to the USA's new Space Hotel.
This book never grabbed me the way the first did. The first had a veneer of plausibility; if an eccentric candymaker wanted to mix his chocolate by waterfall, or to have his walnuts shelled by squirrels, why not? This book, however, has trips to Minusland, where those waiting to be born go, and huge subterranian tracts of candy mining (despite the fact that the first book clearly states that chocolate comes from cacao beans, they are seeking out chocolate wells in this book), and the belief from the first book that this place could possibly exist is stripped away by the lack of logic in this book. Plus Grandma Georgina is whiny and greedy, not at all like the loving grandparent described in the first book.
Not a bad sequel, but it loses its luster compared to the first.
***/*****
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl
Fiction, Fantasy, Children's
Most grown-ups are familiar with this tale of Charlie Bucket, who lives in a shack with his parents and four grandparents, and who for his birthday gets one bar of delicious Wonka chocolate. And they know how five children - only five - get the opportunity to take a tour inside Wonka's factory, which resides in Charlie's own town. And they know how Charlie, poor, starving, shivering Charlie, finds a dollar in the snow and buys himself two candy bars, the second of which holds the last of the Golden Tickets.
What they may have missed as children is the essential sense of fair play that permeates the book. The "fat shopkeeper" who sells Charlie the candy bars and shouts out when Charlie finds the ticket protects him from the curious and mercenary and tells him "I think you needed this break." (As Charlie is chronically starving at this point, it's obvious, but give the shopkeeper points for sympathy and good sense.) There's overheard comments from the crowd that indicate that people realize how hard a life Charlie is leading, and even Wonka himself - with suspicious deafness only when asked annoying questions - treats Charlie with kindness. And, of course, the greedy children get picked off in manners of poetic justice, leaving us with thoughtful Charlie and his joyful Grandpa Joe.
This is a book where the righteous get what they deserve, and the scheming and greedy and disobedient get their comeuppance, never fatal but always hilarious. And where you can truly believe in a chocolate factory run by two-foot-tall happy, singing, Oompa Loompas.
****.5/*****
Fiction, Fantasy, Children's
Most grown-ups are familiar with this tale of Charlie Bucket, who lives in a shack with his parents and four grandparents, and who for his birthday gets one bar of delicious Wonka chocolate. And they know how five children - only five - get the opportunity to take a tour inside Wonka's factory, which resides in Charlie's own town. And they know how Charlie, poor, starving, shivering Charlie, finds a dollar in the snow and buys himself two candy bars, the second of which holds the last of the Golden Tickets.
What they may have missed as children is the essential sense of fair play that permeates the book. The "fat shopkeeper" who sells Charlie the candy bars and shouts out when Charlie finds the ticket protects him from the curious and mercenary and tells him "I think you needed this break." (As Charlie is chronically starving at this point, it's obvious, but give the shopkeeper points for sympathy and good sense.) There's overheard comments from the crowd that indicate that people realize how hard a life Charlie is leading, and even Wonka himself - with suspicious deafness only when asked annoying questions - treats Charlie with kindness. And, of course, the greedy children get picked off in manners of poetic justice, leaving us with thoughtful Charlie and his joyful Grandpa Joe.
This is a book where the righteous get what they deserve, and the scheming and greedy and disobedient get their comeuppance, never fatal but always hilarious. And where you can truly believe in a chocolate factory run by two-foot-tall happy, singing, Oompa Loompas.
****.5/*****
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