I Give Up: Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Ten years after I dated the first guy who told me that this book changed his life, I finally picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And after a month of trying to read this book, I've given up. It's going back to where I found it, namely on my aunt's bookshelf, where it had sat half-read since 1983.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the biggest pile of self-aggrandizing, narcissistic, pseudo-philosophical conversation-with-yourself I've ever been party to. The four chapters I managed to read before throwing the book at the wall in utter frustration consisted of the protagonist explaining to the reader that his attitude toward motorcycling is better (more intuitive, purer, etc) than his biking companions'. But it's all a metaphor: the author/protagonist's view on biking is just a way to convey his worldview, which is The Bestest, Rightest Worldview Ever!

I wish I could say that this bit of ego-stroking was at least interesting or amusing, but it isn't. The writing has all the soul of a midlife crisis. It's hard for me to articulate what's wrong with the writing, aside from saying that it's dull, but at the same time, over-done. One might say that the book is full of the author's bloviations.

Take Chapter 3, The Chapter That Made Me Scream. That's the Chapter where the protagonist/author has a "conversation" with his riding companions about the existence of ghosts and spirits. The author/protagonist's view is that spirits are just as real as atoms and "quants" (did he mean "quarks?"). He goes on to tell them (because it's more of a lecture than a conversation) that gravity is also a "ghost." Let me just quote the book:

"So when did this law start? Has it always existed?"
[...]
"What I'm driving at," I say, "is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed."
[...]
"Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind, because there wasn't anyone, not in space, because there was no space either, not anywhere -- the law of gravity still existed?"
[...]
"If that law of gravity existed," I say, "I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. [...] I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton."

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
My head EXPLODES each time I read this!

The "law of gravity" is a mathematical model for describing how gravity works at a macroscopic level. Gravity is a force, it need not have energy or mass. ARGH!

OK, but setting aside the poor grasp of physics this guy has, there are, like, a billion things wrong with this passage. The writing is of the same caliber as a high school student's (I'm not saying my writing's better...it isn't, but I don't write books) and there are enough logical fallacies in that one exerpt to send my CEGEP philosophy prof's head spinning. Moreover, the author has been lazy creating the biking companions because they never once come up with an objection to his ramblings! Neither of them ever says, "Dude, um, just because you don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

That never happens. I mean, if the author had made the biking companions with half a brain, he would have had to construct a strawman to tear down instead of just lecturing to an enraptured audience.

Lazy. That's what this is. Lazy.

But now at least I know where my ex-boyfriends they got their insane ideas from and why conversing with them was like talking to a ten year old. It all makes sense now.

I should have read the book sooner. An ounce of prevention could have spared me several painful dinner dates.

Three Science Fiction and Fantasy Books I Should Finish

These are three books taken from my Couldn't-Finish-But-I-Feel-That-I-Should-List. It is going to take forever to discuss all the books sitting on my shelf and I'm starting to doubt my sanity for doing this. Anyhoo, here are the three books, in no particular order.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
How I really wanted to read this book! I got about four or fivechapters in and started getting antsy cuz I felt that the story wasn't really moving along. Everyone told me that this was "tension" and "suspense," but to me it was like reading through writer's block. I kept thinking that JK Rowling had something to say, but was having a bit of a hard time of it, but decided to write through it. Then, for reasons I don't understand (probably due to publication deadlines or something like that), the editor left in the flabby writing. *sigh* Anyways, I want to finish reading the book, though, mostly because I want to find out how Sirius dies and because I got the follow-up, The Half-Blood Prince, as a birthday gift.

Humans by Robert J. Sawyer
If you don't know, Humans is the second book in Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax series (Hominids, Humans and Hybrids). I read Hominids and I thought it was a pretty good book. The basis of the story is that there's a parallel earth where the Neanderthals beat out Homo Sapiens as the dominant species of homonid and, through a freak quantum computing accident, a Neandethal crosses into our reality. It's a really cool book and while it can be a bit contrived and the Neanderthal world is way too idyllic for my taste (hammering in the "the environment is important, mmkay" message of the book), it kept me interested. But Humans was a whole other story. I got it as a gift and started reading it and could see right away where it was going. I felt even more manipulated by the lesson-of-the-week feel of some parts of the book and I really didn't like the sex scenes, so when I got sidetracked and put Humans down, I wasn't really in a rush to pick it up. But then all my friends read it and told me that it was good, so now I'm going to finish reading it. Eventually.

Island Dreams edited by Claude Lalumiere
Of all the books I've had a hard time finishing, this is the most interesting and well-written of the lot! It's an anthology of weird fiction, ranging from speculative fiction to macabre, by Montreal-based writers. It's a really excellent collection and I have to congratulate Claude Lalumiere for finding such top-notch fiction. I mean, the future worlds don't overpower the stories, nor do they seem like irrelevant contrivances; the future worlds just mesh really well with the stories, making them seem natural and almost commonplace (it's tough to make your spec-fic look like Blade Runner rather than, say, Total Recall). I stopped reading the anthology at a story called "Carrion Luggage" (Claude told me that the anthology was meant to be read sequentially). It was going to be the third or fourth macabre story and I was really starting to get freaked out by them. Already the zombie love story set in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetary in Montreal had given me nightmares (probably because my psyche wasn't prepared for thinking of Montreal flooded by global warming and corpses rising in the cemetary where the bodies of people I know are burried), I didn't need to know about carrion in luggage. I have a really active imagination and this book was like caffeine and chocolate for it! So I stopped reading the book, despite the fact that I had to interview Claude for The Show. (I justified it as saying that he was the editor and not the author, so it was OK.) Now Island Dreams sits on my shelf, waiting for me to get a grip.

OK, if I'm going to write about books, I gotta write about the books on my to-read list. Actually, I have four book lists: To-Read-For-The-Radio-Show, To-Read-For-My-Own-Edification, On-Hiatus and Couldn't-Finish-But-Feel-That-I-Should.

Here's an explanation of the lists:

To-Read-For-The-Radio-Show: These are books that I've received from publishers that I have to read so that I can eventually interview the authors. Even if the books are boring as all get-out, I have to finish them or else I can't really do a good interview. Mind you, most of the interviewers on TV or on the radio haven't read the books at all, but you can tell. Or, at least, I can tell. In any case, these are books I have to read.

To-Read-For-My-Own-Personal-Edification: These are books I bought because people have recommended them to me or because I've heard good things about them. I stack them nicely on my bedside table and then I dutifully forget to read them.

On-Hiatus: I have so many books on this list, it's just nuts. What'll happen is that I'll actually get around to reading a book I've bought and I'll be really digging it until I realize that I've totally neglected a book I have to read for The Show. So I'll read the book for the show and then, because I have a short attention span, I'll forget about the book I was reading initially and move on to some other book that caught my fancy. This happens more often than you'd think, which is why this list is insanely long.

Couldn't-Finish-But-Feel-That-I-Should: You know how many people have said that I should read Wuthering Heights? At least 30. I can't finish Wuthering Heights, but everyone tells me it's a great book and I feel I should finish it. This list is full of books like Wuthering Heights.

There you go. A list of lists. At some point I'll elaborate on these lists and bore you to death with more random info that you don't need. Kinda like the guy who listed all the flavours of Jolly Ranchers he had in his desk. Info you need.

So here's the thing with me. I like books and I do this literary show on community radio. I get a bunch of books for free because of this literary show and, because I'm a big nerd, I also buy other books on my own. The result is that I have more books than you can shake a stick at. This blog is partially to keep track of the books I'm reading and have read.

The other reason I started this blog is because I hate book reviews, yet I feel this overwhelming urge to review books. Most book reviews are, you know, pompous and have these snotty attitudes. I want to write reviews for The People.

Does any of this make sense?