Stuffing Stockers

2009 is practically over, but before it’s done with, we’ve got Christmas to take care of! I thought to list down some books and music that I’ve enjoyed in the past year just as a quick sort of summary, but also as a source of last-minute gift suggestions. Five each (plus bonuses), and I tried to keep them to recent releases, which is much easier for music than it is for books, considering my reading patterns.

This is also by no means a best-of list, especially considering how my tastes can sometimes be rather esoteric. It’s more of a review of things that I’ve enjoyed in the past year. I hope that you and yours can too.

So, if you’re running short of ideas and running short on time, consider giving these a shot. Alternatively, give yourself a little Christmas treat after a long year.

Books

2666
Roberto Bolaño

For a period of time after reading 2666, I couldn’t read anything else without feeling underwhelmed. Bolaño’s opus is a towering achievement, at turns absurdly funny and hopelessly dark, at once irreverent, unabashed, sprawling and intense. While it is true that one’s mileage may vary with regards to certain portions of the text, the quality of Bolaño’s prose never slips, which ought to be a remarkable achievement except for how it is overshadowed by the book’s immense ambition and spectacular beauty. It is works like these that inspire the very sort of hope that we should have in art, where imagination is vested with powers incomparable and the written word has the ability to intone, inspire, crush and create. It is works like these that remind you the importance of art, as well as its limitless nature.

[You can get this in a couple of humongous hardcover editions, a new one-volume paperback, or the box set that split it up into three books. I liked the one I have the best, which is the three-book edition.]

All-Star Superman
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely with Jamie Grant

Grant Morrison is my favourite comic book writer, and sometimes one of my favourite living writers. I say sometimes because in the multitude of his ambitions, he quite frequently (if I dare say) falls somewhat short. But on the good days, when it all comes together, Morrison is able to take the comic book medium to quite incredible heights. All-Star Superman sees Morrison in some of his best form, reimagining the Superman story in a manner both bold and brilliant. It all comes together (with Quitely’s art and Grant’s inks) in a package that makes you realise the things that all things are possible in the comic medium.

[You can get the collected edition in two volumes, which are available in hardcover and (I think) paperback. I'm not sure if you'll have too much luck hunting down the individual issues.]

Death At Intervals
José Saramago

Of Saramago’s many otherworldly talents, one of them appears to be the ability to make the most absurd plots function. In Death At Intervals, he tells the fable of a country in which everyone, one day, just stops dying. At the hands of a lesser writer, this would probably have drowned in some unspectacular, but Saramago somehow manages to pull it off. What emerges is (as one would expect from a Saramago novel) a bleak exploration of human nature. Every celebration is simply a secret waiting to reveal its cost.

What I didn’t expect, however, was just how humorous the whole thing was. In these pages, Saramago finds the perfect balance between the more piercing perspectives into human beahaviour and the somewhat irreverent and unexpected jokes. It’s a brilliant thing to see. (He wryly lampoons everything from the government, the mob, and even the editors.)

The second half of the novel takes an even more unexpected turn and I am well aware that this will probably not succeed as well as the first half of it. Within it, Saramago decides to personify death, and his characterisation of her is arguably less likely to be as convincing as the remarkable first half of the novel. Nevertheless, I liked it, because it surprised me how it had a certain type of sweetness that I wouldn’t have expected to see outside of the very best children’s fiction.

[This is available in paperback in a variety of covers. There was a black hardcover a while back, but if you ask me, the purple Vintage edition with the cute comic art cover is probably the best representation of its contents.]

Pandora In The Congo
Albert Sánchez Piñol

At the heart of Pandora In The Congo is a writer who writes the tale of a certain Marcus Garvey. It begins by caricaturising the adventure novel, and then bursts into one of its own in the tradition of Conrad and Rider Haggard.

Piñol seizes you from the get-go with his startling imagination and boundless energy, and leads you through a novel like the architect of a good rollercoaster ride. It has thrills, spills, blood, wit, candour, altruism, hearts of darkness, romance and discourses on human nature. It asks difficult questions! It enthralls and excites! It has murder! It has villains! It has ugly humans doing ugly things! It has frightening underground humanoids! It has romance in the trees! What’s not to like?

[I've only ever seen a paperback edition of this.]

The Way Through Doors
Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball’s book is in essence a variation of The Arabian Nights. It is a scheme of things that appeals to us, I think, because of our inherent desire to believe in the power of stories. In order to prevent Mora Klein from slipping into slumber (and thus causing her dreadful harm), Selah Morse, our wonderfully unreliable narrator, has to tell her stories. It is a celebration of the artform in a manner both earnest and sweet, albeit slightly challenging because of its charming oddness and unusual form.

This was a happy accident for me. I picked it up not knowing what I was getting into. I ended up delighted and rather mesmerised. There is a purity and beauty to this that reminds us that perhaps the best parts of our lives are reserved for those unafraid to dream.

[I got this on paperback. I don't know if it comes in any other form, but that Vintage edition was put together in the most lovely fashion.]

Bonus Mention

Your Inner Fish
Neil Shubin

Here’s one additional book I thought I ought to mention. Unlike the rest of the books here, it’s a non-fiction book that essentially deals with the theory that we’ve all evolved from fish. It’s written with great clarity and much enthusiasm, and I’m sure this will win Natural History more than a few new students.

Music

Abbey Road [2009 Remaster]
The Beatles

The Beatles return with their entire catalogue remastered, and I am of the opinion that they are quite remarkable. Nowhere is this more welcome (well, to me, anyway) than with Abbey Road. The differences between the remaster and the original will probably not be as pronounced on Abbey Road as compared to some of the other albums, but it’s these differences that reinvigorate the album and give it a new dimension. The percussion pulsates in She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. The bass drives The End forwards in a way I could never have dreamed. Like I said, it’s not that the differences are night and day, but what differences they are.

Funny feeling, this. It’s 2009, and the Beatles rock again.

[This is available as a single album release and, if it's a special someone who happens to be a Beatles nut, as part of The Beatles Stereo Box.]

The Hazards Of Love
The Decemberists

The Decemberists returned this year with a gigantic rock suite telling the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers, an evil child-killing fellow, a jealous mother, a forest and a river. I suppose if there was anything characteristically Decemberist, it would be something like this.

The band has probably not sounded better (so far), with top-notch production (just listen to the opener) and some of the best musicianship they’ve yet exhibited (all around, though Chris Funk’s electric guitar and Jenny Conlee’s organ will be the most immediately impressive). And really, who wouldn’t want to see the grand, operatic ambition of telling a story like that with excellent music? The album’s massive ambition is a thing to admire, although it sometimes does end up being the album’s greatest fault. It feels every now and then as if they haven’t got enough material to sustain the suite; and sometimes slips into a sort of Disney phase (the romantic sides of the album, in particular). Nevertheless, there’s plenty of good music here, and it’s a spectacle that you really shouldn’t miss.

[The album is available at the Decemberists store, among other places, but I wanted to note that if you get it there now, you will also get a DVD of the animated feature that they put together to accompany the album.]

Humbug
Arctic Monkeys

Humbug is a carnival with a dark twist, a biting poison and the occasional moment of sweetness. Unlike the first two endeavours of the Arctic Monkeys, it is a quite successful attempt at making an album as a cohesive whole. It definitely feels as if they don’t feel the need to impress so immediately anymore (most notably in the very controlled and cheekily vulgar opener, My Propeller), and that shows in the care that has been taken in crafting some of this music. There are fewer hooks, fewer catchy singles, fewer overt displays of showmanship, but definitely a marked maturity to their musicianship. It’s an excellent album by an excellent band that’s showing signs of moving in the right direction.

[All major record stores, and probably most minor ones too.]

Middle Cyclone
Neko Case

Nature and the need for love frame Neko Case’s latest album, and in this balance we find something pleasant, bittersweet, and ultimately sweeping. There is a cinematic quality to this album as it moves from country to noir to rock and even to the spiritual. The range of it alone is impressive, and is made even more impressive by her incredible voice. And while it is one of the very best voices in the business, demanding your attention at every turn, credit should go too to the band for managing to produce a Walden-esque aesthetic within the confines of the album.

Resembling a midsummer night’s dream of forests and fireflies, of rain on the fields and creaking cicadas in the dark nights, tinged with more than a hint of heartbreak, the album turns out to be a thoughtful endeavour that I found thoroughly enjoyable.

[It's really not anything like the cover.]

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix

Early Phoenix stuff has always somehow struck me as promising and yet lacking in some way. That wasn’t at all the case with this cleverly titled album. It’s an album that tries to deal with the grandiose themes of love and angst and disappointments and living in frame of their now-mature sense for pop-rock. In doing so, Phoenix abandons their sophisticated and excessive arrangements for something more urgent, something that breathes. It understands loneliness. It understands hurt. It asks that you pull your socks up. It asks that you step on the gas and ride into the sunset. By somehow drawing upon Mozart, Liszt, Brain Eno and Daft Punk, Phoenix has produced a work of youth and hope that burns as brighter than anything I’ve heard this year (and many others).

Bonus Mentions

It’s Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Together Through Life
Bob Dylan

Two more albums that I didn’t have space for. I wanted to say that even not being the biggest fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I really enjoyed It’s Blitz!. Together Through Life, on the other hand, sees Dylan put out music that’s perhaps more… ‘grounded’? I don’t know if that’s the word for it. I have a terrible vocabulary. It certainly has a far less epic feel than the preceding albums in his discography, and doesn’t carry the same sense of importance about it, but it features Dylan in a somewhat more relaxed mood, delivering some very clever lyrics and supported by impeccable performances. Excellent stuff.

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Pandora In The Congo

A couple of days ago, I finished Albert Sánchez Piñol’s fairly long novel, Pandora In The Congo. I am not normally a fan of long books, and this was almost a long one. However, I devoured it at about twice my usual reading speed, which is not a speed to write home about but still deserving something of a mention here.

I started on one of those sleepy mornings, uncertain if I would get very far, but as I read it on the train, I started to get quite intrigued. By the time I cleared the first fifty pages, I was going at twice the speed that I’d started with and I was hooked. I was quite surprised at the rate at which I was flipping the pages.

Without spoiling too much (though to be fair, there’s a lot to spoil anyway), the book tells the story of a certain Thomas Thomson, who starts out as a ghost writer for (a ghost writer for a ghost writer for) a certain Doctor Flag, who writes adventure novels, though the most trashy, racist and bigoted kind. Our protagonist soon gets hired to write the story of Marcus Garvey, manservant and apparently murderer of William and Richard Craver. Garvey is adamant about his innocence, and is prepared to share what is not just the story of his innocence, but the story of a lifetime.

Garvey’s tale takes us (and Thomson) right into the heart of the Congo, where his masters have discovered a gold mine on their expedition. Let’s just say that what ensues involves hearts of darkness, honour, cowardice, evil from the depths of hell, and a love beyond time.

Deftly alternating between Garvey’s pulsating tale and the slightly less dramatic life of Thomson, Piñol carves a brilliant book of thrills and intrigue and reflections on the human condition. It all pans out into a genre-bending high-adventure novel somewhat resembling (as I’m sure quite a few people have pointed out before) a Rider Haggard book, only on drugs and with a wicked sense of humour. Piñol’s imagination apparently knows no bounds, and his finesse is quite startling.

In short, Pandora In The Congo is magnificent and maniacally clever. You ought to read it.

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Money Matters

So you spend it.

Here’s the loot report for yesterday, or in other words, the books joining my little library:

1. Seeing by José Saramago
2. All-Star Superman Vol. 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
3. The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald)
4. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
5. Pandora In The Congo by Albert Sanchez Piñol (Translated by Mara Faye Lethem)
6. The 4 Major Plays by Anton Chekhov (Translated by Curt Columbus)
7. Last Evenings On Earth by Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Chris Andrews)

Not quite the mix I was expecting, with a shortage of science and poetry. I think I’ll pop by for another book tomorrow if I happen to be passing by, though that’ll likely be a recent novel than anything else. In fact, it might even be in Chinese.

I’m happiest about my Pandora In The Congo buy, actually, because it’s not something I would normally read, and I’ve only heard good things about it.

I had a bunch of other books I was intending to get, including the new Kazuo Ishiguro Nocturnes and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, but I suspect I’m going pocket paperback for those, if they ever appear. Otherwise I’ll just get them as they are. There was also a science book that’s in a gigantic hardcover and I was at first slightly tempted, but what the hey, I’m a poor student without a job.

I’m sure there’ll be another before school reopens, since there’s the Great Singapore Sale somewhere along these couple of months, so there’s certainly ample time to stock up on my new semester reading.

Today…

I think I’ll be working on a query for The River. I just want some space from Bukit Merah for now, in case I burn out prematurely. I figure that if I can’t tell how long it’s going to be (since I am making it up as I go along), then I run the risk of either writing it too short (rushing it) or too long (dragging it). Some distance, temporal or otherwise, from it might help, so I reckon I won’t be back at it until Monday, depending on how the weekend works out.

Hmm.

Results in a week. Wonder what I’ll see. There’s something nerve-wracking about getting your results reported to you by your computer. A click of the mouse and poof it’s there. And as if it wants to mess with your head a bit more, it doesn’t appear instantly. No, it just lags a bit and hangs around and tries its best to surprise you. Then it shows up like a magic trick, and you’re struggling to contain the dread in the first couple of seconds as you try to make sense of it all.

Then it makes sense. And it’s like dust, taking ages to settle.

Next week. Friday, I think.

2.8

The WordPress 2.8 beta has got up and going. [via WordPress.org]

TRICO

Team ICO’s next project has an alleged trailer. [via Kotaku]

Looks great. I like the giant beast.

9

New trailer for 9. [via YouTube]

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