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Sci-fi Books

After leaving this blog collecting cobwebs for over a year, I decided to start writing again. I am an avid Sci-fi reader, so I decided to "restart" posting by writing about some of the books I’ve read in the past couple of years. I will only mention those books that I consider to be above-average. My intention is to periodically post about new books I’ve read and enjoyed.

So, here it is, the very first Jose Aguilar recommended Sci-fi book list:

• Hyperion by Dan Simmons: One of my new favorites. It tells the tale of several "pilgrims" that go to planet Hyperion, and each one tells the story on how they ended up on that pilgrimage. All against the backdrop of a blooming intergalactic war. Impressive book.
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller: Another great book. It tells the story of the order of Saint Leibowitz, an engineer that sacrificed himself to preserve humankind’s knowledge after a nuclear war. The most interesting thing is that it actually tells three stories - 600, 1200, and 1800 years after the nuclear holocaust.
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin: What would happen if humans would alternate between male and female periodically? This is what happens in Winter, the world where this excellent book takes place. The story unfolds as an emissary of the Ekumen Empire tries to establish relations with the planet. Incredibly interesting story.
• The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: Amazing history of human’s first contact with another civilization, completely different from our own. The description of the "moties", and how their environment has influenced their physical appearance and how they think, is something not seen very often.

I also ran into this list the other day while browsing this Slashdot post… I will definitely start checking them out as soon as I read the books I have in queue.

The Importance of Being Earnest Audiobook

A group of people called LibriVox have release an audiobook of
The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. This is one of my favortie books/plays ever, and they recorded the audiobook as if they were performing the play - which makes it much more easy to listen.

Until very recently I thought that audiobooks were just too boring to listen to. That changed when I listened to several audiobooks of HP Lovecraft’s stories, recorded in more entertaining ways - for example, in the At the Mountains of Madness audiobook, it was recorded as a radio interview with Professor Dyer, of the survivors of the expedition to Antartica. Recently I also listened to the Audiobook of Phillip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, to refresh the story before watching the film.

The 5 1/2 Minute review

Last night I finally finished reading House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski ’s first novel. All I can say is WOW. I enjoyed it so much that I’m actually writing a mini-review of the book (and adding a Books category to the blog in the process).

The story of how I came across this book is a funny one. A friend recommended the CD Haunted, by singer Poe. I fell in love with her music, and started digging deeper and deeper into her world - the music includes recordings from her father, answering machines, and, it turns out, references to this book. Poe’s real name is Ann Danielewski, Mark’s sister, and the disk is played out as a soundtrack of sorts to House of Leaves’ history.

The book has been compared with The Blair Witch project, but that is a bit unfair to the book. Both may be based of a similar premise, but House of Leaves goes beyond Blair Witch’s proposal, and has layers over layers of narrative that add a lot of complexity and depth to the story (stories?), like no other book I’ve read. In order to describe the overall plot, I’ll start by describing each overlapping story.

The main premise is that you have the story of Pulitzer Price winning photographer William Navidson. Trying to sort out the issues he is having with his wife, ex-model Karen Green, they move to Virginia along with their two kids, to a quiet house on Ash Tree Lane. Navidson fixes cameras all over the house in order to create a family documentary about the move. After a trip, when they come back, they start finding new rooms and doors in the house, and realize that the house is all of a sudden bigger on the inside than from outside. Baffled by the anomaly, he enrolls the help of his brother and some other friends to try to figure out what is wrong. As you can expect, strange things start to happen, and slowly tragedy involves the family and everyone that enters the house and its dark hallways. All of this is documented in a feature film that is known as The Navidson Record.

Zampano is a blind old frenchman that dies and leaves behind what appears to be a very thorough examination of The Navidson Record, including physical and psychological aspects of the film. It also includes reviews and comments by great luminaries such as Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, and other famous filmmakers, quotes from the hundreds of books and treaties that have been written about the film and overall a dissection of the world-wide event that The Navidson Record became. This examination of the film forms the basis of the novel.

Zampano’s work is found in his house by a young drug-user called Johnny Truant. He starts reading and transcribing the material, looking up all the references made by Zampano, translating the pieces from foreign languages, and adding footnotes about Navidson’s and Zampano’s life, as well as documenting the things that are going on in his life at the time. He eventually publishes that book: An annotated book about a book about a movie about a house. He, however, is never able to verify any of Zampano’s references, nobody has ever heard about the film or Navidson, and he makes it clear in the footnotes that none of it ever happened.

While Johnny is working on the book, he becomes obsessed and slowly descends into darkness and sorrow, and hints that something beyond our comprehension is going on with the book and with his life. All of it is written in this footnotes. The complete title of the book, spelled between the second and third pages, is “Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves - by Zampano - Edited by Johnny Truant“, which shows you all the different layers that I just tried to describe.

There is an additional layer of narrative on top of all that. Johnny’s mother (Pelafina H. Lièvre) has been institutionalized since Johnny was a young boy, and the book includes a collection of letters that detail her descend into madness at the Whalestoe mental institution. At the beginning these letters look like just another appendix to the book (and are actually featured in their own book, called Whalestoe Letters), but once you start reading them, you realize that there is more going on than it appears to be. Let’s just say that this is the first time I’ve ever devoured the appendixes in a book with the same interest as the main story… they are just as important!

The book itself plays with the reader quite a bit. Each one of the narratives is written in a different font (i.e. Johnny’s in one, Zampano’s in other, Editor’s in yet another, etc), which helps out a bit when sorting out what is going on. The layout is also very interesting. There are parts of the book where the fonts and paragraphs are really small and spread all over the page, even with different orientation, so you have to turn the book around to continue reading. At other times, there are several pages with just one or two words on it. Also, the word house is always in blue, there are crossed-out paragraphs, the narrative suddenly stops and you have a few blank pages (Truant allegedly lost or burned the pages in between), etc. Overall, reading the book is more of an experience than anything else.

The book also shatters “the fourth wall“, since there are codes scattered all over the place, and even Danielewski’s name appears on one of the codes. There is also a reference to Poe as one of the critics of the film, as well as references to her songs all over the place. Even the book is play on words - House of Leaves refers to the leaves(pages) in the book, and the cover of the book is actually smaller than the pages (house bigger on the inside than outside?). Zampano’s book (in the novel) is also called House of Leaves, Navidson reads a book called House of Leaves at some point in the documentary, and there are even other appearances of the book inside the narrative. This reminds me of High School and Don Quixote…
I have to admit that it was after reading the book’s Wikipedia entry last night that I realized most of this, and I actually went and re-read large portions looking for this clues - like the now famous “My dear Zampano, who did you lose”. The book becomes like a scavenger hunt of sorts. Just do yourself a favor - DO NOT read the Wikipedia article on this book if you ever plan on reading it. I fortunately didn’t, and I think it paid off big time.

All in all, I can say that this has been one of the most demanding, but at the same time, rewarding reading experiences I’ve ever had. It is definitely worth it, so if you have plenty of spare time and can get your hands on it, give it a shot. And stick with it to the end, even if you get tired of Zampano’s ranting about the physics of sound. Believe me, you won’t regret it.