The Book Stack pt. 1

[It's true, Pliny's not very good with photography]

Despite the fact that finals are nearly upon us, I've been hoarding books like you wouldn't believe. Last weekend Violet and I made a trip to the library, where I came back with a stack that I could hardly peer over the top of. And of course we've been visiting various other branches in adjoining counties throughout the week. It's rather a delight to know that I've been spending my free hours reading books rather than studying my tail off. Being irresponsible can be quite delicious.

I thought about making a grand post of "Good Books I've Read Lately," or better yet, "Great Books I've Read Lately." But I don't seem to have read all that many that topped the list. Instead, here are a few of the books in my stack.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain, by Vikram Chandra

Hanuman swayed from the rafters, hanging by an arm and a tail.
"So," he said. "What's your narrative frame?"
"My what?" I said.
"Your frame story?" He looked hard at me, then dropped down to the bed. "You don't have one, do you?"
"No," I said shame-faced. "I was just going to tell it, straight-forwardly, you see."
"Don't you know this yet? Straight-forwardness is the curse of you age, Sanjay. Be wily, be twisty, be elaborate. Forsake grim shortness and hustle. Let us luxuriate in your curlicues. Besides, you need a frame for its peace, its quiet. You're too involved in the tale, your audience is harried by the world. No, a calm story-teller must tell the story to an audience of educated, discriminating listeners, in a setting of sylvan beauty and silence. Thus the story is perfect in itself, complete and whole. So it has always been, so it must be."
"If you say so," I said.
"I do, and who am I?"
"Hunuman, the most cunning of dialecticians, the perfect aesthete."
"And don't you forget it," Hunuman said. "I'm listening." He rocketed up suddenly, into the rafters, round and around, laughing. Then he crouched in the corner between two beams, his red eyes twinkling at me, an enormous smile on his face.
"Enough," Yama said. "Begin."

This book was lovely. It's one of those books full of gorgeous culture and clever writing. It's the story of a family living in India who have a monkey that visits their roof and accepts dinner offerings in exchange for returning their clean laundry -which he likes to steal. It turns out, through some mildly violent events (the college-age son who has just come back from America shoots the monkey who falls off the roof and ends up lying, unconscious, in his parents bed for several weeks) that the monkey is really a man who was cursed by the lord of death some 200 years prior. The monkey, Sanjay, ends up in a storytelling duel with Yama, The Lord of Death to keep the Lord from turning him into a sea crab for the rest of eternity.

Unfortunately that plot and characters weren't enough to hold me. I've read too many books from the western culture-they're all fast paced, packed with romance and sex, and full of characters that not only come alive, but are beyond fascinating. I lost patience with this beautiful book and haven't read beyond the 27th page. Gorgeous though.

The Palace of Illusions, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

He understood the question beneath the question. His eyes showed his displeasure. "Karna has come."
Dhri didn't point him out, but I found him. Next to Duryodhan, half-hidden behind a marble pillar. My heart beat so hard, I was sure Dhri would hear. I longed to look into Karna's face, to see if those eyes were indeed as sad as the artist had portrayed, but even I knew how improper that would be. I focused instead in his hands, the wrists disdainfully bare of ornaments, the powerful, battered knuckles. If my brother knew how badly I wanted to touch them, he would have been furious. Duryodhan made a comment-probably about me-and his companions slapped their knees and guffawed. Karna alone (I noted with gratitude) sat still as a flame. Only the slightest thinning of the lips indicated his disapproval, but it was enough to silence Duryodhan.
Drhi was calling me to the dais, his voice so sharp that my attendants stared in surprise. I went, but all the way loyalty and desire dueled inside of me."

This book was even more gorgeous than Red Earth and Pouring Rain, I read the first two hundred pages in the course of a single afternoon. It's a story about love, destiny, resiliency, human nature. A princess is born out of a fire with her twin bother when they were five years old, but it's the brother that their father asked for. He prayed to the gods to send him a son to avenge his pride, and the gods sent him a daughter as well. As daughter that he didn't cherish as well as he should have.

As Princess Panchaali grows into a woman she is determined to live up to the proclamation over her birth-that she will change the course of history. Throughout the book she finds herself doing just that, at time to her pleasure, at others, to her chagrin. She finds herself married to five men-brothers-in love with her husbands' enemy, mistress of a magical palace that all the surrounding kings envy, lonely, gambled away to another king by one of her husbands, shamed before an enemy court, cursed to live in the forest for twelve years, and launcher of the biggest war in history. And that's just the first half of the book. The writing was absolutely beautiful, and Divakaruni's insights into human nature and the differences between story and reality are inspired.

War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull

As she stood at the inner door, fishing in her pocket for her keys, he said, "there's a stink on this place."
"Drunks come in here to get warm."
"No, this smells of rules and laws and Thou Shan'ts."
She pushed open the second door. "Mm. That's Roberta, the caretaker."
"Oho-a threat worthy of your guard dog! I shall go for her throat-GRRAAHRR!" He bolted snarling down the hall and up the stairs, toenails clattering on the wood floors.
"Shut up!" she hissed, and ran after him. She caught up with him on the third floor, outside her apartment door. "God damn you! If she heard that, I am screwed to the wall!"
He cocked his head and looked doggily innocent. "Have I... done something?"
"This is a 'no pets' building, you..." Something about his voice lit her suspicions. "You knew that, didn't you?"
Eddi wondered if, had he been in human form, he would have pressed a hand to his breast. "You could believe that of me? Oh, I am wounded to the quick!"
She unlocked the door. "Get in there."
He loped into her tiny blind-alley kitchen, through the living room, into the bedroom. "Charming! A bit cramped for two, but I don't regard it in the least! What's for breakfast?"
"Chew off one of your own hind legs."

War for the oaks is one of those little treasures that you just have to come back to and reread every so often. I don't much care for the large-scale plot or the major battles 'for the good of humanity' etc., but I love the characters.

Eddi McCandry is a guitar player who has been unwittingly drafted as the 'mortal blood' necessary in a battle between the light and dark courts of Faerie. The Seelie Court has reason to suspect that the Unseelie Court (their mortal-or not so mortal-enemies) might try to harm Eddi so they send her a guardian, of sorts, to protect her from any attacks. Within the course of a nightmarish evening in which she quits her band, decides to break up with her boyfriend, and gets chased down the Nicollet Mall in the middle of the night, Eddi acquires a phooka, a man who can turn into a dog (and has also been credited with horse and goat, though he'll take no notice of it) as her guardian, much to her chagrin.

After the excerpt I posted at the top I think it's pointless to reiterate how great the characters are, but they really are, honest. They're the whole reason I even read this book, which I indulge in every few months.

Okay, enough for one day, that's waaaay too many words for any sane person to read in a normal post, so I'll save the rest of the stack for a future date ;)