I write like...

I write like David Foster Wallace

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

So, I found this on a Library Thing topic: it analyses your text and, based on the words you use and the writing style, it tells you which author's your writing resembles.

I ran it through 14 reviews and this is what I got:

• David Foster Wallace - 4
• Vladimir Nabokov - 2
• Jonathan Swift - 2
• Dan Brown - 2
• Mary Shelley - 1
• James Joyce - 1
• Charles Dickens - 1
• Kurt Vonnegut - 1

I also ran it through some original texts and I ended up with:
(The results are ordered by age of the texts, older ones first)

• Dan Brown (I really need to revise this one :S)
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Anne Rice
• David Foster Wallace 

Now, I never heard of David Foster Wallace, or read anything by him, but after this I will probably try it.

You can try it for your writing here.

What should I read next?

Because I sometimes don't know what read next, I'm leaving to the blogreaders the choice to select what I should read.

Below is a list of choices you can select from (just a tiny bit of my huge TBR list). So, What should I read next?

What should I read next?

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

As I said before, Kafka on the Shore is a very strange book. It was loaned to me (thrust my way, that is) by a friend singing its praises and saying it was just like an anime.

The backcover reads: Kafka on the Shore tells the adventures (and misadventures) of two strange characters, whose lives, running side by side throughout the novel, will eventually prove to be full of enigmas and mystery. These are Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home at age 15, pursued by the shadow of a dark prophecy that one day was launched by his father, and Nakata, an elderly man who has never recovers from a freak accident he suffered as a young man and who has devoted much of his life to a cause - seeking missing cats.

This oversimplifies a lot.

It is true that these two characters' lives run parallel to each other, almost meeting in the end. But Kafka's journey is not simply that of a runaway kid, he is running away from an Oedipal prophecy, made by his own father (who has quite a few screws loose). He will take refuge in Komura Library, where he meets Oshima with whom he has philosophical and metaphysical conversations about life, literature and music (in fact, these made me want to read more Japanese literature - I've added Akinari Ueda's Tales of Moonlight and Rain to my wishlist, and started Kawabata's Snow Country). Kafka's tale is mostly of coming of age, and becoming strong to be able to survive the world.

Nakata's story, together with the reports of the incident that left him unable to read and write, or learn anything, but with the strange gift of talking to cats, is amusing at first, but growing more deep and poignant as the chapters advance. Nakata is responsible for most of the surreal things happening in the book, although it is not really his fault if it rains fishes, or leeches. I really liked Nakata, and his relationship with all the characters that he meets. He is really a nice old man, who isn't very bright, but is quite happy that way. But what starts with a quest to find a missing kitty, ends up being the journey of his life, setting right what was wrong.

And between these two characters there is Miss Saeki, a connecting point between the stories, a woman for whom time has stopped, in the sense that she stopped living, only being able to exist after the death of her fiancé. She will be important to Kafka, helping him become the “world's toughest 15-year old”, and the ending point of Nakata's quest.

When I finished the book, I wasn't sure I had liked it. I wasn't sure I disliked it either. It's the kind of read that needs digesting, that you can only know how much it touched you when, 6 months later, you still recall the story and the feelings associated with it.

What is great about Kafka on the Shore is that I was there with the characters, in the same places they where, having the same adventures as them. It is not that I loved the book, it wasn't that great, I just didn't want to leave that world. I would love to keep going to Komura Library with Kafka, having lunch and conversations with Oshima, or walk on the forest, with trees looming over me, or even keep going west with Nakata and Hoshino, and talking with cats.

(4/5) - for now, we'll see in 6 months how I'll feel about it

Reading Challenge - 30 to 34

30 - The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Book of Lost Things seemed, at first glance, exactly the right read for me: dark with fairy tales gone wrong. But it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.


Full Review



(3,5/5)



31 - Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Lord of Light is a strange book. At first I was having trouble finding the science fiction in it: it seemed more like a religion book about the life of the Gods, the kind that is usually given away on the street. I was also constantly lost amidst the different Gods, with all the name/position changes.

It did get better, but not by much. I was able to understand the gist of it, which lead me to believe that I would have probably loved the book if it wasn't so vague and confusing.

(3/5)


32 - The Book of Imaginary Beings By Jorge Luis Borges
The book of Imaginary Beings is a bestiary of fantastical animals, from folklore, mythology and literature. It is in no way comprehensive, but it's a good reference for anyone who enjoys to read about human imagination and its history. Some of the beings are alike, as their descriptions get mixed up throughout the ages, and sometimes the same name is given to beings so different.

I really liked the bits of imagined beings by other authors, especially the ones by Kafka.

Not your standard literature book, more of a reference of sorts, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

(4/5)

33 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and other stories by Washington Irving
It was an OK book: some good stories, some bad, one awful.

Full Review

(3.5/5)







34 - Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
This is, undoubtedly, a very strange book. Good kind of strange. At this point I'm not sure I can say much about it. I'm not even sure I liked it (or disliked it, for that matter). I will probably need time to digest the story.

What I will say is this: There are things in the book that I loved, and that includes the characters, and most of the plot. But I'm not sure if I wanted it to end how it did, or even if I wanted it to end.

The friend that lent me this book told me it was like an anime. It is. But not the action kind of anime. We're talking about sureal, philosophical and heavily metaphorical storylines here. But it's just like an anime.

Full Review (written a few days later)

(4/5)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and other stories

I've wanted to read the Legend of Sleepy Hollow for quite some time, so when I found this book at a good price I had to buy it. I guess I should have made my homework before picking this up: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a very short story, from where Tim Burton took the generic idea, and expanded it. It is quite nice, but it was a surprise as it is very different from the movie. Basically, the characters are there, the place is the same, the lore of the place is the same, but Ichabod Crane's backstory and what really happens is different.

Some of the other stories in this book were very nice: Rip Van Winkle was amusing and fairytale like, The Spectre Bridegroom was eerie but very sweet, The Wife was simply sweet and romantic, Adventure of a Mysterious Stranger and The Story of the Young Italian were very good and tragic, and The Mutability of Literature, although not really a story, was interestingly actual, although it relates with the printing press. Here's a quote:

"But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They have made every one a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent—augmented into a river-expanded into a sea. "

What would have Irving said about the Internet, if he could only see it?

The other stories (Mountjoy, Adventure of the German Student, The Adventure of my Uncle, The Adventure of my Aunt, The Devil and Tom Walker) were not so good, most of the time boring and seeming to drag for ages. Westminster Abbey was especially boring, and I almost skipped it ahead because I hardly could read a paragraph at a time without my mind drifting to a much more interesting topic.

I liked Irving's writing style, a third-person that is not detached from action, with a somewhat conversational style. It seemed like he was telling me a story. This alone made the good stories great, and the not so good, enjoyable at least in a language level.

A complaint I have about this edition is: Why did they separate the stories Adventure of a Mysterious Stranger and The Story of the Young Italian when they are obviously parts of the same? The Adventure of my Uncle and The Adventure of my Aunt were not separated, and their connection is far more tenuous.

Final Opinion: It was an OK book; some good stories, some bad, one awful.

(3.5/5)

Book Fair Haul, part 5

This week I made two more visits to the book fair.

On Monday  I ended up buying three books that I wasn't counting on. It is really one book in three parts, that was originally published in two books. Confused? So was I. It is O Planeta dos Dragões be Anne McCaffrey, which corresponds to Dragonflight and Dragonquest, the first two volumes of the Dragonriders of Pern series.



Yesterday I visited again, determined to do my last shopping, as the Book Fair ends next weekend. I bought four books: one that I've been trying to buy for quite some time (the one that disappeared from its shelf before), A Rainha do Sul [The Queen of the South] by Arturo Pérez-Reverte; one that I picked up on the first day, because it was pretty, and been looking at it ever since, Terra de Neve [Snow Country] by Yasunari Kawabata; the book of the day in one of the stands, that seemed nice, O tempo dos Imperadores Estranhos by Ignacio del Valle; and finally a book that caught my attention in a review, O caso das Mangas Explosivas [A Case of Exploding Mangoes] by Mohammed Hanif.


To top all of this, I received Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel in the mail, that I won in a competition made by the Portuguese publisher.

Book Fair Haul, part 4

Now that the fair is on its second week, it takes me much less time to walk through it. I know where most of the books are, and only check on some stands to see if there is anything new, or at a better price.

Today I went to buy one book, but ended up with two. And the name of another to check reviews and on bookmooch.

The one I wanted to get was A Escriba by Antonio Garrido (La Escriba in Spanish, not available in English), an historical novel set on Charlemagne's time.

The other one was a random book that I encountered on a stand that had some of Tim Burton's books. It is A Loja dos Suicídios (The Suicide Shop) by Jean Teulé, and it is a black humour novel. The first sentence of the book is (roughly translated by me):

"It is a little shop where a sun ray never enters."

It will probably be a fast but delightful read.

The one I will try to get on Bookmooch is a crime novel, based on Fairy Tales (because I like them, even if I had a bad experience with a book based on them). It is Brother Grimm by Craig Russell.

The Book of Lost Things By John Connolly

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Book of Lost Things seemed, at first glance, exactly the right read for me: dark with fairy tales gone wrong. But it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

Taking place during World War 2, it tells the story of David, a twelve year old boy who recently lost his mother, and finds himself living in an old house, with his father, his stepmother and his newborn stepbrother. David's only comfort are the books that he is constantly reading and that speak to him (and I mean, literately speak). But when he hears the voice of his dead mother calling him, asking him to help her, he embarks in a journey in a fantasy world.

It's an allegorical story, that is quite clear from the beginning. To what the allegory referred to, it took me a while to guess (and some of the nuances I only learnt at the end, when the author explained). It is mostly about coming of age, but told with a bit of nostalgia, so it seemed to me that it was a book for adults (actual adults, to whom the childhood was a happy time long ago, and all the bad parts stopped being quite that bad as memory fades, and worse things happen), about a young boy; and not, like I supposed, a book for teenagers with a bit fantasy and horror.

The story and the fairy tale retellings were nice, but I felt distanced from the main character and his quest. This was probably because I'm an only child, and most of the anger and resentment that David felt for his younger stepbrother were completely lost on me. The book really starts to get good towards the end, when this "brotherly" envy is no longer as important.

Another thing that didn't sit well with me was the moralizing factor of the book. I know fairy tales are meant to taught us morals, and some are more subtle than others in that. But as far as subtlety goes, The Book of Lost Things has none. I knew I was being taught morals, regardless of whether I had them in the first place or not, or of whether I wanted or not. And I didn't want, nor did I need them.

My edition contained a lot of extras, and I think it is safe to say I probably enjoyed the extras more than the book itself. The biggest part of the extras are devoted to the fairy tales in the book, how they relate to the story of David and what he was going through, their history, and finally, the fairy tale itself. So, I guess I enjoyed the deconstruction and analysis of the story more than the story itself.


(3,5/5)

Red by Hyunjoo Song - A different version of Little Red Riding Hood

Finished reading The book of lost things, which is heavy on Fairy Tales retold (or should I say Fairy Tales gone wrong?) and found this video on Vimeo, that features the same theme.

I have to say it's such a sweet retelling. Also, I now want an unicorn bunny.





Red from Hyunjoo Song on Vimeo.



Edit: And here is Hyunjoo Song's blog