The Teleportation Accident

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
Sceptre - July 19, 2012
357 pages

HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. When you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loesser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like himself can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is, a noir novel that turns all the lights on, a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner, a science fiction novel that can't remember what "isotope" means, a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT

You know those summaries of books where you really wonder if whoever was tasked with doing that truly read the book or if they just skimmed it and decided to come up with a wild hook to get people into the novel? Well, I think that's what happened here. Maybe thirty pages are devoted to the Lavicini mystery, and it isn't even about a deal with Satan, It's about whether the "Teleportation Accident" of 1679 was actually an accident.

So, the book. Not one of my favorites. I think it might have been my fault, because I was thinking to myself one day that I had read so many good books, and I would just love to rant and rant about how horrible a book is. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten something that horrendous. In fact, I've gotten stuff I've forced myself to finish, felt bad about finishing, but didn't want to go crazy ranting about it like I had Mockingbird.

I simply didn't care about any of the characters, which was good considering how many of them popped up and then disappeared. In addition, the last few chapters skip about ten years, and you're expected to understand everything that happened in those ten years. The plot isn't a clear, defined one, much like The Dead Zone; instead it aimlessly wanders around, pausing at times to poke at something that might become sort of a story before the author gets bored with it and throws it away. He even grew bored with the era of the 1930's/40's, so near the end he just skipped a decade per chapter and expected you to know what was going on.

I don't know why I forced myself to finish this. Maybe I thought that it would get better? Whatever the answer is, it didn't get better. There's no plot, just some meandering stories that happen to feature an unlikable protagonist and his interactions with unlikable people. I would give it an F, but then I remind myself of Mockingbird.

Grade: D-

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
MTV Books/Pocket Books - February 1, 1999
256/224 pages

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

(Spoiler level: Minor/moderate)

I cheated. I watched the movie first and then decided to read the book. I tell you right now that they are both awesome and rather close. Of course, it's pretty obvious that they would be close, as Stephen Chbosky wrote and directed the movie version. In this case, it actually helps you move through the book.

This is another epistolary novel that I didn't slug through, joining the ranks of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and, in a distant time, Carrie. Charlie addresses letters to someone he just calls "Friend" about his time at school. He proceeds to make friends with seniors and only seniors and then scares all of his fellow freshmen, as well as the sophomores and juniors. As a result, he will live out the next three years of high school completely and totally miserable, as he has no hope of making friends except with younger kids, but the kids in his class will probably tell them ahead of time to "Watch out for crazy Charlie! He punched a kid in the face and completely blacked out!"

The book is frequently cited as being on various banned or controversial book lists because of the content that it deals with, and trust me on this case, it certainly does deal with a lot. Suicide, abortion, abuse, homophobia, the list goes on and on. Some complaints have revolved around how the book deals with all of these, but I think that it handles them pretty well.

The only complaint that I have about the book is what Charlie knows and doesn't know. He appears to be relatively clueless about sex, but he knows much more about drugs, smoking, alcohol, etc. (For those of you who read the book, I'm choosing to ignore the pot brownie part, where it's obvious that he doesn't know what he's eating; other times he knows about marijuana, acid, etc.) He has also read an otherworldly amount of books, but yet, once again, clueless about sex. I'm guessing he hasn't read Lolita.

Grade: A-

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
Hachette Book Group - September 27, 2011
432 pages

Karou is a seventeen-year-old Prague art student that hasn't exactly led a normal life. Blue hair sprouts from her head, no dye required, and she's sent around the world to collect teeth for a group of chimaera, or creatures with attributes of both humans and animals. She has bullets in her stomach that she doesn't remember, as well as tattoos of eyes on the palms of her hands. She speaks nearly all human languages there are to offer. One one of her missions she finds an angel named Akiva, and the two of them help her discover a past life that has been long forgotten.

There is one major problem that I have with the book: it destroys Roman Catholicism and basicially all other religions with a concept of angels and/or devils. Basically, there are chimaera (devils) and seraphs (angels) that have no ties to God or Satan or any other deity because there are no deities outside of the goddesses Nitid and Ellai. Now, I'm fine with a nice pantheon or whatnot set in another world, but this actually tears apart true religion and labels it as wrong. That being said, the pace built wonderfully and the characters were rich. There were a few awkward one-sentence chapters, though, that some may enjoy but others, such as myself, found jarring.

Grade: B