I know I’ve said it before but not having any prior knowledge or expectations of a book really does make it that much more interesting.

For some unknown reason I had two ideas of what this book was about before I picked it up. The first one being a more literal take of the title, chefs and what they do in the bedroom. And the second having something to do with a murder, why I thought this, I don’t know. Anyways, if you’re familiar with any of Welsh’s previous works you would know better, as should have I. I’ve read several of his other books including Trainspotting and Porno and enjoyed each so i figured odds were, regardless of what I thought the book would be about, I’d enjoy Bedroom Secrets as well.

Welsh typically deals with adult themes in his novels and Bedroom Secrets is no different. As Trainspotting deals heavily with drug addiction and Porno with the obvious, porn, Bedroom Secrets, despite what you may think from the title introduces us to a character who is an alcoholic.

This isn’t your typical alcoholic, not in the James Frey A Million Little Pieces kind of way at least. Then again, I guess that’s an arguable comparison to make since Frey’s book turned out to be a bit of a farce. Anyways, not only does our main character enjoy an occasional drink at the pub he also has this incredible ability to put a curse on his “nemesis.” His nemesis being a geeky, model train loving kiss ass who is in line to get the promotion said alcoholic dearly wants. Who knew this book was also going to have some black magic in it? Unfortunately I can relate, as it would seem that the month of January has put a curse on me.

It’s worth it… would I lie?

Here’s the situation, if it had been possible to start this book smack dab in the middle, say page 200, I think I would have enjoyed this book a little bit more. Of course the book wouldn’t make sense but I think you get the point I’m making.

Obviously this book started off a little rough for me. As always when I have this problem with books I come to the age old dilemma of “do I stop reading it, or carry on?” Well, if you’ve read some of my previous posts you know that I can’t stand not finishing a book so that’s exactly what I did. Naturally, by the time I finished the book I had warmed up to it a bit. I’m not going to say I wholeheartedly enjoyed it, but I did a bit.

It’s another World War II story that is told from the perspective of a  journalist, Ben Reinking, during the war. During this particular journalist’s college days he was on a championship football team out of Montana. After being ordered from flight training and told that he would instead be writing for the Threshold Press War Project, a propaganda news source, he was instructed that he would be covering the stories of the other 10 players from his football team. You see back in 1941 they didn’t have all the substitutes and backup players that colleges have today, instead of having a sideline packed with guys trying to look tough, they were lucky to have a few. What apparently made this football team newsworthy to the army was the simple fact that all 11 of them (including Ben) enrolled in the army after graduating. In order to cover each of their stories Ben travels to the Pacific Northwest, Guam, New Guinea, the open ocean and Antwerp to report on his former teammates. Although the true purpose of his reporting was never really revealed to him, Ben dutifully does as he is told and attempts to bring his former teammates to been seen as “heroes” off the football field.

and you thought I was done…

Oh gosh, another one of those books recommended to me by a woman who turned me away. I feel there’s a trend there, don’t you? I’m pretty much 0 for 5 (maybe more, I’m losing track) when it comes to women I’m interested in recommending a good book to me. Although that’s not really fair cause there have been a few along the way that haven’t. Seriously, nothing makes me feel better than statistics. I think from now on my approach will be to tune out any woman who I am attracted to when they start to tell me I should read such and such book. Perhaps then things will work out better for me. Ah hell, who am I kidding.

This suggestion was kind of a cheat though. I mean it was kind of obvious it was going to be relatively entertaining. Of course nothing is certain, but when a book is a bestseller (which really doesn’t mean much to me, after all Eat, Pray, Love and Omnivore’s Dilemma were both as well), in addition to winning all kinds of awards, I kind of expect something good. That’s fair, right? Although, I’m always secretly hoping I won’t like it and then can get into all kinds of interesting debates or arguments with people who try and convince me otherwise.

Anyways, what we have here is a novel that surprisingly enough has not been turned into a movie yet (IMDB does have a page set up for it though). Honestly, I’m not quite sure what kind of a movie it would make, it would probably be kind of slow and boring to tell the truth. Now, I’m not at all saying that’s how the book is, but sometimes novels just can’t be written into a screenplay. The reason I think this one may be somewhat boring and slow is that this book is all about the characters, their emotions, their feelings towards one another and their relationships.

More more more!

So, let’s see, take a pinch of Harry Potter, add a slice of Narnia, a pinch of the Secret Garden, maybe a squeeze of A in Wonderland and a sprinkle of Frodo and the rings and you’ve basically got yourself Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Some of you may think this recipe is somewhat redundant but if prepared in the right pot, with the right utensils you very well could come up with a tasty dish. I have no idea why I used the cooking metaphor here, I just started that way so I ran with it. Don’t worry though, I’m done with it.

I was pretty hesitant when I started reading this. Like I said it was a bit like Harry Potter and for awhile there I almost thought Mr. Grossman was just re-creating the same story. But, as I learned, he at times actually makes reference to Potter and kind of makes fun of it, or so I think. And that redeemed him a little bit.

I guess if I were to classify this book I’d have to say it’s a fantasy novel. I don’t really know what that means because I always thought fantasy and sci-fi were one and the same but sci-fi doesn’t really seem to make sense with this book. Instead of a story about scientific theoretical ideas, which I understand sci-fi to be, this novel deals with alternate worlds and magic, which as far as I’m concerned are beyond the laws of nature and science, therefore we have fantasy.

This is a short one, I promise

Let me start by saying that this is not my biography. I know that’s what you were thinking when you saw the title of this book, don’t try and deny it. What kind of a man do you think I am? I don’t discriminate, they haven’t only been Caucasian. Ha, ok, I make myself laugh sometimes.

So here’s the story. Fergus claims that in 1854 there was a peace conference held at Fort Laramie, Wyoming between the U.S. army and a Northern Cheyenne chief. In order to preserve the peace between the whites and the native Americans the Cheyenne chief requested 1,000 white women to be brides for his young warriors, in exchange for 1,000 horses. Because of their matrilinear way of life, the children borne out of these marriages would then facilitate the Cheyenne’s assimilation into white society, therefore aiding the peace process. The deal was certainly not made, the conference collapsed and the Cheyenne returned home. Oddly enough I tried to do some research on this “deal” and couldn’t find anything. So, I’m kind of questioning the whole thing but I’ll go with it. And to be fair, my research involved about 15 minutes on the wondrously glorious interweb.

That leaves us with the book. Other than the whole “deal” that went sour thing, the whole novel is a work of fiction. Fergus’ actually changes history in his book and pretends that the “deal” actually was struck, that the U.S. Army agreed to trading brides for horses and presumably peace. He chooses to tell the story through one of the particular women that was sent to marry the Cheyenne, Mary Dodd. By way of her diary, Fergus tells us the story of how she came to be with the Cheyenne and what happened while she was there.

Women for horses? Come on…

Whether you know it or not you most likely are already familiar with Mr. Vikas Swarup (you may actually know him by his Hindi name, विकास स्वरूप). His first book Q & A was published in 2005 and was subsequently turned into a movie. Take a guess at the movie, come on. Ok, since I can’t hear you or know what you’re saying I’ll give you the answer. Initially released on November 12, 2008 his novel was adapted into the movie Slumdog Millionaire which went on to win 8 academy awards in 2009. See, I told you you were familiar with him.

Although I did not read Q & A, I am very pleased that I have read Six Suspects. It is quite easy to see from this, his second book, that the same man also wrote the book that would turn into Slumdog.

Now, let’s not pretend that the novels are similar though. There are many stylistics elements which are similar, the language and imagery are pretty much on par and the fact that it’s a compelling, interesting story set in India doesn’t hurt either. But where it does differ is that unlike Slumdog, Six Suspects provides a vision of India through multiple sets of eyes, it is a murder mystery and you really don’t know who to root for.

Six Suspects is basically a game of clue that you can’t play. As the title clearly states there is a crime, a murder, and there are six people who are suspected of the murder. Let’s go through the characters, you’ve got Shabnam the actress as Miss Scarlet, Jagganath Rai the victims father as Colonel Mustard, Mohan Kumar, the beaurcrat as Professor Plum, Munna, the phone thief as Mr. Green, as for Eketi the tribesman and Larry Page the American there are no clue equals. As for the weapons in this game of clue, there is only one, a gun, but there are six different guns so thats almost clue like. And lastly, the rooms, I’m gonna go ahead and say that the six separate stories are the equivalent of the different rooms.

“Don’t stop [readin'], hold on to the feelin’”

Immediately after finishing this book I went to a book store and read Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are for some perspective. Although it was certainly one of my favorite books growing up I honestly didn’t really remember the story and had a pretty strong inkling that Eggers book was pretty different. I was right. After all, as Eggers explains at the end of his novel that “the children’s book Max is, after all, a version of Maurice and the movie [which of course was just recently released] Max is a version of Spike [Spike Jonze, the director of the film]. The Max of [Eggers] book, then, is some combination of Maurice’s Max, Spike’s Max, and the Max of my own [Eggers] boyhood.”

The story of how this book and the movie came to be is a pretty interesting one. If you haven’t already heard about it I’ll give you a quick synopsis. Maurice Sendak writes book in 1963. In 2003 Spike Jonze calls Dave Eggers and says “hey want to do a collaboration on the screenplay for a film adaptation of the book?” Dave says “yes.” Later, Maurice calls Dave and says “hey, I think a novel could be written based on all the material we’ve accumulated for the movie, do you want to write it?” Dave then says “sure, I’ll give it a shot.” And thus we have a movie and a book based on Where the Wild Things Are. (Dialogues are fictional and completely the guesswork of the author.)

At this point, having read both versions of the book I’m 2 for 3. I have not yet seen the movie. I wanted to, but I think all the hype surrounding it kind of got to me and turned me off. I will at some point see it though, preferably with a small child because I hear that I will scare the bejeezus out of them and I think that is pretty amusing.

More “Wild Things” this way…