My Year in Reading

Here is a little picture of the books I read this year and how I rated them on Goodreads:



For more specifics you can click here and see a more detailed list.

I ended the year by reading three absolutely amazing novels that are completely different from one another; Possession, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and A Storm of Swords. Possession was extremely literary but also accessible and human. I have the film on my DVR currently but Aaron Eckhart and Gwynneth Paltrow seem like pretty terrible casting choices for Roland and Maud so I'm not expecting it to live up to the book. I am excited to see Lena "Cersei Lannister" Headey as Blanche Glover though. And speaking of George R. R. Martin properties A Storm of Swords has been my favorite of the series so far. Even though by being on Tumblr I had some major plot points spoiled there were still so many other things that came at me from nowhere. It was exciting, I started to like characters I had hated and think twice about characters that I loved and it makes me really happy that such a popular novel does things like that.

I ended the year with my first Murakami and loved it. It's the kind of novel that would have made me feel so cool to read in High School or college but I feel now I can just really enjoy it on its own merits as a thoughtful and ambiguous experience. I feel like I didn't really read enough books that left a lot unexplained and this kind of made up for it. It managed to be exciting, existential, sad, wacky, and very real all at the same time. I listened to the version of Danny Boy from Straight to Hell, Like a Rolling Stone, Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again, and Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands on repeat through the last few chapters and it enhanced the experience.

I had challenged myself to read 50 books this year and managed to surpass that once I decided to branch out into YA territory and realized it was faster for me to read 3 books concurrently than reading one-at-a-time. I wasn't sure if I'd make it because I started the year with the long and dense 2666 and even though it seemed like a bad idea at the time it was a great way to start the year off.

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Tumblr And Books

I started a tumblr. It seems pretty fun so far but I haven't done too much with it yet. I need a better theme too but the infinite scrolling thing kind of overloads this computer. Here is the link (which should be obvious): http://ambivalentalumna.tumblr.com/

Also I decided that I'm going to start writing about my progress going through Jezebel's list of 75 Books Every Woman Should Read. When I joined the library, finally, I figured it was a good way to have a ready-made list of books to go to if I was feeling particularly stumped about what I wanted to read next. I'd only read like 6 of the books on the list before I came across it and now I'm about one third of the way through. I already wrote specifically about The House Of The Spirits but I'll probably write a little more about it in a separate post later. So my first Jez Book List post should be coming pretty soon (as soon as I decided what I want the inaugural book to be).

I'm currently reading 100 Years Of Solitude which isn't on the list but I already read Love In The Time Of Cholera which is.

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Redemption and Esteban Trueba

This is my first post about a book and I'm actually a bit nervous to write it. It's silly but it kind of feels strange to write about a book, especially a book that I don't have in front of me, in this informal, electronic kind of space. I'm going to keep it pretty loose and free form.

I've been reading a lot recently and the book that I got the most emotionally invested in was Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. If pressed, and if I had the book in front of me, there are tons of different things that I could write about it but the one idea that provoked the most thought for me, was whether or not Esteban Trueba found redemption.

I don't think that there's always a clear distinction between being redeemable and irredeemable and different people probably have different and valid opinions on whether or not a character can find redemption.

What makes one irredeemable; that no amount of good can make up for the bad? Is there a tipping point when it comes to redemption, is there some point when your good deeds outweigh your bad ones, that when reached brings you redemption? Or, is at the moment that you realize that you have done a lot that you need to make up for and you start doing good that you have been redeemed? Do you need to continue to do good for as long as you can once you make that realization?

Is it what, and how much good you do, or is it the fact that your intentions have changed that makes you redeemable?

Various thoughts and spoilers for those who haven't read the book after the jump.

Towards the end of the book Esteban did help his daughter Blanca and granddaughter Alba, more or less saving their lives. However, it was only after he caused them to suffer directly and indirectly. He was one of the people responsible, if not the person most responsible, for putting their lives in danger in the first place. He helped bring about the coup which led to the capture, rape, and torture of Alba. The same would have happened to Blanca had she been caught.

He also fathered the father of the man who tortured and raped Alba once she was captured, Esteban Garcia. By not being involved in the lives of the child he fathered and through the way he treated the people at Tres Marias, the village where he had his country house, he helped to create an environment where this unrecognized grandson, Garcia, became the monster he devolved into.

In addition to the pain he caused his children and grandchildren Esteban Trueba raped pretty much every woman in Tres Marias. The only thing that kept his character in murky territory, as opposed to black and white evil, was how much he loved his granddaughter, and perhaps his biggest step towards possible redemption was using what was left of his connections to save her.

Those connections, however, were virtually nonexistent when it came to issues of real power in the government and he resorts to going to a loyal friend and brothel owner in order to save Alba. Would he have even helped Blanca or Alba if he had not been old, feeble, and no longer influential politically? Does that matter?

He was always going to reach a point where he'd no longer be powerful physically as well as politically, living as long as he did. Does the inevitability of the circumstances that softened him take away from the goodness of the choices he made?

If redemption occurs at the moment that you decide to start atoning for the things you've done wrong then it is possible that Esteban Trueba found redemption. However if you need to fully counterbalance everything that you've done wrong in order to be redeemed than Trueba fell far short.

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