Asthmatic Kitty

As sort of an in-between-posts post, I'd just like to say I've been listening to the Sufjan Stevens album "Come on Feel the Illinoise"

Pretty good album. I first saw it on a couple of Best Album's of 2005 lists on NPR, then I saw it in a couple of magazine reviews, then a friend (Malcolm, thank you very much!) loaned it to me. So I guess you could say it’s getting a bit of buzz, though I still think your average person has no clue who Sufjan Stevens is, let alone how to pronounce his name. The label he's on is called Asthmatic Kitty. That's great.

As far as the album itself goes, I must say I love his track titles, such as “A Conjunction Of Drones Simulating The Way In Which Sufjan Stevens Has An Existential Crisis In The Great Godfrey Maze” (a 19 second track). Sure, MAYBE it's sort of gimmicky, maybe if every artist on every album was as verbose about their song names I would want to burn all of my cd's. However, for a single album by a single artist, it works.

I started to review the album from a musical standpoint and realized after getting 3 paragraphs in, that this wasn’t what I wanted to do. I just wanted to tell you I’m listening to this album and enjoying it. THAT IS ALL. You are dismissed.

Interesting Job Situations

Well the principal at our DC office (yes, my boss) had his last day today, so it is official and I can talk about it so what am I going to do? I guess not talk about it. I don't really know what to say right now. This has been a rather interesting first job.

Mike

View down an Alley towards a cool building. 

Neat (church?) building around where I work. Just kind of nestled in among other buildings. 

A building. It has a shadow on it. 

New Years Resolutions

No, actually I didn't make any of those. I probably should have though.

Things I didn't do last year:
1. Kill anyone.
2. Go bancrupt.
3. Get in a wreck.
4. Lose a limb.

Things I did last year:
1. Move half way across the country
2. Start a new job
3. Start exploring our nations capital
4. Pay my OWN bills
5. Make some new friends
6. Eat at some great restaurants
7. Read quite a few books (but not enough)

I think the only thing more depressing than not accomplishing much is seeing how much others have accomplished. Some times I wonder, though, if other people aren't just better at "telling their story".

100 days of reading

I don't know for a fact that it took me 100 days to finish 100 Years of Solitude, but it was close. Sometimes you read a book and it just does NOT suck you in. Usually that's when you decide not to finish the book and just say, "Well, at least I tried". I'm glad I didn't give up on this one. And I'm now going to have to re-read this book.

The rest of this (hopefully not too long) post will be about why, exactly, I'm going to have to re-read this book. As I read through the book I kept getting bogged down by trying to remember who they were talking about at any given time. 90% of the characters have some derivation of 1 of two names, either Ursula or Aurelino, the matriarch and patriarch of the family. Additionally they timeline gets switched around quite a few times. Also, there are long stretches where the only thing happening is character development (that very important task of bringing your flat characters into the third dimension so to speak), without any Hollywood-esque action sequences. No single one of these things would have put me off the book, however the frequent overlapping of each of these characteristics was enough to make the book a chore at several intervals.

So why re-read a book like this? That is a question easily answered by a reading of the last page of the book. In my humble opinion, the genius of this book is that it takes the story of many generations of a family, essentially from its genesis to its quite literal extinction, and uses the lives of these characters to reveal the story of an entire village and its people. The way in which he combines figurative with literal is nothing short of magnificent. I'm left wondering if there actually was a cloud of yellow butterflies that constantly followed one character around, even marking his death, or if that single drop of blood really did navigate an entire city all the way to the room in which the victim's mother was sitting just to announce his death?

Any one of the reasons I liked this book could possibly (I said possibly) be considered gimmicky. However, having all of them in one place and tied together by masterful narration, it's impossible for it to be a fluke, or beginner's luck. No, the reason I wish to read this book again is that now I understand how to view it. When I first started reading it I had no idea what to look for, no idea where certain things were going. And if this book has a fault (from my perspective) it's that it is hard to read until you know what to expect. Sort of like that uncle that is hard to appreciate until you really get to know him - at which time you realize just how well intentioned he really was and can finally appreciate his actions and words.

Also, I completely understand why there is a family tree at the front of the book. More useful even than the maps in the Lord of the Rings books.

Mike