Easy to swallow

I'm on a graphic novel binge. Probably as a result of my reading one Sandman collection after another. Ah, Sandman. It really never gets old. And I can't imagine the Sandman stories being told in another genre besides the graphic novel form.

I've just finished Chew Volume 1: Taster's Choice by John Layman and Rob Guillory, and I am hooked on this series. It's the kind of graphic novel with a premise so outrageous that it just works. Chew is my current guilty pleasure.

In the first volume, we meet Tony Chu, a detective who has just recently been recruited by the Special Crimes Division of the FDA. Tony Chu has a very unusual talent. He's a cibopathic, a person who sees in his mind impressions from the food he's just taken. If he eats an apple, he sees how and when it was harvested and who picked it. If he eats a burger, he gets glimpses on how the cow was slaughtered.

Chu's talent is so prized by the division because he can actually solve murders with it. But of course, it would mean having to take a bite of the dead person's body. Gross stuff, but so damn good. In Taster's Choice, we discover that the US is now at a time when eating farm-grown chicken has become illegal. Everyone has been reduced to eating the fake stuff. There's probably a conspiracy involved with this, but the first volume just hints at it. Something to discover in the next volumes.

I am loving Chew because of its humor. It's a graphic novel that doesn't take itself seriously. (How can you, with such an out-of-this-world story line?) Lots of jokes are scattered in the panels. And superb one-liners too! But make no mistake, Chew is still, at its core, a detective story. A very good hard-boiled one at that. And the twist at the end involving one of the main characters is one you don't really see coming. I'm so in.

Read this book if:

1. You have strong feelings about your food.
2. You wanna go vegan.
3. Your instagram account is filled with pictures of food.

Burn, baby, burn

So it's true—when you reread a good book, you discover more things about it that make you love the book even more. It was only last year in July when I first read Fahrenheit 451, and now, after finishing the book this lazy Sunday afternoon, I must say that the reading experience was even more fulfilling.

When I first read Fahrenheit 451, I was blown by away by the premise and its plot. Bradbury's made-up world where firemen burn books is the stuff of nightmares, especially among bibliophiles. It's a world where people aren't encouraged to feel and think, where it's enough to spend the day in one's work and then kill the remaining hours with mindless television.

This time around, I was particularly surprised that I paid more attention to Bradbury's characters. And I think that Fahrenheit 451 may be more character-centered than plot-driven. I still have a soft spot for Guy Montag, our main character. You just can't help but root for the guy. When his character transforms from being an instrument to destruction to a supporter of the printed word, you realize that all is not lost for humanity after all. It takes just one person, just one person who thinks rationally and questions the status quo, to tip the balance. Montag is the person that the dystopian world in Fahrenheit 451 is afraid the most.

Then there's Captain Beatty, Montag's boss and the novel's antagonist. He represents everything that went wrong in that speculative future. Beatty is uncompromising in his belief that it's dangerous to let people read books and pollute their minds with the thoughts of the books' writers. Beatty is learned, but he doesn't want people to learn. He quotes Shakespeare and Pope, and thus feels superior to the rest of the population who remain uneducated. He knows the world's terrible history—why it has come to be the bleak place that it is—but he fights and destroys the things and the people that can bring the old world back.

Montag's wife, Mildred, shows us what happens when we let unkind governments have their way with us. Mildred has become one-dimensional, forgetful, unaware, insensitive, and shallow. Who can blame her though. If the highlight of your day is watching TV programs, then you become nothing but someone who just takes up space. Mildred even chooses the company of the actors of a TV program, even calling them her "family," to having a conversation with Montag. She is what happens when we constantly get stimuli only from limited and controlled sources.

I wonder what I'll discover if I read Fahrenheit 451 a third time. I'm happy that I was able to go through Bradbury's detailed and sometimes poetic narrative. He really embodied the difficult craft of showing rather than telling. And I feel a bit melancholy that we've list this distinguished man of letters. If not for the book club's sci-fi read-along, I never would have reconnected with Fahrenheit 451. Now I'm looking forward to hearing other people's thoughts about it. I hope they like it as much as I did.

The temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns

Can you imagine life without books, dear reader? That would be my own personal hell. So it was a particularly jarring experience reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

In the world of Fahrenheit 451, firemen don't put out fires. It's the other way around actually. When they receive a report that a person has been hiding books in his house, they're the ones who set the house on fire. And Bradbury's story focuses on one particular fireman, one Guy Montag, who begins questioning the status quo after his series of encounters with a very precocious and unconventional teenage girl.

Montag eventually takes out the books that he has secretly kept while doing his job. Needless to say, it was a pivotal moment for him, and it's an act that would cost him his job and force him to go into hiding. And this is the point where he meets a band of 'outlaws' who dwell in the outskirts of the city with a single, seemingly profound purpose—to read books and thereby commit them to their memory.

The concept of a person being the living Bible or Anna Karenina or The Origin of the Species is both an ingenious and a romantic one. That person becomes a living repository of the text, one who becomes invaluable in humanity's struggle against oppression and ignorance. In that world, I would like to be the living I, Claudius, Robert Graves's wonderful historical novel, which is still my favorite book of all time.

After reading Fahrenheit 451, you can't help but feel that censorship is not always a good thing. It supposes that people cannot think for themselves and somebody else has to do it for them. Thus, I believe that censorship is insulting. Who are you to tell me what books I should read, what movies should I watch, and what songs I listen to? Just because I read Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting doesn't mean that I'd do drugs and lead a life of waste and deprivation. Also, believing that watching 'Glee' would turn children gay is just plain moronic.

Fahrenheit 451 is one novel that would certainly appeal to the lover of the printed word. In that novel, the government has banned books because they make people think differently. But is that such an evil thing? In that world that Bradbury conjures, people seem to have lost that zest for living. So I guess it would make sense if I find myself trapped in that nightmarish fictional world, I'd rather kill myself.

Read this book if:

1. You believe that one cannot have enough books.
2. You know that this world would be much nicer if more people read.
3. Despite the book's first line, you don't think that 'it's a pleasure to burn'.

Give it up for Saba

There's another dystopian novel that everyone's talking about -- Moira Young's debut novel Blood Red Road. It has recently won the Costa for Best Young Adult Novel, so I think that more and more people will be discovering this satisfying work of contemporary YA fiction.

Young's protagonist, Saba, is predictably strong willed. Saba lives in a dried-up area called Silverlake with her father, her twin brother Lugh, and her youngest sister Emmi. One day, a group of hooded riders abduct Lugh. Saba's father is also killed, and Saba promises to herself that she'll do whatever it takes to get Lugh back.

In the world of Blood Red Road, I kept asking myself where could Silverlake be? I keep thinking that it's somewhere in North America, where the weather has been so f****d up that it hardly rains anymore, resulting in the land's arid climate. Young never does disclose where Silverlake is, much less the reasons for Earth's condition in the novel. I guess it's a technique to compel readers to anticipate the rest of the books of the trilogy.

The language of the novel is something that takes getting used to. It's made up of broken English with hardly any regard for tenses, subject-verb agreements (gasp!), and punctuation marks to set off dialogue. Still, the rhythm of Young's dialogue is very engaging that I never did pay attention to these details while I was reading.

The day's hot. So hot an dry that all I can taste in my mouth is dust. The kinda white heat day when you can hear th'earth crack.
We ain't had a drop of rain fer near six months now. Even the spring that feeds the lake's startin to run dry. You gotta walk some ways out now to fill a bucket. Pretty soon, there won't be no point in callin it by its name. [page 7]

Of course, there's so much more to this novel than just a story about one girl's quest. While the world building isn't as extensive as fantasy readers are used to, the circumstances in Blood Red Road did appeal to my love of the escapist and the speculative. It's a world where people have been addicted to a drug called chaal, which is controlled by a very powerful king called Pinch. And Saba's twin somehow plays a role in keeping the king in power for the next 6 years.

There's something derivative about Blood Red Road though. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's the story of the quest. Or perhaps Saba's nature which can get quite predictable in this genre. Nevertheless, Young's debut is outstanding. It is difficult to write another dystopian novel at a time when The Hunger Games is extremely popular. But Blood Red Road is more grounded in its themes, more plausible in its story. And for a first book of a trilogy, it has successfully done its purpose -- to make the reader hungry for the next book.

Read this book if:

1. You love dystopian fiction.
2. Broken English narrative doesn't bother you.
3. You can be patient in waiting for the rest of the books of a trilogy or series.