7. The Restaurant At The End of The Universe (Adams) vs 26. The Man In The High Castle (Dick)

Quote Porn

The Man In The High Castle

"Evil, Mr. Tagomi thought. Yes, it is. Are we to assist it in gaining power, in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our Earthly situation?"

"It is therapeutic to meet these people who have intimidated you. And to discover what they are really like. Then the intimidation goes."

The Restaurant At The End of The Universe

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

" 'Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.' Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. 'But we have also,' continued the management consultant, 'run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut.' Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down. 'So in order to obviate this problem,' he continued, 'and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and... er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.' The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn."

A Few Thoughts

The Man In The High Castle is a great exercise in imagination. Alternate history books have become all the rage (culminating in Stephen King trying his hand in 11/22/63), but the dust had only a decade settled from World War II when Dick wrote the book. The alternate history facet of the book is important because The Man In The High Castle isn't so much a narrative of one or two characters living in an Axis-won world, but rather a tapestry of more than a dozen characters and their roles around a planned German hydrogen bomb & a fiction-within-fiction book asking what would happen if the Allies had won the war. 

I'm aware that this is somewhat of a mouthful. Think of it this way: remember the Simpsons episode 22 Short Stories About Springfield? That's sort of how this book rolls. 

My interaction with this book has become kind of a point of humour when I look back on it: I can tell you how Dick sets up his alternate world, what happened to FDR and Hitler and how the Third Reich and the Japanese divvied up the United States... but I can hardly remember any of the many characters' names, let alone their roles in the whole situation. The writing wasn't particularly compelling—I had to wrestle with my Kindle Clippings file to even find two quotes that still resonated with me outside the context of reading the book itself. It's almost making me lament that I didn't include setting as one of my scoring metrics in the head-to-head section, because that is the strength of this book to the point that I could hardly tell you anything else about it. There were just so many named characters that were talked about for such short times that, even though I know the book had a plot, I can hardly tell you who did what or why. 

As far as I can tell in my limited religious studies experience, the book has a neat and at-least-half-reverent take on the I Ching. A number of characters use the text and the rituals it contains to guide their lives to better and worse horizons. While Dick doesn't present the I Ching as infallible by any means, watching fictional characters cast hexagrams and ponder their situations with its guidance felt like a story outside of the fiction, and was interesting to read. Similarly, the jewelry shop that exists in the book is a neat sideplot that, although probably nothing like an actual jewelry shop startup, was really fun to read. 

...just don't ask me who was involved in either case. 

The Restaurant At The End of The Universe, despite being the second in the series, is the highest rated Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy book on Goodreads, and likely my favorite to boot. Its story follows the characters from the first book as they come off an adventure looking for a quick bite to eat. 

This book succeeds the first, in my eyes, largely because the settings and characters the gang encounter have so many brilliantly written bits. The true ruler of the universe and The Lord are delightfully insane; the Total Perspective Vortex and Zaphod's interaction with it (even if it is in a puppet universe) helps cement his character as the ultimate beacon of arrogance; the nature of the titular restaurant is refreshingly contemplative in a book that's principally for the lulz; and Arthur and Ford's meeting and marooning with the Golgafrinchans is at once earmark British humour and a dark, scathing commentary on human nature and society. 

That last part, especially, largely helps to elevate this book as the pinnacle of the series. While Adams' British humour manifests itself in many ways (decreasingly so after the third book), it's only during the closing pages of The Restaurant At The End of The Universe (and somewhat during the opening ones of Life, The Universe & Everything) that Adams abandons harmless absurdity and begins to really cut into 20th century ideals and, to be blunt, starts calling everyone on their shit. My younger mind missed the parody of it entirely, so it's at least a little subtle—but, as the quote above shows, it's not exactly hidden, either.
In summary: when an author points out that I'm a selfish consumerist jerk and, rather than get offended or pledge to change, I just laugh: that's good satire. 

Head-to-Head

Characters: Long story short, The Man In The High Castle suffers from too many figures, not enough prose.
Advantage: The ludicrous Restaurant At The End of The Universe.

Plot: I'm going to cheat a little here and consider Dick's setting as his plot, because it kind of is. Restaurant is a great book, but the plot often serves to get the hilarious characters from one spotlight to the next, and is sort of unimportant. Think of it like a spotfest wrestling match in a regular ring, while TMITHC is more like a Hell in a Cell.

Advantage: The Man In The High Castle. 

Ending: The actual last page of Restaurant isn't a big deal, but the book's later pages are definitely its better pages.

Advantage: The Restaurant At The End of The Universe.

Language/Writing: Adams phrases and delivers his work ideally. TMITHC was often phrased awkwardly in (what I think was) an attempt to create atmosphere. 

Advantage: The Restaurant At The End of The Universe.

Philosophy: At face, neither contains a ton. But then, extended thinking about Restaurant ends up mired in thoughts about entropy, society, and leadership. TMITHC posits a world that'll host a wide variety of what-ifs and other game theory-type predictions, and that's before you even consider the I Ching.

Advantage: Too close to call. 

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

Hey, some amends for knocking out the first Hitchhiker's Guide book early! The Man In The High Castle is worth the short read, but it stands out to me as the piece of fiction I remember in the oddest way. 

The Restaurant At The End of The Universe moves on to the second round. 

6. The Hobbit (Tolkien) vs 27. Atonement (McEwan)

Quote Porn

Atonement

"A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended."

"A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it."

"It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you."

The Hobbit

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."

" 'I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.' 

'I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!' "

A Few Thoughts

While Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series is often credited for launching the fantasy genre, their predecessor The Hobbit paved the way for their creation. I find it remarkably hard to talk about this book in any valuable way: I can't really criticize the things I didn't like because Bilbo Baggins is to fantasy as John Lennon is to pop music (with perhaps a little less LSD), and I hesitate to flatter it because as the Barenaked Ladies said, it's all been done.

Still, I'll give it the old college try. Tolkien, a renowned Beowulf scholar in the 30s, paid much tribute to the time-lost poet who wrote about the bee-keeper, lifting ideas and descriptions from the poem to describe Smaug and some other Middle Earth dwellers. For lit nerds like myself, it's a nice tie-in from centuries ago to today: a poet who time has actually forgotten writes a literal epic (noun epic, not adjective epic), and a man who has studied it is inspired to write a fantastic story that, as we speak, is being made into Hollywood movie magic. It's a tremendous homage to both the human spirit and the written word that the images that create some of the most visually stunning films today are sourced back so far that scholars can't even tell you who wrote it first. Seeing as I'm getting grandiose with it, I might as well quote Carl Sagan: if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Replace apple pies with hobbits and, well, you get the (motion) picture.

As for the story itself, I've read it twice, although both readings date a decade or more. Still, it's admirable that any written word was able to draw me away from video game role playing adventures like Final Fantasy into a much more user-driven effort in imagination. I still recall my initial surprise at the idea of an intelligent dragon like Smaug—at that point in my life, I hadn't met Dungeons & Dragons or any other franchises that would depict them as such—and it's stuck with me ever since. I can't say that Tolkien created that trope, but he was instrumental in my meeting with it. Similarly, when I did later mentally invest in D&D, my staple character for years in my late teens & early twenties was a dwarf who either was or was not drunk depending on what a 20-sided dice said early in a playing session. Again, even after the LOTR trilogy of movies were released and it became cliché and passé to be into Tolkien, the tropes were effective and survived. Aside being formative of D&D and every SNES RPG to come later, Tolkien was often formative of things that felt original or funny when interacting with the Tolkien-derived media. 

Hopefully my fond memories of interacting with The Hobbit at a young age served as a fun placeholder for actual book opinions.

Atonement was one of the few books that was relevant enough to be taught in a lit course I took, while still interesting enough to actually read for fun. I hear that these sorts of novels become more abundant in late undergrad work and graduate work, but then people who hold BAs with a major in English Literature often look at books very differently than I do. So, who knows. I'm going to go ahead and deem it a rarity anyway.

Perhaps the greatest moment in the book—and there are a few—is the text of the love letter from Robbie to Cecilia. The books meanders a quarter of the way feeling like a Brontë book about rich British folks, and then it's like surprise, here's the word cunt. That one word in that one moment changes the face of the book from one that feels predictable because of its style to an anything-goes story that'll pull a few punches. Once the stuffy fog of a Victorian-styled approach lifts from the narrative, the book has an edge that causes the hours spent reading it to melt away.

McEwan's writing is great, too. His use of Briony to reflect on the nature of creative writing and individualism cause the words to transcend the story and enter the realm of quotes-you-might-read-on-tumblr. Neither of these ideas, though, can really trump the main theme of the book (hint: it's in the title), and it's one that's reflected on at length. 

Such length, in fact, that the book's ending actually reveals the surprise that Briony never did get to earn forgiveness from her sister and Robbie, but that parts II & III of the book are her attempt at redemption by allowing them eternal life together in a popular novel. It's an M Night Shyamalan-worthy ending that not only causes the whole shebang to be more memorable, but also gives other parts of the book a much more somber effect. It's masterfully executed, and remains among my favorite novel endings years later. 

When's the last time you said that about a text you read for school?

Head-to-Head

Characters: Drunken dwarves, mischievous wizards, noble hobbitses, wise dragons... Briony's a monstrously deep character, but she doesn't stand up to the creation of literal monsters. 

Advantage: The Hobbit. 

Plot: The Hobbit is an imaginative adventure, but Atonement's World War II tale takes real world history and weaves a dark adventure from that. 

Advantage: Atonement. 

Ending: I'm really happy for having read The Hobbit, and I'm'a credit it a good finish, but Atonement has one of the best endings of all time!

Advantage: Atonement. 

Language/Writing: McEwan's writing is soso readable and relatable. But, then, Tolkien's descriptions are world class and unlike some parts in Lord of The Rings, he doesn't overdo it in The Hobbit.

Advantage: The Hobbit, by a hair from Bag End. 

Philosophy: At the most elemental level, Atonement's about atonement and The Hobbit's about a hobbit. Although McEwan gives more thematic ruminatons than just that one, it's already enough to beat out a not-particularly-symbolic adventure story.

Advantage: Atonement. 

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

It might feel like an unfair shake because my thoughts on The Hobbit weren't rife with detail, but I really liked Atonement more than many folks did, and I think it criminally underrated. 

Atonement moves on to chapter two. 

11. The Prince of Tides (Conroy) vs 22. The New York Trilogy (Auster)

Quote Porn

The Prince of Tides

"There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal."

"My body had not felt like an instrument of love or passion for such a long time; it had been a winter of deadening seriousness, when all the illusions and bright dreams of my early twenties had withered and died. I did not yet have the interior resources to dream new dreams; I was far too busy mourning the death of the old ones and wondering how I was to survive without them. I was sure I could replace them somehow, but was not sure I could restore their brassy luster or dazzling impress."

The New York Trilogy

 "Stories happen only to those who are able to tell them, someone once said. In the same way, perhaps, experiences present themselves only to those who are able to have them."

"Nothing is that simple. There are no odds to beat, no rules to set a limit on bad luck, and at each moment we begin again, as ripe for a low blow as we were a moment before."

A Few Thoughts

I won't pummel in the vicinity of the proverbial brier; the lexicon administered by Pat Conroy is superfluously complex and decidedly anti-sesquipedalian. 
Blech. 
In other, less unnecessary words: there's no such thing as a simple page in The Prince of Tides. Conroy uses big words whenever possible, often when much simpler words would suffice. This style appeals to me because I loves me a bit of flair in my prose, but I can see how it would be a turnoff. 
That said, I don't know that The Prince of Tides would be quite the same achievement in writing that it is without Conroy's monstrous and aggressive vocabulary. Other books I've read about the southern US never drew me in with their setting whatsoever. However, I posit that Conroy's description of the marshlands, the customs, and the interactions of the townsfolk on Melrose Island was compelling precisely because of how it was written. 
I'd also liken Tom Wingo to the song New World Man by Rush: Odds are, if you like the media, you think yourself like the character. While I don't share any of the many deep traumas or ridiculous upbringing of Tom, his outlook on his adult life and his interactions with it often feel like my own. In this way, he was all the more relatable and pitiable and his story drew me in.
And it's a story that will surprise with all the entertaining elements: a pet tiger, a domestic terrorist older brother, a fanatical grandfather... folks who've only seen the movie don't have any idea what they missed. The book pulls a number of sideswiping plot developments (they're not really twists) that are sometimes funny and sometimes tragic and, perhaps most importantly, are more than just a vehicle used for the creation of a love story. 
More advantages of the book: no Nick Nolte, no Barbara Streisand...

Anyway.

The New York Trilogy barely meets my conditions for inclusion in this tournament, being a collection of three "separate" short stories. However, the common themes and characters from them (including Paul Auster himself, postmodernmetasayswhat) marry them in a gestalt-y way that insists they be read together. 
Auster's stories all appear austere at first blush, but quickly become convoluted in their own way. City of Glass has a great unlikely-gumshoe start that quickly devolves into mental illness. Ghosts, my favorite of the three, is kind of like The Crying of Lot 49 in that it's intriguingly hard to tell the difference between conspiracy and paranoia. The Locked Room sees the deteriorating sanity angle again, with returning characters and more great moments of tension.
Tension is the word that was at the core of The New York Trilogy for me. Auster's style is solid, his settings are solid, his endings aren't really for me but are definitely staples of noir and of the meta-fiction that he's created... but it's all about the tension. Wondering who's really pulling the strings in the color-driven Ghosts or where on Earth Fanshawe has disappeared in The Locked Room creates an intense apprehension that got me through the whole thing in a weekend.

Head-to-Head

Characters: Auster's characters serve their purpose, but so much verbose detail is given to the Wingo family and to Dr. Lowenstein. 

Advantage: The Prince of Tides. 

Plot: The Prince of Tides wears on seemingly forever, but is always interesting. The New York trilogy is short and intense. Both are great in their own right, but I liked one better. 

Advantage: The Prince of Tides. 

Ending: I didn't love the maddening endings to any of Auster's trilogy. Conversely, it was a moment of half-love, half-hate when I met the surprise ending of The Prince of Tides only to discover that it explained an early Simpsons reference I'd never really understood. 

Advantage: But Marge, her name is Zweig! The Prince of Tides. 

Language/Writing: Conroy's style is absolutely love or hate, and my tastes find me in the former category. 

Advantage: The Prince of Tides. 

Philosophy: Neither of these books really gave me much food for thought outside of their covers. The Prince of Tides focuses its massive breadth to develop intricate characters and settings rather than Didacticism, and The New York Trilogy, while arguably about the nature of authorship, was all for the story to me. 

Advantage: Push. 

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

I keep shutting out books I enjoyed by scores of 4-0 because they're against books I enjoyed way more. In this case especially, the two books would appeal wildly differently to different people, and Auster's trilogy is a staple in the noir genre for a reason. 

The Prince of Tides breezes to round 2 regardless.

14. Kafka On The Shore (Murakami) vs 19. Snow Crash (Stephenson)

Quote Porn

Snow Crash

"This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the black light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed."

"All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there."

Kafka On The Shore

"It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness is a story."

"I can't be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha's followers and Jesus' apostles felt the same way. When I'm with the Buddha, I always feel I'm where I belong—something like that. Forget about culture, truth, all that junk. That kind of inspiration's what it's all about."

"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."

A Few Thoughts

Snow Crash was written with balls. It's at once a science fiction story and a spoof on a science fiction story. For an immediate and always present example, the main character's name is actually Hiro Protagonist. Deeper than that, though; Stephenson fearlessly predicted the advent of avatars (sort of a second life, though I dread to call it that) on the internet, and some of the seriously criminal and criminally vapid uses that we would have for them as technology junkies. Some of these predictions are forthright in the text: the descriptions of people who are paid handsomely to help craft the aesthetic features of one's online avatar are hardly even funny anymore because, well, that's the world we live in. Other predictions are more subtle, perhaps unintentional: the effects of snow crash as it appears in the text seems like an awfully bleak allegory to human dependence on computers and their smartphone and tablet cousins. The combined effect of these serious, weight-holding predictions combined with the sense of humour and self-awareness the book carries is an odd mash-up, but it works.
The alternate reality of Snow Crash is attractive too, and not just when it's online. Hiro resides in an America that is largely decentralized and run corporately—not silent-partnered by corporations in a way that satirizes real life, but the gears and cogs of life in their universe are plainly in the hands of Uncle Enzo, Mr. Lee and entrepreneurs like them.
What Snow Crash does right by not getting too ridiculous or making up too much jargon with respect to technology, it does wrong by doing the same with history. It explains the mechanism that makes the title drug work using a "human root language" hacking the brainstem explanation, and posits that the virus was derived from ancient Sumerians. While the humour of Pentecostal churches rewiring and breaking the human brain was by no means lost on me, the more the book tried to explain archaic tongues in a true-history context, the more foolish it felt.
Still, I can't detract from Stephenson for his gutsy approach in one place while complimenting it in another. Even if it induced a few eye rolls in me here and there, Snow Crash is a fun and absurd cruise through a metaverse (read: internet) that's peculiarly different but also strangely familiar.

Kafka on the Shore is definitely my favorite Murakami book that I've read yet, and the only one of them that I'd deem a page-turner. At the surface, the story of a 15-year old boy running away from home really doesn't appeal to me, but the amount of intrigue about Kafka (the character, not the savant writer) builds exceedingly quickly in the novel. From the top of my head: the boy named crow, the unknown sister, the unknown mother, the connection between Kafka and the old man that half the book focuses on, the blackouts, the UFO-ish story... all of these things pop up and bring questions within 50 pages or so and had me really turning pages in search of answers. I wanted to read more and read faster to try and tie all the loose ends together. It was enveloping.
Unfortunately, many of the loose ends never get tied up, and often, when it feels that a big reveal is coming, it blossoms the aforementioned intrigue into yet more mysterious, unanswered questions. By the time the book ended, the only thing I was sure I understood was that, in his own messed up way, Murakami had just written a bildungsroman (in which he had actually used the world bildungsroman). I found Kafka had a lot in common with Holden Caulfield, if Holden had been willing to be a student of the world. Maybe that makes him entirely different; who knows.
The familiarity with and insertion of North American pop culture was always refreshing in the very Japanese-feeling story. Scenes where Murakami would describe Kafka's daily routine set to a backdrop of a Prince or Led Zeppelin song evoked clear, montage-y mental imagery. The insertion of Johnnie Walker & Colonel Sanders as characters brought a risibility to scenes that were confusing at best, and disgusting and confusing at worst.
I really wish I (or anyone) had understood what this book was about: if the metaphors or symbolism made any sort of sense to me, it'd likely be among my favorites. As it stands, it's a great read that's marred just a little by the fact that I can't think my way through it.

Head-to-Head

Characters: The characters in KotS felt much more developed and real, and felt like they grew as the book went on. Snow Crash had some good ones, too, but they were definitely more static.

Advantage: Kafka on the Shore. 

Plot: Both were very fun to read, but KotS was much more compelling for all the mysteries it started—even if it didn't ever explain half of them. 

Advantage: Kafka on the Shore.

Ending: Snow Crash created a world, gave it a conflict, and resolved it roundly in order. While Kafka On The Shore really didn't explain all that much, it made up for that with the feeling of accomplishment when Kafka began to make his way home at the end.

Advantage: Push. 

Language/Writing: The mood created by Murakami's style has me perpetually flabbergasted that his books are all translations. Stephenson was solid, but didn't stand out in any special way. 

Advantage: Kafka on the Shore. 

Philosophy: KotS is constantly referencing the philosophy of other books as well as popular culture. This cut and paste, wide scope approach packs a lot of punch. 

Advantage: Kafka on the Shore. 

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

I liked Snow Crash and its inventiveness a lot more than the head-to-head section may have made it look like I did. Still, the better book wins.

Kafka On The Shore moves on to the second round. 

3. Infinite Jest (Wallace) vs 30. jPod (Coupland)

Quote Porn

JPod

"TV and the internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public."

"Here's my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can't fake are erections, competence and creativity."

“Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total asshole? We're all assholes now.” 

Infinite Jest

"That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. 

That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.

That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. 

That having sex with someone you do not feel for feels lonelier than not having sex in the first place, afterward. 

That it is permissible to want. 

That everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

That this isn't necessarily perverse. 

That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels. 

That God—unless you're Charlton Heston, or unhinged, or both—speaks and acts entirely through the vehicle of human beings, if there is a God. 

That God might regard the issue of whether you believe there's a God or not as fairly low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it's interested in re you."

"Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you."

"And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void. 

And darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. 

And We said: 'Look at that fucker Dance.' "

A Few Thoughts

I am going to consider it a personal challenge to write about Infinite Jest without just fawning all over it.

Infinite Jest's first big draw is the surreal setting. It takes place in alternate universe Boston, where only part of Canada that hasn't joined the U.S. & Mexico in O.N.A.N. (think the E.U. with a masturbation pun); the other part of Canada is a messy, blown-up, literally irradiated political situation; corporations have begun "subsidized time" wherein year numbers are done away with and each year instead is named by its corporate sponsor; the most horrific active terrorist group are a bunch of French Canadians in wheelchairs... it's almost not set in reality at all. It's got this duality about it, though: it's real enough to feel familiar and intuitive, but then suddenly there's rabid feral hamsters and I'm like okay this sure is fiction.

The themes in the book are many (I bloody well hope so in almost 1100 pages): depression, addiction, the nature of entertainment, pop culture, addiction again, corporatism... those are the major recurring ones that resonated with me, anyway. 

It's not just that the book boasts these themes, but Wallace's words are just so phenomenal and correctly chosen that he's spot on each and every time. Like, a sentence will be 15 words long but the precise definition of two or three of those words will simultaneously imply six different things and sentences that would take a couple seconds to read in any other book require a full minute to mull over and then bam something profound just jumped off the page. It's a reading experience I haven't had before or since. 

The themes actually extend so far that, after his meditation about the nature of entertainment and passive reception thereof, Wallace ends the book on a seeming nonpoint—but when quizzed about it in a later interview, he was insistent on the fact that there is a definite ending. Then, upon rereading passages (and more importantly asking Google), an ending emerges from parts that seemed semi-recollected and unimportant. While this approach is definitely take-it-or-leave it, it seriously illustrates one of Infinite Jest's central points. 

I can't think of a book where the point(s) the author's trying to make permeate every aspect of the book so much. It's like paper enlightenment: it makes ya earn the enjoyment, but once you've attained it, it was so, so worthwhile. 

...Okay, too far. I love this book.

For what it's worth, JPod is a riot. I'm definitely due for a reread, but I remember it being the only book that I'd class with the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy  in outright sincere laughing out loud while reading. It follows a group of video game designers who've just been informed that their skateboarding video game is going to contain an attitude-bearing turtle based on Jeff Probst, and the nerdy foolishness and score of Simpsons references that they find in their life. 

The book doesn't have a heavy scope: beyond the hilarity, it feels very episodic and pointless. There's a greater overall plot, but more memorably, there are 45 consecutive pages with several thousand digits of pi written out and one intentional error (no, seriously). I read one reviewer liken JPod to Arrested Development in terms of the characters' adherence to their insane traits, and that's where much of the humour comes from. I can definitely see that: stuff happens and there's an overarching plot, but the draw of the book is definitely in Coupland's characters and their interactions. 

Speaking of characters, perhaps my favorite thing Douglas Coupland does in writing JPod is his method of character sketch: early in the book, the six main characters are coerced to write mostly-homoerotic love letters to Ronald McDonald, and their traits & backstories are elaborated upon in those. I didn't include this quote above because it's inane out of context, but one of said letters states (and I quote):

"I'll bring over a loofah and a bottle of Noxzema, and we'll take off your paint. If it turns out that you're really Liv Tyler, we can even make it, too."

That's about the best endorsement I can give the book.

Head-to-Head

Characters: JPod's characters are funny, and almost the entire draw of the book. Infinite Jest has a much bigger, deeper cast that are plenty hilarious when given the chance, too. 

Advantage: Push. 

Plot: Infinite Jest manages over a thousand pages of mostly stuff happening. JPod has 45 pages that are literally pi. 

Advantage: Infinite Jest. 

Ending: At first blush, it's a non-ending, but that's among the most clever cards pulled by Infinite Jest for reasons way too long to get into here. 

Advantage: Infinite Jest. 

Language/Writing: Hands down, DFW writes my favorite prose ever. I will read IJ again someday just to re-experience it and try and catch myriad things I definitely missed.

Advantage: Infinite Jest. 

Philosophy: JPod is largely without a philosophy, although it definitely holds a mirror up to the Google era. If you're not thinking intensely during IJ, you're either a savant or you're not getting it. 

Advantage: Infinite Jest. 

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

Uh... sorry JPod. 

Infinite Jest breezes through to round 2. 

4. Lamb (Moore) vs 29. The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon)

Quote Porn

Lamb

"All books reveal perfection, by what they are or by what they are not."

"No sense sitting under a bodhi tree for a few hours when you can get the same thing through thousands of lifetimes of misery."

"In my time we had very few words, perhaps a hundred that we used all the time, and thirty of them were synonyms for guilt."

The Crying of Lot 49

" 'I came', she said, 'hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.' 

'Cherish it!'  cried Hilarius, fiercely. 'What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.' "

"But then how can you blame them for being maybe a little bitter? Look what's happening to them. In school they got brainwashed, like all of us, into believing the Myth of the American Inventor: Morse and his telegraph, Bell and his telephone, Edison and his light bulb, Tom Swift and his this or that. Only one man per invention. Then when they grew up they found they had to sign over all their rights to a monster like Yoyodyne; got stuck on some 'project' or 'task force' or 'team' and started being ground into anonymity. Nobody wanted to invent—only perform their little role in a design ritual, already set down for them in some procedures handbook. What's it like, Oedipa, being all alone in a nightmare like that?"

A Few Thoughts

Despite being a nonbeliever who spends more than a little time on the internet, I'm as sick of atheists on the internet as anyone. Had Lamb just been a tired, stock lambasting of Christianity I wouldn't have made it very far before I would've lost interest and returned to rolling my eyes at Neil Degrasse Tyson-based memes instead. 
But it's so much more than just "lolz, Christianity". In fact, as told in the epilogue, Christopher Moore went to great lengths to be not only moderately respectful but as historically accurate as he could while writing an adventure occurring between 1 BCE & 1 AD. It's a novel concept; the Bible is light on the antics of Jesus between childhood and adulthood, so Moore posits what might have happened in sincere and hilarious fashion. 
I loved the way the plot came out. It's long been cited by aforementioned atheist rhetoric that Christmas is actually a ripoff of Paganism's Saturnalia, Jesus is Mithras in a new robe, Pagans ate their gods before the advent of cheap wine or crappy wafers, etc. While demonstrably true, Moore eschews the idea-stealing accusations for a more spiritual, modest learning from other religions to write "Joshua" (read: Jesus) as a world-wise spiritualist. Along with the humour provided by Biff's antics, it's a story full of levity that's incredibly well-executed.
This praise isn't to say that the book doesn't have its shortcomings. Perhaps related to Moore's endeavors to not contradict the Bible, once the story evolves into Jesus' 30s and the apostles show up, everything got less funny to me. Moore couldn't use his creativity to make Jesus' later life as funny or interesting as the parts where he had free reign to just make it up as he went along. And the ending... meh.
Still: Lamb, to me, is basically the Bible as retold and set by a Chuck Lorre sitcom character. It's got plenty of punch lines, lots of funny tropes that are well executed, and manages to be funny without going out its way to offend. There are so many points when Biff is narrating and the gag is a laugh track shy of casting Jim Parsons as Jesus and Charlie Sheen as Biff. 
*shudder* 
Please don't let this happen. I ask this in Joshua's name. 

I didn't want to commit to Gravity's Rainbow yet (if ever), but Pynchon is on too many best-of-century lists to ignore, so I settled for The Crying of Lot 49. 
So often in these blogs, I've found myself bemoaning the ending of books—I know I'm more critical than most in that aspect. That said, The Crying of Lot 49 pulled an ending that I thoroughly enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't stare-at-the-last-page-for-minutes-heartbroken good, because the book's a glorified short story that never picked up too much emotional traction... but it's a method seldom attempted and it was incredibly effective. I'd liken it most to the movie Inception; all would be revealed roughly two seconds after the story ends, and the reader is left to decide for themselves or argue on the internet about it. Bonus points also for ending the book with its title, even if it did have to explain what it meant in context.
Speaking of explanations and context, a perusing of book summaries gives so many real-life references Pynchon makes that, perhaps due to its publish date being half a century ago, I didn't catch half as much as I'd've liked. A more thorough reading with this knowledge (or a more perceptive reader) would likely reap more enjoyment than my read-through, which was still pretty fun. 
Not only did some of Pynchon's references sail over my head, but some of his language did, too. Not since Infinite Jest have I had to reread so many passages in a book because they were phrased in a way that wasn't intuitive to me. Granted, sometimes on a reread, the passages held hidden treasures of wit or wisdom, but it didn't come easy. I don't mind earning my pleasure from a good read, but it was a little odd in something as short-form as The Crying of Lot 49. By the time I'd adapted to the writer and begun to fully enjoy his style, the book was about ten pages from over. 

Head-to-Head

Characters: Biff and Joshua are a comedy all-star team. Oedipa Maas is often little more than a vessel to the hijinks happening around her.

Advantage: Lamb. 

Plot: Even if it sags a little towards the end, Lamb manages 350-400 pages of enthralling and hilarious adventures. It's hard to beat in that respect. 

Advantage: Lamb. 

Ending: When I recommend Crying of Lot 49 to people, it'll be based on the ending above all else. So well played. 

Advantage: The Crying of Lot 49. 

Language/Writing: I had to grasp at it from Pynchon, and the payoff was only maybe worth the effort. Lamb has the art of the punchline down to a tee. 

Advantage: Lamb. 

Philosophy: While C49 closely echoed my thoughts on conspiracy theory in an intelligent way, Lamb's visits with other religions are fun and clever tributes.

Advantage: Lamb, even though they're both neat.

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

Not even close today, really. I feel like Crying of Lot 49 would be better as a second or third Pynchon book, and it's probably better than I'm giving it credit for. Still, I think I'd make the same decision regardless of what else I'd read before or after. 

Lamb moves to round two by a lambslide.

13. Dune (Herbert) vs 20. A Wild Sheep Chase (Murakami)

Quote Porn

A Wild Sheep Chase

"Not a comforting thought: that my betters could fall to pieces before me."

"Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit."

"Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context."

Dune

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh."

"Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing."

A Few Thoughts

Today features two books that kind of caused me to roll my eyes when I finished them, and wondered why they had come so highly recommended. But, I remember each book fondly each time I think of the things contained within them. 

Forgive me if this sounds ridiculous, but Dune has either the thinnest veneer ever or is the victim of massive coincidence. Some plot highlights, in short: there are sand-people native to a desert planet, where liaisons of a white galactic empire abuse the local resource called spice, a resource which powers the galaxy. These sand-dwellers defend their rightful, torrid homes as fierce battlefield combatants and by extreme means such as suicide bombings. Their language is a mouthful, and words like Muad-Dib and Shai Hulud are par for the course. They deal with the evil empire's presence despite their resentment of them. Oh, and the figurehead pulling the strings above the local empire's administration is literally a diddler. Eventually, a psychic spiritual leader for the people arises and begins to lead them on a jihad (the book's word, not mine) to reclaim their place of ownership on the planet, and he fears later, the universe. 

If Dune were written and released today, Frank Herbert would be on a no-fly list and the target of countless death threats. Context is a hell of a drug. 
With all that said, I was able to detach myself from the metaphor for more than long enough to enjoy the book. Herbert does an awesome job with politics, body language and atmosphere, to name a few things. The attention given to detailing character body language especially (a necessary plot device for certain characters in the book) is unique and paints a vivid moving picture. The Dune universe feels full in the same sort of way Middle Earth does, with customs and songs and languages and maps and all other sorts of flavor text around the main quest.
The prose in Dune is admirable, too. Doubtless, it's at least partially due to its length, and the writing is fairly matter-of-fact without a lot of flair—but, those thoughts notwithstanding, I clipped more quotations for keeping in my Kindle notes from Dune than just about any other book. That's a compliment I didn't even try to pay Frank Herbert. 
My biggest nitpick with the book was the characters. Paul was a messianic figure who somehow managed to be more boring than Jesus, and his mother, despite her training-bestowed mysticism, still often felt like a cardboard cutout female matriarch. Lots of the auxiliary characters (Gurney Halleck and Stilgar especially) were better, but then the story wasn't really about them.

A Wild Sheep Chase, for a Murakami novel, is very cohesive and almost makes literal sense without delving too deep into metaphor and symbolism. By more broad reading standards, however, the book is rife with odd situations, odd characters, and an eventual outcome that's as creepy as it is open-ended. 
Of course, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As the story winds along, the settings get gradually more rural as the nameless protagonist searches for the sheep. The surroundings graduate from urban Japan to a cabin that's inaccessible during winter months. What's more, a narrative initially grounded in the reality of a daily routine begins to unravel until, eventually, I have another excuse to use the word Kafkaesque in a sentence. It's an incredibly smooth transition that slides A Wild Sheep Chase from crowded to vacant, from reality-anchored to dreamy, and from comfortable to why is this man dressed like a giant rat? 
One thing I gained from A Wild Sheep Chase was the desire to know more about Eastern philosophy. A lot of the questions it poses, both in the text and outside of it, are very existential in nature. Now, that's not to say that I did anything more to educate myself than read a few Wikipedia pages—but then, there aren't many books I put down and immediately think "Mmmm, supplemental reading; delicious!", so the intrigue continued to some extent even after the novel was through. I tend to like any author who makes me think, I think. 

Head-to-Head

Characters: A nameless protagonist and a girl whose ears are her most important attribute still manage to trump cardboard cutouts of tired tropes.

Advantage: A Wild Sheep Chase. 

Plot: Murakami's smooth and a little frightening, Herbert verges on epic.  

Advantage: Push. 

Ending: Dune was the first in a series, and still managed a satisfying ending. Props because that's not always so easily done. 

Advantage: Dune. 

Language/Writing: A Wild Sheep Chase was early Murakami, and though his talent was still manifest, his writing definitely got better in later days. As said above, Dune wasn't flashy, but still quotable and effective. 

Advantage: Dune. 

Philosophy: Dune meditated a little on holy wars, indigenous peoples and bureaucracy. A Wild Sheep Chase was a little more abstract and existential, but still generated thought. 

Advantage: A Wild Sheep Chase, if just because the thinking it caused was less uncomfortable/stressful. 

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

Dune is a classic for a reason, and despite A Wild Sheep Chase's excellent evolving atmosphere, Dune was bigger and better. 

Dune to round two. 

12. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Adams) vs 21. Gone Girl (Flynn)

Quote Porn

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."

"The real Universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of Jell-O. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away forever."

" 'Perhaps I'm old and tired,' he continued, 'but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.'"

Gone Girl

"A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off."

"So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel any better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me."

"You know what I was about to say? I was about to say I don't know what to believe anymore. And then I thought, that's someone else's line. That's a line from a movie, not something I should be saying, and I wonder for a second, am I in a movie? Can I stop being in this movie? Then I know I can't. But for a second, you think, I'll say something different, and this will all change. But it won't, will it?"

A Few Thoughts

So, uh, in a different bracket this could be the finals. 18 year-old me would come at me with an axe for even considering a book other than A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I have recently reread and learned to appreciate all over again. 26 year-old me spent months telling anyone who seemed the least bit literate that they should really, really read Gone Girl. 

When I spoke about Dark Places a couple days ago, I said Gillian Flynn's ceiling was a lot higher, and I was referring specifically to Gone Girl. There are so many attributes I loved and I'd like to speak about.
First, it may have been the most enthralling page-turner I've ever read. Yesterday I talked about being excited to find chances to read Never Let Me Go; Gone Girl does it one better because I read it in three sittings. I only managed to put the book down twice! It wasn't a matter of finding time to read, it was a matter of rearranging and reprioritizing other things I wanted to do. The book alternates chapters between Nick's discovery of his missing wife Amy (without ever telling you if he's responsible), and events in Amy's history from her point of view that have brought them to this situation. It's a hot and cold, off and on style that really builds and sustains tension. 
A good thriller is all well and good, but the prose in Gone Girl transcends just plain storytelling, and there are great diatribes that are pro-feminist and very cynical about pop culture. Despite the fact that I didn't overly like or relate to either Nick or Amy as people, some of the things they say are perfectly insightful and stand up well out of context.
The only foible for me is the book's ending—it's probably a sort of penance to be paid for the corner that Flynn writes herself into. The things that happen in the book, twist after twist, are all thoroughly enjoyable sideswipes. The problem is that, with the aggregate awesome of the narrative path, eventually tying up all the loose ends might require a ridiculous last act. Not that the ending's terrible, but after everything that happened it just left me with an "...oh. I guess" sort of feeling because I definitely didn't want both of them to live. As always, your mileage may vary, but this book goes from 0-60 quick off the line and doesn't slow down 'til it's over. 

What can I say about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that hasn't been said in spades by someone before me? It is the quintessential funny book. From the universe's most sophisticated computer claiming that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 (of course, answering the question to life, the universe and everything which is revealed in a later book to be what is six times nine?), to the ubiquitous reminders to bring a towel and not to panic, to revelation that we're not even the smartest creatures on Earth; the book is filled with delightful absurdity.
The Hitchhiker's Guide's characters are also completely timeless. Arthur Dent plays a wonderfully British only sane man (who may not even be all that sane), Zaphod's ego is riotous, Marvin's nihilism in the face of infinite wisdom is a well-played sardonic juxtaposition, and Ford Prefect is like Dean Moriarty in space. There could be no better and no worse company on a trip through the galaxy than the cast Adams wrote for the book. 

Head-to-Head

Characters: The absurd traits of the characters in Hitchhiker's Guide were by design. The ones in Gone Girl, I'm not so sure. 

Advantage: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. 

Plot: Gone Girl is well over twice the length of HHGG, and I still tore through it in half the time. Refer to your usual stereotypes about being physically unable to put the book down. 

Advantage: Gone Girl. 

Ending: HHGG pretty much ends with a freezeframe and cheesy music after one last comedic quip. Gone Girl's plot was so good that it wrote checks I don't think it could fully cash with its ending. 

Advantage: Push.

Language/Writing: Flynn is full of flair. Adams is hilarious. Both read easy.

Advantage: Push.

Philosophy: Life's a lark vs originality is dead. 

Advantage: Push. (They're both right)

Winner Winner Turkey Supper

This is a heart rending decision. I'll undoubtedly give myself flak for picking Gone Girl because once the Fincher movie's out, it's probably going to become passé while Hitchhiker's Guide is pretty much timeless. I'm going to absolve and justify myself as best I can: if we're talking the whole series with all the antics, Adams' trilogy in five parts would have it on lockdown. Taking the first book as a standalone, however, leaves just ¼ of the hilarity to consider in this match, and that's going to cause it an early exit by the slimmest of margins. 

Gone Girl eliminates my longtime favorite to move on to round two.