D is for Diary of an Oxygen Thief: Anonymous

I'm afraid I might have entirely missed the point of this novel. Frankly, I didn't see the point, but there must be one, because it's a bestseller.

It was quite easy to read through; overall I think it took me two hours to read. I appreciated the fact that there were only three chapters, because it forced me to finish it quickly. I would sit down and make myself read an entire chapter, so I finished it in three bursts.

I didn't like the main character. He starts out as a sadist and never really changes. His heart was broken, so he decides to break all other hearts in the world, one at a time. The whole novel consists of him explaining how he broke hearts and complaining about everything: the amazing job he got, the girl he fell in love with and broke his heart, the weather in Minnesota. It was just annoying to read all of his complaints. I suppose that's the point of a diary, so perhaps the fault there is mine.

I didn't particularly like the writing style. First of all, it was very difficult to figure out the order of the novel. The narrator often switches between past and present (or at least I think he does?) without any description or pause for the benefit of the readers. It's just really hard to keep track of where we are in time.

At what I thought was the climax of the novel, the narrator switches from first to second person point of view, and I really didn't like this. To throw such a change on readers at such an important part of the novel was frustrating to me. I was trying to keep up with his narration and then I had to switch points of view.

The narrator also digresses way too often: I'm sure this happens on every page. That in itself is difficult to get through but then the narrator continually apologizes for getting off subject and there's a great show of him trying to get back on track, which is just so muddy and difficult to trudge through. Maybe this is for comedic relief or something, but I didn't see the humor in it.

I did make myself think about what it means that the narrator is an "Oxygen Thief." At first, I thought he was stealing the oxygen of all the women whose hearts he broke. But then it became much more clear to see that he was stealing his own oxygen. Nothing is going the way he wants it to go in his life, and I think it's his doing: partially because of his own attitude, but also due to his laziness, his lack of self-control, and his general dislike for everything. Of course he has no oxygen. He's sucking everything out of the world leaving nothing for himself.

I can't decide if I'll read the rest in the series. I think the novel ended well. I should also mention that I find it very difficult to feel sorry for him at all in the end. He made it sound like he knew what was going on the whole time, and he had several occasions to end things, but he didn't. It wasn't necessarily his fault, but I do think he could have changed his story. When I'm done with my reading challenge this year, I might return to the series to see if anything changes in future books.

C is for A Clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgess

Is it better to have goodness forced upon you, or is it better to be able to choose to be bad? That's the question Burgess presents in this story of Alex, the main character. And this book made me think about which was is better. As a society, we like to think that goodness is obviously the better choice, but as you can see through Alex, who becomes capable of only goodness, that can't work as easily as we'd like it to.

The language was a difficult barrier for me, but after the first part of the book, I was able to really get into the story and I forgot about the difficulty of the language. I found too that even though I didn't understand all of the terms, it wasn't necessary for me to have a glossary or anything because if I couldn't figure it out myself, I didn't need to understand.

I remember talking to my husband as I read the first few chapters, and he and I were both appalled by what I was reading. The things Alex and his droogies did in this first part is really horrible, and yet, as I was reading, they seemed completely natural. This made me think about how neutral I am to crime now because of society. Crime is romanticized and dramatized and made normal through books and television, which is actually a really scary thing to consider. The actions in the first part are truly horrifying, yet I found myself laughing at some of the lines in the midst of the violence. That was a weird feeling, but Burgess manages to bring humor into the horror to make it seem more natural or human.

Alex himself is a very confusing character. He's only 15 when the book begins, and yet he and his friends have done some of the worst things I've known a human to do. At 15 years of age. Then, he turns around and smacks Dim because of his lack of manners. What? Manners are important to this guy who beats up anyone who crosses his path just for fun and rapes any girl or woman he sees? He's concerned about his muscle having proper manners? I also don't understand his fascination with classical music. How can he so easily see the beauty of Mozart and Beethoven, but fail to see any beauty or value in the life of a human being? That's a question I never got answered, and I might just have to figure it out on my own.

The captivating portion of this book really starts about halfway through part 2 for me, when Alex is presented with this new view of correcting criminals: "The new view is that we turn the bad into the good" (p. 104). They're going to eradicate Alex of all of his bad, to the point where he is capable of only doing good.

Burgess brings up so many good questions in this last half, mostly surrounding the question of free will. Is it better to choose bad than to be forced to do good? What makes a man good? If a man is incapable of committing bad, is he good? Can you cure a man of "bad?"

This was an excellent novel: excellent and horrifying. Is this what our future holds? Will future teenagers behave like Alex at the beginning? I pray not. If this is the case, how will we, as a society, handle this crime?

One thing I also wanted to touch on was the last chapter. When first published, the last chapter wasn't included, and I can understand why. I think it is so much more powerful to end on the previous chapter with Alex's cure. In my opinion, adding that last chapter takes away from the true purpose of the novel, and dissolves the impact that the final line could have on the novel: "I was cured all right" (p. 199). However, I'm sure Burgess had a reason for including that chapter, and as the author, I believe he knows best.