eairo's six movements

I'm late but in. I am doing an around the world challenge and thought this might be a nice diversion for that one.

My first book for this challenge is the one I was reading when I first heard of the 6 Degrees: The Algebraist.

I also try to align the two challenges so that the sixth book here will be common for the both of them.

And another extra rule for me will be that I will not use the same connection twice.

Good luck!

Thanks.

My second book will be a Culture novel by Iain M. Banks, the connection being---surprise, surprise: same author. Will read that when I feel like that.

I was thinking of reading a Culture novel instead of The Algebraist but the Algebraist was what I found in the local library first.

Finally took my second step in this challenge.

Consider Phlebas is the opening of the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, and the third I've read so far.

Culture is always interesting, an utopia where all needs but the most basic one of humans (and the conscious machines who too are its citizens) have been fulfilled: how to avoid the feeling of uselessness when all is well and one does not need to do anything ... and how this leads some individuals to actions that are against everything what the Culture stands for and somehow at the same time save the Culture from one or the other crisis it is in.

I have no idea yet what will be my next degree.

The next book for this challenge came to me quick and easy, unlike I thought it would.

I browsed through the reviews of Consider Phlebas and the one of the most often mentioned reasons for not liking it was that the (human) characters were unlikeable. (I agree, but that was no news to me, so it didn't stop me liking the book -- Culture is not about nice characters.)

The Death of Bunny Munro was given me the other day, and what I've heard of it is that it makes a point of being a story of the last days of a very unlikeable middle aged man.

(Should that make me think about why it was given to me as a gift? I don't know. Well, Bunny Munro doesn't think a bit what others think of him.)

Bunny Munro is a sleazebag door to door salesman trading cosmetics, sex addict, seducer, rapist, and a husband and father.

He has driven his wife to commit suicide and is left alone with his nine years old son, Bunny Jr. After his wife's funeral, he is frightened, haunted by his late wife, and lost. Lost, not knowing what to do or how to be he does what he has always done. He hits the road taking Bunny Jr with him, starting his last bunny run, amok.

Bunny Jr is a nice boy who often read his encyclopedia, checking things his father or others talk about, citing the info to us, the readers. This and his other comments were amusing, the humor often based on the contrast of his child's view based on a child's knowledge and the "reality" of Bunny (Sr). Jr admires and loves his father, even though he sees he's not the best of fathers, and that he is losing it. I guess that is often the tragedy of a child's life.

Bunny Munro is, or was, since he's now dead, not a nice guy, not someone you'd like to know. Maybe too much so. He was not just a little exaggerated bad man, but no good in so many ways and sooo badly ... he was so horrible a person it is easy to label him a special case, and not think of him after closing the book.

I read the book in Finnish, and I often had a feeling that the translation could be better. Other than that the writing was ok, not great, not bad, with too much adjectives and too many "or something"s and "or whatever"s.

Next step: Death in the title

From Bunny Munro's Death to Deathly diseases (or Bunny Munron kuolema & Kuolemansairauksia using Finnish titles).

Kuolemansairauksia : novelleja or Deathly diseases (my translation, not available in English) is as collection of bleak short stories. Death is, in most cases, a metaphor here, the stories are about end of marriage, social misery, alienation, or, in the final story, about an extended suicide.

I guess these stories can be viewed as the author's analysis of the state of the things in today's society (Finnish). Yet the point of view is always that of an individual, and in more cases than not, there is light at the end of the tunnel. These people are pushed down by the society/families/anything, walked over and kicked a few times before being left alone. Some of them stay that way, others come through, survive and rise.

There are boys who are bullied--one of them walks away and lives, the other builds a bomb and blows himself away with tens of others--; a girl who had stopped talking and only the pain of being violated is strong enough to make her speak again; guy who tries to do what is right but finds out that it is not enough; a woman who finds herself in her fifties, with help from a young lover, with whom she cannot stay no more than with her husband--in the end the lover and the husband drink coffee together wondering what has happened ... and a few more interesting cases.

I see Lampela firstly an observer, I believe he knows what he is writing about. The stories feel true. The settings are good, the writing is basically good too, but a different writer could probably have made more of the material: better literature, maybe. In Lampela's writing the message dominates.