And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Hi everyone,

Due to upcoming testing and traveling, I will be suspending The Unmasked Raccoon for the month of June.

To keep yourself cold during the long, scorching days ahead, I recommend reading

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the iconic story of a man trying to recover from the consequences of playing God and of a disfigured creation with more love and curiosity in him than in any living man.  While the original book does not have a village riot or a bumbling lab assistant named Igor, it features a chase across Europe and enough layers of narratives within narratives to make Inception jealous.
• The Schwa was Here by Neal Shusterman, in which a kid who blends in so easily that he is “functionally invisible” and always marked absent at school tries to fit in before he disappears altogether.

Happy summer!

Love,

Jonah

Book Review (Rucksack): The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

Written by Margaret Atwood in 1985

The Raccoon: In the wreckage of what was once the United States, a military government forms a Christian fundamentalist society, justifying its oppressive, “Big Brother” theocracy with Biblical passages.  A woman known only as Offred (literally “of Fred”), whose sole purpose is to bear children to her Commander, chronicles her life as a slave in this new world.

UNMASKED: The Handmaid’s Tale resembles a crystal ball, offering simply a glimpse into Offred’s daily life and memories.  This writing style, which differs from every other dystopian book, deeply draws the reader in.  Rather than suffering through a historical lesson and watching an average person suddenly become a hero in the fight against the system, the reader sees Offred’s fear, confusion, and humiliation; she grew up in the United States and has to watch her freedom be taken from her.  Furthermore, Offred admits that she is not a hero.  An underground resistance helps smuggle women out of the country, but it has little power and is incapable of overthrowing the new regime.  Atwood allows us to experience life in a dystopian society as it would actually be for almost all of its citizens.

However, Atwood’s slice-of-life approach leaves glaring holes in the story.  The Handmaid’s Tale never explains one of its most important questions: how did society end up this way?  The reader is allowed only vague glimpses of the collapse of the United States government, the war being fought on the East and West coasts, the responsibilities of the “numerous commanders,” and the fate of any of the main characters.  An epilogue in the style of a history lecture still fails to clear up any of these questions.

Something powerful rests within The Handmaid’s Tale, the spark of a world-changing idea or lesson.  Unfortunately, the story’s abrupt ending and its withholding of crucial details prevent anything remarkable from taking shape.

Strengths:

• Offred is an unusually raw and vulnerable protagonist.  The reader develops a deep sympathy for her and a feeling of personal connection.
• The “Salvaging,” a mass execution ceremony, leaves a disturbingly concrete image in the reader’s head, one of many scenes so descriptive and emotional that they feels like the reader’s own memories.

Weaknesses:

• Far too many questions are left unanswered, and the reader’s confusion detracts from his/her ability to become immersed in the story.

Rating: 18/20 Marthas

Ideal Setting: Read this before it is too late.

Book Review (Canon): Scythe

Scythe

Written by Neal Shusterman in 2016

The Raccoon: After aging, disease, and political corruption are eradicated, overpopulation remains the one problem in an otherwise perfect society.  Population control is carried out by appointed “scythes,” who each “glean” (kill) several thousand people every year.  Unwillingly recruited by a scythe to be his apprentices, Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch must wrestle with their morality and the question of whether any human-run institution can ever be perfect.

UNMASKED: Scythe takes place in a utopian futuristic vision of the United States.  Surprisingly, this made for a very difficult read. Having been conditioned by several dystopian stories, I was constantly skeptical of every feature of society that Shusterman introduced; it took reading half of the book before I could accept that there would not be any mysterious disappearances or a hidden dictator pulling the strings.

The lack of governmental corruption provides the perfect foundation for a strong individual to rise as a villain.  However, although the novel’s primary antagonist is mysterious and charismatic, his goal is barely justifiable.  Consequently, the villain’s character falls apart, leaving just a stereotypical bad person underneath.

Scythe daringly attempts to show the fate of humanity in a world losing touch with the interdependency and curiosity that created our culture.  While the novel describes compelling characters and unique concepts, the reader is left with an unchanged opinion on death and the disturbing claim that putting humans in power will never be a good idea.

Strengths:

• Shusterman uses popular, contemporary science, and the future he outlines seems very likely to occur.
• Every character has a different reaction to the presence of a scythe, making every moment special and intriguing.
• All of the action sequences create powerful imagery, many of them shocking to characters and the reader alike.
• The highly-advanced artificial intelligence does not suddenly try to take over the world or eliminate humanity.

Weaknesses:

• The main characters reach a point far too early on in the story when the reader understands their motivations and values completely and can predict their actions for the rest of the novel.
• Scythe presents an extremely pessimistic view of humanity as a whole.
• The prominent Tone Cult religion feels far-fetched and nonsensical, and no explanation is given regarding how other religions have fared in the aftermath of humans conquering death.

Rating: 16/20 philosophies

Ideal Setting: Read this when life seems to lose its spark.  Our culture of convenience has caused us to ignore and even forget the depth and importance of human emotion and expression.

Book Review (Rucksack): Elon Musk

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Written by Ashlee Vance in 2015

The Raccoon: Elon Musk delves into the life, personality, and mission of entrepreneur Elon Musk.  Journalist Ashlee Vance traces the development and trials of Musk’s many companies and features discussions with Musk’s peers, rivals, and relatives.

UNMASKED: “Do you think I’m insane?”

Vance opens Elon Musk with this arresting question that Musk himself asked the author during an interview, immediately establishing the kind of man we are about to explore.  As Vance paints the scene and events leading up to that particular conversation, the reader finds that he/she already has a picture of the way Musk’s mind works and how he relates to others by the time he/she settles into the book.

Elon Musk is far superior to other biographies because of the lens that the author uses.  While a significant chunk of the book is dedicated to Musk’s childhood and the environmental factors that shaped his personality, hobbies, and passions, Vance focuses on Zip2, Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX. Musk’s inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to establish a work/life separation means that the structure and progress of his companies are the windows to his soul.

A biography has a more explicit goal than any fiction book; to teach the reader about the life of the subject.  Elon Musk passes with flying colors, allowing the reader to see inside of Musk’s mind, empathize with his successes and setbacks, and, in my case, become confident and inspired enough to invest in Tesla.

Strengths:

• Vance includes headlines and opinions of people who criticize Musk, as well as those who worship him.  His lack of bias enables the reader to develop his/her own opinion.
• Elon Musk also serves as a historical record of several companies and as an intriguing study of American attitudes toward innovation, space exploration, and renewable energy, providing a wealth of knowledge.

Weaknesses:

• The book is broken up by one huge collection of pictures, rather than having  interspersed images at relevant locations in the text.

Rating: 19/20 launches

Ideal Setting: Read this when you are sick of people saying, “When there’s a will, there’s a way,” and “If you really believe something will happen, it will.”  As it turns out, they are absolutely right, when you are Elon Musk.

Book Review (Canon): The Recruit

The Recruit (CHERUB Series, #1)

Written by Robert Muchamore in 2004

The Raccoon: Recently orphaned twelve-year-old James Choke expects nothing more than disaster for the rest of his troubled childhood.  Suddenly, all of that changes when he is recruited by a secretive branch of British Intelligence that trains children as spies.

UNMASKED: Muchamore’s CHERUB series contains twelve main books, an accompanying novella, and a sequel series.  The author has spent at least ten years writing about the adventures of James and his friends as they travel the world and repeatedly save the day.  While I trust that books 2-12 have their merits, Muchamore seems so enthusiastic about developing the series that the first novel failed to provide any noteworthy events or satisfy me.

The Recruit paints itself as realistic fiction; the protagonists neither wield enviable gadgets nor become wrapped up in a plot for world domination/destruction.  This style undoubtedly allows the book to stand above other spy novels, as it provides a glimpse into the subtler domestic concerns that real intelligence agencies solve.  Furthermore, the characters are much more concerned with gathering information than engaging in deadly fights.  Although I would have enjoyed more action, the puzzles of diplomacy and intrigue provided a welcome, and even exciting, change.

The Recruit is a character-driven story.  Consequently, the well-rounded foundation and backdrop of the novel are overshadowed by the unrealistic motivations and behaviors of its cast, which ultimately wrecks the book’s potential.  The titular CHERUB agency was founded to enlist elite children in situations where further adult interference would rouse too much suspicion.  Disappointingly (to the reader, not the protagonists), the extensive training that James must complete before officially joining CHERUB provides absolutely none of the skills he must utilize on his first mission.  Lastly, the agency’s recruitment system seems to be based more on pity than potential.

Strengths:

• The villain’s goal is complex and justified to the extent that James questions whether he is making the right decision by attempting to sabotage it.

Weaknesses:

• None of the characters are relatable, and very few are entirely likable.
• While CHERUB agents’ daily routines seems invaluable in preparing the children for any situation, the “basic training” all members must pass seems to be nothing more than a glorified boot camp.
• None of the characters know what the acronym CHERUB stands for (this is not revealed in any later book either).

Rating: 13/20 hippies

Ideal Setting: Read this if you ever feel that you are too young to accomplish a goal.  Only, do not read it so closely that you realize that some children have reached greater heights than you ever will.

Book Review (Rucksack): Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Written by Herman Melville in 1851

The Raccoon: Melville’s Great American Novel recounts a sailor’s journey aboard a whaleship under the command of the monomaniac Captain Ahab.  Ahab’s crew finds themselves trapped within their commander’s determination to hunt down the whale that severed his leg, at any cost.

UNMASKED: I have yet to meet a single other person who has read Moby-Dick from cover to cover.  While I take pride in finishing the daunting, arduous task of reading this novel, I only wish I had taken a moment to realize why nobody else has bothered with the struggle.  Melville truly made a mountain out of a molehill.

At the heart of Moby-Dick lies an impactful story about the dangers of untempered passion and not processing one’s emotions.  However, similar to how a single ship becomes insignificant when placed into an ocean, the plot is buried under fathoms of opinionated history lessons and undesired anatomy lectures.

While I would applaud Melville for using strenuous passages which study the minutiae of whales and the process/tools/reflection of hunting them to create the illusion that the reader is present on the many-month whaling voyage, the author instead seems to drag the reader through every whaling voyage that has ever taken place over the course of centuries.  I may now possess a uniquely specific knowledge of the composition of a whale’s skin and the chronology of a spare lance (although such chapters are so influenced by the narrator’s personal, only partially educated views ((Ishmael himself asserts that he is no expert, yet immediately after expects the reader to trust his entire taxonomy of marine mammals)) that I am left wondering about the degree of their scientific accuracy), but such comprehension adds very little to the story and absolutely nothing to the remainder of my life.

Moby-Dick the novel parallels Moby Dick the aggressive whale, in that one must wrestle with it for months in hopes of mastering it.  I am exhausted; although I do not regret reading the Great American Novel, I only wish my suffering yielded a greater payoff.

Strengths:

• Three beautiful, profound passages almost make the entire novel worth reading.
• Melville brilliantly captured both Ahab’s obsessive nature and his officers’ conflicting fear and respect for him.

Weaknesses:

• Each chapter of narrative is separated by at least one tangential chapter elaborating on a (typically minor) detail of the previous section.
• The ending is brutally unsatisfying.

Still Trying to Decide:

• One chapter unexpectedly disregards prose style and is literally written as a musical.  Another chapter is entirely dedicated to analyzing the morality and psychology of the color white.

Rating: 10/20 cannibals

Ideal Setting: Read this whenever you are worried that you are acting selfishly.  At least you are not leading several dozen men away from economic prosperity to their death at the hands of a dangerous beast that you may not even find.

Book Review (Canon): Bloody Jack

Bloody Jack: Being An Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy

Written by L.A. Meyer in 2002

The Raccoon: Determined to move beyond her life of urban poverty in the early 1800s, an orphan girl disguises her gender and joins the British navy.

UNMASKED: Meyer likely wrote Bloody Jack for children, featuring young protagonists and humorous situations to drive the action forward.  Nevertheless, the novel is stuffed to the brim with brilliant content and a heroine that no reader should be deprived of meeting, making it a worthwhile read for all ages.

The very first sentence sets up three characters and their attitudes, and the following paragraph fills in the narrator’s entire present situation, all without a hitch.  Meyer maintains this pace and fluid storytelling throughout the entire novel; every single sentence either adds to the reader’s understanding or gives him/her something new to think about.  Moreover, the book is incredibly witty, and most of the humor arises from scenes rather than from dialogue, so that the smirk that one line brings to the reader’s face stays for the rest of the page (and often the next page as well).

Meyer’s greatest achievement in Bloody Jack is “Bloody Jack” herself, the protagonist and narrator.  The novel is heavily character-driven, and Jacky’s own daring nature steers her into events, rather than the author forcing them on her.  Her balance of sarcasm and curiosity ensure that the minutiae of ship life and navigation are understood but not overbearing.  Entertainingly, the reader actually witnesses the book’s language become more refined whenever Jacky mentions her studies or the passing months.

Bloody Jack is the first novel in a twelve-book series, and I already know that I will stay for the entire voyage.  I encourage you to join.

Strengths:

• Several scenes are unforgettable due to their humor and creativity.
• Meyer accurately and openly addresses the issues of gender stereotypes that naturally arise from the book’s plot.
• Bloody Jack does not attempt to glorify piracy and violence, and Meyer effectively shows the characters wrestling with notions of bravery, morality, and reason.
• Meyer avoids the trope of writing characters who are outrageously modern for their time and/or who invent earlier versions of modern machines without any relevant education.  Jacky possesses enviable yet realistic imagination and resourcefulness.

Weaknesses:

• The love interest never seems to have done or said anything worthy of Jacky’s attention.

Rating: 19/20 dissections

Ideal Setting: Read this whenever you need a push to go beyond your comfort zone.