The Literary Amnesiac

Catching Up

2012-02-16T20:48:00.003-06:00

First post of the new year! Never mind the fact that we're already midway through February. I've got to start somewhere.

Contrary to popular belief (or evidence garnered from this blog), I really have been reading over the past eight months. I just haven't gotten around to blogging very frequently. Instead, I've gotten farther and farther behind, leaving me more and more overwhelmed. (And blogging is supposed to be fun. If it's overwhelming, what's the point?)

Because of this, a wise man once told me, "You ought to publish a post of mini-reviews or you'll never blog about all of these books you've been reading," and I am finally taking his advice. So, here you will find a host of worthless mini-reviews of books I've read during the past year but have never blogged about. Yeah, unfortunately this post is more for me than for you. I just like to have a complete record of what I've read, so this won't happen again.

And so it goes:

Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson (a Book Club selection: I think it was Christy's)

Here's the story of two lonely Swedish women, one young and one old, who strike up an unexpected but fulfilling and healing friendship by virtue of living in houses next door to each other.

Why is my most vivid memory of this book that of Astrid and Veronika spooning with each other? I'm sure it has nothing to do with Book Club member Claire's odd experience with her college roommate. I do think, though, that it's because it seemed so unlikely and so far from something I would have done and . . . and just plain awkward.

If you read this book and have any questions about it, though, email the author! She is very friendly and will probably actually write back to you and explain whatever it is you're wondering about. She praised me for being such an attentive reader, although once I saw the answer to my question I knew that a truly attentive reader could have answered this question for herself. Oh well.

A favorite quote:

"I think that perhaps there are no such defining moments at all. Beginnings and ends are fluid, long chains of events where some links seem so insignificant and others so very momentous, while in fact all have the same weight. What may appear as a single dramatic moment is just a link between what was before and what comes after."

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

This book was given to me by the love of my life, and for this reason alone I'm sure I would have found it fascinating--perhaps even if it had been written by Paulo Coelho. But, lucky me, it was written by Italo Calvino instead. I'm sure I need to read more of his books (If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, for instance), but this one is a great start. It's the story of an 18th century Italian family of noble descent whose older son Cosimo, at age twelve, climbs up into the trees and decides he will never come back down. Contrary to every other such decision by twelve-year-old boys the world over, he sticks with it, never again setting foot on the ground.

Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler

The inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut. The book and the film differ somewhat (of course), but I found the book intriguing and thought-provoking. Unfortunately, as I read it months and months ago, I can't remember what intrigued me about it, or what thoughts it provoked. I will venture to say it was good enough to re-read, and I would like to do that sometime in hopes that it will better stick in my mind. This shouldn't be too difficult, as it is very short.

In the Woods by Tana French (a Book Club selection: Charity's!)

This was an excellent mystery: finally, another that ranks highly on my Agatha Christie scale! The premise alone ought to grab you: Years ago, three young Irish friends went into the woods to play. Only one returned. He had no memory of what had happened that afternoon, and no one ever figured out the fate of his two friends. (That right there would be enough to snag my interest!) But there's more: the one surviving boy grew up to be Detective Ryan, who is investigating the murder of a twelve-year-old girl whose body was found in those same woods. Is there a link between the two mysteries?

This is a suspenseful thriller with the favorable distinction of also being well-written. It is also the first in the Dublin Murder Squad series, but (although #2 sounded very interesting!) I try to avoid getting mired in a series of books. There are too many individual books waiting for me to read them!

Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

This book actually contained a trio of novellas ("Revenge," "The Man Who Gave Up His Name," and "Legends of the Fall"), but I picked it up because I've seen the movie made from the third novella, and I was curious to discover its original manifestation. I found it quite surprising that Legends of the Fall began as only a novella. The movie seems like such an epic! You would think it had been adapted from a thousand-pager.

Harrison has such an odd style of writing. It is rambling, resigned, almost emotionless. His stories are told in an off-hand manner, as if with a sigh. That's not necessarily a criticism, though--merely an observation. I have also read his book Returning to Earth, and I plan to read its prequel, True North.

My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster

"Thanks a lot, Miles Davis. You've totally ruined waffles for me."

When I read this book I was in need of something light, and this certainly fit the bill. It's not my kind of book, especially as it was written from the POV of a woman obsessed with reality TV, but I can definitely admit that it was light-hearted and funny.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (a Book Club selection: mine!)

I really, really liked this book and am very disappointed in myself for not writing about it last July when I read it. However (not to mention extenuating circumstances that distracted me) I'm sure I was daunted by the feeling that I had to top my last post about a book of Ishiguro's, a link to which was posted on his official facebook page! (That was an exciting day for me.)

NLMG is a strange sci-fi/coming-of-age novel which thrilled me with its slow reveal of the truth behind the lives of Tommy, Kathy and Ruth. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love books that dole out their secrets so slowly and tantalizingly.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I plan to.

The Other by Thomas Tryon

This was a good twin/evil twin story that was somehow both banal and engrossing. I found the twins' secret easy to guess, but even so it was an entertaining read. The writing was nothing special, and I don't find it surprising that this book has been largely forgotten, but I don't regret reading it.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Here's a book that covers nearly every teen-angst-causing issue that you can imagine (except for vampires). Drugs, drinking, homosexuality, suicide, teen sex--Wallflower has it all. But I can overlook this tiny book's attempt at being all-encompassing, because its narrator is so endearing in an awkward and quirky kind of way.

I made a note of some of his statements that were favorites of mine, Napoleon Dynamite style:

“I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn’t.”

"We accept the love we think we deserve."

"Some people use thoughts to not participate in life." (This is reflected in a review quoted at the beginning of the book: "Passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety.")

"[To Kill a Mockingbird] is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book." (What reader hasn't felt the same way before?)

"I really think that everyone should have watercolors, magnetic poetry, and a harmonica." Wouldn't it be great if life were that simple? Wait, though. I don't have magnetic poetry OR a harmonica. Maybe that is all I need?

Everyone’s heard the phrase “deer in headlights”, right? And it’s such a cliché. But here we get “My brother looked at my dad like a deer caught by my cousins.” It’s so refreshing. And yet, as immediately understood as its more hackneyed antecedent.

So, yeah, I liked this book.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (a Book Club selection: mine!)

This book deserves a complete blog post, as I deemed it a Must Read, but alas. I waited too long to write about it.

I could complain about some things (the sometimes stilted dialogue, I would assume due to the translation; that I guessed on page 66 who the burned man was, although the truth wasn't actually revealed until much closer to the end of the book; and that the ending explained a little too much and wrapped everything up neatly with a bow) but the reading of it was so much fun that I didn't care. Sometimes while I'm reading books like these I start to wonder in the back of my mind . . . do I really like to read? And then a book like Shadow of the Wind comes along and I fall in love with reading all over again. YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK. You will love it too.

My favorite quote:

"The pleasure of reading: exploring the recesses of the soul, letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language . . . by reading, I can live more intensely."

HOW TRUE! I pity anyone who has never realized the accuracy of the preceding statement.

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn

A just-barely-surpassing-mediocre YA ghost story that I remember next to nothing about. I saw it at one of my kids' Scholastic book fairs, and you know I can't pass up a tale of a good haunting. Apparently I can completely forget them, though.

What the Birds See by Sonya Hartnett

Here's an appealing story that begins with the tragic disappearance of three siblings, tangentially viewed through the eyes of an unwanted nine-year-old boy. My memory of this book is vague at best, but I found it well-written and arresting. I would read it again.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I really enjoyed this unique and subtle YA enigma. I was just sure Bookworm Child would, too, but I don't think she gave it a fair shake. Disappointing. I thought it was great, and another one worthy of a re-read.

The best I can do is to quote the back of the book: "This remarkable novel takes place in the real world but holds a fantastic puzzle at its heart. When You Reach Me is an original, and a brilliant and profound delight."

"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett

2011-12-24T20:16:00.000-06:00

The Secret Garden is a fondly-remembered childhood favorite of mine. At my seventh birthday party, I was given two copies as gifts! I know we returned one of the duplicates, although I don't recall what we exchanged it for, but I would have done well to keep both books, tucking one away for the future; the one I kept is now falling to pieces. But my bookworm child has read that tattered copy. I love it when she not only reads my old favorites, but especially when she reads the very same book I read when I was little.

What's not to love about the story of a young girl, raised in India and recently orphaned, who is shuttled off to her distant uncle's mysterious house at the edge of the English moors? Throw in a sad account about the untimely death of her beautiful aunt, some strange noises blamed on the wind, and a friendly, bright-eyed robin, and my seven-year-old attention was captured.

Sadly, this is another one of those stories that may not hold the same fascination for a reader first coming to it as an adult. If you missed out on reading this when you were young, leaving you unable to nostalgically unearth childhood memories during a re-read, maybe you need to put yourself into the mind of a child as you read it? Otherwise you may find it boring, as Renae (from book club) did. (Oh, yes, I just named you, girl.) But as for me, there are a few passages that can even now elicit a thrill when I read them: one of those would be, of course, when Mary first discovers the forgotten garden.

I'm not sure how many times I've read this book, but it's odd (even for a literary amnesiac) that I didn't remember all the prattle about Magic. How could I so vividly remember the first half of the book while what I recalled of the second half was so vague and shadowy? Maybe because the first half is delectable and the second half is kind of crap. Not that I have a problem with magic. Where would Harry Potter or the Pevensies be without it? Maybe it's just Magic-with-a-capital-M that gives me trouble.

Despite a bit of crap, I love to watch Mary's transformation throughout this story. As the book opens, she is a sour, lonely, and quite contrary little girl; bit by bit, she becomes a kind and thoughtful friend, while still retaining her spunky pride and stubbornness. It's no fun--and not especially believable--when a character begins with nothing but rough edges and ends as a perfect angel, but you won't find that annoying mistake here. Mary's polishing leaves her improved but still undeniably human.

I call this another book to give to all the little girls in your life, so they can love it now and in the years to come!

"World War Z" by Max Brooks

2011-10-24T21:38:00.000-05:00

Well, I told you I was going to hate this book. And, what do you know? I was right.

Not only is World War Z (obviously) about war (ugh!) but it is about a zombie war. I don't care for zombies. They're not pretty, they're not witty, they're not fun or clever or admirable. They're not even all that scary when you know how to handle them. So just what good are they, exactly?

Poor Max Brooks was already at a disadvantage with me due to his choice of subject matter, but this was only compounded by the grade-school errors that kept cropping up. Not like I've never made a mistake in my life, but I got annoyed right away by comma abuse (too many in some cases, not enough in others) and a jarring singular/plural mashup in one sentence ("It must have been a heartbreaking irony for those poor peasants, to see their town saved but then only being able to visit it as a tourist." Come on! Either learn to write or get an editor). Stuff like that keeps me from losing myself in the story. By the time I read "that time of the day when it's photovoltaic windows capture the setting sun" I was about ready to put this book out of its misery with one good shot to its brains. If I hadn't already read two thirds of it by that point, I think I would have. (Not to mention the fact that the library probably wouldn't be especially thrilled if I returned this book after an attempted pithing.)

This book is written from the perspective of a journalist conducting interviews with people from all over the world who were involved in fighting off the zombie hoards. In trying to describe every eventuality and cover every facet of the war, Brooks sacrifices the possibility of riveting story arcs that could have made me care about the individual humans involved. There were a few stories that stood out (the blind old Japanese man in the wilderness, the female American pilot lost in Louisiana) but most of the rest of the reports blended together in a nameless, faceless swirl. Even when I knew a character was being revisited, it wasn't often that I remembered where their story left off. And, paradoxically, it was annoying when stories stopped at a cliffhanger and were never picked up again.

In a nutshell: Boy, am I glad that's over. I have quite a feeling of glee as I peruse my TBR shelves, because I have every intention of LOVING the next book I read! Not least because I can assure you it won't have a single zombie in it.

"Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons" by Lorna Landvik

2011-10-20T23:36:00.000-05:00

"A few years back, when I finally got smart enough to go to a therapist, she asked me how I had held things together all these years. It didn't take long to come up with an answer. 'That's easy. I belong to a book club.'"

This book was loaned to me more than a year ago and has had the misfortune to languish on my shelf ever since, merely due to its cover. The only way it could have looked any less like my kind of book is if they had actually printed "This Book Is Not For Kathy" on the cover. Well, its title wasn't any better. Either the title or the cover alone would say chick lit, but together they screech it like nails on a chalkboard.

But what do you know? I didn't hate this book. It didn't even make me feel like my brains were melting and running out of my ears.

The five housewives in this book weren't really angry (well, not all of the time, anyway) and I don't believe they ever actually ate any bon bons during the story. The name of the book is the same as the tongue-in-cheek name they chose for their book club, which impressively (or perhaps implausibly?) spans three decades. (What do you say, book club girls? Will you all stop talking about moving away so we can still be meeting in 2041?)

I found it disappointing that very little was actually said about the books the Angry Housewives read. The references to each title were unsatisfyingly brief, amounting to little more than name-dropping. But then a lot of the books they read didn't sound that great anyway. And the story was more about the Housewives, their relationships with each other, and the circumstances their families dealt with over the years. The books they read were there as more of a framework instead of the main focus of the story.

Anyway, I guess I've got to (grudgingly) admit that this book wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I probably wouldn't ever re-read it, but I think I actually enjoyed reading it once. Don't worry about me, though: I'm planning to absolutely hate the next book I read. Because there's only one topic I'm less interested in than chick lit. Can you guess what it is?

"This is Where I Leave You" by Jonathan Tropper

2011-10-11T19:40:00.000-05:00

I'd heard about this book from several bloggers, though I can't quite recall what it was that convinced me I needed to read it (which is even more true now that I've finished reading). But, though I can't say what first piqued my interest, I found it a good read with (for once) a cast of characters who aren't quirky just for the sake of being quirky.

Judd Foxman and his siblings are roped into sitting shiva after their father's funeral. ("All seven days? That's hard-core.") Complex family dynamics are rendered comically bizarre by a lack of those emotional filters that aid in smoothing out normal human relationships. It's difficult for the Foxman family members to get along under the best of circumstances, and these aren't the best of circumstances. In their raw emotional state of grief, thrust into close quarters for an extended period of time (which, for this family, is anything longer than five minutes) a variety of eccentric issues bubble to the surface, causing an ever-changing stink worse than Uncle Stan's farts. Oh, and it doesn't help that Judd's wife has just left him. For his boss. And she's pregnant. With Judd's child.

"The past is prelude and the future is a black hole . . . " That's not the most encouraging notion, but if you've ever hurled yourself into the unknown, you know that's exactly what it feels like when all you can do is hope that you won't be stretched out like a mile-long piece of spaghetti, or be compressed into something one-millionth the size of a bedbug's eyeball, or vanish into a singularity. It's much better to think that, though I may not have fourteen grand in a shopping bag, anything can happen.

"All the Sad Young Literary Men" by Keith Gessen

2011-10-10T19:09:00.000-05:00

Maybe the title should have clued me in, but this book is kind of depressing. It chronicles vignettes from the lives of Mark, Sam and Keith, three college-educated young men with writerly ambitions. In the first section, the three characters are young and idealistic, their lives ahead of them and the world at their feet, but the reader can somehow sense they are spinning their wheels. The second section finds them feeling like failures, wretched and alone. In the third section, they've all achieved their own blandly homogeneous and hollow happiness because they have . . . settled. I don't think they realized they had settled, but I realized it.

At least each section is depressing for a new reason.

It was too bothersome for me to distinguish between the three main characters. I kept getting their backgrounds and family histories mixed up, and the men themselves seemed to be interchangeable. This made it more difficult for me to invest myself in the story. For example, in Mark's second section, I couldn't for the life of me remember who Leslie was, but I didn't care enough to flip back and find out. (Although, had I been reading this on my Kindle, I think I could have found it in me to expend the effort needed to Search This Book and find where her character was introduced.) Maybe I just didn't pay enough attention, but I began to think this would have been a better book if it had been called "The Sad Young Literary Man" (though maybe that's not quite as catchy a title) and the three main characters had been combined into one.

At the risk of boring you to tears, I will share with you the notes I finally forced myself to take in order to keep the Sad Young Men separate in my mind: Mark Grossman used to be married to Sasha, tried online dating and internet porn, and wants to date Celeste but sleeps with Leslie instead. Sam Mitnick is Jewish, loves Israel, was dating Talia and Arielle at the same time, lost them both, slept with Miss Perfect (Katie) and wrote his name in her book, and is supposed to be writing a great Zionist novel but never does. Keith (Gessen?) idolized a critic named Morris Binkel, spent a summer moving furniture, knows Russian, and roomed with Ferdinand, who dated one of Al Gore's (fictionalized) daughters. Hmmm, they sound fairly different from each other when I list their little bios one after another that way. So maybe it was just me?

Anyway, it's not as if this was a horrible read. I didn't gag on the writing, and it wasn't one of those books I dreaded picking up. It went by quickly enough, and I enjoyed reading it. But I won't be shouting it from the rooftops or pushing my friends to read it. I'm also very glad it only cost $3.97.

Books-A-Million is my Kryptonite . . .

2011-10-07T01:25:00.000-05:00

. . . and my kids are fully aware of that fact. One could even say they exploit my weakness. I should know better than to even go in there anymore, especially with my kids.

During my last trip to B-A-M (a post-book-club sortie), I managed to leave without spending any money (a minor miracle!) even though I carried a pair of books around with me for a good long while, fully intending to buy them. I bet the poor things were so disappointed when I put them back on the shelf and left without them.

Tonight, I was not so lucky. Tonight I was not able to resist the inexorable pull of the printed word. Tonight, books were leaping off the shelves left and right, directly into my waiting hands.

First to make the jump: The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. Yes, yes, I know I could have downloaded this onto my Kindle for free. In fact, I probably already have, though I haven't read it yet. But what a cute little Puffin Classic edition, and only $5 (without even being on sale)!

If I'm going to mention E. Nesbit, though, I might as well go on and confess: I don't believe I've ever yet read any of her books. I've been meaning to read something of hers for years, ever since The Magician's Nephew name-dropped the Bastables (though don't ask me how I figured out who the Bastables were. This was long before Google came on the scene). Anyway, I'm planning to LOVE this book, and I might even share it with my children.

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau quickly followed. I've somehow become convinced that I need to read this entire series, though I can't recall who to credit that notion to. This seems to be an intriguing combination of The Matrix and The Giver. I'd definitely like to engage in a bit of read-the-book/see-the-movie with this one.

THEN I managed to find two books labeled "Buy 1, Get 1 FREE!" and they were both only $2.97! I must admit I selected them with my children in mind (even more so than the previous two), but I have a feeling I will enjoy them as well. First is A Taste for Red by Lewis Harris, a very tongue-in-cheek-sounding story about new sixth-grader Svetlana Grimm, who is afraid she might be a vampire. Yeah, I know, vampires are overdone these days. But an eleven-year-old vampire? That lends a slightly new twist to the trope (if you haven't read Let the Right One In). And I love the cover!

The second book in my BOGO offer was Bad, Bad Darlings: Small but Deadly by Sam Llewellyn. What caught my eye was (yet again!) the cover, not to mention the price tag. But what sold me on the book was the idea of a family of thieves attempting to abandon their old lifestyle. Why on earth shouldn't their first step be to set sail on the good ship Kleptomaniac? Throw in a little bit of a Gilligan's Island situation, and it sounds like something my kids and I can all love.

With four books already in hand, I figured I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. So I purposefully tracked down one of the two books I'd narrowly avoided buying a few weeks ago: This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper. I'm not sure exactly what draws me to this book, but Greg's glowing review didn't hurt. And I'm quite fond of the little tree on the cover.

Too bad I can't remember which other book I'd been planning to buy during my previous B-A-M trip. Actually, it's probably a good thing I couldn't remember, or I would have ended up buying yet another book tonight.

This last book wasn't my selection, but it could have been, based on cover and title alone. Bookworm Child picked out The Last Invisible Boy by Evan Kuhlman. I'm pretty sure I'll be borrowing it when she's through, especially if she gives me her irresistible "You have GOT to read this" line.

I'll spare you the details on the other three books I bought (a HALO book for Oldest Boy and a Scooby Doo zombie book, of all things, for Littlest Girl). I also added a cute little Halloween picture book called The Copycat Costume to the stack.

I did manage to refuse renewal of my B-A-M discount card. I really didn't want to spend $20 to save $5 (though this perspective doesn't take future savings into account). Besides, I probably need to wait long enough for my card to expire again before I go on another book shopping spree!

In which my day is ruined, and then decidedly un-ruined

2011-10-03T23:05:00.004-05:00

I have a meandering and slightly bookish story for you. It begins with my friend and fellow book club member Renae, who gave me a card from Starbucks which promised a free download of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I have been bombarded by this book (and its beautiful cover!) everywhere I look, so of course I'm curious about it, and hey, free? That's my thing.

So I spent part of Saturday in trying to figure out how to download this book and transfer it to my Kindle so I could (eventually) read it, only to find that, apparently, that won't be possible. If I would join the new decade and buy something from Apple that I could use to read books, I'd be good to go. But for now I'm stuck with a flip phone that thinks I should be impressed because it can take pictures, and I don't see an iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch in my near future. And I gathered that the free download wasn't the entire book anyway--it was just an "extended sample." Not so interested.

MEANWHILE, in the midst of discovering that I won't be able to read The Night Circus (even just part of it) for free after all, I ever-so-gracefully knocked my Kindle off the desk. I keep my Kindle in a great case, but the great case was flapped open, which is a not-so-protective state for it to be in. As it fell, of course my poor Kindle struck the edge of the PC tower, and of course the screen was the part of the Kindle that hit first, and of course this made a weird mark in the (normally amazing and magical) E Ink. And then I found my Kindle was in a coma from which I could not wake it, no matter how many times I tried to slide and release the power switch. I even tried the hold-twenty-seconds-to-reset thing . . . nothing. Just John Steinbeck looking at me accusingly, throat slashed, as if to ask, "What have you done to me?"

Oh dear. What a day. And what now? I mean, other than throwing my former Kindle and current useless trash against the wall? Do I spring for a new Kindle? (At least I timed it well, as the Kindle Touch has just been released.) Or do I do the budget-conscious thing and live a Kindle-less existence, no matter how grudgingly? I must admit I don't use my Kindle that often. Maybe it's just an old habit, but I nearly always reach for a paper book before the Kindle even crosses my mind. But I still have tons of books on my Kindle that I haven't yet read!

Before I gave up on my injured Kindle completely, I had to at least try to google my situation to see if anything could be done. After a bit of research, I came across a forum that recommended calling Amazon to see about a replacement. I'd already noted that their 1-year warranty only covers defects, not damages, so I figured it was a lost cause. Plus, I couldn't remember when I got the thing, but I feared it might have been more than a year ago. But, having nothing to lose, I called anyway.

Lo and behold, I came in just under the wire for the warranty (I'd gotten my Kindle last October 4th!) AND the nice customer service man told me he would send me a replacement! I didn't even have to beg! Amazon saves the day. My replacement Kindle should arrive Wednesday. Kathy is happy.

What have I learned?

The Starbucks free book downloads are only extended samples.
Those samples are DRM-locked .epub files which can't be read on your Kindle. (OR, if they can, tell me how!!)
Don't drop your Kindle face-down on the hard and unyielding edge of a PC tower. (BUT, if you do, call Amazon and tell them your story! As my friend BR says, Amazon has amazing customer service. Use it. Only, don't tell them I sent you, as I'm not sure they would appreciate it.)
Happiness is often merely a matter of perspective.

"Time Out of Joint" by Philip K. Dick

2011-10-02T22:55:00.000-05:00

Here's my second foray into the books of Philip K Dick, author of the novella that served as the basis for the movie Blade Runner. I started to love this book as soon as Vic couldn't find the light cord in the bathroom. Weirdness! It's great! And unexplained weirdness? Even better!

This is the story of semi-loser Ragle Gumm, who lives with his sister Margo and her husband Vic somewhere in 1959 America. Ragle has never accomplished much in life, other than his wildly successful run as winner of a national newspaper contest, but he is content in his lack of ambition. That is, until he begins to find that reality may not be as substantial as he has always assumed.

I truly enjoyed this book. The questions, the fascinatingly illogical hallucinations, the dawning realization that Not Everything Is As It Seems. (Most books with that element tend to be awesome.) The reader is on a quest to discover the truth right alongside Ragle Gumm.

However, the book was not pure awesomeness all the way through. Towards the end, I was distracted by things that rang false. Some elements had changed too much (fashion, speech, money) and others hadn't changed enough (prices, books, computer printouts). I suppose I was too hung up on expecting the world in the book to mirror reality more closely, but why should it?

I also must admit that the very end had me expecting Ragle to make a speech about getting on the spaceship in order to go to Blargon 7 in search of alternative fuels . . . I'm guessing I'm the only one whose mind made that leap, though.

"Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt

2011-09-27T23:09:00.000-05:00

"There's nothing like a wake for having a good time."

That one sentence, for me, sums up the tone of Frank McCourt's entire memoir: optimism, maybe even a bit of wry humor, in the face of depressing needs and desperate situations. Or perhaps it's merely the fact that I've never attended an Irish wake? Maybe they're a whole lot more fun than I can imagine. Whichever it is, this book made me think of a 1940s version of Jeannette Walls' book The Glass Castle, only a whole lot more Irish.

Angela's Ashes is the cure for anyone who thinks their life sucks. If you are reading this, you've got electricity. I'm willing to bet your clothes are relatively clean and decent, and (especially if you're an American like me) you're probably not very hungry. (Yeah, I'm talking to you! Put down the Cheetos!) In fact, Angela would say that we "don't have a notion of not having." But even in their constant state of want, there were still times the McCourt family managed to help those less fortunate, because "there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have." It was mind-boggling enough that there were people less fortunate, but even more amazing to see the generosity of those who had so little to begin with.

I appreciated the fact that, even though his childhood was filled with hard times occasionally interrupted by harder times, McCourt doesn't seek to put his readers to shame. (I put myself to shame while reading his book, but that's not the author's fault.) He doesn't beg for sympathy or try to make his readers feel guilty for having too much or not giving enough. He's just telling it like . . . 'tis.

It's also intriguing to watch as McCourt develops his writing skills throughout his childhood. It's evident that he had an innate talent that was strong enough to survive abject poverty, and an imagination untouched by his harsh surroundings: "It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head." I'm not sure I agree with that, as the world seems to be messing with my head on a regular basis, but somehow McCourt made it through a much more difficult life than mine with minimal apparent damage.

Maybe I'm just a dummy, but I couldn't figure out why this book was entitled Angela's Ashes. The entire time I was reading, I was expecting Angela (the author's mother) to die, but she managed to hang on the whole way through. Oh, um, spoiler. So I've looked it up in order to enlighten you. Apparently the follow-up book, 'Tis, which was originally tacked on to the end of this book, concludes with the scattering of Angela's ashes. (Yep, that's another spoiler.) And Angela's Ashes concludes with the word 'tis. So there's a sort of symmetry there . . . although it still doesn't quite make sense to me. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

"Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson

2011-09-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside--walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know."

I'm about to express myself. Madonna, eat your heart out!

I watched the movie version of this story before I even realized it was a book adaptation, but then I started hearing all kinds of good things about the book from other bloggers. I have been known to be a tad, shall we say, disparaging towards YA fiction. But as impressed as I was with the movie, I figured surely the source material couldn't be all bad. And when I saw this in the book section at Target (I was hardly even looking at the books, I swear!) it just sort of leaped off the shelf and into my hands, whispering, "Take me home with you." So I did. (Don't worry, I paid for it first.)

On the surface, Speak is kind of like a cross between the movie Heathers (only with less of its midnight black and razor sharp humor, and with fewer Heathers) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, with the Angst-Causing Teen Issues whittled down from every single possible traumatic life experience to one or two. In case it's unclear to you, that's not a bad combination. Where Heathers may be a bit silly and unlikely (though still awesome!), Speak is steeped in reality. Melinda Sordino could be any girl in any high school in any state in America. That is, any girl with a Big Secret she finds so shameful that she doesn't feel like she can talk about it to anyone.

At just under 200 pages, of course I zipped through Speak, though the excellent writing and absorbing plot didn't hurt a bit in that respect. The book didn't quite reach critical mass for me, but I bet if I hadn't already learned Melinda's Big Secret while watching the movie, I would have found myself the prisoner of an inexorable Chain Reaction of Curiosity, rendering me incapable of putting the book down. You know how I feel about secrets! They drive me bonkers, and I can not rest until I have ferreted out every detail.

I won't tell you what Melinda's Big Secret was, on the off chance that this will leave you able to enter into your own Chain Reaction of Curiosity as you read, but I will mention that (as a result of the secret) Melinda sinks into a depression that consumes her for most of her freshman year of high school. That's not to say that the book itself is depressing. It can be heartwrenching, but it's not a complete downer. Sometimes it's even funny (though, as I mentioned, not Heathers-funny) in a wry and subdued way. And Anderson nails the teenage voice.

Although I am labeling Speak as "not suitable for children . . . or my mom," I do think my mother could probably handle this one. As could the average high school student. I mainly have my 8-year-old daughter in mind when applying this label. She's not ready for it yet.

"Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson" by Lyndsay Faye

2011-09-07T20:19:00.000-05:00

Remember when I told you I'd bought this book? Not surprisingly for a story that stirs together Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper, it managed to leapfrog itself over my insane TBR stack. (Which, by the way, is no longer a stack! My books TBR are now shelved and acting civilized! But I know better.) Dust and Shadow landed in the Top Priority Spot due to high hopes and expectations.

Despite my eager drooling, before I began reading I worried just a bit that the author might have bastardized the immortal duo of Holmes and Watson the way this movie did. (I still haven't recovered from that.) But I'm happy to report I shouldn't have bitten my nails over it. I was quite impressed by the way that Faye managed to replicate the tone and characters of Conan Doyle's stories.

Of course, you should take my pronouncement with a grain of salt (or perhaps a pinch of tobacco from the toe of a Persian slipper). I am no Sherlockian scholar. But (though it's been a while) I have read a few Holmes stories, and this one seemed to fall right in line with my memory of the original Sherlock.

I'm sure it's no shock that my astronomical expectations weren't quite satisfied. I was hoping for greatness and didn't find it, but I can handle the fact that what I got was, instead, a solidly good book. In fact, it rated high on my Agatha Christie scale. (Finally!) However, I must admit I anticipated a slightly greater degree of cleverness from Holmes. He wasn't stupid, of course, but he didn't blow my mind, either. So, nine points out of ten for conforming to the original standard, five out of ten for originality in resolution of the mystery, and fifty-three out of ten for such an enticing story idea!

"Gone" by Michael Grant

2011-08-17T11:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a book that would make a great movie. That's not necessarily an insult, but it's not breathless approval, either. It means Gone has an intriguing premise and plenty of action, but reading it doesn't require deep thought (or even much shallow thought) and it doesn't have much in the way of character development.

This is the idea behind the book: One normal November day in Perdido Beach, California, students at the local school are shocked to see everyone over the age of fourteen disappear in an instant. Gone is the story of how a town full of children deals with a new life of sudden anarchy. Oh, and matters are complicated when some of the kids discover that they have superpowers . . .

So. Nice story idea, but I found myself a bit indifferent to the result. It didn't help that this book never reached critical mass. In fact, I put it down last night with only twenty pages to go, if that tells you anything. But don't start thinking I'm trying to say this book was horrible, because it wasn't. I didn't have to choke it down, and it wasn't boring. I bet those who love YA and dystopian fiction would find this a good one, but I suppose it's just not my thing. I would describe it as fun and superficial. Not that I have anything against fun! I like fun. But while I'm OK with movies that are pure fun, I appreciate a bit more meat when I'm choosing books.

I have a feeling lots of rabid fans (and maybe even the rest of the girls in my book club) will be shocked to hear this, but I'm only minimally interested in what happens throughout the rest of the series. I was curious enough that I read a brief outline of the plots, but not interested enough to buy (or even borrow) the subsequent books and actually *read* them. There are far too many other books that sound more interesting to me. I'll leave the remainder of this series to people who are younger than I am.

How I happen to have purchased Even More Books

2011-07-27T23:44:00.000-05:00

Each of my kids recently lucked into a tidy sum of money. Five whole dollars! I offered them a trip to Books-A-Million, and promised I would make up the difference if they each chose one book to buy. A much better idea than buying $5 toys, don't you think?

I hadn't planned to buy any books for myself (for goodness' sake, I have an embarrassing number of unread books on my shelves already, and I am trying to curb my spending) but then I realized I hadn't purchased my August book club selection yet. And of course book club books are a necessity, so they don't count when there's spending-curbing going on.

When I found a copy of Gone (Charity, it's way fatter than I expected it to be!) it had one of these lovely stickers on it:

So of course I HAD to at least look for two more books with the same sticker. I mean, FREE BOOK! Need I say more?

So. I'd gone from "buying no books for myself" to "looking for more." You know me. The first place I headed was the bargain aisle. Yes, I know they never put the aforementioned stickers on the bargain books. But they do put these stickers on them:

You've got to admit, if you're anything like me, that makes a book awfully tempting. And, surprise surprise, something caught my eye. It was this title:

Which reminded me of this book:

Although, now that I look at it again, I'm not sure why it should have. The only real similarity is that the title is slanted at the same approximate angle. But still! The book had caught my eye.

And what should appear directly below the eye-catching title? These words: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson. Oooh! The Ripper Killings? As in Jack the Ripper? As in one of history's most intriguing mysteries? AND . . . by the Dr. Watson? Of Holmes and Watson fame? It just kept getting better and better. I HAD TO HAVE THIS BOOK.

My bookworm daughter didn't understand. Why was I getting two books for myself when she was getting only one? (Never mind that my two together cost less than her one.) My son told me I shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I said, "I didn't! I judged it by the title and the blurb!" He gave me an odd look, then reminded me, "Those are on the cover." Oops. Busted by an eleven-year-old. It's OK, though, because I quit after two. I know my limits.

I just now realized I did not follow through with my usual book-buying procedure. I didn't crack Dust and Shadow open to a random page to make sure the writing doesn't suck. And now that I've gotten the book home, I'm almost afraid to look. I'd rather hang on to the promise of an amazing story in hopes that I won't be disappointed. Along with the hope that I won't have to make my kids eat their books for dinner any time soon, or burn them for fuel next winter. (Don't worry, it's really not that bad. Yet. At least not until my next trip to Books-A-Million.)

P.S. My youngest, blissfully oblivious to my unfair double purchase and cover-judging, had this to say at the bookstore: "I want to stay here for the rest of my life." Me too, baby! Do you think they would let us?

"The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare" by G. K. Chesterton

2011-06-02T00:08:00.002-05:00

Curses! I read this book weeks ago and I'm just now blogging about it. That's never good. I remember that I enjoyed reading it, but that doesn't help much. I remember thinking it was a (nearly) perfect story for me, which is always nice. (It was only nearly perfect because somewhere about the middle it devolved into a surreal chase scene, which kind of lost my interest, but it picked up again after that.) I remember I was fascinated by the utter strangeness of it.

But beyond that my memory gets a bit sketchy. My vague recollection is that this is the story of two poets: Lucian Gregory, an anarchist hiding in plain sight; and Gabriel Syme, recruited by Scotland Yard to pose as an anarchist and infiltrate the secretive (and oxymoronic) Central Anarchist Council under the code name Thursday.

The story alone is quite entertaining, but Chesterton adds some interesting statements about the nature of the apparent chaos of the universe. Contrary to what anarchists and existentialists would have us believe, Chesterton makes the point that mere chance doesn't have any real bearing on our lives--that all life is dictated by divinely inspired order.

And that's as far as my memory goes (without delving into spoilers, anyway). Not much of a review, I know, but it's the best a literary amnesiac can do. At least I can leave you with a couple of quotes that struck me by their peculiar expressiveness:

"The young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face--that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem."

"This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of the world."

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" by Patrick Süskind

2011-05-30T00:15:00.000-05:00

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille begins life as an unwanted baby boy in 18th century Paris. As he grows, he doesn't develop a conscience or an ethical set of values, but he does have the most amazingly well-developed sense of smell, allowing him to parse out thousands of individual scents. Lacking a moral compass along with any sort of body odor, Grenouille's ambition to create the ultimate perfume drives him to the murder of sweet innocent virgins.

Am I the only person in the world who thought this book was just a little bit ridiculous? I could handle the unscented boy with the most sensitive and talented olfactory nerves in the world, but there was a bit too much implausibility heaped on top of that. By the time I got to the (um, spoiler?) scent-induced town-wide orgy, I just had to laugh at how silly it all was. Maybe that's because I've never had the chance to participate in a town-wide orgy myself, scent-induced or no. But maybe that's because the concept is a bit too far-fetched.

In addition to the aforementioned need to suspend more disbelief than I found possible, there was not much in the way of character development. And I just have to mention that adult ticks have eight legs, not six. (Don't most people know this?) But I couldn't fault the writing, and the story itself was interesting (without ever reaching critical mass) and certainly unique.

The best part of this book may be the inscription I found in my used copy. Some poor sap wrote (among other things): "Behind the fascinating murder story is the notion that we are attracted to people not for their physical attributes or for their deep intellect, but for their 'fragrance' which we perceive unconsciously. Maybe I'm odd, but I find this concept somewhat sexy." And then the girl he gave it to sold the book. Guess she didn't like the way he smelled.

"The Giver" by Lois Lowry

2011-05-26T00:01:00.002-05:00

The kids and I read The Giver as a bedtime story over the past few weeks. My oldest child couldn't stand the slow pace and read ahead, finishing the book weeks ago. I love it when that happens! Though it very rarely does. The only problem with that is, as with Holes by Louis Sachar, sometimes I don't end up finishing the book myself. But I finished this one!

The Giver is the story of eleven-year-old Jonas, who lives in a perfect community pervaded by Sameness. Everyone is equal, there is no pain, each person's job is chosen for them--even family members are put together through a selection process!--and there is no music, no color, and no emotion. Jonas is selected to be the community's Receiver of Memory, and the more he learns, the more he realizes that his way of life is far from flawless; it's more dystopian than utopian.

The story left me with a lot of unanswered questions. We never learn how the community came to be, its location (was it on Earth?), how extensive it was, why it was made, who created the rules, how they controlled the weather, whether Elsewhere really existed. Though I wish the book had explained these things, I must admit the story is full and complete even without further elucidation.

Except for the end of the book, which I want to talk about. I will try to be as un-spoilery as possible, but it's going to be difficult, so you may want to skip this paragraph if you plan to read the book. I won't say exactly what happened at the end, but I will say that it is somewhat ambiguous. I asked my kids what they thought had happened. My oldest took it at face value: Jonas reached his destination. Bookworm Child was ambivalent: maybe Jonas reached Elsewhere, or maybe he had gone in a circle and was back at his own community. Neither of them thought what had crossed my mind, though, which was the story of The Little Match Girl.

"I have just the thing for you!"

2011-05-24T00:06:00.001-05:00

As lovely as it is to have a bookworm for a child, it can be a bit frustrating when said child is both a voracious and a very picky reader. The "I don't know what I want to read" dilemma is a problem I love to solve, except when everything that I suggest is rejected.

Last night at bedtime, when the unending What To Read whine started up again, I was thrilled to be able to tell Bookworm Child, "I have just the thing for you!" I pulled a cute pink book out of the middle of my TBR pile and handed it to her: The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. I could tell by the gleam in her eye that she was immediately optimistic about this one. She ambled obediently off to bed, new treasure in her hands.

Bookworm Child got up before her alarm went off this morning and came to find me, informing me that she was almost finished with her book. My first question: "Did you SLEEP last night?" With a wry grin she assured me that she had. Of course, I was glad she'd enjoyed the book, but that also meant my book selection success was far too short-lived.

I tried for a longer one this time: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I've heard wonderful things about it, though I haven't yet had a chance to read it myself. But no dice. Maybe she'll enjoy it more in a few years.

Meanwhile, BC is busy with the next book in Cabot's series, soon to be followed by #3 and #4. AND I have two other books waiting in the wings for her:

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall. We've all read the first two books in the series. They're sweet and timeless stories, though I think I've always been more enthralled by the covers than by what's inside the book. This new cover is no exception.

And, yes, yet another book I chose because of its cover: Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger. Well, it was a combination of the cover and the ridiculously long subtitle: The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor or The Loosening of M'Lady Luggertuck's Corset. Who could resist? Not me, anyway.

"My Name is Memory" by Ann Brashares

2011-05-23T00:07:00.035-05:00

I'm going to have to be more careful about what I put on my wish list. This book screams
I WANT TO BE TWILIGHT!!
(I can already picture the movie version. Alex Pettyfer will star.) Not only do I dislike books that scream at me--a whisper is much nicer--but Twilight? What a thing to aspire to. Although I suppose it's relatively easy to understand how an author might want to emulate Stephenie Meyer in hopes of a career that follows the same trajectory as hers.

This is the story of Lucy and Daniel and their eternal looooohgve. (Sorry, I gagged on that.) These two have spent centuries of lifetimes in near misses, with Daniel (and his exceptional memory, hence the title) pursuing Lucy (a.k.a. Sophia, and sometimes Constance) through a series of reincarnations. Which, of course, never quite match up well enough for a romance, until they meet in high school in 2004 and finally Lucy isn't married to Daniel's brother, or 80 years older than he is. I guess this is the sort of book people are talking about when they refer to a "paranormal romance." Romance! Why didn't someone warn me?

I should have known this book might not be for me--the author also wrote the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books. But this one was supposed to be for grown-ups! However, a book doesn't become a book for adults just by having one of your characters drink bourbon and say a few rude words. With some not-so-careful editing, this would have been yet another example of the drivel that is being published for teenagers these days.

Especially towards the end, I was ever-more-frequently telling myself THIS IS SO STUPID. And yet . . . I kept reading. I mean, I kind of feel obligated to finish my Book Club books. But I also must admit I had to find out what was going to happen. The story wasn't necessarily compelling, but it was interesting enough. And I literally gasped aloud (I probably even raised my eyebrows) when I figured out why Lucy was so uncomfortable with Daniel after he came back, so I suppose I was invested in the narrative to some extent.

If you plan to read this book, you must be warned that it ends without a resolution, leaving the story wide open for a sequel. Which, as far as I can tell, hasn't been written yet. So if that sort of thing bothers you, step away from the novel.

"Leave Her to Heaven" by Ben Ames Williams

2011-05-19T13:16:00.000-05:00

I first heard about this book from Lesa, who has seen the "creepy suspense film" adaptation from 1945, but hasn't read the book. She asked me to nab a copy for her if I saw it, so . . . I did! And, of course, I read it before sending it to her.

This is the story of an unbelievably possessive and manipulative young woman named Ellen Berent. She sets her sights on author Richard Harland almost as soon as she meets him, contriving to marry him in the space of two weeks. Her destructive jealousy leaves no room for relationships with other people, including Richard's younger brother or Ellen's own adopted sister. The story is suspenseful and steeped in mystery, leading the reader to guess what increasingly cold and calculating steps Ellen will take to keep Richard to herself.

From the beginning, Williams' writing reminded me of Jack London's with its no-frills, straightforward story in an outdoorsy setting (also because it kind of dragged at times); but as the story went on, it made me think of Richard Adams' The Girl in a Swing, only with Americans instead of Brits. And Richard Harland is nowhere near as fey and oblivious as Alan Desland. But Ellen is certainly a mirror image of Käthe (or Karin)--perhaps even more abominable and less plausible.

In all, it was a decent (though certainly not overwhelmingly brilliant) read. I have a feeling the movie may be better than the book.

Hey, want a free book?

2011-05-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hearts and Minds is a campus novel set in a fictional all-female college at Cambridge University. Rosy Thornton has written a story centered on the conflict experienced (and caused) by St Radegund's first male Head of House, giving a glimpse into the inner workings of the college. From student protests to ethical dilemmas regarding donations, Ms Thornton paints a picture of a setting she knows well as a lecturer and Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

I've got a copy of this book that I'd love to give away to YOU. Just leave a comment with your email address and I will choose a random winner on Sunday, May 22. It doesn't matter where you live--anyone is welcome to sign up to win.

If you're feeling extra chatty, you should also tell me about the book that was your most favorite read of the past year.

"84, Charing Cross Road" by Helene Hanff

2011-04-21T00:02:00.030-05:00

This is the charming (and true!) account of the correspondence between an American woman and the staff of a British bookshop, which I heard about here. First published in 1970, it is an epistolary novel that begins in 1949 and spans twenty years.

The majority of the letters focus on the titles of books Helene Hanff (the American) hopes to buy--quite an eclectic selection!--though everything from baseball to royalty is worked in along the way. It may not be the most eventful book I've ever read, but somehow it's still engaging all the way through, managing to draw the reader in easily. And it's really short, so it just flies by.

One of the most interesting things about this book is the difference between the American and the British voice. From the very beginning, Helene writes to Marks & Co with a bold familiarity couched in humor and mild, good-natured castigation, whereas the British writers (most often represented by Frank Doel) are very business-like and proper at the beginning, slowly warming up to Miss Hanff as the book goes on.

In 1973 Hanff published a follow-up memoir entitled The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Have you read it?

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini

2011-04-18T00:14:00.108-05:00

I read Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, in February 2005. (Pretty sharp memory for a literary amnesiac, eh? Well, it helps when I have something to tie it to, like my friend CR . . . have I really not seen her for more than six years??)

For me, The Kite Runner was a lot like the movie Saving Private Ryan: very well done, but I never want to see it again. (I really didn't even want to see it the first time but I was forced to.) Too much horribleness for me. So when I heard about A Thousand Splendid Suns, I wasn't especially interested in reading it. I'd had enough of Hosseini's Afghanistan, no matter how good I heard the book was.

Then it was chosen for book club. Oh joy. (It wasn't my month to pick the book, can you tell?)

As it turns out, though, I'm glad to have read Suns. It wasn't as unpleasant as I'd been expecting. It's the story of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, and the ties between them. Conflict in their personal lives is set against the backdrop of the constant turmoil in their country.

Sure, the story has its share of nastiness and brutality, but you know what the difference was between this book and Hosseini's first one? In The Kite Runner (as with Saving Private Ryan) so much of the cruelty--during the parts that stand out in my memory, anyway--was intentional. People did awful things to other people, and they did those things on purpose.

But in Suns the majority of the awfulness was just part of the situation in Afghanistan. It was cloaked, in a way, by the anonymity of modern war. That's not to say there was no personally-directed viciousness, because there's quite a lot of horrifying Taliban-sanctioned oppression and abuse of women. But there was more of a sense of hope, and of the strength that helped these people through terrible situations. At the core of the book is this truth: "Every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet people find a way to survive, to go on."

I can't help but wonder what the Taliban have against parakeets.

"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel García Márquez

2011-04-13T23:53:00.000-05:00

Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

That quote could apply quite well to Florentino Ariza's love for Fermina Daza, which he keeps alive through constant rebirth for over half a century. Too bad I didn't like Fermina, and I sure didn't care for Florentino. I didn't even enjoy their love story after its first few years. I ended up rather unimpressed by Florentino's persistence and pseudo-fidelity. But there must be some sort of synergy at work, because it's still a really good book.

One major advantage the book has is its writing, which is absolutely beautiful (and I must give kudos to translator Edith Grossman, who did a brilliant job). García Márquez's lush descriptions are incredibly vivid and expressive, and his characters--though often possessing an almost Dickensian grotesqueness--are somehow also intensely lifelike. This book is meant to be savored, based on the writing alone.

Judging by the book's title, I was sure both love and cholera would play a big role in the story, but cholera is only mentioned around the periphery. It's really all about love. It could have been called Love is a Disease like Cholera, though. García Márquez examines a remarkable array of love relationships with an odd sort of realism and honesty, never idealizing any romance for very long.

The story was not quite what I expected (as I expected the chronicle of a heroic and tragic love story that spans decades . . . well, I got the "spans decades" part right, anyway) but what I discovered instead is well able to stand on its own merit.

"The New York Trilogy" by Paul Auster

2011-04-02T19:26:00.000-05:00

Between the siren song of my garden during this beautiful spring weather, and unexpectedly finding the wind knocked out of me more than once during the time I was reading it, I fear I've made the mistake of waiting too long to post about Paul Auster's New York Trilogy. If my thoughts were chaotic and disorganized upon completing the book, my literary amnesia has done nothing towards unifying them in the space of a week. It doesn't help that the stories have already begun to fade from my memory.

While my procrastination might be unfortunate in any case, it's quite a shame with this specific book, because it was AMAZING. I do remember that much.

This trilogy contains three novellas, each set in New York City. (Would you ever have guessed?) The stories are not obviously related in the sense of belonging together as a series, but there are tenuous links between the characters from one story to the next, and the similarities in themes are conspicuous.

In each story Auster gives us a sense of a writer who is isolated from those surrounding him, living as a quiet spectator rather than a participant. All three novellas are mysterious, but they can't be considered mysteries in the traditional sense. As Auster himself puts it, “Mystery novels give answers; my work is about asking questions.” Though each of the three stories could stand alone, they are well-matched in theme with a main character in the midst of an investigation, writing down all of his observations as his obsession with his subject grows. Auster examines solitude and the introspection it invites, dissolution of identity, and descent into madness.

This book is definitely a keeper. I certainly will want to re-read it some day. You'll find it lacking if you're a reader who needs all the answers, but for me it was an entirely satisfying read. And if you've read and loved this trilogy, you should really read The Amnesiac. It's a similarly mysterious story with more questions than answers, but it's also more fully developed than these three novellas of Auster's, and its comparably ambiguous ending is carried off more effectively.

Words of the Day

2011-03-28T00:05:00.037-05:00

Dictionary Day! It's back by popular demand. (Not really, but I've had some words lying around waiting for me to look them up and I figured now was as good a time as any.) Well, leave it to Edith Wharton to come up with another handful of words I don't know. The first three are all from Madame de Treymes:

1. Escutcheon. "There must be no scandal, no retentissement, nothing which her boy, necessarily brought up in the French tradition of scrupulously preserved appearances, could afterward regard as the faintest blur on his much-quartered escutcheon." It kind of makes me think of "listen" in Spanish, but that doesn't make sense. Maybe it means reputation. Webster says: A defined area on which armorial bearings are displayed and which usually consists of a shield. Um, I was wrong. No points.

2. Propinquity. "Propinquity had not been lacking: he had known Miss Frisbee since his college days." Opportunity? Later, the same word is used again: "Mr. Boykin, at this point, advanced across the wide expanse of Aubusson on which his wife and Durham were islanded in a state of propinquity without privacy." That sounds more like proximity. Webster says: Nearness of blood: kinship; nearness in place or time: proximity. One great big fat shiny point for me!

3. Redoubtable. "Durham identified the slender dark lady loitering negligently in the background, and introduced in a comprehensive murmur to the American group, as the redoubtable sister-in-law to whom he had declared himself ready to throw down his challenge. There was nothing very redoubtable about Madame de Treymes, except perhaps the kindly yet critical observation which she bestowed on her sister-in-law's visitors." Formidable? Webster says: Causing fear or alarm: formidable. Would you look at that. Two in a row!

These last two are from Lucrezia Borgia:

4. Inimical. "'It does not seem to me to be apt to tell him absolutely that we do not wish it: because such a hostile response would make him most inimical towards us . . . '" At first I was thinking "inimitable" (matchless), but this is different. It must mean something similar to hostile. Webster says: Being adverse often by reason of hostility or malevolence. I'm on a roll! That makes three.

5. Tergiversation "But the time for tergiversation was over: by early July, Ercole had lain down his arms and accepted his--and Alfonso's--fate." OK, is it just me or does that word sound totally made up? By context, I think it's like rebellion. Webster says: Evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement; equivocation; desertion of a cause, party, or faith. Hm, more subtle than outright rebellion. I would normally try to sneak a fraction of a point here but I already have three good ones and that's enough for today.

"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman

2011-03-24T00:07:00.083-05:00

Neil Gaiman is sick and twisted and I love it.

I've wanted to read this book ever since I watched the flippin' WEIRD Tim Burton-esque movie with my kids. I finally ordered a copy of the book last week. Bookworm Child read it as soon as it arrived, and since it passed her test (and wasn't about rainbows and unicorns) I thought it might be pretty good.

Coraline Jones is the only child of less-than-doting parents. Her mom and dad love her, but they're always so busy that they mostly just ignore her. In fact, no one around Coraline pays her much attention. Her neighbors can't even get her name right, no matter how many times she corrects them.

Left to her own devices, Coraline spends most of the damp and dreary summer exploring in and around the old house they've moved into. Her neighbors are a bit strange, but they're nothing compared to what Coraline finds at the end of a cold and musty hallway: her Other Mother, who wants Coraline to stay with her forever, if only she can sew big shiny black buttons in place of Coraline's eyes.

Just like the other Gaiman book I read, this one is brimful of bizarre atmosphere. I mean, it didn't creep me out or give my seven-year-old nightmares, but some weird stuff goes on, and it's great. The story is very short and simply told--Gaiman could have gone into much more detail and not lost my approval--but the way it's written is perfect for kids. Some kids, anyway. You may want to check it out first, depending on your own child's sensitivity to weirdness.

It's funny--I got the exact same thing from my husband and my son: "Why are you reading that book? We have the movie." Well, you know how it is. Sometimes you're just curious about the source. Or sometimes you'd just prefer to read. Bookworm Child resolutely decided that the book was better than the movie. Either way, it's a fun and unique story. But, having experienced both renderings, I can affirm they've done an excellent job with the movie. They retained the perfect mood, didn't leave out any good bits, and really added to the story with the stunning visuals.

One of these days I'll get around to reading one of Gaiman's books for grown-ups. Which one should I start with?

"Falling Angels" by Tracy Chevalier

2011-03-21T00:03:00.064-05:00

Eight months, eight book club meetings, eight books. We finally found one that we all liked! Everything about this one was great--the writing, the story, the characters (even the ones I didn't like very much).

I loved Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring (and, surprisingly, the movie was really good too). Renae started reading Falling Angels before I picked it up, and I was so excited when she said she got hooked really quickly. Although maybe I was just hearing what I wanted to hear, because what Renae had actually said was, "The beginning certainly grabbed my attention--shocking!!" But, you know, shocking can be good too. In books, anyway.

This is the story of two English families making their way into the freshly-hatched Edwardian era in London. At first, the only things the Coleman and Waterhouse families have in common are their adjacent plots in the cemetery (which is never named but was surely modeled after Highgate). Over time, the links between the two families grow more numerous and less tenuous, to the delight of certain family members and the chagrin of others.

About halfway through the story, women's suffrage became a strong theme (which was, oddly, dropped before the end of the book--I thought at least Chevalier might have included a little bit of history in an Afterword to wrap up that part of the plot . . . I guess she figured I ought to know already). Since you won't get it from the book, here's a refresher course for you: In 1918 (eight years after the end of Falling Angels) full voting rights were given to British women aged 30 and above; ten years later, this was extended to women aged 21 and up. This timeline is closely mirrored in the US, as American women were given the vote with the 19th amendment in 1920.

Anyway, I guess I can understand why Chevalier didn't emphasize suffrage more evenly throughout the book. Relating the history of the suffragettes really wasn't the purpose of the story; the cause was merely an outlet for Kitty Coleman's passion and zeal.

Do yourself a favor: if you haven't read anything by Tracy Chevalier yet, pick up something of hers soon. Yeah, I've only read two of her books, but they were two really REALLY good books. Surely that's not just a fluke.

"The Girl in a Swing" by Richard Adams

2011-03-17T00:05:00.002-05:00

You think you don't know Richard Adams, but YOU DO. You've read Watership Down, right? And that was by . . . (I'll wait for it) . . . yes! Richard Adams. See, I knew you knew him. If the fact that he was not a one-hit wonder is news to you, don't feel so bad; I didn't know it either, until Ben told me.

Alan Desland lives a perfectly satisfactory life as a mildly successful ceramics dealer in a quiet English town. His passion--if it can be called that--is for his lovely, fragile figurines and tea sets. What he doesn't realize is that what he's always accepted as happiness is actually equivalent to being chained to the wall in Plato's cave.

Alan's eyes are simultaneously opened and blinded on the day he is released from his cave: the day in Copenhagen when he meets a young German woman named Käthe (or maybe Karin, depending on when your copy of the book was published). She's captivating and alluring and is the most beautiful woman Alan has ever seen. And, what do you know? She actually falls for him, too.

But this is not a sweet, happy, fun love story. (And a good thing, too, or I probably would have hated it.) There's a dark, eerie undercurrent of secrets that slowly becomes clear to the reader, who then watches this realization dawn on Alan through a series of creepy psychic manifestations.

I guessed Käthe's secret long before I think I was supposed to--certainly well before Alan figured it out--but that didn't ruin the story for me at all. Even though, as Elvis put it, "the imagery and omens became almost oppressively obvious" as the story went on, the climactic scene where Alan's fears are confirmed was still spine-chilling enough for me even though it wasn't a surprise. This is a book that definitely reached "critical mass", and that's always welcome.

Between Watership Down and The Girl in a Swing, Richard Adams is now two for two with me. I'm ready to put another of his books on my bloated TBR list, and Ben recommends The Plague Dogs next. There was also a film adaptation of The Girl in 1988, which I probably won't be watching because it's not available through netflix. Have you seen it, or have you read any other books by Adams?

"What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy" by Gregory Maguire

2011-03-14T00:32:00.000-05:00

My experience with Gregory Maguire has been somewhat hit-or-miss, but as it's been more hit than miss, I was happy to give What-the-Dickens a try when Lydia told me the Kindle version was selling for cheap.

I must say this story couldn't have been more different from the other tooth fairy book I read. It's also quite a departure for Maguire (judging by the three of his that I'm familiar with, anyway). It's a fairy tale without any Grimm elements and, really, a very mild story throughout.

It begins with shades of The Island at the End of the World. A small family group is isolated by an apocalyptic storm, and its effects are slowly revealed throughout the book. But the resemblance doesn't go any further than that.

The tooth fairy bit is worked in as a tale told by Gage, the adult in charge, to keep the minds of the children off of the frightening storm. The story he tells is imaginative, and it leaves the reader with a nice little "could it be true?" feeling. But if you know Maguire and you're looking for the weird, the wild, or the nasty, you won't find it here.

For what it is, it's a sweet little story. I bet Bookworm Child would love it.

"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

2011-03-10T00:09:00.026-06:00

"I am haunted by humans."
--Death

I've been curious about this book for quite some time. I first noticed it in the book section at Target. I remember I picked it up to glance through it after the title caught my eye, but I don't remember why I decided against buying it at that point; probably because the blurb mentioned World War II. (It's a war book! Get out the garlic and the crucifix!) But I heard such good things about it from other bloggers. When I saw a copy in my local library last week, that sealed the deal. It was fate.

Death tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young German girl living with foster parents on Himmel Street in Molching. At the age of ten, Liesel should know how to read, but she doesn't. Even so, books are already a treasure to her. It's as if she knows the role they will play in her future. So she steals books to add to her meager collection any time the opportunity presents itself.

During her years on Himmel Street, so many of Liesel's experiences are tainted by the war going on around her. Not surprisingly, her story has its share of sorrow. It's not a manipulative tearjerker, but even the heartless will find their eyes welling up at least once while reading this book. (I should know.) As Liesel slowly learns to read her cherished books, she reaps the understanding that words are powerful. Words can hurt and words can heal.

Speaking of words, Zusak had Death describing things in intriguing ways. He mixed up his senses. Things he saw had a scent, things he heard had a texture. I always like to come across fresh combinations of words, and these seemed fitting for a character who isn't human but spends quite a bit of time observing us.

This was another book that raised the question: is it YA or not? (It was first published in Australia for adults, but it has been marketed to young adults here in the US.) The format and the tone, to me, say it's YA. Not to mention that the main characters are young teenagers. But labeling this book as YA does not mean it's of lower quality, or that it softens the horrible reality of life in Nazi Germany. Anyway, I'm beginning to suspect some of the best books aren't written with the intention of being either YA or adult. Instead, they blur the line between the two categories, becoming a book that is both appropriate for younger readers and absorbing for adults.

"The Red and the Black" by Stendhal

2011-03-07T00:13:00.103-06:00

So, Stendhal. A one-named personage bears the expectation that he's sufficiently famous to be recognized by that single name, yet I'd never heard of him before. (I promise I'm really not completely uneducated, even though I may give that impression with depressing regularity.) I figured he must fall somewhere between Jesus and Flea.

In case this is the first you've heard of Stendhal also, here's a little bit about him. Stendhal was a Frenchman whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle. He was born in 1783, just a few years before the French Revolution began. He did most of his writing, including The Charterhouse of Parma, after the Napoleonic era but before he stroked out and died on a Paris street in 1842.

Stendhal's works were renowned for their psychological insight. In fact, though I didn't even notice this as I read but I recognized it when it was pointed out in the Afterword, Stendhal spent very little time describing his characters' outward appearances, instead focusing on their thoughts and motives. He reminded me of Henry James by seamlessly and believeably allowing me into his characters' minds.

I didn't automatically know what the colors in the title referred to, nor am I sure I would have figured it out from the text, but luckily the blurb on the back of the book spelled it out for me: "the red" is the military and "the black" is the clergy. Unfortunately the same blurb also revealed what I consider a major spoiler, as it referred to something that didn't occur until about 50 pages from the end of the book. (See how nice I am, that I'm not telling you what that spoiler is?) The spoiler was almost forgivable, as it was only mentioned in relation to Stendhal's inspiration for the story, but that part of the plot would have had a much greater impact on me if I hadn't been expecting it. Or . . . maybe not. The copy Elvis read didn't have that spoiler, and to him it seemed as if that part of the book came out of nowhere.

The Red and the Black is the story of cold-hearted, calculating young Julien Sorel and his ambitions. He is pulled in two directions. He idolizes Napoleon but feels he has to hide that admiration, probably because it was frowned upon in Restoration France as disloyal to the king; and, anyway, the time for military glory seems to have passed. He is drawn to the church as a career, even though it is nearly meaningless to him as anything beyond a source of money and social status. But his ambivalence is pretty well derailed when he discovers sex. The book is divided into two parts, each dealing with one of his two all-consuming affairs.

Although Stendhal does provide a clear window into his characters' minds, he leaves it to his readers to decide how we feel about them. He once wrote that "a novel is like a bow; the violin casing that renders the sound is the reader." Stendhal relates the thoughts and emotions of his characters, but he does little to influence the way the reader judges them. Indeed, Elvis and I had quite different feelings about Julien: I thought he was despicable, and Elvis thought he was just young and confused. Maybe we were both right.

"The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember" by Fred Rogers

2011-03-03T00:02:00.004-06:00

This is one of the books I picked up at Goodwill last month. It's a posthumous collection of quotes by Fred Rogers (who, as any true American no doubt knows, was the Mister Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on PBS) mixed in with a few aphorisms he gathered from other sources. The book is a lovely tribute to a kind and good-hearted man.

Of course, at times some of the quotes tend towards the sappy. Fred's middle name wasn't "McFeely" for nothing. (I'm not kidding. That really was his middle name. At least it was for a good reason--remember Mr. McFeely on the show? He was named after Mister Rogers' grandfather.) But every page, even when overly sentimental, has a thoughtful and admirable truth.

Here's one of my favorites. "Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing." I could have written that myself, if I had a habit of making up pithy sayings. I love to be alone, and it seems not many people understand that. Another good one, which puts into words something I really hope to instill in my kids: "I believe it's a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have."

Though each page was full of simple wisdom, I didn't always completely agree with every quote. When Mister Rogers said, "It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life," the first thing that came to my mind was that it helps me more to listen to loud music. But then that mainly applies to my "difficult thing" of cleaning the house. I've come to find that sort of task is made much easier with a soundtrack. Onerous chores are more palatable if I can do them while "wiggling my jiggly old butt." (Courtesy of my youngest. Don't I have great kids?)

Enough about my butt, the jiggliness of which I will neither confirm nor deny. The book gives a good feel for what kind of man Fred Rogers was, especially with the foreword by his wife Joanne and the short bio at the end, but it just scratches the surface. I'm left wanting to read a biography of Fred Rogers. Do you know of a good one?

Won't you be my neighbor?

In which I have more to discuss about Narnia

2011-02-28T00:13:00.009-06:00

Since we're on the subject, there are Things You Must Know about Narnia and the Chronicles thereof.

In what order should the books be read?

I grew up reading the books in order of publication (making The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the first book of the series rather than The Magician's Nephew, even though Nephew is first chronologically). Setting aside habit and precedent and all that sort of thing, there's something so wonderful in reading about the very beginning of Narnia (in Nephew) after it has already become a familiar place. I will always want to read Lion first, but I won't harp on anyone reading the books in chronological order. The important thing is to JUST READ THEM!

Which of the seven books is my favorite?

I love each one of the Narnia books, but I don't love them all equally. I have four favorites and three not-so-favorites. The best: Lion, The Horse and His Boy, The Silver Chair, and Nephew. But don't tell the other three I said so.

Would I enjoy the books as much if I hadn't read and loved them as a child?

My (grown-up) friend BR borrowed the series from me a few years back. She enjoyed them, but I don't think she loved them. She very tactfully said she wished she'd read them as a child. I think that means the books didn't hold the same magic for her as they do for me. But I know there are a few of you who have imminent plans to read these books for the first time, and I'm eager to hear what you think! Only . . . if you don't love them, maybe you shouldn't tell me.

What about The Movies?

After reading the books so many times, I have very vivid pictures in my mind of exactly how everything looks. With each re-read, I go back to the exact same place in my imagination. I was worried that watching the movie adaptations would ruin that for me . . . but I couldn't help but do it anyway. Oh, the BBC editions are a little bit horrible, but the Hollywood versions are so beautiful that I don't mind very much when the movie scenery rousts the familiar old images from my brain. Hollywood has made a *lot* of changes to the stories, but most of them have actually been good and exciting changes that have added to the experience. I HEART THEM AND I HOPE THEY MAKE ALL SEVEN BOOKS INTO MOVIES. I will die a little bit inside if they don't.

Guess what? I just finished writing my 200th blog post.

Illustrations by Pauline Baynes. She's my hero.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" by C. S. Lewis

2011-02-24T00:06:00.006-06:00

Cover art on the hardback edition.
Yes, I have two full sets. Is that a problem?

The Chronicles of Narnia have been beloved favorites of mine for so many years. I was first introduced to the series when I received a set for my ninth birthday. (Ah, and this time the books were a gift from my parents, so there are no bad memories of the giver attached.) Since then I have read each of the seven books more times than I can count, and it wasn't long before every re-read became as familiar, delightful and comforting as snuggling under a warm blanket on a rainy day.

There is something so magical about Narnia. Even more than enchantments and talking animals and dragons and adventures, I think what appeals to me most is the idea that a whole new world could be lurking in my closet. (I never had a wardrobe, and oh, I wish I had. It wouldn't even hurt my feelings much if it happened to be full of furs.) But just imagine what it must have been like for the four Pevensie children to discover a doorway into Narnia. I would have given anything to be Lucy! Or Jill. Or Aravis. Or Polly. Heck, I would have even done a stint as Eustace if it had resulted in a voyage on the Dawn Treader.

Now that you know how fond I am of Narnia, I'm sure you can picture my elation when Bookworm Child requested this series for bedtime reading. I would put these books on Bedtime Story Endless Loop if my kids could stand it. I had read the series to them before, but they were much smaller then, and I don't think they really remember it.

My original book. It's been well-loved.

Unfortunately, my elation soon turned to disappointment when Bookworm Child declared the story boring and decided not to listen. Boring! I don't understand. How could she? (I'm beginning to suspect she's a changeling.) The other two did hang around to listen, but I think this was mainly just because the youngest likes to cuddle and the oldest likes any excuse to stay up later.

All I can say about this is: what is wrong with my kids?? (I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.) You shouldn't be surprised, though, to hear I just kept right on reading. I think I was mainly reading for me. If all three kids had wandered off I probably would have continued reading it aloud to myself.

I walk a fine line in introducing all of these marvelous childhood stories to my children (not just the Narnia books, but others as well). On one hand, I want to make sure my kids have a chance to read (or at least hear) all of my old favorites. On the other hand, I wonder if I should allow them to discover these wonderful books on their own. What if Stacia hadn't known anything about Narnia until her ninth birthday, and then had read the stories to herself? If her experience had been more like mine, would she have loved the series like I do? As it is, I'm afraid she never will truly care for Narnia.

(*sheds a tear*)

I don't know if I can convince my kids that we need to read the rest of the series at bedtime. I'm not above bribing them. But I should probably draw the line at breaking out the duct tape.

"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

2011-02-21T00:43:00.173-06:00

"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

This was a re-read for me, but it's been a sufficiently long time (which, with my sieve-like brain, could mean mere weeks, but in this case it's been at least ten years) so that I couldn't remember much about Great Expectations other than the vague notion that I really enjoyed reading it.

I remembered that there was Pip, and there was Estella, and there was Miss Havisham who was a little bit gross and a lot crazy. And there were varying incarnations of unrequited love and impressive coldheartedness. I wasn't sure how many of my shadowy memories of the story came from the modernized 1998 movie and how much I actually remembered from the book.

As it turns out, I didn't remember much. The gist of the book was familiar (Pip, raised in a lowly blacksmith's home, admires the rich and snooty until, unexpectedly, he is given the opportunity to become rich and snooty himself, and he does a bang-up job of it). But so much of it took me by surprise. Which was really kind of nice, because it's much easier for mysterious and suspenseful plot twists to be mysterious and suspenseful if I'm not sure where they're going.

One thing I certainly didn't remember was how funny this book is! Not in the way that Anna Karenina occasionally made me laugh when I wasn't sure I should. No, Dickens's tone is surprisingly (and intentionally) quite droll. And Dickens managed to hit Pip's voice just perfectly. It was not at all pompous, prolix or pontifical, the way Dickens seems in my mind whenever I'm not reading him. Pip is hopeful and optimistic, and even when he was painfully ashamed of his roots (or, more importantly, of the loving people he left behind), I still didn't hate him.

Here's something interesting we discovered at book club: we didn't all interpret the ending in the same way. Even more interesting is a fact I unearthed today: did you know there are TWO DIFFERENT ENDINGS to Great Expectations? (Don't follow that link unless you've already read the book, or if you just happen to love spoilers.) It's like Choose Your Own Adventure! I need to ask Lydia if her book had the original ending, which would make our differing interpretations completely understandable. At any rate, I certainly prefer the ending in my copy of the book.

Another certainty: Great Expectations is SUCH a good story. It was definitely worthy of a re-read. AND I would read it again in the future. Dickens deserves to be named the Supreme Mugwump of Victorian Lit, even if I still love Henry James more.

I've got a couple of surplus tidbits for you. First, historical perspective: Great Expectations was initially published in serial form, with the first installment appearing in December 1860 and the final installment in August 1861. These dates bracket the start of America's Civil War, which officially began in April 1861.

Detail of Goya's The Old Ones:
Miss Havisham?

Second, don't you think Miss Havisham could have been modeled after this grotesque old woman?

Hunting and Gathering

2011-02-17T00:08:00.002-06:00

I took a page out of Lesa's book (I'm so corny, how can you stand it?) and went Goodwill hunting today. Wait, I mean yesterday. I didn't fare quite as well as she did (I paid nearly twice as much for the same number of books) but since we're talking $8 for seven books, I'd say I still had a pretty good haul! I might have been able to find free Kindle versions for some of these, but please bear in mind I'm trying to ignore that possibility.

From top to bottom, here are the seven:

1. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I think this is a book that my 8th grade class read without me. (My parents so conveniently managed to ban me from half my life.) It doesn't sound especially fun, but there must be something interesting about it if my parents wouldn't let me read it.

2. The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers. Because I don't believe all of the awful rumors about him, and I have fond memories of his neighborhood.

3. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This one is kind of like The Jungle (except for the part about my parents): not fun, but good for me.

4. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. One from my wish list! I hadn't realized what a fatty it is . . .

5. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. I watched the first half of this movie at the end of a three-and-a-half-movie airplane flight. (I was on my way home and I'd already used up all of the books I'd brought with me.) The movie looked pretty intriguing. I'm not sure why I've never tried to watch the rest of it.

6. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Some (like Brenna) say this book is amazing, and others (like Leah) say it's a little tedious, but for a dollar I can afford to decide for myself. Not surprisingly, I'm a little bit afraid to read it (what if I agree with Leah?) but when I conquer my fear it will be waiting for me.

7. The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. Another wish-lister! I may read this to my kids, once I finish one or two of the three books we have going currently. The cover of the copy I bought isn't quite as charming as the one pictured here, but I hope the inside is.

If I had to pick my next read from this stack, I would probably start with #5. But between book club books and my mental (in more ways than one) list of "I want to read that next" books, it's just going to have to get in line and wait its turn. If it were British it would know how to queue, but as it is I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Which of these have you read? Which did you love? If you feel I should move one of these right up to the teetering tippy-top of my TBR pile, persuade away.

"Daddy-Long-Legs" by Jean Webster

2011-02-14T00:37:00.087-06:00

Daddy-Long-Legs, first published in 1912, is the pleasant little story of an orphan named Jerusha Abbott. At the age of seventeen, Jerusha (who later renames herself Judy, since that's the sort of name which belongs to a girl "who romps her way through life without any cares," which she would very much like to pretend she is) is given a rare bit of good fortune when she is informed that a mysterious benefactor has offered to pay her way through college.

The only requirement is that she must write regular letters to the man (to whom she gives the nickname Daddy-Long-Legs), though she is not to know his real name, and he never writes back to her. After a short chapter at the beginning which introduces the situation, the entire book is in the form of Judy's letters to the enigmatic Daddy-Long-Legs (with some crazy drawings thrown in).

Judy has a very engaging personality that shines brilliantly through her correspondence. In fact, her disposition is so bright and charming that she seems less like a college girl and more like a twelve-year-old. She's certainly not an always-optimistic Polyanna, but she really seems quite childish, albeit in a funny and endearing way. Here's a great example:

"Speaking of classics, have you ever read Hamlet? If you haven't, do it right off. It's perfectly corking. I've been hearing about Shakespeare all my life, but I had no idea he really wrote so well; I always suspected him of going largely on his reputation."

Webster should have had Judy going away to boarding school instead of college. Even so, and despite being overly sentimental at times, this is such a nice little story.

The ending was so perfectly, exactly what I wanted that I nearly cried. (Let's be clear, though: notice I said nearly. Which doesn't really count.) It didn't even bother me that I guessed what there was to be guessed long before it was revealed. I was just so happy that that the ending was just right.

There's a sequel! It's called Dear Enemy. And guess what? Amazon has a free kindle version of it. I know better than to think I'll be diving into it right away, but it's nice to have it waiting for me until I'm ready.

"Exit the Actress" by Priya Parmar

2011-02-10T00:15:00.077-06:00

I've been reading The Plum Bean Project for nearly a year now. If you've ever had the chance to check it out, you know that Priya has a truly lovely writing style. I once compared it to cheesecake (delicious: rich, filling and sweet) but I think that's the wrong type of dessert. I love cheesecake, but it's so heavy. Priya's writing is much more lighthearted. Maybe like a good french silk pie with a wonderfully tender crust.

Of course I have been eager to read her debut novel, Exit the Actress, ever since I first heard about it; it was released last week, so I've finally had that opportunity. Priya has written the story of 17th century English stage actress Nell Gwyn, chronicling her rise from humble beginnings to the bed of King Charles II. The book is written in a familiar, gossipy manner, entirely composed of diary entries and various forms of correspondence.

Despite my anticipation, as I first began to read I found myself thinking that I prefer a book with bigger balls. The most recent historical fiction I read was much more boldly written and I loved it for that. During the first 80 cautious and inoffensive pages of Exit the Actress I was disgruntled and wanted a bit more oomph, but then I settled in and began to really enjoy it. The writing throughout the entire book was just as beautiful as I had come to expect from Priya, and the story gives a charming glimpse into Restoration London. Reading her wikipedia entry gives me the idea that Nell was much more bawdy and indecorous than the delightful and sprightly girl portrayed in Exit the Actress, but Priya's version makes for a much sweeter love story between Nell and the king.

If you are a fan of historical fiction I bet you can't help but love Exit the Actress. Girls only, though, I think. I'm already looking forward to Priya's next book which will take us back to London, this time during World War I.

"The Neverending Story" by Michael Ende

2011-02-07T01:01:00.089-06:00

I finally finished reading The Neverending Story to the kids last week. This book is not meant to be read a few pages at a time. When read in such small chunks it does seem endless, and not in a good way.

Although it took us far too long to read, the book has an interesting ingredient which is probably the fond dream of many readers: a boy who is reading a book becomes a part of the story. Bastian Balthazar Bux has hidden himself away from the world with a stolen book whose title is none other than The Neverending Story. As he reads about the hero Atreyu riding the white luckdragon Falkor in a desperate attempt to save Fantastica from The Nothing that is devouring the country, Bastian comes across oblique references to himself that slowly become more direct and more frequent until he suddenly finds he has left our own world and is a part of the story in Fantastica.

I like this description of the story as "Arabian Nights meets Aesop's Fables meets Grimm's Fairy Tales." The Neverending Story has the same feeling of fantasy and wonder threaded through with morality tales that you'd imagine from such a mix. Also, though it is not a series of stories like those three collections, it does seem to lack cohesion, especially in the second half of the book as Bastian rebuilds Fantastica on wishes and whims.

Most people who love this book refer to the nostalgia it evokes, since they read it as a child. I, too, read it when I was a child. My copy was given to me for my 12th birthday. (Of course I never would have remembered that, but I have proof.) Unfortunately, it was given to me by someone I'd rather forget, so I don't have quite the same feeling of sweet reminiscence as you may have when you reread The Neverending Story.

See? Proof.

Notice how He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wrote that "this story is not just for reading it through, but also for thinking about." I was kind of insulted by that, even at age twelve. Just because I didn't want to tell him my thoughts on books didn't mean I wasn't thinking about the books I read. Of course, I suppose I can understand how he came to that conclusion.

Even worse, Blur called me a rat. Apparently, to Germans, the term "reading rat" is as innocuous as "bookworm" is to us Americans (and really, cultural context aside, I'd say it's a toss-up as to whether I'd rather be called a worm or a rat). I bet if anyone else had dubbed me The Reading Rat I would have worn the badge with pride in the knowledge that it fit me well. Though I might have preferred a nickname like The Reading Mouse, even if that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

I can't help but wonder how much more I might have liked The Neverending Story if it had been given to me by someone I cared for and remember with affection. It's similar to disliking a name because it reminds you of an awful person: not the name's fault, but undeniable all the same. Do you have any books where your own personal experience, unrelated to the story itself, left you with a less-than-good feeling about it?

"The 39 Steps" by John Buchan

2011-02-03T00:51:00.011-06:00

Chalk this up as another one where I've seen the movie but had no idea it started as a book. It's also one whose movie adaptation bears little resemblance to the original story. (Actually, it has several movie adaptations, but the one I've seen is Hitchcock's 1935 version.)

I found myself spending a day away from home with lots of waiting and I FORGOT MY BOOK. I can't stand doing nothing when I could be reading, so I had to feed my addiction and make a quick trip to Books-A-Million. It was a toss-up between looking for something that was already on my TBR and getting something cheap.

Cheap won. B-A-M has a set of Reject Carts out front with books selling (or not) for between $1 and $3. Though there's usually nothing good to be found there, I can't help but look every time. And this time I found a winner! It's a nice slim book--the perfect size to wedge between the others I was already reading but hadn't brought with me. I recognized the title and knew the story (or so I thought) so I was pretty sure the book wouldn't suck. I LOVE the cover. AND it only cost two dollars. I figured I couldn't go wrong.

I haven't read many spy novels, and those I have read were more contemporary, but this was a nice little old-fashioned adventure story. Know what it reminded me of? The Hardy Boys for grownups. (That was not intended as an insult, in case you thought it sounded like one.) Richard Hannay is Frank and Joe rolled into one, with keen skills of observation and a knack for ingenuity, finding himself in the most treacherous scrapes and always narrowly escaping through the use of his sharp intellect.

As the book starts, Hannay is finding life in London dreadfully dull. He's decided to give England one more day to get exciting; if it continues to disappoint him, he'll head back to South Africa where he'd already spent a number of years. Of course that very night the excitement begins. One of his neighbors turns out to be a spy who ends up staying with Hannay for a few days. He's hiding from the evil Germans who are chasing him because he knows about the plot to assassinate the Greek premier, Karolides, which is expected to precipitate a war. (I, in my limited knowledge of history, decided Karolides must have been the literary version of Archduke Ferdinand. The book was first published--and takes place--in 1915, when Franz's death of the previous year was still fresh news.) Needless to say, Hannay decides to stick around a while. He becomes embroiled in the chaos and loves every minute of it.

Differences between the book and the movie are legion. The one that surprised me the most was the absence of any character in the book remotely like Mr. Memory. This, of course, means that the "39 steps" of the title are something entirely different in the original story. The movie also spiced things up a bit by throwing in a couple of major female characters (but don't forget we're talking 1935 here, so it was more like paprika than habanero). I don't think I really had a preference between the two stories; it was actually nice to find they were different. The book was more suspenseful that way, since I was expecting one thing and getting another.

Did you know this was a book? Have you read it, or seen any of the movie adaptations?

"Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis

2011-01-31T01:21:00.000-06:00

I think something is wrong with me. Here is a book that won several awards and is listed as one of "500 of the best books you'll ever read." It was given 9 1/2 caterpillars and I was promised I would luuuuuv eet. A quick google blog search reveals that others have described it as "wonderful" and "beloved" and "unique."

But . . . but . . . this book is just such a mess. There's so much padding that could have been cut out. Too many of the characters are one-dimensional and have a ridiculously one-track mind. (No, not that track. This book doesn't have dirty bits.) Some of the characters were mere placeholders, talked about but never actually present, and left as loose threads.

I could go on. In fact, I think I will. Moments that should have been exciting or suspenseful are just annoyingly frustrating due to contrived delays or obstacles. The "transcripts" between the chapters are insulting in their recap of important details from the preceding chapter, as if I might have overlooked them if I only read them once. Small things are mentioned repeatedly (a shopping bag full of Christmas gifts, an umbrella strap, gobstoppers, a brass-bound casket), so that I was sure there must be some significance attached to each, but . . . there wasn't.

At least the story was interesting (although I had my own ideas that would have made it so much better. A little bit of time travel paradox does much towards blowing the mind.) Here's the premise. It's the year 2054 at Oxford University, when history can be studied in the best way possible: by traveling back in time to experience it first-hand.

Kivrin Engle is well prepared for her trip to 1320. She has learned all of the practical skills needed in the Middle Ages and is vaccinated against any number of medieval diseases. The "drop" appears to go well, and as far as anyone knows, Kivrin has made it to where she'd planned to go . . . until the tech says, "Something's wrong," and then faints on his computer keyboard. And proceeds to spend the next 400 pages either delirious or unconscious--in any case, unable to tell anyone what went wrong. (Yeah, that's one of those contrived delays or obstacles I mentioned earlier). Much worry and many deaths ensue.

In spite of all my aggravation, I wouldn't say I *hated* the book. I really didn't even dislike it strongly. I never had to force myself to read it. It wasn't boring. It wasn't so horribly poorly written that I couldn't stand it. But . . . it was a mess. And it definitely wasn't one of the 500 best books I've ever read.

I did learn something interesting as a result of this book. It sounds like a bit of history I should have already known. The title of the book, and more specifically the name Kivrin gave to her record of the events she experienced, came from a property survey of England and Wales conducted in 1085 for William the Conqueror. The record of that survey was called the Domesday Book in reference to the Day of Judgment "because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgment, are unalterable."

What about you? Have you read Willis's Doomsday Book, and did you love it? Am I the only person in the world who was not impressed?

Presenting Samuel Black . . . And don't miss the giveaway!

2011-01-29T07:47:00.059-06:00

Tomorrow is the last day to sign up to win a copy of The Ground is Burning by Samuel Black. Don't miss out! In the meantime, here's your chance to "meet" the author.

Samuel Black is a debut historical fiction novelist who was born in London and raised in France. In The Ground is Burning, set in Renaissance Italy, Black weaves a gripping story out of the intertwining lives of Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci. I'm proud to announce that I've scored an interview with the author, so sit back and enjoy while I pick Mr. Black's brain.

Who wouldn't want to be this
scruffy-looking nerf-herder?

First, let's get to know you a little bit better. If you were a character in Star Wars, who would you be and why?

Han Solo, because he gets to be a hero without acting like a choirboy. And he gets Princess Leia, of course.

OK, I'll ignore the fact that you've just given the most common and un-original answer to that question, because I know you've written an uncommonly original book. What initially sparked your interest and led you to write The Ground is Burning?

Leonardo da Vinci:
The Original Renaissance Man

I was reading a biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Charles Nicholl. At the time I’d begun writing a different novel, but I was struggling with it. I was reading about Leonardo purely out of curiosity, but then I came upon a short chapter that described a little-known moment in the artist’s life when he shared a series of castles with, among others, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia. I remember being astounded by this – I hadn’t even known the three men were contemporaries. Better still, the story had a classic narrative arc, ending in two bloody climaxes on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. It even had a beautiful young noblewoman, who’d been kidnapped by Borgia. It was just like a novel! To my amazement, however, I discovered that nobody had written a novel on this subject. So I decided to do it myself. I gave up on the other novel I was writing that very day, and began this one instead.

You enjoy reading. Is your choice of reading material reflected in what you've written?

Yes and no. I do love some historical fiction – Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety is one of my favourite novels of any kind – but a lot of it, as with most genres, is fairly clichéd and dull. So I certainly read a lot of fiction which appears to have nothing to do with what I’ve written in this book. Then again, appearances can be deceptive: the voice of Cesare Borgia, for instance, was partly influenced by James Ellroy’s prose in The Cold Six Thousand, while the overall feel of my story owes as much to Coppola’s Godfather movies as to anything more overtly historical.

Tell us about the research you did for The Ground is Burning.

Senigallia, Italy: Setting of the novel's climactic scene
Photo by Samuel Black

I spent a whole year reading every secondhand book I could find on the subject and the period – including the books that my heroes read themselves (Dante, Livy, Plutarch, Lucretius, Julius Caesar etc). In retrospect, I probably overdid this, although I figure it’ll come in useful one day. The best part of the research, by a long way, was a three-week trip round Italy that I took in October 2008, following in the footsteps of my characters: that really made the history come alive for me.

Of your three main characters, who do you identify with most strongly? (Keeping my fingers crossed that you don't say Cesare. He was awful. My guess is Machiavelli.) Did you have a favorite character?

Cesare Borgia: Not a nice guy

I wrote from the perspective of all three of the major characters, and to do that you obviously have to identify with them. This was admittedly easier with Leonardo and Machiavelli, who were both essentially decent human beings, than it was with Cesare Borgia. But I must confess I quite enjoyed inhabiting the Evil One. He was clearly a monster, but he had a certain style.

Machiavelli certainly seemed admiring of Cesare Borgia in spite of (sometimes even because of) Borgia's brutality, and yet you managed to make Machiavelli's admiration palatable. What was behind your decision to downplay Machaivelli's cold-bloodedness and enhance his appeal?

Machiavelli: Not the man you
know by reputation

I don’t think it’s a question of downplaying Machiavelli’s cold-bloodedness, but of writing about the man rather than extrapolating from his most famous work, The Prince. If you read his plays, his poetry and particularly his letters, it’s obvious that Machiavelli was not cold-blooded at all: he was very funny, he loved his family, he was loyal to his friends, and he fell in love easily and frequently. All of that is against his reputation, but that’s because his reputation is wrong.

How historically accurate is your book? Where did you take the greatest liberties?

All of the essential events and circumstances are true, all of the characters are real people, and many of the smaller details are based on historical fact as well. Obviously I have imagined/invented the characters’ thoughts and relationships and dialogue, but I have contradicted history only once in any notable way – and that was one of the central plot lines, which just fell flat when I wrote it in a historically accurate way. It is a work of fiction, so I make no apologies for changing that, but at the same time the original story was so dramatic and novel-like that it seemed perverse to make up more than I needed to. There’s a historical note at the end of the book explaining what is factual and what invented.

Do you have any future projects in the works?

The mysterious Marlowe

Yes, my next book will be about the life and death of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in London in 1593. I think it’s going to be a detective novel, although I haven’t begun writing it yet: I’m still at the research stage.

I can't wait to read it! No rush or anything, but hurry every chance you get. One last question for you: Would you rather be on the team that wins the 2014 World Cup but afterwards lose your eyesight for the rest of your life, OR be a famous detective who lives in the arctic every winter?

Ha, what a cruel question! Much as I’d love to be a famous detective, there is no way I could live in the Arctic every winter for the rest of my life. I really don’t like long, cold, dark winters. Give me blindness in a warm climate to an unending vision of bleak whiteness any day!

There he is, folks. Samuel Black. His first novel, The Ground is Burning, will be released on February 3 (that's Thursday!) by Faber & Faber, and can be pre-ordered from amazon.co.uk now. Meanwhile, check out this related article Mr. Black wrote about the sort of fame that lasts for centuries.

"The Willows in Winter" by William Horwood

2011-01-26T23:33:00.000-06:00

Did you know there was a sequel to The Wind in the Willows? As a matter of fact, there are four (that I know of), although I only learned this recently. The sequels somehow escaped my notice until my bookworm discovered The Willows in Winter at our local library.

For what seemed like an interminable number of nights this was one of our bedtime stories (along with the aptly named The Neverending Story, which we should finally be finishing within the week--I hope!) and I must say I'm really glad it's over. This is in large part because the kids have put in a request for a reread of the Narnia books next . . . and the Harry Potter series after that. Never mind that by the time we finish those fourteen books my grade-schoolers may have already left for college.

So, yes, I'm glad the weeks and weeks of The Willows in Winter have ended, but that's not to say we didn't enjoy reading it. The sequels were not written by Kenneth Grahame, but this story fits in very nicely with the original classic. All the old familiar friends were there: Badger, with his gruff exterior that hides a soft heart; Rat, who is somehow both businesslike and fun-loving; kindhearted and agreeable Mole; and Toad, who gets up to utterly Toad-like shenanigans, though he'd promised he was through with all that. Even the tradition of Using Big Words was upheld.

I bet this is the picture that inspired the sequel

It was interesting to read, in the Author's Note at the end of the book, what inspired William Horwood to attempt a sequel of The Wind in the Willows. He became the proud owner of some of Ernest H. Shepard's original illustrations for that book, one of which portrayed Mole trudging through a snowy wood in search of Badger's house. What happened next is best explained in the author's own words.

"The Mole alone in the Wild Wood in a book was one thing; on my study wall he was rather different. As the months went by Shepard's drawing became part of my own imaginative landscape and Mole's original errand to find Badger faded as the great trees of the Wild Wood loomed larger before me, and the blizzard winds of winter surged and blew . . . it seemed to me that Mole was off on a journey rather different from his original one . . . the story of The Willows in Winter had begun."

How do you feel about sequels of a beloved favorite--especially if the story is continued by a new author? I'll confess that in most cases I would be quite wary of such an animal. I have the feeling that, if the original author is not the source, any further stories just don't count because they're not quite real. Kind of like fanfiction. But I can make an exception for Horwood, who seems to have followed suit respectfully enough that Grahame should still be resting peacefully.

"The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

2011-01-24T15:21:00.001-06:00

Am I the only one who wakes up most mornings frantically trying to figure out what day it is and what I need to be doing? This morning began with a familiar inner monologue: What day is today? What day is today? Yesterday was Sunday. OK, today is Monday. You need to go run, and don't forget that doctor's appointment this morning like you forgot it last week. I can only imagine how that stressful feeling might be compounded if I were simultaneously trying to come to terms with the fact that I'd somehow been transformed into a giant bug.

That is, as I'm sure you all know, the pickle in which Gregor Samsa finds himself in Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis. (Yet another book that was assigned reading in high school for everyone but me.) As the book opens, Gregor's physical metamorphosis has already occurred. The narrative doesn't concern itself with the process of the change, or even the reason behind it. Normally that would drive me crazy because, gaaaah! I want to know why!! But my mind did not dwell on that as I read. It's only dwelling on that now.

So, why call this The Metamorphosis if it only deals with the aftermath? Because there are other changes that occur during the story. The true metamorphosis is in the family's attitude towards Gregor. Formerly the sole breadwinner, he is now their burden. Surely they used to have great respect for Gregor (although I wonder if they didn't quietly snicker behind his back at the naïve way he enabled their laziness). Gregor's transformation caused immediate fear and revulsion accompanied by pity, which slowly changed to anger and hatred. It also caused a reversal of roles. Gregor's parents and sisters were the parasites at first; upon waking on that fateful morning, suddenly the parasite was Gregor.

Kafka's language in this novella is deceptively simple, leaving me certain that it is disguising hidden depths, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to read into the story. To me, it seems like more of an exercise in creative writing. "What would happen if, one day, a man woke up as a giant bug?" As a much-studied piece of literature, there are all sorts of symbols to be found, but like Nabokov said in his lecture about The Metamorphosis, we shouldn't study symbolism too closely. "I am very careful not to overwork the significance of symbols, for once you detach a symbol from the artistic core of the book, you lose all sense of enjoyment." He's hit upon the reason why so many great books are hated by students. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't study symbolism at all, but when you're ~~lazy~~ efficient like me, Nabokov is as good an excuse as any.

And I did enjoy reading this novella, especially the ridiculousness of it all. After Gregor's initial surprise at his new body, he seems to be in denial. He's thinking about his morning as if nothing were different. I like the absurdity of that. Then, he begins to wonder if his metamorphosis will cause anything else to change in his life. What an optimistic outlook for a giant bug.

Initial optimism aside, I felt so sorry for Gregor through most of the book. He wasn't without faults (he seemed unable to see the bad in others, for one thing) but his utter alienation from humanity, which he accepted so humbly, was quite disheartening. I may cherish solitude, but it's always with the understanding that companionship is waiting in the wings. Not so for poor Gregor. I won't tell you whether things end well for him, in case you've not read this one yet, but I'm sure you can guess that life is pretty harsh when you're an oversized beetle.

Yeah, beetle. That's really just a guess. Kafka did not specify exactly what Gregor had become. My translation calls him a "horrible vermin" in the first sentence. The cleaning lady later calls him a dung beetle. I think his specific form was intentionally left ambiguous, which is made even more evident by the fact that Kafka didn't want a picture of Gregor the Bug at all. Regarding the cover of the first edition, Kafka said, "The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance." The unknown is frequently more horrifying than the known. I think Kafka knew that the "horrible vermin" of each individual reader's imagination would be worse than any he could describe. Personally, I tend to think of Gregor as a brand new species, kind of like a short fat millipede with lots of tiny legs and a set of sharp, fearsome-looking pincers.

Whatever kind of bug Gregor was, I'm pretty sure he wasn't a butterfly.

"Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy" by Sarah Bradford

2011-01-20T01:24:00.000-06:00

For years I have been both fascinated and repelled by what I thought I knew of Lucrezia Borgia. I saw her as a powerful and selfish murderess, on the slightest whim poisoning anyone who stood in her way, not concerning herself in the least with trifles such as morality. Topped off by the suggestion that she had an incestuous relationship with both her father and her brother, Lucrezia just about made my eyes pop out of my head.

As it turns out, my impression was completely wrong. It's understandable that I had such an unfavorable opinion of the poor girl, as the intervening years have been unkind to her; even some of her contemporaries painted her as a villainess and a whore. Though some of the malicious gossip was a result of jealousy, most can probably be attributed to guilt by association. Her father, Rodrigo Borgia--though he became the Pope--was not especially pious, to say the least; her brother, Cesare Borgia, apparently deserved every bit of his notoriety.

But Lucrezia herself really wasn't such a bad person. Those who knew her by more than reputation found her modest, astute and wise. Many who had at first believed the reports of poor character thought of her much more favorably after meeting her.

This book does not give a clear and vivid picture of Lucrezia Borgia, but rather a negative image created by the world that surrounded her. You can see her outline, but there's a Lucrezia-shaped hole in the story, especially in the years preceding her third and longest marriage.

I suppose that fault was unavoidable in a work of non-fiction. There's nothing in this book that was not derived from research. No filler, no fabrication, no embellishment. In my opinion, this is both good and bad. Good in the sense that the book relates pure history; bad in the sense that it doesn't bring Lucrezia's personality and motivations to life like I'd hoped.

Slight disappointment aside, I was impressed by the scope of the research that went into this book. And I was amazed by the amount of personal correspondence still in existence! Didn't these people have mothers to teach them that they should only put in writing what they wanted the whole world to read?

This book has dispelled the mystique surrounding Lucrezia Borgia in my mind. She was not vile, evil, or scandalously naughty. She had her share of extramarital affairs, but no more than any other person of nobility during the Italian Renaissance, and she handled them discreetly. While I'm left feeling like I don't have a complete picture of the woman, I'm also convinced I have as complete a picture as is possible after the passage of five centuries. Sarah Bradford has done a remarkably thorough job with the resources available.

Too bad my former conception of Lucrezia Borgia, though much more salacious than the reality, was also much more fun.

Reading in Retrospect: "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" by Kate Douglas Wiggin, or Why the Anne of Green Gables Series is Better

2011-01-17T00:12:00.024-06:00

My middle child, the bookworm, was given a copy of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm for Christmas. I read it for the first time only a few years ago. It seems like I’d heard of this book all my life, and I thought surely I’d read it as a child. But absolutely none of it seemed familiar, so I guess I’d missed this one.

The novel encompasses five years in the life of Rebecca Rowena Randall. One of seven children whose father died around the time of her youngest sibling’s birth, at the age of twelve Rebecca is sent to live with rich spinster aunts for schooling and raising. One aunt is spineless and the other is very hard to live with, but Rebecca’s engaging personality and active imagination see her through.

This book was first published in 1903. Anne of Green Gables was first published in 1908. There are many similarities between the two books, but Lucy Maud Montgomery did a better job with Anne. It’s as if Montgomery read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, said, “I can improve upon this!” and did.

First, Montgomery did away with all of the unnecessary background (Rebecca might as well have been an orphan; Anne was an orphan). More importantly, Anne was a more believable and likeable character. Both Anne and Rebecca were wonderfully imaginative, but Anne was also head of her class at school (smart girls rule!), and the scrapes she got herself into were both more serious and more entertaining than Rebecca’s.

Rebecca’s story doesn't extend beyond the one book, but Montgomery wisely gave us more detail in several volumes for Anne’s story. And overall, somehow Wiggin’s book was sappy, sentimental and adolescent, whereas Montgomery’s books managed to get deep into my heart rather than simply skimming the surface. Comparing Rebecca to Anne all the way through kind of ruined it for me, but I couldn't avoid it. Not that I didn’t enjoy this book, but I knew it could have been better than it was.

One final complaint about Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (which is kind of a spoiler, by the way). Ever since the moment his character was introduced, I wanted Rebecca to marry Mr. Adam Ladd (Mr. Aladdin) at the end. At the rate she was growing up through the chapters I thought for sure we would reach that point, but we didn’t. With no marriage in this book, I had hoped it might take place in a sequel, but that doesn’t seem to be the case either. (Wiggins did write the New Chronicles of Rebecca, which I haven't read, but from what I've gathered it doesn't pick up where RoSF left off; instead, it tells more stories that occurred within the same time frame.) The fact that Mr. Aladdin was twice Rebecca's age might have made a wedding somewhat squicky, but a hundred years ago such a thing wouldn't have even been considered Lolita territory (once Rebecca was an older teenager, anyway).

Oh, and it also annoyed me that most of the story didn’t even take place at Sunnybrook Farm.

Am I the only American girl who didn't read this book when I was little? Maybe I would have appreciated it more if I had.

"Rain Song" by Alice J. Wisler

2011-01-13T00:06:00.006-06:00

I want a book to blow me away. I want a book to make me dig. I want flawless writing with surprising combinations of words and thoughts. I want something to mull over for days afterwards.

Rain Song was not what I wanted.

Ever read a book where you wish you could kick every single character in the head because they're so stupid or incredibly unrealistic or they have the annoying habit of unnecessarily stating the obvious? No? Well, I would say you should read this book so you can commiserate with me, but I know you have better things to do.

The main character is like a wire coat-hanger stretched into the shape of a stick figure with a few quirks hung on it: she eats pineapple chutney, drinks ginger tea, wipes her mouth on a linen napkin, has a few phobias, buries all her problems under ice cream and chews her thumbnails. There's nothing else to her. She's not even a weakly convincing semblance of a real human. What's there is just an empty shell.

I was annoyed with Coat-Hanger Girl from the very beginning. Nicole is supposed to be thirty-one years old, but she sounds more like twelve. "I know nothing about marriage, since I've never been married." Even unmarried people know things about marriage. At the very least, they think they do. "I would like to be married, I think. But . . . my fish and I are doing quite well without a human male mate." All I could think was, someone please kill me now! But no one did, and I still had 280 pages to go.

I may blaspheme by saying so, but this book's plot has vague similarities to Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans (a brief childhood in Asia, mysteries left behind, a return to uncover the truth). When I say vague I mean distant, miniscule and nearly unrecognizable. The execution of the two novels couldn't be more different. It's like comparing apples to oranges when apples are greatness and oranges are mediocrity.

The last time I saw Lydia, one of my Book Club girls, she told me she unintentionally finished this book early. (We usually like to read the book of the month close to the time of our meeting so it's fresh in our minds for discussion). She kept reading and waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever did, and then all of a sudden it was over. And now I know exactly what she meant.

Gosh, I'm awful. I really hope Ms. Wisler never reads this post. But, just in case, here is my disclaimer: I am a mean, mean person and I guess I'm just not in the right demographic for this book. And, hey, look on the bright side--everything in the book was spelled correctly!

So. Another Book Club selection bites the dust. Or just bites. The best part about this book was knowing we'll be discussing it over sushi. Good thing I have great expectations for next month's book.

"The Ground is Burning" by Samuel Black

2011-01-10T02:07:00.000-06:00

Books like this are why I read.

I'm a sucker for a book about Italy, especially set during the Italian Renaissance, but there's so much more to love about The Ground is Burning. The characters are fascinating, though that's hardly surprising when we're talking about Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci. The plot is fast-paced and engrossing without sacrificing depth. And then there's the evocative beauty of sentences like this one: "I can smell dead leaves burning somewhere in the distance--that sweet, sad, summer's-end scent."

I must admit that before I started reading this book, I was a teensy bit afraid it might be somewhat dry and dull, mainly because I was (and still am) in the middle of reading a biography on Lucrezia Borgia (Cesare's sister) that has been slow going at times. But I shouldn't have worried. The day I started reading this book I burned my baby's toast and was late to my son's awards assembly. Good book or negligent mother? Well. Probably a little bit of both. But, setting aside my questionable parenting abilities, The Ground is Burning is bursting with life. Events of more than five centuries ago are as fresh as yesterday, and people long dead once again live and breathe within these pages.

One thing that brings the characters to life is the way their unique ambitions are laid bare for the reader. Cesare's motivation is power, wielded aggressively enough to elicit fear and dread in his supporters. Machiavelli, too, wants power, but he is willing to act with much more subtlety and diplomacy. Leonardo strives to create something that will stand the test of time and lead to immortal fame. All three men are similar in their drive to leave a lasting impression (and it's not hard to argue that they succeeded), yet they are written with distinct voices that highlight their very different personalities.

One complaint: I felt like I could detect a modern British voice at times. Would a fifteenth-century Italian teenager really say "sod it"? I could have bought affanculo or whatever the Italian equivalent is. On the other hand, that underlying contemporary feel is responsible in part for the vividly real characters. After all, the book begins with a quote from Machiavelli which says, "If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were." I suppose that's a fancier and more verbose way of saying, "there's nothing new under the sun," but it also says the people in this book aren't so very different from YOU.

I want you to read this book, so I am doing a giveaway. You can't have my copy, but if you're the lucky winner I'll buy you your own. Anyone is eligible, unless you are my mom (mainly because Cesare Borgia was a potty mouth, among other slightly scandalous reasons). Leave a comment with your email address before the end of January if you would like a chance to win.

My thanks to Faber for providing me with a proof copy of The Ground is Burning, which will be released on February 3. If you don't win my giveaway, you can purchase your own copy from amazon.co.uk.

Yum. Samuel Black, I WANT MORE!

"The Black Dahlia" by James Ellroy

2011-01-06T06:26:00.000-06:00

I first heard of The Black Dahlia when my freak of a friend posted horrifying pictures of Elizabeth Short's mutilated corpse on his facebook page. (Yeah, I have great friends.) If you have kinder, gentler friends who haven’t kept you in the loop, you may not know that the crime in this book is based on actual events, though much of the investigation is fictional.

After seeing those photos (which my lovely friend tagged as “road kill”), I decided I wasn't interested in watching the 2006 movie. I assumed it focused on the repulsive details of the poor girl’s torture and murder. My mind drew parallels to the movie Seven, which--while being a highly suspenseful thriller--left me with the thoroughly depressing feeling of "what is wrong with humanity?"

But I was curious enough to read the book, which I figured wouldn't be quite as bad as the movie in terms of sickening visual images that can be so difficult to expunge from my mind. And it was kind of nice to find that the novel didn’t dwell on the killing, but instead focused on the police work during the resulting investigation.

That’s not to say Ellroy pulls any punches. Nothing is glossed over or whitewashed or made pretty in this story. There is an element of “even the good guys are the bad guys,” but I didn’t end up disgusted with all of my fellow humans. Just some of them.

Even if it hadn’t been written all over the cover, I think I would have been able to guess that Ellroy also authored L.A. Confidential. I haven’t read that book, but I’ve seen the movie, and it has some similarities (namely cops and whores in mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles). Turns out the two books are part of what’s called Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet,” which also includes The Big Nowhere and White Jazz.

My one complaint about the book: the family of crazies with a crazy friend kind of defied belief. One crazy person would have been enough, but Ellroy kept stacking up the insanity. As soon as we knew one mentally ill character was involved, we learned of another. And another. But, though I gripe, I must admit this did not diminish my ability to enjoy the book.

My favorite “noir” is of the Pinot variety, but Ellroy writes some pretty good crime fiction. I have added The Black Dahlia to my netflix queue (now that I think I can handle it) and will probably read The Big Nowhere at some point.

"The Collector" by John Fowles

2011-01-03T01:49:00.000-06:00

I'd never heard of this title or author before I read about the book on Rachel's blog back in October, but she convinced me to read it. The story sounded awfully creepy and perfect for Halloween. So I'm a few months late (or a number of months early!) but I decided it would work just as well to read it as the year came to a close.

This is the story of a socially inept butterfly collector who is fascinated by a local girl to a disturbing degree. When he suddenly comes into an unexpected sum of money, he finds himself with the means to make Miranda notice him. In Fred Clegg's maladjusted mind, the best way to reach this goal is to abduct the girl and hold her prisoner in his cellar.

From the very beginning it is evident that something about the narrator is off. It's not a matter of low intelligence, because Clegg is sharp enough, but there is just something missing from him that keeps him from being a complete human. Fowles really very impressively (if unsettlingly) portrays the mind of the captor.

Cover of the first edition (1963)

I wouldn't say this in public if it weren't for the fact that the author is no longer living, but I think what creeped me out the most was how much thought the author put into the scenario. He planned this kidnapping and imprisonment out to an amazing level of detail. It makes me shiver to think how deeply he delved into the abductor's unbalanced mind. Clegg is not pure evil--Fowles doesn't take the situation to horrifying extremes, and any abuse is subtle and passive--but, even so, the stalking and obsession and their results are disturbing enough.

To be fair, though, Fowles also gave us the opposite perspective, as the second part of the book is narrated from the pages of the captive's diary. We follow Miranda through what, remarkably, can be compared to the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). It's interesting to find that, during her captivity, Miranda transforms into a more mature and thoughtful person. Almost like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis . . .

Fowles also wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I've added to my wish list.

"Madame de Treymes" by Edith Wharton

2010-12-30T00:41:00.000-06:00

I love books. (I imagine you're not surprised.) Just about any book will do, but I have a special place in my heart for really old books.

I have a lot of fond childhood memories of my great-uncle Ed's house in Virginia. I could tell you all kinds of stories about our visits to that huge and creaky old place, but of paramount importance is the fact that Uncle Ed and Nancy actually had a library. It was just a smallish side room, but it was completely lined with books, many of which seemed ancient to us.

My sister and I (very carefully, and when Uncle Ed was elsewhere) used to have little unauthorized competitions to see who could find the oldest book on those shelves. I honestly don't recall the title of a single one of them (give me a break, it's been decades) but I can remember the wonderfully musty smell as if it were yesterday. I trace my fascination with old books back to Uncle Ed's library.

For a short while I thought I might become a collector of old books, but sadly it turns out that paying bills and eating are more important. Of the very small collection I amassed during those delusional days, one is this first edition of Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton, published in 1907. I'd somehow never gotten around to reading it (yeah, I'm one of those heathens who reads them--what else are books for?) but after reading The Age of Innocence I was reminded of this little novel. I finally picked it up this week.

Madame de Treymes is a slim volume (more of a novella, I suppose) about an American in Paris who hopes to wed his love, although there is the complication that she is already married to a very Catholic marquis. The pages are filled with subtle intrigue between family members who are each quietly tending to their own interests, though--no matter the outcome--it will clearly be impossible for everyone to end up happy.

I was once again struck by the similarity of themes between Wharton and Henry James. Both authors wrote about the same class of people during the same general time period, when keeping up appearances was often far more important than what those appearances disguised. James probably would have made a chunkster out of this story rather than keeping it to 147 pages, but I think it would have worked either way; Wharton did a beautiful job in her concise manner, but the framework of the story could likely have supported a James-style fleshing out.

One of the fun things about old books is the mystery of who they once belonged to. More than a century ago, Mary Blair Burgwin inscribed her name on the flyleaf of Madame de Treymes. I can't help but wonder who she was, why she chose this book (or was it a gift?) and what she thought of it after she read it. Mary Blair may not be quite as compelling an enigma as Mrs. Baja Greenawalt, but I'm still curious about her.

I thought I might mention that during my brief foray into collecting, Christine at Walter-Saxena Rare Books was very friendly and helpful, in case you are interested in contacting a book dealer.

"When We Were Orphans" by Kazuo Ishiguro

2010-12-27T01:12:00.000-06:00

Kazuo Ishiguro is freaking BRILLIANT. I may be the last person in the world to have figured that out, but that doesn't make it any less true.

After the last couple of stinkers, I decided it was time to choose a book I'd been promised was excellent. I'm elated to report I was not a bit disappointed. It's about time I came across another Must Read.

Ishiguro writes the story of Christopher Banks, an Englishman who spent much of his childhood in early twentieth century Shanghai but was then sent to England as an orphan at the age of nine. It's been his lifelong dream to become a detective, and once he reaches this goal he travels back to China to determine what really happened to his parents.

Banks is an adult as he tells the story, but important childhood events in Shanghai are woven into the narrative as memories, made all the more real by their elusive and possibly unreliable nature. He readily admits that his perceptions may very well differ from reality, but his perceptions are, after all, what his memories are composed of. After he returns to China, it becomes evident that it's not only his impressions of the past that may be unreliable; his obsessive qualities taint even his grasp of the present.

Ishiguro's choice of words is so precise. Do you ever find yourself mentally editing as you read, thinking you would have used a different word or phrase? I didn't do that with Ishiguro. His prose is subtle but beautifully descriptive, with an elegant simplicity that belies the deft and clever writing. Ishiguro never seems to be trying too hard, but he doesn't have to.

Of course, no part of this book was boring. But the way the tension subtly built, I reached a point where I had to stop my eyes from racing ahead. I tried to force myself to read slowly, to savor the story. When I noticed I only had about thirty pages remaining, I actually put the book down and stopped reading for a bit to prolong the inevitable and avoid finishing the book too soon.

Allow me to pause mid-gush and concede that this novel isn't perfect. The resolution of the mystery was a little bit Scooby Doo. (Maybe there weren't any meddling kids, and no one had a mask pulled off, but there was a sort of "it was you all along!" vibe.) But don't let that deter you in any way from reading this book. You know you thought Scooby was awesome when you were little, too.

Even with my criticism, I was surprised to read on wikipedia that this is "considered one of Ishiguro's weakest works, with Ishiguro himself saying, 'It's not my best book.'" That's actually kind of encouraging for me, though. If this is not his best, I can only imagine how good some of his others must be.

I'm here to tell you it's time to move Kazuo Ishiguro to the top of your TBR pile. I already have The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go on my wish list, but I won't need much of an excuse to add more.

"Tell-All" by Chuck Palahniuk

2010-12-23T00:25:00.003-06:00

One of the girls in my book club is a Palahniuk Evangelist. She sent me home with a loaner last Friday night, which I was really excited about since I thought Palahniuk's Fight Club was pretty great when I read it just last month.

Well, my second foray into Palahniuk-land was not a win. After Fight Club, I expected mind-bending, dark and edgy. I got a predictable, gimmicky cliché. The best part about this book was the cover. Even that should have sent up a warning flare. It's so . . . colorful.

The book is written in the style of a Hollywood tell-all (hence the title) from the point of view of an aging movie star's personal assistant. There's a very annoying device of name-dropping throughout the entire book, with every famous person or expensive brand picked out in boldface type (to make sure the reader notices each one, I suppose). That got old fast. Actually it never wasn't old.

Judging by Fight Club, along with a vague memory of someone mentioning it, Palahniuk is known for his plot twists. Well, this one fell flat. The truth was clear to me, though I can't remember exactly why, when Hazie tossed Terry the "blueprint for Miss Kathie's most recent brush with death." Which was exactly 55 pages before it should have dawned on me.

Fight Club drops hints so subtle that you never realize they're hints until you get to the end and look back. Tell-All bashes you over the head with obvious insinuations in just the loud and insufferable way you'd think something with such a loud and insufferable cover would do. (By the way, you can't tell it in the photo here, but the cover actually sparkles.)

I didn't mean to read this book all in one day, but that's what I did. It was kind of like the way you might sit down with a bag of Oreos and find they're gone before you know it. Afterwards you're left thinking, I sure had better things to do. But at least it wasn't boring. There are lots of ways a book can be bad, but "boring" is the worst of them.

I want to give Palahniuk another chance, since I thought Fight Club was so clever, but I've already got my fingers crossed that the next time I read Palahniuk it will be much more Fight Club than Tell-All.

"The Resurrections" by Simon Louvish

2010-12-21T22:15:00.001-06:00

What if World War II had never happened? What if Rosa Luxemburg had not been executed in 1919, but had seized control of Germany in 1923 and formed a communist German Soviet Republic, forcing Hitler and his National Socialists to flee to Austria?

These changes in history allow for a lot of interesting speculation. Who knows where this new track through the twentieth century might have led? When I saw The Resurrections (on sale for two dollars!) it sounded like a promising premise; it was the application of it that I had a problem with.

This was a difficult book to read. At just over 200 pages, I should have blown through it, but that I definitely did not do. It was written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, with maybe a dozen narrators taking turns, but there was nothing to distinguish one from another beyond the label on the chapter. They did not have individual voices. Other than the varying points of view, it could have been the same person narrating the entire book.

Some of the alterations of history were hard to get a handle on. My only other experience with reading "alternate history" is with Harry Turtledove's World War II books. (Aliens attack! Former enemies ally against the invasion! It only makes sense that this would knock history askew.) That series may not be especially well written, but it makes for an interesting story. And, more importantly, there's a clear impetus behind the alteration in history. But with The Resurrections, the reason behind the changes was never explained to my satisfaction.

A few of the changes make sense. If WWII had never occurred, the eldest Kennedy son, Joe Jr, may well have survived to become a successful American politician. A lot of the differences revolve around the idea that many of the Axis "villains" lived well into the 1960s rather than dying at the end of the war: Mussolini, who went on to form an Italian empire; Hitler, who moved from Austria to the US and entered American politics; and Goebbels, who changed his surname to Gable and followed Hitler as a puppetmaster.

But I found most of the other changes inexplicable. I'm not sure what was supposed to have happened to Stalin, but somehow Trotsky succeeded Lenin and died of natural causes in 1967; Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley died in a car wreck in 1956, 20 years before his actual death; King Edward VIII did not abdicate the throne for Wallis Simpson but instead continued to reign until his death, and had three daughters; Chairman Mao died "in a skirmish" in 1942, more than 30 years before his actual death. And Howard Hughes ruled Las Vegas. Most of these purposeless "facts" were just tossed into the book without being tied in at all.

Hitler's character in this book was regrettably undeveloped. He was an ex-Senator from Illinois (the book was written in 1994, so I don't think we're supposed to draw any interesting parallels to Obama) and doesn't come into the book much at all. Even worse, the book ends with Freddy Hitler (Adolf's American-born son, of course!) as President of the United States. Yeah, that's kind of a spoiler, but let's face it--you're never going to read this book.

I was disappointed that there were no actual resurrections in the book--just historical figures who lived a lot longer than they did in real life. I thought, based on the title, that surely somebody (and my money was on Mengele) was bringing villainous historical figures back to life in a diabolical plot to take over the world. Implausible? Sure, but at least maybe then I would have enjoyed the book. As it is, I'm just glad it's over so that I can read something good.

The author's purpose in writing the book wasn't completely worthless. It's made clear by the final narrator who says, "I wanted to show how fragile we all are, in history, blown this way and that in the wind. The only answer we have to all these storms and tumult is that we survive, somehow, with our critical faculties intact." I say, along with the narrator, "I'm sorry if it's not an earthshaking conclusion."

I may soon be won over to Chris's way of thinking: that if a book is this cheap it's for a reason. But I have found a few gems for really low prices, and I will probably keep looking for another.

"Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See

2010-12-17T18:00:00.096-06:00

I first heard about this book from Georgia (who is the weirdest person I know, in an I-fried-my-brain-on-acid-in-the-60s kind of way) and then from Kate of Kate's Library. Both Georgia and Kate recommended Snow Flower to me, so I put it on my wish list. And then, if you can believe it, I won a copy from the lovely and generous She! I've been plagued by a lifetime of neverwinanythingness until just this past year. I'm hoping a new precedent has been set. Maybe I should start playing the lottery.

It took me forEVER to finally pick up this book, and I know exactly why. Though I am fascinated by subtle cultural differences, I tend to overlook books that are too different from what I know. I like discovering what I have in common with other people (whether real live ones or literary characters). I'm sure this has much to do with the fact that I can more easily relate when I'm able to draw clear parallels to my own life. Not only is this is unfortunate, but it's probably also a misconception. I think I often underestimate an author's ability to show me how I can relate even to people (or settings or situations) I find foreign. As Lisa See said in her "Note About the Writing of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,"

Yes, our lives are completely different from those lived by the nu shu writers, but inside we are the same . . . at our cores we still long for love, friendship, happiness, tranquility, and to be heard.

My version of footbinding.

I found the book a bit slow to start, and the vivid descriptions of footbinding were pretty horrifying, but it quickly picked up after that. The author was right--I really can relate to characters whose lives are completely different from mine. And I realized how grateful I am that I can walk and run quite comfortably on my great big feet. The only time I experience painful footbinding, it is temporary and completely voluntary.

The real thing. I prefer my version.

Allow me to display a bit of my ignorance (yeah, like I've never done that before). I always thought that footbinding just kept a child's foot from growing. I had no idea how grotesque and painful the reality was. Did you know that footbinding trained the four smaller toes to curl under the sole of the foot, and that it rotated the calcaneus so that the bottom of the heel met the ball of the foot? Or that it was common, even expected, for bones to break during the process? Or that, if the desired results were achieved, an adult woman might end up with a foot just seven centimeters in length? Anne, you have probably broken out in a cold sweat just reading about this.

But this novel is not about footbinding. That practice is more of a backdrop for the story. It's a constant presence, but ultimately it's only one of the many ways women were constrained in nineteenth century China. The true story lies with the deep friendship between the narrator, Lily, and her laotong, Snow Flower. The two girls were paired at the age of seven, kind of like kindred spirits but with an official contract. Their story, from childhood to maturity, through happiness and hardship, affinity and betrayal, is woven together with the history of China's Taiping Revolution.

It's a good thing I enjoyed this book, because there is more Lisa See in my future. I already have a copy of Shanghai Girls, and am curious about Peony in Love. I wonder if it's about the same Peony mentioned in Snow Flower?

Movie news: they're currently filming this one too. I'm not sure when it will be released, but it looks like it will be some time during 2011. Here's a head-scratcher: Hugh Jackman is in it. For a bit of comic relief on that topic, read this first--but the really funny part is here.

To pass along the good karma (maybe you'll start winning stuff too!) I'm going to give away my copy of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I'll ship it anywhere in the universe. Just leave a comment with your email address and I will randomly select a winner one week from today.

Words of the Day

2010-12-15T08:45:00.107-06:00

I really am almost at the end of my List of Words to Look Up, but who am I kidding? As long as I am still ~~reading~~ living I will continue finding enough new words to do a Dictionary Day post occasionally.

Not my dad

1. Tonsure. From The Tooth Fairy. "Was that unfair of me, laddie? Not warning you about that, I mean. Not telling you not to buy a hairnet for your uncle's tonsure?" It must mean "bald head," but my dad has one of those and I've never heard it called a "tonsure." Webster says: The Roman Catholic or Eastern rite of admission to the clerical state by the clipping or shaving of a portion of the head; the shaven crown or patch worn by monks and other clerics; a bald spot resembling a tonsure. OK, so my dad doesn't have a tonsure; he's more like a cue ball. But I still get a point.

2. Specious. From One Day. "But in the years since leaving college this line of argument had come to seem so abstract and specious that she had finally succumbed to Dexter's nagging and got the damn things, realizing only too late that what she had really been avoiding all those years was that moment in the movies: the librarian removes her spectacles and shakes out her hair." Could it have anything to do with "species"? But how could something be abstract and specific? Webster says: Showy; having deceptive attraction or allure; having a false look of truth or genuineness; sophistic. I was way off! No points.

3. Bespoke. Also from One Day. "Something of an amateur DJ, Dexter had a wallful of CDs and rare vinyl in bespoke pine racks, two turntables and a microphone, all tax-deductible, and could often be spotted in record shops in Soho, wearing an immense pair of headphones like halved coconuts." The only other descriptor for pine I can think of is knotty, but I don't think that's right. Webster says: Custom-made. Well, I was right that I wasn't right, but that's not right enough for any points.

Picaresque?

4. Picaresque. Sorry, I don't remember where I found this one. My mind wants it to be the same as "picturesqe." But . . . it can't be, because why would it be so similar but not exactly the same? Webster says: Of or relating to rogues or rascals; a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a roguish protagonist. Yeah, not exactly the same. Once again, no points.

5. Metafiction. This wasn't actually in a book--I think I saw it on a book blog. I have the idea that it refers to a book within a book, but since I'm not sure, I'll look it up. Webster says: Nothing. I guess that's what I get for using a dictionary that is more than twenty years old. Google to the rescue: Any work of fiction that takes either itself or some other work of fiction as its subject matter. Yay! I get another point, but I'll take a piece of chocolate instead. That makes one point out of five, plus a piece of chocolate. I win!

Want to hear something sad? I almost put "fulminating" (from The Tooth Fairy) in this post, until I realized I'd already used that as a Word of the Day here. Obviously it didn't stick with me. I ought to subtract a point for that. But I won't.

"One Day" by David Nicholls

2010-12-13T00:49:00.030-06:00

I have been beaten over the head with this book (in a good way). I've seen this cover on so many blogs that I can't imagine there's anyone reading this post who isn't saying, Ah, yes, I've read that one. So, when I saw it at my local library last week, I borrowed it like a good little lemming so that I could go over the cliff with the rest of you.

If you've been beaten over the head with this book as well, you already know the shtick: this is a series of snapshots (or maybe more like video clips) in the lives of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew during their lifelong almost-romance. The entire book takes place on the fifteenth day of July, but each chapter is exactly one year after the previous.

You know about my compulsion to read every part of a book except for the copyright page and the barcode. I thought I'd let you board my train of thought as I perused the back cover. First I noticed that some author named Tony Parsons claims this is "the best weird love story since The Time Traveler's Wife." My thought: Oooh! Could it really be? I kind of ignored the "love story" bit but liked the "weird" and loved TTTW.

The next quote that stood out was from Nick Hornby, who I've heard of but haven't read. He says this is "the perfect beach read [and I thought, oh no] for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads." Oh, OK. He snatched that one from an untimely death.

The last quote I marked left me a bit more ambivalent. BBC Radio Five Live claimed, "I couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't love this book." Hmmmmm. That's ambitious. If I've learned nothing else in reading book blogs over the past year, it's that there is no one-size-fits-all book. People don't always love my favorite books, and I've read some stinkers based on the breathless recommendations of others.

But I did like this book. I really cared about "Em and Dex," even though Dexter was quite vain and self-absorbed, and both characters had somewhat self-destructive tendencies. Dexter during his TV presenter days was the way I imagine Ryan Seacrest would be if he had a soul, but somehow I still wanted to know what was going to happen in his life. All the near-misses were frustrating (as I'm sure they were intended to be), but my favorite part was one of them--the vacation in Greece with all the sexual tension.

The story reminded me a lot of Bridget Jones's Diary, except seriouser. And maybe Emma was less pitiful than Bridget most of the time. Every now and then some Four Weddings and a Funeral was thrown in, along with a bit of Notting Hill for good measure. But this book had more substance than the usual romantic comedy. It teetered precariously over fluffy territory at times, but at least I never had to read about anyone's throbbing manhood or heaving bosoms.

I've had the feeling before of not enough pages remaining in a book for a satisfactory resolution. Here I had the opposite problem. In the middle of chapter sixteen--75 pages from the end--life is simultaneously good for both Emma and Dexter for the first time, and it's such a relief, but with 75 pages to go I knew it was going to sour. When I reached the inevitable sad part, all I could think was, Oh, come ON. The book really kind of lost me at that point. Which is odd, since more than likely Part Five is the place where a true human would be crying buckets. If you have ever questioned my heartlessness, here's the evidence: I didn't cry, nor did I even feel like I was trying to avoid it.

So, my verdict? The book was great up until Part Five. After that it was still good, but I'd lost my connection with it.

Did you know? The movie is coming out next year, with Anne Hathaway as Emma and Jim Sturgess as Dexter. Which reminds me of the book's quote from the Daily Mail: "The feel good film must surely be just around the corner." They were right. And you know what? I think it's going to suck.

"The Tooth Fairy" by Graham Joyce

2010-12-11T23:21:00.000-06:00

What puts a book in the YA category? (Other than a publisher's marketing department, that is.) Is it the fact that the main characters are teenagers? Or that the author wrote with a younger audience in mind? Is it related to the frequency or degree of profanity, sex, or violence in the story? Should a YA book be short, or have short chapters? Does it have anything to do with reading level? (I've heard the depressing claim that the writing in most contemporary books is no higher than an 8th grade level--an eighth grader is usually 13 or 14 years old, for those who are unfamiliar with the American school system--in which case there shouldn't be any difference in reading levels between the average adult and young adult book.)

The line between young adult and adult fiction is more blurred than I thought. I always assumed that a YA book would be toned down as compared to a book for adults (not necessarily devoid of vulgarity--just with less of it). But in poking around online I found that often the definition of YA revolves solely around the age of the main characters. Frequently, the only difference between an adult or young adult book is marketing.

My YAdar would not approve this book. I think there is too much talk of penises to label it as YA. But Elvis defines YA as fiction that appeals to teenagers through subject, characters and writing. He even takes it one step in the opposite direction and says he thinks YA fiction should have more vulgarity than adult fiction because "that's what teenagers like."

Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, the idea of a teenager reading a book meant for adults doesn't really bother me much, but I don't like the idea of YA marketing for a book like this one. Of course, this might be rather a moot point where The Tooth Fairy is concerned. It won the British Fantasy Award in 1997 (which, to my understanding, is not a specifically YA award), and I've seen nothing that indicates it was marketed as YA, although the author has written some other books that were.

Beyond its categorization (or not) as YA, The Tooth Fairy is a dark and intense story of three friends who sometimes call themselves the Heads-Looked-At Boys. Sam, Clive and Terry could be any ordinary British schoolmates (albeit perhaps missing a couple of appendages), until one day when Clive punches Sam and accidentally knocks out a tooth. Sam puts the tooth under his pillow at bedtime, just as you might have done, but the Tooth Fairy who visits him later that night is not the innocuous incisor-collecting creature we all grew up thinking we knew.

Sam's introduction to the Tooth Fairy is the beginning of a turbulent coming-of-age for the three friends. Under the Tooth Fairy's sinister but subtle influence, the boys behave increasingly like little hoodlums, yet in an almost naive way. Sam sees the Tooth Fairy's fingerprints on every aspect of his life as well as the lives of his friends, which results in a mixture of fear and fascination.

Elvis loved the book and thought it was brilliantly written; I liked it a lot and enjoyed the read. It was interesting to speculate about the nature of the Tooth Fairy, as the book leaves the question open for interpretation. Have you read this book? What exactly did you think the Tooth Fairy was?

"When the Nines Roll Over & Other Stories" by David Benioff

2010-12-08T00:46:00.002-06:00

Here's a collection of short stories I picked up at Books-A-Million probably a year ago. I figured it was about time I read it. It's not the book that has been in my TBR Pile of Doom the longest (I'm thinking that dubious honor would go to Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath) but I'm pretty sure it was second from the bottom.

1. The first story, "When the Nines Roll Over" is about selfishness and opportunism and the music industry. The whole time I was thinking, Something's gonna happen, something's gonna happen, something's gonna happen . . . but by the time I got to the end, nothing had really happened. My first thought was, What was the point of that?

2. "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo" follows a trio of Russian soldiers on a mission through the snowy Chechen countryside. This is the one that EW called "the best Hemingway story Hemingway never wrote," but I forgot to remember that while I was reading. Even so, I was impressed by the tangible and genuine setting (if someone who has never been to Chechnya can be a judge of this) and how the men lived and breathed. It felt as if the author must have been one of the three soldiers, although I'm pretty sure he wasn't.

3. "Zoanthropy." (By the way, this is a mental disorder in which a person believes that he or she is an animal. I looked it up before reading this one.) A bizarre story about an escaped lion in New York City and the Lover of the East Coast.

4. "The Barefoot Girl in Clover." I LOVED this story. It's like the beautiful, nostalgia-ridden song "Kiss Me" stretched in a thin veneer over a rancid pit of slime.

5. "De Composition." A survivor types in solitude in his bomb shelter and is horrified to find his com01puter has a virus. I would have edited out one paragraph that makes it all too obvious. OH HAHAHA I JUST GOT THE TITLE. DECOMPOSITION. GET IT?

6. "Garden of No." An aspiring actress finally gets her big break. I liked this one almost as much as Barefoot Girl. I'm not sure why I so enjoy reading about monstrously selfish people, unless maybe I see myself in them.

7. "Neversink" is about the rise and fall of a relationship, followed by the revelation of deception. It reminded me of the movie Closer. It's amazing how much can be packed into a short story.

8. "Merde for Luck." Kind of a horrible little story about crapping in your airplane seat and dying of AIDS. It's not as funny as it sounds. What's that? You're right, it doesn't sound funny at all. But it's another one that seemed so real I thought it could be autobiographical (though it's not).

Overall, it's a decent book of stories, but I certainly liked some of them better than others. I wish I could keep a few and give the rest away on paperbackswap.

Check it out!

2010-12-05T23:57:00.000-06:00

I've made a sort of FAQ page for my blog. You can view it by clicking here, or you can go to the sidebar at the right and click on "In Case You Were Wondering . . . "

Anything else you want to know? Ask and ye shall receive (within reason).

"The Ask and the Answer" by Patrick Ness

2010-12-04T01:13:00.002-06:00

I had to force myself through the first half of this book. I was already strongly invested in the trilogy due to The Knife of Never Letting Go, and I never thought of giving up, but it wasn't until I reached the second half that this book regained some of the breathless momentum of its predecessor.

Spoiler avoidance hampers me from saying much about the plot; not only do I have to worry about spoiling this book, but the first one ended with such a cliffhanger that anything I say could spoil it too. However, I can't imagine anyone coming to this book without having read Knife first, and all you really need to know is that it's a continuation of Todd Hewitt's story.

One thing I really appreciated at the beginning of the book was the way that Patrick Ness managed to remind his reader of all the pertinent details from the first book without seeming like he was doing so. Reintroducing the characters and their situations was not merely a repetition of a list of attributes; Ness managed to seamlessly work this information into the story.

Another little bit of magic that Ness impressed me with was his villain. I can't explain to you why I did not find him completely hateful. I wouldn't say I ever really sympathized with him, but oddly enough, throughout most of this book I almost liked President Prentiss. I'm not usually one to root for the evil oppressor, but there was something fascinating about this one. As the book wore on he sort of lost his sheen, and by the end--as they say in Texas--he "needed shootin'," but for most of the book he was quite intriguing.

While reading, I marked several brief passages that interested me. I'll let you in on a few of them for your own personal edification. Be grateful that I'm sparing you my thoughts on each, though I will say I found more truth in them than in Paulo Coelho's steaming piles of crap. Here you are: We are the choices we make; nothing more, nothing less. How do you know you're alive if you don't hurt. A man is capable of thought; a crowd is not. To see the ocean once is to learn how to miss it. An idea lives on after the death of the person. AND, women don't really fart in their sleep . . . do we?

It's a good thing I was already prepared for the lack of resolution at the end of the story. Whoever warned me that this book was just as ending-less as Knife was definitely right, but since I was ready for it, I was much less frustrated by the fact. Even so, I'm going to take another break from Chaos Walking and read something else. But it won't be long before I wrap things up with Monsters of Men.

Words of the Day

2010-12-01T10:09:00.054-06:00

I am coming to the end of my List of Words to Look Up. After these five, I still have three to go. But never fear . . . this is the sort of list that will never truly end. At least until I learn all the words.

1. Deliquescing. Charlie St. Cloud. "Soon, when they were ready to go on to the next level, they would fade away, deliquescing like mist in the sun." It must mean melting or burning off. Seems tediously obvious, just like the rest of that book. Webster says: Becoming liquid by absorbing moisture from the air, as certain salts; melting away. Mmmmhmmm! One point.

2. Coruscated (not corrugated). I didn't write down where I found this word, but I did write down "sounds like scolding." I don't know if this was a guess according to context, or if that guess was really just based on the sound of the word. But it does sound kind of harsh and abrasive. And since I really have no clue what the word might mean, especially with no context, I'll go with harsh, abrasive scolding. Webster says: Gave off or reflected light in bright beams or flashes; sparkled. I don't think I could have been more wrong! No points for this one.

3. Adumbrates. I actually marked down where I found this word! It was in Lolita, on page 36 . . . but I didn't keep the book. OK, I'm going out on a limb here, but I think the prefix ad- means drawing towards, and an "umbra" is kind of like a shadow . . . and I still have no idea what this word might mean. A shadow going towards something? Webster says: Foreshadows vaguely; suggests, discloses, or outlines partially; overshadows, obscures. One tenth of a point for saying "shadow," which is kind of like "foreshadow" . . .

4. Obdurate. The Age of Innocence. (Can you believe I still have two more Words to Look Up from that book? Go Edith!) "It was the note the family had taken to sounding on the mention of the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised and inconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances." Stubborn? I think I am mixing it up with obstinate. Resistant or opposed to? Webster says: stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing; hardened in feelings; resistant to persuasion or softening influences. I say I get a whole point for that one.

5. Probity. The Age of Innocence. "So far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who broke the law of probity must pay." Solvency? Webster says: Adherence to the highest principles and ideals. I'm taking a half a point, because someone who adheres to the highest principles and ideals would be solvent, right? Yeah, maybe it's a stretch, but hey--stretching is good for you.

Looks like I got 2.6 out of five. How did you do?

"Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk

2010-11-29T01:07:00.013-06:00

I was warned away from this book by both Rachel ("the movie was better") and Elvis ("the book is exactly the same as the movie except without Brad Pitt's muscles or the cool Pixies soundtrack") but I've wanted to read it ever since I heard it existed. (I'm not sure how long it's been since I saw the movie--years, anyway--and back then I hadn't realized it was first a book. It's kind of sad, how often that happens.)

When Hud saw what I was reading, he said, "You're reading Fight Club? That just doesn't seem like the kind of movie anyone would want to read. It would be like reading Die Hard." I disagree. There's much more to Fight Club than fighting. And, come to find out, Hud hasn't seen the movie. (How is that possible?) He didn't even know the Big Thing. All he knew was that there was something called Project Mayhem, there were fights, and Brad Pitt wore fur.

I've seen the movie, so I already knew all about the Big Thing. And now Hud knows too, because I told him. (Oops.) But that was just about the only thing I remembered--that, the first rule of Fight Club, and the scene with the big yellow dishwashing glove. (The important parts, right?) I mean, here's how bad my memory is: I couldn't remember what the movie had to do with soap.

It's been long enough since I've seen the movie that I thought the book was really, really good. If you've seen the movie often enough that you can quote every line, or if you just watched it last week, I will warn you away from the book along with Rachel and Elvis. You won't find any extra tidbits in the book that you haven't already learned from the movie. But if it's been close to a decade since you watched it, or if your memory isn't any better than mine, I say go for it and read the book. If you loved the movie but don't remember it very well, you'll love the book too. Even without Brad Pitt's muscles (because, see, you can imagine them).

Reading the book made me want to see the movie again. In fact, even though I heart the book, I think Rachel and Elvis were right about the movie being superior. Whenever I get a craving for Fight Club in the future, I'll probably reach for the movie instead of the book.

What about someone who has neither read the book nor seen the movie and has managed to avoid hearing about the Big Thing? If such a person exists, should they read Fight Club or watch it? To me, the most important factor in this choice is the impact of the Big Thing. I want to say it seemed like a bigger surprise in the movie, although that's probably because I knew it and expected it by the time I read the book. Here's my call: either 1) watch the movie only, 2) watch the movie now and read the book after a few years, or 3) read the book and then watch the movie. Notice that the common denominator is watching the movie . . .

"The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness

2010-11-22T00:03:00.000-06:00

This book doesn't have an effing ending and I'm not very happy about it. I mean, sure, it has a final page, and the last sentence even ends with a period, but it's not a ruddy ending. Patrick Ness has unapologetically dragged me into his trilogy and now I couldn't get out even if I wanted to.

The nice thing is that I don't want to. This is not the sort of book where I only have to read the sequels. No, I want to keep reading. I want to know what happens to Todd Hewitt. It doesn't hurt that I can't even imagine what might possibly be coming next.

But I can tell you a little bit about what came before. Todd Hewitt is just one month shy of his thirteenth birthday, which means manhood in the community of Prentisstown. Life may not be exactly as Todd wishes it--he's an orphan, and he's been stuck with a talking dog instead of getting his fissionbike fixed--but he feels secure in what he has known all his life on New World. And what he knows, above all else, is that a germ was responsible for killing all of the women in town, leaving the men awash in each others' Noise--the constant mental barrage of thoughts every resident transmits involuntarily.

Of course it's not long before everything Todd has ever known is turned on its head. He is forced into a journey--one that is metaphorical as well as physical--that opens his eyes along with his mind. His path is beset by tension and danger and askings and answers that cause Todd to mature in a way that he never would have, had he remained at home in his snug cocoon of ignorance.

Too bad the book kind of sounds like it sucks when I describe it. It really doesn't, at all. I promise. Well, except for the non-ending.

Don't let the presence of a talking dog put you off. Manchee is very different from Enzo in The Art of Racing in the Rain, but he's just as appealing. Either you will love him or you are not human. I have it on good authority that even people who don't like dogs (gasp! there really is such a thing) love Manchee. He made me laugh from the very first time he said, "Need a poo, Todd." (Though, of all the New World animals, my favorites were the crickets. I can hear real ones outside my open window as I type, and I giggle because now I know what they're saying.)

Even though the ending of this book just begs me to read The Ask and the Answer right away, I refuse to be manipulated. I'm reading something else first. But I will read the sequels soon. I have heard that the second book ends very much like the first (in that it doesn't), but surely the third book will end with some semblance of finality. If it doesn't, watch out. My wrath will know no bounds.

"The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud" by Ben Sherwood

2010-11-19T17:30:00.066-06:00

My apologies to Ben Sherwood, but this book made me want to gag.

I must admit I came to it with a bad attitude. As if it weren't ghastly enough that my copy of this book has Zac Efron* on the cover, it's supposed to be "one of the most magical love stories I've ever read." Gaaah. Even worse, there's a quote from Nicholas Sparks, King of Shameless Tearjerkers, on the back. My overriding thought was, do I have to read this?

This is kind of a ghost story with all the good, spooky parts taken out. Charlie "I see dead people" St. Cloud lives and works in a cemetery so he can hang out with his ghost of a little brother (gosh, I wish I had one of those). Charlie's life has been on hold for thirteen years so he can keep his promise to Sam that he'll never leave him, and Sam has spent all those years stuck between "here" and "beyond" in order to keep his end of the bargain.

The story itself wasn't so bad, but I had trouble swallowing it--hence the gagging. I had to think for a while before I figured out the reason behind that. Sure, the book is filled with unlikely premises, but I've read and loved less realistic stories (Harry Potter springs to mind). I believe my problem was with the unrealistic characters and dialogue. (Elvis is probably cackling right now, or at least thinking, "I told you so!" He argued during Bel Ami that the "realness" of its characters was a rare thing; I agreed that the characters were very realistic, but didn't think it was so rare.) Charlie St. Cloud was filled with characters who did and said things that no real person would ever do or say. Not only that, but everyone in Charlie's town of Marblehead was undeniably quirky, and you know what they say--when everyone is quirky, no one is.

I feel bad when I don't like a book written by an author who is still living. No, that's not quite right; it isn't disliking a book that is the problem--it's writing about it here. But since I'm probably one of the only people in the world who read this book and didn't care for it, I don't feel so bad. It was just not my kind of book.

If you're wondering why, once again, I have tortured myself with a book I really didn't want to read, there are a few reasons:

1. It was for book club.
2. I didn't choose it. (Don't worry, Lydia, I won't tell anyone who did.)
3. Reading, for me, is like . . . um, yeah. Pizza. Even when it's bad it's good. (To a certain extent.)

What I did like about the book, and what I think will be fun to discuss at book club, was its interesting take on death, grieving, and the spirit world. There were three specific parts that stood out to me, realistic or not. First, Charlie's admission of what he missed most about Sam. ("The feeling that everything is all right in the world.") Second, the concept of dreamwalking. ("We can go right into people's dreams. We can hang out wherever their unconscious takes them. And we can tell them stuff.") Third, the spirits of your loved ones are reaching out to you. ("We all shine on. You just have to release your hearts, alert your senses, and pay attention . . . Notice the little things, because somebody is reaching out to you.")

If nothing else, maybe we'll tell some good ghost stories tonight.

*It's not that Zac Efron is hard to look at; it's just that he doesn't seem especially indicative of quality literature.

"Brisingr" by Christopher Paolini

2010-11-17T01:57:00.067-06:00

I've had this book since it first came out just over two years ago, but I've never been very eager to read it. Paolini is at best a marginally talented storyteller. Maybe I'm just a tough crowd, since fantasy really isn't my genre (fairy tales, yes; swords and sorcery, not so much). But I'd read the first two Inheritance books and kind of felt obligated to read the third.

I read the first book, Eragon, because I was kind of in awe of the fact that Paolini began writing it at the age of fifteen, much like S.E. Hinton with The Outsiders. I was perhaps even more impressed in this case, as Paolini takes on the likes of J.R.R. Tolkein with his story. (Of course, Tolkein soundly boxes little Paolini's ears and sends him to bed without any supper, but at least Paolini tried.)

My vague memory of Eragon is that it was OK. Nothing transcendent or life-changing, but not horrible or boring. I read the second book, Eldest, because I'd read the first book. And maybe because I hoped it would be even better than OK. (I think it wasn't, or I would have remembered.) Which leaves me with the third book. I obviously didn't have much hope that it would be better than OK, or I would have read it two years ago.

At least I wasn't disappointed in Brisingr. It met my expectations: it was OK, and it wasn't horrible or boring. I do feel like Paolini went into a whole lot of detail without an excessive amount of plot. I'm also pretty pissed (and this is a huge spoiler here, so consider yourself forewarned) that Galbatorix was not defeated by the end of this book. Nobody won or lost. There was no real resolution. Same with the potential love between Arya and Eragon. Of course, by now I have figured out there will be another book--no wonder it's gone from the "Inheritance Trilogy" to the "Inheritance Cycle"--but I'm dreading it before it's even been published. Do I buy the fourth book or do I leave the set incomplete? There are a few authors who could squeeze out a turd between two covers and I would still buy it (the first time they tried it, anyway), but Paolini isn't one of them. However, Hud seems to enjoy these books more than I do (he's more of the sword-and-sorcery type) so we probably will end up with a copy of book four.

It was a little bit silly of me to listen to the audio version of this book when I own a paper copy, but after this much time I knew if I hadn't started reading it yet I was never going to. I was fairly certain that, given the choice between this book and any other, I was always going to pick the other one. But I refuse to own a book that I will never read (and it's not like I would get rid of my copy just to resolve the issue--that would be giving in!) so my compromise was to listen to it. I haven't yet devised a way to read while I'm ironing or washing dishes or running, but listening to an audio book allows me to be a multitasking maniac.

The audio version was well done, and I was impressed by the reader's range in making each character sound like a different individual. It did take me a bit to get over his voice for the dragon Saphira. At first he sounded like an unfortunate cross between Yoda and Grover whenever he spoke Saphira's lines. But either the reader improved or I got used to the similarity, because I stopped noticing it.

This audio book was really, really long (29.5 hours!) and if I could have listened on fast-forward, I would have. It took me two weeks to get through it, during which I sorely missed listening to music and watching movies. I am glad to get back to those (possibly less-than-admirable but probably more entertaining) pursuits.

"Quite Ugly One Morning" by Christopher Brookmyre

2010-11-15T11:15:00.000-06:00

Here's a book for those of you who think Christopher Moore is funny. Moore may have the ability to elicit internal chuckles from me (tempered by an equal number of eye rolls), but Brookmyre actually had me snickering out loud in the first few pages. I figured sooner or later Hud would ask me what was so funny, but he never did. That's probably a good thing, though. How is it that I can hear a perfect Scottish accent in my head but utterly fail at making it come out of my mouth? Hud would have been distracted by the hilarity of my awful attempts to channel Sean Connery.

Of course, any book that takes the Lord's name in vain and drops the f-bomb in the very first sentence has got to be as "thrillingly unpleasant" as Esquire claimed. Though I kind of take issue with the unpleasant part. I actually found it to be quite a lovely read, unless we're talking about the first two chapters which treat the reader to a vivid description of the murder scene with all of its excrement and emesis--oh yeah, and a dead body. Hmmm, lovely may be the wrong word. But fun works.

This was my first Brookmyre book. I heard about him here. It's nice to finally find a mystery that doesn't pale in comparison with Agatha Christie's, although admittedly it's very different from hers. In fact, I think nosy investigative journalist Jack Parlabane may be exactly the sort of person Miss Marple always railed against. Contrary to all her sentiments, I am almost tempted to add the rest of this series to my TBR, but the thought of adding four more books at one whack is too daunting for a Monday morning. Maybe I'll do it later in the week.

I learned a lot of new words in this book. All of them were Scottish. Most of them are synonyms for poop. As such, they won't be appearing in any of my Words of the Day posts, but I will throw out a pair for you here: keech and jobbie. (You put them in the bog, by the way.) A few other "Jock" words that I remembered to write down:

smout (a small person, especially a young child)
glaikit (foolish, flighty, giddy)
baw-faced (that of a person with a large, round head; apparently, "baw" comes from the Scottish pronunciation of "ball")

Now you try to channel Sean Connery and see how well you do.

"Bel Ami" by Guy de Maupassant

2010-11-12T00:34:00.000-06:00

Before we discuss Georges Duroy, I want to explain to you about Elvis. You've heard of him, right? Elvis and I have started an online book club, and this is the second book we've read.

I hope you're not too disappointed to hear that the Elvis you're probably thinking of is not the one I'm talking about. For starters, there's no question that my Elvis is still alive. Second, I don't think anyone has ever painted his portrait on a canvas of black velvet. Third, I have a feeling the other Elvis was too busy TCB to do much reading. But my Elvis loves to read (maybe even more than I do? Nah, not possible) and we'll be reading a book together every month until we get bored of each other. I'm not allowed to reveal his secret identity (I think he's embarrassed to be seen with me) but all you need to know is that he is The King.

Now on to Georges Duroy. I've been wanting to read something by Guy de Maupassant for years. I was first introduced to this author during my old book club when one of our members suggested, "We could even read something by Guy de Maupassant. IF YOU WANT." The way he said it made Maupassant's work sound unusual, risky, maybe even naughty. So of course my interest was piqued.

We never did get around to reading Maupassant in book club, but when I heard a new movie adaptation of his novel Bel Ami (first published in 1885) was being filmed, my decision was made. It may have been an odd choice to start with one of Maupassant's novels--and not even his greatest one, a distinction wikipedia states is claimed by Pierre et Jean--as the author is considered one of the "fathers of the modern short story." But I had to begin somewhere, and starting with a seductive Parisian social climber of the late nineteenth century seemed as good a place as any.

Bel Ami is the nickname of Georges Duroy, a handsome and ambitious young man of humble beginnings who finds his surest route to success is through the beds of a series of ever more prestigious mistresses. Without much effort, the nearly destitute ex-military officer of the book's opening scene rises to an impressive position of wealth, influence, and power by the book's denouement.

Elvis couldn't understand it, but I loved Georges Duroy. How could I appreciate such a despicable character? I don't quite understand it myself, beyond the fact that he must have seduced me while he was seducing the ladies in the book . . . plus, in my imagination he doesn't look anything like the portrait on the cover, but instead looks just like Robert Pattinson. (And now you know my dirty little secret.)

It was interesting to learn from the book's introduction that the title character was modeled after the author. Maupassant must have been successful with the ladies, not to mention quite the "cold, vain, selfish, single-minded" person (description courtesy of Elvis. I should have just gotten him to write this post). However, there couldn't have been much of a happy ending for Maupassant, with his world crumbling around his syphilitic ears. This is most evident in the depressing epitaph he wrote for himself: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing." I have to say I would hope my life embodies the exact opposite of that sentiment. But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at so cheerless an outlook from someone who tried to slit his own throat.

Bel Ami was very well-written and, though I can't quite explain this since the story wasn't especially suspenseful, it was a page-turner for me. Every time I came to the end of a chapter I just wanted to keep going. Duroy kind of made me think of Scarlett O'Hara; I just had to see what kind of shenanigans he would be up to next.

Elvis called this book "clear, light, and funny," and found all of the characters very realistic.I had to wonder, as I have occasionally in the past, if such a light and clearly-written book was considered fluff in its day (sort of like the nineteenth century's answer to James Patterson or Danielle Steele). However, I think the fact that people are still reading this book more than a century later--and finding they can still relate to it--places it well above fluff.

I do need to rant about the free Kindle version of this book. In case you haven't noticed, many of the free Kindle ebooks originally written in another language are inferior translations. I'm fairly certain that the free Kindle version of Bel Ami is abridged, although I didn't see anything on the amazon website that made this clear. Once I realized this, I sprung for the Penguin ebook edition, though even that had a surprising number of odd mistakes. Penguin has always stood for quality in my mind (though I was a bit disappointed in them recently . . . Elvis knows why) but evidently that doesn't extend to their ebooks. There were several instances where what should have been a "th" was replaced with the letter "m." Just mink how confusing mat was. But it wasn't significant enough to detract from my pleasure in reading the story.

After reading Bel Ami, I am interested in checking out some of Maupassant's many short stories. I wonder why I don't hear much about him from my fellow book bloggers? Such an elegantly written and classic story should be read more often. Have you read anything by Guy de Maupassant?

"The Book of Lost Things" by John Connolly

2010-11-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

I really wanted to love this book. I expected to love it. I knew it was just my thing. A boy is sucked into a world of all the fairy tales he knows so well, only to find the reality of the stories is darker and more twisted than he ever suspected. What's not to love?

Well, I'm not quite sure, but . . . something. I considered waiting to write about this book until after I'd figured out what my problem was, but procrastination is my archnemesis.

This is not to say that I didn't like the book. I liked the fresh take on the old stories (and such a satisfying number of them were incorporated), the pervasive sense of enchantment and danger, even the comic relief in the form of oppressed communist dwarfs. Some of the stories were new to me, including my favorite--Roland's Second Tale, of Alexander and the Lady. I loved the way the book is written (the choice of words, their timeless quality). The language is perfect fairy tale fare, just like Shannon Hale's (albeit in a decidedly darker manner). But throughout the entire book I remained a spectator. I didn't expect to be literally sucked in, the way the main character was, but I did hope for more absorption of the figurative kind.

Oh, maybe that's why I didn't love it.

I (of course) can't remember where I first heard about this book, beyond the fact that it was from a fellow book blogger. The one thing that stuck in my mind was the blogger's insistence that this book is not for children. I find myself ambivalent about that distinction. While I do agree that it is too grisly for my seven-year-old book lover (worse than the brothers Grimm, by more than mere degrees), it's not aimed at adults as clearly as Gregory Maguire's fairy tale retellings. There is something childish in the feel of the story, and I don't think it would be inappropriate or too frightening for a young teenager.

I've never liked reading more than one book at a time, though I've gotten used to it since the Anna Karenina debacle. But just in the past few days I have decided it's best to stick with wildly different genres. Reading The Book of Lost Things concurrently with Bel Ami? OK. Reading it in conjunction with listening to Brisingr? Not OK. At times I had trouble remembering who was dealing with a castle which is "said to move with the cycles of the moon" and who just rescued Katrina from Helgrind. Throw in bedtime readings of The Neverending Story and I've really gone down the rabbit hole. Next thing I know, Eragon will be riding Falkor to the castle of the old king with the Loups in pursuit.

Parting shot: the book should have ended three pages before it did, with this perfect-for-an-ending paragraph: "David . . . became a writer and he wrote a book. He called it The Book of Lost Things, and the book that you are holding is the book that he wrote. And when children would ask him if it was true, he would tell them that, yes, it was true, or as true as anything in this world can be, for that was how he remembered it." If only the Woodsman hadn't told David that most people return in the end.

Reading in Retrospect: "Hallowe'en Party" by Agatha Christie

2010-10-31T01:39:00.000-05:00

This is your average Agatha Christie book. That’s a good thing, of course. In my mind, Christie is the ultimate mystery writer. I weigh all mystery novels against hers, and most suffer by comparison.

I have read this one enough times that I can actually remember who done it. (Most of Christie’s books surprise me every time I read them. You know. That literary amnesia thing again.) Of course there were a lot of details that I did not remember, so I still enjoyed the read.

In this book, Hercules Poirot is called in by his author friend Ariadne Oliver, who has been visiting in the town of Woodleigh Common. Just the night before, Ms. Oliver had attended a children’s Halloween party during which one of the young guests, a girl by the name of Joyce Reynolds, was drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket. The thing that stuck in Ms. Oliver’s mind was the fact that, earlier during the evening of the party, Joyce--a girl given to telling tall tales and generally known as a liar--had been trying to convince the others present that she had once witnessed a murder. Unfortunately for Joyce, the wrong person overheard her claims.

This isn't my absolute favorite Agatha Christie book (I'd say that slot is claimed by And Then There Were None), but I don't think I've ever read a mystery of hers that I didn't like, and this one was no exception.

Here is what I love about Agatha Christie. Her stories are always so logical. Even if the murderer is slightly insane, it's in such a neat, restrained, British way. There's very little gore, and hardly anyone ever gets hacked to pieces. Many of the deaths occur by a nice, civilized poisoning, or at worst an efficient coshing or a single, well-thought-out gunshot. Poirot and Miss Marple are my heroes, with their amazingly astute observations and keen understanding of human nature. And somehow Christie manages to get me suspecting almost every single character in the story at one point or another. See? Perfection.

Happy Halloween! Don't keep your head in the apple-bobbing bucket overlong.

Words of the Day: Special Edition

2010-10-28T07:27:00.002-05:00

Today's words are some of those which sound nothing like they should. Mandy will just have to live with the fact that I am not giving myself points for these, mainly because I already knew the definitions for most of them.

1. Pulchritude. Might as well mean ugliness instead of beauty. Or at least something like a bad attitude.

2. Bucolic. Sounds like some sort of disease that causes gassy indigestion rather than relating to a rural countryside.

3. Flummery. Should be an adjective used to describe a woman who wears flowing, ankle-length skirts, grows her hair really long, and flings her arms around a lot when she talks. Or maybe it should just describe Stevie Nicks. She seems very flummery. But flummery is actually a noun, and it is a soft jelly or porridge made with flour or meal. Ew. I like my version better.

4. Lacunae. Ought to be a synonym for chrysalis. Don't ask me why. It seems I am coming across it everywhere, and I still don't know what it means. It's the plural of lacuna, which is the title of Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel (I haven't read it). Grushin used it in The Dream Life of Sukhanov. "She had never been easy to understand, and he had long since learned to allow her small pockets of privacy by not dwelling on her manifold silences and not pursuing to its hidden origin her every expression or gesture or even absence, habitually interpreting these mysterious lacunae as evidence of her unique brand of feminine mystique." I am also re-reading The Amnesiac, and in it the main character, James, is trying to recall a song. He can only think of two of its lines, which are followed by, "Ellipsis. Lacuna. And then . . . the chorus." My guess would be something like "empty space." Webster says: Well, would you look at that. Of course it doesn't mean chrysalis, but it does mean a blank space or missing part; gap; a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure.

5. Gred. My first college roommate and I wondered how people began using words like "cool" and "rad" to mean, well, "cool" and "rad." We figured it had to start somewhere, so we decided to make up our own word: Gred. It didn't catch on.

What would you add to the list?

"Call a Man Cold" by Tom Wright

2010-10-26T08:24:00.112-05:00

Copyright © Celine Chamberlin

Remember how I said Tom Wright could easily use Blue Falling and its strong cast of characters as the beginning of a series of books, and that even a prequel would work well? Evidently Dr. Wright already knew that. Because I have just finished reading the prequel to Blue Falling.

Call a Man Cold is another excellent book, though of course by this point I am not surprised. Dr. Wright takes us back to the fictional town of Traverton, Texas, where we witness the chaotic events that culminate in Lieutenant James Bonham's willingness to finally retire from the police force. Sure, that's how this book ends, but I promise that's not a spoiler; if Blue Falling is to be published first, the reader goes into the prequel knowing that Bonham ends up retired somehow. It's finding out how that's all the fun. And when I say fun, I mean fun in the way that only a gruesome and adrenaline-filled murder mystery can be.

It will be interesting to see how these books are marketed. Of the four books, Call a Man Cold and Blue Falling are a matched pair of Texas murder mysteries. Not to disparage them, because they are excellent, but I would label them as genre fiction. Keep the Devil Dancing and What Dies in Summer, while retaining the air of mystery, suspense, and secrets, add a coming-of-age element and would be classified as literary fiction.

I will let you know as soon as any announcements are made!

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick

2010-10-23T23:43:00.000-05:00

As any true fan knows, this book was the basis for the 1982 movie Blade Runner. I am probably not a true fan, though I have seen the movie, but my husband falls in that category (as do lots of other boys, from what I gather). I've been meaning to read this book ever since Hud told me about it.

This is one of those situations where the movie adaptation is just barely related to the book. Here's what is the same: in a dystopian future, bounty hunter Rick Deckard "retires" androids. (Actually, they're not even called androids in the movie; they're "replicants.") Here's what is different: everything else. Imdb.com claims that neither director Ridley Scott nor screenwriter David Webb Peoples actually read this novel. Judging by the resulting film, I am not surprised.

The title of the book doesn't even make sense if you're only familiar with the movie. In fact, for a long time Hud thought the book was called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? which would seem much more logical based on Blade Runner. However, there's a very good reason that the book's title refers to "sheep" rather than "sleep," due to one of two huge and inter-related themes that (to my recollection) are not even hinted at in the movie.

First, most animal populations in the world have been decimated and many species are extinct. The remaining animals are highly prized and very expensive, but owning at least one animal is a necessity due to the second main theme: an empathy-based religion called Mercerism, in which the apathetic androids can't participate. These aspects add a whole new dimension to the story laid out in the movie.

Don't buy this version!

I first got this copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and was kind of disappointed in the meager, shallow writing. It was so simple and lacking in detail that it was almost like a children's story. After about three chapters I took a good look at the book and realized it was indeed a re-write for kids. *headdesk* Take this as another public service announcement: don't order that copy of this book.

When I got the real version of the book I was blown away by how much better it was. I mean, I knew it would be an improvement, but I hadn't guessed how amazing the difference would be. What I had at first mistaken for a flat and featureless story was suddenly so enriched. Not to the extent of Olga Grushin's vivid descriptions in my previous read, but the story's world was so much more fully realized. And, like Grushin and Kafka before her, this book gives a good and welcome dose of weird.

I read this book on my Kindle (a fun toy that I've enjoyed so far, except that I can only manage to get my hands on it when my middle child is either at school or asleep; she tends to commandeer it the rest of the time). However, this book did give me one complaint about the Kindle. I understand why there are no page numbers (since you can change the font size, which would alter the pagination), but the end of this book jumped out at me before I was ready for it. The gauge at the bottom of the "page" showed that 2% of the book remained to be read, and then BAM, the end. In a conventional book, I would have been more aware of how close I was to the last page.

I found the following paragraph on imdb and thought it was interesting:

Philip K. Dick first came up with the idea for his novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' in 1962, when researching 'The Man in the High Castle' which deals with the Nazis conquering the planet in the 1940s. Dick had been granted access to archived World War II Gestapo documents in the University of California at Berkley, and had come across diaries written by S.S. men stationed in Poland, which he found almost unreadable in their casual cruelty and lack of human empathy. One sentence in particular troubled him: "We are kept awake at night by the cries of starving children." Dick was so horrified by this sentence that he reasoned there was obviously something wrong with the man who wrote it. This led him to hypothesize that Nazism in general was a defective group mind, a mind so emotionally flawed that the word human could not be applied to them; their lack of empathy was so pronounced that Dick reasoned they couldn't be referred to as human beings, even though their outward appearance seemed to indicate that they were human. The novel sprang from this.

In my ridiculous stack of TBR is another novel by Dick that I'd never heard of before entitled Voices from the Street, which I am looking forward to reading. Which other books of his do you recommend?

Words of the Day

2010-10-20T08:18:00.001-05:00

Here I am squeezing just a few more words out of The Age of Innocence. I've had plenty of fiber today, so I'm ready to go!

1. Adipose. "She gave an adipose chuckle and patted his knee with her puff-ball hand." Doesn't "adipose" mean "fat"? As in, "adipose tissue"? Sure, Mrs. Manson Mingott (the owner of the "puff-ball hand") is impressively obese, but who knew even her chuckles could be chunky? Webster says: FAT. One portly point!

2. Fulminated. "When he fulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its 'trend'; and to Mrs. Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel herself part of a community that was trending." My guess is that "fulminate" means "preach" or "rail" (the verb, not the noun). Webster says: Uttered or sent out with denunciation; caused to explode (I'm guessing Wharton wasn't going for this denotation); sent forth censures or invectives; hurled denunciations or menaces. One point for "rail," minus a quarter because "preach" wasn't potent enough and because I didn't think to use "vituperate."

3. Vaticinations. "Archer had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of his mother's; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as he listened to an enumeration of the changes, that the 'trend' was visible." Maybe a synonym could be pronouncements? At least I'm pretty sure this doesn't have anything to do with the Vatican, or vaccinations. Webster says: Prophecies or predictions. That's probably worth 85% of a point, even though I didn't grasp the idea that the future was involved.

4. Unwonted. "She looked paler than usual, but sparkling with an unwonted animation." I've often read the phrase "as s/he was wont to do" (see number three!), meaning something a character does regularly or is accustomed to, so I would assume "unwonted" would be the opposite. In other words, going against tendency or acting out of character. Webster says: Being out of the ordinary; rare, unusual; not accustomed by experience. How nice! Another full point. One might even say that was unwonted.

5. Impecunious. "Archer looked with a sort of vicarious envy at this eager impecunious young man who had fared so richly in his poverty." This might mean "poor," but somehow I don't think that's right. Webster says: Having very little or no money; penniless. Ha! Another point. Just ignore the part where I said I didn't think my guess was right. And I believe that makes about 4.6 points out of 5! That's a good Dictionary Day.

Hey Tracy, guess what? Wharton used "valetudinarian" in The Age of Innocence! "His eminence as a valetudinarian now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his temperature permitted." One point for Edith. (If you want, you can have another one too, Tracy.) Plus, Wharton used "sedulously" and "importunate" not once, but twice each in this book! I'm not giving her any more points, though. She should have gone for a little more variety.

Would you believe there are still a few more Age of Innocence Words of the Day words to come? I'm going to make you wait for them, though.

"The Dream Life of Sukhanov" by Olga Grushin

2010-10-18T01:54:00.000-05:00

Following on the heels of last week's sampling of Kafka, here's a novel whose moorings to reality have been jolted askew. It accompanies a privileged Russian art critic, sometime darling of the government, as he recalls odd memories and experiences strange dreams which begin a bizarre intrusion upon his life until what is real, what is recollection, and what is nightmare are inseparably tangled.

Beyond the enticing strangeness of the story, I was quite impressed by Grushin's unusually descriptive writing. It was beautifully expressive but never trite. Whereas someone might see it as unnecessarily flashy, I reveled in the unique choices of words which resulted in passages that might be favorably compared to a vivid painting.

It seemed to me that Grushin knew just where to draw the line in relating her rich images. If she'd written the entire book with that same intensity, the result would have seemed overblown, diluting the impact of each scene and sapping much of the strength from the novel. Instead, Grushin's adept depictions heightened the dream-like quality of the story, causing time to slow as the reader was drawn in to peer at a minute detail; at the next moment, with a step back and a broader focus, time snaps back into shape.

I was a little bit disappointed that, other than its surreal and illusive nature, the cover art was not more directly related to the story. I'd been looking forward to hearing about the specific dream it depicts, and discovering the significance of the missing rung on the ladder. However, much weirdness in the book is left unexplained, so even if an incomplete ladder had been mentioned, I still might not know the meaning behind it.

"The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton

2010-10-15T18:00:00.065-05:00

The Age of Innocence and I got off to a most inauspicious beginning. After several light and easy reads, I thought I was fully recovered from Anna Karenina and ready to tackle some more Real Literature (though I must admit I rejoiced when Wharton's book arrived and I saw it was not even 300 pages).

Well, I'll tell you, I have this odd disease that renders me incapable of leaving any part of a book unread, and my copy of this book has a 21-page introduction that is so very, very dull. I thought I would never get to the book itself.

At least the introduction was not completely horrible. I actually learned a few things from it. Without it I would never have known about Edith Wharton's involvement in the Great War, providing "help and support for civilians and soldiers alike," mainly in Paris. I likewise would have had no idea that the setting for The Age of Innocence (New York just after America's Civil War, though that conflict is never mentioned in the book that I recall) mirrored the era which Wharton lived through after World War I.

Once I got through the introduction, the story itself was like a breath of fresh air. I really enjoyed it. I'd never read anything by Edith Wharton before, but I found her writing very similar to that of Henry James, which I've always loved (well, except for The Ambassadors, although I can't remember why). Both writers deal with the Victorian era and delve into what lies beneath its superficial propriety.

I loved reading what might well be called the subtext of these characters' lives. One good example was an entire unspoken monologue from May Archer to her husband Newland. With a seemingly innocuous statement and a significant look, she conveyed a much deeper meaning which was grasped by Archer with perfect clarity. This tendency was recognized years later by their son Dallas, who said, "You never told each other anything. You just sat and watched each other, and guessed at what was going on underneath . . . I back your generation for knowing more about each other's private thoughts than we ever have time to find out about our own."

Several times the reader is privy to the thoughts that Archer might have spoken aloud had he not been such a product of his environment and its mores. I think my favorite was when May asked him to close the window so he didn't "catch his death," and he thinks, "But I've caught it already. I am dead--I've been dead for months and months." What was left unsaid spoke volumes. I wonder if May was as astute in deciphering Archer's thoughts as he was with hers? She certainly knew more than she ever let on.

The entire book was rife with Victorian repression, which particularly resonates with me as it reminds me of precisely what it was like growing up with parents like mine. (I'm not really kidding very much when I say that.) Almost every character is rigidly constrained by the approval of society, keeping up appearances even if it meant withering and dying inside. Right up until the very end! Which, interestingly enough, stirred in me such a strange sense of déjà vu. I know I haven't read the book before, but I'm almost certain that somewhere, somehow, I'd already read the last two or three pages.

We'll be discussing this book tonight at Book Club. Even more fun, I got a copy of the 1993 movie with Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska. I've never seen the movie before, but I could picture Olenska looking and acting just like Pfeiffer throughout the entire book.

One final thought: I learned from this book that you should never slice cucumbers with a steel knife, but what I can't figure out is why. And, does this rule apply to stainless steel (which, in the form as we know it today, wasn't produced until the 20th century)?

Some Short Stories by Franz Kafka

2010-10-13T00:56:00.004-05:00

I'd never read anything by Kafka before, although I've always intended to at some point. I spent the past week in a frenzy of downloading free Kindle books and then realized that my glut of new e-books didn't include any of Kafka's works. (A quick search revealed the reason why: none of them were free, which makes a big difference to a cheapskate like me.)

I decided I could spare some change and ordered a collection of Kafka's works (not complete, but it looked like a good sampler). It included five very short stories.

Before the Law. Apparently this is part of Kafka's novel The Trial (which I haven't read yet, though it's a part of the collection I ordered). It is a parable about a "man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law." He spends his entire life pleading with the gatekeeper, but to no avail.

I can recognize the themes of frustration and futility in this story, but beyond that I only have questions. First of all, I have no idea what it might mean to "gain entry into the law." Does he want a job as a judge? Is he seeking forgiveness? Does he want to make a deal with the feds so they'll look the other way while he sells moonshine at the speakeasy? Second of all, why the heck did he have his very own gate assigned to him if there was no possible way for him to go through it? Or is the whole point that he should not have waited for permission? It seems that was the only thing he didn't try.

The Hunter Gracchus. A dead hunter (who is also alive "to a certain extent") travels through all the countries of the earth in his death ship which has lost its way. I guess the moral of the story is that there's a big difference between only mostly dead and all dead, and it may be best if you don't go through this hunter's clothes to look for loose change. (OK, that last bit has nothing to do with the story, but I couldn't resist.) Anyway, once again it's a story of endless frustration.

Up in the Gallery. A very brief (two paragraph) story about a frail consumptive circus rider, and the absurd way things might be in contrast with the not much less absurd way things are. What stood out most to me about this story was that each paragraph was one very, very long sentence, so that the entire story is made up of two sentences.

An Imperial Message. This is an introductory parable to the short story entitled "The Great Wall of China" (which is not included in the collection I purchased). A peasant dreams of a message sent to him by a dying emperor which, even if its very existence weren't improbable, is undeliverable due to logistics. Another exercise in futility.

Jackals and Arabs. I'm not trying to insult anyone here, but I wondered if the talking jackals in this story represented the Jewish people. "It seems to be a very old conflict--it's probably in the blood and so perhaps will only end with blood . . . you should end the quarrel which divides the world in two."

Time Transfixed, 1938
by René Magritte

Judging by this brief foray, Kafka's writing reminds me of paintings like this one. It's technically superior, but it leaves me with the feeling that there is something about it that I don't understand. The individual elements may make perfect sense, but their juxtaposition causes me to question why. Though the superficial view is deceptively simple, I am just sure there are hidden layers of underlying meaning that I am not grasping.

If you are suffering from Kafkaphobia, try a few of his short stories. They may not make any more sense to you than they did to me, but they are not difficult to read and you will get a taste of his style without investing much time. They may be enough to dispel your fear and lead you to read one of his novels. And if you do understand them, you can explain them to me!

Words of the Day

2010-10-11T00:34:00.003-05:00

I've only read a third of The Age of Innocence, and our book club meeting is Friday night. I'm not too worried (yet), but in the meantime I've found a wealth of words to look up.

1. Dilettante. "He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation." Maybe a "dilettante" is something like a minor hedonist. Webster says: An admirer or lover of the arts; a person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge; a dabbler; an amateur. Word Nazi says: No points for you!

2. Vicegerent. "Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offense against 'Taste,' that far-off divinity of whom 'Form' was the mere visible representative and vicegerent." Vicegerent? I can't help but wonder if that's a misspelling for "vice-regent." Webster says: Vicegerent actually is a real word. It's an administrative deputy of a king or magistrate, whereas a "vice-regent" is a regent's deputy. So close . . . and yet so far away.

3. Fatuities. "The stockings were one of Beaufort's few fatuities" (referring to the silk stockings his footmen wore). I'm sure this is related to the word "fatuous," but I'm not sure what that means either. Though I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the word "fat." Webster says: something foolish or stupid. (Fatuous means complacently or inanely foolish; silly; simple.) Zero for three.

4. Apotheosis. "She disappeared in a kind of sulphurous apotheosis, and when a few years later Medora again came back to New York, subdued, impoverished, mourning a third husband, and in quest of a still smaller house, people wondered that her rich niece had not been able to do something for her." Maybe an "apotheosis" is a mystery. Or a cloud. Webster says: elevation to divine status; deification; the perfect example; quintessence. I should have guessed from the root "theos" that it might have something to do with God. Oh well.

5. Sedulously. "In this view they were sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when 'such things happened' it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman." I can't decide if it means "firmly" or "secretively." Webster says: accomplishing with careful perseverance; diligent in application or pursuit; busily. SO if I had guessed "assiduously" I might have earned one measly little point. But alas, it was not to be.

I have reached a new low, with zero points for this edition of Words of the Day. I hope you did better than I did! I would make myself feel better with the idea that at least I'm learning the words, but I have a confession to make. I came across one of my previous Words of the Day in this book. "He had been somewhat languidly drifting with events for the last fortnight, and letting May's fair looks and radiant nature obliterate the rather importunate pressure of the Mingott claims." The depressing thing? I had to look it up again. In case you need a refresher too, "importunate" means troublesomely urgent.

Reading in Retrospect: "Dragon Rider" by Cornelia Funke

2010-10-08T07:37:00.023-05:00

My sister first introduced me to Cornelia Funke's books a number of years ago. Meine Schwester wohnt in Deutschland, and Funke is like a German J.K. Rowling, if perhaps the junior version. I think Sis first told me about The Thief Lord, which I devoured with relish before quickly working my way through several of Funke's other books.

It's been several years since I read Dragon Rider, but luckily I marked down a few notes about it at the time. The story took me a little while to get into, although I’m not sure why, because it turned out to be a very enjoyable book. Perhaps not quite as good as Inkheart (which is by far my favorite Funke book), but every bit as good as The Thief Lord--and maybe just a little bit better because, rather than beginning realistically but suddenly and strangely becoming an obvious fantasy halfway through, Dragon Rider was fantastic in its entirety.

This is the story of Firedrake, a silver dragon, and his furry Brownie companion named Sorrel. Firedrake and Sorrel have embarked on a journey to find the Rim of Heaven, a protected valley of legend where any number of dragons could live undisturbed. Their reason for this quest, and for leaving their happy and comfortable home among other dragons (in Scotland?), is that humans are encroaching on their caves, and discovery--with the inevitable destruction that would follow--is imminent. Once Firedrake has found the Rim of Heaven, he plans to return for the other dragons and lead them to it.

Not far into their journey, Firedrake and Sorrel acquire a small orphaned human named Ben when they stop to purchase a map from Gilbert Graytail, the white rat. Unfortunately (cue menacing music), the trio attracts the attention of a wicked golden pseudo-dragon named Nettlebrand, a creature created by an alchemist for the purpose of destroying dragons.

Not surprisingly, my two older kids have taken to Funke's stories just as much as I have. My son read Dragon Rider for a school project last spring once his interest was spurred by the movie How to Train Your Dragon. Not long afterwards, my daughter also read it when she was on her Cornelia Funke kick.

Dragon Rider is a good fun kids’ book. Have you read anything by Cornelia Funke? Which is your favorite?

Words of the Day

2010-10-06T10:40:00.024-05:00

It's as if Anna Karenina is reaching out from beyond the grave. I still have two more words from that book on my List of Words to Look Up.

1. Pellicle. Of course I wrote down that this word was on page 563, and of course I have already swapped my copy of Anna Karenina, so now I can't tell you what sentence it was used in. With no context, I can't even venture a good guess. But I can venture a bad one: a small pelican. Webster says: a thin skin or film. Zero points. Of course.

2. Nihilist. How did I make it out of college without a firm understanding of nihilism? Apparently Levin considers Oblonsky a nihilist, which causes Oblonsky to say that's like the pot calling the kettle black (though not in those words) since Levin has let nine years pass without "taking the sacrament." So I'm guessing a nihilist isn't overly religious. Webster says: a nihilist views traditional values and beliefs as unfounded, and existence as senseless and useless. Nihilism is a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth, especially moral truth. In 19th century Russia (ding!) nihilism was the program of a political party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination. Half a point for heading in the right direction but not quite grasping the scope.

3. Tenebrous. Oh, how I wish I knew where I found this word. All I know is that it referred to the way Pete's head creaked before it cracked (aren't you curious now too?) and I assumed it meant ominous. Webster says: Shut off from the light; dark, murky; hard to understand; obscure; causing gloom. Yeah, I can see how it might cause some gloom for Pete if his skull creaked until it cracked. But my guess was wrong. Which has caused me some gloom. No points.

4. Implacable. Orphan word. My old guess was that it meant "hard," but wouldn't it mean "unable to be placated," or "unsatisfied?" Webster says: not placable; not capable of being appeased, significantly changed, or mitigated. Finally I get a whole point!

5. Fulsome. Another orphan word. My guess was curvaceous. Webster says a lot: characterized by abundance; copious; offensive to the senses or to moral or aesthetic sensibility; disgusting; excessively complimentary or flattering; lavish; obsequious; exceeding the bounds of good taste; overdone; being completely developed; full, well-rounded. I'd started to worry, but there it is in the end. Another point!

Two and a half out of five. It's a little bit ridiculous how much fun this is for me, especially considering the fact that I'm not very good at it.

Once again I have a bonus phrase for you. I didn't note the entire sentence, but early in What I Was there was a reference to a "mackerel sky." This seemed a unique juxtaposition of words, although I wasn't quite sure what it could mean (pale and silvery, like a fish belly? Mottled greenish grey, like a mackerel's back?) so I looked it up. I was surprised to find that it refers to an actual meteorological phenomenon: a sky covered with rows of altocumulus or cirrocumulus clouds resembling the patterns on a mackerel's back.

"The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton

2010-10-04T01:33:00.000-05:00

Here's a book from my "I can't believe I've never read this before" list. (Well, I don't really have such a list, but I ought to. I have lists for everything else. Why not one more?)

I'm sure I'm the only one who's been living under a rock for the past few decades, but just in case I've had some company, this is the story of fourteen-year-old Ponyboy Curtis, the youngest of a gang of "greasers" living in Oklahoma in the 1960s. Their central conflict is with the "Socs," a group of rich kids with too much time and money on their hands.

The greasers have some pretty serious issues to deal with in their lives, but none of those issuses were added for shock value (I'm thinking of the movie Thirteen when I say this). Instead, we're given an honest and realistic portrayal of life as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Granted, that portrayal may be slanted to get the reader to sympathize with the greasers, but it works.

What most impresses me about this book is that the author was fifteen years old when she started writing it. When I was that age, I couldn't see much farther than my plans for the coming weekend. And not only was Hinton young, but she managed a believable male voice. Writing from the opposite gender's point of view is something I've found even fully mature authors can have trouble with.

I watched the movie just a few months ago, and I've gotta say (beyond the horribly dated music) they did an excellent job with it. The book adds very little to the experience, although it does add some.

One of the main things I found in the book which I didn't glean from the movie (maybe it was there, but either I didn't notice, or I've forgotten since I didn't write it down) was the explanation for Johnny's line, "Stay gold, Ponyboy." I guess I always thought Johnny was basically just saying "stay cool," but there's more to it than that. Johnny is asking Ponyboy to retain the beauty of his innocence--to avoid being hardened by the harshness of reality, to hold on to the childlike tenderness in his heart. The wording came from this Robert Frost poem:

"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Now I finally understand why that guy from high school told me to "stay gold, Ponyboy."

Reading in Retrospect: "Mirror, Mirror" by Gregory Maguire

2010-10-01T08:06:00.046-05:00

This was the second book I read by Gregory Maguire. It's definitely different. The story is based on that of Snow White, but I would call it more of an alternate history than a retelling of the fairy tale. In fact, when I read the "teaser" for Mirror Mirror which I found at the end of my copy of Wicked, I'm not sure I even realized it was supposed to be the Snow White story.

After reading Wicked and seeing how Maguire’s treatment of the Wicked Witch of the West portrayed Elfaba as more kindhearted than wicked, merely masquerading as a witch, and not even really from the west, I assumed that in Mirror Mirror the allegedly wicked queen would really be a tragically maligned figure while Snow White would be the truly wicked one. (And, in fact, until finishing Mirror Mirror I assumed that the ugly stepsisters of Maguire's Cinderella retelling would really be beautiful, sweet and kind, and Cinderella would be a mean and thoughtless harpy, but Mirror Mirror caused me to revise my expectations.) Maguire may have explored the theme of fairy tale retellings through several books, but his methods are by no means formulaic.

In Maguire's version of Snow White, displaced Spaniard Vicente de Nevada and his motherless daughter Bianca (get it? that's White) have a small but comfortable Italian holding in Montefiore. Bianca’s mother and the love of Vicente’s life, Maria Ines, had died in childbirth in approximately 1494. Seven years later, although the residents of Montefiore have managed to avoid the civil unrest that swirls around them, destruction is visiting them in the form of the Borgias, Cesare and his sister (and sometime lover) Lucrezia.

Cesare forces Vicente to depart from Montefiore on a quest to obtain the one remaining branch of the Tree of Knowledge, leaving Montefiore (and thus, Bianca) under Cesare’s control. Vicente is compelled to obey this demand as he owes the holding of Montefiore to the Borgias. Over the next five years, Lucrezia is overcome with jealousy as she realizes that Bianca has unwittingly and unwillingly caught the eye of Cesare, so Lucrezia pays a young hunter to take Bianca into the woods and kill her.

Of course the hunter cannot complete the evil deed, and instead releases Bianca into the forest, where she is found by a group of strange stone creatures that are slowly evolving into dwarves. (That's one of the more bizarre aspects of this story, of which I’m not absolutely sure I grasped the point.) Another odd part of the story is the way time seems to slow down for Bianca while she is with the dwarves. She lies in a sort of a coma for perhaps 6 years. There is really no explanation for this passage of time (no poison, no illness) other than the fact that the stony beings she is with have a different concept of time from humans; nor is there any good explanation for why she finally wakes up.

This book is definitely a departure from the Disney version. I am sure that in this case I prefer the original story. Some of Grimm’s fairy tales can be grisly (in the case of the original Snow White story, Disney doesn't tell us that the wicked queen salts, cooks, and eats what she believes to be Snow White's heart, or that while Snow White and her prince were living happily ever after, the queen was punished with dancing in red-hot shoes until she fell down dead), but Maguire's retelling went beyond grisly. It was corrupt and perverted (though I understand that for some of you that may be a draw rather than a deterrent).

One great thing about the way Maguire told the Snow White story was how he stirred in actual historical figures. The Borgias fascinate me in the mesmerizing way of a poisonous snake. I'm not sure I can think of a more conniving and infamous family in all of history. Though their presence in a fairy tale can't be historically accurate, I'm convinced the portrayal of their tendencies and personalities was.

My biggest complaint about the book is that odd dreamlike quality I was frequently frustrated by in my own creative writing assignments when I was in grade school. So often when I was required to write a story I had trouble making it sound concrete and realistic, as when something you think you understand inexplicably morphs into another thing, or perhaps even disappears entirely. Much of this book was plagued by a similar problem. It may sound intriguing, but I saw this as a weakness in my own writing, and when I recognize it in a book I can't help but view it as a flaw.

Words of the Day

2010-09-29T01:12:00.053-05:00

1. Valetudinarian. It's like cheating to include this word in my Dictionary Day post, because 1) I didn't come across it while reading a book, and 2) it was defined for me. I read it here. But I'm using it anyway, because I have read Emma before (though it's been years), and I wouldn't have remembered what it meant if Tracy hadn't told me--in fact, I don't remember even seeing it in the book. But here it is: a whining hypochondriac. Webster says: a person of a weak or sickly constitution; esp: one whose chief concern is his invalidism. I can't count this one for me, but Tracy gets one point.

2. Exigent. From Tom Wright's fourth book, which I hope to tell you about soon. "The killing clearly was not exigent, nor did it strike effectively at the illegitimate occupation forces of Washington, either of which might have justified the effort and risk of such an undertaking." I gotta tell you, I've got nothing. Unless "exigent" is related to "exiguous" which was one of my previous Words of the Day, meaning excessively scanty or inadequate, though that really doesn't fit the context. Webster says: requiring immediate aid or action; requiring or calling for much; demanding. So, basically, my kids. And nothing like exiguous (other than the first four letters). Dang. Zero points.

3. Parlous. From Anna Karenina. "Oblonsky's financial affairs were in a parlous state." Sounds to me like the redneck pronunciation of "perilous." And--would you believe it?--it kind of is. Webster says: full of danger or risk; hazardous. One point for me!

4. Concatenation. From What I Was. "The sea was oddly flat. There was always at least a gentle swell and fall, though more usually little white riffles and uneven waves. It looked eerie out there now, unnatural. Dead flat and motionless. A concatenation of signs." As much as I want that to be something about a country of felines, judging by the context I am sure it is more of a confluence or a "coming together." Webster says: Linked together. Yeah, I was close enough to get point number two.

5. Exeat. Also from What I Was. I'm a little annoyed at myself for not writing down the sentence, but I remember it referred to a note signed by a teacher allowing a student to leave the boarding school campus and make a trip to town. Webster doesn't know this word (so I should get two points for it, right?) but wikipedia tells me that "exeat" is used in Britain to describe weekend leave from a boarding school. Another interesting tidbit: the word is Latin for "he/she may leave." I guess I'll just take one point. Three points for me and at least one for Tracy.

I've got a bonus phrase for you today. It's not one we need to define, but it's one I was surprised to find in Anna Karenina. Oblonsky "was kept cooling his heels for two hours" in a waiting room. I would have guessed that people started cooling their heels in the 60s (and by this of course I am referring to the twentieth century, not the era of Tolstoy). I can't help but wonder if this is an anachronistic idiom or if the same phrase is found in the original Russian version. My brief search for the origin of "cool your heels" was unsuccessful, so if you have any information on this, please tell me. Otherwise, I will just content myself with this fact: at least Oblonsky didn't cool his jets instead.

Speaking of the era of Tolstoy, here's a fun parallel. Anna Karenina (written between 1873 and 1877) is a contemporary of Laura Ingalls Wilder (born in 1867). So the childhood we read about in the Little House series was taking place in America during the same time that Tolstoy was writing in Russia.

"The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein

2010-09-28T00:39:00.000-05:00

I didn't expect to like this book. It's about a race car driver (not interested) and it is narrated by his dog (double not interested). But it was recommended to me by Anne (who, by the way, ought to post on her blog more frequently because I know she has all kinds of interesting things to say). Anne's book suggestions are worth something to me, so I thought I might give it a try.

Judging by the source of the recommendation, I shouldn't be surprised that I enjoyed the book. I was afraid the doggy narration would either be too silly (look! a squirrel!) or too human, but Stein achieves a fine balance in anthropomorphizing Enzo the dog. He is smart, even philosophical, but not so clever that you lose sight of the possibility that maybe dogs really can think this way. Not my dogs, of course. One is too lazy, the other is too spastic, and neither has the look of a deep thinker. I can't help but figure that when they bark their minds are devoid of anything beyond "woof." But I have heard of dogs whose responsiveness to humans surely reflects an internal monologue every bit as steeped in astute observation as Enzo's.

Enzo is not omniscient (which is a good thing, of course, so that the story is not impossible to swallow), but he sees and knows and understands so much. It was a bit jarring at times when Enzo was clearly a thinly disguised vehicle for the author's own opinions (like the brief diatribe on allergies and pharmaceutical companies, among others) but it was never to an extent where I lost the magic and fell out of the book.

Some of the weirdest parts of the story (the zebra, the crows) were my favorites. They kept the narrative from being too syrupy, too saccharine, too sentimental. It was just as Enzo explains when postulating that a true hero is not perfect and must overcome obstacles of his own making in order to triumph. Unfortunately, I found Enzo's owner a bit too good to be true, belying those observations, but this was not a fatal flaw in the book.

My prayer to the movie gods: please give up on your film adaptation of this book. I can only picture two possible movies, and they would both suck. Movie #1: Just Denny the driver's story, with Enzo sidelined as a mute witness. This would drain all the life from the story. Movie #2: a movie more faithful to the book, with an Enzo voiceover by someone like Judge Reinhold. Please, no.

"Free-Range Chickens" by Simon Rich

2010-09-24T15:11:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a book isn't what you expect and that is not a good thing. I bought this book because I was seduced by the price (a dollar for a hardback!), and I liked the cover, and I like chickens. I chose to read it next because it was short (129 pages!) and claimed to be funny.

I promise I really did read the cover copy before buying it, and although I'm sure I didn't pee my pants over it, what I read was at least chuckle-worthy. But evidently the price tag prevented me from flipping through and glancing at random excerpts the way I normally would before buying a book. I had expected one funny story, or possibly even unrelated but cohesive chapters, but instead it is basically just a joke book.

The text is divided into several categories, but there is no flow within those categories. It's like Short Attention Span Theater. I'm guessing the title refers to how scattered these unrelated thoughts are.

I wonder, had I not already read in the author bio that Simon Rich writes for Saturday Night Live, would I have been able to guess? Most of these bits read like skits that were either too short or not funny enough to make it onto the show. A show which I stopped watching years ago because it wasn't consistently entertaining. If only one or two skits are funny out of the entire show, it's too much of a gamble--a waste of time.

Don't let me give you the idea that the book isn't at all funny. Rich takes everyday circumstances and twists them so that the absurd or ridiculous is visible. I never did roll in the floor, and probably didn't even literally laugh out loud, but the book was at least humorous enough to bring a smile to my face.

I have to wonder how much more I might have appreciated this book if I had been prepared for what it really was. But I know what I do appreciate--someone has already requested it on paperbackswap.