Top 10 in 2010

Again, in no particular order (I'd find it hard to put these in order; sad that only four are by women)

The Light of Day – Graham Swift
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Plague – Albert Camus
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot

First runner up: Silk – Alessandro Baricco

So, yeah, go read these! But remember how I feel about skills at recommending books.

Bottom 10 in 2011

In no particular order (trust me, if these were in order, Interview with the Vampire would either be at the top or the bottom depending on the order). Special shout outs to Roth and Coetzee for getting on this list twice this year!

The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi

First runner up: Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul

Are you okay?

Oh, Fugitive Pieces. It's been awhile since I've cried so much while reading a book. This led to two personal trainers at the gym and a stranger on a bus asking the titular question. The answer may be debatable.

That said, the book description should give anyone a fairly good sense of how upsetting it will be. Essentially, it is about the shattering effects of World War II and the Holocaust, and how they reverberate in the lives of three men from different generations. That set-up is certainly powerful in and of itself, but what really drives the novel is the language/prose and description of how the characters perceive the world and make sense of their experiences.

Here is a quote from the dustcover that sort of sums up what I mean "And in this layered process of re-entering life, Jakob learns the power of language - to destroy, to omit, and to obliterate; but also to witness and tell, conjure and restore." The novel explores this duality and is concerned with other seemingly contradictory dualities and how we make sense of them in the face of terrible trauma and tragedy.

Now, I realize like many of the books that I love, this makes it sound bleak and sad. And it certainly is, but it is also so. . . I'm not sure the right word. Beautiful was what first came to mind, but I do not want to imply on any level that I think there is anything beautiful about acts of atrocious, unspeakable violence. And yet, there is something awe inspiring, tender, and exquisite in the ability to survive, to endure, to not try to cover over these tragedies or forget, but to fully face and fully grapple with them and their impact on lives. I do find something beautiful in that, but obviously it's very complicated.

Here are some favorite quotes:

"To be proved true, violence need only occur once. But good is proved by repetition."

"I can't save a boy from a burning building. Instead he must save me from the attempt; he must jump to earth."

"Perhaps the electron is neither particle nor wave but something else instead, much less simple - a dissonance - like grief, whose pain is love."

10 Things I Can't Do

So, I realize this has nothing to do with the list project - except it does reflect my love of lists - but that said I've been thinking about a variety of things that I imagine most adults/people can do that, quirkely enough, I cannot. I wanted to write these down, since they've been jangling around in my head.

1. Whistle
2. Tie my shoelaces the regular way
3. Blow a bubble with gum
4. Juggle
5. Drive a car
6. Make coffee
7. Dance
8. Braid my hair
9. Unlock most doors without struggle
10. Light a match (this may be more fear based than anything)

Now, clearly the bubble blowing impacts my daily life the most. The car one tends to surprise people the most, but that said, no one really wants me to drive. Trust me on that one. I would be an awful driver.

The Girl Who's Read One Million Books

So, in my head this is more of a story, but as I write it I realize it is more of an anecdote than a full-up story, as it were. Oh, well. Maybe it's still a bit amusing.

Mini background: part of my job involves a lot of communication with various law enforcement (LE). In this capacity I was exchanging emails with an LE contact who happens to know about the list project (another story for another day).

First he wanted to know where I was at on the list and then how many I had read this year. Armed with that knowledge, he then told me that he hoped I was also making some time to enjoy life and not just read (says the guy who is sending work related emails late on a Saturday night). I pointed out that a lot of my reading happens on public transportation, which is hard to enjoy; he conceded this point.

From this exchange, I also learned that around this particular LE agency I am known as the girl who has read a million books, which a) not exactly what I was going for, and b) not at all accurate. I mean, even if you read for 80 years you would have to read about 35 books a day (a day!) to do that. While apparently I may appear older than I am, I don't think that I appear to be 80.

What is your book about?

I think that I am losing my ability to summarize books based on their plots. Lately, when asked to describe what I am reading, I've started saying things like "It's about his inner struggle to accept mortality" or "It's about the way we create meaning from experiences." I think this is a very annoying new tendency of mine, but seriously, that's how I've started thinking about novels.

I imagine that this is all leading to me just saying "It's an exploration of what it means to be a person/to exist," since hey, boil everything done and that's really what they're all about (example a: Green Eggs and Ham).

So, yeah, I'm really bad at this blogging thing

I could give a variety of excuses (I've been busy, or something?), but bottom line, I've been an awful blogger lately. The problem is that I keep right on reading, and then I just get so behind that it is overwhelming to try to catch up.

Since last I wrote, I have read 27 books, putting me past my 100 goal for 2011. Go me! Still on track to finish by the time I am 35. I even read Don Quixote, which I consider quite the accomplishment (who knew the windmill part came so early in that tome?). Please insert your own quixotic joke here, since I'm not feeling super creative.

Only one of these books made me so frustrated that I started hitting myself in the face with it. While on the metro. Awkward, I know (but hey, my seatmate got up and left me, so that's a win if nothing else). I also read one that when I summarized it for one of the women I see a lot at the gym, led her to say "Well, I like books, but I don't like that sort of book." These weren't the same two books. Super, magic bonus points if you can figure out which two lead to these experiences!

Let's see, some highlights: still love Kundera, Black Water was very upsetting, the Sayers was just fun, Marya was painful, I cried so much with Timbuktu, really enjoyed Daniel Deronda (so many questions about what it means to be a "good" person, what makes life worthwhile, etc.), and Silk is just devastating and amazing and beautiful.

That's all you're getting on these works, but I'll try to be better generally with blogging. I have one funny story to share in another post, and I'll do a bottom ten and top ten for 2011 soon as well.

In case you're wondering, here are the 27:

The Victim – Saul Bellow
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Untouchable – John Banville
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Temptation lurks everywhere

The Economist recently sent me a lovely little letter. Since I gave Josh a subscription for his birthday, the letter told me, I could now give myself a gift of The Economist for just $109 for a year. Which is a pretty good price.

I also love that they call it a gift for myself. It's how they try to lure you in: "here's a nice gift," it purrs. "You deserve to give yourself something nice." Now personally, I think of this as actually buying something, not giving myself something, but maybe I have the wrong outlook.

It is awfully tempting though. Mmm, The Economist.

That said, it wouldn't have a positive effect on my list reading. Hmm. . .

B is for Bored

Yeesh. I can't decide if I dislike unpleasant books or boring books more. Of course, many books are both boring and unpleasant, so maybe I don't have to decide! These two, though, fit squarely in the just boring category (because for me "unpleasant" is a euphemism for books that I find skin-crawlingly icky like American Psycho and The Wasp Factory). Maybe I wasn't in the right head space for them, but they sort of made me want to claw my eyes out.

First up, we have The Enigma of Arrival, aka my first Naipul. Maybe I just don't get Naipaul. Maybe I just don't want to. Honestly, I tried to go into this not having any baggage about his jerk tendencies (and in reading this, I'd say also his delusions of grandeur, but again, maybe I just don't get his works).

That's all I want to say about that one. I know I didn't actually say anything about it, really, but trust me, there is nothing to say. Nothing.

Then I read Strait is the Gate. To give some context, when I was making a record of this on my list I use to keep track of the books that I've read, at first I spelled the title as straight, and I thought the book wasn't really on the list. I literally said out loud, "If I read this and didn't have to, I'll kill myself." Now, okay, yes I didn't actually mean that, but good gracious. This one was both boring and maddening.

Essentially, the plot is that the narrator lives in France in the 19th century. As a young boy, he grows up with his cousins and falls in love with the older female cousin. She's sort of like Elsie Dinsmore on steroids. Her younger sister is crushing on the narrator, so first she's like, don't marry me, marry her! I shall sacrifice myself. Then the younger sister (who is sort of awesome; I wish this had been a book about her) hooks up with someone else, so that's all good. But then she's like, if we get together we'll be happy, but we shouldn't want to be happy! We should want to be constantly working towards being happy, but never really get there. Let's be really holy instead. You should talk to God, not me. I shall sacrifice myself! And then she dies. The end.

Why I try to avoid recommending books

I think I have pretty unusual, and at times a bit morbid, taste in books. These two books are good examples of works that I loved, but that I'd be hesitant about recommending to the general populous. Both are really excellent! But maybe not for everyone.

The first was a bit of a surprise for me, because generally I am not a Virginia Woolf fan (bad feminist!). That said, I absolutely loved The Waves. For a one-word descriptor, I'd choose transcendent. It's very unconventional, and accentuates that impressionistic quality of Woolf's. Though that sometimes (usually) bothers me, in this case it worked. The novel follows the inner lives of several friends as they intersect and then cascade away throughout their lives from childhood to adulthood. The characters do not speak in the usual sense; instead, we hear their inner monologues.

Here is a favorite quote: “He will forget me. He will leave my letters lying about among guns and dogs unanswered. I shall send him poems and he will perhaps reply with a picture post card. But it is for that that I love him. I shall propose meeting – under a clock, by some Cross; and shall wait, and he will not come. It is for that that I love him. Oblivious, almost entirely ignorant, he will pass from my life. And I shall pass, incredible as it seems, into other lives; this is only an escapade, perhaps, a prelude only.”

The second one, Time's Arrow, sort of sounds horrifying when you just read the summary. It's about a Nazi doctor who was at Auschwitz as told through the perspective of this alter ego who is in his body but disconnected from his mind/thoughts. The kicker is that the alter ego is experiencing the life of the protagonist backwards, starting with death and working back through his years living in the U.S. undercover as a doctor at a hospital, hurtling of course towards the years at the concentration camp. Doesn't that just sound delightful?

So, it's obviously a difficult read (though a super fast one, too) raising a number of difficult issues, but it's really, really amazing. Holocaust novels are a genre in and of themselves, of course, and it can feel like a cheap shot at making something "meaningful" and "important" (there's a reason there was that Kate Winslet skit about the Oscars). This one, though, doesn't fall in that trap. Through this incredibly strange narrative device, it brings a unique perspective to many of questions. The narrator truly is experiencing everything backwards, so during the years at the hospital he sees the doctor as taking healthy people and breaking them; at the concentration camp, he experiences the crematoriums as taking ash and turning it into people. It's disturbing, yes, but also gets at you in ways that more conventional and trite works certainly do not.

But yes, this is why I shy away from making recommendations.

Sudsy

Phineas Finn is, quite simply, a soap opera. Reading it is the equivalent to watching a 19th century soap opera. It's also really, really long (over 700 pages), but overall the length isn't so bad, because it's just a frothy, sudsy little read.

The basic plot is following the career of Phineas Finn, a young Irishman who goes into British Parliament as his first career move. He semi falls in love with (proposes to or is proposed to by) four women, including two who are close friends, one of whom is in love with the brother of the other one, etc. Characters marry the wrong characters, there are duels and scandals, and lots of political intrigue that didn't mean all that much to me.

If you ship properly, you can really enjoy this one (that is, do you see Violet and Oswald as OTP?), though the duel did bug me. Overall I was able to accept the gender issues for what they were at the time and such, but duels and violence like this just make me crazy. Probably because this sort of behavior defending a woman's "honor", fighting (physically) about a woman with no input from her as though she's a desirable piece of cake or something, and such is still seen as romantic, not as creepy, objectifying, and problematic. So, yes, I get it in the context, but we've not gotten past it really, so it bugs.

Completely different direction, but while reading this, I have become (re)obsessed with watching various YouTube clips from old One Life to Live episodes. I've alluded to my love of the Jessica Buchanan character before, actually (Erin Torpey version). That said, if you're ever confused and looking for a way to tell me and Sarah apart, there are actually many good ways (two words: soul gestures), but one solid option is to ask with whom we ship Christian on OLTL.

I Love You, Because You Know Such Lovely People

Sometimes this project is rather like taking nasty-tasting medicine; there's not other way but through, so you just have to suck it up. I've had a few books along the way that have matched that analogy quite nicely, but the most unpleasant I have read (probably the most unpleasant book I have ever read) is The Wasp Factory. Good gravy. The basic plot of this story is that you have this very morbid teenager whose hobbies mostly involve a machine to kill wasps in a number of unique ways, collecting dead animal heads (which often involves killing the animals), and musing about the three murders he has committed. He indicates that he's killed his younger brother and two cousins; we'll return to that in a moment.

In addition to this lovely human being, we also get his brother who, at the start of the novel, has just escaped from a mental institution where he has been confined for doing such charming things as setting dogs on fire and giving small children lumps of dirt with maggots and worms in them. Yes indeedy.

The novel has a bit of a twist (though it's hard to really care about, because by then you just want to be done and take a hot shower), about which I have extremely mixed feelings. Extremely. I won't really go into it, but let's just say that gender is a very complicated topic to raise and I think even with the twist some aspects of this novel's treatment of gender are pretty problematic.

That said, it did raise for me some questions about unreliable narrators and what it even means to be an unreliable narrator in a fictional story, since there's not reality to be unreliable with regard to, really. I'm not sure if our lead is supposed to come off as potentially unreliable, but I did wonder at times. Which then led me down this rabbit hole of what it even means, etc. which, sadly, was the most interesting aspect of this book for me. So icky. Really a shame, too, because Iain Banks is hot.

I also read another Graham Greene, The End of the Affair. Which, okay, fine whatever, it was good an all, and had some interesting characters and a cool structure. But, the thing is, it's really just like ever other Greene novel that I have read; which is to say, so obsessed with this weird sort of Catholic guilt, this intense need for Catholicism, combined with this need for some sort of divine Catholic approval and a simultaneous hatred of Catholicism. It's hard to describe in a way that would really capture what I mean exactly, unless you've read a few of Greene's books, but suffice it to say: yeesh, dude, get over it.

These boots were made for walking

Earlier I wrote a post about the role of pacing in how I experience a novel. Cloudsplitter is an interesting example to consider in this light. First, some quick background. This is a historical novel about the life of Owen Brown, the son of John Brown of the famous Harpers Ferry raid. In some ways, it's equally about John Brown as seen through the lens of Owen Brown (as seen through this fictional account, of course, but there you go). It is also very long, and since I had a hardback edition, not particularly portable. I actually broke one of my rules and read a couple of shorter books while reading this one, since it wasn't super fun to lug it all over creation. I don't like doing a book for home and a book for the bus/gym, but in this case it seemed the best option.

The pace of the novel lent itself to this approach, since it really is a very thorough life story, beginning with the protagonist as a young child (will, it's told in a series of letters he's writing, so technically at the start he's an old man, but whatever) and traversing up to the raid. It's a very meditative novel, so a meditative reading approach fit well. The character really is reflecting on his life and it's meaning, not simply recounting the events.

A major issue of concern to the narrator is, of course, race. Throughout the novel, he struggles with his internal racist feelings, and his rational knowledge and external stance which is aligned with his father's very radical views for the time. This struggle is central to his character, and really is the center of the novel as a whole. I can't imagine a book club ever actually being able to get through this one because it is so long, but I think it would be an excellent choice if people were willing to really engage with it (I imagine it would make many white people feel rather uncomfortable if they're completely honest).

I'm familiar with the basic outlines of the raid and John Brown's life, but I should read some more to get a better sense for how to judge the novels account of all of this. I don't know enough to really know the fictional aspects from the historical facts (aside from the obvious pieces, of course).

If you are the kind of person who likes books on tape, it might also be a good choice for an extremely, extremely long road trip.

I plan to be serious when I grow up

One thing that I have noticed is that people at the gym do tend to have opinions about my reading habits. Here is a relatively recent example.

I'm sitting waiting patiently for my first Saturday dance class - reading Cloudsplitter, in case you're curious - when the hip-hop teacher approaches me, plops his hands on the table, and delivers the following mini-speech:

"Every time I see you, you're always reading. . ." long pause as we both contemplate where this is going. "Which is great, but you can also relax."

This story is probably funnier if you know both of us.

Bonus points if you get the titular reference.

You're Just Reading These Now?

Awhile ago I noted that there are three categories of books on the list. These two decidedly fall in the category of books that people are surprised I haven't read. In some ways, those are the least exciting ones. Anyway, here goes.

The Color Purple is rather the sort of book that you're glad to have read, but not glad while reading it. I was sort of dreading it, even though I knew that it would be excellent. Definitely lived up to expectations on both counts. Yes, it's haunting, painful, beautiful work. It's also extremely, extremely triggering. Ultimately, it was more uplifting and I guess affirming than I had expected, but still, super triggering.

I certainly am not the target audience for Catcher in the Rye. It left me feeling rather the same way that Franny and Zooey did, which I suppose makes sense. I decided to read it in a quick sitting, and I'm glad that I did. It's one that I just wanted to get behind me.

It's another one of those reads that it's hard not to have other associations with, since it pops up so much in other literary and pop culture. Depressingly enough, though, the only example I can think of is a Full House episode. That is seriously, seriously pathetic.

Playing Catch Up Again

Okay, fine, I'm not a very good blogger. I acknowledge this. I own this as part of my personality. Deal.

Let's talk about Cloud Atlas. I actually really want to, because this book was amazing. Amazing. I loved it. I need to find the librarian again who checked me out, since he said it was on of his favorite books, and I should tell him that now it is one of mine.

Basically, it is this sandwich of stories, starting with an explorer in the 19th century that felt Master and Commander-ish, then abruptly jumping to a composer in the 1930s who would be at home with Evelyn Waugh characters, then jumping to a thriller/mystery involving an investigative journalist and a nuclear plant, a semi-modern day story about a publisher's escape from a retirement home, a dystopian futuristic world with a clone for slave labor, and then a post-apocalyptic, almost stone-age like story. And then it loops back through all of them.

There is so much one could say about this, though clearly the first thing is, go read it! The description on the cover of the book calls it dazzling, and truly, that's such an apt word. It simply is dazzling. The way the different stories connect with each other, and what this says about the nature and role of stories, legends, and truth is fascinating. The most fun story was the composer one. It's quite hilarious, and also heartbreaking in light of one of the other stories. My favorite, though, was the second-to-last one. I know the final story is sort of the heart of the novel, but so many of the novel's themes seemed to really come out with this one, particularly relating to truth and how truth can have such a complex relationship with stories, legends, and truth as we perceive it.

The two main themes of the story are: rewriting/retelling of the past, and human beings willingness, sometimes eagerness, to enslave one another or exploit one another. Both permeate the various stories in interesting ways, and I'd love to write an exploration of how those two themes interact with each other. You could also do so many interesting academic papers comparing two of the stories. It would be great for a class, because you could all read the book, but everyone could pick whichever two they wanted for the comparison.

After this, I read Hawksmoor. This also played with time and typical narrative construction, since it involved an architect in the late 1700s and a modern CID Detective (okay, I'm too lazy to look up whether that is redundant; oh, the Brits). It was all right, but not a favorite. Basically, it was all about reason and the edges of human reason. And doesn't that sound like fun?

Slate article

I have a thing for articles like this, though they do get repetitive.

What is the Name of this Post?

Sometimes I think that many literary authors must have had terrible experiences with filing out paperwork or applying for state ID cards or something. Seriously.

Spoiler alert!

So, this first books is about a guy who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral and then gets executed. Again I say, seriously. That's really the plot. It's either called The Stranger or The Outsider depending on your translation, and it's the first book by Albert Camus. Now, I loved The Plague, but The Outsider didn't do all that much for me. It was rather Kafka-esque, and I have low patience for these sort of things.

Anyway, it was an interesting read in some ways. It really picked up with the second half after he had been arrested. Though actually the trial was a bit maddening as well. But his outburst at the absurdity of it all was excellent. Again, I recommend The Plague, but this one was fine. And actually quite short.

Now, the next one I really did love. I've noted here before that I have a thing for Russian writers, and The Master and Margarita did not disappoint. It's a retelling of Faust wrapped up with a retelling of the Pontius Pilate story.

This was such a forceful, complex novel. The set-up in the first chapter is amazing, and the tonal change from that chapter to the second leaves you reeling but also shows the author's mastery. While the story builds and continues to raise the stakes in many ways, that second chapter may be my favorite part of the novel. There is so much to unpack here, and I'm sure this is one that would benefit from a few re-reads, as well as some conversations with people who have more expert knowledge and background.

I did love it, but I'm not sure to whom I could recommend it. I'm definitely glad that I've read as much Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky as I have, and that I've read Faust (and I guess that being familiar with the Passion helps, too, of course). In some ways it also reminded me of The Satanic Verses. It would be interesting to do a comparative piece with those two. Many, many differences obviously, and written in very different historical moments and cultural contexts (and really literary styles, though they have a similar feel in some ways), but they speak to each other in fascinating ways.

Glass House, Stones, Mumble Mumble

Yeesh. We got a bit behind in July. In order to stay on track for the year, I need to read at least 37 and ideally 39 more books. We'll see what happens. The two years worth of American Scholars that I salvaged definitely did not help matters, and neither did Bleak House and its 900 pages. Time to kick it up a notch again.

Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key was definitely the most enjoyable read I had during my Europe trip. It is basically just classic noir of the non-detective variety. It is short, but well-crafted, as you would expect from Hammett. I'd say that this one is less about the twist, per se, and more about the main character's journey. Even that doesn't feel quite accurate, exactly. It's not that he changes as a character, more that his circumstances change and he adapts, and in some ways it's almost as though he expected this change. It's a very cynical novel, of course.

I feel like I should have more to say, but I read it about a month ago now, and though it was a fun read, it was essentially your basic noir. Nothing particularly unusual about it. After I finished it I did start to try to cast a movie version with current actors. They did make a movie of it in 1942, which I have not seen, and which is not available in any format on Netflix. Sad face.

Onward now to Bleak House. I personally find it easier to tolerate this one if I put the emphasis on house rather than bleak. I suggest trying that if you ever decide to read this one.

There's really nothing wrong with Bleak House; it's quintessential Dickens, as you would imagine. I'd suggest David Copperfield or Great Expectations over this one, but overall it's fine. There were some really funny parts, and I think I tolerated Esther more than some (you need to groove with her or you are in trouble). I'm sure many papers have been written about Dickens' treatment of and perspective on women, and this would provide some fodder for that.

The thing is, though, that this is a really, really long book; having read so much Dickens already, this really contributed nothing new. I am Dickensed out, ladies and gentlemen, and that is all there is to say. Yes, it does have spontaneous human combustion, but it's not what you think. It really could have been replaced with pneumonia, say, and would have made little difference.

Sometimes this Project Sucks

Some books raise more questions than they answer. Interview with the Vampire is one of those books. It raises such provocative questions as:

• What possessed Anne Rice to write this novel?
• Why was it so popular?
• What do people find appealing about it?
• Why is it on the list?
• Can I please have the hours (not many, mind you, but still) of my life that I spent reading this back?
  
• Pretty please?

Seriously.

Where to start. Clearly I hated this novel. I think I hated everything about this novel, including the name of the main character. He was amazingly whiny and angsty. I don't think I have any sort of unreasonable prejudice against vampires. Yes, not a Twilight fan, yes, never seen Buffy nor Angel nor True Blood, but hey, I read and enjoyed Dracula! That should count for something. Plus, I think it is fair to blame a lot of the current problems with vampires on Rice.

I'm having a hard time deciding which character I hated the most. One hand, wanted to maim or otherwise destroy Claudia; other hand, loathed Lestat to an unbelievable degree; but, in all, I think Louis was the worst. Perhaps because we spend so much time with him, or perhaps because he is pretentious, whiny, obnoxious, creepy, self-righteous, stupid, boring, and cringe-inducing.

When looking up the title for this little work online (I can never remember the proper article before Vampire), I stumbled on Annerice.com, which is filled with discussion questions (22, to be exact). Let's tackle a couple, shall we?

1. Over the years Rice has been asked why she chose the vampire as her hero. If you were Rice, how would you answer the question?

With hand puppets! Or a sardonic grin.

2. Why did she write a metaphysical thriller using B-movie motif?

I reject the premise of this question; I argue that she did not write a metaphysical thriller. There was nothing thrilling about this novel, except when I reached the last page and realized that it was behind me.

The silver lining to all of this has got to be the movie adaptation. I've not seen it, but I recently googled it as well, and the pictures of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are hilarious.

Bubonic Insomnia

All right! Yes, we did take a hiatus. We were on holiday. It was amazing. We read many books, but we had internet limitations.

Currently, Bleak House is destroying my soul, so I thought I'd take a reading break and do a quick update.

Let us start with The Last September (since that is the first one that I read). I elected to read this one on a transatlantic flight, which proved to be an excellent decision. This is because the first flight was one where I was supposed to fall asleep, and if this book doesn't cure insomnia I don't know what will. Truly, nothing happened. At all. This was actually sort of the point of the book, I think. It's kind of a coming of age story in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence, which actually sounds like it has some promise. However, the book is amazingly dull. I was actually quite disappointed, because I loved The House in Paris (and even The Heat of the Day was pretty good). I have a ton of Bowen's left, so hopefully this was the fluke and not the other way round.

After that, I decided to read The Plague, mostly because I found a left copy in the reading material stand at the gym. How amazing is that? This is a book about an Algerian town that faces the plague sometime in the 1940s. Now, I know that this sounds truly terrible, sort of about the worst book one can imagine, but please believe me, it is not. It's actually very beautiful in a sort of morbid way, and captivating. It's a bit bleak, but also hopeful in a way that only a work that real sees into the absolute darkness of the world without flinching can be. I'm not explaining this very well.

Here's an example quote "He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts." The whole book is like this. It's captivating, and it explores so, so, so many issues. You could do a whole course just using this book as a spring board. I'm always fascinated by ways people cope with facing horrific aspects of life over and over again, and my favorite passage of this book is a scene where the doctor and his friend decide to take an afternoon for their friendship to remind themselves the purpose of their work, the world the're working towards.

One of these books was abandoned in Venice and one in Munich. I wonder if anyone is reading them now.

One Word Book Titles

Deserve one word reviews, right? For Fury, I would pick misanthropic; for Ragtime, sumptuous.

Well, all right, they both deserve a bit more than that.I actually really liked both.

I've been making my way through Rushdie's' oeuvre. Nothing has surpassed or even come close to my love of The Ground Beneath Her Feet (The Moor's Last Sigh came the closest, and it was still a solid miss). That said, I do love Rushdie. Fury was very short, but it was so richly and tightly woven that it still had the decadence of any Rushdie. That said, it had a bit of a different feel, perhaps because it was so tightly focused and took place almost completely in the US. In some ways, it almost reminded me of Zadie Smith's works.

I will admit that Neela did not do too much for me. I was much more interested in Mila. This may reflect my age more than anything, though of course there's always the possibility that I liked her since she made me think of Mila Kunis, which is pretty much always a good thing.

I decided to stay in the city but jump back about 100 years for Ragtime. This is actually one that I wasn't excited about reading. I love the musical, but I had once tried to start this one about seven years ago and couldn't get into it, so I was concerned. However, I really loved it. There were some extremely beautiful passages (particularly the part that is Our Children and Atlantic City in the musical), and it really is masterfully constructed. The real historical characters get more room in this than the musical, particularly Nesbit and Houdini. I found Younger Brother's story a bit more compelling in the book as well, though I found Coalhouse less so.

It's interesting, actually, to see how the two different mediums work for this story. On the one hand, the novel is more leisurely and can explore its richly and again tightly woven world in these vignettes of detail that are lovely. On the other hand, the story simply aches for music.

It was also an excellent choice for Independence Day, I rather think.

How Strange

Some books simply are not cut out to have back of the book descriptions. I think these are two good examples.

The first, Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, according to the back of the book, is about a 16th century nobleman, who over the course of the story will become a 20th century woman. Indeed.

The second, The Blind Assassin, starts out describing the suicide of a young woman in the 1950s in Canada, before jumping to the alien planet Zycron. Yep.

That said, I actually enjoyed both a great deal. I have some issues with Woolf, but I found Orlando to be her most readable and enjoyable. This may be due to it being less melancholy than your average Woolf. It is strange, but overall it works surprisingly well, and it raises some interesting questions about gender, sexuality, and identity (fluidity is sort of the theme).

Similarly, I found The Blind Assassin to be one of the more enjoyable Atwood's that I have read (though I confess the aliens didn't due too much for me). It's an interesting one structurally, certainly, and the twists work. I think Iris is a bit of a polarizing character, and your enjoyment likely will depend on how well you can take her.

Why I need a book deal

Okay, so I don't actually need a book deal. Aside from water, food, shelter, and oxygen one really doesn't need all that much. That said, I feel like I would really benefit from a book deal, because I hate ice breakers. Here is my (rock solid, air tight, hole proof) logic:

If I got a book deal, then the book could be very popular, and then someone could option it for a film, and then they could make a movie about me, and then a celebrity would play me, and then whenever I had to answer either the "interesting fact about yourself" or the "which celebrity would play you in a movie," questions that inevitably are part of most ice breakers, I'd have an amazing answer.

Meanwhile, until I can say, "well, since so-and-so did play me in a movie, clearly her," I keep telling my only semi-amusing Helena Bonham-Carter story.

I'm kind of awesome

This is another instance where I am inordinately and unreasonably please with myself. Yes, I have done it. I have read Ulysses. Now, I do realize that there are plenty of people out there who have already read this book, including incredibly enough some who have read it multiple times and some who love it. However, I still think I deserve some recognition for getting through this one. Go me!

What a weird little book. I mean, really. I am glad that I had read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and The Odyssey before wading into this one, that's for sure. It also helped that I had some familiarity with the book as well (I was excited when I got to Molly's inner monologue, since I've read references it to it before).

Perhaps my excitement does need to be tempered somewhat, because I must say that I didn't really get that much out of this one. It wasn't as difficult or bizarre as I had expected, I mean it certainly does change style and tone frequently and I wouldn't call it your traditionally structured novel by any means, but overall it had a plot and characters (which is more than you can say for the list works of some Irish authors). I could always follow it, and having the Odyssey as a guide certainly helped.

Side note, but the trouble with the Odyssey is that it always makes me think of Wishbone, specifically the Odyssey computer game. That was a tripy game. I'm glad Wishbone never tried to do Ulysses. That would have been bad. And you may say, they never would have, but they did Faust for goodness sake. Faust!

Back on track, there were some sections I liked more than others. I did not care for the part written like a play script. My favorite part was probably the question and answer essay part. It might have been exhaustion on my part, but I found a lot of that seriously hilarious. I'm not sure that I was supposed to, though.

Anyway, I should probably go read some literary criticism on this one to see what I was supposed to get out of it.

Do you hear the people sing? Or, As long as he needs me

The other day I was thinking that I should do a post about musicals based on books that are on the list; the only problem was that I could only think of two that would really work, where I've both read the book and seen the musical: Les Miserables and Oliver Twist. Now, I am not a fan of either the book or the musical of either of these, so I don't really want to do an in-depth comparison. Suffice it to say that I found both musicals to be overly long and pretentious, and both books were kind of sloggy for me.

If I had to choose, I would choose the musical of Les Miserables, because some of the songs really are very beautiful, but overall I'm not a fan. There are two kinds of people in this world, those who think the Thenardiers are hilarious, and those who think they are irritating, insufferable, grating, unfunny, and given way too much time on stage. You may be able to guess which kind of person I am.

This isn't to say that there isn't more musical/1001 list overlap. In many cases, though, I've just listened to the soundtrack. I definitely want to see Jane Eyre and Jekyll and Hyde. I'm a fan of both soundtracks, and I adore Jane Eyre (Jekyll and Hyde I can do without as a book, but the musical is great). I'd also be interested in seeing Woman in White, though I have some issues with it/it doesn't solve many of my problems with the book (interesting tidbit, but Phantom of the Opera isn't on the list; I've seen that one many times, though).

There are also some list books with little known, short lived musicals like Dracula and A Tale of Two Cities. I'm particularly interested in Dracula, but I've never had luck with finding too much of the soundtrack (actually, there are multiple musical versions of this one). I haven't read Ragtime yet, so I can't comment on that one really at all, though I have a very strong feeling that the musical will far and away trump the book.

Oh, wait! I just thought of three more: Little Women, Cabaret, and Candide. Go figure. I wonder how many of these I would be able to think of if I really put in a more concerted effort. Anyway, there are many songs from the Little Women musical that I love, but nothing can compete with the book (but I certainly cry during pretty much the whole second act), Cabaret worked better for me as a musical (maybe sense they could show the cabaret, perhaps?), and Candide I'm again fairly meh on overall for both versions. It's a little heavy handed, and the musical is crazy long. But the version I saw was really good.

I should try to think of some more (though I'm not sure this was a very insightful post).

Happy Bloomsday!

I wish I could say that my decision to read Ulysses right now had been made to intentionally coincide with Bloomsday, but no, pure coincidence. I'm not that good. In any case, I hope that you do something to celebrate.

Score!

Sometimes, the list project can get you down or seem like a waste of time. And then you read something you know you wouldn't have read otherwise, you fall in love, and suddenly everything is right again.

Life of Pi was one of those reads for me. It's one I had seen all the time at bookstores before, and one that I had never had any interest in reading. But I absolutely fell in love. It is so, so, so good. I love it on so many levels and for so many reasons. If you haven't read it, do. Go. I'll wait.

....

Wasn't that beautiful? It presents so many fascinating ideas and questions. Obviously religion and humans' relationships with animals are the two main themes (which intersect and cascade in such breathtaking ways), and they give the novel structure and force, but there are many other themes and questions (What makes a life worth living? What drives us to survive? What is a story?). The structure of the story is so compelling; I felt a conflict with wanting to read it quickly because of the tension and wanting to savor it because of the beauty. It's surprisingly funny, and some of the passages are so beautiful. The characters are lovingly drawn. I am particularly in love with Pi's relationship with Richard Parker, and all the levels and questions that one relationship creates. I also just loved Pi's voice as the narrator. I can't even really explain why.

There is a quote on the cover of the edition I read from the Los Angeles Tmes Book Review: "A story to make you believe in the soul sustaining power of fiction," That really is a perfect description. It's such an affirming read.

Whenever I read something like this, I want to run out and recommend it to everyone. The problem with something like that, though, is that many do not fall in love with it. I do tend to love Indian novels and novels of the Indian Diaspora (God of Small Things, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Namesake), so if you don't love such novels this may not be one for you.

I also have a thing for Russian novels. Even though the Russian greats had some disagreements amongst themselves about Turgenev, I like him. So there, take that Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or whichever one of you it is who doesn't like Turgenev.

Spring Torrents is seriously, seriously Russian (spoilers: Russian guy in Frankfurt meets beautiful girl, misses train, is broke, meets girl's fiancee, fights a duel with a random person over her honor, she breaks up with fiancee, he attempts to get money, meets sort of horrible but rich woman whom he is sexually attracted to, leaves first love interest to pursue a shallow and ultimately soul-crushing life with horrible woman, and looks back on life with regret later). It also is strangely compelling. I think because it has this internal balance that makes it satisfying rather than frustrating, if you can just wallow in the Russian-ness of it all.This is what cold weather does to people, I think.

How do I get that job?

Recently I mocked some of the delightful and scintillating discussion questions in the book of Robinson Crusoe, and I feel compelled to take up this topic once more. The discussion questions at the back of Life of Pi are equally excellent, hard as that is to believe.

Some of my favorites include:

Nearly everyone experiences a turning point that represents the transition from youth to adulthood, albeit seldom as traumatic as Pi's [ya think?]. What event marked your coming of age?

How might the novel's flavor have been changed if the sole surviving animal had been the zebra with the broken leg? . . . Or the hyena?. . . Which animal would you like to find yourself with on a lifeboat?

Pi imagines that his brother would have teasingly called him Noah. How does Pi's voyage compare to the biblical story of Noah?

I can't help but picture someone taking an essay exam with these questions, and answering that last one with "They both were stuck on boats."

This all does rather beg the question, though, who writes these discussion questions? And more importantly, how can I become one of those people? Seriously. I have lots of insipid ideas to inspire intellectual interchanges at book clubs.

No One Likes the British or Buses

I know that in the past I have complained about (or at least made frequent note of) instances where the two books I am set to write about have nothing in coming, thus making a coherent post challenging. These two really do have nothing in common, but in some ways they are ripe for comparison because they could hardly be more different from a style perspective.

Castle Richmond is pretty much exactly what you think a mid 19th century British novel should be. It is self-consciously a novel, the author talks to the reader and makes comments about himself, acknowledging that this is a story, a constructed world. It's your classic love story with decaying aristocracy, over-bearing relatives, sinister and scheming characters who get what they deserve, and lots of life of leisure events like day-long picnic excursions and parties. Everything is, of course, resolved by the right people marrying each other. Hooray!

Jacob's Room, however, is nothing like that. It's not even really a story. When reading Woolf, it always helps me to remember this article I read that talks about her novels as being very impressionistic. I'm not a Woolf fan, but coming from that lens helps me appreciate her, and that was particularly the case for this one. The world is constructed and conveyed in that impressionistic style, and to the extent that we ever get close to the titular character, he is similarly constructed. I don't think that I got too much out of this one, since existential angst doesn't do a ton for me. But I always like reading about British people going to Italy.

Back to Castle Richmond for a small bone to pick (or really not so small, but I'm letting it go): Trollope describes Clara as the heroine of the story, but that is far from the word I would use. She doesn't get to do anything except sit around and wait for all the people in her life to work out whom she should marry. Seriously. Yes, she is sort of the eye of the hurricane of the story in many ways, but she is not a heroine. She's less developed and interesting than your average Disney princess.

And now for somethng we hope you'll really like

Robinson Crusoe is definitely one of those reads where you really can't help but have preconceived notions about it going in. I've mentioned some of them before, actually, and they certainly shaped my read of this book (I as so thrilled that there were earthquakes!). I suppose that I should appreciate this book for what it did for the English novel (say, start it), but all things considered, I found it rather hard to appreciate this book at all.

First, it really reminded me of the types of stories I would create as a child. These were stories that were largely lists and inventories. I wasn't happy unless I had listed out exactly everything a family owned in their house on the prairie, or I had listed out what the young heroines were able to salvage from the shipwreck for their island life, or I had listed out exactly what food the company was going to eat on what days during their quest. Notice a pattern? This is probably why I loved Oregon Trail so much. The first step was always creating that massive inventory of stuff! Which is fine for a retro computer game, and sort of okay for the stores of an eleven year old, but it gets pretty old to read pretty quickly, and good gracious, that was really the extent of the novel in many ways. I am not kidding.

Of course, one could also discuss many of the lovely themes of the novel, such as colonialism and racism. Or, if you are feeling particularly daring, perhaps you would like to tackle some of the scintillating discussion questions helpfully included in the back of the Modern Library edition that I read, such as, "How does what we now call the Protestant work ethic pervade Defoe's novel? Robinson seems to channel all of his energy into the pursuit of manual labor, the story is a series of daily routines and a tribute to work. . . Is his newfound work ethic accompanied by a spiritual awakening? (I'll give you a hint, the answer starts with a Y). I love that they call that section of the book "Reading Group Guide." Are there really book clubs out there reading Robinson Crusoe? Really?

Anyway, for fun, here is a tour of my childhood:

Another Post Not By Me

But can we say amen?

Yes, I'll start writing my own posts again soon here

I certainly hope not!

Since I Love Lists

I love reading articles about lists. However, I do take some issues with this list of the best read cities in the US.

It certainly is interesting to see, but I don't think it's very accurate. For example, I wouldn't even register on this list at all, and do not think that I am exaggerating when I say that I read more than your average person. Obviously, my reading and living in DC doesn't offset DC's place on this list at all; my point is that, my situation exemplifies why the criteria for the list are misleading on larger scale.

Symbolism for Breakfast

I rather enjoyed The Talented Mr. Ripley. It wasn't amazingly, painfully beautiful like my absolute favorites are, but it was a lot of fun. It has many of my favorite things, specifically a murder mystery of sorts, Venice, European travel in general, and hotels. Lots and lots of hotels. Really, what more could you want?

I haven't actually seen the movie, but now I want to. I have, though, of course, read The Ambassadors. I think reading that one first definitely increased my enjoyment of this particular book. If you've ever wanted to murder a Henry James character, this truly is the next best thing! It was so much fun for that reason alone. I'm not sure that I would ever need to read the (many, many) additional books in this series, but this one was a good romp. I particularly loved the ending.

As I mentioned earlier, it doesn't have the qualities that make me adore a book, and there isn't a whole lot to really analyze here. It's just fun, and sometimes that's a good thing.

For example, it's a good thing before tackling yet another Henry James, say. I read The Golden Bowl after this one, which was not a coincidence. Did I like this book? No, I did not. There was one scene that was amazing, and the last 100 pages or so were pretty compelling (essentially once Maggie starts to take some control of the situation). Overall, though, I couldn't get past the creepy factor. I ask you, would you set up one of your friends with your father? She's not even an older friend, really. She is two years older than you. That's just creepy. The story already has some creep due to the father/daughter vibe that is a bit sketchy. I do like Maggie's arc a bit, but it was so claustrophobic, the symbolism of the golden bowl was heavy handed, and I do not like his style. I just don't, and I don't care that I should.

That said, drum roll please! Because I have now finished all the Henry James' works on the list! I am so excited. The only one of his that I liked was The Wings of the Dove, and I don't think I liked it in the proper manner.

List from the List!

Some authors appear on this list a lot. An awful lot. Here is how many I still have to read for some of those repeat offenders.

Phillip Roth = 4
Kurt Vonnegut = 1
Henry James <1 (since I’m reading the final one for him at the moment; fist pump!)
Charles Dickens = 2 (fist pump!)
J.M. Coetzee = 5 (gulp)
Salman Rushdie = 3
Virginia Woolf = 7 (gulp)
Ian McEwan = 3
Kazuo Ishiguro = 2
Margaret Atwood = 3
D.H. Lawrence = 3

Thanks for giving me your permission!

http://www.salon.com/books/phillip_roth/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2011/05/23/callil_vs_roth

What is the Problem?

You might well ask. It's a fair question. Yes, I have slowed down a tiny bit. You see, I recently discovered four recent issues of the New Yorker (including a double issue) from this past April. This is why taking out your recycling is so exciting! You should try it; maybe you will also find amazing, time-consuming magazines. Thanks, random person who lives in my building and doesn't appear to have actually read these magazines.

The consequence has been that rather than reading books from the 1,001 list, I have been reading articles about human perception of time, corruption in Russia, oil drilling in North Dakota, European tours targeted to the Chinese, and taxi unions. It's been so fun! I'm almost tempted to get a subscription, because the savings off the cover price are incredible. However, I'm worried it could have a pretty negative impact on the project.

Read what you know?

When I noticed the title on the list, I was immediately drawn to it. When I read the description of the hostel/boarding house, the May of Teck Club which is the center of the story, I nodded my head in recognition: "The May of Teck Club exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London." Seriously. Just flash forward 66 years and switch the location to DC, and you have me. Well, not really, but still. I loved that description. The young ladies of slender means under 30 in DC should form a club; the best part is, we already have a name!

Anyway, I really enjoyed Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means. It's more a novella than a novel. It's set in London right before and right after the end of WWII, and follows the trials of several residents of the May of Teck Club. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that this was by the same author as Up the Down Staircase, when it really is by the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I don't know why I had that mixed up, though I do tend to associate those two books in my head (I read them right around the same time ages ago in Phoenix; I vividly remember checking them out of the Juniper Branch library; weird). That said, stylistically it is just like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and once I got that confusion out of the way everything started to make sense.

I also recently read Black Dogs by Ian McEwan. If you follow this blog, you know that I adore McEwan, so it should come as no surprise that I loved this one. There is just something so beautiful about the way that he writes. It was also incredibly short, but it's one where you do have to just stop and re-read some passages. Strangely, they part that effected me the most was actually in the prologue when he described leaving his young niece when he went to college.

Like most McEwan's, this novel explores the impact of single moments on people's life trajectories. There's the obvious instance of the black dogs themselves, which shape the whole story the author is telling (and by author, I mean the protagonist who is ostensibly writing a memoir; I know I've complained about that convention in the past, but either a) it works for McEwan or b) I give him an unfair pass, you decide). However, I was also struck by how McEwan contrasted those moments with the moments the characters wanted to make meaningful or telling in their lives. For example, one character wanted the fall of the Berlin Wall to really matter in his life personally and felt a disappointment by the disconnect. I loved those contrasts, between the moments we want to infuse with meaning and the moments that take us by surprise but change everything. But yes, Saturday is still my favorite.

For Whom Does the Bell Toll?

Why, for you, dear reader! Yes, that's creepy, but it's true!

Seriously, though, this one was okay. It was my favorite Hemingway (and also my last; coincidence?), but that isn't really saying all that much. I was more of a Pilar fan than a Maria fan. I appreciated the ending. It was pretty compelling, and I do love a good story about the consequences of fascism and how violence warps us.

That said, what stood out for me the most was how annoying the Spanish was. There would be something literally like, que caballo! What a horse!, or no me gusta, I don't like it, and you'd think, why put the very easy, Spanish 101 Spanish throughout the story and follow it my an English translation? Is that really what all that French has been in these novels that I just skip because I am too lazy to Babel Fish it? Maybe I haven't been missing anything all these years! Truly, all you need is je detest John Tesh to get by.

I haves been in a bit of a dry spell lately, I think. Fortunately, I now seem to have passed that. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was definitely a favorite, and as a bonus it is one that I would recommend to other people. Score! Seriously, though, I have some pretty warped tastes, so it's always nice when I hit one that I liked and I think others will as well.

The novel works as an enjoyable love story (though SPOILER ALERT, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about the ending; it sort of worked, but it also felt a little too cheery in some ways), a thought-provoking historical drama, and even a semi-literary piece. You can fall in love with the characters, the lush descriptions, or the ideas.

The story explores several themes, such as the impact of various forms of totalitarianism on the human spirit, and the consequences of war and violence on soldiers and civilians alike. You could do a lot with those various themes, but I was particularly interested in its exploration of various kinds of love, the relationship between love and identity, and the meaning of family. He explores those in large-scale and intimate ways. For example, we have a pine marten that is treated like a cat, and we have an occupying soldier serving a fascist country who ultimately is the hero of the story. And music, of course, plays a huge role in the story, both in terms of character progression and narrative.

I haven't seen the movie, but I haven't heard good things about it, so we might skip that one.

Keeping going with the "Vonnegut Faze," I next read Good Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I don't have too much to really say about that one. It was pretty hilarious in parts. I laughed out loud at the telephone conversation between the father and the son; so funny. It was a very quick read. I definitely get Vonnegut's style now. I'm not sure how many of his I have left to go. Yep, that's all I've got.

I hear ya, sister

I really do. Been there: http://thehairpin.com/2011/02/men-at-the-gym-have-thoughts-on-my-reading-material

Don't Get Too Attached

I have a bizarre tendency to over identify with fictional characters and/or become overly attached to specific characters. This sort of extends beyond fictional characters in some situations, which is why the Olympics are so stressful for me (I always have favorite gymnasts or ice skaters).

This tendency of mine is likely the reason why I had such problems with soap operas as well. Seriously. You mess with Jessica Buchanan and I will never forgive you.

Why, you may ask, is this relevant? Well, when I become overly attached to a character or characters, my reading really slows down. Significantly. I don't want to deal with the bad things the characters are destined for, so I take pauses. Lengthy ones. That's why it took me longer to read Captain Corelli's Mandolin than it really shoudl have.

Sometimes, the more I enjoy a book the longer it takes, and not because I'm savoring it per se (though sometimes it was the savoring piece as well, and that was true with Captain Corelli's Mandolin; really, it's a mix of both of those). Part of increasing my speed is disciplining myself to push past the tendency when it is that first aspect; I don't feel the need to push past when it has to do with savoring.

Now I Know What the Gentleman Wanted

And knowing is half the battle!

Lost Illusions, Balzac's lovely little story, is tres French (side note, little is a facetious comment: this book was 700 pages long; I read it in three days, which isn't too bad, but still). It wasn't exactly a favorite, but there were some fun parts. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Paris. It made me think of French paintings and French music. Overall, I enjoy French things, though not really French food. Anyway, that element was fun.

However, it wasn't really a particularly enjoyable read. It reminded me of Oscar Wilde, though I suppose that should probably go the other way. Part of why I wasn't much of a fan, though, is that I mostly just really hated Lucien, and right from the beginning really. Unfortunately, this spilled over into me not thinking much of Eve, David, Coralie, and just about every character in the story. I did find his descriptions of journalism and its place in the world to be amusing, though.

Speaking of journalism, the other book for this post is The Midnight Examiner, which is about the employees at this tabloid publishing company and their run-in with organized crime. It's about as over-the-top and ridiculous as it sounds. I enjoyed the first half more, where we met the characters and saw the rather hilarious business and writing practices of the company. The part where they take on the mafia was also pretty amusing, but it got a bit old for me.

Anyway, it was a funny read, but I really have no idea why it is on the list. Really, if you only have time to read, say, 999 books before you die, you could probably skip this one.

Benefits of Being Unpopular

Sometimes, it's really quite nice to be reading books that nobody else wants to read. The past few times I've gone to the library, I've checked out quite a few books. I've not bothered to return the ones that I've finished (which I really need to do, but there you go), so I have built up quite a stack of books that I've read and just keep renewing. Fortunately, no one else seems to want to read The Midnight Examiner or Lost Illusions, which is very nice for me, if sad for Balzac.

Delayed Gratification

I finally got around to celebrating the quarter milestone! I ran into some bakery issues, so I ended up celebrating with cheesecake instead. Now, I do realize that caloricly speaking that's not exactly an even trade-off, but whatever. Life is short, it was delicious, and this is quite the milestone, I think.

Quietly Upset

So, I know that The Quiet American is supposed to be Greene's masterpiece or whatever, but I must say it was probably my least favorite of his that I have read. Well, maybe second least favorite, but still, not exactly a fan. I know that movies have been coming up lately, but maybe I need to see the movie on this one. I think it actually is available on Instant Watch. I think that this one more than the others by Greene that I have read really made the women non characters, even though in a way the story more than the others revolved around a woman.

It's strange. I would say that in the previous Greene novels that I've read, women are never the focus exactly, but they always felt real in some way. Sort of like, yes they aren't the main character of this book (often more a catalyst), but they are the main character of their own story. In this one, she didn't feel like she could be the main character of her own story. Almost as though she wasn't a person in the way the male characters were. I was definitely intrigued by the ending of this one. Not what I had expected, I must say.

I guess the common theme of this post is, I liked other books more. The Unconsoled is definitely my least favorite Ishiguro that I have read. Now, I loved Never Let Me Go, and Remains of the Day is exquisite, so that's important context. The Unconsoled is still masterful and beautiful in many ways. Unfortunately, it is also a bit maddening.

The basic plot of the story is that this man shows up in the small town to give a concert, and he has no memory of agreeing to do the concert. It has an almost Alice-in-Wonderland quality to it, since reality and relationships are always shifting in a dreamlike way. The story also explores rules and the folly of adhering to them in strict, nonsensical ways (foolish consistency and all of that), which is a fascinating device when you consider that the novel changes its own rules along the way in some ways. So, from a craft perspective it's amazing, but I always get so annoyed with characters who seem to be causing their own problems (it's why Kafka makes me crazy).

You'll say that we've got nothing in common/No common ground to start from/And we're falling apart

Truly, I don't think Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Cat's Cradle have ANYTHING in common, at all. Well, aside from the fact that I rather enjoyed both of them. But thematically and stylistically, they are rather dissimilar.

First, dear Miss Pettigrew. What a fun read. I had seen the movie before, (and reading this again annoyed me that it is not available on Netflix Instant Watch, because I have such a hard time working through my DVD queue, and Pushing Daisies is available to watch instantly and I don't care about that; sigh). This is one of those ones where there were aspects of each that I enjoyed, but neither is the obvious winner of being superior. For example, I liked that some of the characters in the book were more nuanced, but I enjoyed the romance more in the movie.

There isn't really all that much to say about it, though. It's a very fun read, but that's really it. Many laugh-out-loud moments, and some very clever dialogue, but not much to really reflect on.

I think I am starting to get a better sense of Vonnegut's style. I definitely enjoyed Cat's Cradle more than Slaughter-House Five, for what that is worth. I continue to be fascinated by these authors who always or almost always frame their stories as being narrated by an author working on a story; in this case, it worked because the author actually becomes part of the story, but still.

This book was also quite funny, of course, albeit in a rather dark way most of the time. Generally I enjoy satire, so this was up my alley in many ways. It took a bit for me to really be engaged, pretty much up until the plane piece. Once that got going, I read the rest of it quite quickly. Again, I feel like I should have more to say on this one (confession time, I'm running behind and have read several in the interim; what can I say? Work has been more manic than usual).

Random thoughts (in an attempt to make this post be a descent length):

• It might be interesting at some point to do a paper on various made-up religions/theologies/philosophies in different books.
• It's probably helpful to have some understanding of the nuclear arms race/development of the atom bomb (but then, who doesn't, really?).
• Clearly Slaughter-House Five was an exemplar, not an outlier.
• Apparently, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company has optioned this (thanks, Wikipedia), so maybe we'll be able to do a film comparison at some point! I wonder who would play Mona? Maybe Olga Kurylenko?

I say, this is rather horrifying; Or: Cthulhu!

I knew, of course, that H. P. Lovecraft was responsible for Cthulhu. I first encountered Cthulhu via those adorable little plush stuffed dolls they have at various gaming stores. As a side note, this may have not been the best foundation for viewing At the Mountains of Madness in the proper way. I did not realize, though, that Cthulhu appeared so prominently in many of Lovecraft's works, and I did not expect to encounter him/it? on my first foray into his canon. Imagine my surprise and delight!

I wish that I could say that The Shining had brought an equally lovely surprise, but alas, I cannot. This is another one that really did nothing for me. I think I started off a bit on the wrong foot, and I can't really blame Stephen King for that. After so many books that you read at least in part for the prose/language, I entered this one and found it jarring. No one should read Stephen King for his prose, end of story, and the sooner you get comfortable breezing through his works the better.

That said, I don't think that horror is my genre. I'm not saying that these stories aren't scary, I just didn't find them to be scary. I think a lot of that has to do with ones desire, though, to find them terrifying. You can enter and decide you won't be scared, and by and large you won't. I'm not willing to let horror into my life in that way, so these don't do much for me.

I don't think horror ever really had the right impact on me, even as a child. I was rather a morbid child. I always loved Hansel and Gretel, and I had a fascination for the weird parts of E.T. At the same time, I never could handle Miles and Otis or that Winnie-the-Pooh with the bird. For whatever reason, I enjoyed the Charlie Brown where the little girl gets leukemia, but I could not handle Snoopy Come Home. Now, in my defense, the little girl goes into remission and her hair grows back! That story has a happy ending! And do not tell me that the bird flies back and Snoopy comes home. I do not want to hear anything about those stories and I am not listening.

Vonnegut Faze

I believe that Slaughterhouse Five was my first Vonnegut. I could be wrong about that, but I do not think so. For some incredibly inexplicable reason, I always sort of lump Vonnegut, Kafka, and Faulkner together in my head. This really makes absolutely no sense. It's not like I mix them up or anything, I just lump them together the way I do Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, for example, but at least that lumping makes sense. Vonnegut, Kafka, and Faulkner really have nothing in common. They don't even have a letter in common. Ah, well.

Anyway, stories about war are an interesting genre. This one had several laugh-out-loud moments, but like many war novels, it's focus is the senselessness of war, which isn't exactly a cheery theme. Since it's my first Vonnegut, I can't really make any intelligent remarks about his style or anything. I have no idea if this is an exemplar or an outlier. From a craft perspective, it's method of construction is intriguing. Of course, the problem with telling a story about non-linear time is that we do experience time linearly, more or less at least. Thus, even though the story may be told in chunks with some jumping around, it's not really disorienting or truly non-linear within each chunk. That said, the structure works and brings out the novels themes rather than distracting from them.

The Power and the Glory was my third Greene. Man, this guy thinks about Catholicism all the time! It's sort of exhausting. Not only does he think about Catholicism, it seems to give him a rather high-level of anxiety. I think he needs to calm down a bit. Every novel of his that I have read has taken place in a vastly different geographical context, which is interesting. Many writers essentially settle down in familiar areas. Like the other ones of his that I have read, the ending is not a surprise; the story is on a collision course with the ending and that's obvious from the beginning. That doesn't detract from the story at all, but it's an another intriguing trend of his.

His female characters fascinate me. On the one hand, they are often peripheral to the story in many ways. They move in and out of focus, and aren't ever the leads. However, they drive the story in subtle ways and are as real as the leads. They are neither Madonnas nor whores, instead occupying a more complex space, and some are quite original (the young girl in this one is particularly excellent). This particular novel would be particularly interesting to analyze in juxtaposition with The Scarlet Letter.

250 Down, 751 To Go!

Yay! Go me! I'm not exactly sure that The Power and the Glory is quite epic enough for this milestone, but there you go. It was a fun enough read, and I'll write more on it and Slaughterhouse Five in a bit. However, I just wanted to write this little post in celebration. Next weekend I am going to have a cookie to celebrate (since there is a bakery I want to visit in Georgetown). I also do plan to buy my favorite book from the first 250; the challenge there is that I still can't decide between The Ground Beneath Her Feet and The Forsyte Saga. We shall see.

In other news, my next read is The Shining. This should be interesting, since I really have no idea what it is about or any preconceived notions about it. From reading the back of the book, I have learned that it takes place in a hotel. I think that's a good sign, since I rather like hotels.

It Said We Weren't Likable

Writers and literary critics always seem to take issue when someone (specifically, your average reader who reads for pleasure, rather than pretentiousness) says they didn't like a book because the characters weren't likable. As writers and literary critics rightly point out, just because you wouldn't want to take a road trip or go bowling with someone doesn't mean that they aren't interesting, compelling characters or that stories they are in aren't worth reading. Some of the best characters would be horrible human beings. Thus, they argue, finding characters unlikable is not a good reason to not read or enjoy a novel, it's just readers being immature.

I disagree. The real issue here is that readers are not being precise enough when they say that the characters weren't likable. Yes, I do not have to think, "man, I'd love to go to see spectacularly excellent action movies with this person" to find them compelling in a story (actually, there's really only one person with whom I really enjoy seeing spectacularly excellent action movies, but that's not the point here). However, I do have to think that they are not so annoying and/or boring and/or loathsome that I want to spend time with them. Average readers probably do need to be more precise when they say they found the characters unlikable, but I think annoyance with the characters is a perfectly excellent reason to hate the novel.

For example, I found every single character in The Corrections to be mind-numbingly dull and painfully irritating. Not only would I not want to be stuck on a Greyhound bus with them, I did not give a flying fig what happened to them as they bored me to tears. In real life, the heroine of The Ground Beneath Her Feet would be a rather terrifying person to know, the lead of The Joke is rather a bitter person, and the whole ensemble of The Secret History are essentially murderers, but these are all very compelling, rich, fascinating novels.

Ultimately, I do have to find something that I like in a story to enjoy it, and in general I would rather enjoy a story than admire it. This is coming from someone who mostly loves prose and the ways that words are put together, too; I'm not just a character person, but words are their most beautiful in service to an exquisite narrative and a richly created world and characters.

Operation Insanity

There are some books that inspire a good deal of reflection, books that I am eager to write about and find that I have thoughts that I want to share. For a subset of these books, I also have ideas for more in-depth, academic-y papers in addition to these breezy blog reflections; I want to discuss their symbolism or explore them in relation to another work or larger theme/issue/genre.

Operation Shylock is not one of those books. I really have nothing to say about this novel. Philip Roth does very little for me. Don't get me wrong, he is clearly an excellent writer, and I can appreciate the prose and the craft. He has forceful ideas that drive his novels, and they explore intricate and complex issues. But they just don't do anything for me.

Moreover, Operation Shylock is one of those books that makes me feel sort of insane, rather like that Beckett trilogy I read ages ago. Whenever I try to explain this story to someone, I start off by telling them that it's really weird. Then I explain that it's about this guy who finds out that someone is impersonating him to extol this sort of reverse diaspora, this movement for the Jews in Israel to return to Europe. Then the person looks and me and is like, that's not that weird, because I actually make the story sound like it makes more sense that it does. Please take my word for it: this book is trippy.

A little Satan goes a long way

Books on the list tend to fall into three categories:

1. Books of which nobody has heard. Likely, the majority of the books on the list actually fall into this category. Which means that often when people who know about the list project ask me what I'm reading and I tell them, they respond by saying that they've never heard of it (English majors skew this a bit).

2. Books everyone knows about but nobody has actually read. These are particularly fun, and are the most impressive to be able to say that you've read (Moby Dick, anyone?).

3. Books that most people have read and that it's a bit strange that I have not. My reading habits are capricious, and my high school reading did not exactly follow a traditional curriculum. This means that I have not read 1984 or Catcher in the Rye. Ah well. People are always shocked that I haven't read the particular book for ones in this category.

Which brings me to The Scarlet Letter, the lovely little tome that I read today. I was completely familiar with the story beforehand, of course, and I have read The House of the Seven Gables before. However, I've always wanted to avoid reading this one. Fortunately, it was short and now it is in the past. Yay!

I also recently finished Tipping the Velvet, which likely falls into the first category of books. That said, it's really worth a read. It's the funnest, most engaging one that I've read in awhile. I've been in a bit of a dry spell with enjoying my reads, so this was a welcome respite. It's sort of decadent and lush, really, in terms of the details and characters.

Seeing an Oscar Wilde and reading this one all on the same day definitely made for a rather intense Victorian England day. Fortunately, I rather enjoy Victorian England. Here's something a bit ironic, though: as I read it, I kept thinking how much it reminded me of Fingersmith, but it wasn't until after I had finished it that I clued into the fact that it was by the same author. Bright of me, I know.

Masochism Tango

Take your cigarette from it's holder/ And burn your initials in my shoulder/ Fracture my spine/ And swear that you're mine/ As we dance to the masochism tango.

So, I just read two Coetzee's in a row. I don't mean to make him my punching bag or anything, but goodness, I just do not like these. At all. With some authors, after reading a few I start to understand and love their work. For example, I struggled with The Satanic Verses, and even Midnight's Children wasn't a favorite. Then, I read The Ground Beneath Her Feet and fell in love. With other authors, I may not like everything I had to read from them, but I have some favorites (Persuasion, Great Expectations, etc.). Maybe after a few more of Coetzee I'll start to enjoy them, but right now I am mostly excited to report that I have read half of the ones that I will have to read.

Let's start with Foe. It's fine, really. It's deliciously, blessedly short. Just 157 pages. Thank goodness. The story is sort of a re-imagining of Robinson Crusoe. I probably should have read Robinson Crusoe before reading this one. I have three main associations with DeFoe's novel:

1) Baby Island (again!), since the lovely ladies of that story reference Crusoe on occasion.
2) The Peabody and Sherman, where they split the island and make a horrible Friday the 13th pun.
3) A supremely trippy little animated show we watched in Germany where it was Robbins and Crusoe or something; it was really trippy (that may have been the language barrier, but man, we watched some fairly awesome TV there).

Now I can add this story. Apparently, the main point has something to do with the nature of reality and truth, and how literacy, language, and imagination shape that. Or something. I don't know. It's classic Coetzee, which is to say stark and bleak.

Of course, Foe has nothing on Disgrace for stark and bleak. Or grim and intense, for that matter. What a book. The plot essentially is, middle-aged divorcee may or may not rape young college student, loses job, goes to live with daughter out in rural South Africa, daughter is brutally raped, and then things sort of get worse. And meanwhile everyone is borderline depressed. Including me, the poor little reader.

The other thing about Coetzee is that I always feel like I am missing something, like the point or the resolution. Or else the books really do stop abruptly without any resolution.

I picked these flowers; they're prettier than you

You'd be forgiven if you've never heard of Castle Rackrent, or for that matter, its author Maria Edgeworth. You also wouldn't be missing all that much. There's nothing really painful about it, but I was mostly bored most of the time. It was short, though; I definitely appreciated that about it.

My main thought in reading this related to how incredibly American I am. It boggles my mind that you can have aristocracy that essentially have no money and never do and who borrow it from their servants, but they are the aristocracy and the servants have more money and. . . I just don't get it. I know that "class" is made up of more than just money in the US as well, but our class system is very much based on money and capitalism, not a sense of aristocracy/genetic nobility. I feel like I'm not explaining this well, but essentially, on a basic level I do find it these rigid notions of class and status that really actually have little to do with wealth so counter-intuitive, and while I can sort of understand them intellectually, I have a hard time understanding how someone would accept them as at all sensical.

Anyway, if you haven't heard of my next read or its author, there really is no forgiving you. The exciting piece of reading David Copperfield is that I am now a bit closer to finishing the canon of Dickens. I believe I just have two novels left, and then I will have read every single, shockingly long, shockingly numerous book written by this prolific man. It's hard to go into a Dickens without preconceived notions. First of all, they are all remarkably similar. Second, they are such a part of our cultural knowledge.

I also couldn't help thinking of the illusionist, of course. Man. I don't usually wish I was born in a previous era (I love technology, temperature regulation, improved women's rights, and diet soda a bit too much), but sometimes I think it would be fun to have lived in a time when magic and illusions were really magical. Now we have too much with computer generated options, and nothing is shocking or unbelievable or really magical. Of course, small-scale, close up magic/slight of hand/illusions can still be fun. I'd like to learn some magic tricks; I also would like to learn to juggle.

Before going any further down that rabbit hole that is my brain, let's return to the novel in question.

I actually really enjoyed this one. Yes, it's long, but it's fun, engaging, and a quick read. David and Agnes are adorable as a couple. Just absolutely adorable. I loved their relationships and how Dickens handled their friendship. Even some of the more annoying characters were less annoying that their equivalents in other Dickens'.

Dickens said this was his favorite, or hinted at that at any rate, and I have to agree with him. Apparently it's his most autobiographical as well. I would say read this one and Great Expectations. Don't read Oliver Twist. Seriously.

A Tale of a Whale; A Whale of a Tale

Yes, dear readers, I have done it! I have finished Moby Dick. I feel awfully (perhaps even unreasonably) proud of myself. I actually hadn't intended to read it, but on the other hand, stuck in an airport likely was my best chance to finish it, and I had no time to get to the library before my trip to MN last weekend. Thanks, work for being even more busy than usual! Seriously.

Anyway, wow. What a book!

I thought that this one would be so much more miserable than it was; I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, but actually, it's not. I am certainly not the target audience for this one, and it felt rather dated. But it was pretty similar to Treasure Island or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in terms of readability and enjoyability.

I actually read the whaling parts, too. I particularly appreciated all of the references to Jonah, since they made me think of Baby Island. Man, I loved that book so much. I didn't actually love Moby Dick, but it could have been so much worse. Some of his odes to the awesomeness of whales does wear thin, but the parts about the actual chase where kind of fun in their way. They had momentum, even if the thought of whaling anymore is pretty disturbing. It had a pretty fantastic ending, of course.

I agree with the person who wrote the commentary for the edition that I read, who said we should really just read this and enjoy it as an adventure travel book, and not get all philosophical. Or more importantly, not get psychoanalytic, I think. I do not want to go there.