Winter Recap

It's been a bit busy in my library of late; of course I'm managing to keep up with my book club girls (who never fail to find the most interesting morsels of a book) but this fall and winter I'm also teaching a literature course at the Art Institute of Washington.

I'm not going to count the pages of my lit textbook (but if we were there is around 1,000 of them), but will instead give you thoughts on the books we've covered in BC the past few months.

My Antonia by Willa Cather
Having never read anything else by Willa Cather, and being quite a city girl now, I was genuinely surprised by my deeply set reaction to My Antonia. This book flew through my fingers as I lost myself among the early American countryside. Simple depictions of landscape and characters allowed the reader to chart their own understanding of the narrow scope of entertainment and relationships on the prairie. Although Antonia is told from the perspective of the male protagonist, we see how his image of the once beautiful Antonia is lost to time and circumstance. In stories like Bridges of Madison County, what we come to understand is that some endings that occur are not idyllic, but they are marked by reality and the truth of things that cannot be.

One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
To be fair, I did not finish One Hundred Years, although I made every honest attempt. As a very linear reader, I often have trouble when the lines between fantasy and reality are not clearly marked--such is the case of the future/past world created by Marquez in One Hundred Years. This oft acclaimed book has left me puzzled and without a desire to return.

In stark comparison, I found myself enthralled with the grotesque portrait of the undying love of Florentino Ariza for Feremina Daza. Ariza is illustrated much like the Slumdog of Slumdog Millionare and his youthful yearning for the passionate and caustic Feremina is eloquently relayed in the most poignant dialect of teenage love. However, over one summer Feremina begins to understand the politics of romance--a life of comfort, of prestige, of bloodlines--and relinquishes her engagement to Ariza. Instead she marries the stable Urbino--a local doctor of repute because of his ferocious attempts to cure cholera in the region. Urbino and Feremina's marriage is one of careful and cautious routine. Marquez's downfall here is that he creates a stable partnership for Urbino and Feremina (which, while perhaps not based on mutual love is based on something more like friendship).

What makes Love so worth reading is the chronological journey from youth to old age--Marquez takes us beyond where the Harlequin romance novel stops and gives a glimpse into what "happily ever after" may look like. And it's worth noting that several sites dedicated to the book mention Marquez's comparison to Love being a kind of encompassing illness--in this case, cholera.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Having not been able to make it through a second book which asked me to throw about chronology and reality simultaneously, I did not finish Rushdie's acclaimed novel.

Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud by Jonathan Safran Foer
Told from the perspective of 10 year old Oskar Shchell, we encounter a family with a deep connection to 9/11--Oskar's dad was in one of the twin towers when it collapsed. Told with the stunning fragility of a child so manic with grief that goes out in search of an answer to his father's final puzzle, Foer's novel is heartbreakingly honest. Oskar confronts his mother's grief as well and her new-found comfort in a male "friend." Oskar's narration is complimented with the interspersed story of his grandparent's courtship and his grandfather's nightmarish escape from occupied Germany.

Foer makes incredible use of literary elements including perhaps the most under-utilized tool of silence(both the silence of Oskar's mute grandfather and dead father). In addition to the text, Foer includes Oskar's "images," entire pages that depict the world and its complexities through the lens of Oskar's camera.

This book is startlingly engaging. I cannot recommend it enough for it's well-drawn characters, multiple narrative lines, and unfortunate basis in post-9/11 America.

On the shelves: I Love You Beth Cooper (BC selection) & A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Summer Catch Up

It's been a summer of literary proportions and it's been a bit since I've updated. I've had some great reads in the meantime, I'll give a short stack here for your consideration.

A Tale of Not-So-Happily-Ever-After
Book Club's April selection was The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, an interesting read by Angela Carter. Although Carter died in the 90s, her interest in fairy tales was primarily about the female character and the role she plays in such tales. Thus, the book was divided by the acts or traits of the women: wicked, cunning, beautiful, etc. and Carter is keen to remind you that not all women play the damsel in distress in fairy tales. I read the book in its entirety, but the stories are individual and are further divided by their originating country/heritage. While this may not have been a book that I would have picked up for pleasurable reading, it was an interesting commentary on the female archetype based on geography and historical context. Perhaps my favorite part of Carter's research is that she includes "Hillbilly" as an ethnicity from which stories derive and included, naturally, the vernacular of these folks as the omniscient narrator.

The Age of Excess Gets Sexy
Perhaps a new favorite, Lady Chatterly's Lover was a book club selection before I joined this year. Because of the varied sentiment on the readability of the book, I decided to give it a chance myself. I'm always perplexed when men can write a woman so thoroughly, but D.H. Lawrence, who took a most glorious "savage pilgrimage," was often known to toggle between the sexes himself and so that is perhaps why he writes women so perfectly. Chatterly was also known as incredibly salacious in its day--practically porn to the gilded agers--and considering how red my face got on the metro during my commute reads, I'd say its sexiness is still intact.

Chatterly is about a poised woman who marries young to an invalid, only to realize how important a sex life is to maintaining the flush and passion of her youth. Everyone from her father to her own husband encourage her to find a lover, to fill the void which seems to have paled her pallor and set her about on depressing walks through the woods. No one expects that the lover she will take is the game warden for her estate. A rather tame calamity ensues--fit for modern soap operas--but all the while, Lawrence's calm, lyrical prose is engaging. I recommend this book, not only for the romance factor, but for the element of setting description that is so often lost in modern books.

For Whom the Bell Tolls--Apparently Plath
I took the opportunity to finally read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and was not disappointed. Plath, who is well known for her head-in-the-gas-oven suicide, recreates her own desperate isolation in The Bell Jar. Knowing now what we all do of Plath's death, The Bell Jar reads like an autobiography in painful foreshadow--a Plath desperate to have passion, a future, a need to socialize. But alas, as Plath lays out in devastating precision, she is caught in herself, lost for understanding about why she sinks and sinks into an abyss of numbness. Plath reminds me of a later Virginia Woolf--a woman aching to understand her own talent in a foggy world of disillusionment. Perhaps for Plath, who was in the heyday of Leave it to Beaver housewives, the social pressure was too great. Or perhaps the right measurements of medication had not been prescribed--Plath's character spends much time in a mental ward and even undergoes shock therapy. I wonder how Plath's writing might have been different in modern medicinal America? Would she had been merely average without the angst?

Note: An interesting read on Plath's tombstone destruction on Wikipedia--Plath's husband was a cheating SOB--a fact which Plath devotees haven't forgotten.


Choppy Waters Lie Ahead
The May Book Club read was To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, an author I imagined I might greatly admire once I actually sat down to read her. Woolf, who is perhaps quite infamous for suicidally putting rocks in the pockets of her dress and walking out into the river to drown herself (Chopin, anyone?), seems to create a kind of modern abstract art throughout the pages of Lighthouse. Like a painting which, standing too close you are only able to see the brush strokes, but from far, able to discern a larger picture (this is called modernism, in case you were wondering), Lighthouse sparks the emotions of both a grown-up and a child. Woolf's constant stream of consciousness from various characters reminds me of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying; and as with Faulkner's work, when someone dies, it is merely a parenthetical thought. Here, Mrs. Ramsey who is the primary narrator for the first half of the book, is suddenly dead in the second half and the chronology has shifted too.

Mrs. Ramsey wants her sensitive son, James, to "go to the lighthouse," but the poor kid's dream of seeing the salt water home is dashed by the scientific fist of his father (who insists it will rain making their excursion impossible). The bigger metaphor, from my perspective, is the loss of innocence on behalf of James, the narcissism of a father/writer, the duty of a wife. They all seem so completely unhappy in this book that it is not a book read lightly. With its shifting perspective and abstract ending (they do make it to the lighthouse many years later, but now what of the roles of the father? the son?), I do not recommend the book for poolside reading, or even a commuting read. Lighthouse requires thought, for among its pretty words, there is deeper meaning; I'm still contemplating what that might be.

Currently reading: My Antonia by Willa Cather
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Book Club: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

When You are Engulfed in Flames

I've nearly finished David Sedaris' When You are Engulfed in Flames. I picked this book up at the library for two reasons: on the cover is a skull with a cigarette (the ultimate poetic imagery of cigarette cool) and also I've wanted to become a fan of David Sedaris since he presented a monologue on This American Life a few years ago (Note: Sedaris' sister is Amy Sedaris of Strangers with Candy and Sex and the City fame).

I've heard mixed reviews of Sedaris' work--apparently he is well-known for sardonic essays on his own life. The few books which have strayed from his narcissistic formulae have suffered unpopularity on the charts (which is a surprise since shows like This American Life tend to encourage a quiet cult following of their contributors).

Although Sedaris' work isn't life altering, it is amusing and easy to read. Most of his stories surround his family, his addictions to alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, his struggle to publicize and yet hide his homosexuality. If you think these heavy topics can't sustain a humorous theme, you're wrong. Sedaris weaves the witty with the wicked and pauses only momentarily to reflect on the seriousness of his vices.

The characterizations Sedaris presents at times fall flat, but Helen, his poor rapist neighbor (yes, poor, because even Sedaris paints a pitiful picture of the ailing molester) and Sedaris' own longtime boyfriend, Hugh, are lively and tangible. His stories rarely have morals, more of a punch in the arm, as if to say, "Bet you didn't know you'd giggle quite so loudly there!"

I read this book on the metro and found myself apologizing for interrupting the quiet AM rush hour with my laugh.

The truth is, I'm not sure what pays for Sedaris to travel the world as he does in the book. Months in Tokyo, a rented home in Paris, impromptu trips to America, all seem incredibly extravagant for an author of the printed word in this digital age (when even newspapers are barely treading water).

There are no grand lessons here. And the book, while an interesting study in the extravagant nature of 80's twenty-somethings, gives insight into Sedaris--and not much else.

He's Just Not...worth reading this book over

Review of: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys by Greg Behrendt, Liz Tuccillo

There are very few exceptions where I don't read a book before ever seeing the film version; however, having sloughed through endless recitations on the absurdity of the (NY Times Bestseller) book, I thought a safe distance from the text was fair.

I saw the film and am glad to report that it was only slightly (devastatingly) sexist. I don't want to imply that it wasn't perfectly terrible (and that I enjoyed at least 2 of the 5 love complications) but I did find the casting to be noteworthy. Also, I am an avid supporter of the Sex and the City collection which I find to be smart and witty. I am sad to report that the only thing in favor of HJNTIY is that it was drafted by two SATC writers.

When my friend (who shall remain nameless out of protection) suggested I read the book (post-film), I was hesitant. Hadn't I got everything I needed to know from the film? Yet, when I found myself on a metro with nothing else to do for an hour, suddenly reading this little book had merit. I earnestly read the introductions in their entirety, wanting to understand how the book came into being and why it might be relevant. First, it's clear that Behrendt (the guy) is running the show and Tuccillo (the woman) is just his "yes man" for agreeing that his tactics work. What an annoying concept considering Behrendt's whole methodology is for women to stop questioning a guy and just let him be in the proactive role.

Tuccillo was initially doubtful of Behrendt's methods--she likens it to a diet. She is won over when her co-workers see "he's just not that into" statements provide clarity for their otherwise cloudy-headed female cohort. She reminds us that we COULD eat those bad-for-you-items sometimes, but where is it going to get you in the scheme of things?

The book isn't like a novel, but a self-help manual: situation, Greg's answer; situation, Greg's sarcastic answer, followed by Liz's approval of all things Greg ("even if it's hard.."). The fonts are annoyingly multitudinous and the research is frustratingly simplistic ("Twenty out of the 20 guys I emailed said they will talk about marriage if they are really interested in a girl").

The truth is, what the book states is common sense. Women KNOW that they are being hurt by men, we understand that we are completely abandoning reason and rationality; but I fail to find a poem which likens love to rationality and ever have it be successful. I'm not sure this book will change the rate at which women allow themselves to be emotionally entangled--it is our nature, I believe--but there is an opportunity here for women to be smarter about who they entangle themselves with.

As for the question we all wonder--why isn't there a book that will encourage men to re-think their dating habits? Greg tells us it is because exactly 5 men know how to read and only 1 of them would buy the book. And he's probably gay. Okay, he didn't say that last part. So what about a TV show then? I'd much rather see someone like Gloria Steinem write that script.

I don't think that ignoring Greg's advice will make a woman less powerful, nor do I imagine taking it will either. It's a matter of where you're choosing to get your information--Wikipedia, anyone?

Poetry

My first introduction to Czeslaw Milosz was during the film Under the Tuscan Sun, when the main character and her repairman have no common language except that of the poet, Czeslaw Milosz. I always intended to discover what made his work translate across cultures so effortlessly.

I didn't even realize Milosz was a poet until I stumbled upon his book, A Book of Luminous Things, in the library a few weeks ago. At no point have I ever been fond of the poetry genre--too often the verses' significance is lost on me along with their rhythm and meter--and discovering this long-sought author was of the poetic nature, I was disappointed.

I grabbed the book based completely on the use of "luminous" in the title.

A few weeks later and I am completely engrossed in the pages. Luminous is divided by sections and are meant not to educate us about the austerity of poetry but to remind us "that for some very good reasons it may be of importance today." In an age fraught with technological and epistemological reasoning, I can't help but find the simple aesthetic of a poet to be reassuring. Milosz does not write his own poetry here, but instead edits a collection of sometimes prolific, sometimes quiet authors.

Many of the poems are from Eastern writers of a different era--the early 700s. Although the Eastern poems were naturalistic in their discussion of mountains and the buds of spring, I found the beauty stunted--trying to discern how their fragile, patroned lives could figure into this century. There were few American writers and many translations of Polish and Russian poetry. Each poem begins with Milosz's brief thoughts--which can be somewhat frustrating, to have an image superimposed before you even make conclusions for yourself.

Since my own poetic experience is limited, I'm reminded of one of the few other books of poetry I've read and enjoyed, which you can take for what it is worth. Garrison Keillor's collection of "Good Poems" is unpretentiously filled with some of the better modern poetry I've read. Both of these poets take little known selections and have their subtle impact bounce from the middle of a perfectly adequate text.

As for Milosz, I have every intention of finding some of his poetry to read. However, I have little doubt that his ability should be in question, based on his ability to select a series of achingly fantastic samples.

I will include some samples below, once the book is returned to me from a co-worker who also saw the title and quickly pilfered it from my desk...

Books I've Read (BBC List)

The BBC thinks most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

I couldn't find the hyperlink to this list, so you will have to trust me (or my friend Olivia whom I stole the list from) that these were indeed the represented 100.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible (what really counts as reading here? No, I haven't finished this book yet)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X+
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott X+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X+
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (Missed this one in book club)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X*
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot *
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald X+
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X+
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen X+
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X+ (One of my favorite Austen books)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X+
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *(Actually the next book on my list)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X+
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *(Book club selection)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X+
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X (I say I've read this, but I didn't get to the VERY end, per se. I need to pick this back up)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X+
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell *
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White X+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Books I've read: 33
Books I loved: 16

I'm astonished that I've read many of these "classics" but don't even touch the 54 that my friend Olivia has conquered. I've always wondered why books are chosen for lists like these (for example, I would not have put Mitch Albom's "Five People You Meet in Heaven" on here, but would have put his work "Tuesday's with Morrie").

How many have you read?

The Reader

This novel first appeared on my radar when my friend Allen sent me an email saying he couldn't put it down. Relegated to the bottom of my behemoth inbox, I found it again after the holidays only to discover that this was indeed the same book that was recently produced for a motion picture audience, and staring Kate Winslet (Insert obsessive comment).

Typically I loathe the book to movie translation which tends to lose the detail that accompanies a richly drawn linguistic image. A few exceptions are the Harry Potter books (which perhaps actually might be better than the books minus the whole act of reading part) and Bridget Jones' Diary. But I found myself wanting to both see and read the interpretations of The Reader.

Schlink's plot is decidedly simple; the telling of the story is from the point of view of a German lawyer, who does not absolve the Germans of their holocaust but rather acknowledges it pointedly as if he too tries to understand the purpose of the actions. The language, which often determines the quality of a book, at least for me, hovers above the page touching down lightly with profundity now and then. It is a short book and although I raced through it during my evening metro rides, I couldn't help but feel it moved at a solid pace.

If I have issues with the book they are in the narration--both past and present at once. The loss of the years when Hannah is, we'll say "unavailable, are also a loss for the reader as her uncertainty, her quick anger are fascinating to unravel. If its goal is to have one of those "you'll wish you could read about this but I'm only going to let you infer" moments, it didn't work. I wanted to understand more about Hannah or the narrator. I wanted to have some part of their interaction embrace continuity beyond the initial rush. But the reasons for the narrator and Hannah's first encounter aren't ones which can be explained, it just happened. The war...just happened. Aging...just happened.

It will not be a stretch to bring Kate Winslet to this role...she IS Hannah. The narrator, however, will prove a more difficult feat for Ralph Finnes--the narrator is almost empty in his recollection and offers for explanation--he serves nearly as a bucket and less as a substantial well.

The ending has a slight twist, but it's quiet and necessary.