Linda Without Borders: Literary Supplement

Other Books, Same Authors

2012-02-07T00:57:00.004+09:00

now finished: Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
now reading: Grant by William S. McFeely

Careful readers may recall my first post-War and Peace project on this little Lit Supp blog o' mine. I suppose you'd have to be something like a careful reader just to even be reading this blog today after so long a hiatus on my part, but that's not the point. In 2007, I embarked upon my long-contemplated A-to-Z Reading Project, in which I chose a book from one new-to-me author for each letter of the alphabet (apart from my sorry, sorry, I'm SORRY OK Gao Xingjian for 'X' issue). It took a little longer to complete than I had originally contemplated, what with the whole being-in-law-school thing and all, but I eventually finished and then chose my top half, thirteen of those authors that I would like to read again.

The winners were: A-C-D-E-F-I-L-R-S-U-V-W-Y (runners-up: H & J). I have since read a second book from three of them. After starting with Martin Amis' The Information for the original project, I returned to him and read Money. I was not that enthralled with Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night during the project, but was happy to leave his novels behind and delve into his travel narratives with Video Night in Kathmandu -- this was the Pico Iyer I knew I loved from back in my days when we had him on The Savvy Traveler. And I read E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, which I found as pitch perfect on ever page as A Passage to India, my introduction to him.

Now, here in Phuket of all places, I have lain on a beach and in two days devoured Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms. I am surprised this book is not more famous than it is. I can see why the literary world must have been so excited to have him become one of its darlings a few decades ago. The writing is so good. It's just a marvel. He evokes people in a place and makes you ache for them. This book is also so bold and so saucy, in its way, and you might say a kind of wistful evocation of Capote himself. It's definitely something any of the millennials who think they discovered gender should read. But mostly it's just harsh yet subtle, breezy yet powerful, and naively wicked, much like many of its characters.

There were times I was doing something else during the day and wanted to get back to reading because I was truly worried about what was going to happen to Joel Knox (Samson). (I know, right? As if I could do anything about it by hurrying back to 'save' him - it's already there in the book. Duh. The mind does strange things.) Capote evoked a sympathy in me that I haven't felt in a very long time. I also have an incredibly vivid picture in my mind of the house, garden, and surroundings of The Landing. Powerful, I tell you.

That's A, C, F, and I revisited. The plan is that after I read these 13 again, I will again whittle it down to a top half and choose six authors, then read a third book by them. Then a final round of three before I select a winner. It's definitely getting harder now to contemplate eliminating authors from the running!

Of course, I also have to alternate with my other reading project, the Prez Bios, in which I am on #18, Ulysses S. Grant. And that is what I am reading now, to be followed by my revisiting Philip K. Dick.

My Most Read Authors

2011-10-27T14:06:00.000+09:00

I love Goodreads for a lot of reasons, and here's one: it created a little link on the side of the "My Books" page with my Most Read Authors. Fun! I clicked on it and was shocked to discover Jane Sorenson at the top. A little known secret about me is that as an adolescent I devoured her series of twelve books about Jennifer Green, in all its ridiculous, born-again-Christian, totally cheese-tacular, intermediate fiction glory. These books were terrible, and yet great, and they taught me all about Haiti. They are kind of from the Brady Bunch school of kids' art/entertainment. Despite the greatness of the so-sappy-they're-awesome "Jennifer Books," I really was appalled to see Jane Sorenson's name at the top of my list of most-read authors. I realized that although her series had a dozen books, if nothing else I had read at least as many Beverly Cleary and Dr. Seuss books when I was a child but just hadn't rated them on Goodreads. So I promptly went through adding and rating a few more books from those two authors. With no further ado, then, here are my top 13 most read authors:

1. Dr. Seuss & Beverly Cleary (tie)
2. Jane Sorenson
3. Sandra Scoppettone
4. Elizabeth Berg & Virginia Woolf (tie)
5. William Shakespeare
6. Nelson DeMille & Douglas Adams (tie)
7. Margaret Atwood, Anna Quindlen, Judy Blume & Nick Hornby (4-way tie)

I'm good with the gender balance of the list, but my goodness, it's certainly very white-Anglo-American, isn't it? But, hey, naysayers! Check out all that genre fiction!

Who are your most read authors?

Finally, Abe Lincoln. Is he great?

2011-10-11T23:23:00.001+09:00

now reading: Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years by Carl Sandburg

So I'm reading this bio of Abraham Lincoln, as I continue along with my prez bios project (reading a biography of every president in order to see where we went wrong, a project that was obviously started during the Dubya administration). I realize that for some people Abraham Lincoln has been "next" ever since I finished Thomas Jefferson, or possibly James Madison, since many of us tend to give little thought to the likes of Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, or Zachary Taylor. And, let's not even get started about Millard Fillmore, who is solidly in my top three along with James Madison and my boy, JQA. (That would be John Quincy Adams).

But you see, if you don't read a biography of every president in order to see where we went wrong, then you might find yourself reading a book about ol' Abe without any idea what Franklin Pierce (#14) and James Buchanan (#15) did in the decade before the Civil War. I must say that reading these presidential stories has been even more interesting than I thought it was going to be. The early-to-mid 1800s are a seriously incredible time in U.S. history, with so much going on, and HUGE problems to solve, and so many potentially mad events on the horizon, and the presidents are fascinating. I have found my study of Abe enhanced by knowing the details of what came before.

I am totally not prepared to launch into any slavery diatribe right now, but my god was that a problem for the nation. Very few saints in the whole ending-slavery thing. For example, Lincoln: not a radical abolitionist. He was much more concerned with keeping the union together, etc., at least as president. It is interesting to read about the folksy, humorous, humble man, as presented by Carl Sandburg. Obviously most of us know Carl Sandburg for his poetry, but he dug deep and spent years creating this six-volume portrait of Lincoln, which he then himself abridged into a six-in-one 800-page volume (that I am now reading).

Obviously, I know how things are going to end, but it is nonetheless a gripping saga getting there.

The Download of a Random-A** Story

2011-09-28T00:33:00.004+09:00

now finished: The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch by Bill Pronzini

Every once in a while you just have to listen to something silly...or maybe that's what I'm telling myself because I succumbed to the pressure of the "Free for Members" section of Audible and downloaded this along with a half dozen or more other interviews, shows, and samples last month. This novella (or is it a novelette? That's a problem with downloading free audio samples; you don't actually know how many words/pages you've got. I am still resistant to audio fiction for many reasons, and now I have thought of another one) is about a detective in Northern (waaay northern) California investigating a fire, death, suspected arson and the like in a former gold mining town.

It was enjoyable enough, although I wasn't too fond of the way the male narrator did women's voices. They were like something out of a cheesy variety show sketch. Is that really necessary? We understand that his girlfriend Carrie is a woman, and your weirdly affected not-falsetto does nothing to further this impression in our minds, Mr. Narrator Dude.

This, you see, is part of why I am not an audio book person. I am greatly enjoying my Audible membership for the non-fiction, particularly my idea to listen to a lot of Pulitzer-winning non-fiction books on my MP3 player as I walk and ride buses around Korea, but as for novels (and novellas/long short stories), I still hate being read to. Hate hate hate.

Putting all that aside, this is a simple story that would be a great way to pass the time in a doctor's waiting room, for example. Mostly it just made me hanker for another trip to Northern California some time in the very near future. And, I kept thinking someone might actually secretly have gold in them 'thar hills... alas, no.

A Pennsylvania President

2011-09-09T12:14:00.000+09:00

now finished: President James Buchanan by Philip Shriver Klein(entry backdated to when I finished the book)

Lots of early U.S. presidents were from Virginia. There were also a few from New England and from the Carolinas-Tennessee corridor, and a couple from New York. There was even a "Western" president (you know, Ohio and the Indiana "frontier") who played up the log cabin angle in his campaign years before Lincoln was around. But the 15th president, James Buchanan, came from Pennsylvania, and what I learned from this prez bio is that Pennsylvania politics of the early to mid-1800s were almost as atrocious and horrifying as New York politics.

I've mentioned before that Martin Van Buren basically invented the Democratic party as we know it, with political party loyalty, back room deals, and bizarre trade-off power plays. (He had the help of Andrew Jackson in this, along with plenty of New York politicians.) Well, Pennsylvania was not content to let its neighboring state be the biggest and baddest, and it certainly started throwing its weight around in presidential elections as well.

Now, here I must say that I actually like James Buchanan, and I think he gets a raw deal in how he is remembered. (I mean, to the extent that he is remembered at all.) He was a true success at his law career, and his political career. He made money, and he made connections, but he had loyalty to the place he came from and he supported his family forever, a family plagued with deaths and deadbeats and struggles and extra mouths to feed. This is why his niece and others lived in his household and ended up coming to the White House with him -- that's right, James B. is our famous "bachelor president" who had his niece do all the official society hosting First Lady duties. James had a LOT of experience, serving in Congress and as a Secretary of State, as well as being involved in all the political goings-on in Pennsylvania. People think poorly of him because the South started seceding at the end of his term, and because the slavery question obviously erupted into the biggest event in U.S. history during the next presidency, that of Abe Lincoln.

But our boy Buchanan did his utmost to keep the Union together, and he was deeply concerned with the law. He, like Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore before him, was no fan of slavery, but saw no legal way in the Constitution for the president to do anything about it. He also considered secession illegal. Most people at that time were focused on trying to prevent the spread of slavery into new territories; abolitionists were considered dangerous radicals (and, also a threat to the Constitution), sort of like some people jabber about Michael Moore and other righteous crusaders today.

Buchanan also got a raw deal from the Democratic party. Buchanan probably should have been nominated for the presidency earlier than he was. Maybe Franklin Pierce was the Obama to his Hillary? (Although I tend to think of Hillary as more like Henry Clay - hugely important and destined to be president, a foregone conclusion that somehow went awry.) Buchanan got shipped off to Europe during Pierce's presidency, but interestingly that ended up working out in his favor because he wasn't around for those violent, nasty, tearing-the-country-apart years and he was actually able to get the 1856 nomination.

Buchanan was dedicated to the law and I think of him as acting with dignity and maturity in his political interactions. Of course he had his side of things in the heated passions of Pennsylvania politics. But he was also the older, wiser man born at the end of the 1700s, the previous generation that was now passing the torch to a volatile new era.

Furthermore, I learned from this biography how very much Lincoln some ideas of Buchanan agreed with and even adopted some ideas of Buchanan. There is one part where the author, Klein, includes Buchanan's writing of his main points on slavery, secession, the Union, and the crisis, and then juxtaposes it with Lincoln's later speech of "his" points on slavery, secession, the Union and the crisis. Well my, my, aren't they similar.

In short, this was another fascinating read and I truly think everyone would benefit from and enjoy reading a bio of every president in order, as I am doing. Note: my favorites are still Millard Fillmore and my boy JQA.

I left home lots of years

2011-09-05T02:00:00.000+09:00

now finished: The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson

People who say you can't go home again may not have really tried. At any rate, you can definitely leave home again if you decide you don't want to be back after all.

I enjoyed this novel of Iowa people, life, The Big City, escape, grad school, drinking, cousins, driving, fretting, tragedy, cynicism, hippies, music, war, financial woes, family, "America," and so on. As I mentioned on my Goodreads review, I really have to like a book that includes the the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Chicago's Clark Street, the Grand Canyon, AND Indigo Girls, don't I? Not to mention the random f***ed-uppery of the characters. Story of my life, much?

But it was not perfect, lest ye plunge in thinking it will be like The Corrections only different but still as good. No. It was lighter and had mistakes. Yes, mistakes! Actual mistakes! Come on, publishing industry: don't give up on editors. All writers need editors. Real writers know this. Books especially need editors. Clearly, I should have a job editing at a major publishing house based on what was allowed to make it into print in this and The Help, to cite two recent examples. In The Year We Left Home, we read that Newhart aired in the 1970s (no, that would be The Bob Newhart Show, not the 1980s Newhart) and "apparent" is spelled wrong MULTIPLE times. How does that happen? These are only a couple examples.

If I got over that (if!), why else would this not be a perfect book? I'm not sure. It features grad school and aimless twenty- and thirty-somethings in all their glory. Grad school people and aimless twenty- and thirty-somethings are my favorite! It also involves people living in different places, which is also my favorite. Not to mention the Iowa/Nebraskaness of it all, which everyone knows I think is the most underrated region of the U.S. (Not best, underrated. Don't you misquote me.)

There's just something imperfect about it. But it's likable, likable, likable and it sucks you in so you'll stay up reading after you could easily have gone to sleep even if you aren't trying to finish it for your book group, as I was. The characters are all messed up in many ways (oooh, I forgot! There's AA! AA is always fun.) My book group had some dissatisfaction because of the messed up characters, but I greatly enjoyed the heck out of the oh-so-flawed people who populated this book.

I would probably read another of hers. But get a new editor!

Sisterhood

2011-09-01T12:16:00.000+09:00

now finished: Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement ed. by Robin Morgan
(post backdated to when I finished the book)

Sisterhood is interesting. And, OK, powerful. Reading an anthology of women's liberation writings from 1970 is a wonderful exercise because it:

1. Offers hope
2. Lets you look at how far we have come
3. Makes you realize how far we also haven't come
4. Could really help some of "The Kids Today" to learn a thing or two about history before they go off half-cocked when jabbering about Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, and so on
5. Could really help a lot of people who have consistently allowed the backlash to define feminism. You know who you are: the ones who say "I'm not a feminist but..." or who have ever once called feminism "anti-male." If that's you, you have allowed the backlash to define feminism, and you would benefit from learning what it is really about.

Sisterhood Is Powerful reflects one specific time period of feminism, the very late 1960s women's liberation movement. It is a fascinating look at the discrimination women faced at work - not just in factories and "pink-collar ghetto" jobs, but also in the professions. It is an exploration of the women's liberation struggle as it related to and overlapped with and separated from other struggles, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the desire for peace in Vietnam. It even has poetry.

The book includes Lucinda Cisler's extremely well written argument about abortion, birth control, and reproductive freedom. Sisterhood Is Powerful has pieces that are guaranteed to teach you something new, such as one about feminism in China. It features high school girls who were taking bold stands against feminism - where are they now? It includes inspiring quotes, galvanizing statistics, and famous feminist pieces such as "The Politics of Housework" by Pat Mainardi, "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" by Frances M. Beal, and "The Grand Coolie Damn" by Marge Piercy.

It is an anthology, so you can dip in and out of it, or read one piece a day over the course of a few months in addition to your other readings, like a little feminism devotional. You don't have to agree with everything written in it, but you can just learn from it. Even an excerpt from the "SCUM Manifesto" is included, not to be taken literally, but to make a point. (A Modest Proposal, anyone?) That's what reading and political dialogue are all about.

Highly, highly recommended!

Tell it, Genji!

2011-08-21T23:09:00.000+09:00

now finished: The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu

(this post backdated to the date I finished the book)

Who doesn't love a 1,000-year-old Japanese novel? A world classic! A perfect book to bring on my August vacation to Japan! I am so glad that out of the two books I brought, I read The Waves first, finishing it the day after climbing Mt. Fuji, which was perfect for its life pondering themes. I then started reading The Tale of Genji after having already seen Kyoto, the longtime imperial capital with its megadoses of history, and I was able to appreciate more fully some of the settings in the book: I've been there! I know that mountain/temple! And the like.

OK, so a lot of Goodreads reviewers seem to be angry at this book because its about a snotty little sexist pig prince at court who sleeps around and can even pick out a young girl and "adopt" her to raise until she is old enough (read: adolescent) to become engaged to him. Ewww, right? But not reading this book for that reason would be like banning The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it talks about awful things done to slaves. Yes, I know some people want to ban Huckleberry Finn. Those people are stupid.

Anyway, the Lady who wrote this spent time at court and knew whereof she spoke. I love that she wrote this slightly scandalous account. I think she is sly. Then again, some people who got to live at court had fairly good, interesting lives, and it's fun to learn little random details about that, too.

Another reason to read this book, and other old books, is because too many people suffer under the delusion that we in the modern world invent and experience things and that our ancestors didn't know anything, and people really need to realize that there have been great civilizations, intellect, philosophers, artists, and wit for many, many centuries/millennia.

The only problem is that I picked up the cheap Dover Thrift Edition, which, like many editions, is really just the first "book" of the whole many-page saga. So while I read that, I realized I really need to read the whole thing. Otherwise it really is all about Young Prince Genji's sexual escapades. But then what? I want to see what he does as a grown-up. I will be back, Genji and Lady Murasaki!

The Waves

2011-08-19T23:39:00.000+09:00

now finished: The Waves by Virginia Woolf
(this post backdated to the date I finished the book)

When we traveled to Japan for a nine-day vacation in August, I was in the middle of reading a thick, heavy James Buchanan biography hardcover, which I left at home in Andong, instead bringing two paperbacks that I thought would be thematically as well as weightedly appropriate for the trip, The Waves and The Tale of Genji.

I started reading The Waves by my girl Virginia Woolf on the ferry from Pusan to Fukuoka. How appropriate, thought I, to begin reading The Waves while actually hydrofoiling on waves. Even better, Brian next to me was reading The Beach. I love me some Virginia Woolf and have been working my way through her oeuvre ever since I started Virginia-ing around 1995. I actually don't devour her books too quickly because I don't want to be done. I am sad when I think about the day I run out of VW to-reads. I've read about ten so far. Anyway, The Waves, in case you haven't heard, is mind blowing.

People like to describe it as "experimental." Doesn't that just scare readers off? Don't some of you immediately mentally check out when you read that word? (As opposed to the smaller, much smaller, group who immediately became intrigued and pull up Amazon in another window.) It's not experimental like House of Leaves, though, or even like DFW/endnotes. It narrates and tells a story of interacting characters, but what you read is their streams of consciousness, alternating. It is totally genius and it totally works.

It's awesome.

I like recommending Virginia Woolf novels, not that many people ever take me up on the suggestions, which is a shame because I do think about which book I am recommending (they are so different from one another). But The Waves could definitely be recommend to multiple people and I daresay anyone who appreciates a well-crafted novel. Also, it packs a total "What's-it-all-about?" punch and will make you think about life, your life, your friends' lives, meaning, relationships, and so forth. You read these lives, from youth through old age, and you realize that your life is that, too. (A little bit like Kazuo Ishiguro, perhaps.)

If you're like me, you will fold down many pages because there are passages and quotes that are so strikingly beautiful. Or maybe you're the grab-a-pen-and-jot-it-down type. Or the just-sit-back-and-ponder-that-for-a-second type. Whatever works.

Well done, Virginia Woolf. I so wish there was an afterlife where I could imagine you and David Foster Wallace talking these things over.

Go Banana!

2011-07-29T21:04:00.000+09:00

now finished: Lizard by Banana Yashimoto

(this blog post backdated to the day I finished the book)

I've had Banana Yashimoto on my radar since I first ever started working at Borders that holiday season long ago. I mean, one doesn't easily forget a (pen) name like "Banana." But, I never got around to buying or checking out anything or even for several years figuring out if the author was male or female. Turns out, female. Someone brought a book of short stories, Lizard, to an Andong book swap this summer, and I took it home mostly out of "Why not?" curiosity.

File under: not bad. It was a fast read, and some of the stories were better than others. Bonus: the stories got better as the book went along, so stick it out through the first two or three. All of the tales seemed to be about alienated or searching people wandering (and riding trains) through their days, and all were about relationships and self in some way. I would read another Banana.

It also helps, maybe, that this year I have fallen in love with Japan. I was set to be even more appreciative of people hurtling on a subway through the Tokyo night to their suburban enclaves. I was totally tapped in to the mix of emotion, history, practicality, modernity, efficiency, and beauty that infuses everything there.

I've read a lot of comments that her novels are even better than her stories, so I will check one out. Someday.

Who Needs the Help?A Bestseller Backlash Case Study

2011-07-17T12:08:00.000+09:00

now finished: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

(this blog post backdated to the day I finished the book)

The very concept of bestseller backlash was made for books like The Help. I discovered bestseller backlash in early 2000 when I was at the beginning of my approximately six-year Borders career. People flock to certain books in a very "nothing-attracts-a-crowd-like-a-crowd" way (thanks, Soul Asylum). And those books are rarely worth the hype. To be clear, a book does not fall into the category of bestseller backlash just because it is a bestseller. There's a certain intangible quality to these books, a certain skepticism about their place on the bestseller list, a certain lack of need to read them felt by me and other Readers, as opposed to the breathless "you-have-to-read-this" masses. Sometimes the bestseller backlash is a mistake and the book is good or even great (The Life of Pi, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Dogs of Babel, Freakonomics) and sometimes the book is terrible (The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Who Moved My Cheese?) but most often the book is incredibly average and, much like Top 40 pop music, the throngs of devoted fans are blind to its mediocrity (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Men Who Hate Women, Water for Elephants, etc. etc. etc....and, notably, The Help).

The Help has the added bestseller backlash "advantage" of being not just ridiculously popular but also being thought to be important. Social issues, race, the South, the Civil Rights Era, change we can believe in (oops, wrong decade) you can just feel the self-pronounced importance oozing from the reaction to this book. However, it has actually generated some actual backlash (in the world at large) for telling the African-American stories from a very white, very limited point of view. I myself wrote about feminism in The Help because the feminist issues are there, even when the author seems to be oblivious to them, despite having written this "important" novel. And if there is one thing I hate ("one thing?!" - Clue), it is people/institutions that miss their own point. (See also: most of religion.) I have thoroughly enjoyed this blog, which explains a lot of what is wrong with The Help.

The Help straight up gets some things wrong. For example, when people started becoming long-hair hippies. That was one of the first things to rub me the wrong way, when she had a character in Mississippi in 1963 refer to a long-hair Yankee throwing a peace sign. "No way," I thought. That is way too early! In her afterword, which the abovementioned blog calls her Too Little Too Late section, she casually states, "I took liberty with time, like using Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin' even though it didn't come out until a year or two later." Um - why? You specifically set this novel to swirl around the events of 1962-1963, like Medgar Evers, JFK, MLK, etc. And then you decide to go ahead and switch up history - because - why, again? You're just too good for it? You can't think of a song that was out in 1963? You don't really remember this world you are so haughtily evoking, as you want us all to believe you do?

There were other mistakes/willful errors. And they weren't the only annoying thing about this book. One annoying thing is the condescension inherent in writing this story the way she chose to do. Another is that no one who lives on the colored side of town seems particularly empowered, ever. They just do good things and get patted on the head by the occasional liberal white person. I think Ms. Stockett was trying to do something awesome here, but it turns out to be another bestseller that ought to be anything but.

As I read, I wanted to know what would happen; I am not going to write a spoiler review because I am more concerned with telling you to PLEASE DON'T BUY this book. Borrow it from a friend or the library or whatever, but please do not throw any more money to this book/author/publisher/entity.

I want someone to write this novel better. I am fairly certain the author did not at ALL learn the lessons she is apparently trying to teach the rest of us.

Long Time No Nick

2011-07-12T09:50:00.000+09:00

now finished: A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Nick! I missed you, Nick! Nick Hornby is one of those authors whose words I love so much that I actually don't devour all their books immediately, but instead I move slowly through their oeuvre, savoring it, so that I never run out of books by them to read. Who are "those" other authors, you ask? Well, at the moment I would say Nelson DeMille and Virginia Woolf and Nick are my solid trinity in that category. It is a lot easier for me to do with those boys, who are alive, of course, and still writing, as opposed to my girl V.W. who is sadly not going to provide us with any more of her writing. I'm going to finish her oeuvre someday soon, plain and simple.

I see echoes of Virginia Woolf in Nick Hornby. That's right, I said it. Not in word choice or style, exactly. And no, not because of the suicide theme. (Although...) It's more of a sensibility that understands and communicates the life of a Londoner so well, complete with all those inner thoughts, while interacting with people in the world, yet being pensive and kind of removed from others, but not brooding in alienation (a la Salinger). There's something connecting those two. I would love to imagine a meeting between Nick Hornby and Virginia Woolf.

Anyway, A Long Way Down. It has been a few years since I Fever Pitched, but there I was at book swap and someone had brought A Long Way Down to trade and for me the chance at a free copy of a Nick Hornby I haven't read is a no-brainer. Let me just say that I adored it! It might even be my favorite of his. The perfect lines, the way he nails each character personality as they spew out their pithy takes on the world.

The morbid premise is that four strangers meet on top of a tall London building (I think I should know what building it is he alludes to, but didn't) on New Year's Eve because they are all planning to jump but instead, because they are all there, they don't jump, and the book chronicles what happens to the four of them next. It's a sheer joy to read, while also being full of sarcasm, thoughtfulness, and some true life pondering as well as hope. What more could you ask from a novel? I daresay Voltaire would be impressed.

I'm trying to get Brian to read it. One of these days, he is going to read the Nick. He already means to read Fever Pitch, and I am sure he will read High Fidelity because he appreciates the genius of the movie, so soon, soon he will know the brilliance that is Nick Hornby. Virginia Woolf is a harder sell. (But she shouldn't be!)

Long Gone

2011-07-07T23:24:00.001+09:00

now finished: Long Gone by Alafair Burke

I read this book on my computer, using Kindle for PC. I'm in Korea, and I have yet to find any Alafair Burke books in the bookstores here, and I wouldn't have been able to order a copy in time for her online Long Gone-reading club, and she/her publisher had already hooked me and got me to download Kindle for PC in the first place with the $1.99 electronic Angel's Tip (one of her previous books) a few weeks ago, just like (as Alafair says) a drug dealer hooks the kiddies by passing out samples at the playground.

My point - oh yes, a point - is that this book was on my laptop, and my battery doesn't last too long. Which means I pretty much never unplug my laptop and roam around the house with it to, say, the bed or couch. It stays on my desk. Which means the desk office chair, my work space, not curled up all comfy-like. And yet! I sat there for hours, up past my bedtime, reading Long Gone so I could find out what happens. My point, therefore, is that it hooks ya, the Long Gone, and you keep reading.

I like Alafair Burke's writing style but I also like knowing her personality a bit and seeing it come out in her novel. I am still not a big mystery/thriller person and I sometimes feel like I am the wrong person to judge mystery/thrillers, but then I think that's stupid because why can't we all comment on any "type" of book, but then I remember people who have a preconceived bias against girls-with-guitars talking shite about Indigo Girls and I don't want to be those people and...and....oh, me and my genre fiction woes.

Will you like Long Gone? Probably. It's very New Yorky, but not in a way that's been done to death. If anything it's kind of Sandra Scoppettone New Yorky. (See! I read other mysteries! Sometimes. Every five years or so.) It has lots of different characters who start connecting together. It has people using modern technology for nefarious reasons. It's a good beach read, or a sit-at-your-desk-past-midnight read. It has a thirtysomething heroine. It has snark. Alafair Burke is good with the lovable snark.

And I didn't even have to spot any issues this time...

In which I am blessed to receive The Giver

2011-07-06T13:51:00.003+09:00

now finished: The Giver by Lois Lowry

I am no longer the only person in my social circles/tax bracket who has not read The Giver. See, this is what happens when you are a thirtysomething who has spent an awful lot of time a)with twentysomethings b)working in bookstores. You realize that there is some book that slipped into the young adult repertoire while you were in college leaving behind childish things, a book that became a modern classic while you were diving into Plath, Sartre, and the like.

For me, that book is The Giver. When I hear Lois Lowry, I think "Of course! My girl Anastasia Krupnik!" Alas, Anastasia has apparently been usurped by dystopian Jonas as Lowry's most famous contribution to literature. Goodreads tells me that the book was first published in March 1993. Yup, I was sitting in a freshman dorm room. Even Brian read The Giver in school. He's only a few years younger than me, but clearly during those few years The Giver did its thing. I'm pretty sure I never saw a summer reading list during my Borders career that didn't include either The Giver, The Things They Carried (I haven't read that either), or both of those books. Even my sister read it a few years ago! She basically stopped reading when she started reproducing, but one day at her husband's school, with the kids being babysat somewhere, she had down time in his office while waiting to accompany one of his choirs, and she picked it up and read it in an afternoon. I don't think there has ever been a book that Brian, my sister, and droves of teenage Borders customers from three different U.S. states have all read that I have not read. Seriously.

Therefore, when I happened upon a copy here at our monthly Andong book swap, of course I snatched it up, knowing I could quickly read it, get it checked off the list, and even give it to one of my middle or high school students at Avalon and not have to have it take up shelf/suitcase space. I read it in two days, of course. And now, what you've all been waiting for, surely: what did I think about it?

Well, it was fine. I know, not terribly enthusiastic, am I? I'm not trying to be anti-YA or anti-dystopia, but I'm not quite going to salivate endlessly about this one. However, I did like it. One thing I really like about it is that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. I can absolutely see what it has become the perennial middle/high school book. I could probably talk about the themes and characters and plot revelations for days just by myself, let alone with a class and a teacher.

I think three main strengths of this book are:

A bold, philosophical idea: that society would envision a "perfect" world as one without emotions and choices, and what this says about the necessity of evil.
The slow revelation of the full import of this philosophical idea. For example, you kind of enjoy the first family dinner talking about whether anyone had a feeling that day, or when they report their dreams. But then later you realize it's totally creepy why they're doing it.
The steady pacing.

Some have criticized the book for being heavy-handed or propaganda-like. I don't see it. I didn't think it was perfect, but I thought it was interesting and it pulls you along smoothly enough, despite some rough patches when you realize what's happening to people who are "released." I for one would have preferred a clearer ending, because I think every author wants to have the "Oooooh, did (s)he or didn't (s)he?" ending, but not every author earns it.

Anastasia! Are you reading this? I want to know what Anastasia Krupnik has to say about Jonas.

Franklin Pierce

2011-07-05T15:41:00.003+09:00

now finished:
Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son by Peter Wallner
Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union by Peter Wallner

It's interesting to consider what is meant by "martyr for the union." I mean, I personally think it is awesome to be "New Hampshire's favorite son" too, but I can see where many regular U.S.A. folk don't necessarily get all jolly and fascinated about states as I do, so for this paragraph we'll stick to what it means to be a martyr for the union. I can imagine a chorus of talking heads using those phrases in praise of someone who gave his all for the United States. But you know what it really meant, in 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, and 1856? It meant continuing to prevent the abolitionists from getting very far in abolishing slavery. I say this not as a particular indictment of Franklin Pierce. He was actually a man of integrity who honored his father, tried to rid the government of corruption and steadfastly refused to do things he didn't think the president had Constitutional power to do.

Also, he was not alone. My boy Millard Fillmore before him was also a man who is much overlooked by history, probably partly because he kept the status quo - i.e., the union. The union of slave states and free states who were sliding farther and farther apart, threatening this amazing thing the founding fathers had recently created. And there were others, many others, who might wring their hands and weep and wail and gnash teeth, but really just let slavery keep on keeping on, as it were.

Why? Well, let me tell you this: these two Peter Wallner volumes about Franklin Pierce make it quite clear how very extreme the abolitionists were. I feel like these days in the U.S. we tell ourselves, subconsciously but also through all our institutions and prevailing narratives of society, that the abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln were the Good Guys and the slaveholders and Jefferson Davis and anyone who wanted to not emancipate slaves were the Bad Guys, and there was a clear dichotomy, and it was simple. And to be honest, that was not the case. Abolitionists were largely reviled and shunned, even though we later call them "right."

Abolitionists were the Michael Moore of their day.

They dared to speak truth to power, and even their churches disliked it. The president had no use for them. The state political parties were infuriated that these believers who wanted such a fundamental transformation would threaten the stability of the union, political harmony, etc. Furthermore, it was not actually easy to be the president and just "do something" about slavery. The president was also president of the southern states. The Kansas-Nebraska act and all that followed in "bleeding Kansas" pretty much destroyed Franklin Pierce's political career. Jefferson Davis was his Secretary of War. (I'm glad we don't have that job title anymore - I wish we also didn't have that job.)

Here I must interject. Jefferson Davis was actually smart and kind of awesome. Sure, sure, a few years later he would preside over the less awesome (and less smart?) Confederacy. But during the 1850s he was successful and he cared about the United States and he did some really cool shit, like import CAMELS! real camels! into Texas and the Southwest, newly acquired U.S. land, for transporting military supplies and the like. He sent some armed forces minions to observe the Prussian War and all that went along with it, and they returned talking about camels in the Middle East, and one thing led to another and - so awesome. I really, really want to find out what happened to the descendants of these camels in Texas when the nasty Civil War interrupted and took everyone's attention away from the Southwest camel program.

But seriously, that interjection is also partly my point. Jefferson Davis was not a monster or devil. He wasn't even a Hitler. He was part of the United States. And there were millions and millions of citizens - churchgoers, politicians, family men, family women, business leaders, frontier renegades, and so forth - all of whom were equally convinced that the southern slave holding states' peculiar institution was not something the Constitutional federal government could do thing one about.

And, most of you today would have been willing to go along with that majority, keeping the peace, not shaking things up too much. I know, because I see the way you react to Michael Moore, and truthout, and Noam Chomsky (who might be one of our smartest living humans), and to those of us who speak out against the evil, awful warmongering of the U.S.

Finally, Franklin Pierce was awesome because he went to college in Maine with Nathaniel Hawthorne and then they were BFFs for life. That job in the customs house? Thanks, pal in the federal government. Ditto for the stint in London. Nathaniel even came to Franklin's house to die instead of setting up his deathbed back home with his wife.

I love my presidential-bios-to-see-where-we-went-wrong project.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

2011-06-25T16:16:00.005+09:00

now finished: The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan

Often the titles of my blog posts aim to be descriptive and whimsically clever (like this, or this, or this, or how about this one), but that seems unnecessary if not plain wrong for an entry about The Aquariums of Pyongyang. I mean, it already has its own intriguing title. And it's about the least playful book you're likely to come across, until the next horrifying tale of the North Korean gulag you read.

I've had The Aquariums of Pyongyang on my to-read list for several years, ever since the first time I was preparing to teach English in Korea. Back then, in 2005, I was working at Cambridge Borders (one of the few Borders stores still open in 2011, as far as I can tell from across the ocean) and I would stealthily peruse the novels by Korean authors and the Korean history section while I shelved, floor managed, avoided the manager who was hell bent on my professional and personal destruction, and so on. I had to do it stealthily because I for quite some time did not inform my boss and co-workers that I was plotting to go teach English in Korea and leave them far behind. Of course, it never took long to peruse a Borders' Korean history section because there are, like, five books in it. But one of those tended to be The Aquariums of Pyongyang.

When I lived in Daegu 2005-2006 I met a few English teachers who had read it, but I never got around to doing so. Of course, I was all about reading War and Peace during my first Korea tour of duty, which is what gave birth to this Literary Supplement blog (then called my War and Peace blog, hence the URL) so I actually bought shockingly few new books during that period of my life even though I made at least weekly trips to Kyobo bookstore in Daegu's Junangno district, where I browsed and wrote and sipped coffee and accidentally decided to go to Hofstra for law school. Then, once back in the U.S., other things happened to me and The Aquariums... continued over the years to fall through the cracks between my A-to-Z literary blog project, Infinite Jest, and all that crap my law professors were always encouraging me to read. *smirk*

So anyway, this month I had new motivation to read it because the Books and Booze meetup group in Seoul chose The Aquariums of Pyongyang for the monthly book discussion selection, and I am glad I finally got around to it. News flash: life in North Korea is singularly awful. While that is not even remotely surprising, it becomes more and more infuriating and heartbreaking as you actually spend a few hours a day delving into the details of it.

I suppose it is a bit of a self-selected group that even picks up The Aquariums of Pyongyang in the first place, but it's interesting to note that it has NO one-star reviews on Goodreads. I don't think the book is a literary masterpiece, but I do think that it is a well told story, so you aren't just reading it because you're shocked and wowed and sad and angry and mortified and fired up and depressed and worldly and all that jazz.

After growing up in a North Korean prison camp, where he performed hard labor, watched people die, nearly starved, ate rats, was beaten, lived through diseases, and suffered in myriad other ways, the author ended up defecting and making his way through China to South Korea. This means his family and maybe even some other close associates left behind could have been re-imprisoned or even killed because he left. We don't know. And WHY don't we know?

Because we -- and by that I mean 190+ countries on this planet -- sit around doing nothing and let North Korea go on being a secretive, nasty regime about which it is hard to get accurate information.

Why don't we go inside? We (and by this we I mean the U.S. and some other countries) refuse to have diplomatic relations and an embassy, but we are willing to station 35,000 troops in South Korea and operate a De-Militarized Zone, complete with DMZ tours, for decades. What a waste. A waste of resources, talent, money, time and millions of North Korean human lives.

Why don't we just lay down our weapons and pick up flowers and baskets of food and march across the border? Why don't we just say, listen Kim Jong-Il, we're coming in. We come in peace. Hi. Here we are. Hey everyone, have some food. Let's all sit down and talk and stop with the bullshit posturing and making up stories and labeling each other the axis of evil and whatnot.

As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons we don't do that:

1. We are afraid of China.
2. We are full of shit.

The first one is just so dumb. (It's also very much related to the second reason.) The U.S. cannot get it through its thick head that the world would be a better, happier, more productive, more peaceful place if we would let go of the notion that we need enemies in order to demonstrate our greatness. So instead we demonize China, but meanwhile we make truly evil corporations like Wal-Mart rich by having them produce everything there, and then we get mad at China for not wanting to just drop its relationship with North Korea and come crawling into our lap full of trusting, boot-licking tendencies. God, we suck. Fidel Castro is so right about what jerks the Yanquis are when it comes to anyone daring to stand up to the big bully on the foreign policy block. Ugh.

Secondly, as my book group cohorts kept reminding me, we couldn't possibly just show up at a country's border and spill over the river in a giant, flower-toting, hippie-shaking, peaceful entrance of nurses, engineers, teachers, artists and whoever else wanted to come in peace, en masse, insisting that said country immediately begin an internationally recorded and watched dialogue exposing its inner workings, because that would be a violation of North Korea's national sovereignty.

Isn't that rich? We are willing to march violently into anywhere that ~~threatens our way of life~~ has oil but we are not willing to peacefully march into a country where people are suffering and dying in large part because the world is kept in the dark about the suffering and dying. And then people actually have the audacity to say that the U.S. military does humanitarian military interventions. Really? I'm sure all the young men who have been murdered (yes, murdered) in prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq by U.S. forces, along with the Rwandan genocide witnesses, would love to chit chat with you allllllll about the humanitarian interventions of the illustrious U.S. military. Show me the oil might as well be emblazoned across those patches that say 867th airborne artillery blah-blah whatever those patches say.

Yes, I recommend that you read The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan. I then recommend that we do something about it.

I go out walkin' through the miracles

2011-06-09T20:36:00.005+09:00

now finished: Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles by Simon Winchester

I finished the book May 10 but am just getting around to blogging about it. Ugh, me and my bloggage this time around in Korea!! What is going on with me? Well, that's another story for another day. Here, let's ponder Simon Winchester. Of course, I knew how awesome he was ever since we had him on The Savvy Traveler but I must confess this is my first time reading an actual full-length book of his. I chose Korea because, well, duh - here I am. The book really inspired me to travel to the southwest coast of Korea, which we did this past weekend.

In Korea, Simon walks through the land of miracles to retrace the path of some 1600s Dutch sailors who were shipwrecked at the southernmost Korean island, taken to the main peninsula on a boat, and marched up to the capital in Seoul where the reigning king informed them they wouldn't be leaving. After eight or so years, they escaped and sailed to Japan. Then, one of them, Hendrik Hamel. wrote the first account of Korea for the so-called Western world.

Fascinating stuff! As is Simon's walk. I like his weaving of history, georgraphy, food, mountains, weather, wistfulness, and getting drunk with random people, even a monk (yes). I like how he lets some of the most egregious actions and characters (young-but-already-jaded U.S. service members who only leave base to go peruse flesh a few miles down the road, for example) speak for themselves. I like his encounter with the DMZ at the end and like even more that after the fact he actually went back to North Korea. I so envy English people like Simon and others who can actually go to North Korea. I am so sad to be an American who can't do it. (A much harsher "can't" than Cuba, I might add. Cuba actually wants us to visit -- we're the only jerks in that scenario. "We" - not me.)

I'll definitely be reading another Simon Winchester, the one wherein he cruises in China, because that's one of our upcoming travel plans, too! I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn more about Korea, or doesn't know anything beyond M*A*S*H and Kim Jong Il and kimchi. A lot of "travel narratives" are bad. This one is not.

This book has the uncanny effect of making it seem like a really, really good idea to take a journey across a country on foot.

Literary Blindness

2011-05-20T12:35:00.000+09:00

now finished: Blindness by Jose Saramago

WARNING: Thar be spoilers here!!! They don't start until the third paragraph, though!

It was my first Saramago. Blindness has been on my to-read list for quite some time. Funny thing, I actually own a copy in storage back in the U.S., that I picked up off the $1 bargain rack at Borders, a Borders store that's probably closed now. It was a movie tie-in edition, and normally I wouldn't do it, but the $1 rack convinced me. Didn't get around to reading it in the U.S., and now, in Korea, I've found a book group of foreigners that were reading it, so I re-motivated myself - and, necessarily, re-purchased it - and away we go.

Good book. They don't just hand those Nobel prizes to anyone. Yet. It can be really refreshing after months of reading Water for Elephants, frothy memoir, and some-written-better-than-others-prez bios to plunge into an actual, good, true literary novel. It can also make a girl want to abandon all aforementioned contemporary bestsellers, work-required memoirs, and non-fiction projects to read only true, good, literary novels for a while. But I do love my projects, so I'm not abandoning them yet.

Anyway, Blindness. REMINDER: The spoilers start here!!! One thing we discussed at the book group is that some advocacy groups for the blind and perhaps for others with disabilities apparently protested this book for its "depiction of blind people." I find myself in shock that someone could so have entirely missed the point of something. There are about twenty-seven ways in which registering such a protest misses the point. First and foremost, the book is an allegory, and one with many layers of meaning at that. So, the people who are initially locked up, the first few hundred or so to go blind, degenerate into a pathetic, violent state. This is so clearly not a commentary on people who are blind, because it imagines an impossibility, a world different from our own, a society transformed almost overnight. It's asking questions about how we function, what a society that has come to rely on certain things would do if those things were taken away, and what those who have power do with it. I'm like, actually offended by people who miss these points. Someone at the book group pointed out that not everyone uses their intellect, and an advocacy group is speaking on behalf of people who will be thought of poorly by those who don't actually think about things. Ugh.

More spoilers! The other thing we talked about at book group that blew me away was the ending. I mean, the very end, the last sentence of the book, so this paragraph really, truly is a spoiler and I'm begging you not to read it if you don't want the book spoiled. I made an offhand comment at book group when we were discussing the doctor's wife about how everyone would treat her now that she is blind. Someone stopped me and said, "Did you say 'now that she is blind'? She didn't go blind." Shocked, I realized that the majority of the readers agreed with him, and that I had read it differently. The organizer of the book group said a friend of his (who was unable to make it that day) had the same reading of the ending that I did, and he had reacted to her like, "Did we read the same book?" I am marveling that I could read the last sentence so differently, but I totally took it as her turn to be blind. I thought she "lowered" her eyes by closing them, so that the city would still be there in her mind. It makes me want to read the Portuguese and see if that interpretation would make sense in the original language.

There are no more spoilers after this sentence! I highly recommend this book. It has come to my attention that some people have an issue with Saramago's style, and the voice that meanders through long flowing sentences that don't break up dialogue with punctuation nor indicate who is speaking in the traditional "he said" manner. Sigh. I just sigh at people who complain about things like that without actually asking themselves, "Am I reading good writing or bad writing?" While there is subjective enjoyment of all types of entertainment (good or bad), there is - oh, yes, there is - such a thing as good writing. There are good writers and terrible writers. I have sat across from both in writing groups over the years. Guess what? Jose Saramago was a good writer. And I definitely want to read more of his stuff.

I finished this almost a month ago. Man, I am a blog slacker these days.

Strangely Stirred

2011-05-02T23:41:00.003+09:00

now finished: A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz

This book is a look at Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which is of course the classic 1963 text that kick started feminism in a lot of women's (and men's) minds. I thought A Strange Stirring was quite interesting, and my review of it is on About:

Book Review of 'A Strange Stirring' by Stephanie Coontz

Would "Sara Groan" be too mean?

2011-04-15T16:07:00.001+09:00

now finished: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I'm in between presidential biographies - after a very satisfying Millard Fillmore experience, awaiting a two-volume stint with Franklin Pierce - and the time came to read some contemporary novels that have been percolating on the to-read list in my head for a while. I plunged right into Water for Elephants, what with the movie coming out soon and all. And....sigh.

It's never a good sign when the only thing you find yourself telling other people about a book is that you'll read it really fast. (Are you listening, Twihards?) Wanting to know what happens does not mean it is a great book. Does wanting to see a photo of a car accident mean it is necessarily great art? No. Two totally different things going on there.

I don't want to chalk Water for Elephants up to being just another nothing-attracts-a-crowd-like-a-crowd bestseller, but it really isn't the Great American Novel. It has some good ideas, some fun scenes, some good writing, some totally out of place dialogue (more like out of time - sounding decidedly un-1930s), some characters that are flat as a pancake and, bringing it all together, an author who I daresay is getting just a bit too much credit for being an animal rights enthusiast when she apparently has no problem with animals being forced to live in cruel captivity and perform in the circus.

Part of me thinks I shouldn't judge Water for Elephants based on the Sara Gruen interviews I've read, in which she says that extreme animal rights activists are as bad as those abusing animals. The rest of me is puzzled that this woman who is so enamored of the circus and zoos is getting credit for writing an animal rights-themed book.

The main problem with the book has nothing to do with any of this. The main problem is that the two main characters, Jacob and Marlena, who fall in love, are flat flat flat flat flat. In the midst of a circus - a CIRCUS! - a place with the most interesting, crazy, robust, raunchy, drifter, mean, talented, bizarre, drunk, quirky group of characters you've ever seen, this author manages to make the object of our hero's affection have absolutely nothing interesting whatsoever about her. Quite a feat, that. There's also the slight problem that most of these interesting kooky circus freaks and whatnot are men, while the three women characters are the beautiful love interest, the nurse, and the sex worker. Wow, Sara Gruen. Just wow.

I ended up gladly giving it away at our inaugural Andong English teachers book swap and am just a little sad that I spent the money to buy it (and gave Ms Gruen another number to pad her bestseller statistics), and yet I'm not really sorry I read it. This is what makes me miss having ready access to an English library.

Whither the Integrity of Millard Fillmore?

2011-04-10T15:12:00.004+09:00

now finished: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert Rayback

All in all I am a fan of Millard. Also, this was a more-than-decent bio that got me even more interested in a.)Millard Fillmore b.)New York politics of the early to mid-19th century c.)Buffalo.

Seriously, Buffalo was where it was AT when that there Erie canal was getting built and opening up waterways and the town was becoming an important port city for shipping and trade. And Millard and his wife just kind of strolled in and became important fixtures of the Buffalo social scene.

Millard took a whole lot of flak from newspaper man and would be president-maker Thurlow Weed over the years. I do not know who today is comparable to Thurlow Weed. He's not even like a Bill O'Reilly - his influence seems even more pernicious. I mean, he really got people to do what he wanted and nominate whom he wanted and he was more like a kind of sinister Oprah.

But Millard, apparently, had integrity. Even in his fights with Thurlow, disagreements with Zachary Taylor, and resolve to keep the union from breaking up over the slavery issue, he always acted with integrity. Who doesn't love a little integrity in a president? I mean, not that we've had that a lot in our lifetimes, but who doesn't love the idea of it?

People joke about Millard, apparently, as being the most obscure president, but I have never thought of him that way. (My favorite obscure prez is Rutherford B. Hayes.) Reading a bio of Millard really shows one that he was an important figure and quite a success at many things in his life, not some random who strolled out of nowhere to the national scene.

Of course, another tragedy struck when his wife died right as he was leaving office. And then his daughter died a year or two (I forget) later. I'm getting so overwhelmed by all these presidential tragedies. Presidents dying in office, presidents dying right when they leave office to settle into retirement, presidents' spouses dying...so much sadness!

Three cheers for Millard.

Where's Millard When You Need Him?

2011-04-08T14:44:00.002+09:00

now reading: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert Rayback

So I'm reading this Millard Fillmore biography, and I'm really into him. He is pretty underrated and I daresay misunderstood. It's really problematic to try to make 20/20 hindsight judgments about any of those guys from the early 1800s, because there is such a temptation to say, "If you weren't trying to end slavery, you were nothing." Obviously, those who were working to end slavery were wise, courageous, sensible and a whole host of other morally right qualities, but the problem comes in defining trying to end. We like to look back from our comfortable vantage point and get all "if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us" when there was really quite a lot going on.

Millard Fillmore stated unequivocally that he was against slavery and thought it was reprehensible. As a New York state representative, and later as vice-president and president, he had a problem in that he couldn't figure out a Constitutional way to end it. Basically, my point is that it was really difficult for a lot of politicians during the early 1800s, and we should walk a mile or so in their shoes, or at least read some books about them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before he even got to his presidency he was already an accomplished, well-liked, talented man who got lots of stuff done. Details, numbers, land/bankruptcy/debt law, state comptroller duties, political party unification and other fun tasks were right up his alley. He also read and had fun. And, he was sensible enough to realize religion was unnecessary in a lot of places the evangelical extremists want it shoved into public life. He was also pretty darn magnificent at effecting compromise. Not just the great compromise of 1850, but other compromises that kept parties from splinterting, brought people eye to eye, built alliances, and more. He did not act in vengeance and he rose above some petty crap hurled at him by the likes of Thurlow Weed and his New York political ilk.

In short, we could definitely use a little Millard right now in our own federal government shutdown nonsense.

Make No Mystique

2011-03-31T21:16:00.002+09:00

now finished: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
now reading: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert Rayback
(curiously spelled "Raybach" in many places, but I'm going with what's on the book itself)

I was thinking about changing the name of this blog to "Things You Should Be Reading Instead of Give Me a !@#$&* Break Heaven Is for Real." What do you think? Does that have a nice ring to it?

OK, OK, we'll stick with the Literary Supplement...

So, as I have mentioned previously, everyone should read The Feminine Mystique and those of us who have read it before should reread it. In March, I spent some time with Betty Friedan's feminist classic and remembered how essential it is. That's right, is.

If there's anything that's more annoying than when people say "I'm not a feminist, but..." it's when people say that 1960s/70s feminism was necessary but is now a)not b)over c)both. Actually, on second thought perhaps those are equally annoying. But I digress. Feminism is alive and relevant, and I am happy to report that so is The Feminine Mystique.

Like many people, I became vaguely aware of The Feminine Mystique as a teenager and finally actually checked it out of the library during college, a time when I was doing all sorts of interesting things like abandoning my religion wholesale, kissing girls, visiting Communist nations, and so forth. As it happens, reading The Feminine Mystique is not nearly as subversive as doing those other things. And yet it remains curiously necessary, because we have people posting reviews on Goodreads that say things like, "The women in this book are unhappy because they don't have the gospel and they don't homeschool their children." Um - wow.

I've already written about The Feminine Mystique here, as well as about Betty Friedan's survey that launched her Feminine Mystique project. I'm just going to reiterate today that when you delve back into it for a rereading you might be astonished at how dead on she was about so many ways the tale has been spun -- it's like a giant web of lies from magazines, suburbia, elementary schools, guidance counselors, business, advertising, universities, marriage, and pretty much every force in society, insidious or overt. They spin the lie that a woman's "role" - her divine role, in many cases - is to be a wife and mother. And they never, ever, ever, ever, ever spin the lie that a man's role, divine role or only role (or, a personal favorite, "most cherished role") is to be a husband and father.

Why? BECAUSE THEY ALL KNOW what should be so obvious to everyone: you can be a parent and a spouse and that's NOT YOUR ENTIRE IDENTITY. Your identity is you. Nearly fifty years later, we are still feeding the backlash b.s. in the media and in far too many women's (and little girls') lives. We are still arguing this crap notion of "having it all" and "motherhood versus career" which is the falsest dichotomy that just puts everyone right back into the thick of the problem. Hypocrisy abounds, Betty Friedan totally called it out, and woe unto us if we forget it.

Interesting chapter worth revisiting: I totally forgot that she has a chapter about autistic kids who identify as "things" instead of with normalized human connections. In that chapter, doctors who have researched these cases point out the serious danger in parenting so intensely that the child can't develop, which happens when the mother is not allowed to have her own identity in the first place and is instead shoved into marriage at, like, age 18 after years of being groomed to find a boy and not act too smart around him and never have any dreams of her own and all that nonsense. It was so interesting to read that in light of the whole increasing autism today and stuff.

It's funny that Betty and NOW (the National Organization for Women, and yes, you should know that) became the staid/liberal/establishment feminism as opposed to radical feminist theory that sought to take down patriarchal society, because Betty Friedan was a revolutionary. I love me some revolutionaries.

Doin' Japan and Doin' the Feminist Canon

2011-02-22T13:34:00.001+09:00

now finished: Dave Barry Does Japan by (duh) Dave Barry
Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life by Stephanie Staal

Dave Barry rules. We recently went to Japan, my first time outside of Tokyo Narita Airport layovers. Besides the fact that Japan is awesome as a whole, Hiroshima is now one of my favorite cities in the world. We did a lot of wandering there and found many cool little things including an used English book shop with cafe (meaning, also a bar!) where I just had to buy a used book as part of my Japan experience. And lo and behold, they had Dave Barry Does Japan for 5000 yen.

Funny stuff! What I like most about it is how he weaves together a wry look at both Japan and the United States, pointing out that when either culture cries, "You're so strange and different!" it's because it takes two to tango, i.e., one couldn't be strange and different if the other weren't also strange and different coming from the opposite perspective. But he's also just really funny, like about Godzilla, Toyotas, onsen spas, Japanese rock music and more.

I disagree with him about only one major thing, which is that he seemed to think the Hiroshima remembrances of the atomic bombing on August 6 every year were somehow "forgetting" the seriousness of why the U.S. dropped the bomb. He was also offended that at the nighttime gathering in the peace memorial park there were kids running around along the river in an almost festive atmosphere. Well, kids are kids, and they will run around on pretty much any occasion; have you even been with toddlers at funerals? I sure have. And, I don't see how anyone could visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and not find the whole Hiroshima remembrance very somber indeed. Furthermore, I don't think there is any justification for dropping an atomic bomb. Even legally, in criminal law, there is a difference between excuse and justification.

All that said, the Hiroshima chapter is a short, serious bit in an otherwise very funny book full of awesome observations and storytelling. I can't imagine it not inspiring someone to go to Japan, but then again, I can't imagine people not wanting to travel there in the first place.

As for Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life, wherein Stephanie Staal revisits the feminist classics of her college women's studies class a decade later, now that she's married with a child and by all accounts an actual adult woman, check out my About Women's History review here.

Anna and the King of Siam

2011-01-24T14:06:00.002+09:00

Now finished: Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
Next up: Dave Barry Does Japan
(backdated to match when I finished the book - sorry it was posted late!)

Sensing a theme yet? I decided to read Anna and the King of Siam in January because I was headed back to Korea, where I taught English to children and the occasional teenager or adult in 2005-06. There's loads to say about returning to Korea - most of which I haven't got around to blogging yet over on my main blog, just give me time - but as I was packing I came across the old paperback of Anna on my shef and decided to toss it in the carry-on. Why not check out another expat-English-teacher-in-Asia, old school style? I never actually bought the book: it was one of a slew of old (50s/60s) paperbacks previously owned by my dad, aunts, and uncle that sat in my grandmother's house for decades until she died in 2007 and I inherited a bunch of the books.

Anna certainly had it harder than any of us random twenty- and thirtysomething teachers today! Never mind online ESL teacher forums or which English-language movie is playing at the theaters, she didn't even have a telephone when she set about educating the children of the king and the ladies of the palace. Of which there were many, because the king was a promiscuous jerk - more on that later. When Anna needed to seek the British consul's help she might have to go by boat on the little river running through Bangkok.

Needless to say, she was a more stalwart soul than us, because she had to be. Also needless to say, the book made me want to visit Thailand like, right now. My other main observation is that the king is a big jerk. I don't really remember the movie musical The King and I that well - Yul Brenner, some kids running around and other prostrating-themselves people, etc. Now that I've read this book I'm not sure I remember the movie at all. Was he this much of a jerk in the movie? I mean, we're talking dozens of concubines/wives AND he has people tortured/killed without much guilt, kind of Dubya-Cheney style.

It was a quick enough read. I don't know that it would suck everyone in, but it is interesting and for sure does one of my favorite things: it reminds 20th and 21st century people (especially young people) that their thoughts and experiences aren't some new modern thing older generations wouldn't relate to. Including galavanting about the world teaching English.

December recap

2010-12-31T15:00:00.002+09:00

Yes, I did read books in December. I humbly apologize for not writing about them here sooner! Here's the December recap. (Although I'm writing this after the fact, I'm backdating the post for archival purposes.)

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace by William Lobdell
This is one of those non-fiction books that catches my eye from time to time and muscles its way into my already-too-large, ever-expanding queue of Books To Read, for no reason other than right time/right place. It was a super quick read, and a good story. The author was an LA Times Orange County reporter so I could relate to his So Cal journalisming. He tells a good story: his story, of how he grew kind of religious but kind of apathetic (like so many in the U.S.), then found religion for realsies at en evangelical retreat, then became a thoughtful and spiritual religion reporter, and then realized it was all hooey, to borrow my friend Amy's word for religion. I think the story is interesting for seekers, ponderers, and confirmed atheists. And I know it's interesting for at least some still-in-the-faith Christians, because I read a bunch of comments and reviews online by people who were "moved" by his tale and are now holding out hope for him and praying for his return to Jesus. Which, hello. I guess we've just been too conditioned to "wait for the sequel." If nothing else, though, his insights into the shenanigans surrounding the Catholic priest scandals confirm in his mind the damage organized religion does. Philosophically, the fretting is done and I think he is totally at peace, as we atheists tend to be.

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
I read this one for my women's fiction book group at the feminist bookstore down the road a piece in Chicago. I miss my book group! Well, anyway, like most of you I had never heard of it before, but it was apparently a bestseller in its day, which was in the 1950s. Twentysomething girl goes off to live the foreigner life in Paris instead of "settling down" and subsequently finds ALL SORTS of interpersonal drama, much of it her own making but a good bit of it just part of the swirling cloud of creative expats doing creative expatty things. Needless to say, I related to this book too. It wasn't AWESOME, but I would go so far as to call it delightful. I'd say it deserves to be resurrected by more book groups.

Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest by K. Jack Bauer
So there's one thing Jack Bauer can't do: write a presidential biography. Ha ha. This book was the driest of the dry. Out of twelve presidential biographies I have read, this easily ranks twelfth. I feel bad being so negative about it, because I did learn some things (and after all, that is the point of my prez bios project), but my goodness was it dry. And not just academic-stilted dry, but honest-to-god holy-s*@!-this-is-boring dry. It really read more like a college report on a military battle. No, make that a high school report on a military battle; there was nowhere near as much focus as a thesis of a college-level paper would provide. It was a recitation of facts in Ol' Rough and Ready's various military endeavors for a few chapters. Then it got slightly more interesting in Mexico when Taylor was at odds with his commander-in-chief, then-President James K. Polk. I had already read Polk's side of the story in the bio of him, and I had some sympathy for Zachary even then, which is more than I can say for the author of the Taylor bio, who really seems to loathe his subject. The actual presidency part of this book was so meager at the end that I can barely recall any of it. I have no idea, really, why he wrote this book. Someone needs to give us a little better examination of Z.T.'s life.

On to 2011!

Amazon user CLS is my new hero

2010-11-25T08:59:00.004+09:00

NOT reading: Decision Points "by" George W. Bush

While searching for something else on Amazon, I noticed that ex-monster-in-chief George W. Bush's new book Decision Points is the top seller or the top search or something on there. Yes, I know, it's pathetic, but that's not the point. I perused some of the comments on the book and I have a new favorite person in the world for the day. Catherine aka "CLS" on Amazon, I don't know who you are, but you totally rule. Why? Because the thread she started in the Decision Points forum is: "Why isn't the title Decider Points?"

Fabulous!

How Many Books Will I Read in 2010?

2010-11-22T05:22:00.004+09:00

now reading: American Women Activists' Writings ed. by Kathryn Cullen DuPont

I'm disappointed with the number of books I have read this year. I had even toyed with the idea of making 2010 the year I read 100 books! Instead, I have been an all-over-the-place reader and not accomplished anywhere close to that. As far as I can see there are two main reasons for this.

One is that I have been reading books to review them for work or do a little work-related research and while I like them, I usually do two or three of those at once, while also having a leisure read going, and all three just get jumbled and slowed down. The other main reason is that Brian and I live in a studio apartment in Chicago right now (since February). I actually like the layout, as studios go, with the bathroom, closet, and kitchen all separate so it's kind of like a 2.5-room studio. But it is a studio, and I do like to read books in quiet, which means that I don't do as much reading as I would if we had a separate room where I would not hear the news/sports/music or whatever else is going on. Basically, I only read when Brian is either also reading or not here or when I take the extra physical-but-also-mental step of having to create quiet in order to read instead of just starting to read. This might not make sense, but trust me - we read (and write!!!!) more when we have "a room of one's own."

Anyway, I believe I have read only 34 books this year so far! They are:

Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis
Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year by Jay Parini
Introducing Feminism by Cathia Jenainati
Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough and Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror by Craig Murray
The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
After the Second Sex by Alice Schwarzer
En el tiempo de las Mariposas by Julia Alvarez
Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer
Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time by Freeman Cleaves
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Video Night in Kathmandu: and Other Reports From the Not-So-Far East by Pico Iyer
Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End by Sara M. Evans
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Chicago: Lonely Planet City Guide by Karla Zimmerman
The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
John Tyler: Champion of the Old South by Oliver P. Chitwood
Betty Friedan: Her Life by Judith Hennessee
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky
The Talbot Odyssey by Nelson DeMille
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
Le Petit Nicolas by Jean-Jacques Sempe
I Will Fight No More Forever: Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War by Merrill D. Beal
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America by Walter Borneman
Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood by Mollie Gregory

And the question is, (how) do I now revise my goal? It would be an extremely difficult thing to read 65 more books in addition to the one I'll finish tonight or tomorrow between now and December 31st, unless they were all picture books or maybe the entire Magic Treehouse series or something. Should I revise down to fifty? Sixty? Forty? (Forty doesn't seem at all ambitious enough, but I might actually be really busy during December as it happens.) Unless someone gives me a much better idea, I think I am going to revise the goal down to fifty, and a few of them might be young adult books which happen to be on my list anyway, just to make things a tiny bit easier on myself.

This blog entry has been brought to you by Goodreads, which ably keeps track of my books in the order I read them. I love that web site.

50 Books You Should Shut Up Until You Have Read

2010-11-18T08:52:00.005+09:00

So, recently on Facebook a friend tagged me in her post of that list that's been circulating for a couple years with the intro, "The BBC thinks most people have only read 6 of these 100 books; how many have you read?" This has led to an unprecedented number of comments about books, the list, and which books should be on the list. I had no idea so many people wanted to jabber about books with me! My little ol' Literary Supplement blog has been here the whole time! I should also point out that there is no evidence that particular list was actually the BBC's list anyway; rather, it is probably a random internet bastardization. Such is the way of the world. Anyway, I half-jokingly said I'd make my own list of fifty books and as luck would have it, the serious half has won out. Off the cuff, spontaneously, what the heck, this list is nothing close to complete or definitive, but is nonetheless....

Fifty Books I Think Everyone Should Read

Aesop's Fables
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Macbeth by Shakespeare
Candide by Voltaire
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe (and a collection of his stories)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Cimarron by Edna Ferber
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Jubilee by Margaret Walker
Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
Julian by Gore Vidal
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Holes by Louis Sachar
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Going Nucular by Geoffrey Nunberg

There. Now, how many of those have you read?

James K. Polk, #11

2010-11-05T03:38:00.003+09:00

now finished:
Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America by Walter R. Borneman

One of my favorite things about this book is in the photos section in the middle: the first picture of a president's cabinet, taken in 1846. It's so exciting to think about how new and exciting daguerrotype and photography were for them! After reading my first ten president bios, and flipping through a few reprints of painted portraits in this Polk book, there it was: a photo of the Cabinet. Which, by the way, included Mason, Marcy, Walker, Bancroft and a man named Cave Johnson (the Tennessee peeps had some fantastic names during this period of U.S. history!) James Buchanan was also in Polk's cabinet, but he was absent on picture day.

I liked this book, although it wasn't really a bio that takes you into the life of Polk so much as the expansion of the country and how his presidency related to that. Still, it was interesting, and I got enough into him to be very, very sad when he died a mere three months after leaving office. He had a diary going on, and his last entry was back in Tennessee with Sarah at their house where they were planning to kick it and relax and retire, and he's "arranging my library of books in presses which I had caused to be made to hold them." The last entry. Thirteen days later, he's gone, and Sarah is a widow for forty years.

He did irk me a lot during his presidency, basically just marching into Mexico and saying, "We want this land, so we're going to occupy it and take it, 'K, thanks." The United States is so not entitled to California, Arizona or New Mexico. AT ALL. The ranting "why don't they speak English" anti-illegal alien voices in the Southwest need to take it down a notch, for real, and read this book.

Texas is a whooooole other story.

"In politics," writes Borneman, "when the going gets tough, it's time for a road trip." He includes lots of information about Polk's travels, including back and forth across Tennessee. That was another really interesting part of the book for me, the growth and influence and people of Tennessee. There was Andrew Jackson, for starters: Old Hickory liked Polk, mentored him, and helped him get elected. The Tennessee governor and other campaigns involved visiting the eastern, middle, and western parts of Tennessee, which each had its own politics, people, ideology, lifestyle, and so forth.

The Baltimore 1844 convention and the way Jackson's/Polk's people worked out the nomination for Polk and not for Van Buren was nothing short of amazing. For that part alone it would be worth reading this book.

All in all, a good read. Still greatly enjoying my little prez bios project!

Catching Up x 5

2010-10-28T02:55:00.005+09:00

Wow, I've been slacking on the lit supp bloggage. A quick review, then, of the five books I've read since last posting.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Simply put, this is one of the best books of the decade (as you may have heard) but its greatness sneaks up on you. It's a quick and easy read, except that it's emotional and in the end frankly heartbreaking, and definitely not light. Oh, no. It's a meditation on both the darkest and most wondrous aspects of humanity. You realize its significance only after you've walked away from it and you start asking yourself how the length of your life relates to its worth. Oh, that Kazuo - he's good. Really good. As a bonus, the movie is out now with Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield, two of the finest young actors around.

Zami : A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde Started reading this for the feminist book group, didn't finish it in time, skipped the book group, but then reviewed it for About. I mean, I was already well aware of Audre Lorde, her poetry, her significance, and in fact this book, though I had not got around to reading the "biomythography." I'm not sure it was necessary to come up with that word to describe it, but then again, in 1980 perhaps she and her writer friends were still not acknowledging that "all first novels are thinly veiled memoirs" as Jonathan Safran Foer later pointed out. It was interesting enough to get the slices of New York life - 1950s lesbian bars, West Indies immigrants, Harlem Catholic schools vs. public schools, Hunter College, the after-effects of an illegal abortion, the factory in Stamford, Connecticut, and so on. I did not, however, think it was all that in terms of giving any some great magical insight into Audre and her coming into her feminist poet self. I was jealous of her stint in Mexico, though. For the record, 'Zami' is not the new spelling of Audre - 'Audre' is the new spelling of Audrey. But that's just how this book rolls.

Le Petit Nicolas by Jean-Jacques Sempe Picked up this little French intermediate reader book, which I read part of years ago, to keep up with my goal of reading at least one book in French/Spanish every month (a goal I am not meeting, by the way. Gotta work on that.) As always, it was delightful. All the little sneaky insights, and all those elementary-age boys' antics, and all those adults' antics. Highly recommended.

I Will Fight No More Forever: Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War by Merrill Beal I bought this at a used bookstore a couple years ago because my grandfather, who died last month, always half-jokingly declared, "I will fight no more forever!" to end a not-so-serious argument or discussion. I finally got around to reading it because I brought it on the plane when I flew to grandpa's funeral, in his honor. I learned so much about the Nez Perce people and how the U.S. royally screwed them over (big surprise) and how stalwart, noble, smart, and willing to compromise Chief Joseph was, right up to the end. He really was trying to help his people, too, to get back to land that could give them some kind of life/living and not just crap reservation life with no economic possibility on land that nobody (white or Indian) wanted. He just wanted to find a single white man who would actually tell the truth. The first half of the book can be a little dry when it gets into minutiae of battles and retreat, but the geography of it all was also super interesting, particularly because the aforementioned grandfather was from Utah and southern Idaho (shout-out to Pocatello!) and I suddenly had insight into what recent history this all was around there when grandpa was in high school. Everyone should know this history, everyone in the U.S. - but I'm worried that those who did, like my grandpa, have all left us or are leaving soon.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Read this one for my other book group. Interesting. You know Shirley Jackson as the author of "The Lottery" of course. This book is a little less stark but equally creepy-insidious. The main character/narrator is subtly psycho, and this is totally worth a read. Also, there is a wonderful cat, Jonas, and he lives! Hurrah for Jonas!

After those five, I moved on to my latest prez bio, Polk, and I shall post about that next.

You don't have to read The Talbot Odyssey, just everything else by Nelson DeMille

2010-09-16T21:16:00.004+09:00

now finished: The Talbot Odyssey by Nelson DeMille
now reading: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

So, I love me some Nelson DeMille, seriously, still do - but The Talbot Odyssey was just OK. I mean, it wouldn't be worth refusing if you were on a flight to Europe with no book or anything like that, but I must say it didn't measure up to the quality of the rest of his books, in my ever-so-humble appraisal. Where was the snark? Where were the sly digs at bureaucrats and other self-important people? Few and far between, that's where.

The good folks who rated The Talbot Odyssey on Goodreads seem to agree with me -- many of the reviews say, basically, "This was my least favorite Nelson DeMille" "Not as fun and breathtaking as the rest of his books" etc.

It's not just that the plot about 1984 Soviets destroying the U.S. with electromagnetic energy while they hole up in their basement on Long Island doesn't take my breath away - but I really missed the vast amounts of vintage Nelson DeMille sarcasm we know and love. If you want a great Russian/Soviet/spy/Cold War book of his, hie thee to The Charm School instead.

I, personally, am going to continue through his oeuvre, glad to have got the least great one out of the way.

(re?)Claiming Anne Bronte!

2010-09-10T03:34:00.002+09:00

now finished: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Anne Bronte is completely and totally underrated.

This was my first time reading one of her novels, and now I want to rush out and read her other one, Agnes Grey. I think The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the most prescient, insightful thing I have read in quite some time. Anne Bronte had so much understanding of - well, the human condition, for lack of a better phrase. Alcoholism, destructive behavior, a feminist take on marriage/property rights ... wow! This young woman knew what was up.

The tragedy of the Bronte sisters, of course, is that they died so young. The TB got that family and robbed us of what may have been prolific lengthy lifetimes. Seeing what Anne did before age thirty with Wildfell Hall makes me sad to think we lost all that potential.

I am totally on this Bronte kick of late - having just reread Wuthering Heights and realized it is WASTED on 19-year-olds, and now having discovered this gem, I am also going to be re-reading Jane Eyre in a couple months for one of my book groups. I highly recommend a thirtysomething re-reading of these books. There is so much going on underneath the surface that is downright subversive, with regard to religion, chauvinism, repression of women, and the like.

I am in awe of these women and what they created. I want more.

Tyler Teaser Tuesday

2010-08-25T12:42:00.002+09:00

now reading: John Tyler: Champion of the Old South by Oliver Chitwood

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, a blog meme from Should Be Reading via Maybe Tomorrow. How to play along:

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two(2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title & author, too, so that other participants can add the book to their to-be-read lists if they like your teasers.

I think most people who do this are reading fiction, and most of those genre fiction. Such is the book blogging world. I, however, am reading a biography.

"He was allowed to remain in private life for only a short time, however, as he was again elected (1838) to the Virginia House of Delegates. This time he went as the representative of a district of which Williamsburg was the center." -p. 152

Join the fun in the comments, or on your own blog - and share a link!

MFK Fishing for Meaning

2010-08-20T03:26:00.005+09:00

now finished:
The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Lonely Planet Chicago City Guide

I've been doing a little reading! I like getting the Lonely Planet guide upon moving to a new city. Lonely Planet rules, and I like exploring, so it's perfect. In fact, I recommend getting the Lonely Planet guide to your city/state/province/island/country even if you've lived there for years. You will learn and discover new things, and it's fun to consider a new perspective on your home.

For my take on Ursula's feminist sci-fi classic, I steer you here:
Book Review: The Left Hand of Darkness

Now, onto this MFK Fisher business. No, I haven't undergone a personality transplant. No, it wasn't a dare. I actually read a book from the Food Literature section because it was chosen by my Women's Classics Book Group. Yes, I felt a little dread, because I'm not really a fan of reading/talking/listening/watching about food. It's the one section from my Borders days in which I was never tempted to buy the books I was shelving. (Well, that and maybe Romance novels.) When The Splendid Table comes on the public radio station, it quite literally makes me cringe. I hate it the same way I hated being dragged to three hours of church as an adolescent. Yes, there is information somewhere in the speaker's words that could be useful to me, and even interesting to ponder. But the last thing I want is to be a captive audience, sifting through all the boring jabber looking for something beneficial that I could just as easily philosophize about on my own.

For some reason, people fall all over themselves these days talking about how much they love to cook, watch the Food Network, and even shop for groceries. That last bit is due to the whole green living/farmers' market trend, or as I like to think of it, the we-made-fun-of-you-throughout-the-80s-and-90s-for-being-a-hippie-environmentalist-but-now-it's-suddenly-cool-to-give-a-shit-about-the-Earth movement. I adore fresh fruit and canvas grocery bags as much as the next person, probably more so (I'm the girl who's been trying to make you reduce, reuse, and recycle since 1987 - remember me?), but no, I do not need to read eight thousand articles about how you've "discovered" rutabaga. And no, I don't want a copy of your recipe. It bores me to tears. I cannot tell you how delighted I was by Annette Bening's restaurant table rant in The Kids Are All Right about all the self-righteous heirloom tomato talk.

I am digressing, but I am also honing in on my point. I think one thing that bugs me about all the "foodies," apart from the word "foodie" itself, which I think is retarded, is how impressed they are with themselves. Maybe that's why I like The Next Food Network Star, out of all the shows on that channel: the competitors are fighting hard to prove themselves, not resting on their self-made laurels because they chopped some vegetables this morning. The point is that I started reading this MFK Fisher book expecting to be unimpressed, and I was really happy to see that 1.)it was not entirely about food and 2.)she had some insightful, well-written passages about seriously cool life moments. But then it got really weird. I'm talking off-the-charts "what just happened?" weird.

So The Gastronomical Me leaves you shaking your head a little. I mean, did she even have an editor? Every book needs an editor. Every book. Not just to copy edit spelling and grammar, or trim 500 wordy pages down to 200, or whatever, but for theme and overall cohesiveness. Editors are misunderstood and they are totally necessary. And I'm really not sure this book had one.

The stories start in MFK's childhood (her name is Mary Frances Kennedy, and yet she's not Catholic? Figure that one out) and go through boarding school to life in France and then a trip to Mexico, from Prohibition into World War II, and through a husband and a lover who dies. And yet you really don't ever learn about her or understand what is happening in her personal life. That's why I say it's not well done.

At boarding school, she has a lesbian dalliance with another student - I think. In France, she rescues the neighbor young woman from - something. An aggressive date? It's not really clear. One minute we're in France with her husband and she's tra-la-la-ing about this man she loves as they take a boat somewhere for a perfect meal and wine, and then all of a sudden she's divorced, but she doesn't tell us that. She just tells us she's sailing across the Atlantic home to the U.S. to tell her family she's getting divorced. Her next lover/soul mate dies, but if you want to know what the disease IS that has caused him to LOSE a LEG, you're out of luck. And don't even get me started on Juanito. Seriously random creepy final chapter. Off the charts. I'm not spoiling it here, because I don't really understand what happened, so how could I tell you?

The thing is, much of the writing was interesting. This woman was clearly learning who she was, and that totally comes out, and I really liked her interactions with the Frenchies and lots of her life moments. But it felt like she was deliberately trying to confuse us. I know the 1940s didn't have quite the same tell-all sensationalist style that causes everyone and her dog to write a memoir these days (which I hate, too - memoir. Making my foray into food memoir just about like a descent into hell) but could she at least tell a complete story if she's going to tell it? It was like watching the edited-for-TV version of The Exorcist. You just know there's something you're not getting.

So anyway, I was all ready to give the book 3 or 3 1/2 stars until I got to the final vignette. I might even be willing to read another book of hers if someone can recommend one where something happens and she tells us about it and everyone acknowledges that this is happening. I really think she was born sixty years too soon - she clearly was meant to be writing a blog. Which I might not read. But she does have little epiphanies, and she writes lines such as, "I felt illimitably old, there in the train, knowing that escape was not peace, ever." That's a good line. I think I disagree with her, but it's a good line.

I will say this, too: there's one part where she totally comes to the defense of potatoes. I mean, she goes all out, declaring that "meat-and-potatoes" thinking unfairly relegates them to a "menial position" and that they should be cooked "respectfully." That part was awesome.

I'll take the praise of spuds over creepy gender-bending Juanito any day.

Authors, party of six

2010-08-12T12:47:00.003+09:00

~~Everyone knows~~ Some people know that one of my favorite little games to play with myself is to imagine all of the celebrities who share my birthday (May 13, btw) at one big birthday dinner party, because it's quite an eclectic mix: Harvey Keitel, Stevie Wonder, Bea Arthur, Dennis Rodman, Mackenzie Astin, Stephen Colbert, and the latest addition, Robert Pattinson. Well, tonight I just happened to glance at my Goodreads profile (paying attention to something else entirely) and there's a whole "Linda's favorite authors" section where the first six who happen to default to the front page, complete with pictures, are: Fyodor Dostoevsy, Virginia Woolf, Nelson DeMille, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Quindlen, Gloria Steinem.

Suddenly, I was playing a new imaginary dinner party game. Imagine the possibilities! I mean, obviously, Fyodor and Leo could go off in a corner speaking Russian, but I don't think either is the type to do that. Nelson would obviously have to talk to Leo about how he totally used War and Peace in The Charm School. Which man would hit it off with which woman? Virginia clearly had opinions about Leo and Fyodor; what would she make of Nelson? They might be surprising friends. What would Virginia think about the latter century feminists, Gloria and Anna? Would Anna act like a journalist, or a novelist? And with Leo and Gloria at one table?! Two of the wisest people ever. Ever! World peace might just spontaneously come into being, just from them existing in each other's presence.

God, this is a fun game. Endless fun.

More Asia, please!

2010-08-06T12:28:00.002+09:00

now finished: Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer

This was the Pico Iyer book I should have read in the first place. You may recall that when I did my A-to-Z Literary Blog Project, I selected Pico for "I." However, I was reading novels for that project so I read his Cuba and the Night, a work of "fiction." It was OK, but not really a novelly novel, you know? More like a thinly veiled memoir of his Cuba experiences - kind of like what I'm writing in my own Cuba "novel." But I had wanted to read Pico Iyer ever since we had him on The Savvy Traveler back in the day, and I was most intrigued by Video Night in Kathmandu. So now I have read that one, and I am a fan.

He wrote it after traveling through a slew of different Asian countries in the 1980s. To give an idea, he talks about seeing Rambo, Madonna, and "We Are the World" making it big. The book's philosophy is basically his examination of how East Meets West as he travels in Bali, Nepal, Tibet, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, China, India, Hong Kong and Japan.

And all it did was make we want to drop everything and go back to Asia. Now.

I was actually already plotting to go back to Asia, but this book was like a catalyst added to an already bubbling over test tube.

It's not like he had the most amazing mind-blowing travel experience ever, or that he told some story like no one else could tell it. This was no Into Thin Air. It just made me insanely jealous because he writes about so many places and I want to see them all! The British expats having a grand ol' time in their high-rise Hong Kong apartments, when China's re-taking-over was still years off. Tibet and Burma and China when they were newly opened to Western tourists. Mandalay! The intricacies of baseball in Japan, before quite so many Japanese pitchers were doing great things in the MLB. And India - his delightful descriptions of the wacky layers of life that pile on top of each other in India, and how perfectly those crazy layers are reflected in Indian film.

Yes, please.

The Girl Who Doesn't Care About Stieg Larsson's Trilogy

2010-08-04T07:08:00.000+09:00

now finished: Men Who Hate Women by Stieg Larsson

Oh, you thought it was called The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, did you? That's because we are victims of jackass corporate publishers who listen to their jackass marketing departments, who, unfortunately, are well aware of just how dumb jackass Americans are. The title in Swedish is .. um...something I can't remember or spell very well, but it MEANS "men who hate women." And that's what the book should be called in English. Instead, we have this "The Girl With..." nonsense. Apparently The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second book in the series, is an accurate translation of the Swedish title, and as this wise blogger points out, the first and third were willfully changed to distort not only the focus of those two titles but the second title as well, making it all about The Girl instead of the fact that she is taking on something more dangerous than she may have thought.

And now we have a jackass "English-language remake" of the Swedish film in the works and EW keeps jabbering about which actress will play Lisbeth Salander and quite frankly, she's totally not even the main character of ~~The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo~~Men Who Hate Women, which I, unfortunately, have now read.

Usually I maintain my bestseller backlash for a bit longer than this - I first touched Men Who Hate Women With Dragon Tattoos, what - two years ago? Two and a half? In Borders Atlas Park. But there was this vast ~~right-wing~~ conspiracy to get me to read it, and then we went to the cottage and Brian's mom had it and blew through it and the second onto the third, and everyone but everyone like Jill! and Amy! and Stacey! and Chris and everyone on Facebook! and the Swedish movie was across the street forever! and the violence wasn't gratuitous, and wasn't misogynistic, or was it? and fine! fine! fine! I read the damn thing on the beach in two days. And my grade? W. For "whatever!"

It's like The Incredibles all over again. People got so uproariously mad when I didn't like that movie, because, they all said, "It's unique! It has this totally inventive, original story line about these superheroes who are, like shunned by society but really are smart and have these incredible talents!" To which I responded, how is that not the plot of every single superhero movie? And of every single Brady Bunch episode? My friends, we have a repeat. All the Män som hatar kvinnor (I looked up the spelling) devotees go on and on about the unique literary brilliance of this book. No. It's a mystery. It's written much like any mystery. Especially maybe The Da Vinci Code. It has its interesting points, but around page 280-something it goes seriously downhill for a while. And, as many people have pointed out SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! NOT TO DO WITH THE 'WHO DONE IT' BUT A PLOT POINT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS' RELATIONSHIP 300 PAGES IN SPOILER ALERT! SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT THE SPOILER! ALERT! ALERT! I'M GOING TO SPOIL NOW! there is no freakin' reason for Lisbeth to sleep with Mikael Blomkvist. Seriously. None. It is so stupid. Even if Stieg *had* to establish the nice-guy-can-be-promiscuous-without-hating-women-so-not-all-men-are-bad aspect of Blomkvist, he could have done so by him sleeping with his best friend co-worker (which he does) and one of the members of the Vangar family (which he does) or even the red herring of what's-her-guts in the cafe. UGH. Also I really really hate that Stieg took the David Foster Wallace/Emile Zola route with regard to the cat. The cat was, quite frankly, my favorite character, but he sacrificed it and, worse, made it the subject of monstrous brutality. That's when I wanted to throw the book across the room. OK THAT IS THE END OF THE SPOILER. ONTO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH. NO MORE SPOILERS.

So I'm annoyed with Stieg, I'm annoyed with the publishers/marketers, I'm annoyed with the fans, and I'm totally not impressed by the story or the writing. Whatever, trilogy that you all can't put down. I can so easily put it down. Noooooo problem.

The First President Harrison

2010-07-27T06:03:00.000+09:00

now finished:
Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time by Freeman Cleaves

Most of us know little to nothing about the ninth U.S. president, William Henry Harrison. Those of us who held onto anything from U.S. History class remember the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!" which would help us remember that John Tyler was the tenth president if only we even remembered that "Tippecanoe" refers to Harrison in the first place. Others may recall that W.H. Harrison had a grandson, Benjamin, who also became prez, and that W.H. was the president who served the shortest term in office because he got sick and died one month in, often blamed on delivering his long inaugural speech in the freezing cold rain with no hat, coat, or gloves.

Friends, country folk, listen up: there is so much more to William Henry Harrison! The presidency was an afterthought for him. Seriously. It came after a long, productive life, in which he was a successful military general on the frontier (uh...that would be Indiana/Michigan/Illinois) a legislator, an ambassador, and a judicial employee (all 3 branches of government!) He was basically kickin' it back home in the Ohio/Indiana area and taking care of his various wayward children, sons' widowers, and the like when his friends who hated Jackson/Van Buren rustled up a presidential campaign for him.

W. Harrison is fascinating. He made friends with a bunch of the Indians on said Midwest "frontier." They respected him and he them, although as a general for the U.S. he was in charge of taking their land. Side note: Tecumseh is thoroughly awesome and my new hero. I'm talking, to the point that I would name a kid after him hero. I cannot wait to learn more about him. (Like, by reading this.) So, our boy William H. H. could be said to have dealt somewhat "honestly" with the Indians, in comparison with others. Question for discussion: would it have been worse for him to bribe/hire/manipulate the Indians into being mercenaries as the British did, or to pretend to deal fairly with them while really taking their land (I'm looking at you, Jackson!), as opposed to what he did do, which was fight them "fairly" for it (to the extent that any war/killing is fair, but you know what I mean) as well as to honor peace agreements that were made as he tried to scoop up as much land as possible for the U.S.?

I mean - obviously, "Manifest Destiny," as the westward expansion eventually came to be known, is kind of a crock of shite, another blatant attempt of those who have power to use God propaganda to make the masses submit to their will while getting fired up about it. But, if one believes that the U.S. or whoever has a "right" to explore/fight for land instead of just backing off and leaving Indians alone, and that person goes about it with all the accepted "rules of warfare" and such, how can that be any worse than, say, blitzkrieging into any country with oil under its sands while convincing the masses that "they" all want to hurt "us" and "our way of life"? Also, taking land really doesn't begin to explain W.H. Harrison. He was in the army and on the frontier for quite sometime and rose to be a beloved general, but he did a bunch of stuff in the War of 1812 - telling the British to stop encroaching. And those British were using the Indians to fight their war against the Americans for them. William Harrison totally invited chiefs over to his house and chatted.

Anyway, he was seriously famous way before anyone thought to randomly make him president at age 68. We always hear the story of his one-month presidency as a kind of "Oh, too bad, he died before he could do anything." Hardly!

It was also fun to read about him going to Colombia, as U.S. ambassador to the newly independent country that had kicked out Spain. I've been there! He even traveled to visit my favorite sight, the salt cathedral Zipaquira, outside of Bogota. And, get this, on the way there he stopped off at Curacao, where I've also been! ('Cause he was on a ship of course, duh. But he spent some time there.) How many Americans, besides me and William Henry Harrison, have been to Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Washington D.C., Curacao, and Colombia? I bet it's a small group of us!

Done With Martin Van Buren

2010-07-19T04:50:00.006+09:00

now finished: Martin Van Buren (The American Presidents Series) by Ted Widmer

Yikes, do I need to catch up! I suppose it's time for some brief summaries, back dated to approximately when I finished the books. As careful readers will recall, I abandoned a Martin Van Buren tome almost 300 pages in -- it was that bad, and that long (600-some odd pages). I did learn a lot from it, laboriously, and so when I subsequently read the Widmer bio of Mr. Van B, from the American Presidents series, I had a good, solid, in-depth background, so I can't be accused of reading only a brief surface account.

The book was good! Well-written (what a relief!) in a very engaging style, the opposite of academic prose. Funny, informative, and really pointed out the struggles and possible motivations of Martin without slamming him or taking his side with blind devotion. In fact, I truly recommend it, and not just for people interested in history or presidential dorks like me. I recommend it for the writing and the insight into a major transition this country made, from being a post-Revolution new kid on the block to a modern, working country of the 19th century that would have to deal with crises. Big ones.

Martin Van Buren is unjustly overlooked. I don't even mean that to defend him, necessarily, but just to say that he played a far larger role than he is given credit (or blame) for. He basically invented the Democratic party - at least as much as Jackson if not more so - and the system of party loyalty. It's interesting because on the one hand, many of us roll our eyes at the whole two-party system and party loyalty that leads to things like entirely predictable votes in Congress, nasty campaign ads, and a whole lot of ignorance about actual issues (let alone no chance for independents and 3rd parties). But reading these books about Martin helped me see how they saw the party loyalty as a positive thing to counteract the blind regional loyalty of North vs. South, especially at a time when the volatile issue was slavery and nothing else was going to get done if you just had that split all the time.

Also, Martin lived for some time after his presidency. He had always had the ability to gather support on these mysterious journeys he would take, traveling through the farthest reaches of New York state, or into the South, to talk with important figures and win them to his side. He continued his little journeys post-Presidency, including being the first prez to visit Chicago. On his way there, he stopped at some random town in Illinois for the night, and the town officials wanted to bring out their biggest guns to impress/entertain the ex-President. They brought a rising young political star to the tavern, one Abraham Lincoln, and he and Van Buren totally hit it off and talked politics 'til the wee hours of the morning. Van B recalled it as one of the most pleasant nights he'd spent in his life. Who knew?

More fun facts: he is sometimes portrayed as a pro-slavery villain, but he was really more of a pro-not-losing-the-tenuous-alliance-with-the-South villain, as explained above. He did come out against slavery later in his life. Furthermore, he was not an upper class man, and his family of Dutch speakers, who had intermarried only within the Dutch immigrant community for several generations, made up the name "Van Buren" when they arrived here, because it sounded important and no one in the "new" world would know they weren't some noble household. Ha!

Accomplishing and Abandoning

2010-07-14T11:24:00.002+09:00

now finished: En el tiempo de las mariposas by Julia Alvarez
now abandoned: Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics by John Niven
now reading: Martin Van Buren - The American Presidents Series by Ted Widmer

Yes, it's true. After 285 pages of my first MVB attempt, I totally abandoned ship. I just couldn't do it anymore. It was painful. I really hope the professor historian dude who wrote it got tenure out of it, because I just cannot in good conscience recommend it as a book to read. This is not to say there was not interesting information in it. I actually learned a lot about Van Buren, and some of the things I had already learned about him from my JQA and Jackson bios were fleshed out, and that was cool. But it was overly wordy while still being really dry, a dastardly combination. It was put together like a typical academic endeavor: impressive research piled upon impressive research, with lots of unnecessary terrible writing in lieu of getting to the point. Occasionally an interesting passage or a clever turn of phrase would show up, just the way they would occasionally show up in those research papers you wrote at 4 a.m. in college. Doesn't mean the whole thing was well done.

I've moved on. I even took it back to the library yesterday already, so the deed is done. I am now reading an incredibly different, short Martin Van Buren bio (but I feel no guilt about reading a short, light one, having given many weeks of my life to 285 pages of the long, awful one).

In other news, I finished En el tiempo de las mariposas (that's In the Time of the Butterflies to some of you). It's pretty crazy how no one in the U.S. knows a damn thing about Trujillo or the Dominican Republic or the Mirabal sisters (las mariposas), who were brutally murdered. I really want to read another Julia Alvarez book after reading that. She has a vivid imagination and a great writing style and storytelling sensibility.

Lots more reading to do in July!

Also, on today's Here and Now (that's a public radio show, y'all), I heard Jack Murnighan talk about his book Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's Greatest Hits. I have idly considered reading that book before, but today I was really digging some of the stuff the author said, particularly his intense, effusive praise for War and Peace. (See the header of this blog, please, thanks.) Made me want to revisit The Book again. Gotta do some serious plowing through the 600 books on my to-read list first, though....

Hatchet and a heads up

2010-06-30T04:34:00.003+09:00

now finished:
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
After the Second Sex: Conversations With Simone de Beauvoir by Alice Schwarzer

now reading:
En el tiempo de las mariposas by Julia Alvarez
Some presidential biographies
Lots of feminist history stuff

Just thought I'd drop in and see what's happening around the ol' Literary Supplement since I finished The Whale a couple weeks back. The very next thing I did was read, like, the shortest book ever, but also a tale of man vs. nature, namely, the intermediate-level Hatchet. The reason for reading it was simple: I had owned a copy of it for years and never read it, and someone just bought it from my listings on Half.com, so I had to read it really quick before shipping it off to the buyer. I liked it. I can actually say I learned a few things about surviving in the wild, should I ever need to. I suppose the kids today read it and ask why he didn't call his mom on his cell phone. Sigh.

Reading Hatchet also prompted me to examine how many Newbery Medal-winning books I have read, total. (Hatchet is not actually a medal winner, but was a "Newbery Honor Book," and that insignia on the cover is what inspired me.) I was disappointed that my total was a mere ten. Ten! That's pitiful! Of course, reading all of the Newbery Medal winners is one of my on-again, off-again projects, along with reading all the Pulitzer Prize winners and reading a biography of every U.S. president in order to see where we went wrong (a project started during the Dubya administration, obviously). But I tend to read other things instead of just blazing through one of these projects. I'm thinking it might be time to start a blazing.

I would feel so accomplished! But I always stop myself by saying, "But there's so much else I want to read!" So then I don't get all of those books, read, either. Might as well just read all the Pulitzers and then worry about what's still around. I would make an exception for a few books-about-to-be-released-as-movies-that-will-get-nominated-for-Oscars because those can't be delayed, but other than that, I think I need to blaze through my projects. And then think up new projects!

The only other sticking point is that I have to do a lot of reading in my research for one of my writing jobs right now, but because the subject matter is so interesting to me (feminism) I keep picking up books like Betty Friedan: Her Life and American Womens' Activist Writings, An Anthology, 1637 -2002, both of which are right in front of me now on my desk, and wanting to read them in their entirety instead of just dipping in and out of them for research. And so it goes.

I am really behind on the presidents, though. Pre-Tajikistan, I totally fell apart on that front and now I am just scrambling to finish Old Tippecanoe so I can be all caught up to my Presidential Reads group on Goodreads, a group I randomly found when I was 4/43* of my way through the project and decided to join because they were right up my alley, or I was right up theirs, or something. Only they don't get as distracted from their project as I do.

And don't even get me started on the fact that another Goodreads group I follow is about to plunge into Atlas Shrugged ... and I recently put it out there to the universe that I had started and not finished Atlas Shrugged, and was almost convinced that I need to re-read it...

Read, read, read, read, all I want to do is read! Why do so many other things take my time?

*And I'm actually - surprisingly - not saying that because I don't count Dubya as a president (which, I don't) but rather because there have been only 43 presidential-like peeps in the White House. It really bugs me when people say Obama is the 44th president. It's not like I'm going to read two bios of Grover Cleveland. There have been 44 presidencies, but there have been only 43 presidential-like peeps. Focus, people.

One Did Survive the Wreck

2010-06-12T12:35:00.001+09:00

now finished: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Hurrah! I am so happy to have done it. I have conquered The Whale. I do not know what my problem was in high-school and twice in college. I would also say I don't know what my problem was when I originally launched my re-re-reading this past March/April, but I kind of do know: a)I had way too much reading and research to do for way too many things, including some time-sensitive work deadlines and b)I clearly was meant to pick it up after returning from Tajikistan instead. I mean, you know, if you're into the whole fate thing and all that.

Herman, my buddy, you rock. Think of me as putting my hand over my heart while I talk to you this way, Herman. You rock and delight my soul and I am sorry I couldn't find it in my stupid self to appreciate you sooner.

"Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege." - p. 613

I love Ishmael's whimsical rants. I love the philosophy. I love his traveling soul and I love, love, love that the world eventually came to see - as it so often does, after they leave us - the brilliant piece of art this Herman person created.

Why we can't recognize artists' genius during their lifetimes (hi, Vincent!) remains unknown. Another thing we can't seem to recognize in our or anyone's lifetimes is the damage we are doing to our planet. Melville-as-Ishmael has many Moby Dick moments in which he waxes philosophical about the ocean, and in the wake of the gulf oil gushing tragedy, some of it was quite striking. The sea is a "terra incognita," he writes. "Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one." (p. 298) He also notes that many disasters befall us mortals when we take to the sea, and yet we continue to do so. I loved that:

"...however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it." -p.298

Oh, prophet Herman. However much in the future our science and skill may have augmented, you're right - we're all just pretty pathetic when we think we have really figured out how to conquer our planet. And why do we want to conquer it anyway? I don't know, Herman. I wish I could tell you it was all in the name of travel, fuel for flights to see this wide world, but unfortunately, Herman, I think too many people are drilling and consuming just so they can keep on going in circle in their own little insular lives, while further alienating themselves from the life in the land that gives this petroleum bounty. I don't understand it either, really.

The "great shroud of the sea rolled on," indeed.

Actually, you really should touch that rope-yarn

2010-06-10T01:57:00.004+09:00

now re-re-re-reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Oh, Ahab. Oh my.

Ahab, Ahab, Ahab, my friend. You had me - you really did. You were tough, and surly, and kind of dark, but you really had me. I could totally dig your ferocity, your dedication, and your commitment to a quest. I kind of liked your brooding, mysterious ways. I really liked how much you knew about the ocean, and whaling, and the fun characters from islands all over the place who peopled your ship. I was even a bit jealous of the way you had spent most of your life traveling the world instead of languishing in Nantucket.

But now - now being p. 579 in my edition - you have lost me. With your despicable "Touch not a rope-yarn!" you sent Captain Gardiner on his way and refused to help him look for the lost boat with his 12-year-old son. Sure, sure, them's the breaks in this whaling industry. Captain Gardiner knows it, too, and was tough enough to bring his son along and teach him the ways. And who knows? Maybe they will find the missing sailors even without you and the Pequod. But Ahab! You even said it: now you have to forgive yourself. While a bird of prey swoops in to snatch your hat and drop it in the sea.

You are so totally doomed, old man.

"How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab

2010-06-09T06:51:00.006+09:00

now re-re-re-reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

You may recall that one of my new favorite hobbies is reading the 1-star and 5-star reviews on Goodreads. The non-extreme reviews on there just aren't as interesting. But the 1-star reviews of crap like Twilight or The Almost Moon? Endless entertainment! Yesterday, I checked in with some of the love and hate for The Whale, and I observed the following:

1. The five-star people need an editor. Seriously. Their reviews are, on the whole, looooooong. Just because the book you loved is long and rambly, your Goodreads review does not have to be. Trust me on this.

2. The one-star reviews for the most part were flawed! Seriously. I found a few where there was just a straight up difference of opinion, and I totally accept that. But many of them stated things that weren't quite right! For example, one person's review says: "you only read (and I'm not exagerating) like 50 pages of actual story, and the rest is biological documentation," but that is not true. The "biological documentation" of the whales comes and goes (and I think most of it is hilarious - but that's another point entirely), but that person is totally exaggerating, even though she cannot spell exaggerating.

I am now on page 538 of Moby and I am so delighted by Melville, and so sad I can't meet him and tell him he's awesome and hang out with him. Let me give you a real example of what Melville does, lest you be dissuaded by inaccurate reviews on Goodreads. In Chapter 17, "The Ramadan," when Melville-as-Ishmael waxes philosophical about religion? He says that rather than arguing with Queequeg one should let him be, because "Heaven have mercy on us all -- Presbyterians and Pagans alike--for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending." So that's a digression that's too boring and philosophical for you, oh 1-star reviewer? Really?

Yeah, and all these digressions about whaling? That's another popular complaint - a lot of people even say they read the book "but skimmed through some of the whaling parts," which, ewww. Then you did not, my friend, read the book. But here's an example of a "whaling part," from chapter 94, in which Ishmael talks about the blubber-room, where the spade man stands barefoot on a sheet of blubber chopping it into portable pieces:

"This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistant's, would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men." - p. 458

Dude, Herman is funny! Moby Dick is a whimsical, profound work of genius. It occurs to me that in all my questioning of myself as to the genre of the Cuba book I have written/sort-of-almost finished, I should have long ago realized it's kind of like Moby Dick. All personal-voyage-quest-fiction-yet-fact-invented-character-narrator and stuff. I can only wish that my book will end up half as awesome. Wait, who am I kidding, an eighth as awesome. A hundredth.

You get my drift.

Read Moby Dick, people!

I also recommend it to people who liked Infinite Jest. I suspect a lot of Infinite Jest readers have already read Moby Dick -- I mean, you don't get to be an Infinite Jest reader by just succumbing to the endless 40% off crap the big retailers shove down your throat all the time -- but you know, for those others like me who maybe blew off Moby Dick ~~once or twice~~ three times in high school and college English (major) classes but still grew up to be real-live readers and thus ended up reading Infinite Jest first. Infinite Jesters will think nothing of the length of Moby so they won't be overwhelmed, plus they clearly are a lot who appreciate a digression or two. And they will be delighted to see how very Herman-like our boy DFW is. Was. Is?

Bonus, for law school-like peoples: there was a whole bit about a fast-fish or a loose-fish and to whom either belongs. It was totally all first-day-of-Property-ish when a fox, a duck, and a whale walk into a classroom...

It's going to be over soon. I can't believe I'm going to finish soon! It really has me in the mood to read more fabulous classic novels instead of going back to presidential bios.

Mobying Along

2010-06-05T05:27:00.002+09:00

now re-re-re-reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I have just about given up on having any sort of discussion about Moby Dick whatsoever on this here blog. Normally I would say this is my fault, but it's not as if there was really a discussion happening before I ~~abandoned~~ paused my reading of The Whale anyway.

Now on page 332, I am really in the stretch of what I like to think of as Herman's "Wheeee!" phase, in which he's like, "Whales! Ships! ooooh, a little philosophy thrown in the mix." You've got Queequeg clutching the rope and whale, mates flying through the air, swarming sharks, and all sorts of little tidbits about life on the seas. Plus a crazy cult-like wacko who visits from another ship just long enough to foretell Ahab's doom. Amateur. Ahab's doom is so totally long since foretold.

I think I'm going to be able to read a lot again this weekend. Yay!

Private Idaho and Insular Tahiti

2010-06-03T23:58:00.005+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Meant to be? Perhaps it's a little soon to be using that phrase, always a favorite of mine. But it certainly seems beyond fortuitous that despite my best efforts to launch my re-re-reading of The Whale in March, and then April, I would really be best able to plunge into it now, after from my voyage to Tajikistan.

Upon returning from the other side of the world, I came home, took care of a few re-entry tasks, and then headed with Brian to his family's vacation home on Lake Michigan. I picked up Moby, a month neglected, and read those first paragraph words that I thought I had understood before:

"It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." - p. 3 (which is really page 1, it's totally one of those)

I have such a literary crush on Herman-as-Ishmael. And seriously, could he put it any better? I sit here thinking about him and I get a sad little rush as I think about what he would have had to say about airplane travel. Not that I would want it to take away from what he has given us about the ships and the sea and the whaling voyages. I just kind of want him to live twice, I suppose, to grace us with his philosophy about our 20th/21st century times as well. We are so damn lucky - all of us! But, I've said this before. Those of you who complain and bitch and moan about the companies that fling us around the globe in mere hours aren't worthy to even open your mouths about higher powers.

Sitting there on the sands of Lake Michigan, I re-re-re-re-read the 100+ pages of Moby Dick I had accomplished in the spring, with only a bit of skimming, and then I pressed forward, totally in the right place and mental space now to read it all. What a wondrous thing it is, this classic novel.

I think the entire process of reading it might be worth it for Chapter 58 alone. "Brit" is one of Herman's philosophical bits, with some explanation about the ocean all wrapped up nicely with a statement about humanity. He has quite a few chapters like this coming fast and furious in this section of the book. This is the one in which he thinks about the "universal cannibalism" and "eternal war" going on in the sea, then compares it to the human being, in whose soul "lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life." - p. 299

I loved this so much that I just sat there and re-read the chapter. Brilliant, Herman. Seriously.

I spent a lot of time in both Turkey and Tajikistan talking with fellow travelers who understand my need to galavant about the world. As Herman/Ishmael rightly points out in the beginning of the book, our time is short, and every funeral ought to serve as reminder that the time to travel is now. And shut the !@%* up about the airlines already -- maybe once you've handled a whale-line from the line tub you'll get over yourself and your carry-on baggage.

Dry Spell on the Water

2010-05-30T00:59:00.003+09:00

now finished: Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer
now reading: oh hell, I have no idea

Well. I think that may have been a record for length of time without posting a blog entry. But I'm back! As you may(?) know, I was out of the country volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Tajikistan for a while during May. I also stopped in Istanbul on the way to and from. This wreaked havoc not only with my frequency of blog posting (oops!) but also my reading. Yikes.

In the end, I had to make some tough decisions, including getting some must-do research reading done for work assignments and putting personal reading projects on hold. I know, Moby, I know. You thought it was just like old times. Just another futile attempt to conquer The Whale. You're wrong, Moby! I'm back with you! I re-launched my re-re-re-reading of Moby Dick over Memorial Day weekend at Brian's family's "cottage" on Lake Michigan. I am on page 297. It is happening, for real.

But first, I will report on the book I read while traveling. I wanted to choose one Istanbul- and/or Turkey-related book. I had thought to read fiction, but a friend recommended the non-fiction Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer. It was really interesting and the perfect book to be reading while I was there. (I had precious little time for reading in Tajikistan, but it was fine there, too.) Kinzer is a journalist who has reported from many countries and was the New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul during the late 1990s. He does a great job of explaining how and why Turkey is part Asia and part Europe, geographically, historically, politically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

The book is a basic primer to what's up with Turkey, so you can plunge in whether you know anything or not. As I said, it was a real value added to the stuff I learned while there, and I even discussed some of what I learned from it with our Sultanahmet tour guide.

It gives you a lot of hope for Turkey, the modern world, the Islamic world, and stuff like that. It also makes the case for how awesome and important Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is. And yet, do we learn one thing about him in the United States? We do not. I wasn't even sure on his specifics when I was booking my flights into Istanbul's Ataturk airport. What a damn shame! I think I might make it a little research project goal to read up on the people whose names show up in each country's largest airports. Seems like a good way in to at least a little info about the country. I mean, reading about JFK, for example, would be a good intro for someone who knows nothing about the U.S., yes?

Speaking of presidents, yes, I will be posting soon about Martin Van Buren and then William Henry Harrison as I continue my presidential bios quest. But Herman! Moby! I'm ba-a-a-ack!

Book Swaps Everywhere!

2010-05-03T09:18:00.004+09:00

Not long ago, the Chicago Reader, this fair city's alternative newsweekly, hosted an amazing event that I knew I would attend the second I learned of it: the Chicago Reader book swap.

It was held in a bar. (I. Know. Books --free books -- and a bar. What more does one need?) The bar turned out to be appropriately gritty and the rules were simple: bring books, take books. Actually, you could do only one of those and not both if you so chose. They simply asked that you take no more than fifteen. It was amazing.

People (and their books) kept coming for three hours. Workers/volunteers did a quick, major-category sorting of the books, which a runner would then take into the other room, between the bar and the stage, to place on the appropriate table ("Fiction," "History," "Religion/Philosophy/Spirituality" etc.) There were good, cheap beers on tap, and the literary classics and fiction tables would be cleared within minutes of a new pile of books appearing upon them.

I was in heaven.

What I gave up:
(the first two all too eagerly)

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

What I got:

Hardcover Fiction
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua

Paperback Fiction
The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo
Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
Angelica by Arthur Phillips
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
including a couple mass markets
Cuba by Stephen Coonts
Setting Free the Bears by John Irving

Paperback Non-fiction
The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism by Robert Coles
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski
Captive Audience by Dave Reidy
Among Warriors in Iraq: True Grit, Special Ops, and Raiding in Mosul and Fallujah by Mike Tucker
MacArthur's War: Korea and the Undoing of an American Hero by Stanley Weintraub

Here on Earth, our Comfortable Inn

2010-04-21T03:45:00.005+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
now also reading: a bunch of other stuff. mostly for work/projects

Totally have not been posting frequently about the Moby, but hereby getting back on the stick!

So. We had been thinking about Ishmael and Herman and religion. (Hadn't we? Who's out there reading this, anyway?) I know I'm still quoting from the first hundred pages of the book and it's high time to move along to the next centennial page grouping, but first:

"Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him." --p.94

First of all, you can tell we get kind of a Melville mix in this paragraph. Ol' Herman clearly is positive about Ishmael's live-and-let-live stance, while also taking care to emphasize that in order for a live-and-let-live stance to work, those who we let live also have to let us live, an often overlooked crucial point. In other words, no freedom for your religion once you start doing crazy stuff like oppressing women and killing people. That goes for everyone - no killing. No killing abortion providers, no killing women who commit adultery or wear comfortable clothes or show skin, no killing people whose oil you want, and definitely no killing "blasphemers" who depict an image of your prophet. (Three cheers for South Park!)

But also in the quote I like Herman's layered subtext, because Ishmael does what most of us do once we outline our broad, charitable philosophies: he starts carving out an exception for himself. This just further supports Herman's point in the first place about how dangerous we are when we hold fervent beliefs. I love this man. I also, by the way, love that he was BFFs with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Would that I could go back in time to have a drink at ye olde New England pub with those two. Or meet up with them in the afterlife, in which I do not believe. Religion.

The final thing to love about this quote is how Ishmael characterizes what happens when the religious person crosses the line: his religion becomes a "torment to him." That's what's so true! The zealot himself is tormented! Let alone the people around him, since it makes the world, for the rest of us, "an uncomfortable inn to lodge in."

Since Herman said it best, I have little to add about religion, but it is fun to consider what other sorts of things/people make "this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in." Some of my suggestions:

George W. Bush (obvio)
Wal-Mart
Bill O'Reilly
Fur coats
Long Island(ers)
Rock of Love
Post-1990 video/images of Michael Jackson
Also him talking
Twi-hards
Green Jell-O with carrots
Tequila

I'm sure there are more. But when those things come around, it is definitely "high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him."

I owe you one (or more)

2010-04-15T03:40:00.002+09:00

now reading: way too many books for various projects with a long to-do list
now falling: totally behind

I know, I know, I owe you a Moby Dick entry or two or three, but you'll just have to be patient. In the meantime, content yourself with a little feminism and/or National Poetry Month celebration, won't you?

Gloria Anzaldua - the self-described Chicana/Tejana/lesbian/feminist/dyke/poet/writer

Carolyn Kizer - the Pacific Northwest's own, with lots of "Pro Femina" poetry

Adrienne Rich - Activism, anti-Vietnam war, women's liberation, gay rights, she's got it all. Plus, W.H. Auden picked her out of the crowd nearly sixty years ago!

OK, that should tide you over, my adoring fans!

The Unfinished Books of My Life

2010-04-08T14:47:00.004+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Well, I may have reached the page where I stopped reading in my USC English class. Page 81/82 was folded, not in the corner-folded-I-need-to-remember-this-quote way (that Joe and Jodi hate!) but in the folded-in-half-I'm-too-lazy-to-go-find-a-bookmark way. I'm sort of disappointed that I didn't read any further, but I shouldn't have been expecting much more. I know I skipped ahead and read some of the later whale/ship/climax stuff, but it appears this is where I stopped actually reading reading. So sad. At least, that time. I really don't know at all what/how much I read the other time I "read" it in college, or the time I "read" it in high school.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about other books I have started but not finished. Of course, life as an English major is different because you're reading several books all the time, but elsewhere in life I have started books and then just not finished them. I thought I'd try to remember and go over the list to see if I should go back and revisit them, too. Let's have a look; these are pretty much in chronological order, too, as near as I can remember:

Jaws by Peter Benchley
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
(p.s. It's so weird that it's called that, when we all totally call it The Diary of Anne Frank.)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Naked by David Sedaris
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone by some lady
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
White Dog by Romain Gary
Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

So I didn't count books that I idly picked up at someone's house and read only a few pages while waiting for them or something, because then this list would be twenty times this length. These are all books that I legitimately was reading and then, for one reason or another, didn't continue.

There were all sorts of different reasons. I was too young for it (Jaws, around age 10?), I was bored (Anne, Ayn), I was bored twice - once in English and once in Spanish (Harry), or even that I bloody detested it and wanted desperately to throw it across the room and stop all others from making the mistake of investing the precious time in it that I had (The Memory Keeper's Daughter, The Almost Moon).

I think maybe I should start a new paragraph to really drive home this point: The Memory Keeper's Daughter and The Almost Moon are two of the worst books I have ever attempted to read. I got about 50-60 pages into TMKD and 200 or so into TAM and they both were just so awful that nothing, not will power or guilt or perseverance or ANYthing could make me want to finish them. Awful awful awful. Like, majorly philosophically flawed and a deep disservice to humanity and stuff.

But the others on my list aren't that at all. Many of them -- The Elegant Universe, Fierce Invalids..., White Dog, Naked, I greatly enjoyed what I read of them but circumstances just somehow forced me to put them down.

Then there are the averages: not throw-across-the-room awful, but not exactly calling out to me to finish. Kavalier and Clay - I'm sorry, Michael Chabon, because I adored every word you had written up to that point, but comic books? Really? Ugh. I tried, but I loathe comic books, I really do, and I also loathe all the comic-book-derived art that tries to invade my mind. AND you had to go and set it all WWII-ish...and my wall...anyway, you know I'll get back to you because it won the freakin' Pulitzer, so I WILL read it - like, after I read the Pulitzer fiction winners from 1917-2000 first. (Actually I've read a bunch of those already, making my way though the rest, so this really will happen.)

Don Quixote - one of my more recent ones. Since I read about 350 pages of it, I kind of feel I should get some credit seeing as if it were a normal length book then I would have finished it! (Same goes for Atlas Shrugged, by the way.) It was really entertaining but - I don't know. I'm actually considering redoing that one in Spanish because I heard it loses a lot in translation. That will happen soon; I was going to re-read Don Quixote for my big book this year in fact, but I am "re"-reading Moby Dick instead.

So, what do you think? Which ones should I quickly get back to? Which ones am I crazy for abandoning? Which times did I make the right choice? I'd love to hear your thoughts! But if you have anything positive to say about The Almost Moon then I'm scared of you. As for The Memory Keeper's Daughter, if you buy that this jackass could or should in any way tell such a lie to his wife and build their lives on such a lie, and you find this in any way acceptable, then you can just go ride off into the sunset with Benjamin Linus right now because ewwww. Move on folks. Nothing to be redeemed here.

Sermons and Stuff

2010-04-08T12:19:00.001+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

In my head this post has a slightly more PG-13 rated title (in which the last word starts with the same letter, but is a wee bit shorter) but I try to keep it family friendly in case my sister ever decides to read it someday.... no just kidding, that's not why. Because she probably never will. I've never used vulgar words in an entry title, though, have I? Anyway, on with the show. I suppose I'm duty bound to write about the sermon. Don't we all love the sermon? I refer, of course, to Chapter 9, in which Father Mapple prattles on about Jonah. This contains all sorts of exciting talk about whales, foreboding, God, sin, doom, and the like, plus it makes modern day readers wonder why their preachers aren't half as cool as Father Mapple.

But I guess I just don't know what to say about it. Thoughts, oh ye who are reading along? I mean, Herman keeps giving lots of little jabs to religion ("I'll try a pagan friend," Ishmael thinks a few pages later, about Queequeg, "since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.") But this sermon chapter is not so much of a jab. It's kind of an admiring mocking of preacher fervor, and congregation ("shipmates!") fervor, but without really mocking. It mostly mocks those who think they've got it all figured out, I suppose.

I even remember reading the sermon when I "read" Moby Dick in college, so I know I got at least this far before quitting. And there's a bunch of stuff underlined in these few chapters in my copy...

Meanwhile, there's a great phrase on page 62 that could slip right by you if you're not paying attention: for the nonce. It means "temporarily." Queequeg feels like he can't go back home to claim his place as a pagan king yet because he's been defiled by hanging out with all these Christians (another jab from Herman! love it!) but he'll go back eventually once he feels baptized again. "For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans."

"Sowing wild oats" lasted. Where did "for the nonce" go? I want to find this phrase. I want to read more 19th-century or 18th-century literature just to find this phrase. I want to see where I have missed it in things I have read before. I am newly in love with it. Nonce - the particular, present occasion, says Merriam-Webster, the time being. I hereby resolve to use "for the nonce" somewhere, somehow, sometime soon.

Like we didn't already know this, but everyone should read this book.

"What's all this fuss?" indeed!

2010-04-06T13:39:00.004+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

There is something on practically every page of this book about which I could write! The "grand programme of Providence" Ishmael envisions in which Fate lists the solo "Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael" in between more "extensive performances"? The fact that Queequeg is out trying to get all his heads sold on Saturday night because "it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches"? Or, shall we just move on to Ishmael's movement from wariness through pretty well freaking out to curious observance to an actual acceptance of the situation of sharing Q's bed?

"The man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." - p. 26

Wise words, my friends.

"Grub, ho!"

2010-04-03T08:08:00.002+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

All I know is that I have officially added this to my Life Things to Do List: at some point, somewhere, I want someone to summon me to a meal by calling "Grub, ho!"

Looming Questions

2010-04-02T07:29:00.004+09:00

now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

There's a lot going on with Moby Dick. Well, duh. But let's start with identities, shall we? The most famous three-word beginning ever, "Call me Ishmael," is both straightforward and deceptive. Call whom Ishmael? Call me Ishmael because that's your name, or call you Ishmael to assign a name to a construct of identity that will morph into an omniscient narrator while simultaneously rendering the account of a voyage through one man's reason even as he whimsically observes others' quests? Yeah, and that's just the first line. Oh, Melville.

I mean, our good buddy Herman (can I call you Herman? It's not as if anyone else does, ever. Maybe there's a reason for that? Maybe you wish you were named Ishmael?) also constructs other identities for himself/the narrator, like the "late consumptive usher to a grammar school" and the "sub-sub-librarian" who provide the Etymology and Extracts that actually come before that famous "first" line. Those are worth reading, by the way. Herman's sense of humor comes through, plus you learn about languages and get more ideas of things to add to your ever-growing list of literature to read. Or wait, maybe that's just me.

So anyway, Manhattan? I had totally forgotten about the book starting in the "insular city of the Manhattoes" with everyone gazing to the water. The last time I perused these pages I had not yet lived Manhattoes-adjacent. How can one not love taking the plunge into this novel, with our wandering narrator who's like, "Man, you know, every once in a while I just got to GO to the sea! I'm off!" Love this man. Also how he doesn't actually want too much responsibility in his job.

"For my part I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not." -p. 5

By the way, I am reading the Penguin Classics ISBN: 014-039084-7 but even if you don't own the book at all it is available online. (Although, shame on you if you have stopped buying real books and only read digital. Shame, shame.)

And, just a refresher for those who didn't get the memo, why am I reading Moby Dick? Well, you see I have "read" Moby Dick before. I have "read" it three times in fact, once in high school (hi, Ms. Freeland!), and twice in English major classes in college. And I blew it off all three times. I SUCK. So in a concerted effort to suck less, I decided to re-read/read it, and had pretty much settled on it being my Big, Classic Book of 2010. Then this past New Year's Eve, for whatever reason, someone said something I now can't recall about the whale hating Ahab. I immediately started debating this with Brian, and then via text message to several others: that's not quite right, is it? I mean, the whale doesn't hate Ahab. Right? It's Ahab who's a crazy f***er. The whale just wants to go about being his bad-ass whale self. I decided then and there to get on the Moby Dick stick ASAP, which worked out to be mid-March. And despite some minor blogging delays, here we go!

Join us!

Hot to trot, yet cool as a cucumber

2010-03-31T05:52:00.000+09:00

now finished: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini
now reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

And I must say, reading those two books together is meant to be. Remini even quotes Moby Dick about Jackson, as indicative of the country about which Melville was writing, a country where a concept of populist democracy was taking shape, thanks in large part to that "'ruffian' in the Hermitage." And the intro to my edition of Moby talks all about how Melville grew up in the land Jackson and Van Buren were redefining.

Andrew Jackson is a complex man and I had complex feelings about him while reading this book. First of all, he was a no-holds-barred war hero, and while he demonstrated all sorts of qualities that are widely praised, courage, and sacrifice, and quelling a mutiny, and all that, it's all so - violent! And don't even get me started on the frickin' duels. Jeez. I've been dealing with this while reading the first six U.S. president bios, too, and I've got to say, I find it appalling that these "honorable" "gentleman" would find it necessary to arrange a freakin' DUEL when one has been wronged, and they called the Native Americans savages? Hello?!

That said, you can't argue that Jackson was beloved of the people, and he probably would have been totally fun to have a drink with. There is in fact a scene in the book where he's just kickin' it in a pub in West Virginia while he's the President and talks to all the people who talk to him, including the drunken Irishman who staggers up and pronounces his verdict: "Folks say that you are plaguy proud fellow, but I do not see as you are." Doesn't get much better than that.

Of course, I also liked the scene where James Buchanan, who was minister to Russia, is in Washington preparing to present a noble lady to President Jackson. Buchanan wants to do it all proper royal-style, so he drops by the White House, only to find Jackson kicking back in old clothes with his feet on his desk smoking a corncob pipe. Buchanan tries to gently suggest how refined the Lady is, etc., and Jackson tells him, "I read about a man I was much interested in. He was a man who minded his own business and made a fortune at it." Naturally, Buchanan scurries away, and when the Lady arrives at the White House shortly thereafter, of course Jackson is dressed perfectly and distinguished as ever, and impresses the Lady as the most elegant gentleman she'd ever met.

So that's the Jackson who comes through in this book. As much as he pisses people off, he also gets a lot of stuff done, some of it rather well. Can I fault him for living in a violent time, especially in the volatile "western" states of Tennessee, Louisiana, and such? It's not like our generation has learned to be any less barbaric (see e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the daily jingoism spewed from the idiot box about one "hero" or another).

The only thing is, Jackson hated my boy JQA. I mean, they just did not get along. I learned this when I read my John Quincy Adams bio, of course, but that was when I was discovering that JQA was my soulmate. Now, reading about someone who hated my new BFF at all times and in all things -- well, it was like Jackson hated me, in a way.

And did I mention Jackson walked around with a bullet in his arm for a good portion of his life, because it lodged there after one of the stupid duels, and they couldn't remove it until decades later when it worked its way closer to the surface one day?

All in all, this wasn't the best or the worst of the prez bios I've read, but it was good and I would recommend it. And Jackson, while not part of The Crew (Jeff, Mad, Mon) or my BFF JQA, was an interesting fellow in his own right, ushering in the next generation of politics. He totally helped and was helped by his alliance with Van Buren, to whom we turn next.

Dirty Deeds Done at Quite a Price

2010-03-15T07:18:00.002+09:00

now finished: Dirty Diplomacy by Craig Murray (aka my new hero)
now reading: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini

And to think that I almost had no idea who Craig Murray even is! It was in seeking out information about Tajikistan* that I stumbled upon his Dirty Diplomacy, or Murder in Samarkand as it was called in Britain before being published in the U.S. I'm not sure why the name changed for the U.S. edition: perhaps they thought we needed a more salacious, scantily clad title? Because god forbid we pick up something that sounds so worldly and international-affairs-like? We're burned out about all that, right? So they tell me. Books and movies about the wars we are waging don't go over well. Now, gee, why is that do you suppose?

Well, this book reminds you that United Statesians' "burned out" attitude may be exactly where Dubya and friends want you. Craig Murray shows up in Tashkent in 2002 as the British ambassador to Uzbekistan and is promptly horrified by the way the U.S. runs the show. To wit, the "Americans" have set up a military base, declared Uzbek president Karimov an ally in their war on terror, and proceeded to ignore his insidious, corrupt regime as it routinely totures, imprisons, and executes hundreds of its innocent citizens. Not to mention the squelching not only of dissidents but pretty much any flow of information.

You one of those anti-Commies? Well, the Uzbeks tell Ambassador Murray over and over they long for Soviet times -- that's how corrupt this regime is. When Craig Murray confronts the U.S. ambassador about all the Uzbeks in jail for their religious beliefs, the American replies, "Oh, well they're mostly Muslim."

It's surely no spoiler to tell you how this story ends: with Craig Murray pushed out of his job for daring to tell the truth, and the U.S. still merrily slaughtering people and turning the other cheek when our allies slaughter people as we all "fight terror" together.

I can't think of anything better you could be doing with your time right now than reading Dirty Diplomacy, with the possible exception of watching the documentary The Good Soldier. As for bonus fun times, Dirty Diplomacy will take you on a whirlwind tour of Uzbekistan. It features everything from bureaucrats sleeping on the job to secret-entrance strip clubs, from gigantic mining operations to the logistics of throwing a party for the Uzbek rich and famous. Plus, I learned about the Battlefield Band, a Scottish group who happened to be playing here in Chicago last Friday; Brian and I attended their fabulous concert. I wouldn't have known who they are either, but for this book. See how eye-opening learning about the world can be?

*For those who haven't heard why I've been seeking out information about Tajikistan, please click here to help Habitat provide homes in Tajikistan!

Upcoming Things!

2010-03-07T09:41:00.002+09:00

now finished: Dirty Diplomacy by Craig Murray
now reading: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini

I've been oh-so-busy but meaning to post about the amazing Dirty Diplomacy (U.S. title) aka Murder in Samarkand (Brit title) by Craig Murray, who is my hero forever. Dirty Diplomacy report coming soon! Since it was my desire to learn more about Tajikistan that led me to stumble upon his book in the first place, have a look at this page about my Tajikistan trip in the meantime.

For now, I'm wrapped up in the world of president #7, Andrew Jackson, who is a little on the crazy and complex side. I'll write about that soon, too.

Don't forget we're going to start (re-)reading Moby Dick in just about a week!! March 15th is the ~~witching hour~~ whaling day!

One Last Last Station Thing

2010-03-01T07:39:00.002+09:00

finished, but still quoting: The Last Station by Jay Parini

Yes, one more bit of my soul placed on the page for all the world to see by Parini-as-Chertkov:

"Again I long to go away, and I do not make up my mind to do so, yet I do not give up on the idea. The great point is whether I would be doing it for my own sake if I went away. That I am not doing it for my own sake in staying, that much I know for certain ... " - p. 129

Wanting to go away, aka plotting my next big move, is sort of my m.o. in life. I may want to go away slightly less than usual because I have just gone away, which is to say I have come to Chicago and am living somewhere new. But just in general, I do still want to flee the country. And yet I stay. "...that much I know for certain."

And I really want to go read War and Peace again this spring/summer after all this Last Stationing. But I think I will reread it every five years or ten years, I haven't decided yet. Instead, this year, I am going to reread/really-actually-read-all-the-way-through Moby Dick. And you're all going to do it with me, starting on March 15 (beware!) Who's excited?!

Leo Tolstoy totally gets me

2010-02-27T14:35:00.003+09:00

finished: The Last Station by Jay Parini

Or is it that Jay Parini totally gets me? Well, either way:

"It is not an easy thing to alter the trajectory of your life. People have expectations on your behalf. You come to believe them yourself. When I began to live my life according to new principles, my family and friends dismissed it as youthful folly. Friends and relatives turned against me when I persisted..." - Chertkov, in The Last Station p. 126

The only thing I'm not sure is whether this has more to do with my rejection of religion more than a decade ago, or my more recent cavalier attitude toward law school, or if it's equal parts of both.

The Last Station

2010-02-24T04:06:00.004+09:00

finished: The Last Station by Jay Parini

I love me some Tolstoy! This we know. After all, we owe the existence of this blog to Tolstoy. This Literary Supplement to Linda Without Borders was born when I commenced reading The Book itself, War and Peace, a little more than four years ago now, whilst I was over yonder in Korea. I even called it Linda Without Borders: War and Peace until it outgrew the title and became a place for me to think all my literary thoughts.

So, my boy Leo Tolstoy - love him, as did many others, apparently! The Last Station takes place in and around his Yasnaya Polyana estate duing the last year of his life. He and his wife Sofya are not on the same page with regard to personal property, specifically whether he should give his personal property to the masses of Russia. Nor are they on the same page about his friend Chertkov and the Tolstoyan minions who all hang around living communally and professing Tolstoyan values all day.

The Last Station was not on my radar whatsoever until I started reading about the movie (in EW, naturally); then the movie started getting awards season buzz, so of course I knew I was going to read the book, see the flick, and enjoy one or both.

Check, check, and check - although I would say especially the film. The book is well done though. I'm not a big one for "historical fiction" - with rare exceptions - but I tried to appreciate Jay Parini's desire to write it as an homage of sorts to Tolstoy. I think he really digs Tolstoy's understanding of God-is-love. Rejection of the flawed church, but with an acceptance of the depth of religion. And there's the occasional great quote, often from Tolstoy himself, taken from real life sources, like this one:

"In recognizing Christianity, even in its distorted form as professed today, and in recognizing at the same time the necessity for armies and arms to kill in wars on such an enormous scale, governments express such a crying contradiction that sooner or later, probably sooner, they will be exposed. Then they shall put an end either to Christianity (which has been useful to them in maintaining power) or to the existence of armies and the violence they support." - p. 212-213

A few days after finishing the book, I happened upon the film The Good Soldier, a documentary that ponders that very issue of the violence in war and the injustice of a government asking/forcing its citizens to kill. Would that Tolstoy could be here to watch the film with us and comment wisely. He left us great messages, though, about such things as war, and peace. I just wish everyone would read them.

Has anybody here read my good friend Martin?

2010-02-17T11:42:00.003+09:00

long since finished: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

Have I really not talked about good ol' Martin Arrowsmith? I finished him not that long ago, but it's starting to feel like another world now that we are in Chicago, and out of the exquisite suburban torture that was life in the GRapids. (Oh, sigh. Grand Rapids is NOT that bad, and I should stop implying to the blogosphere that it is. It was just my situation there that was that bad.)

But Martin understands! Martin Arrowsmith had his own exquisite tortures in life as he tried to make his way, not the least of which was Wheatsylvania. The scenes in the provincial prairie town of Wheatsylvania, where his wife Leora's family lives, are painfully funny! Like, to the point that the book would be worth reading just for the Wheatsylvania scenes. (But luckily there's plenty of other good stuff, too.)

I had to return my copy to the library so I can't quote you some of the Wheatsylvania dinner table goodness, but suffice it to say everyone just has to be all up in Martin's business about everything, and not because he's, you know, doing anything wrong per se, but because he's, well, Not From Around There, and he is grilled and analyzed and criticized and advised and questioned about everything and nothing. And apart from the invasiveness, they talk about so many things that Just. Don't. Matter. Except to them.

But then Martin and Leora are off to even more adventures in other cities, and the book takes you to unexpected places, much as their lives take them to unexpected places. I think that is in fact the best thing about the book, because it reminds you of what life is and what it does. Also, I did not see the ending coming at all; an unexpected ending is always fun.

As you may know, I love reading these Pulitzer winners partly because of what the fiction Pulitzer is: an award for an American novel. This means so much more than being a novel published in the U.S. by an author who happens to be from the U.S. The works that win this prize reflect and comment on what American life is. Not in a jingoistic, hyped-up way, but in a true way. That is what I like so much about the Pulitzers, how they are an award for Truth, even in the fiction and poetry categories. And Arrowsmith exemplifies that so well.

Who does this remind you of?

2010-02-03T02:31:00.002+09:00

"And you make people nervous...You either take to somebody, or you don't. If you do, then you do all the talking and nobody can even get a word in edgewise. If you don't like somebody -- which is most of the time -- then you just sit around like death itself and let the person talk themself into a hole."
-- from Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

When I think back on Franny and Zooey, I remember it as OK-not-spectacular. But I just looked at my old copy and realized I certainly did fold down a lot of pages!

Flashback Friday: Eighties Haiti

2010-01-16T01:37:00.001+09:00

I posted about this on my main blog, too, but since it's a book I must share it here on the Literary Supplement (although "literary" is not one word I have often used to describe the Jennifer Green books). I have totally been reminiscing about In Another Land, the book that totally educated me about Haiti and put it on my radar.

It's part of a series, the Jennifer books by Jane Sorenson, a fairly cheesy series of twelve books about an eighth grader that I for some reason adored and devoured and read over and over back in the day. The weirdest thing about my reading and loving them, I think, is that they are super-Christian. What can I say? I used to be a different person. The main character is "born again" or "becomes a Christian" or whatever, but she also narrates all sorts of other things about her life, like moving to a new city, school, horseback riding lessons, friends, boys, and such.

I remember far too much about the mundane, goofy, and ridiculously sappy details of the books -- and believe me, there are many -- but one of the books actually taught me something useful. In the eighth book, In Another Land, Jennifer Green accompanies her grandmother on a trip to visit Haiti and meet the Haitian child that Grandma sponsors. They travel all around and Jennifer has all sorts of epiphanies about how lucky and rich she really is in her life back home. The thing is - it was a really interesting book! The author, Jane Sorenson, had obviously been to Haiti and been affected by it, and it is kind of cool, I think, that she wrote a book that would educate and possibly inspire adolescents to learn a thing or two about the world.

I have always remembered those books. Even my mom remembers the books; I forced her to read them and she still jokes about how silly some of them were. But the Haiti book was somewhat significant, I suppose. In the two decades since, I sometimes forget that not everyone read this random, obscure series of young Christian fiction books, that not everyone has all these vivid associations with Haiti described in Jennifer Green's trip. Needless to say, In Another Land has been on my mind this week. It's apparently long since out of print - maybe because no one besides me ever bought them?! - but I saw a few listings online for ridiculously cheap. You'll read the book in like five minutes, seriously. I'm not sure if I can recommend the series in good conscience as they are SO incredibly cheesetacular. But hey - people read a lot of crap in this world, so why not read about Jennifer Green and her family and friends? I think I related to her way more than I ever wanted to admit to myself.

And I was always very jealous of her trip to Haiti!

The things we do

2010-01-09T12:44:00.006+09:00

now finished: Money by Martin Amis
now reading: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

"The telephone was a one-way instrument, an instrument of torture." - Money, p. 40

How am I not going to love the protagonist when he says a line like that? I don't even have to be in a drunk, drug- and pornography-addled haze to loathe the phone that way. John Self, the perpetually partying narrator of Money, says way too many things that I relate to. He's also really awesomely pithy, like when he says, "There are, at the latest count, four distinct voices in my head."- p.104 It happens. Drinking too much, going a little crazy? Hey, when you are thrust into New York City -- or New York City is thrust upon you; it can be hard to tell the difference -- it definitely happens.

The plot, roughly, involves him mostly roaming around New York trying to deal with the stars and producers of a film he is--making/about to make/starting once they can work out the script--but he also goes back and forth from NYC to London a couple times in there, and tries to figure out if his girlfriend is cheating, and tries to figure out if he is going to cheat on her, and so on. He also has to figure out if this movie, this script, these actors are going to work. There are lots of characters, restaurants, bars, cab rides, events, and streets of New York City.

John Self has a few problems with people. Sometimes it comes out in a complicated trail of who's with whom, and sometimes it comes out in lines like, "What are friends for? What are they for? I've often wondered." -p. 212 You're not meant to like him, especially, but how can you not have a little fondness for his blithe observation of and participation in all that nasty early 1980s Manhattan has to offer?

This book rubs some people the wrong way. The perceived "misogyny" and rampant pornography scare off some readers, or piss them off, or both. The character is maddening, sure, but I think they're missing Amis' satirical point. Everything is mocked in Money, especially the things on which people are willing to spend their money. Maybe it's too much for readers to ponder that people also "waste" money on going to the opera? I'm not sure.

Self does have his insights, such as "Normal girls, they aren't like the girls in the pronographic magazines. Here's a little known fact: the girls in the pornographic magazines aren't like the girls in the pornographic magazines either." -p.219 Eventually, he realizes he can't go on drinking like an alcoholic ("Only the alcoholics can. They're the only ones who can hack it." -p.250) But redemption will be tough for this one. We are just along for the ride, to see how it will all work out. He has an uncanny ability to describe all the wonderful horror of New York City, and reading this novel made me want to be back there more than just about anything else has since we left. The little New York descriptions are gems:

"Oh, for some of that New York spirit! Over there, you can look all fucked-up and shot-eyed and everyone thinks you're just European." - p. 65

"One of the subvoices of pornography in my head is the voice of an obsessed black tramp or retard who roams the Time Square beat here in New York. Incomprehensible yet unmistakenly lecherous, his gurgled monologue goes like this: Uh guh geh yuh tih ah fuh yuh uh yuh fuh ah ah yuh guh suh muh fuh cuh. I do a lot of that kind of talking in my head too." - p. 104

"New York was just how she'd always imagined it ... a stand in the Great Exhibition of the future that would one day be christened Money." -p.317

The "she" in question is his London ex-/girlfriend who has now arrived and "had been in Long Island for a week doing god knows what with god knows who: she looked tangy, rusty, with a salted sharpness of tooth." -p.317

You know I gotta love him for slipping a little bit about tangy Long Island in there! Of course, he has a line or two about California, too, including the thought as he ravaged his body that he "better get to California soon, while the transplant people still have something to work on." -p.121 Or, "In L.A., you can't do anything unless you drive. Now I can't do anything unless I drink." - p. 157 What can I say? I love this man.

The thing about the debauchery is that it's all written by Martin Amis, so it's a very literary, practically elegant, debauchery. And it's full of lots of wry commentary on media, pretension, and consumerism. The whole book asks what is going to happen to New York when the money bubble bursts. Hmmm....

"Sometimes life looks very familiar." -p. 136

Miles to go

2009-12-28T09:47:00.003+09:00

now finished: Up in the Air by Walter Kirn

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Up in the Air. Much like the previous book I read, about John Quincy Adams, boy do I relate to the main character! I never thought I would find myself so similar to two men as I have in reading these last two books.

Ryan Bingham flies - a lot. He is more comfortable in airports and jetting from place to place than he is in conventional things like homes and families. I understand Ryan. I take it that some people don't?

In the grand scheme of things, I am so not a frequent flyer. Nor am I ever likely to be an elite member of any given airline's club: I tend to buy tickets based mostly on price, my miles are spread across a few airlines, and I can count the number of trips I've taken by redeeming miles on one hand. But maybe being a flyer is also state of mind. I tend to be pretty zen about the whole flying thing. And I most certainly do not hate the airlines. Au contraire. I hate the passengers who complain about them.

People get really impatient when they fly, but I think they are impatient about all the wrong things. They are ready to tear the airline apart if there's a ten-minute flight delay, but they have no concept of how to get their stupid bags out of the overhead bin and get off the plane in an efficient fashion. They are all convinced that The Airline is going to lose their luggage, and for some reason it is okay to complain about this theoretical possibility, but they don't like it if I complain about an actuality, such as their child screaming or kicking the back of my seat.

It would probably behoove me to get elite status on some airline, and to get some first-class upgrades. I haven't really been in a position where I've flown more than a few times a year for the last few years, so it's kind of a non-issue. But I would love nothing more than a job that has me flying around all the time. Like Ryan Bingham's. He's comfortable and happy in Airworld. I relate.

Other things I like about the book are 1)that it has an easy familiarity with U.S. geography, which you would think any American has but boy would you be mistaken and 2)it has this whole snarky observation-of-Mormons/Utah thing going on throughout which I found awesome.

The movie, which is currently playing and getting much Oscar buzz, is quite different from the book, but also good. I think if you like one you will like the other, but they are different.

One of the most interesting things about Up in the Air is that it was published around July 2001. Meaning, then September 11 happened, forever altering flying as we know it and probably wrecking the chances of Kirn's whimsical Airworld having mass appeal at that time. That's a bummer for Kirn. I hope the release of the film this year inspires lots of us to pick up the book -- a light read, but with a lot of cleverness tucked in between the lines.

JQA & I

2009-12-26T03:42:00.003+09:00

now finished: John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

It is hard to sum up my feelings about my most recent presidential bio subject, John Quincy Adams, aka my new best friend. I wonder if this is why people read biographies? That eventually, if you read enough biographies, you are bound to come across your doppelganger and in reading an exhaustive account of his/her life, come to a greater understanding of yourself?

I seriously had to stop counting the ways I am similar to JQA -- it was distracting me from my reading. Professional dilemma, temperament, outlook. Let's see: JQA loved travelling internationally and was interested in being a diplomat, but when he got the job offer his first worry was whether the job would leave enough time for reading literature. (Hello.) He really just wanted to be a poet and read things and then think about them, but he was smart so he made it through law school, even though his heart was never, ever into being a lawyer. He kept a diary, narrating and reflecting on daily events for years. He was moody and held people, including himself, to really high standards.

"Resolved to be his own man, Adams went out of his way to demonstrate how individualistic he planned to be. From his first moments in the Senate, he behaved in a manner that sometimes amused his colleagues, frequently baffled them, and occasionally angered a number..." - p.144

He did not like the two political parties and insisted that all his actions in government came from a place of personal integrity, not blind loyalty to a party. He put off getting married and was averse to the dating scene during his college days. Of course: it was a waste of time when he could be reading! He was forever starting projects but not necessarily keeping up with them; he was just interested in so many things. Among these things were languages, of which he learned several.

He was actually quite good at his job, maybe better than his poetry, although he did write some. Oh yeah, and fashion! He took a lot of flak about his clothes, some of it from his mother, Abigail. He just didn't put that much effort into refining his dress, looking nice, or being stylish. This was a problem. When he was up for election to anything, he didn't like to talk about it or to campaign:

"The prospect of a seat in the House had such portent that Adams chose for the moment not to discuss it even in his diary. He kept mostly quiet on the matter until after he won the election." -p. 335

While quite young, he travelled by himself, happily. He came to love astronomy when he started learning about it. He sometimes suffered from melancholy. He quoted Voltaire.

Perhaps one of the greatest summings up was about some tree-planting he was doing against conventional wisdom at the family's Massachusetts house:

"It left him as a minority of one seeking to prove the universe wrong -- a position JQA found quite comfortable." - p. 350

Nagel writes the book drawing heavily on JQA's lifelong diary to structure the story. I think Nagel misses the point sometimes. He has researched the Adams family so widely that I think the breadth of his knowledge makes him miss some of JQA's depth. Nagel doesn't seem to understand that a diary is a place for reflection, reconsideration, rumination, and elaborate plans. It is a place where certain things will be discussed and others ignored, not necessarily in the same proportion that attention is given to them in the writer's daily life. Nagel goes so far as to say JQA was never content but I think he is wrong. I think Nagel just can't relate to JQA, doesn't really "get' him. So how could Nagel come to accurate conclusions?

It's not my favorite biography in terms of being a favorite work, but I loved the experience of reading it, and discovering my double in the form of the sixth president of the United States.

Holiday swap thanks

2009-12-21T01:20:00.002+09:00

This year I participated in the Book Bloggers holiday Swap, a fun Secret Santa gift exchange among book bloggers. (And there are many of us, by the way, for those of you who lurk outside the book blogging world.)

I received two hardcovers(!) from my thoughtful Santa swapper: Amigoland by Oscar Casares and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. These have both been on my to-read list for a while, and I am grateful for the gift. Of course, I will post my thoughts here when I read them, which I predict will be in mid-2010. What a fun thing this holiday book swap was.

Thank you, Brittany!

When E.M. Forster talks...

2009-12-17T07:17:00.002+09:00

now finished: Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
now reading: John Quincy Adams: A Private Life, A Public Life by Paul. C. Nagel

E.M. Forster: I swoon. When I first read him two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at the sheer awesomeness of his writing in A Passage to India. I've owned a copy of his Aspects of the Novel for years, but just got around to reading it after letting it stare accusingly at me from my shelf of books-on-writing that I somehow keep ignoring while I waste time going to law school, etc. Not only was it high time I read his classic on what a novel is, but it was also time to commence my A-to-Z Literary Blog Project sequel, in which I shall read a second book from my A-to-Z top half, the thirteen authors I liked best. So, this was my second Forster.

He's just so freakin' smart. And literary. And witty, and perceptive. He puts things so well, even when he's just talking about literature and not writing it. He is a true master. I would so love to hear from people who met him or heard him speak before he died. You must be out there - share your thoughts with me! I find everything he says so impressive. Reading Aspects of the Novel, however, I also found myself in fits of jealousy as he analyzed this or that novel; I have a four-page list of reading suggestions now, thanks to him. My Goodreads "to-read" shelf runneth over.

But he did talk about books I have read also. You know, your Wuthering Heights, your Great Expectaions, and perhaps most exciting, War and Peace. E.M. Forster sings its praises, good on him. He's super matter-of-fact about it being marvelous. He even comes out and says that foreign novelists are basically better than English novelists, and he calls Tolstoy courageous and divine. As for The Book in particular, he offers this:

"Then why is War and Peace not depressing? Probably because it has extended over space as well as over time, and the sense of space until it terrifies us is exhilarating, and leaves behind it an effect like music. After one has read War and Peace for a while, great chords begin to sound, and we cannot say exactly what has struck them." -- p. 39

Soooo good. He concludes that the development of novels may well be a reflection of the development of humanity. I want to hang out with E.M. and talk about novels over a few beers. But he gets to do most of the talking.

Last Revolutionary Dude

2009-12-12T04:13:00.003+09:00

now finished:
James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity by Harry Ammon
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
now reading:
John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

James Monroe took a lot of flak, but he was actually quite awesome. He had integrity and just honest-to-god wanted to do the right things to make this fledgling union into - well, an awesome union! As a diplomat and in all the other positions he held he worked really hard, but the partisan winds of politics weren't always blowing in his favor. This was never more true than during his presidential administration: he was the last sure-thing destined-to-be-president dude from the Revolutionary generation, and pretty much his entire cabinet plus an enemy or two in Congress wanted to be the first of the younger generation to be elected, in 1824. So they spent the whole time jockeying for position and stirring up shite, while Monroe remained unfailingly neutral but still got blamed for lots of dumb stuff.

This book gave me such a greater understanding of him. He wasn't as inherently brilliant as his buddies Madison and Jefferson, but he excelled at being a pragmatic problem solver, which they did not. And he did a lot of things well. He completely and totally saved Madison's skin during the War of 1812, for example. Another likable president who actually did quite a bit to save the day.

Ammon's book is not my favorite of the bios I've been reading; it's a little slow and convoluted at times. But even when I got bogged down, I felt bad disliking the book at all because I so much respect Ammon and other historian/biographers who have combed through pages and pages and volumes and volumes of material for, like, fifteen years to write a well-researched book. Can you imagine working on a book for fifteen years? Is there anything to which I have devoted fifteen years? Besides, say, watching baseball, or Oscar-nominated films. (Which, speaking of, it's totally awards season; check out my ramblings on my "front page" blog.)

Monroe also tried, often, to do the right thing for Native Americans and slaves. Not that he was sure what the right thing was, but he at least tried to solve those huge problems that are such a blemish on the reputations of him and his crew. Besides his attempts to get Liberia going (you know - Monrovia and stuff), he tried to stop the execution of slaves who were arrested after plotting an uprising. It was all such a mess, and I can't imagine what good anyone I know today would have done about slavery if they had lived at that time, despite how easy it is to criticize with hindsight.

I relate to Monroe a lot because he was a little self-critical but also it upset him terribly when people didn't understand him, or misjudged him or his motivations. I think the people around him might have been oblivious to how much he cared, while they were basically willing to be shallow. All in all, I am impressed by my boy Monroe. Except for the part where he enjoyed/was good at practicing law. Yuck. But I do like that initially he, as with all the others, didn't know what he should do with his life.

Next up? My new BFF JQA!

Shutter to Think

2009-12-07T12:27:00.002+09:00

now finished:
This Too Is Diplomacy by Dorothy Irving
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
now reading:
James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity by Harry Ammon

Yes, I have been reading, even though I have not been blogging. Shame on me. After So Big, I finished This Too Is Diplomacy and Shutter Island, before plunging into another giant president biography -- Monroe, now -- which has consumed my last two weeks or so.

This Too is Diplomacy is something I had partially read before, in raw form, because I was in a writing group with the author, Dorothy Irving. That was my writing group in Boston, right before I went to Korea. I rejoined up with them off and on post-Korea as well, when I happened to be in Boston, but by that time Dorothy had pretty much finished her book and was working on publishing it. The book is about the life she led with her husband and their kids as hubby worked in the Foreign Service through the 1960s and 1970s. Obviously, it was interesting to me even before law school as she read excerpts to us, and now that I have my eyes on the Foreign Service it is even more interesting. Or I guess, interesting in different ways. Anyway, this was the first time I had read the whole thing straight through. If any of you are curious about what life in the foreign service is like, give it a whirl!

As for Shutter Island, it left me confused. I hate it when that happens. Not too long ago Alafair Burke blogged about why people don't like to read mysteries. At the time my gut response was that it's overwhelming for non-mystery readers to listen to the mystery genre enthusiasts; all those die-hards seem to have breathlessly read everything by so-and-so, and you feel sort of looked-down-on if you are a mere dabbler, so you just don't even bother trying to conquer the mystery section. But reading Shutter Island reminded me of another reason that I as a dabbler sometimes feel lesser than those oh-my-I've-read-all-of-her-books people. Because sometimes I straight up don't get it.

I read Dennis Lehane's Mystic River (before seeing the movie) and when I started seeing Leo as duly-appointed federal-maahshall in the Shutter Island previews I became intrigued enough to read this one, too. (I ended up having extra time because the release of the film was delayed for stupid reasons.) I really enjoyed reading the book, and I won't write any spoilers here because I do recommend it, but I literally don't know what happened at the end. I hate that! I consulted with another friend who has read it who supported me and said there was definitely ambiguity and that I am not stupid, but still, I hate it! And I remembered that another reason I'm not a mystery devotee is I hate those people who are always all "Oh, I totally figured that out so early" every single time they read one. I think I resent them. Plus, ugh, why would you want to know how things end before you get to the end? It's not as if I read the last page of a book before the first; that would be retarded. But when I do get to the end? I would like to understand it.

Well, if anyone wants to discuss the layers of mystery and ambiguity in Shutter Island, let me know. Meanwhile, I returned to my presidential bios quest, and have spent the last couple weeks plodding through Harry Ammon's James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity, which is huge and sometimes a little dull. It's a really big book. Heavy, too. I get in my weightlifting practice when I hold it. And the writing is dry, especially compared to the giant Madison tome I just read. But I can't hate on Ammon too much, or anyone who does such amazing amounts of research for these bios. It takes them like fifteen years and they sift through insane amounts of documents, all so I can read a biography of every president to see where we went wrong. Good stuff!

Hi, my name is Sobig.

2009-11-18T03:54:00.002+09:00

Hi, Sobig. Well, actually his name is Dirk, but during childhood was nicknamed Sobig, which came from the repeated nonsense of adults asking the baby in a cheesy voice, "How big is the baby?!" and replying "Soooo big" complete with arm motions. This is the first thing that should clue you in to how awesome Edna Ferber is: she makes fun of our silly baby talking, while not making fun of the endearing sentiments people feel about children, especially your own. This all happens in the first two pages of So Big, and it only gets better from there.

I read my first Ferber a few years ago, Cimarron. Like that book, So Big features a strong heroine who deals with farming the land, eventually losing her husband, raising a child, etc. But there is also so much more in this Pulitzer-winning novel, not the least of which is a story about how appreciating beauty and art can take place on a farm, or in a painter's studio.

The themes of artist life and what "success" is resonate with me (as we all know). The magic of the book is that she plants the seeds all along the way and then when we move from the High Prairie of Illinois to WWI-era Chicago, we see the result she has cultivated. If we are smart, then we reflect on our own appreciation of beauty, and how we would answer the question of when does it become "too late" to find the life of love, art, and creation that you abandoned to make a lot of money?

Selina Dejong is a success, not because she married the "right" man, made millions, or has a mansion, but because she knows that the cabbages are beautiful. Her son knows this somewhere inside him, but will his bond-trading, car-driving, pleasure-seeking rich friends outweigh the influence of artists who hang out in Paris and really know themselves?

I think the name Edna Ferber sounds so, well, old-fashioned that we unconsciously assume we have an idea of what her books must be all about. Edna Ferber was pretty bad-ass, though, from what I can tell. It was probably like being named Britney or Taylor in the 1880s, wasn't it? (note to self: discover origins of the name Edna) She eventually ended up hanging out in the Algonquin Round Table in New York, which shows that she was witty and avant-garde-like. I for one have big plans to read even more of her books, like Giant and Show Boat. She is my candidate for author-that-needs-to-be-rediscovered.

Perpetual Union and liberty, please!

2009-11-07T07:22:00.003+09:00

now finished: James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham
now reading: This Too Is Diplomacy by Dorothy Irving
up next: So Big by Edna Ferber

Last night I finished reading the James Madison biography with tears in my eyes.

Spoiler alert? The book ends with the dramatic telling of his death, touching tributes from John Quincy Adams and others, and Madison's final plea for everyone to value both the Union and the liberty for which he had worked his entire life.

Basically, Madison and his buddies changed the world. I think this is all too easy for us to forget, because now we take the United States for granted. But for the past month I have been swept up in the world of someone who not only was born and came of age when the U.S. did not even exist, but who was a huge part of forming the very foundation of it.

The book is superbly researched. I kind of want to be Ketcham's friend. I doubt that I would want to be his research assistant, although I steadfastly admire anyone who is. I think Ketcham read everything while writing this book -- Madison's writings, his friends' writings, his enemies' writings, Congressional reports, colonial newspapers, letters to and from just about everybody who ever knew Madison and his family.

Highlights for me included Madison's time at Princeton and his insane devotion to studying and learning, let alone figuring out what to do with his life. I've already mentioned here that my boy Madison, just like me, read the law due to interest in public affairs but never even attempted to be a counselor-at-bar. Madison was so well-respected in Virginia after his lifetime of service that multiple people praise the depths of his intellect and visited him in his old age just to chat and bask in his wisdom. Plus he came out of retirement in 1829 to be in the Virginia legislature one more time to try to head off the nullification crisis (Southern states resenting the federal government - we all know where that was headed).

A favorite scene of mine was a New Year's reception during Jefferson's presidency -- when Madison was Secretary of State -- whose guests included Native American chiefs and an ambassador from Tunis. The latter took it as a given that the U.S. hosts would provide concubines for him, but then, he did bring Arabian horses along as presents for the U.S. officials and their wives. Ah, dipomacy. He also asked the Cherokee what god they worshipped, and they said the Great Spirit. So he asked them if they believed in Mahomed, Abraham, or Jesus Christ. None of the above, said the Indians. Well, then, asked Sidi Sulliman Mellimelli, what prophet do you worship? None, they said. They worshipped the Great Spirit without an agent. Well then "you are all vile Hereticks" he told them.

How awesome is that? I love how he's so inquisitive, like, well, there must be some prophet, let me just see what category you're in, any religion would be fine. But no prophet at all? Shocking! It just goes to show - again - how much the three biggies of monotheism have in common. And how much do you love the Cherokee and the other Chiefs there who are like, we don't need some prophet. We're directly in touch with the Great Spirit, hello!

Dolley, of course, is a righteous babe. You grow up in elementary school hearing about how Dolley Madison was a "great hostess." Translation? She knew how to party! Not to mention her teenage sister who lived with them during the early years of their marriage to take full advantage of the fashions and social scenes of Philadelphia and later Washington D.C.

And the friendship, partnership, and accomplishments of Madison and Jefferson together? Astonishing. And what good friends they remained throughout their lives, just down the road on their little farms there, always visiting, and philosophizing, and revolutionizing, and whatnot.

Basically - I love this book. I think I enjoyed it as much as reading David McCullough's John Adams. It has definitely renewed my fervor for my presidential bios project. It has also cultivated in me a great respect for Madison and his ideals, including his strong belief in the Union and true liberty.

Luxuriance of Nature's Charms

2009-11-03T01:55:00.004+09:00

now reading: James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham
now also reading: This Too Is Diplomacy by Dorothy Irving

I have spent the entire month of October reading my Madison bio. This is not entirely a bad thing, as I have rather enjoyed delving into the world of Madison ("mad about Madison," Brian calls me right now), but I am a little shocked that it's been a whole month on one book. That's kind of like being in law school again and having time for only one or two pleasure reads per semester. However, I have been doing a lot of stuff during October -- some writing project success, etc. And I have been catching up on reading a bunch of magazines and news, too. Still and all, it's nice to be getting close to finishing Madison.

I'm pretty sure my next presidential bio, about Monroe, will be long too. Most of these president bios are. One's read-a-bio-of-every-president project could easily consume all of one's reading time. I am going to make sure that doesn't happen again, having learned my Madison/October lesson, because there is just too much else to read! My Goodreads queue is getting to be like my Netflix queue!

Now, the honest truth is that Ketcham's book is always interesting, but sometimes it plods along. It's never really boring, it just gets kind of bogged down in the intricacies of the Congress or the trip to Montpelier or whatever. Ketcham doesn't have all of Madison's writings (they didn't all survive, apparently) so he pieces together this life using a lot of other people's writings and observations too.

What happens is the most fascinating little details pop up at the weirdest times. Like when James and Dolley first get married and Dolley's teenage sister lives with them in the Philadelphia scene of balls, parties, and the "social season." Diplomats from France hang out and they party non-stop, it feels like, with fashions in the French style of showing a lot of cleavage. This horrifies Abigail Adams. There's a letter from her to a friend in which she calls it an "outrage upon all decency" and goes on to describe the outrage of using the Girdle to accent the Bosom.

"Most [ladies] wear their Cloaths too scant upon thebody and too full upon the Bosom for my fancy," Abigail writes. "Not content with the show which nature bestows, they borrow from art, and litterally look like Nursing Mothers."

I find that hilarious, "the show which nature bestows." I guess there is no shortage still today of fashionable young ladies who use their clothes and other tricks to enhance that "show" of "nature" that so easily fascinates the boys. What would Abigail think of Us Weekly, for example? But I like to think she would appreciate watching the Oscars red carpet. I could see her sitting at home with John watching and commenting. She would totally give an A+ to some elegant number worn by Meryl Streep or Kate Winslet, but maybe frown at your Bjorks and your Chers over the years. Dolley and James, though, would totally be hosting an Oscar party, with snacks and ballots for their friends to fill out and prizes. It's just how Dolley rolled.

Alphabetting Again

2009-10-27T12:23:00.003+09:00

Hey everyone! Remember my A-to-Z literary blog project? Sure you do, because except for those of you who were here in the War and Peace days there's not been much else to this blog. Well, remember when I finished my A-to-Z project and talked about my final thoughts on which authors I like and which I'd like to read again?

Pretty soon I am going to do that. Going to read a second book, that is, by each of the deserving authors of my top half. Thirteen of my A-to-Z authors are going to get another turn in my ever-growing To Read queue. Namely, Amis, Capote, Dick, Eco, Forster, Iyer, Lawrence, Rushdie, Styron, Updike, Vidal, Warren, and Yalom. (Runner-up was Erica Jong. I'll get to her, eventually. And a few of the others. But not in this next round of thirteen.)

For some of these, I have an idea of what to read next, but for others I need suggestions. For example, for Philip K. Dick, back when I read Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Sara insisted that I should read his Valis instead. In fact she insisted twice. So I feel compelled to do that one next for him. For E.M. Forster, I am reading Aspects of the Novel next because I own it already and have it sitting by my bed. For Umberto Eco, though, should it be Foucault's Pendulum or not? Should my next Rushdie be Midnight's Children? And so forth.

Most importantly, Martin Amis, since he is first. I am deciding among Time's Arrow, Money, or The Rachel Papers. Anyone? Also, for Pico Iyer I am deciding between Falling Off the Map and Video Night in Kathmandu, leaning toward the latter. Anyone, again?

When is all this happening, you ask? As soon as I finish Madison (I'm past page 400!), another Pulitzer winner, and Up in the Air, I think I will start incorporating my A-C-D-E-F-I-L-R-S-U-V-W-Y into my reading rotation. But I will definitely be spending a few more nights curled up with Madison before I get there.

Mad About Madison

2009-10-20T03:00:00.002+09:00

now reading: James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham

Actually Brian came up with that catchy phrase, there in the title. That's how he describes me as I delve into my colonial Philadelphia/Virginia world each night. I've been slowly reading my James Madison biography for a couple of weeks now. I need to sit down and read for an hour or two at a time, but instead I seem to only be reading at night before falling asleep -- which means I'm doing twenty pages a day. It's a 700-page book. This could take a while.

But I do like my boy Madison, and I relate to him a lot, what with his not knowing what he wants to do with his life, reading law but never wanting to practice as a lawyer, not bothering to be admitted to the bar, etc. One thing of interest is that this bio mentions from time to time what Madison was reading at various stages of his education and life. He sought all the great writers of course, not just on political theory but philosophy, literature, lots of classics, ancients, essays, Montesquieu was apparently big, and so on. I keep finding myself folding the corner of the page so I can go back and get more reading recommendations. Thanks a lot, Madison and Ketcham. After I slog through this 700-page book, I'll just have 700 more books added to my list.

No, really, though -- should I continue blogging about non-fiction here or not? I suppose I can blog about everything I read. But the literary snob (joke) in me keeps wondering if some things should be excluded.

My boy Madison

2009-10-09T12:07:00.002+09:00

This is just a quick note to say I'm reading Ralph Ketcham's James Madison: A Biography, which means it will be a while until I'm reading a novel again. I never know whether I want to blog about non-fiction or not. I probably should, since I read a lot of it. This book's a doozy - 700 pages of colonial bio. I will say, though, that a hundred pages in I have found yet another President who in his early twenties had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. I have discovered this recurring theme as I go along reading a biography of each prez (to see where we went wrong).

I will also say that I have found myself to have quite a bit in common with Madison, not the least of which was that he "read the law" only due to his interest in public affairs, with no intention to ever become a counselor-at-law. Ha! That's my boy! Bar exam, schmar exam. And if I haven't yet convinced you to read it, there's also a delightfully matter-of-fact one-sentence insult of Long Island that made me really happy.

What do you think? Why do I hesitate to blog about non-fiction here? Is it related to my supposedly being a literary snob or what? Did I even mention that I recently read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

Too hideous and too brief

2009-09-29T00:55:00.003+09:00

now reading: Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

The great thing about reading Infinite Jest first is that now everything else by DFW is a piece of cake. (What a strange cliche, by the way.) Brief Interviews With Hideous Men has many Jest-like digressions, bizarre subjects, and footnotes, but it is a tiny fraction of the length and commitment of Infinite Jest. I don't know that I would do Infinite Jest again right now, or ever, and I wonder if I had read Brief...Hideous... first if I would want more of him or not.

David Foster Wallace was really smart. This is part of what makes me give his books the benefit of my doubt a few times, when I could just as easily close them and walk away. I even stick with his writing about awful, just awful subjects, like torture and excrement. However, he still pisses me off when I get to those awful parts of his books. It's like if, say, Martin Scorsese or some other fantastic, creative, intelligent, visionary film director spent his time making nasty porn -- it would be such a waste. And weak.

As my devoted fans know, Brian and I read Infinite Jest in the first half of 2008. Reading that book takes a lot out of you. But the one thing with which I decidedly left that book was a sense of the creative genius and the regular-ol-life genius of DFW. I wanted to urge him to use his powers for good (99% of Jest) instead of evil (the awful animal-torture passage), not that my opinion would matter to him. I wanted him to not be like a playground bully, or a druken frat boy, or a coked out partier on a three-day binge, who has to take his show-offy antics one step too far, and tarnishes his powerful persona in the process by revealing that he is as capable of foolish mistakes as the rest of us.

And then, in September of 2008, he committed suicide, an act which sort of proved my point. Just when a reader thinks DFW has outsmarted us all, he succumbs to the same bullshit he had previously so fabulously deconstructed - we thought.

This is what I am experiencing all over -- and over and over -- as I read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. It's a collection of experimental "short stories," wide-ranging tidbits with some recurring themes, tangents stacked upon tangents, incisive societal commentary presented in an entertaining fashion that fears no taboo, and utter brilliance marred by the occasional misstep when the taboo-busting for taboo-busting's sake defeats its own purpose. I think I like DFW, I think I want to read more of his writing, then I think that no, I've had enough; then I remember that we won't get anything new from him because he chickened out of facing this life and I become furious.

DFW's mind seems to have grappled with or be able to grapple with every problematic, frustrating, or amusing aspect of our post-modern world, until you remember that he bailed out. Suicide is a desperate act. DFW's writing has you convinced that he was way too above ever being desperate. What a joke. What a damn shame, that the curious mixture of admiration and disgust has to be tainted now by pity.

Twenty years after

2009-09-19T07:41:00.004+09:00

now reading: 1984 by George Orwell

This little paperback has been sitting around what feels like forever, so I'm finally checking it off my Books You Should Have Read In High School Or At Any Point Since list.

Of course, everyone's favorite things to say about 1984 are 1. that it is "prophetic" and 2. that its message is "still relevant today." Seriously, I challenge you to go listen in on a discussion, or peruse some online reviews, of Orwell's famous book, and see how far you can get before running across those terms.

Well, I'm going to have to go ahead and agree with that. To wit:

"Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird. " - p. 156

Hello, Fox News? George Dubya Bush? Right-wing contracts with America? And my personal favorite, the "war on terror." Anyone?

If for some reason you disagree with me, go Netflix American Blackout already. You'll see what I mean. Go on, I'll wait here. Hurry ba-ack!

Top Three Frustrating Novels

2009-09-08T03:55:00.003+09:00

Inspired by a thread on a Goodreads forum, I have been thinking about my Top Three Most Frustrating Novels. This does not mean a book you hated the most, but rather a book you liked that made you angry in the end, or a book that had potential but never seemed to reach it. I will try to keep this specific spoiler free, but it will necessarily give some general spoilage.

1. The Life of Pi - This made me so mad because of the ending. The book was unbelievably well written, creative, and interesting, and then I felt the ending was a super cheap shot. I was working at Borders in Cambridge at the time, and I remember the whole group of us twentysomething supervisors reading it and discussing it. We were somewhat divided -- a couple thought the ending was brilliant, whereas I was furious at it. The book is so good that I continue to enthusiastically recommend it to people, and I even think I need to continute to understand the ending on multiple levels -- but damn! did it ever infuriate me!

2. Infinite Jest -- This would be another book with a frustrating ending whose genius becomes clear after you pick up the book from where you've hurled it across the room, except Infinite Jest is too big to be hurled anywhere. Actually, the ending is not what earns Jest a place on my list; instead it's the portion somewhere around 60% (?) of the way through where one of the psycho characters goes on a psycho murderous rampage killing stray and pet animals. Wallace, in his chillingly good writing style, delivers the macabre details of this lunatic who kills rats, cats, and dogs. It is hard to get through, but what pisses me off the most is that he lingers over the cat killing, disturbingly and I guess somewhat pornographically, and then goes on to the dog slaughter for like a page. It made me hate DFW a little bit for a while. I had to put the book down for a month or more and considered not finishing it. I hate cat haters, and I can't tell exactly to what extent he is one, but it was gross. I consider that portion of the book a huge flaw, which gets lost in the hundreds of pages of sheer genius surrounding it.

3. The Handmaid's Tale - I get annoyed by this book partly because of how people fall all over themselves loving it. I think it is my least favorite Atwood -- and by the way, I love her persona and intelligence, love hearing her speak, and love reading her books. The Handmaid's Tale, to me, is a kind of smug, reactionary novel that falls just short of the beautiful, wise literary feminism of which Atwood has made a career and a life, but it does so quietly and profoundly so nobody notices the frustrating things about it. If it had been written ten years later, Oprah would have picked it for her book club and then maybe a few more people would understand what I mean about the sensationalism, not-quite-perfected writing and storytelling. It's like "deep thought for dummies." There are better dystopian novels, better philosophical novels, and better socio-political-feminist novels, but because it's Margaret Atwood who has since only got better and better, The Handmaid's Tale always gets a free pass, and that bugs me.

What a fun exercise this was!

Results

2009-09-01T04:07:00.008+09:00

This A-to-Z Literary blog project, as you'll recall, was about the authors probably even more than it was about the individual books. My goal was to work my way through the alphabet, selecting one author for each letter whom I had meant to read for a while. If I read a "classic" book that I had also meant to read, so much the better. As it happened, my absolute favorite book and favorite author of the project are the same letter, but I will get to that in a minute. In considering the 26 authors, I put them into five basic groups, based on the answer to the question "Do I want to read this author again?"

OF COURSE! Martin Amis, Truman Capote, Umberto Eco, E.M. Forster, Salman Rushdie, William Styron, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Robert Penn Warren, Irvin D. Yalom

SURE... Philip K. Dick, Dashiell Hammett, Pico Iyer, Erica Jong, D.H. Lawrence, Frank Norris, Gao Xingjian

MAYBE Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Koestler, Norman Mailer, Chuck Palahniuk, Daniel Quinn, Ivan Turgenev, Emile Zola

NO...? William S. Burroughs

NEVER! Cynthia Ozick

The Awful: I cannot tell you how much I loathed O, The Puttermesser Papers. Not only am I forever swearing off Cynthia, but I think that book might be one of the worst books I have ever read. Maybe THE worst -- unless I've read something else that was so bad I blocked it out of my memory. Burroughs I actually might read again. I do like the Beats (Ginsberg is my fave) and their whole schtick, it's just that Naked Lunch really didn't do it for me. It was weird, and pointless, and weirdly pointless.

The Disappointments: Along with Burroughs, there were some others who did not live up to the hype and the accolades I have perceived to be bestowed upon them. Norman Mailer, Nadine Gordimer, and Chuck Palahniuk were just - okay. They have devoted followings, literary acclaim, and even a serious prize or two under their belt, so I was a little surprised. However, they were not bad, by any means. I might try them again, at some point. Especially Mailer, because inevitably I will end up reading his works that won Pulitzers, and I did like some things about The Naked and the Dead. It has also got better with hindsight, and it was a fast (although long) read. Chucky P., I can see his potential. Gordimer's None to Accompany Me was infuriating partly because of the main character's whiny, spineless infidelity, not because the author lacked writing talent.

Novel? Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying were barely novels; they were not just thinly veiled memoirs, but I daresay not-veiled-at-all memoirs. Coincidentally, neither book was all that great, but I saw interesting writing and interesting personality, and they made me want to read more of that author's thoughts, whether they choose to call it fiction or not.

The sure things: I knew for a fact that I would like Capote and In Cold Blood, Eco and The Name of the Rose, and Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses. I ended up liking The Satanic Verses the least of those three, finding it a little weird/tedious at parts, but I did like it, and thought Rushdie was great, and want to read other books of his. His book was also one of the most unlike how I thought it would be -- decidedly more wacky than I had been led to believe, what with it inspiring retarded radical religious death threats and all. If there is anything in the world more simultaneously serious and utterly laughably stupid than the "fatwa" against Salman Rushdie, I don't know what it is. In Cold Blood is, of course, close to perfect. Umberto Eco, a literary genius, should probably be the next winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The surprises: Which are, in many ways, the point of the project. I discovered some authors whose writing I loved more than I would have guessed, and some books that are even better than I thought they would be, such as All the King's Men and A Passage to India. Martin Amis, too, fits the bill as exactly what I was looking to discover.

The stats: I read 23 men and only three women. Yikes! How disappointing! There were 15 Americans, four Brits, and seven other countries. Twenty-one books written in English and five translated. Two from the 19th century, four from the early 20th, eight from WWII through about the 60s, and a dozen from the late 20th century.

The winners! But, the real question (and answer) for which you've been waiting, is obviously: who was the best? Well, if I were going to hand out, say, Olympic medals, it would have to go like this. Taking the bronze, for exquisite writing that shows others how it's done and leaving me so excited to delve into his other works...E.M. Forster!

In second place, with a silver medal in the A-to-Z blog project event, a writer who blew me away with how good of a writer he is on every level -- words, wordplay, story, research, depth, breadth, imagination, compelling to read more, and philosophical outlook -- even though I have also heard for years what a good writer he is, we have Gore Vidal. A genius, nothing less. I cannot recommend Julian highly enough.

And the gold medal book AND author, my absolute favorite of the 26, astonishingly good, should never be allowed to fade into obscurity, and so so so well done, I give you the winner: Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron.

The end? No, it's just the beginning actually. I have thought about the better thirteen of the authors (my "top half," you see) and over the next year, as I move on to other reading, I will also read another book by each of those thirteen. We will see if they continue to impress!

Now I've Read My ABCs

2009-08-30T11:53:00.003+09:00

now finished: Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

I'll tell you what's now finished: my A-to-Z literary blog project! I am sort of in awe as I think about it. For so long, the thought of my next letter has been ever-present in the back of my mind if not the front, even though I have read other things while making my way from 'A' author to 'Z' author. I mean hello - I was in law school, plus there was a little thing called Infinite Jest, so no wonder my project took two and a half years instead of the initially planned one.

Once I started Emile Zola, it hit me that I was at the end. For that reason, I'm glad Therese Raquin was not terribly long. It's a quick read, and I liked it at times, although I was so disappointed in how stupid and messed up the protagonists were. I liked Francois the cat a lot -- and I loathed the stupid, whiny, adulterous Therese and Laurent.

Now that I have finished, it is time to make some decisions! First of all, this, even more than finishing law school, has truly freed me up to be able to read whatever I want next. But I always have projects in mind, and have had my ongoing read-all-the-Pulitzer winners and read-a-bio-of-every-president projects for a while that got kind of pushed aside during law school and A-to-Z.

Secondly, this blog ... almost no one reads it, and so here I am at another pivotal point where I get to ask myself why I even write it (other than for the delight of posterity when they uncover it). I started it for War and Peace and then really didn't know what to do with the blog when I finished The Book; among other things, I had to change the name from "My War and Peace blog" to "My Literary Supplement." The A-to-Z blog project gave it a new focus, and persuaded me to keep it around, because who couldn't use another place to babble about things she's reading?

Third, and perhaps most exciting: which of these authors will I read again after this little discovery process? Who was my best find? Who sucked? (Oh yes, there was one who sucked greatly.) These questions and more will be addressed next entry. So stay tuned!

"A thinker so prescient yet so blinded"

2009-08-21T02:17:00.003+09:00

now finished: The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin D. Yalom

I ended up liking my Y even more than I thought I would. Of course, I am always interested in philosophy, but I also really came to like the therapy group a lot, to want to know what each character would do next. Yalom definitely constructed a novel, and I like how he constructed it, weaving in Schopenhauer's story, Julius' story, and the stories of Julius' patients, making them intertwine more than the reader at first realizes.

I like how Yalom helps the reader to conclude that Schopenhauer was very smart about things, but that he needn't totally discount the world. I have felt some of the same disdain for people as Schopenhauer apparently did -- although I do envy him for being so certain so early of his own genius! -- so I thought it was interesting that he might possibly have become happy when he achieved a bit of fame and thereby met people who were interested in him.

I also totally relate to Schopenhauer's desire to leave his thoughts for the world and not have them misinterpreted or weakened by others. It is not that fame is important, but the thing whereby we merit fame: "A man's greatest happiness is not that posterity will know something about him but he himself will develop thoughts that deserve consideration and preservation for centuries." - p. 322 How different the fame of, say, Plato or Einstein, versus the "fame" of reality TV trash! Even the recent death of Michael Jackson, freak extraordinaire, revealed this theme; people were conflicted, I think, because his "fame" of the last half of his life had totally eclipsed the talent and works of art which had previously given him the real kind of fame, and made him "deserve consideration and preservation for centuries."

I ALSO like that Schopenhauer thought supernatural religion was a bunch of nonsense.

I recommend the book, especially to people who like to think and analyze, and definitely to anyone who's been in group therapy.

I've always liked Western Philosophy; same as many an undergrad, I took the obligatory Philosophy 101 and, as I recall, did pretty well. A or A-minus. The Western Philosophy section was one of those in which I would linger when I worked at Borders, formulating in my head plans to work my way through all of the books in it. I do like me a reading project! I might start up another project soon here of choosing twelve major philosophers to read, one per month for a year. The trick is narrowing all the biggies down to twelve -- I have a list I've whittled to 23. I will probably post it to ask for advice.

Because, speaking of projects, can you believe I've (finally!) almost finished this one! Today I will start reading 'Z'! (Zola, if I haven't mentioned that on here already.) I'm so excited about having completed this project that I have a little spring in my step as I cross the living room.

Reading in the Moment

2009-08-19T09:32:00.003+09:00

now reading: The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin D. Yalom

A lot of The Schopenhauer Cure takes place in group therapy, and I rather enjoy reading it. Group therapy, when portrayed well, can be among the more entertaining and insightful things to read/watch. See also, The Bob Newhart Show. However, I haven't decided how great the novel is in general. It is entertaining, interesting, and well-constructed, but it also has that sort of confused identity thing going on, that it shares with the likes of Ishmael, where I wonder if the author really wanted to write a novel. Maybe Yalom wanted to fancifully muse about Schopenhauer and what he would be like if he lived in the modern world, but felt a little too constricted by the traditionally novel-like aspects of novel-writing.

I am learning a great deal about Schopenhauer. I guess he was kind of a brat, but depending on who you ask it could just be because he was such a genius. And I really like the well chosen quotes from Schopenhauer's works that start each chapter of the novel and relate to what happens in that chapter; I've taken to going back and re-reading the Schopenhauer quote at the beginning each time I finish a chapter.

I also like thinking about philosophy, and about how the ideas of the Far East make much more sense than Western religion. The book, while it makes me want to go out and read a million books by Plato, Kant, and other philosophers, is not a read through which the reader must slog. It is entertaining and you come to like the characters quite a bit, characters who are endearing in that special way only group therapy members can be.

Right now, the dastardly jackass character who worships Schopenhauer is really off-putting to me, but at the same time I completely and totally relate to Schopenhauer himself. I suppose I should be a little worried about what this could mean.

Y and Y not

2009-08-14T04:59:00.003+09:00

NOW READING: The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin D. Yalom
my edition: ISBN 0060938109

Have you missed me? It feels like a long time since posting here. While I was in Michigan, approaching the end of 'X' (Soul Mountain), I wanted to buy 'Y' from Borders before the end of July to take advantage of their 3x the Borders Bucks promotion through July 31st. There was no Borders store in Grand Rapids or Holland or Saugatuck, so I ordered online, but I had it shipped to a store in Phoenix so I didn't have to pay shipping. I was happy to see that I could have it shipped to a Waldenbooks, too, which is even closer to my mom's place -- biking distance!

So then we got back from Michigan, and I waited. And waited and waited. The email from Borders.com gave me a tracking number, but five days after the supposed delivery date I still hadn't received a call from the Waldenbooks, so I called them to check on it, and sure enough my Y book was there. When I went to pick it up, the woman said because they're Walden, they don't have access to the Borders info system with my phone number. I'm not entirely sure if she's smoking crack or Borders.com really is giving the option to ship to a Waldenbooks, instructing the customer to wait for a call from the store, and then not providing the store with any way to call the customer, but that sounds like a typical Borders move, so I totally buy it.

It's okay because in the interim, I read another Pulitzer winner -- The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson -- and Madam Secretary by Madeleine Albright. McLaughlins was fine -- had its charms, and I liked the ending. Madeleine I loved. Her book took me a while, detailing as it does her life and foreign policy experiences. It got me very hopped up about the possibility of working in the foreign service, if I wasn't already hopped.

Finally, 'Y' is here. I have started The Schopenhauer Cure and it's pretty much what I expected, and I like thinking philosophically. In fact, I have long considered a philosophy reading project; maybe that will be next after Pulitzers and A-to-Z. Can you believe I'm on Y already?? At long last, the A-to-Z- project is winding down. I have even purchased Z and it's waiting on my bedside table. I got it as a real-life bricks-and-mortar Borders here so as not to have to wait.

I souled the mountain

2009-08-03T01:16:00.001+09:00

NOW FINISHED: Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

Well, 'X' is in the can. Despite what you may have heard, Soul Mountain is not particularly hard or arduous or even really that long -- it's 500 pages, but a quick moving, breathy dialogue, spaced-out printing 500 pages. There are some languorous passages as he travels through the mountain and river villages but they aren't long and they flow nicely. However, there is something undeniably literary about the book, for whatever that is worth.

I have been scrolling through the reviews on Goodreads, and they all seem to fall into one of two categories, either Wow-this-is-breathtaking-I've-never-read-anything-like-it-dreamlike-narration-identity-beauty or "Wtf, Nobel Prize committee? I'd rather be mass marketing." One reviewer commented on there that this book is good for "anyone tired of anti-Chinese rhetoric." I could get behind that. It opens one's eyes to the normalcy that exists everywhere, even places that "we" think are so exotic. It makes me think how much we all have in common, while also showing how two people can never really understand each other because they are so different. It also talks about various peoples of different cultures that many in the West lump together as one "Chinese" population.

The book is nothing if not a voyage of self-discovery for the author, the narrator(s), the constructed identities of those persons which may or may not be different identities, and possibly even the reader. It also makes me want to go hang out in some of these villages in search of the mystical (mythical?) Lingshan, even if there are nasty snakes hanging around there.

Mr. X

2009-07-17T03:10:00.002+09:00

NOW READING: Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

OK, I know. I KNOW that technically the name "Gao Xingjian" is really like "Xingjian Gao" in the way we here in the West would say our names (not my usual U.S. West, but the Western West, as opposed to not Asian, basically). But have you ever tried to find authors, plural, whose last names begin with X from among which to choose the 24th book of your A-to-Z Literary Blog Project? I daresay you have not!

The whole starts-with-X thing has always bugged me. One of my most gigantic pet peeves in life -- I'm talking right up there with "PIN n****r" and people who say they "don't have a choice" about shopping at Walmart -- is when there is a game, children's book, motivational poster, or other list where there is one word for each letter of the alphabet A through Z and then when they get to X there is NEVER an appropriate word/item for the list that actually starts with X, so they put in something like "eXtremely _____." It is totally cheating. The way I see it, if you want to do the whole gimmicky A-is-for..., B-is-for.... thing, then you damn well better either need an X-ray or a xylophone, or just don't make the list in the first place.

So I have been aware for a while of the difficulties presented by 'X' and I have allowed myself to read Gao Xingjian because he totally meets all the other qualifications (being an author I have wanted to read etc.) and also because he is so shelved under X and I certainly did not think about that back in 'G' time (hello Nadine!) so otherwise Gao would not have a chance. And he deserves a chance to have me read him, don't you think? Even if he is not a xylophone.

The only other options I found, by the way, were also Chinese last names that are actually Chinese first names. One was some mystery author and one was a woman who apparently goes by the one name, like Cher or Madonna. She could be better or even worse for my 'X' name credibility, depending on how you look at it.

Of Kings and Eggs

2009-07-16T03:08:00.005+09:00

NOW FINISHED: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

I'm sure it is high time I pondered the relevance of the title All the King's Men. Now of course, we all can recite a little Humpty-Dumpty who had a great fall. And when you get to the end of Warren's book, the ways in which all of Willie Stark's men cannot put him together again are many and varied. Still, why that line in lieu of any others? Why a nursery rhyme at all? If I had a book group I might start the discussion by asking them these questions.

Speaking of book groups, I am jonesing for one right now. If I were settling anywhere I would start one. Instead I will just have to wait. This little blog of mine (I'm gonna let it shine) would be kind of like a book group, if anyone actually read it and commented on it. (Very few exceptions duly noted and appreciated.) Which means I clearly need to stimulate some discussion about books on here. I actually have misgivings about online book groups (see e.g. Infinite Summer) although they are not based on any particular bad experience. But I digress.

So all the king's men ... could not put Humpty together. I was thinking about why Robert Penn Warren (or any poet/writer/nursery rhyme composer) would liken a mighty politician/king's fall to a shattering egg, irrevocably damaged, as opposed to, you know, something that breaks but could be mended, at least a little. Then, I realized that I have a different question: Why is Humpty-Dumpty an egg? It never says that Humpty-Dumpty is an egg. In fact, it says that he is sitting on a wall. Since when do eggs go around sitting on walls?

A little Wikipedia action told me that the rhyme was presented as a riddle a couple centuries ago, a la "What falls off the wall and can never be put back together again." So, if the Humpty-Dumpty rhyme is a riddle, and the answer is that Humpty is an egg, and that is why he cannot be put back together again, I am somewhat back to my original question of why did the composer of the riddle rhyme invoke all the king's (horses and) men? What did that phrase "all the king's men" mean to a 17th-century nursery rhymer? Was it a common phrase about when something was tried to the utmost, or was it a genuine political allusion?

Furthermore, I read that a "Humpty-Dumpty" was an ale and brandy drink. Which I might have to try ordering next time I go to happy hour. And doesn't it make at least as much sense that it was about dropping your drink as about dropping an egg?

Now that I am thoroughly confused about what the phrase means, I still think about why RPW chose it. He was definitely thinking political, not egg, even though he says his novel is not about politics but merely set in politics. Oh how the mighty fall, etc. The interesting thing (to me) about Willie Stark is that I do not really think he changed all that much. A lot of commentary on the book goes on and on about how Willie of the noble intentions ends up just as corrupt as the next politician. I am not sure that is the case. (I would discuss this with my book group also.) I think Willie's handlers and hangers-on and minions are the ones who get corrupted, and begin to see Willie as someone who can give them something, be it a favor, or money, or power. With the exception of Sugar-Boy, who remains genuine. Dumb, but genuine, and not without his own special talents.

Willie, on the other hand, just seems to be more and more sure of how able he is to get things done, things he wants. He is more cocky than corrupt.

Highly highly highly recommend the book ... and currently am trying to figure out if I know anyone who's read it! As usual. At least Brian's reading this one with me, but now I've finished way ahead of him (he's working a lot, but I took a plane trip) so I have to wait a few hundred pages to have this conversation with him.

Just around the bend

2009-07-13T12:50:00.003+09:00

NOW READING: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

I am just liking this book so much more as I build my momentum into the home stretch. More and more great thoughts, quotable lines, and building to fever pitch of all the interpersonal relationships' fallout.

I like how narrator Jack has this really matter-of-fact and yet profound way of saying, in essence, "Wow we all screwed that up pretty much beyond belief."

I love me some Sadie Burke.

I'm not sure they make lines better than, "The Boss was dour as a teetotaling Scot."

I have definitely been impressed by the twists the plot has taken.

And the Twitch! It simply does not get any more awesome than the Twitch.

I officially recommend this book to you now, even though I have 100 pages left to go. (That is rare of me to do that. Sort of the parallel to my give-it-a-100-page-chance rule. Anything drastic could happen in 100 pages.)

"But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day." -- p. 534

"It was just where I went"

2009-07-10T13:00:00.003+09:00

NOW READING: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

This is one of those books I've been reading in fits and starts, but not because I want it to be that way. I am totally interested in it, I like it, and I want to devour it. I just seem to have too much going on and not enough laziness to my summer days to allow for reading it in longer stretches.

I totally think that long lazy summer stretches are the perfect way to read this novel. Perhaps this is in my mind at the moment because I am just finished reading about narrator Jack's summer romance, complete with porch swings, sultry swims and swan dives, plus a few dashed hopes.

Thematically, All the King's Men reminds me of War and Peace as it ponders the interconnectedness of mankind and history. Jack, the historical researcher, sees the ripple effects of men's actions, but he also senses a certain inevitability to it all. Even when it is not inevitable, it is out of our hands:

"And so my luck became my wisdom (as the luck of the damned human race becomes its wisdom and gets into the books and is taught in schools...)" -- p. 447

In addition to the bright jumble of melancholy that is human interaction and the ruminations on human history, Warren has delighted me here in the 400s with Jack's drive West. Specifically, his summation of what the West is.

"For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gices out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go." --pp. 405-406

I like reading a Southern writer's perspective on the West. The South is a mythical, misunderstood place too, just as the West is, full of legend and lore and history and mistakes and all sorts of other things. And I think both regions seem equally mysterious to some people who live in places like, you know, Long Island. I guess if nothing else, on some level the insular viewpoints of New Yorkers or New Englanders help the West to be that much more free and awesome. It's like their ignorance of things west of the Mississippi (or the Hudson) help fuel the frontier mentality that persists a little to this day. Even when you're escaping something, it takes courage to go West. It takes less courage to remain in your Long Island enclave for the eighth generation in a row.

At any rate, it is interesting to have a little bit about the West in this novel that had been completely Southern up to this point. As I have mentioned on this blog many a time, the South has seen way more than its fair share of excellent writers and stunning writing.

The strength of this book continues to be the way the narrator observes things in powerful sentences that make you feel both that only he could have stated the thought so well, but also that it captures what was on everyone's mind.

Speaking of speakeasies...

2009-06-24T08:00:00.004+09:00

NOW READING: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Not just about politics, All the King's Men is so far a whirlwind of hotels, speakeasies, hot days full of bothered crowds, and long drives through the Louisiana night into one scandal or another. It is also a bit of a study of who takes charge of the law, making a reader question the very nature of government, power, relationships, and how those things intertwine. Robert Penn Warren does not flinch at the wild nature of man, and I might add that he is the master of spinning a phrase that really captures the inner, conflicted essence of people who seek power as they try to figure out who they are.

It's thrillingly cynical about the law, which I rather enjoy:

"'No,' the Boss corrected, 'I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. In fact, I know a lot of law. But I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind...'" - p. 204

On that note, and thinking about the very concept of a speakeasy, I must say that I still cannot for the love of all that is holy believe that there was ever Prohibition. Ever. Just, no. And by the way I wish those who refuse to listen to the "Legalize It" movement to let marijuana be legal would clue into the ridiculousnes, too.

2009-06-08T12:45:00.002+09:00

NOW READING: American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 by George F. Kennan
NOW FINISHED: Julian by Gore Vidal

Julian is stunning and awesome. Perhaps I am just being a snob when I am sometimes surprised that I have never even heard of a book and then it turns out to be amazing and I want everyone to read it. I shouldn't be, though, since often when the masses like something it is less than spectacular. (I won't name any hideous, incredibly obvious examples that are popular at the moment, although I do think it would be funny if people searching for her or her trashtracular crap series were to come across my blog instead. Ha!)

Not usually a fan of historical fiction, I was drawn to Julian because I had decided to finally read Gore Vidal and I liked the idea of the plot: a Roman emperor attempting to squelch the wacky upstart religion of Christianity before it thoroughly took hold. I now plan to read more Gore. He plunges you into this old world much like Umberto Eco does in The Name of the Rose, perhaps even better. Despite the fact that I and many others born in the 20th century are unfamiliar with much of Greek and Roman history, the book is not at all off-putting, and you learn all about the gods and religions, the geography, and the goings on in the politics of the empire without ever being confused or feeling like you are having to learn history in order to read your book. You also learn who's the crazy cult magician, who means well, and who is just the empire drunk. It's good stuff.

Stirring, funny, philosophical, and a compelling drama as well, this novel is not to be missed.

Soon we will be moving on to 'W' -- another political novel! But my brief detour into the non-fiction and non-blog-project American Diplomacy is because I am taking the Foreign Service exam in a few days (I know, yay!) and I was reading a study guide of practice questions that asked about George Kennan's such-and-such political theory and I was like, "Who?" and then later that day while packing up our apartment I discovered that his book was among the paperbacks in the inherited pile I got from Grandma's house after she died at the end of my first year of law school, which pile has been waiting patiently on my bottom shelf, hidden and overshadowed (literally) by law school books for two years. So clearly that was a cosmic sign that I should read that really quick before moving on to All The King's Men!

"I could still...read Turgenev": help me identify this quote please thanks

2009-05-31T02:43:00.003+09:00

From the Totally Random Files...For those of you who don't know (really?) I have a tendency to jot down things I like/want to remember/want to revisit later. These days, most of this "jotting" happens electronically, on my Google Desktop or in my cell phone. But, there are still many scraps of paper and notepads from back in the day. I might add that I have been doing a good job of decluttering and getting the appropriate To Do things and reminders onto Goodreads, Netflix, my Google calendar, what have you.

Today, as we pack up the Brooklyn crib, I am stymied by something I clearly wrote down years ago. Here's what is says:

"'I could still travel, change jobs, read Turgenev. Any kind of love was possible.' - p. 314"

Now, I KNOW: why didn't I write the title? I suspect I was using the card on which this was written AS a bookmark and meant to transfer the whole thing to a notebook, duly citing the sources, within days if not minutes, though I clearly did not do that. The thing is, now I really want to know whence this quote comes. Particularly because I have now read Turgenev (as the 'T' author in my A-to-Z literary blog project), so that's fun, but also because it's bugging me.

Clues: it has to be from years ago because the card on the back of which this is written is from Euro Pane Bakery in Pasadena. Assuming I read the mystery book (not that kind of mystery book) before leaving L.A. it had to be out before end of 2002, latest. It sounds non-fictiony if not memoir/self-helpy. And there are two other things written (smaller, much less prominently) on the other side of the card: "We don't talk anymore. There is too much to say." - p. 412 And "There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we ever expect it to be." - [page number indecipherable]. It is probable that all three quotes from the same book but I can't guarantee it.

It could be Elizabeth Berg, but if so I'm definitely not placing which one.

Anyone?

Vast old empires and republics

2009-05-29T11:38:00.001+09:00

NOW FINISHED: At the Foot of the Blue Mountains: Stories by Tajik Authors
NOW READING: Julian by Gore Vidal

Because I am currently totally interested in all things Tajikistan, that's why! And the book was pretty good, especially for a collection of short stories. I was looking for Tajik literature -- which by the way is hard to find, for reasons I shall discuss -- because I am very much seeking permission from the universe to travel to Tajikistan this August on a volunteer trip. It is hovering on the line between impossible and likely right now. I need to just make it so. But I need that permission.

So one of the problems is that the old Tajik Persian-derived literary heritage was sort of eradicated (I know, how can something be "sort of" eradicated? but you'll see that's my point) during the Soviet era. But it was mostly a language thing. And it wasn't even Farsi and Tajik (which is similar to Farsi) language books but Arabic books that were destroyed/confiscated, because the Tajiks had been invaded by Arabs long before Soviets. The Soviets were trying to get rid of Arabic language to standardize the Cyrillic alphabet. Quite a mess, of course, but then here in the U.S. people also tend to get bitten by the one-official-government-language bug pretty often, now don't they?

However, since there was a lot of oral poetry in said Tajik Persian-derived literary heritage, it is not actually gone and is mentioned a lot in At the Foot of the Blue Mountains. I really like this book. It is quite the good little introduction to many things Tajikistan. It contains a sampling of twentieth century stories and from authors born in various decades, but it was published in the 1980s so it still does not slam anything Russian or Soviet at all. However, a Tajik identity and the lifestyle there totally come through. There were several very interesting stories and only one or two duds.

Anyway, so I read that. And now I am on to 'V' - for Vidal! He is definitely one it is good to finally read after always hearing about him. The book, Julian, is about the 4th-century Roman emperor and his attempts to get rid of that wacky, newfangled religion that was rearing its head everywhere (Christianity). Normally I'm not one for historical fiction -- ugh -- but I had little choice with ol' Gore V. as that seems to be his specialty. Plus this one is a pretty obscure person and definitely snarky about the religious stuff -- fun!

In other literary news, for those of you who were jealous back when I was reading Infinite Jest and swore to yourselves that you, too, would tackle DFW's tome, this summer is your chance!

With apologies to Mr. Chatfield

2009-05-22T11:46:00.003+09:00

NOW FINISHED: The Centaur by John Updike

So, it's called The Centaur because the entire book is an allusion to the Greek mythological race of half-horse half-people, which myth I have apparently entirely forgotten. In fact, as I went along reading the book, there were a couple of times when Updike blatantly told a magically real encounter between two characters and I knew this, say, girls' coach/p.e. teacher was supposed to represent a mythological character. It was totally spelled out. Not until the end of the book did I come across an index of mythological characters to whom Updike had merely alluded throughout the book, and the pages on which they appeared -- there were lots. The index contained a list of names about fifty times longer than the list I would have written of mythological characters appearing in the novel.

OK, so now that we know I had absolutely zero idea of what was going on in the subtext, how was the actual text of the book? Not bad. A little weird at first but after getting more comfortable with the characters it's a much better experience. It's essentially three days in the life of this father and son, with lots of small-town drama, hints of Updike's long-simmering love for New York City above all other locales, a keen understanding of what goes through the minds of high-school students and faculty, and plenty of social commentary. But it's also a totally novelly novel, in that early twentieth century way (i.e. when the mindless churned-out crap fiction was still pulp).

Updike, like Forster before him in this A-to-Z blog project of mine, has an uncanny way of writing along, you know, telling the story, lah-di-dah, and then BAM! He hits you with an amazingly well written line and you think, Ahhh, this is why he's a famous and well-renowned writer whose praises are regularly sung.

Next up, V, another author who seems in my head to be of the same ilk as Updike, for whatever reason. I'm currently pausing from the project as I read At the Foot of the Blue Mountains: Stories by Tajik Authors. This is inspired by a trip to Tajikistan in August that I really, really, really want to do with Habitat for Humanity and which I am still pursuing but about which I am losing more hope by the minute. I think Mr. Centaur Biology Teacher would have a thing or two to say to me about that loss of hope, actually.

In summary, The Centaur is sort of like Ulysses meets Breaking Bad.

And I want to become smarter and then read it again. But I totally respect that Updike a)just writes the hell out of it anyway, without stopping to explain every last thing and b)writes such a great simple story, too, that you have to be smarter than a lot of people to even realize that you need to get depressed about everything you're missing.

Significance

2009-04-24T02:44:00.003+09:00

now finished: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

This was a quick read (unlike many a Russian). While it may seem simple, it definitely has a lot of statements about humanity, families, politics, generations, interpersonal relationships, and the like. Those are never as simple as they seem, of course.

It's funny (now, to me) that this novel caused such controversy at the time. Older conservatives thought Turgenev was mocking the older generation whose time had come and gone, and putting the young radical on a pedestal. Younger radicals thought he made a caricature of the young whippersnapper who thought he knew better than everyone and hated everything around him. Turgenev himself said he wasn't quite doing either and had mixed feelings about the times that were a-changin'. For these reasons, we could all obviously get introspective and analytical while reading the novel.

Bazarov and Arkadii (mostly Bazarov) get bored visiting the parents' countryside peasant-laden farms. It sounds like a nice idea, Bazarov muses, to live that idyllic life with solitude and all, "but no--you're consumed by boredom. One wants to come into contact with people, if only to criticize them, but at least to come into contact with them."

See, how can I fully dislike Bazarov, when I am so much like him? Not that I wouldn't rather be more like Arkadii, whose reply is:

"One ought to organize one's life so that every moment in it is significant." -- p. 134

The only thing I didn't like about reading this was that occasionally the language got that forced feel it gets when you just know the original is not quite translatable. One of my goals is to learn Russian so that I can read all the fantastic Russian literature in the original language. I kind of want that to be my first post-law school project. Wouldn't mind taking a job in Moscow, either, come to think of it.

Young Bazarov realizes himself toward the end that the jig is up. Basically, he may have some right ideas, and some of his skills may even save people, but being a jerk who's incapable of some soul-searching never helped anyone. He learns that lesson a bit too late.

Thank you for the invitation, ~~Hofstra~~ Anna Sergeevna, and for your flattering estimation of my conversational talents. But I think I've already been moving in a sphere that isn't my own for too long. Flying fish can stay aloft for a while, but sonner or later they have to splash back into the water. Allow me to swim in my own element, too. -- p. 191

Century Clubs and Beetle Gazing

2009-04-17T01:06:00.005+09:00

now reading: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

When I used to have time to read a lot of books, especially when I worked at Borders and would start books for a million different reasons including being asked to read them by other people for quasi-professional reasons (e.g. getting more free books from the publishers' marketing reps), I needed to come up with a way to give a book a fair shake before throwing it across the room. Yes, it is wonderful and fabulous when a book hooks you on from the first page, but then again, heroin hooks you from the first "page," too, doesn't it? And we see how well that turns out. Perhaps an acquired taste (coffee, beer, marijuana) can be better or at least less destructive.

There is also the sheer length of some books to consider. Do you really know on page ten of Moby Dick what you are going to ultimately think about it? Let alone War and Peace or Infinite Jest. You might already like them or dislike them at that point, but you cannot yet fully understand/appreciate them. At such a fraction of the whole I would be uncomfortable rejecting a book. And we cannot forget either books such as The Corrections. That book starts out weird, and I've had quite a few people tell me they started it and "couldn't get into it" or some such thing. But the first -- I forget how many, twenty? thirty? more? -- pages are in fact "weird" but there is a REASON and it is so genius and I might add part of the point of that magnificent book. Like, part of the point so much that I can't explain why it has to start that way without ruining something for you when you read it. I sometimes wonder if some asshats on the Pulitzer committee that year "couldn't get into it" and that's why they mistakenly awarded the Pulitzer to Empire Falls instead?

But how much is enough of a chance to give a book I hate? I eventually settled on the 100 pages rule. If, after a hundred pages, I really do not like the book and can see no redeeming qualities in it and truly do not want to waste my life finishing it, then I am allowed to throw it across the room. Most recently I did this with Alice Sebold's second novel, The Almost Moon, or, as I prefer to think of it, The Almost Book Worth Reading. I actually got further than 100 pages with that one, but it just kept getting worse, actually. Note that the completion of 100 pages is a necessary but not sufficient requirement. There may be other overriding reasons that compel me to finish a book or for which I will consider going on after 100 pages. Most recently this happened with The Puttermesser Papers, because I had unfortunately and terribly misguidedly chosen Cynthia Ozick for my 'O' author in my A-to-Z Literary Blog Project and so it was Too Late. UGH.

The point is that because of my 100 pages rule, I have decided that 100 pages is also a good time point at which to reflect on what I think of the book I'm reading here on the blog. And it just so happens that yesterday I got to page 100 in Fathers and Sons.

I am reading it quickly -- but it goes quickly. It also REALLY makes me want to learn Russian, because as is generally the case when I read Russian authors, I am so aware I am reading a translation. That was the less the case with War and Peace than others, because I guess in order to publish a translation of War and Peace you do have to be damn good, but even then there were moments. It's just bound to happen because of the patronymics and the way the language is used differently to talk to different people and such. I totally think learning Russian is going to be one of my first post-law school projects.

So in Fathers and Sons we've got Arkadii and his good friend Bazarov -- or is he such a good friend? -- hanging out at Arkadii's father's country estate. Bazarov is basically telling all the old guys, like the father and uncle, that they are outdated and have no idea what's up with the philosophical and political realities of the day. Bazarov is a nihilist, and Arkadii is trying to be a nihilist to be as cool as his friend, and the father and uncle are a mix of baffled and annoyed by this young whippersnapper who does not appreciate anything (including art and nature), and the whole scenario really shows us that generations have always fought with the generation before and the more things change -- well, you know the rest.

"In earlier times, young people had to study -- they didn't want to be taken for ignoramuses, so they had to work hard whether they liked it or not. But now one just has to say, 'Everything on earth is absurd!' and the deed is done -- young people are overjoyed. In fact, they were simply dolts before, whereas now they've suddenly become nihilists." --p. 56

I've been considering going to spend some time in Phoenix soon, what with the end of law school and not having a job or money to pay the rent in New York or any idea what to do next. Basically, I might totally be like Arkadii Kirsanov a mere few weeks from now: returning home to the parents' pad with all my worldly, educated, big city ideas but clearly not able to do anything with them.

The friend, Bazarov, is kind of a jackass. And if Brian and I go to Phoenix, I won't be bringing a jackass. In fact, for us the roles might be reversed: I might be more of a nihilist (and/or more of a pessimistic dolt) than Brian is. But Bazarov is funny, despite his pretense of not caring about anything and being above it all. He is a scientist becoming a doctor and he likes to wander around the forest examining trees and cutting open frogs. That is more important to him than learning about people and what they feel -- and certainly more important than love or any silly notions of a soul. Things might change after page 100; they are spending quite a bit of time with the beautiful Mrs. Odintsov... but for the moment, he still feels this way.

"And what's all this about mysterious relationships between men and women? We physiologists know what these relationships are. You study the anatomy of the eye: where does that enigmatic gaze, as you put it, come from? The rest is all romanticism, nonsense, aesthetic garbage. We'd be much better off going and looking at the beetle." -- p.34

So what about y'all? Do you stop books you have started? Do you have any guidelines for doing so? Have you experienced the ultimate satisfaction of throwing a book across the room? (Which can also be done at the end of a book, of course.) Do tell!

Still more evidence that I need to give Faulkner another chance

2009-04-15T02:56:00.004+09:00

now finished: Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
now reading: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

The word, I believe, is "wow."

My boy Styron is a fantastic writer, compelling storyteller, deep thinker, and furthermore, I think he was a really insightful and beautiful person! That part kind of snuck up on me at the end of the book, but this man was a thinker and a good soul. I want to be his friend!

There are a whole bunch of things I liked, but I will say one of the things I keep thinking about as I reflect is that this is exactly the kind of book I'd been hoping to find when I embarked upon this project. I wasn't looking for another War and Peace, Infinite Jest, or Moby Dick -- you know, something that I knew would be Great. And I certainly wasn't looking for the likes of Cynthia Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers -- something I'd have to continue to wonder why anyone found it great. I was looking to just read good books, and especially to be delighted to have finally read authors I'd neglected far too long. The difference between Styron and the likes of Umberto Eco and Truman Capote is that I've heard SO MUCH about The Name of the Rose and In Cold Blood, but Styron is a bit less mainstream, somehow. Not that that matters. I don't know, I can't explain it. Let's just say that 'S' = success!

Styron makes me think about a few things I've previously considered. One is place as it relates to writing. I often wonder how much my own personal geography comes out in my writing; I don't see myself as a Tony Hillerman/Edward Abbey/Terry Tempest Williams type in my Southwesternness, but maybe I am? Then again, I have been out of Arizona almost as long as I was there. But then again again, doesn't it always stick with me?

The South has long had an obviously strong, notable, controversial sense of place and self in the U.S., not to mention a slew of amazing writers. In the last part of Lie Down in Darkness the action moves to New York and what happens to Peyton there. Now, if I have not yet been clear on this point, I relate to the tragic figure of Peyton. I've babbled about her father Milton, but Peyton is really where it's at. After all, she has to suffer the effects of her totally screwed up parents. It was in her wedding and in the New York pages I really came to appreciate how much like her I could be. And, I like how Styron via Peyton calls out the New Yorkers on their totally insular New Yorkerness, asking them why they have to be so bigoted against the South and totally closed to the idea that it could rise from its dark and mighty problems, which are still quite recent, into a position of strong and mighty progress.

Styron matter-of-factly calls New York (ers) "provincial and myopic." This caused me to cheer, to pretty much weep with joy.

So, geography, self, progress, and how they interrelate -- we get all this, plus soap operaesque drama and beautiful descriptions. What's not to love?

I am definitely eager to read more Styron. Meanwhile, of course, I'm on 'T' and am happily back in that other region of the world, besides the U.S. South, that has produced ridiculous amounts of amazing writers: Russia.

Which means I'm back to that old familiar problem of really wanting to learn Russian, that I may read some of the world's most amazing literature in the original language. This just might be the year I embark upon that goal.

Here comes the suicide

2009-04-11T05:51:00.003+09:00

now reading: Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron

I've told you that Milton Loftis is a lawyer, right?

"'I'm interested in your work. You tell me about your cases --'
'I don't have many cases,' he interrupted, sitting down across from her; 'they bore even me. I wish I had been a poet.'" -- p. 179

Amen, brother! This is yet another mistake of Milton's that I myself have caught in time, so maybe I won't end up like him? Oh, Milton. I'm three-quarters of the way through the novel now and he is making a fine mess of everything, not the least of which is his daughter Peyton's wedding. Doom, doom, doom is all that awaits this family. We know that from the beginning of the book, but it's still a great read as we watch them fall apart.

As we get to the end, we start to see how Petyon, too, is doomed. She is a bit resilient ("to people so young there is nothing final in disaster, the disaster itself often opening up refreshing vistas of novelty, escape or freedom..." -p. 232) but as more and more happens, what resilience she does have clearly won't be enough. And girlfriend NEVER should have come back home to get married, methinks. Totally should have had the ceremony in New York and made any of the Virginians who wanted to see it go north. Not that I'm not enjoying all the comments about how foreign the "New York Jews" are to these coastal Virginian people.

Styron's descriptions of the wedding are awesome. I love how he makes the reader slowly discover what a staged happiness it is, and how he hits the nail on the head. This might be my favorite thing written about a wedding, ever:

"There is a lull in the celebration, for it is the duty of each guest to have some of the cake, although cake goes poorly with whisky or champagne, and it is the last thing the guests want to eat. Few of them would care, really, about eating, but the guests have been to too many wedings. The cake has become symbolic of something and they have to face it: it must be eaten. Besides, it would be a pity to let that huge thing go to waste." -- p. 286

Symbolism and huge ordeals abound at this wedding. It's a great scene because it is just a disaster waiting to happen, the culmination of this family's descent. But also just the first step toward their final tragic chapter. Which, I am about to go read -- the last 100 pages. Have I made you want to read Styron yet? I hope I have.