From the "Nothing Attracts a Crowd Like a Crowd" Files

They tried to make me love the latest hyped bestselling trilogy, and I said no, no, no...

I can hear it now. Now that I have finally read The Hunger Games, I will discuss its flaws and then people will accuse me of disliking it because it's popular. Please let me assure you that popularity is not what I dislike about The Hunger Games.

Oh, wait. Perhaps I should rewrite those sentences so Suzanne Collins and her fans can better understand them. Let's try this:

I can hear it now, that I have finally read The Hunger Games, I will discuss its flaws and then people will accuse me of disliking it -- because it's popular -- please let me assure you that popularity is literally not what I dislike, about The Hunger Games.

Unfortunately, that is how Suzanne Collins writes  in The Hunger Games, way too often for my liking. Yes, my basic idea is still communicated in the above paragraph. Yes, someone might write that way on a daily basis -- someone like a blogger, or perhaps a junior high student writing a note to a friend. You know what should not be written that haphazardly and punctuated that poorly?  Books! The atrocious writing in itself would be bad enough, but then you have to think about the editing. Who are the people at Scholastic Press who let sentences like that go to print?

I do have things to say about The Hunger Games' anti-war allegory (oh yes! there is one!) but first we have got to talk about the punctuation. I was not aware that as the publishing industry crashes and burns their plan was to just release books without bothering to copy edit them, but I really have no other explanation for what happened here. I am not sure when I have ever been so frustrated by run-on sentences, missing commas, extra commas, and missing apostrophes. I thought maybe I was reading my Facebook news feed, but no, it was an actual published book.

You want examples? OK!  Page numbers are from the hardcover edition I borrowed from my local public library.

•  "Electricity in District 12 comes and goes, usually we only have it a few hours a day." -p.80
• "When suddenly I notice Peeta, he's about five tributes to my right, quite a fair distance, still I can tell he's looking at me and I think he might be shaking his head." -p.150
•  "But I don't dare leave the jacket, scorched and smoldering as it is, I take the risk of shoving it in my sleeping bag, hoping the lack of air will quell what I haven't extinguished." -p.173
•  "The girl with the arrows, Glimmer I hear someone call her -- ugh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous -- anyway Glimmer scales the tree until the branches begin to crack under her feet and then has the good sense to stop." -p.182
•  "They know I have the bow and arrows, of course, Cato saw me take them from Glimmer's body." -p.241
•  "I chew a few mint leaves, my stomach isn't up for much more." - p.282
•  "The strong fatty cheese tastes just like the kind Prim makes, the apples are sweet and crunchy." - p.309
• "Portia and Cinna receive huge cheers, of course, they've been brilliant, had a dazzling debut." - p.360

I'm pretty sure Suzanne Collins' computer might actually be missing its semi-colon key. 

Meanwhile, she manages to do something else terrible. In multiple instances, first-person narrator Katniss explains that a character "literally" did something or other. I noticed at least four, such as:

• "To say I make it in the nick of time is an understatement. I have literally just dragged myself into the tangle of bushes at the base of the trees when there's Cato..." -p.223
• "He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean with his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds." -p.312

There is nothing more colloquial, current, and annoying than the use of the word "literally" in all kinds of sentences where it doesn't belong.  Turn on your television or radio and you will hear everyone from sportscasters to politicians adding "literally" into their sentences for emphasis. You will hear them use it in place of "very" or "actually" or even "not literally at all" such as when an ESPN commentator the other night said the NFL draft was "literally consuming New York City." No, it was not literally consuming New York City. That's the whole point of using a metaphor, or speaking in entertaining hyperbole.

It is becoming rarer and rarer to hear or read a use of the word "literally" in which the word means what it means, namely, the opposite of figuratively. Millions of us have been guilty of overuse of "literally" in excited casual speech. That's bad enough, but the misuse is even more annoying than the overuse, in my opinion. I recognize that word saturation happens; sometimes words achieve a weird place in the vernacular. Does this mean published, edited books should succumb? No! That is why it annoyed me in The Hunger Games. It's too easy for Suzanne Collins to write as if she is blogging. It's too easy to fail to be careful and creative with language. It's too easy to require nothing special from our writers and editors, in a world where everyone can self-publish and cheapen the value of the written word.

I'm sure someone will say that Katniss talks that way. Katniss is supposed to be our postmodern heroine, telling her story in a casual, personal, freewheeling tone. Yes, creating a narrative voice -- even a casual one -- is a literary achievement. The writer should create a voice, maybe even a jaded one peppered with slang, like Holden Caulfield.  Consider all the ways J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is nothing at all like The Hunger Games. The author isn't creating a magical Katniss voice if Katniss just sounds like the author herself. That is my objection to "literally." It doesn't sound like a young, fierce hunter from District 12 in the dystopian future. It sounds like Suzanne Collins. Today.

This stuff bugged me to no end as I read The Hunger Games.  The story is all right. In my next post, I will address how very much it is indeed an anti-war novel. But I find myself once again disappointed by the latest hypity-hype-hyped bestseller, and I have no immediate desire to rush out to get my hands on the next installment in the series.The fact that shoddy work can get published and that millions will breathlessly enthuse about it without stopping to notice or care about such basic mistakes offends all of my writerly and readerly sensibilities.

Not that Garfield

now finished: Garfield by Allan Peskin

Not bad, Allan Peskin, not bad.  This President James A. Garfield of ours was an interesting character. While he did not catapult himself into the ranks of my favorites (20 presidents into my project, my top four are James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and Rutherford B. Hayes), Garfield did manage to remind me a lot of - myself. Not necessarily in a good way.

Some of it was just factual...he felt out of place as a youngster at times, and his literary aspirations occasionally seemed mismatched with his political aspirations, and he went to a religious academy to get out and do SOMEthing SOMEwhere in the world as a teenager...but Garfield held onto his religious devotion much longer than I held onto mine (i.e., his life). Also, he put work off until the last minute and thrived under deadline pressure, and sometimes he was kind of a jerk to people. But he meant well.

As for differences between us, he actually was  a wonderful orator, but labored over writing, so we're opposites there. And he really enjoyed being a soldier. I for one am really looking forward to getting out of this stretch of presidents who fought in the Civil War because each prez bio is taking me through the same battles, over and over and over, as I see the war through yet another prism. A Civil War buff I ain't.

The bio was well written for the most part, although this one had some weird editorial and grammatical things that seemed slightly off at a few points, like a date or sentence had been inserted from some other thought process that contradicted the page before. Mostly, though, it presented the mass of information very well, and it once again had really interesting discoveries lurking in the endnotes, such as the fact that in a speech called "The Currency" (Garfield was a freak about greenbacks and being anti-inflation), he used the term "industrial revolution," apparently 13 years before it was supposedly coined, according to the author of this bio.

Garfield was often disgusted by people who took power in the Republican party. (Another similarity between us!)  He said: "The war has brought to the surface of National politics many men who are neither fitted in character, nor ability, to be leaders of public thought or representative of the true men of the country."  (pp. 329-330)  Although he didn't hate Ulysses Grant, he did think Grant's presidency failed and really had negative effects on the Republican party. Then again, Garfield was totally wrapped up in the politics and ideas of James G. Blaine, whereas other people were on Roscoe Conkling's side (such as Garfield's VP, Chester A. Arthur), and Conkling was crazy, but Blaine was a little crazy, too, and it's hard to say if anyone was actually justified in his actions.


The most interesting parts of this book, hands down, were the 1880 Republican convention in Chicago where Garfield surprisingly got the nomination -- a drunken fest of backroom shenanigans! -- and the story of Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau. (I feel sorry for the guy -- his messy, deranged upbringing is clearly what made him a pitiful crazy man capable of taking out a president "for the good of the country.")  Anyway, so after being shot Garfield suffered for quite a while and died, as all my presidents do at the end of the prez bios. If I continue along this project at a good clip, I just might get to Carter,Bush, Clinton and Obama before they go. (I still haven't decided if the Usurping Decider gets to participate in my project, or if I should stick to just presidents.) 

And the Pulitzer goes to ... nobody!

As I'm sure we all know, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. Wait, you mean everyone else didn't have the announcement in their Google Calendar for months? OK, fine, I may be slightly  more interested in the Pulitzers than some most other people, but yesterday there really was something interesting for those of us who like to read a good ol' Pulitzer-winning novel now and again: no Fiction award this year!

The last time this happened for the Fiction category was 1977. In fact, it happened for Fiction three times during the 70s!  It happens from time to time in most categories. I was intrigued to note that there has been No Award only once each for Poetry and Biography as opposed to the multiple No Award years for other Letters and Drama categories. Anyway, since I have known and loved many a Pulitzer-winning novel, I thought I would offer my totally unsolicited recommendations to those of you who were ready to rush out to your local bookstore/library to pick up a copy of this year's winner, only to find there was no winner. Here are...

Linda's 10 Pulitzer Fiction Books To Read Instead of This Year's Non-Existent Winner (Pulitzer award year is in parentheses)

1. His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
   This was the first one, awarded in 1918 (note: there was no Fiction award in 1917, the first year of the Pulitzer Prizes!) His Family went out of print and few people remember Ernest, who wrote some other acclaimed novels as well. I consider this a little-known gem, especially for people who like or have lived in New York City and want a taste of its old days -- the city has always been filled with immigrants, financiers, do-gooders, and bright-yet-obnoxious young people (even if they weren't called hipsters yet). This book also speaks to a changing nation faced with war and a new generation that will surely do things better than the old generation did -- right?
2. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919)
   Another early winner, awarded in 1919, that looks at the progress of a nation's people and their shifting political and financial fates, this time in the Midwest. The younger Amberson with his sense of entitlement from his "great" family kind of reminds me of Dubya.
3. So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)
   Edna Ferber is a truly underrated writer. She's vaguely "famous" but really not pushed on anyone in the academic canon, and most young people probably just tune out at the name Edna. Big mistake. (Your great-grandchildren will do the same thing with "Britney" and "Jaden," you know.) Any book of Edna's you pick up is a good choice (Giant, Cimarron, and Showboat, to name a few) but why not start with So Big, which won the Pulitzer and may be of particular interest to my readers in Chicago, Iowa, Michigan and environs?
4. Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926)
   Our hero has some flaws in this one, but his journey is interesting, and the ending made me cheer - out loud and everything! Awarded in 1926, this is one of those books that makes you realize people have always just been people and we have hopes and dreams and fears in common with our peeps of previous generations.
5. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947)
   Dude, you think politicians are messed up now? Well, I mean, they are. But they were messed up in 1947, too, when this book won the Pulitzer, as they were in the 1930s when the events in Louisiana that may (or may not) have inspired this novel transpired. Very well written!
6. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953)
   For those of you who want to check a winner off your to-do list quickly, head for this novel. I think it goes by pretty fast, unlike some other Hemingway works I could mention *cough* set in the Spanish Civil War *cough* and plus it's got the Cuba connection! And it's the eternal struggle of man versus nature! And yet it's so much more! And so on.
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee  (1961)
   Because seriously, if you haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird by now, you are just not caught up on one of the best, most essential works of the 20th century.
8. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986)
   This is one of my favorite books ever. It's a big one, but well worth it. It immerses you in a world with wonderful characters and unparalleled achievement in storytelling, plus snakebites and campfires and prostitutes and sweeping vistas that are evoked by the stellar writing. I know that a lot of people think, "Lonesome Dove?" as they wrinkle their noses and recall fleeting images of the 80s mini-series and Robert Duvall in a cowboy hat. The answer is: yes. Lonesome-freakin'-Dove. AMAZING.
9. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994)
   I think people are divided on this one, but I love it. It's all so gray and cold and psychologically dark, up there in the northeast U.S. and Newfoundland, and there is so much that haunts the characters and, naturally, the reader. Bonus points: the protagonist is named Quoyle. Cool name.
10. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
    I'm totally with Oprah here. Yeah, it's got the whole depressing apocalypse thing going on, but it's a fantastic choice for everyone because although it's grisly at times, it's the story of a father and son and the choices of humanity. The writing style is such that it moves quickly, but that's only one reason I couldn't put it down. And yes, you just might cry at the end, if you (and humanity) have a soul.

There now. Just because the Fiction jury consisting of Maureen Corrigan (whom I love listening to on Fresh Air) and Michael Cunningham (whom I love reading and even meeting in real life) and Susan Larson (whoever that is) didn't find any Pulitzer-worthy fiction that was published in 2011, you still have choices.

And may I suggest that to obtain these books you either a.)get a library card  or b.)visit an independently owned bookstore?  Happy reading!

We Need Another Rutherford

now finished: Rutherford B. Hayes, Warrior and President by Ari Hoogenboom
now reading: Garfield by Allan Peskin

Rutherford B. Hayes has long been my favorite obscure president. His name is great for starters; I think that's what sucked me in years ago.  As I have gone through my Reading A Biography of Every President In Order, To See Where We Went Wrong, a project  obviously begun under the Dubya administration, I have discovered some other favorite presidents, including the also obscure Millard Fillmore and the not-at-all-obscure James Madison, as well as my soulmate John Quincy Adams, who falls somewhere in between (famous, but not well known). So when I got to #19, Rutherford, I wondered if he would regain his title as my favorite obscure president, now that I am all up on #13 Millard Fillmore's awesomeness.

I will say this: Rutherford is the man. He had integrity. I do so love the presidents with integrity. (For example: not Van Buren, and Polk.)  And like some of my other favorites, he served the public well, did his life work well, fought against corruption, kept religious hooey from being dragged into government, and a whoooole bunch of other stuff. And, he kept a diary, so Hoogenboom's account is filled with lots of straight-from-the-horse's-mouth stuff, and I really feel like I know Rud very well. (That's the nickname, Rud, in case you were wondering or planning on naming your baby/pet Rutherford or anything.)

Rutherford was a Buckeye through and through, a man of Ohio, who was totally into his Ohioness, even though he was also a well traveled president. In fact, he was the first president to visit California while in office, and he even visited my alma mater USC on that trip!  Awesomeness!  Rutherford has me intrigued about Ohio things in a way few people have been able to do.  He was a good lawyer, he did good things for people, and no, lest you think I am swooning, he was not perfect, and I don't agree with him on every single thing. But I like him, and I think he did a great job.

The Hoogenboom bio is thoroughly researched and well written, and all in all it is one of the high points of my prez bios project.

Now, I have moved onto James A. Garfield, another Ohio man, and yes, they did know each other although they were not BFFs or anything. Garfield is not striking me as quite as spectacular philosophically, although he means well most of the time. In my Garfield bio, I am currently in the 1870s, when corporations and railroads and corruption are doing their thing in business-government.  Garfield is finally getting along with his family, after kind of being a jerky absent father/husband for the first few years of his marriage to the loooong-suffering Lucretia. What took me the longest to wade through in this book was the Civil War. For the last six or so presidents I've been reading about the Civil War politics, of course, but with Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, and now Garfield I have had to go through the entire Civil War, battle by battle, general by general, political ideology by political ideology, party split by party split, and did I mention battle by battle?

It could be interesting, I suppose. You know, to, like, a Civil War buff.  A Civil War buff I am not. I am a person interested in history, so it's great to learn things, and as a bio reader it is interesting to see which battles are brought to the fore in each president's life story, but seriously -- I'm mostly just over it. OK, Bull Run...McClellan sucks...here we are in Tennessee...there goes Grant to Vicksburg...who's where...is Sherman to Atlanta yet?...are we in Virginia...? And so on.  It's kind of like I'm in Groundhog Day, experiencing the same thing over and over again, with just a little difference of perspective.

A lot of times when I read my prez bios I wouldn't necessarily recommend the books for the casual reader, but I think I would in fact recomend Hoogenboom's Rutherford B. Hayes. I mean, you have to want to read a big bio, but it's an enlightening look at a period in history and a president about whom I'm willing to bet you know next to nothing. And yet he was so progressive and did so much! 

And you won't even have to experience the battles over and over if you are just reading Rutherford and not the surrounding presidents.

Is The Hunger Games anti-war? (And if not, why not?)

now reading in English: Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President by Ari Hoogenboom
now reading online in French: Douze ans de sejour dans la haute Ethiopie by Arnauld d'Abbadie

now listening on my MP3 player when I exercise: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

As much as I don't enjoy reading multiple books at a time, it just works out that way when the medium is unique for each one.  I never used to listen to audio books, and I still can't stand to listen to fiction being read to me AT ALL, but I have discovered that I can listen to non-fiction. It's kind of like listening to intelligent news/public radio. So anyway, I'm making my way through these three works, at different times and in different places.

Anyone notice what I'm currently not reading? That's right, The Hunger Games. But fear not! You will be happy to know, ye of the "ZOMG!-it's-SO-amazing!" persuasion, that I am planning to read it as soon as I get to the top of the holds list at the good ol' Phoenix library. (No, I'm not going to buy it. I prefer to buy books that need my dollars more, and check out from the library something that is already a runaway bestseller and that I am not sure if I'll love.) I think I will actually reach the top of said library holds list fairly soon, as I have gone from position #236 on the holds list to #29 in just a week and a half.

So yes, I am planning to read The Hunger Games, and I will probably see the film, too, and I am not at all concerned about seeing the movie soon, because frankly there is nothing I hate more than being packed into a crowded theater, because I prefer silence with my films. I never ever ever go see movies on the days they come out. Ever. I verrrrrrrrrrry rarely go see films on Friday or Saturday at all. I like having lots of empty seats around me. Anyway, I have actually been vaguely planning to maybe read the novels for a year and a half or so, because the constant EW coverage and some of what I read in the blogosphere started to convince me they were worth a read. Of course, in 2010 when I started to become intrigued by The Hunger Games I also capitulated and read Men Who Hate Women aka in the U.S. as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and it was so overrated that I promptly did not read the next 2 Stieg Larsson books and I went back to ignoring bestselling series for a while, but I've come back around to The Hunger Games because it's so short and YA, so how much of a mental investment can it be, really? And because it's anti-war.

I mean, I thought it was anti-war.

I certainly read about it being anti-war. In the aforementioned EW coverage for starters. I've read a lot about the book in the last two years, much of it straight from Suzanne Collins' mouth, and I have a distinct impression of an anti-war message. But today I've been following the discussion of some friends (who have actually read the books?) as to whether it is in fact anti-war. So I poked into the blogosphere a bit on this specific topic, and I think what I'm discovering is that there might be more disagreement on what it means to be anti-war more than there is  disagreement about The Hunger Games.

And I certainly don't think it is exclusively anti-war. Of course it is also anti-totalitarian evil f#&*$ in government and anti-infatuation-with-glamorized-entertainment-at-the-expense-of-real-people's-tragedies and so on. Why would those things prevent it from being an anti-war allegory?

But clearly I need to read it, because there is more to this than meets my eye. So, what do you think? WITHOUT SPOILERS, give me your opinion: is The Hunger Games anti-war?

Killers for Life

now finished: Intimate Wars by Merle Hoffman

now reading: Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President by Ari Hoogenboom

now listening: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

I found this Merle Hoffman book especially interesting what with all the fracas over birth control in the national media of late. Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room is a so-so memoir in the personal-life-recollection parts, but a fascinating inside look at this country's power structures in the history-of-abortion-reality parts. To be even more precise, it's a look at how those power structures affect people who don't have anywhere near as much power, including women who need abortions. And it's a look at what it took to make Choices, her clinic in New York, a reality.

I recommend Intimate Wars because I think more people need to take an unflinching but realistic look at abortion. In the book, Merle Hoffman specifically does not try to downplay anything, including the reality of abortion, which helps all the more to drive home her point that the "other side" (i.e., the anti-choicers outside her clinic who threaten her staff and make bomb threats while calling themselves "pro-life") are very much engaged in the business of lying about the reality of abortion. If they can make up some grisly picture and convince everyone this is what abortion looks like, they rally people to their side. Who needs facts when you can have grisly wedge issue titillation?

She details how much violence and threat of violence she and other clinics faced in the 1980s and 1990s, a history that must not be forgotten. If those anti-choicers get their way, there is such a terrible lot of violence, either against abortion providers (when abortion is legal) or against women's bodies (in back allies and other butcheries, when abortion is not legal).  

Bonus:  Merle Hoffman has traveled to Russia a few times (including when it was the Soviet Union) and there are interesting looks at what was going down there vis-a-vis women's health as well.

Revisiting Philip K Dick

now finished: VALIS by Philip K. Dick

Despite my occasional sigh-fi wall, Philip K. Dick made the top half of my A-to-Z Literary Blog Project authors, and I read a second book of his, VALIS.  Or is it Valis? It gets written both ways. The book didn't blow me away, but it was enjoyable. I recall that the first PKD book I read, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, was greatest in its last third, and I think somewhere between the halfway to two-thirds-of-the-way points of this one would where I started to most enjoy it, too.

Really, though, in the end, what I enjoyed about this book were the pithy quotes that I find awesome both in and out of context. So, I decided to share here my  Top Eight Valis quotes. With no further ado:

"A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it it, is worth more."  -- p. 44

"Sherri resented every creature on earth, in order of proximity to her; that is the more she had to do with someone or something the more she resented him, or her or it." -- p. 89

"You can understand why Fat no longer knew the difference between fantasy and divine revelation -- assuming there is a difference, which has never been established." --p. 101

"Someone is playing a board game with time, someone we can't see. It is not God. That is an archaic name given to this entity by societies in the past, and by people now who are locked into anachronistic thinking. We need a new term, but what we are dealing with is not new." - p. 119

"...on Judgment Day and they're going to laugh at him like he laughs at us. That's what he deserves: a Great Judge exactly like himself.  That's not a bad theological idea," I said. "You find yourself facing yourself." -p.129

"It would not be in China, nor in India or Tasmania for that matter, that Horselover Fat would find the fifth Savior. Valis had shown us where to look: a beer can run over by a passing taxi. We had just saved Fat a lot of money, plus a lot of wasted time and effort, including the bother of obtaining vaccinations and a passport." - p. 158

"God can be good and terrible--not in succession--but at the same time.  This is why we seek a mediator between us and him; we approach him through the mediating priest and attenuate and enclose him through the sacraments. It is for our own safety; to trap him within confines which render him safe." - p 178

"It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense." --  p. 210

Generally Speaking

now reading: Grant: A Biography by William S. McFeely

In my prez bios project, I am on president #18, one Ulysses S. Grant. Of course, trivia lovers among you may know that he was not in fact named Ulysses S. Grant, rather, his name was Hiram Ulysses Grant and the (senator? congressman?) who got him into West Point mucked up his name and it kind of went from there. Anyway, I am a little past halfway through this book and as usual it is interesting learning about the president's formative years, rise to fame and greatness, and place in the swirling events of history. I continue to love this reading project. As for Grant in particular....

He was quite the popular hero. I have always been fascinated/skeptical when it comes to the voting-public-enthalled-by-a-general thing (like, what exactly makes a general qualified to be president? no one can say), but it happens every few presidents, even though it hasn't worked in my lifetime (yet), most prominently when some people bandied about Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf's name but that was a total non-starter.

This particular biography actually qualifies for two of my reading projects, as it is also a Pulitzer Prize winner; howEVer, I am actually not sure if I think it's superb, so far. It's interesting, but not really drawing me in more than any other biography, as you might expect a Pulitzer winner to do. The most interesting thing about this book  so far is how William S. McFeely is the first biographer I've read who actually calls out "great war leadership" for what it is: getting men to kill other men. At first (the earliest chapters in the book) I was excited because I thought he was actually going to go with that thought and try to make people see how stupid and murderous war is, but instead he goes down a different path of kind of making it Grant's flaw that only leadership in war could bring out his talents as opposed to business or politics or whatever he tried as a young man.  I suppose it was shocking enough for some academic writer to actually call a spade a spade (war is senseless murder) and that's why he doesn't really go any further and indict everyone responsible (i.e., people who might be reading his book).

McFeely is totally defensive of (#18) Grant's role in (#17) Andrew Johnson's presidency, and it's interesting to contrast this point of view with the biography of Johnson I recently read that explains what a raw deal Johnson got from the Congressional Republicans in the early days of Reconstruction.

As usual, I continue to see how large the story of slavery and blacks in America looms in the history of the United States, despite how thin of a thread it is in the tapestry of many of my school social studies textbooks. The story of race relations in the U.S. is so not just one thread. It deserves all the study activists try to give it and more.

Other Books, Same Authors

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

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?

Honest Abe, Rail-Splittin' and Constitution Splittin' (but not nation-splittin')

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

next up: The Beach by Alex Garland

So, Abraham Lincoln: a benchmark, it would seem, in my prez bios project. I mean, Abraham Lincoln is a president that other people read bios of, even people who aren't doing a wonderfully dorky read-a-bio-of-every-president-in-order-to-see-where-we-went-wrong project. That means I had a lot of choices, for the first time since Thomas Jefferson, but we settled on the Carl Sandburg.



Have I mentioned that it was originally published in six volumes?  This is one big bio. You can find just The Prairie Years or just The War Years, but I opted for the all-in-one combined volume that Sandburg himself abridged from the six volumes. It was very in depth, and I definitely feel that I spent a great deal of time with Lincoln and learned more about the Civil War than I ever came close to doing in my history classes over the years. I mean, there just isn't time to focus that deeply (unless you're a history major) as Sandburg did in researching and really becoming one with Lincoln's life.


The book has a strange style: it's a little folksy, like Lincoln himself, in relating the anecdotes of Lincoln's way with people, always able to smooth a ruffled feather or talk to anyone or get done what he wanted done without ever strong-arming people or even sometimes letting them realize they were being persuaded to give Abe his way.


Of course, nowadays it's all the rage to reconsider Lincoln's greatness by comparing him to the evil, monstrous, tragic-joke-of-a-president Dubya, because both kind of tossed habeas corpus to the wind during their wars. It's an interesting comparison (I first studied it intensively in my Foreign Affairs and the Constitution class in law school, so it's no surprise to me) but I'm not sure it's exactly spot on.

At any rate, though, the Civil War sure was a bloody mess.

I really, really hate how inevitable so many people thought it was. There should have been some kind of human decency that rose above the sectional slavery struggle. Look, I understand the need to adhere to the Constitution. And I understand that Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, aka presidents numbers 13, 14, and 15, basically did not solve the slavery issue because they disliked it but understood legally that they "couldn't" do anything about it under the Constitution.  And it was true, in its way, that the Constitution protected slavery in the South. But then, simply, the Constitution was flawed. OK? It was flawed. It needed to not protect slavery, just as countries and governments and constitutions and leaders today should not protect slavery (including human trafficking!) or oppression. And the idea that Lincoln (and Grant) knew they needed to open up wholesale slaughter of the Confederate soldiers (also, of course, leading to slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers) in order to stop this evil from happening is just so tragic, so...so...Hiroshima of them.

WHEN will there ever be a generation that stands up and says war is murder, and war is wrong, and we are going to solve our problems in a different way?  WHEN will we have a leader do that?

It certainly isn't our Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obama.  And my god it was not that lunatic clown murderer from Texas before him.

I agree with the man who so eloquently stated in the documentary The Good Soldier that the generation that finds a way to solve problems peacefully will actually be the "greatest generation."

And then, at the end of the horrible war, after so many have suffered so much, the night of Lincoln's death makes for one of the most gripping episodes I have yet read in any president biography.Well done, Carl Sandburg.

Finally, Abe Lincoln. Is he great?

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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