Thursday, December 2, 2010

I'm baaaaaack

So sorry for the long break in posting - I have been busy laying on the beach and watching basketball in St. Thomas, cooking and eating lots of turkey, and studying corporate tax.  But now the trip is over, Thanksgiving is over, and classes are over, so I can get back to being a bizzy bookworm.  Here's a list of what I've read since I last posted:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Obvi this was a re-read, but I had only read it once before and wanted to appreciate it one more time before the movie came out.  I definitely teared up at the end, but I didn't sob last time, probably because I was on an airplane and that would have been embarrassing.  Aaron is reading book 7 now and I can't wait to see his reaction.  JK Rowling is a genius, but I have to admit that I still get a little confused with all that wandlore stuff at the end.

2. The Pact by Jodi Picoult.  I know, Jodi Picoult is kind of below my normally high standards.  My Sister's Keeper was a really good book though, and I appreciate Jodi Picoult for her ability to pick timely, controversial and/or fascinating topics.  She is a machine though, it's ridiculous how many books she writes, so you can't expect all of them to be that great.  And I read this book on a plane and on the beach, which are the two places where it is most acceptable to read easy mindless stuff.  The Pact is about teen suicide and two families struggling to deal with the aftermath.  Kind of depressing and it jumps around a lot between character perspectives and chronologically, but it sucked me in and that flight was over before I knew it.

3. The World According to Garp by John Irving.  I think Until I Find You is still my favorite Irving novel, but I loved loved loved Garp.  No one can make you laugh and squirm and gag and cry at the same time like JI.  This book kind of made me jealous though, because I want to be a writer so badly, and here's John writing not only a great novel about a writer, but also writing that writer's stories within the novel.  He is almost disgustingly creative.  I just watched the movie version with Robin Williams as Garp and Glenn Close as Jenny last night, but of course it couldn't compare to the real thing and they changed the story way too much.

4. Bolt by Dick Francis.  Not my favorite from Francis, but was still a great plane read.

5. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.  Unlike Oprah, I did not read this book during all the hype about it before it turned out to be fake, so I approached it as a novel and not an autobiography.  It's kind of hard to follow the dialogue because there are no quotation marks or anything, and the part at the dentist is seriously disturbing, but it was definitely an interesting book.  Leonard was my favorite character, I thought the James character was conceited and obnoxious.  Overall verdict - I'd rather watch Intervention.

Currently reading: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Hot Money

I really wanted to read a Dick Francis book after watching Zenyatta in the Breeders Cup.  She is such an amazing horse.  For anyone who has never read Dick Francis, he is a former steeplechase jockey, and all of his books are mysteries that somehow involve the horse racing world.  Usually the main character is a kind of everyman, often a jockey or trainer, who somehow gets recruited to solve a murder or fix some other kind of crisis.  I got really into these books once I outgrew the Thoroughbred and Saddle Club series and now DF is in my top 5 of favorite authors, and luckily he wrote like 400 books before he passed away a few months ago (RIP...seriously, I got teary when I read his obituary, that's how much I love him) so I still have plenty to enjoy.  If you're into horses like I am, you'll love these books, but honestly they are great mystery stories even if you take out the horse stuff - really great pace, lots of unexpected creative plot twists, entertaining and realistic dialogue.  And you will learn some funny British words.

Hot Money is about a jockey, Ian, who is from a mixed family - his dad's 5th wife was recently murdered and now it looks like the murderer is after his estranged father too, so Ian reconciles with his dad and basically becomes his bodyguard and private detective.  They know that the murderer is almost certainly one of Ian's half-siblings, so there's a lot of thought provoking issues about family betrayal, childhood trauma, and greed.  The dad is a great character - comic at times but also very real and likable.  A lot of the story involves the family home and the house almost becomes like a character as well.  DF never disappoints.

If you want to see one of the most heartbreaking moments in sports, check out this video of Dick Francis riding Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUCvrzdILE

Up Next: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling

Saturday, November 6, 2010

The 19th Wife




I decided to buy this book after watching a 4.5 hour marathon of Sister Wives.  Polygamy is hot right now, I guess.  This book is one of those kind of cheesy historical fiction novels that weaves together jazzed-up stories about real historical figures with a made-up story about fictional modern characters.  In the modern story, the main character has been kicked out of his polygamous community because he is a teenage male and a homosexual.  He learns that his mother (wife #19) has been accused of murdering his father, and returns to try and clear her name.  This is paralleled with the story of Ann Eliza Webb Young, the 19th wife of Brigham Young who publicly divorced Brigham and fought for the abolition of polygamy.  One thing that I liked about this book is that I really couldn't figure out where the author stood.  At some points, it seemed like he was being kind of apologist for the LDS church and its role in the polygamous offshoots that still exist today, but at other points I felt like he was pointing out how oppressive and strange Mormonism was and is.  A book revealed to some random guy on golden plates, baptisms of the dead, guys with 50+ wives, sacred underwear...weird but also fascinating (hence the 4.5 hours of Sister Wives).  In my opinion, the author wrote an unbiased but still very entertaining story.  I just wish there had been more of the modern part - I really liked the main character Jordan and I missed him when I was reading all of the Ann Eliza parts.  The only thing that seemed really contrived with how the stories were tied together by Jordan meeting another character who happened to be writing a masters thesis on Ann Eliza, I thought the stories had enough connections and shared history without needing something that direct and artificial.
One very unique aspect of this book is the incorporation of different "sources" - the author tells the story in part through newspaper articles, letters, Wikipedia entries, diaries, depositions, and others.  All made up of course, so he really had to use a lot of different voices.  Obviously a 21st century teenager who is angry and hungry and scared (lots of f bombs) is going to be written very differently from a 19th century Mormon wife, mother, and authoress (no f bombs).  I think it's hard enough to create and give voice to one character, so I appreciate how much work this book must have been to research and write.
And finally, a note from Wikipedia - apparently a Lifetime tv movie starring Lexie Gray from Greys Anatomy based on this book premiered in September.  And no one told me!!!  It will not air again in the next 6 weeks, but I will keep checking the Lifetime website so stay tuned :)

Up Next: Hot Money by Dick Francis

Monday, November 1, 2010

The Lost Symbol



I went to Boston this past weekend, so I wanted to read something good for traveling that would be entertaining but require no effort on my part, and Dan Brown did not disappoint.  I was very impressed with his ability to keep me riveted with the plot and yet be beating a dead horse at the same time.  The last 50-60 pages of this book are completely unnecessary and overkill and I was losing interest at an exponential rate, but luckily I was back home at that point and didn't feel bad about skimming.  The main idea in this book is that because God created man in His image, the human mind has godlike powers, which the ancients knew and appreciated, but that modern people have forgotten and lost the ability to tap.

"This is the great gift, Robert, and God is waiting for us to understand it.  All around the world, we are gazing skyward, waiting for God ... never realizing that God is waiting for us.  . . .  We are creators, and yet we naively play the role of 'the created.' We see ourselves as helpless sheep buffeted around by the God who made us.  We kneel like frightened children, begging for help, for forgiveness, for good luck.  But once we realize that we are truly created in the Creator's image, we will start to understand that we, too, must be Creators.  When we understand this fact, the doors will burst wide open for human potential."

I think that's a fascinating, inspiring idea, and I like the point that if our ancestors could see us today communicating through computers, transplanting organs, exploring space, etc., wouldn't they think we were gods?  Pretty cool.   Unfortunately Dan Brown makes his characters discuss this point ad nauseum until you want to shake him and be like I GET IT, ENOUGH ALREADY, HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK YOUR READERS ARE?!

Also, I think it's kind of a cheap trick to make the ending of every single chapter be a cliffhanger.  It's kind of exhausting when every 6 pages, someone is turning around and gasping, eyes wide in fright, as they make some alarming discovery and nananabooboo, I'm not going to tell you what it is yet.  And italics lose their purpose when they're so overused.  I've also never read a book where the word "esoteric" is used so frequently.  Has anyone ever actually used esoteric in a sentence?  I looked it up and I still don't understand what it means.

But despite all that, I actually love books like this.  It's the literary equivalent of a really nerdy soap opera.  Plus I really like Dan Brown's bad guys - the albino monk in Da Vinci Code, and now in this book there's a crazy tattooed antagonist who is really freaky.  So if you want a good page-turner with cool historical trivia for geeks, then I recommend this book, just don't think about it too hard while you're reading and feel free to skip the last 50 pages.

Up Next: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

Friday, October 29, 2010

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao



I liked this book better the first time, when it was called A Confederacy of Dunces and wasn't half in Spanish.  For example, here is advice about how to get over an ex-boyfriend, given to Oscar's mother by her friend/coworker: "Forget that hijo de la porra, that comohuevo.  Every desgraciado who walks in here is in love with you.  You could have the whole maltido world if you wanted."  I can understand the basics from context in this example, but in some places there are entire paragraphs in Spanish that I had no clue about...I just felt like I was missing a whole lot because I didn't want to stop and google every 7th word.  Does desgraciado just mean man or gentleman or something more specific?  Any other non-Spanish speakers read this book, and how did you deal with the language problem?

But that being said, this book did make me laugh a lot and was very interesting.  I also learned a lot about the political history of the Dominican Republic.  The footnotes were very long and were in very small font, but they were some of my favorite parts, I kind of wish there had been a lot more of them.  I also loved all the Tolkein references, because I've read LOTR and seen the films multiple times, so I felt like I was actually in on those inside jokes.

One major theme of his book is fuku or the idea that a curse can follow a family through generations.  So that made me think about whether or not I am superstitious.  When I was a kid, I used to have this thing where I would have to open and close the laundry hamper three times before the tiolet stopped flushing everytime I used the bathroom, but I don't remember what I thought was going to happen if I didn't do that, so maybe that's more OCD and not superstition.  There's a black cat that likes to hang out under our black car and runs across the driveway whenever we turn in, so Aaron and I are in trouble if that's a bad omen.  I think that to a certain extent our lives are subject to fate.  Everything that happens is leading you to where you're meant to be, whether it's a decision you make or one that gets made for you.  And it's certainly true that your parents' mistakes can stick with you and have irrevocable consequences, although I think that's environmental and not because there's a fuku hanging over your head.  So go walk under a ladder or break a mirror and enjoy the ride because life is short and you are not in control.  And take a few semesters of Spanish if you want to try and read this book.

Up next: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Out Stealing Horses



Another WWII era story about stealing things.  I found this book to be a little annoying, it kind of had that artsy-fartsy tone where you think the author is trying to show that he is smarter than you because he is so creative and not subject to the rules of linear storytelling and wants to keep you guessing about exactly how far over your head he is.  Which is probably why the NY Times picked as one of the 10 best books of the year, because those Times book reviewers obvi can't admit that anyone is over their heads.  However, to be fair, this book is translated from Norwegian, so it's hard to know how much the translator influenced the tone.  Here's a quote from the author according to Wikipedia:

When asked “How did the Nazi Occupation of Norway translate into the plot of your novel?” Mr. Petterson responded “Well, like I said, I do not plan, so that double meaning came up when I needed it. That is disappointing to some readers, I know. But for me it shows the strength of art. It is like carving out a sculpture from some material. You have to go with the quality of the material and not force upon it a form that it will not yield to anyway. That will only look awkward. Early in the book, in the 1948 part, I let the two fathers (of my main characters, Jon and Trond) have a problem with looking at each other. And I wondered, why is that? So I thought, well, it’s 1948, only three years after the Germans left Norway. It has to be something with the war. And then I thought, shit, I have to write about the war. You see, I hate research.”


It's kind of funny that he said shit, but seriously, it's that easy for you to spit out an award winning novel that you don't have to plan, you just rely on "the strength of the art"?  Vom.

And I also questioned the verisimilitude (shout out to Mr. Burke, my 10th grade english teacher) in Chapter 2 when the main character Trond, 15 years old at the time, jumps from a tree branch onto a running horse's back.  Maybe if Mr. Petterson did not hate research so much, he would know that no normal horse is going to let a human, esp. a teenage boy who probably weighs what, 140-150 lbs?, jump on its back from a tree.  Horses are fast, that's kind of how they survive...  And even if by some miracle the horse does not shy away and leave the would-be rider in the dust, no teenage boy who does not know how to ride is going to be able to hold on when the horse starts rearing and bucking.  As a general rule, I will love any book with the word Horses in the title, but geez, that scene was ridiculous.

But except for those problems, this book does have some beautiful imagery of the forests and lakes and rivers of northeastern Norway.  Lots of snow, spruce trees, and cold clear water.  Although it is a war story to a certain extent, it is really about a boy's discovery that his father, who disappears after the summer when most of the story occurs, is not the person he thought he knew, and how that discovery is kind of his final break with childhood.  I agree with that idea - you can't be your own person until you decide how you are going to be different from your parents.  Another theme that really resonated with me is the idea of being alone vs. being lonely, because I've been spending a lot of time alone lately.  Is it truly unnatural for a person to prefer being alone, is solitude a personal choice that we should have the right to make?  As an introvert myself, I feel like most introverts would choose to be extroverts if they could, but I doubt that most extroverts wish they were more introverted.  I can actually see myself living like Trond if I'm old and without my spouse, even though I hate to think about that - just going for walks with my dog, piddling around the house and yard, sitting on a bench thinking, reading Dickens by the woodstove at night... Except I would not move to a cabin in the forest with an outhouse :)

Up Next: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Book Thief, Part 2

I could not go to bed last night without finishing this book, so I ended up awake until almost 2:00 am, tears streaming silently down my face.  I almost decided to wake Aaron up just to give me a hug because I was so sad.  But instead I just wiped my face with the covers, went to sleep, and had horrible dreams.  This book is narrated by Death so death is everpresent.  The question I kept asking myself at the end is whether I would want to live if basically everyone I loved was dead.  Horrible to even think about, isn't it?  What else would you have to live for?  Books, I guess.

This author was able to really make me care about the characters, they seemed like such real people.  I think they were so likable because their lives were so difficult but they still managed to love each other and be funny, and that is what real people have to do.  I was a little skeptical at first of the choice to have Death as the narrator - it's such a human story, I thought maybe it should have been told by a human - but now I think it was really cool because it was a tool to see these characters from an omniscient birds eye view and to also fit in information about what was happening in the war and in the death camps.  One of the most beautiful things in the book is the word shaker story that Max writes for Liesel, and message in that story is that as long as there are some people who are willing to stand up for the oppressed, change will happen.  Hitler's downfall can start with just two people.  So the idea that Death could become so interested in following one little girl and telling her story fits perfectly with that theme.

This is definitely a book that will stick with me, although I think I might still be a little too sad to fully appreciate how much.  It actually made me think of The Hunger Games a lot as I was reading it, just in terms of the impact of war and totalitarianism on young people, but like The Hunger Games, it is so much more than just a war story.  I think what I will remember most about The Book Thief is its portrayal of Liesel's relationship with her foster parents and what it says about what makes a family - you don't have to be blood-related or even affectionate, you just have to be selfless.  Read this book, Saumensch!

Up next: Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson

Friday, October 22, 2010

The Book Thief, Part 1



I consider myself to be a good speller, and I know the i before e rule, but for some reason whenever I type the word thief, I want to spell it theif.  Why is that?  But other than that minor issue, I am loving this book.  I like the random bits of German that are thrown in because they make me feel good about how much German I actually retained from those 4 years in high school and 2 semesters in college.  But most of all, I like Rudy.  He is such a lovable guy - mischievous and reckless but also incredibly loyal and caring.   I like the main character Liesel also, but for some reason she doesn't seem as special as Rudy.  Liesel is tough and resilient enough that you want to cheer for her to keep going, but Rudy's character I think has more of a spark and seems more alive.  He's the sidekick character in the action movie who you know is not going to make it to the end because he's just a little too larger than life.  A kid who paints himself black with charcoal and runs around the park pretending to be Jesse Owens is probably going to have some problems in Nazi Germany, and the narrator tells us about 1/2 way through the book that Rudy is going to meet with a tragic end.  Obviously this made me sad and upset and a little angry, but as I continue reading, I think it's kind of interesting to know that a character is going to die before it actually happens.  Now I feel like I'm getting a chance to say goodbye whenever Rudy appears, or like he was given 3 months to live 6 months ago and keeps hanging on.  I'm sure I'll still cry though when it actually happens :(

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Our Mutual Friend, the 4th and final part

Done-zo!  I'm sure you're all tired of hearing about this book, but I am actually pretty sad that it's over.  I would really love to watch a reality show about these characters.  In typical Dickens fashion, the good guys win and get married and rich, the bad guys lose and move away or die, and all the loose ends are neatly tied up in the last 30 pages.  The afterword by J. Hillis Miller says that this book is about "money, money, money, and what money can make of life," and it's definitely true that the central conflict for almost all of the characters involves money - how to get it, how to keep it, how to marry it, how to show it off.  The obvious, and in my opinion a little overly pedantic, moral of the story is that the happiest characters are those who realize the value in things other than money, which characters of course end up being rewarded for their virtue with lots of money...But I think that's pretty true in life; it's the Goldilocks principle.  Too much or too little is not good, we're always the most comfortable with what is "just right."  The poor characters are generally uneducated and are unwelcome in most parts of society; but almost all of the rich characters are vapid and ridiculous.  So I say be grateful if you're in that happy medium that doesn't live in fear of the poorhouse, but it is also not forced to endure dinner parties with the Podsnaps and Lady Tippins.

The people who don't care about money in this book do have some beautiful relationships, which I think is a nice change from always thinking about Victorian-age British people being so oppressed.  The two young couples who end up married at the end are actually outwardly affectionate and make each other laugh and they have real conversations about their feelings and their lives, not just small talk about the weather or other appropriate topics.  Bella and her father have a very close relationship as well, and he shows her unconditional love and acceptance like a good parent, but I wonder what Freud would say about them because she pets him and kisses him and calls him her child a lot, which is weird.

And on a final note, whenever I read Dickens, I think about the people who had to read these stories in pieces as they were published as serials.  I need more instant gratification that that.  According to Wikipedia, it was originally published in 19 monthly installments.  Can you imagine starting a book and not being able to finish it for over a year and a half!  And it was being published as Dickens wrote it - he apparently was short or late or something on one of the installments because he was in some horrible train accident, but that's another story - so imagine how difficult that was as an author.  Apparently he tried to say about five months ahead of the publication schedule, but what if he had changed his mind about something?  This was his last completed novel, so I guess by that time he was just that good.

So that's it for our mutual friend.   If you read this blog, odds are good that you are nerdy enough to appreciate Dickens, so seriously, people, go read some Chuck D and get ready to laugh your head off.

Up next: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Our Mutual Friend, Part 3

Yep, still trucking along with Chuck D.  Currently on page 631 of 895.  The theme of the past 100 pages or so has been Anti-Semitism.  There is a Jewish man who is employed as a debt collector by one of the really bad characters.  This bad guy figures out which of his friends are in debt, and then secretly buys the debt and sends Mr. Riah, the Jewish man, out to collect it, so that the friends don't know who is actually behind it.  Awful, right?  And to make it worse, the whole time, the bad guy just harangues Mr. Riah about how is he convinced that he has secret hoards of money hidden away somewhere and is sure that Mr. Riah steals from him, because of course that's what Jewish people do, and just mercilessly makes fun of Mr. Riah in front of people.  And another character calls him Mr. Aaron because he thinks that's what all Jewish people are named.  I'm really hoping that this is just a devise by Dickens to show how bad the bad guy really is.  The actual portrayal of Mr. Riah is otherwise positive - he tutors two poor girls and helps one of them escape a dangerous situation - so I don't think that Dickens actually hated Jewish people.  Maybe Wikipedia will tell me.

The other interesting theme that I've noticed since my last post is that Dickens sets up these great similarities and contrasts between the young female characters.  In a lot of ways, they are foils for each other, but I think they have too much in common to really call them foils.  Bella is spoiled and is desperate to marry money so that she can get away from her tiny house and horrible mother, but she is totally devoted to her father, who is basically a long-suffering, sweet, cherubic lump.  Lizzie is industrious and self-sacrificing; she helps her brother run away so that he can go to school and takes care of their father even though he is mean and does not approve of education and is possibly a murderer; after her father dies, she moves in with and cares for this weird midget crippled child/woman, but then her world is basically turned upside down because two men are in love with her, and she has to run away (with the help of Mr. Riah) because she worries that the one man who she doesn't love will kill the other one who she actually does love.  Oh Chuck, I am counting on you to have Bella and Mr. Rokesmith and Lizzie and Mr. Wrayburn together in the end...

In other news - Barnes & Noble is having a 3-for-2 sale on their Classics series, so I picked out three:
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (more Dickens!)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot also by Dostoevsky
After Our Mutual Friend, I'm definitely going back to shorter books for a while, but I am looking forward to getting my Russian lit on eventually, maybe if we have a big snow this winter or something, and of course, I can't ever get enough Dickens.  (That's what she said?)

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Name Game Answers

Sorry I forgot to post this sooner!  For all (4, maybe?) of you who are dying to know how you did on the Dickens name game, here are the answers:

1-C
2-B
3-D
4-A
5-F
6-E

Our Mutual Friend, Part 2

This ish is getting good yall!  I'm currently on page 421 of 895, and Chuck has really kicked it up a notch in the last 100 pages.  This guy who supposedly was murdered at the beginning of the book is actually alive, but now he can't reveal his true identity because he will lose the woman he loves.  There's a couple that just got married because they both thought the other was rich, but actually they are both poor -- kind of twisted gift of the magi -- so now they're plotting revenge against the guy who set them up.  Another couple got rich because they inherited a fortune from the supposedly murdered guy's father, and they have just adopted a hilarious teenage orphan named Sloppy.  I mean, who besides Dickens or maybe a writer for Days of Our Lives could come up with that stuff?  I think that some people find Dickens to be kind of formulaic -- all of his books are just protagonist with some problem/obstacle, protagonist meets a bunch of funny, crazy people, some more stuff happens to highlight the plight of the working class, someone falls in love, protagonist inherits a bunch of money and everything turns out pretty much ok in the end -- but I love it, and even if there are certain similarities, who cares, it's still wonderful.  Sorry this is a short post and posting in general has been kind of sporadic lately... Too much Corporate Tax homework and other fun things going on and not enough time to read.  Bear with me!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Our Mutual Friend, Part 1

n381.jpg.jpeg



Whew, this is a long book.  Current progress: page 222/889.  And I have not been able to read as much as I had been recently b/c too much other crap to do, including a Federal Income Tax exam coming up soon...not as funny as Dickens.  I think Charles Dickens is hilarious, and I probably don't get half of his jokes.  To show you how fun he can be, we're going to play the Charles Dickens name game!!  Match the character name with their description: 

1. "With an immense obtuse drab face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up to the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs. Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patronized."
2. "So poor a clerk, through having a limited salary and an unlimited family, that he had never yet attained the modest object of his ambition: which was to wear a complete new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at one time.  His black hat was brown before he could afford a coat, his pantaloons were white at the seams and knees before he could buy a pair of boots, his boots had worn out before he could treat himself to new pantaloons, and by the time he worked round to the hat again, that shining modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of various periods."
3. "A dark gentleman.  Thirty at the utmost.  An expressive, one might say handsome face.  A very bad manner.  In the last degree contrained, reserved, diffident, troubled."
4. "a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea overcoat and carrying a large stick.  He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger's.  Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly inquiring grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows and broad-brimmed hat.  A very odd-looking old fellow altogether."
5. "an ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer who, as he spoke, fumbled at an old sodden fur cap, formless and mangy, that looked like a furry animal, dog or cat, puppy or kitten, drowned and decaying."
6. "this young rocking-horse was being trained in her mother's act of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting on.  But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an under-sized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother's head-dress and her father from head to foot."


A. Nicodemus Boffin
B. R. Wilfer
C. Lady Tippins
D. John Rokesmith
E. Georgiana Podsnap
F. Roger Riderhood

The point of this fun little exercise is to marvel at Dickens's powers of characterization.  The names always match the personalities so perfectly, and even every physical detail that he tells us about the characters reveals their true natures.  You read the person's name and physical description and you already know if they are good, bad, tragic, ridiculous, rich, poor.  I mean, could anyone named Uriah Heep have any redeeming qualities?  I just love that.  If Charles Dickens had written Twilight, none of us would be wondering why Edward and Jacob are so in love with Bella.  Much more Dickens to come, including trying to figure out why this book is titled Our Mutual Friend...

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Mockingjay!



Real or not real -- this book is awesome.  Real!  I thought it was the perfect ending to the trilogy, even though I want to cry that it is over.  It is not a completely happy ending, but there is no way that it could have been (or should have been) after everything that Katniss has been through.  Even aside from the psychological damage, in this book alone, Katniss is strangled, shot, burned, has a ruptured spleen, broken ribs, shrapnel in her leg...she literally lives in the hospital.  But she overcomes it all and finds love and eventually realizes that she can escape from the horrors by focusing on the good deeds and acts of kindness that she has witnessed.  This series gives you examples of every possible reaction to violence and war -- anger and lust for revenge, depression, tears, compassion, immobility, calm purposefulness in caring for the injured, self-sacrifice, courage, humor, addiction -- and raises so many questions.  Could you kill another to save your life or the life of someone you love?  When does saving many justify the killing of a few?  Should you always accept an eye for an eye?  Can you love two people at the same time?  What is not fair during war?  Is it ever acceptable to use others?  Are there fates worse than death?  It's like a philosophy course disguised as YA lit.  And while all these questions are being raised, you get a completely gripping story and unforgettable characters.  I can't think of many villains creepier than President Snow...he smells like blood and roses, which gives me the willies just thinking about it.  This series will be definitely be on my list of books to be reread like once a year - READ THEM NOW!

Up next - Because I have been so absorbed with THG, I feel like I need something very different that I know will be good.  So get ready for Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Catching Fire



Holy crap, this book is amazing!  I loved The Hunger Games, but this one just picks the story right back up and takes it to a new level.  It is kind of like the progression of the Harry Potter story where each book you get a bigger picture of this entire world that the author has created.  Don't want to give too much away, but there are some major twists and turns that I never saw coming.  You get to meet a lot of the former HG victors and it's really interesting to see how they're described and characterized to show how damaged they are.  The Peeta/Gale thing is seriously breaking my heart.

One thing I always look for in a series is how the author handles the generally inevitable and awkward recap of the previous book.  I think I've been fascinated by this ever since my Sweet Valley Twins days when chapter 2 of every book was the explanation of how Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield were identical twins with long honey-blonde hair and aquamarine eyes and matching dimples in their left cheeks, and even though they looked exactly alike, they were really very different b/c Elizabeth was the bookish type-a school journalist and Jessica was the outgoing social butterfly, but of course they were best friends too.  Oh and by the way, here's 5 more pages about their one-story ranch house, parents, older brother Steven, all their friends, Todd Wilkins, and a brief history of the Unicorn Club.  I never checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of these sections were just copied and pasted between the 150 different books in the series.  Obviously most authors don't take it to that extreme, but I just have no sympathy for people who might actually need that information.  If you don't read the books in order, then that's your fault and don't take up any of my time bringing you up to speed.  That being said, I thought that Suzanne Collins handled that aspect of the story very well - she tried to give info about what had happened in book 1 throughout instead of all at once, but there were definitely some places where it seemed forced.  We'll see what book 3 is like because it's up next - can't resist!

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Red Tent - Part 2

Well I finished the story of Dinah, and with apologies to Heidi, I don't think this one is a keeper.  I thought the final 2/3 was better than the first part, but for some reason it just didn't quite do it for me.  Reading this book is kind of like watching a flashback movie, except instead of going to the flashback, you just watch the old person telling the story the whole time.  Sure it's interesting, and you don't want to get up until you hear the end, but it doesn't really transport you.  Titanic without Leonardo DiCaprio.  It makes sense that that style would be used to emphasize the importance of storytelling in Dinah's history and that Dinah lives on through the females in her family passing on the story through the generations, but I think it makes it difficult to really build the other characters and there's not enough dialogue.

What a great story though - love, sex, murder, revenge.  Dinah is claimed in marriage by a prince who is so in love with her that he agrees to be circumcised as part of her bride-price along with his father and all of his male subjects.  That is true love.  I always thought Jacob was a heroic character in the Bible, but in this story he ends up ruining his daughter's life and living a cursed life until his miserable death.  Also, the brief account of Dinah in the Bible says that the prince rapes and defiles her, but in this story they fall in love at first sight and he promptly drags her to the bedroom where they do nothing but have sex and bath each other for about a week, which I hope for Dinah's sake is closer to the truth.

One big point I'll take away from this book is to be grateful to be a woman in 2010, rather than Genesis. Here are some things I can do that Dinah could not: get mad if my husband takes another wife, have drugs stronger than herb tonics during childbirth, eat meals with my husband, leave my house during my period...just to name a few.

Here is a good representative passage from when Dinah first sees and then has to cross the Euphrates as a child -
"I stood by the water's edge until the last trace of daylight had drained from the sky, and later, after the evening meal, I returned to savor the smell of the river, which was as heady to me as incense, heavy and dark and utterly different from the sweet, thin aroma of well water.  My mother, Leah, would have said I smelled the rotting grasses of the marsh and the mingled presence of so many animals and men, but I recognized the scent of this water the way I knew the perfume of my mother's body. ***
I had no time to be afraid.  The pack animals were at my back, forcing me ahead, so I entered the river and felt the water rise to my ankles and calves.  The current felt like a caress on my knees and thighs.  In an instant, my belly and chest were covered, and I giggled.  There was nothing to fear! ... I moved my arms through the water, feeling them float on the surface, watching the waves and wake that followed my gesture.  Here was magic, I thought.  Here was something holy. ***
Later that night, when I lay down to sleep among the women, I told my mothers what I had seen and felt by the side of the river and then in the water, during my crossing.  Zilpah pronounced me bewitched by the river god.  Leah reached out and squeezed my had, reassuring us both.  But Inna told me, 'You are a child of water.  Your spirit answered the spirit of the river.  You must live by a river someday, Dinah.  Only by a river will you be happy.'"

Up next: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Red Tent - Part 1



Sorry I forgot to tell you what was up next at the end of my last post.  I am currently about a third of the way through The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.  This book was recommended to me by two people: First, a nice lady at the book sale last year who was browsing right beside me, and second, Heidi Montag.  No, Heidi was not at the book sale, but she did tweet about this book and said it was great.  Guess she had plenty of time to read when she was recovering from all those plastic surgeries...

Anyway, I'm not so sure I would agree with Heidi that this book is great.  It is the story of Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob.  Dinah apparently gets a few sentences of fame in the Bible, and this is the rest of the story told in her voice.  I have just finished Part I, which is Dinah's retelling of the stories of her four mothers (well, she only really has one mother, but her father is married to her mother and her three aunts so she calls them all her mothers - weird).  There's not too much action in Part I - Jacob shows up at Dinah's grandfather's home, having apparently run away from his strained relations with his father Isaac and brother Esau, promptly marries the 4 sisters as soon as they've all started their periods, and then has 13 children.  So lots of sex (with women and with sheep - also weird) and lots of births.

I think the most interesting part of this book so far is the snapshot of life in biblical times - the food they ate, the medicine they used, the different gods and goddesses and idols they worshiped, the possessions they valued, family dynamics with polygamy.  I've been thinking for a while about trying to read the Bible because I never have, so this book has made me wonder how much we actually know about how people lived back then.  Another thing I loved is the family tree in the front to help keep track of all the different wives and whose kid is whose.  I always get excited when I start a book and it has a family tree, although sometimes it can be a bit of a spoiler.

This is the second book in a row that I've read with very strange names - Gad, Zilpah, Bilhah, Beor, Naphtali, Issachar, Re-nefer, Shalem, Oholibama - but for some reason, I don't find these names as distracting as the ones in The Hunger Games.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Hunger Games



I loved this book!!  It was over way too quickly, and I would be seriously depressed right now if there weren't two more books in the trilogy.  The concept of teenagers being forced to fight each other to the death on live TV is definitely disturbing, but it's introduced and handled almost casually - I think we're supposed to feel desensitized to the idea just like the people of Panem.  Life in the Capitol seems full of unreality - crazy costumes and makeup, affected speech, hovercrafts, genetically altered animals - and the people in the Capitol are so intent on their material comforts and are so separated from the districts both physically and morally that they celebrate the Hunger Games and cheer on the competitors as if it really was just a game.  Most of the people in District 12 seem to be just as unconcerned - the games are just another burden imposed by the Capitol that takes time away from their daily struggle for survival.  So as humans, how far does our capacity to accept atrocities go?  Is it our responsibility to keep our head down and try to protect the ones we love or to risk the consequences of speaking out?  Isn't it kind of sick and twisted to enjoy reading this book - does that mean you might enjoy watching the actual Hunger Games as well?

Peeta and Gale - the new Edward and Jacob.  Two good looking guys with different skill sets.  One represents danger, the other security.  A heroine possibly in love with both.  Sound familiar?  I'm pretty sure Katniss could kick Bella's ass any day of the week, but there are certain similarities in the love triangle situation.  Gale is Katniss's literal partner in crime and wants her to run away, and he makes dangerous criticisms of the Capitol.  Peeta also loves Katniss and feeds her and keeps her warm, and her life may depend on her ability to convince the world that she loves him, but Peeta can't "walk with a velvet tread" like Gale and Katniss can't stop thinking of Gale when she's with him.  I was always Team Edward all the way, but I think I prefer Peeta here.  He's self-sacrificing, witty, strong, emotionally available.  It's definitely a tough choice though and I care about these characters enough that I'm already nervous about it.

One final thought - the names in this book bothered me.  Katniss, Clove, Peeta, Thresh, Rue, Glimmer, Cinna...  I guess maybe the strange names were supposed to seem futuristic, but I just found them distracting.  There have got to be some cool futuristic names that don't seem quite as dumb...

Friday, September 3, 2010

Love in the Time of Cholera, Part 2

Lately I've gotten in this habit of looking up a book on Wikipedia after I finish reading it, just to see what other people have had to say and some of the most interesting entries I've found are quotes about the books from the authors.  I read Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh a few weeks ago.  According to Wikipedia, it was recognized by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the 100 best English language novels written since 1923; however, in a letter to Graham Greene 5 years after its publication, Waugh apparently said that he had re-read the novel and was appalled.  Isn't that great to think about an author re-reading their own work years after it was published?  Makes me think about the book in a whole new way, thanks to Wikipedia.

Anyway, I read the Wikipedia entry on LITTOC after I finished reading it this morning and learned that Marquez once said "you have to be careful not to fall into my trap."  This has been interpreted to mean that you shouldn't just look at this book as a love story about a woman who marries another and the man who waits for her for over 50 years.  Does Marquez think we should not be sucked into being sympathetic for this man who so badly wants to be loved?  It's a real testament to the skill with which he lays that trap that he can make us cheer when a character who craps in his pants and molests a 14-year-old relative (who later commits suicide) finally wins the heart of his true love.  But I think that cheering for Florentino should give us hope - if Fermina can love him, then no one is unworthy of love.  Love is redemptive - it might not wash away our faults but if we can find one person to love us, then our faults have no power.  And I think its important that Florentino does not find that love until he and Fermina are both old and near death.  Maybe sometimes we have to grow old before we are lovable.  Which brings us with beautiful irony back to the beginning of the book where Jeremiah de Saint-Amour has committed suicide by cyanide at age 60 out of his refusal to never grow old, leaving the scent of bitter almonds that inevitably reminds Dr. Urbino of unrequited love.  GGM is my hero.

P.S. According to Wikipedia, the 2007 movie version of LITTOC was horrible and did not do the book justice at all.  I have trouble believing that anything with Javier Bardem could be that bad.  Anyone seen it?

Up next: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which comes highly recommended by my friend smgA.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

New Purchases

Forgot to share the news that I went shopping at Books-A-Million today.  I bought the 2nd and 3rd books of the Hunger Games trilogy and Wally Lamb's new book The Hour I First Believed.  Couldn't resist...

Love in the Time of Cholera, Part I



I have been meaning to read this book for years, and I finally decided that it was time after watching the movie Serendipity, which is without question one of the best five movies ever made.  Lars the Swedish new age wind musician guy, Eugene Levy as the uptight salesperson, John Cusack looking all shaggy and adorable, Jeremy Piven before he ate all that mercury and became an a-hole, Molly Shannon...doesn't get better than that.

It's hard to come up with one word to describe this book because it is beautiful, disgusting, funny, heartbreaking, disturbing all at the same time... For example: "But first he enjoyed the immediate pleasure of smelling a secret garden in his urine that had been purified by lukewarm asparagus."  As I read this book, I keep thinking about the coexistence of the beautiful and the ugly.  The story takes place in this old Caribbean city full of mango trees, exotic birds, and ocean views, but also suffering from poverty and war and teeming with pathogens.  Dr. Urbino is at times a respectable doctor and loving husband and at times an insufferable and shallow bore.  Florentino writes love poems and cherishes this pure adulation of his longtime love, and he also has seriously gross personal habits and has indiscriminate sex with "little birds" who he hunts down in the streets.  No character is completely likable, but no one is completely unredeemable either.  But that's life isn't it?  No city is totally clean, no relationship is always harmonious, no one who you love is as great as you hope they are.  However, there's still plenty of beauty to go around, and all you have to do is read Marquez to find some: 
"She put her palette down on a chair and tiptoed to the window, her ruffled skirt raised to keep it from dragging on the floor. She wore a diadem with a jewel that hung on her forehead, and the luminous stone was the same aloof color as her eyes, and everything in her breathed an aura of coolness."

"She clung to her husband.  And it was just at the time when he needed her most, because he suffered the disadvantage of being ten years ahead of her as he stumbled alone through the mists of old age, with the even greater disadvantage of being a man and weaker than she was.  In the end they knew each other so well that by the time they had been married for thirty years they were like a single divided being, and they felt uncomfortable at the frequency with which they guessed each other's thoughts without intending to, or the ridiculous accident of one of them anticipating in public what the other was going to say.  Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy.  It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity.  Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore."


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

miss_julia.jpg


So this is the first book that I have read since starting this blog - Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind by Ann B. Ross, recommended by my mom, who loves books about southern women.  She was a little worried about giving it to me because it has a not too flattering portrayal of the Presbyterian church and Miss Julia's money-hungry pastor and my father-in-law happens to be a Presbyterian minister, but I don't think he would be offended.  More an indictment of small town gossip and politics than anything specifically Presbyterian.  Lots of funny, albeit kind of stereotypical characters and a charming southern story about a widow who finally becomes her own person and finds a new family after the death of her husband.  Cutesy stories like this are not my favorite, but it was very entertaining and did make me think about some deeper questions, especially why are we so willing to let ourselves be changed by relationships?  Miss Julia was a "shrinking violet" during much of her life - controlled by her father, then by her husband and her pastor, and always subject to the expectations of the community -  and it took her husband's death to force her to be independent and be able to realize that she didn't have to keep doing what men told her to.  And even while she's supposed to be becoming this steel magnolia, she allows herself to be persuaded by the pastor that she's suffering from nymphomania (ha!) and is terrified that the town will find out.  So was she lucky that her husband died?  Hopefully there aren't many women out there who would feel the same sense of relief that Miss Julia seems to have if their husbands died.  Should we judge Miss Julia because she wasn't able to speak her mind sooner or because she was so dependent on her husband that she couldn't?  My husband (who is a wonderful saint of a man) and I try to have an equal partnership and make decisions together, but there is definitely a part of me that breathes that sigh of relief when I can defer to him -- it's not my responsibility to get the oil changed or pay the bills or make that call to the repairman or plan the trip because I have a husband who can do it.  However, I also know that I could do (and have done) those things if I had to.  Wouldn't my life be easier if I were Miss Julia and only had to worry about what to bring to the next potluck at the church or what kind of new curtains to buy?  If Miss Julias are a dying breed, will girls in the next generation be even less concerned with gender roles than I am?  Wouldn't it be interesting to read a book where you didn't know the gender of the characters?

Up next - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I see you, LRC!)

The most wonderful time of the year


Supporting a habit like mine means you have to have a source for the goods.  You have to know where to get the good stuff and get it at a good price.  This is why I am an absolute sucker for the 3-for-2 table at Borders and the 4-for-3 bargain books at Amazon.  However, as good a deal as those are, nothing beats a used book sale.  In my hometown of Winston-Salem, a wonderful group called the Shepherd's Center has an annual book sale, and it is literally like Christmas and my birthday all in one.  Tables and tables of $0.50 or $1 paperbacks.  Get 25 of the $0.50 books for $10.  Get 25 of the $1 books for $20.  That's 50 books for $30...blows my mind.  Old, torn-up, wrinkly books, practically mint condition new books, fat books, thin books, yellowed books, trashy books, classic books, and everything in between.  And the smell...it's like heaven.  Your mucus membranes start to dry out after a while because of all the dust, but who cares.  It does take some effort to weed through the romance novels and John Grisham (no offense to John Grisham, I love him - I am a lawyer after all - I just already have all his books), but I think that's part of the reward.  This past year I didn't get to go until the last day of the 3-day sale and I was a little worried that all the really good stuff would be gone, but no...I found John Irving and James Michener and Belva Plain and Dick Francis and Robert Ludlum galore.  I think I was there for about 3 hours and had to send my dad to the car with books twice because I couldn't carry everything.

This picture (taken with crappy iPhone camera, sorry...) is of the to-be-read bookcase in my office at home that is filled with book sale bounty, as well as other bargain books and a few hardcovers that I broke down and bought because I just couldn't wait.  Yep, I read all the time and I still have this many books that I haven't gotten to yet.  I sit and look at this shelf and I'm seriously almost blinded.  It makes me happy to know that I have them to enjoy, but also a little sad because I can't just go in a room and not come out until I've finished them.  I want to be reading all of these books at once and at the same time, I want to have already read them and already know them.  And that I think is the definition of booklust.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Legacy of the Red Bag

So, I really like books, like a lot.  I always have.  When I finish a book, I close it gently and lay my hands on the cover.  I don't exactly pray over the book, but I take a moment to linger in the atmosphere it has created around me, watching characters transform back into misty ideas and thinking of the words or images that will always transport me back to that book from now on.  I see this ritual as my way of offering thanks for what that book has given me (and every book gives us something), as well as an exercise in self control because it restrains me from putting the finished book aside and immediately opening another, which would seem a bit obscene or disrespectful.  But having had that moment with my new fully realized book friend, I can never wait too long to get my hands on the next one.

It was my mother who made me this way.   Some of my earliest memories are going to the public library with my mom and older brother.  We had this red canvas tote bag with white stripes down the middle, and every week I got the pleasure of combing the shelves in the children's section and filling up the red bag with as many books as I could fit.  I would line up dolls and stuffed animals in the den and read to them, being sure to show them all the pictures on each page just like the librarian at story time.  I was like a dog that goes berzerk whenever anyone says "car ride" or "treat" - I would see that red bag and start drooling and running around in circles.  Mom also read to us every night -- Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, all the classics that every mother should read to her children.  We would lay in my bed, Mom in the middle, and I just loved the sound of her voice and the way she rubbed her toes together while she read, crossing one foot over the other and strumming them back and forth.  Mom would tell you that she got me hooked on books even earlier than that. Before I could walk or talk, she would sit for hours with me and a book, usually one by Richard Scarry, in my lap, not trying to get me to understand the story, but just pointing to words and pictures and talking to me - Where's the ball?  Point to the red car.  How many apples are there?  I'm no psychologist but I'm pretty sure that kind of thing is good for child development.  Pretty soon I was devouring chapter books on my own, and by the time I got to Mrs. Shore's first grade class at Speas Elementary School, I thought I was hot sh*t.  I became locked in a bitter contest with two boys in my class to see who could read the most books.  It was a happy day when Omar got the measles and fell out of the race.

All of these experiences mean that today I am a 27-year-old self-diagnosed bookluster, whose love for the written word interferes with daily life more often than I should probably be comfortable with.  I've started this blog to see if I might enjoy writing about books as much as I enjoy reading them and if anyone cares about what I have to say.  So I will be posting about the books I read as I read them, and maybe about anything else I feel like talking about.  Please keep reading!