Frustrated English Teacher

Reunited--Brit Chick Lit Extravaganza

2010-04-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, well, maybe not extravaganza, since it was only two books, but while I was away on vacation last week, I opted not to take anything "heavy" with me and instead took books by two of my absolute favorite authors--Anna Maxted and Marian Keyes. I first fell in love with them during the Bridget Jones' Diary explosion of the late 1990's; British chick lit became my #1 go to for reading. The dry British sarcasm and the much-longed for setting of London and its surroundings drew me back time and again until I'd inhaled everything they'd written to date.

After becoming a mother and turning my sights to first every book on parenting available and then to the likes of Jodi Picoult and Phillipa Gregory for my more mindless (read: enjoyable but highly formulaic and predictable) reading, I lost sight of Maxted and Keyes, only recently discovering that they had both published again since I last picked them up. So I grabbed This Charming Man & A Tale of Two Sisters at the library before heading off to Hawaii and devoured both books by the pool over the course of 3-4 days.

What I love about these two authors is that while they definitely have a Bridget Jonesian breezy chick lit feel to them, they also tackle some straight-to-the-heart issues that impact women in real and often painful ways. There are strained familial relationships, infidelities, fertility issues, alcoholisms, depressions, career turmoils. Each author creates characters who are fully fleshed out, compelling and utterly believable. They write the type of books that you fall into.

Endings with these two, admittedly tend towards the almost unrealistically happy, no loose ends remaining and perfect satisfaction for all involved. But really, when you're on vacation, isn't that what you want? And while it's not entirely 100% believable, it's also not without precedent--all of Shakespeare's comedies end, regardless of how outlandish, with happiness, marriage, celebration, the fulfillment of the main characters' wishes.

A Tale of Two Sister, by Anna Maxted, chronicles the lives of Cassie and Lisbet, who, though sisters and friends, could not be more different. Raised by bumbling and emotionally closed-off parents (this seems to be a running theme through most British chick lit), the ramifications of their upbringing lead them to one miscommunication (or failure to communicate) after another. Then when Lisbet, who has no desire to become a mother, finds herself pregnant, after Cassie and her husband have been trying for upwards of two years---things for the sisters start to fall apart.

I had a hard time with this book, much as I enjoyed it. Having recently put an end to my own disappointing journey through infertility, watching the lives of these two women play out was particularly painful for me at times. The sadness and sense of loss that weaves through the novel was particularly striking to me, but in a way gave me a small sense of closure on my own journey, although it in very little way resembled Maxted's story. Watching characters work their way through the tangled emotional web of infertility and the depression that comes with it, making you a stranger to yourself and others, reassured me that I was, in some small way, not alone.

Marian Keyes' This Charming Man, though a quick and at times, hilarious, read, also tackles some serious issues--most notably domestic violence. Each chapter starts with an excerpt from some later point in the book, a tableau of abuse, which spreads out like an undercurrent through the lives of the main characters. These shocking images wind their way through the stories of four women, two of them sisters, but all of them connected through their experiences with one man named Paddy de Courcy, a leader of the New Ireland political party.

Keyes' four narrators are beautifully distinctive, not only in their experiences, but in their voices. I love the way Keyes creates character through voice--multiple narrators without highly specific narrative styles tend to fall flat, in my reading experience, so I loved that you could tell each woman's voice within the first line of their chapter. Each woman is dealing with her own relationship to Paddy de Courcy (whether it was in the past or present) and the turmoil the relationship has introduced into her life--depression, infidelity, anxiety, alcoholism, etc. For "light" reading, there were times when it felt particularly heavy, but at the end, incredibly satisfying.

I'm so glad I reconnected to these authors and almost "squeeee'd" outloud when I saw that Maxted has another book I was unaware of, called Rich Again, and that Keyes just published The Brightest Star in the Sky earlier this year. They're going straight to the top of my list...

Eden and Happiness

2010-03-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's kind of a relief when I don't love a book. Sometimes I worry that I don't have very discriminating tastes because I so often LOOOOOVE whatever I'm reading. So when I finish a book and think, "meh. It was all right," a little part of me wipes my forehead and says, "phew!"

Eve, by Elissa Elliot is a good book, but it did not wow me or knock my socks off. It was an easy and quick enough read, but it will not stick with me. The story of the first woman (well, really, the first family), it had the potential to be an extraordinary book, not just good. Starting on Eve's deathbed and then flashing back through her years in Eden and her family's life in exile, the book bounces back and forth between several narrators and that's part of how the book lost me. I love a book with multiple narrators. But not when the book is titled for one character and subtitled: A Novel of the First Woman.

It is persnickity, I know. But it irritated me that I expected to read an entire book from Eve's perspective and in her voice, but instead I read a few chapters from her point of view and exponentially more chapters from the various voices of her daughters.

I was also disappointed that Elliott never touches the subject of Lilith, Adam's "first wife." According to lore, Lilith makes several appearances in Adam's life and it seemed to me like potentially fabulous fodder for Eve's drama. But nope. Not a mention, unless I was nodding off at some point and missed it, (which, to be fair, I read at night and sometimes I am a bit noddy--I'm not dissing Elliott).

There is plenty of existential angst and marital angst and sibling rivalry angst and mother/daughter angst and how-to-exist-peacefully-with-those-non-Edenite-city-dwellers angst, and it's interesting. And I know I shouldn't blame the book for not being what I expected it to be. But I kind of do.

I'm also reading:

Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project is the memoir of one woman's quest to spend a year of her life searching for and more fully appreciating the happiness in her life. It's inspired me to go through the next 12 months, one (or 3) "resolution" at a time, in an attempt to live a more mindful and happy life. It's not phenomenal literature, a tiny bit dry at points, but the subject matter and the journey is inspiring and I'm loving it.

In my search for a greater understanding of happiness (per the Happiness Project thing), I've decided to read different books about happiness--happiness in different cultures, raising happy kids, different philosophers' thoughts on how to live a truly happy life. No worries, I'm not looking to find some sort of "how to be happy" self-help recipe. I'm just curious what the idea of happiness means to other people.

Eric Weiner's book, The Geography of Bliss, is an entertaining journey. A self-proclaimed "grump," Weiner travels the world to find, as he says, "the happiest place on earth." For a grump, he's pretty freaking hilarious (although he is pretty sarcastic, which is the grump's sense of humor, after all). He visits a variety of countries, interviews citizens about how happy they are (or aren't) and picks apart the myths of happiness in each place.

I've been looking at this book since it was published and I'm so glad that I found it in my library and that, yay!!!, it fits into my happiness project, thereby making it, clearly, a MUST read! Yay!

Still Frustrated

2010-03-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

Mostly because I can't seem to keep up with this blog. Not sure what my issue is--perhaps I am so hopped up to talk about books that I feel intimidated by the greatness of some of the stuff I'm reading and fear that whatever I have to say about it won't be "enough"--insightful enough, written well-enough, whatever.

But the only option other than forging ahead with the blog is giving up the blog and I'm really not willing to do that. If there's one thing I know about myself it is that I am inherently compelled to talk about books. And when I'm not writing this blog, I tend to want to pin down anyone who makes eye contact in a "what have you read recently? Was it good? Let me tell you about what I just read....." sort of invasion of personal mental space. Today a girl friend of mine asked me to pick out a good book for her from my collection and in my excitement to share a book with a friend and SQUEEEE!!! potentially talk about it with her, I barraged her with questions about what type of book she'd like, what genre, what type of stories---historical fiction? family dynamics? memoir?! WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?! I'VE GOT IT ALL AND I CAN'T WAIT TO SHHHHHHHHARE!!! I am fairly certain that as she chuckled and said, "really, just a book," she was really thinking, "What have I gotten into with this one??? I need to get new friends." When one of my best friends came to visit for a week last month, we talked briefly about books and I ended up emerging from my room one day with a stack of books for her to "borrow" (she lives on the other side of the country, so "borrow" really means "have" in this case). She laughed at me and chose a couple of the best ones, because really, she'd need an entire suitcase dedicated to the mini-library I'd selected for her.

I like to share books. Because I like to talk about them. And since I am hard-pressed to find any nerds here as nerdy as myself, I find I will have to pour myself back into this blog and share my books with you, you lucky interweb.

I won't go into full detailed reviews of all the books I've read since December 1st, but I will share with you a list of and a few thoughts about the ones I've really enjoyed in the past few months. I am also planning to write here at least every Wednesday.

How the Light Gets In, by M.J. Hyland, is the story of an Australian girl who leaves her impoverished home to become an exchange student in a wealthy Chicago suburb. She struggles to fit into her new "family" while bristling against the superficiality of her new environment. It is almost as though Hyland envisioned Holden Caulfield, the angst-ridden teen, dropped into the middle of the film American Beauty, where everything looks to be perfect, but is actually a hot mess waiting to explode. The results are tragic, as Lou comes face-to-face with the disillusionment of her dream and the consequences of her actions (and the actions of those around her). I have read some unflattering reviews of this book, but I think most of them miss the mark; this book is not just about Lou and her self-destructive behavior. Just like Salinger in Catcher in the Rye, Hyland seems to be lamenting the isolation and angst of being a teenager in a world that seems to set you up for failure.

As a New Englander and a mother, Strout's Olive Kitteridge struck such a chord in me. A series of stories strung together to create a cohesive novel with Olive Kitteridge as it's main character, the book creates an image of Crosby, Maine during a time of transition. The theme of New England stoicism runs through so much of the book, with so many characters opting for stern silence rather than expressing their feelings, that at times I felt viscerally uncomfortable reading it. Having been brought up with that veneer of "every is fine," even when everything is falling to pieces, it was difficult to watch characters swallow their feelings and allow life to happen to them. And it was epic when a character truly spoke his/her mind. The book is so achingly beautiful--Strout's development of the characters and the relationships between them, some deeply painful--like Olive's relationship with her only child--I found it almost impossible to put down.

I adore Barbara Kingsolver. From Bean Trees to the Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer, her books, her gift for character, theme, description, all of it, has mesmerized me. It was everything in me not to snatch this book up the day it was released (it had been almost TEN years since she published a work of fiction; I was dying!)

So I was a bit frantic when I wasn't drawn into the story on the firs page. Or the 20th. Or the 50th. The story of Harrison William Shepherd, The Lacuna chronicles his life from 1929 to 1951. Shuttled back and forth between his Mexican mother and his American father, Harrison writes everything down in his notebooks. A boy of seemingly little consequence in the world, Harrison finds himself in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, serving as a domestic and eventually, a confidant. His path also crosses that of Leon Trotsky as Trotsky seeks refuge in the Rivera-Kahlo household. After his return to the United States, these connections find him embroiled in one of the most tumultuous debacles of American history, McCarthyism.

The book was hard to get into. It took about 100 pages before I was completely enrapt and could not put the book down. The symbolism of the lacuna, in the book an underwater cave, but more generally, a gap or missing piece, is developed from the first page to the last so exquisitely that Kingsolver had me fooled up until the end. I literally gasped when I got to her final twist. It is not The Poisonwood Bible, I sincerely believe that Kingsolver wouldn't have wanted it to be--this book is entirely different from anything Kingsolver's written before and is amazing and worthy in its own right.

I adored The Red Tent by Diamant, so I was thrilled to pick up Day After Night. Diamant has a gift of creating female characters and weaving them into complicated relationships and forging their bonds through stories of adversity and salvation. The experiences of four women in the British-operated Palestinian interment camp after the Holocaust (hello, did NOT know those even existed--history's untold stories are vast and disturbing, people! Read about the camps here), the novel is beautifully written and emotionally compelling. Each woman's tale is different from the other--one spent time in a concentration camp, one was hidden in the Dutch countryside, one was a Polish Zionist fighting with the resistance and one survived occupied Paris using her wits and her body.

The women's stories demonstrate how every person's experience of the Holocaust is unique and how they deal with the aftermath is equally individual. But regardless of the differences of their own stories, each woman shows remarkable strength and resolve in enduring the next step of their journey towards freedom, from their pasts and from the Atlit detention center.

Oh my goodness. If you even remotely liked The Time Traveler's Wife, you HAVE to go get Niffenegger's second book, Her Fearful Symmetry. I've never read anyone who can dip into the supernatural and make it seem so effortless, creating a story so believable, even though it is utterly against the rules of time and space, that the reader can absolutely suspend her disbelief for the duration of the novel. This is the second time Niffenegger has done this.

I believe she's able to do it because she creates characters who are so utterly compelling and captivating that you are willing to take the journey wherever it goes in order to get to know them better, even when it wanders boldly outside of the boundaries of our widely accepted notion of realistic possibilities.

Set outside of London's Highgate Cemetery, the novel is the story of two generations of twins and the ways in which they twist their identities around each other and what happens when they attempt to extricate themselves from their twins' grasps. One of the elder twins, Elspeth Noblin, dies and leaves her estate, including an apartment just outside of Highgate Cemetery, to her nieces, her sister's twin daughters, whom she has never met. Julia & Valentina, the second generation of twins, arrive in London, move into her Elspeth's apartment. As an only child, I've always been fascinating by sibling relationships, especially those of twins; perhaps that's why I was unable to put this book down. I at once wished for the connection these women had and felt utterly grateful not to feel the responsibility and connection to another human being that could so sap my sense of freedom and individuality.

I am hesitant to reveal anything further because the book is just a marvel, in my eyes, of twists and turns. Just, really, read the book.

***** ***** *****

Okay, so that gets us pretty much caught up; there are a couple other books I've read recently that I might add into later reviews, but I think that's enough for now?!

Happy reading!

Some books I read...

2009-12-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know. Sigh. Not so much with the NaBloPoMo on this blog. I find that trying to keep up with three blogs takes away from my reading time and that's something I've never been willing to sacrifice, so that's just how that has to be. But anyway, I read some books.

Julia Glass's I See You Everywhere fascinated me because I'm an only child and this story revolves around the complicated relationship between two very different sister. One conscientious and relatively grounded, the other free spirited and rebellious, they are paradoxically miss-matched and intertwined at the same time (as the cover image of the book suggests by the shared woven braid).

The book spans 25 years and the one thing that really detracted from the story for me was the way in which the narrative jumped. I love a novel that spans decades and is told through multiple narrators, but for some reason it made this book difficult to fully sink into.

I found that I didn't truly love either Louisa or Clem as individuals, but I did love them together. Perhaps that is part of Glass's overall goal, to illustrated the interconnectedness and the interdependency the sisters had to comprise their full character. Indeed two starkly opposite sides of a whole, they together create one well-rounded entity. Alone, they are each "too much" of what they are.

While I don't think I loved it as much as I did Glass's first novel, Three Junes, which to me was resonating down to my very core. But I See You Everywhere is definitely a worth-while read and a beautiful, painful, sometimes funny, ultimately tragic exploration of the sibling relationship.

Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum will never leave me. The story of the Schlemmer women (mother Anna and daughter Trudy) is a richly told and agonizingly raw account of how people both survive unthinkable cruelty and inhumanity, and how those who come after try to make peace with the knowledge that they come from a people who perpetrated such atrocities as the Holocaust on their fellow human beings.

Anna Schlemmer, the daughter of an ambitious German with his sights set on impressing the leaders of the Nazi party, disgraces her father by trying to hide a Jew in the crawl space of their home. Upon being found out, she flees, pregnant with the Jew's child, to become an apprentice in a small bakery. There she gives birth to her child and covertly works with the bakery owner, Matilde, to smuggle bread to the prisoners at Buchenwald, smuggling messages from the prisoners out to the resistance.

During a turn of events that claims the life of the baker owner, Anna is visited by the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald, who she believes will kill her and Trudy. Instead he takes a sick fascination in her and Anna, her sense of self unraveled to its very barest, knows what she must do to ensure her own survival and that of her daughter.

Now an old woman, Anna, has never spoken of the Obersturmfuhrer or of her life in Germany. Her daughter, Trudy, is now a middle-aged, divorced, college-professor. In her desire to further understand her mother's experience of the Holocaust (she has no information from Anna, save an old picture she found of herself, Anna and the Nazi officer), Trudy undertakes a series of oral history interviews with Germans willing to talk about their experiences in WWII. Through her interviews she encounters a variety of individuals with very different recollections of what they did and didn't know at the time of the Holocaust--some interviews renew Trudy's hope in humanity's goodness; others dash it to pieces.

As Trudy gains a deeper insight to what her mother endured, and what she accomplished, during the Holocaust, the story, and Anna's legacy come full-circle in a way that, if the books were not so beautifully and brilliantly written, *might* seem a bit hokey. But Blum's ability to weave characters with such coherence and integrity gives the story unquestionable believability.

I haven't read a book in a long time that touched me as deeply as this one.

The New Yorkers by Cathleen Schine is an entertaining look at a neighborhood of characters, all linked in one way or another by their affection for, or loathing of, dogs. Very sort of Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, but in New York instead of San Francisco, and with more dogs.

The characters represent a plethora of personalities and mindsets: the middle-aged divorced man, the hopeless romantic "spinster" teacher, the aimless gen-Xer and the heart-broken perfectionist, to name a few. Each is lost in some way and is found through their connection to a canine companion and in some cases, each other.

Although it was not soul-touching in the same way as Those Who Save Us was for me, The New Yorkers was an entertaining and sweet look at the lives of ordinary people, going about their days in the busiest city in the world, trying not to get, or stay, lost in the shuffle, and finding a sense of self, purpose and joy in the dogs who love them unconditionally. Perhaps it is that, the sense of unconditional love, that Schine is commenting on in this novel. As humans, we rarely receive that kind of unwavering devotion from those other humans around us--maybe it is why so many of us feel so lost so much of the time.

Speaking of blogs....

2009-11-07T19:15:00.001-08:00

Not that we were, but since you're here reading mine, I'm guessing you probably know of a few other good book blogs (erm, a few good book blogs. saying "other" implies mine is good. Ha!)

I'm still reading I See You Everywhere and it's growing on me. I'm actually off to bed now because I'm too tired to even stare at the TV screen. Perhaps I'll squeeze in a few pages before my brain checks out completely and find myself more invested.

It's always disheartening when a book doesn't suck you in immediately, but how much of that is the writer's issue versus your own overblown sense of expectation. I feel that way about John Irving; since reading Prayer for Owen Meany, I have just not felt any of his work resonate in the same way. Not his fault. I just fell so deeply in love with that Owen Meany's story that nothing else Irving has created since has struck as much of a chord with me.

So, good book blogs? thanks!

I'm Just Not That Into You...

2009-11-06T21:46:00.001-08:00

I love Julia Glass. Her debut novel, Three Junes, was one of the best books I've ever read. I KNOW I will love this book. I'm sure of it. But I cannot get into it.

I started it three nights ago. I got to page 14 before I fell asleep. Last night when I picked up on page 14, I had no idea what I was reading, so I went back to the first page and started over. As I get ready to go to bed and read now, I am trying to remember what I read last night. Something about an old aunt dying, a trip home and tension between two sister, whose personalities and lives are completely opposite of one another's. That's all I've got.

I am always so disappointed when I don't feel connected to a book immediately; especially if it is by an author I adore. I heard Julia Glass speaking on an NPR show recently and just fell in love. So I feel like I'm letting her down by not immediately engaging with her work the way I did with Three Junes. Which really is weird--I mean, do I, as a reader, have any obligation whatsoever to the author? Probably not.

But I hope when I write tomorrow I can report that somewhere on page 15 or 25, I hit my stride and find myself immersed in the world Glass is creating on the page.

In Praise of Bookstores

2009-11-05T19:22:00.001-08:00

I hate to admit it, but I am a flat out sucker for a Borders or Barnes and Noble. I want to be all "down with the big book chains!!" in a righteous Meg Ryan "You've Got Mail" kind of way. I wish I was in love with "The Book Shop on the Corner," but give me a "Fox's Books" type of store, please. Yes, I'm hanging my head in shame.

This morning, as I wandered through Borders with my grande chai (for the first time this season, in a holiday cup!!! Yay!!), I decided to call one of my best friends, Tress. She picked up her end, and as I meandered through the newly configured holiday-sized stacks, we chatted about our lives. What was up in them, and down in them.

As the conversation got more in depth (you know how girlfriends are, right? Well, if not, read Wednesday Sisters), I found myself sitting in the self-help section--IRONY--in a well-worn, utterly comfortable leather chair. Tress and I batted ideas back and forth, exchanged some deep thoughts (ha!) and had some laughs. I may as well have been in my own living room, for how comfortable I felt sipping my tea and having an intensely personal conversation with one of my closest (yet farthest) friends.

On Tuesdays, I head to Barnes and Noble after my WW meeting. I sit in their cafe, reading blogs, writing in my blogs, drinking my tea and enjoying my place in the world. It is another home away from home.

No worries, I do more than chat on the phone and hog free wi-fi; I give these stores oodles of business. But it's not that I can run in to the store, find a book and buy it that makes these places so special to me. It's the sense of hominess I feel there, and that I can go into any Borders or Barnes and Noble, pretty much anywhere in the country (world?) and feel "oh, this is familiar. This makes me feel safe."

NABLOPOMO FAIL. But a kick ass book

2009-11-04T19:10:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know. Three days into NABLOPOMO and I blew it on this blog. Well, in my defense, I was rocking a big fat sinus infection and was hopped up on Robitussin with codeine; so chances are I wouldn't have had much of any coherence or interest last night.

I am *this* close to being finished Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen. I have so enjoyed Janzen's voice, humor and brutal honesty as she examines her roots, her rebellion against those roots and the eventual appreciation and respect (at a distance, of course) she finds for the belief system that in so many ways shaped her life.

Throughout the hilarious style of her writing--the endearing, adoring way she pokes fun of her mother, the sarcastic and self-deprecating multiple-choice quiz boxes, and her development of her very own 12-step program--she interlaces insightful and deeply philosophical snippets of the person she truly is, beyond the self-effacing "I'm such a goofball! How could I be anything else with this life?! Ha Ha!" image that so much of her book portrays. Take this passage, for example,

"But I have come to believe that virtue isn't a condition of character. It's an elected action. It's a choice we keep making, over and over, hoping that someday we'll create a habit so strong it will carry us through our bouts of pettiness and meanness. Until recently I dismissed Niccolo Machiavelli's brutish philosophy that the ends justify the means, but lately I've begun to question that. If in the service of choosing virtuous behavior we need to practice some odd belief, where's the harm? Don't we all have our weird little rehearsals and rituals? Sure, from a ratiocinative point of view, the intervention of angels on the wall seems an unlikely way to achieve virtue in praxis. Or take the case of the nuns. Insisting that you are the bride of Christ is pretty wacky, in my opinion. So is the bizarre corollary, giving up sex on purpose. Yet these choices, odd as they are, harm nobody. It seems to me that there are many paths to virtue, many ways of creating the patterns of behavior that result in habitual resistance to human badnness....

At this stage of my life, I am willing to accept not only that there are many paths to virtue, but that our experiences on these varied paths might be real. We can't measure the existence of supernatural beings any more than we can control our partners. And anyhow, I don't want to measure supernatural beings or control my partner. What I want to measure, what I can control, is my own response to life's challenges," 175-176)

But when she's not waxing philosophical? Freaking hilarious. I have about 10 pages left to read and I'm bummed. I wish this book were 500 pages long.

Comfort Read

2009-11-02T20:23:00.000-08:00

For one of the two book clubs I've joined, I read Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. In keeping with the reading public's recent love affair with all things cooking (thank you, Julie Powell and Julia Child), this memoir is about how Reichl's life was shaped by food.

One part cookbook, one part travel guide, one part family drama, the book is entertaining on many fronts. Reichl's search for connection and community resonates with this reader, having found myself moving at a pretty steady clip for the past few years.

Reichl's love affair with food began not with an adoration over the one perfect dish, but from the concern for the well-being of anyone who came in contact with her mother's cooking. Apt to throw all things into the stew pot at once for dinner (including meat past it's safe-to-eat-by date), Reichl's mother is the foil against which Reichl's journey is set. Just as some children of Republicans rebel by becoming liberal Democrats, or children of sheltering teetotalers rebel by sneaking out of the house and binge drinking, Reichl rebelled against her mother's disastrous kitchen creations by developing a love affair with good food, food created with love and with history, not just tossed together from half-rotten ingredients as a backdrop for her manic-depression.

Good book. Entertaining, super fast read. I'm not sure it's one that will stick with me forever, but I'm finding more and more that memoir fascinates me; how someone picks the theme of their life and the moments that illustrate those themes is thrilling to me.

I'm Still Reading.

2009-11-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure what has kept me away from this blog for THREE months. I've been reading. And reading some fantastic books. But for some reason, I've ignored this blog. I'm sure there's some deeply rooted psychological reason, but eh. I'm not going to sweat it. I'm just going to jump right back in.

I won't bother going back through everything I've read in the past few months right now. But as I have committed to participating in NaBloPoMo with all three of my blogs, I might revisit books I've read since July at some point.

Since I last wrote, I moved to a new location: from Los Angeles to Northern California. Which means making new friends. Again. This time I've decided to attempt to make new friends through literature. I've joined two reading groups that I will meet with for the first time this month. Hopefully one will resonate with me and I'll find a little place for myself. If not, I might attempt to start my own book club. Because seriously. A girl has GOT to talk about books.

I expect that this month, in addition to talking about what I've read in the past few months, I will write more about each book I'm reading, rather than waiting to complete a book and talk about it in its entirety. Maybe I'll write about a character, or a passage, or something that stuck out in my mind from the night before's reading. I'm not sure. Of all three blogs, this will be the most challenging one to keep up with.

Right now I'm reading Mennonite In a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen. It is truly hilarious and poignant and wonderful so far. Janzen is in one breath hilariously self-deprecating as she talks about the end of her marriage (her husband leaves her for a man he met on Gay.com) and in the next breath waxing philosophical on the concept of G-d. I'm loving it, and I'm sure I'll be talking a lot more about it. It's for one of the two reading groups meeting in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for checking back in!

A Woman's Worth

2009-07-07T11:02:00.001-07:00

The 19th Wife, by David Ebershoff, is two stories intertwined to illustrate the history of polygamy in the Mormon church. Seen through the eyes of Brigham Young's rebellious 19th wife, Anne Eliza, in the late 1800's, and also in the present, through the eyes of a young man who's mother is the 19th wife of a prominent Firsts member (the branch of Mormon that maintained polygamy after the church officially banned it), the novel reveals the struggle and despair of life in the church and it's practice of plural marriage.

Written to be part historical research and part murder mystery, the novel has pretty much every element a reader could want. Anne Eliza's story reveals both the anguish of being a plural wife--not only sharing a husband's affection, but his resources and, at times, his basic good will, and also the strength and power of the feminine spirit. Jordan Scott, excommunicated as a young man from the fundmentalist sect of the Firsts, digs through the society's secrets to clear his mother of a murder charge.

What I loved about this book, aside from the characters (in particular Anne Eliza) was the questions it raised about a person's beliefs and to what length one would go to uphold those beliefs. And how do we come to embrace our belief systems in the first place? Sitting on the outside of this community, we shake our heads and say, "I could never, ever believe that being one of 50+ wives is what's going to ensure my happiness in the afterlife". It's absurd to even contemplate. But the book makes note, over and over again, that this is the only message young women in the society in question ever heard. To think beyond that was just, well, unthinkable.

What infuriated me about this book was the idea that, while a man married to many wives was considered more of a man, the wives were disposable. When a husband grew tired of a wife, he simply "stopped visiting" her. She remained married to him, bound to him as property, but no longer required or received any of his attention or resources.

The book made me think about the polygamist ranch in Texas that was in the news last year. And how all those children were taken from their parents. And then returned. But to what? We've heard nothing of them since, have we? I shudder to think at what their lives are today. I shudder to think this still goes on in parts of our country today.

First Love, Family Conflict and Neuroses...

2009-06-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Meh. I am one of those people who gushed about Weiner's first book, Good in Bed, raved about In Her Shoes and fell all over myself to run out and get Little Earthquakes the second it hit the shelves. But I have to say, much as it pains me, the last few books I've read by Weiner have been less than inspired. Which sucks, because when I start to feel attached to an author, like I "get" her and like she can do no wrong (hello, Barbara Kingsolver---write a new novel for me so I can bask in your Barbara Kingsovler-y goodness, pretty please), I am fairly distraught when I read something by them that is unimpresses. I hate to think or speak badly of a favorite writer because truth be told, they're doing a hell of a lot better than I could, so who am I to complain?

But this book just fell a bit flat for me. I loved the premise--the return of Cannie Shapiro, the protagonist of Good in Bed, and her relationship with the child she gives birth to at the end of that novel, Joy, who is now 13 and preparing for her Bat-Mitzvah. The plot focuses around Joy's utter mortification at finding Cannie's published novel, both because of the main character's (based on her own mother) promiscuity and because of the way in which the main character deals emotionally with the news that she is pregnant (with Joy). If teenager doesn't have enough to feel insecure and angst-ridden about normally, reading about how your mom thought her life was over when she found out she was pregnant with you will certainly give you something to talk about in therapy. The subplot is one between Cannie and her husband and their thoughts on expanding their family, a topic complicated by Cannie's lack of a uterus (which she lost upon giving birth to Joy). Sounds like it's going to be an awesome and complex look at family dynamic and the developing sense of self of a teenage girl.

Somewhere along the way, though, the story just got boring to me. I don't know if it was because Cannie, as a character, seemed a million miles away from who she was in the first book and I just didn't care about her as much. Or if it's because I really didn't like Joy (I'm generally not that fond of 13 year olds to begin with---no offense to any 13 year olds out there. It was a tough age for me and I project....). For whatever reason, I felt as though I was trudging through it and it was a big fat bummer to feel that way about a Jennifer Weiner book (although I really wanted to gouge my eyes out while I was reading Goodnight Nobody, so I guess I should just realize now that it's going to be hit or miss for me).

Patricia Marx's Him Her Him Again The End of Him was freaking hilarious. I had no idea it even existed until one of my best friends (who is on a bit of a book-buying jag & I love her for it) sent it to me. It is the story of a wayward graduate student, who isn't even quite sure what her thesis is on, falling in love with the most neurotic, self-obsessed cad this side of...well, anywhere. Marx is a former SNL-writer (which makes it utterly hilarious when her heroine--if you can call her that--takes a job as a writer for a show called Taped, but Proud), and her sense of humor and style of writing reminded me both of Steve Martin (who I adore in a very daddy-complex kind of way) and Woody Allen.

Totally off the wall and bizarre in parts, the story doesn't really invite you into the true hearts of the characters the way most fiction does. But it puts such a spotlight on the neuroses of this wacky people that you can't help but love them (or love to hate them, as is the case with the love interest, Eugene, who is an expert in Ego Studies and teaches a seminar called "Towards a Philosophy of the Number Two".

The utter inaneness (is that a word?) of these peoples' lives, even through career turmoil, lascivious affairs and what may or may not be murder, is what makes this story so hilarious.

Jaime Ford's debut novel will stick with me for a very long time. Set alternately in the mid-1980's and the early 1940's, it is the story of Henry Lee, an aging Chinese man in Seattle, looking back on his first real friendship and love, with a young girl, Keiko, who happened to be Japanese and living in Seattle after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

There is so much in this story--the bitter and heartbreaking conflict between 12 year old Henry and his father, who harbors a passionate hatred against all Japanese. The struggle of his mother to pacify both men in her life, seeming to have no will or beliefs of her own. The friendship, which grows to love, between two outcasts, Henry and Keiko, both sent to an Caucasian school by their parents to enforce the idea of their American identity, while at the same time their cultural backgrounds force them down paths away from each other that seem irreversible.

I often find that it's hardest for me to write about books that I really loved reading and found beautiful and touching. I fear I cannot possibly do it justice with my own meager ramblings. I feel that way about this book. There is such powerful emotion and sacrifice and generosity of spirit and bravery in the main characters of this book that trying to describe fully seems impossible.

The other truly difficult part of this book is, of course, as it is set in the early 1940's and one of it's main characters is Japanese, it deals with the Japanese interment camps set up after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ford does an amazing job describing the way in which families were rounded up and robbed of their dignity as they are sent to live, first in oversized horse stalls, and then to the permanent camps that they built with their own toil and sweat. This is a part of American history that gets tucked away and ignored by so many educators. When we think about America's crimes against it's own people, we tend to think about the decimation of the Native Americans or the scourge of slavery prior to the Civil War (and even those we don't learn enough about). I don't think I ever heard one word about the Japanese interment when I learned about WWII in the 1980's. I'm glad to see that our country's literature is catching up to it's history and providing that education where our formal education system has fallen short.

Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan

2009-06-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes." - Anonymous

Thus starts Amy Tan's novel, Saving Fish From Drowning. Narrated by Bibi Chen (via a medium), who has recently been found dead, of mysterious causes, the story follows a tour group of her friends from the Himalayan mountains to the jungle of Burma. It is a trip she had intended to lead, sharing with her friends her vast knowledge of Chinese and Burmese history, culture and art.

The group decides to go on without her (primarily because they'd lose their deposits if they didn't), and fate twists and turns in all manner of barely believable ways to lead them to a quiet lake in Burma, on which they disappear, taken hostage by a paranoid, but kind-hearted and actually pretty funny, splinter group, hiding from the Burmese officials, the SLORC. Tan creates characters as she always does---sympathetic but so very flawed, and it is impossible to dislike any of them, even as they are grating on each other's (and your) nerves.

Most impressive is that Amy Tan weaves the theme of the introductory quote, the best of intentions leading to the worst of outcomes, into so many levels of her story, that even days after having finished it, I am finding myself saying, "ooooooh. wow."

It wasn't my favorite Tan book; that distinction, I think, will always go to The Joy Luck Club. Part of my the drawback of this book was the unfortunate timing of reading it while I was sick with a cold; so between cold medicine and general ickiness, I am fuzzy on a lot of the details (and some major events) in the book. But it was good and I'm glad I read it, but I'm sure I would have gotten more out of it had I read it when I wasn't hacking up a lung or nodding off between every paragraph.

I'm taking a little bit of a break from substantive reading---I'm going to indulge my Chick Lit craving for the next few weeks or a month, starting with Jennifer Weiner's Certain Girls.

So Noone Told You Life Was Going to be This Way...

2009-05-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

It seems like the last few books I've read have centered around the power for friendship as opposed to that of romantic love. Certainly, The Space Between Us, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Snowflower and the Secret Fan, have all focused on the relationships between women as they navigate their way through fairly hostile male-dominated societies. Even These Granite Islands and Love Walked In are far more about the dynamics between the female characters than they are about the love affairs out the outskirts of the plot lines.

So I guess I'm not surprised that I was drawn to both Belong To Me, by Marisa de los Santos and Wednesday Sisters, by Meg Waite Clayton. Each follows the lives and interactions of a main character and those closest to her---while each main character is married and has a homelife with it's own challenges, the writers in each case seem more drawn to the relationships her main character forges with the women around her.

Belong To Me is the continuation of Santos' Love Walked In. This time, Cornelia Brown has left the big city to make a home in the suburbs with her husband. I could truly relate to Cornelia's reluctance to leave the energy and diversity of her urban Philadelphia for the quiet, seemingly fondant-icing perfection of the 'burbs. I've always struggled with those separate parts of my pscyhe---the thrill and the feeling of being a part of something huge and vital that comes from living in a bustling urban environment versus the security, comfort and sense of community that comes from living in a suburb where neighbors stop to chat on the sidewalks and you can let your kids play in the backyard because...well, you actually have a backyard.

Cornelia is faced with restocking her supply of friends once she makes her way into the new neighborhood and finds that what lies behind the perfectly manicured lawns of her neighbors is not quite as sweet and charming as she had initially thought.

Piper, Elizabeth and Lake are the women of Cornelia's neighborhood--one, a total uptight snoot of a woman (think Bree Van de Camp from Desperate Housewives, but with a bit more spit and vinegar), one dying of cancer and the other an enigma who has a secret that, while Cornelia doesn't know it, threatens her happiness.

I really enjoyed this book. Cornelia is so likeable as a main character and Santos is marvelous at weaving separate story lines together to make a cohesive experience that her books tend to play like a movie in my mind, much more so than many of the other books I've read.

I did think the twist in this book was actually pretty superfluous, given that it turned the focus away from Cornelia and the women back to the relationship between her and her husband. I found that I wasn't all that interested in him. I wanted to read more about the friends---in particular Piper who, ironically enough, initially made my skin crawl.

Similarly, The Wednesday Sisters are all married woman with families of some form of their own. But I really didn't care so much about the families any farther than that sometimes their actions impacted the relationships of the women who comprised the writing group. It was the closeness and emotional intimacy between the women, and not what their kids are like or what their husband do (although this is all they really think to talk about initially), that made this book so powerful to me.

Meeting by chance at a local park in the late 1960's, these young mothers find a common connection through their writing. They establish a Wednesday morning "meeting" at the park while their kids play, to write and share their writing with one another. It is through their writing (sometimes stories, drafts of novels, just journal entries) that these five women come to know each other's greatest dreams, heartbreaks and fears.

Set against the backdrop of both the women's liberation movement and the civil rights movement, the main character, Frankie, shows us how the paradigm shift of our country's consciousness impacted the lives of these women and challenged their own, sometimes shameful, beliefs.

I love that Clayton connected her characters to great literary works of the past--each one of them bringing a favorite author, character or classic piece of literature to the table with them as an inspiration.

I found the book touching and inspiring, reminding me of my own love of writing and the one or two friends who've shared that love with me for decades.

Oh, look! A blog...

2009-05-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still here. And, I've been reading! Let's see if I can remember everything I've read since I last posted (in no particular order)....

First, I discovered Chris Bohjalian. Not sure how I managed to miss him before, but I picked up my first book by him, Midwives, in March, and now my goal is to not overdose on him a la Jodi Picoult. He's written so many books that I've never read that I'm afraid I'll over-saturate my brain with Bohjalian and end up feeling "meh" about is writing.

Midwives chronicles the story of Sybil Danforth, a midwife who, after years of assisting with successful home births, is present at a birth where the mother dies. She is accused of involuntary manslaughter and sent to trial. Narrated years later by her daughter who was 14 years old at the time of the trial (and who, in her adult life, is an obstetrician), the novel weaves an incredible mix of suspense, character development, and ethical dilemma (there's a constant sense, to me, of "what would YOU have done?" in the narrative) into a captivating story.

Over a year ago, I read The Birth House, and was disappointed because it didn't go deeply enough into the challenges of midwifery and the community that centers around childbirth in the home, surrounded by the proverbial village as opposed to the masked, gloved OB/surgeon. Bohjalian's book finally gave me the story I had been wanting to read way back then in The Birth House.

Before You Know Kindness was equally as captivating. Spencer McCullough, a public relations executive for FERAL, a PETA-esque animal rights group, is shot in the shoulder, by his daughter, using his brother-in-law's gun. It's an accident. Right?

The family is pushed to its limits as one branch of the family is pitted against the other by FERAL, which uses McCullough's shooting as an excuse to sue the gun company involved. Through the characters, the ideal of animal activist vegan faces off with the idea of sport hunter. In the same way that Tom Perrotta's The Abstinance Teacher illustrated how the flaws of extremist belief, Before You Know Kindness follows a family on a journey to reconcile their philosophical differences while loyalties and egos are stretched to the limit.

Another writer I'd not found before. Marisa De Los Santos tells the story of Cornelia, a quirky, tiny urbanite, obsessed with old movies and finding love. This character is impossible not to fall in love with. Looking for her own Jimmy Stewart (unless she can find Carey Grant), she is woo'd by Martin Grace, who walks into her little Philadelphia cafe one day and sweeps her off her feet. At least for a time...

This is also the story of Clare Hobbes, an 11-year old girl, whose mother is smack-dab in the middle of one hell of a nervous breakdown, leaving Clare to fend for herself. For months, Clare tries to hold things together so people don't her mother is falling apart at the seams. The one person she tries to enlist help from, her estranged father, essentially pats Clare on the head and tells her to run along. So when her mother leaves her on the side of the road, Clare is forced to find a way to make sense of her life.

The way in which these two characters' lives intertwine is just great writing. Both characters are fleshed out so thoroughly, I could almost touch them. I loved the way the book made me consider my connections to other people and how we are essentially a giant network of lives, ready to collide at any time, and change the course of our world's forever.

I am currently reading the second book in this series, Belong To Me. When I picked it up, I didn't realize it was a continuation of Cornelia's life. And? Loving it so far.

Oh, I was so bummed when I finished this book. Quite literally, I was sobbing at the end. Told in flashback, by a dying mother to her already elderly son, These Granite Islands chronicles the life, and specifically one summer of Isobel. A somewhat ambivalent wife and mother, Isobel stays behind in town one summer while her husband takes her sons out to an island camp.

It is during this summer that Isobel meets Cathryn, a mysterious, moody, married urban woman, who is carrying on an affair with Jack, a forest ranger. Scandalized by the affair, but drawn in by Cathryn's warmth and candor, Isobel becomes Cathryn's closest friend and accomplice in hiding the affair from Cathryn's husband.

When the lovers disappear, as if into thin air, Isobel is left contemplating not only the woman she considered to be her best friend, but also her own life and the choices she's made in her life.

Like the History of Love, this is the type of book I need to read again. The first read was just me plowing through it, in love with Isobel and the characters around her.

I finished the book one night after having lied down with my 3 year old son to help him fall back to sleep. As I listened to Ethan breathing next to me, I thought of this woman, 60 years after this fateful summer, at the end of her life, telling her story to the only of her children to survive her, and I was just overcome with emotion. Our lives are so brief, and pass so quickly. All of our relationships, from those that come and go to those that bind through blood, make us who we are. Who knows what we will see when we get to the end of our own lives and look back. What will we remember? Who will be there next to us? What stories from our lives will be important enough to share when we get to that point? Yeah, I didn't sleep a whole lot that night. But it was worth it.

After having seen "Slumdog Millionaire", I became one of eleventy billion people to be horrified by the slums of Mumbai and went in search of a novel that might help me understand the social make-up of a society that allows so many of it's people to live in such horrendous poverty and squalor. What I found was a story of two women, separated by class, pride and the weight of societal expectation.

Bhima is Sera's servant. They are as close to "friends" as they could possibly be, given that Bhima inhabits the slums and Sera is a rich widow. Sera cannot help but flinch if Bhima touches her, but she feels badly for it.

The novel takes us back through both Bhima's and Sera's lives, their disappointments with love, their search for meaning in their lives--in both cases, the lives of their children. The parallels between two women in such different positions in life was staggering, but so was, as the title suggests, the space between them.

As a bleeding heart fan of the underdog, I found it much easier to feel for Bhima, even though Sera's story was also compelling. What I loved about this novel was it's developing theme that privilege and money does not equal inner strength.

I'm looking forward to reading more of this author's books as well.

Frustrated English Teacher FAIL: Three books I could NOT get through...

2009-03-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

I really tried. But like The Book Thief, The History of Love left me feeling adrift in a world of lesser quality literature. I have tried, since posting last, to read three books and each one left me feeling, for lack of a better descriptor, "meh". I wanted to like them, but was, for one reason or another, unimpressed, underwhelmed or outright annoyed at them. And so, down they went. Sadly, two of them were purchased with my own money, as opposed to a gift card or a library find. So that will teach me.

Dinner with Anna Karenina, is, in my opinion a big fat rip-off of the Jane Austen book club, but with Tolstoy. The first thing that put me off? The print is MASSIVE, and all I could think of was my former students who opted to print their essays out in 16-point font in order to fill space because they really had nothing of importance to say. I read about 35 pages, got a big pain in my ass from the soap-opera quality of it and I couldn't continue. The fear of what was going to happen to my love of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina made me slam on the breaks pretty fast. I have no idea if it would have unfolded into one of the best stories I've ever read, but I couldn't take the chance that it would turn into treacle in my hands and ruin the literary classic for me forever.

I gave the second book, Firefly Lane, 125 pages worth of effort. I liked the premise of the story: two childhood friends struggling through adolescent angst and trying to maintain a friendship in the face of their own individual identity crises. The problem? I liked it better the first time I read it, when it was called Beaches. I read Beaches with my best friend when we were teenagers and she was Cee Cee Bloom and I was Hillary Essex. We wept when the movie came out and Bette Midler sang, "The Wind Beneath My Wings". It was the ultimate "BFF" book and movie, and, corny as it may be, it's etched in my heart as such. I don't need to replace it with another book with the same premise.

Also? The 80's references made my head hurt. The author tried so hard to call to mind so many fads, clothing and otherwise, from that decade that I felt like the story got lost in the kitcsh of the time period. Yes, yes, you have a very good grasp of the fact that shoulder pads and double-wrap belts were stylish in the 80's. Bravo.

The last book I tried to read was Suite Francaise. It was good. But I couldn't finish it. The story of a collection of Parisians who flee Paris during it's occupation during WWII, I could not care about any of the characters. They all, with very few exceptions, seemed so self-centered and obnoxious to me that I couldn't make myself care one iota about how their lives turned out. So when the book came due at the library, even though I only had 100 more pages to go, I decided not to renew it. Meh.

I need some suggestions. I need a good book. Frustrated English teacher, indeed.

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

2009-03-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

This book is proof that I need to stop reading before I fall asleep. Because I loved it, but I'm not entirely sure I know exactly what it was about. I can only imagine how I'd feel about it if I'd been 100% alert while reading it and able to keep track of the zig-zagging through characters and history.

This is the story of Leo Gursky, and old man approaching death, who is so alone that he goes to Starbucks, orders lattes and then spills them just so that people will turn their heads and give him a moment or two of their attention. His loneliness, his story, what he's lost in this life, is so tragic that my heart just ached for him as I read.

It is also the story of Alma, a young girl mourning the death of her father, trying to find a new life's meaning for her mother, and searching for the story behind her name, which comes from a book her father gave her mother while they were dating.

I fell in love with the book in the very first pages and I'm afraid I read it too quickly and hungrily to take it all in. I'm thinking I'll be reading it again some time soon and putting among my list of favorite books.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry, Kathleen Flinn

2009-03-09T01:48:00.000-07:00

I happened upon this book a few days ago, on a "Buy One, Get One 1/2 Off" table at Borders. I am a complete sucker for those types of "I didn't really need any books to begin with, but think of the money I'll save if I get two books for the price of one and a half!!!....wait. what?!" deals, so voila. Here it is.

A quick and completely enjoyable read, this is a memoir of a woman unceremoniously sacked from her corporate career and who, with the encouragement of her too-good-to-be-true-but-really-is-true boyfriend, pursues her lifelong dream of studying cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Each chapter regales us with anecdotes of her experiences, in class as well as in life, and provides us, if we dare, with a recipe taken from her class work at the culinary institute (and in some cases, from her mom).

I read one review of the book that called it "light reading", and while it's not War & Peace (erm, thank god, considering what I went through with that book earlier this year---no, thank you!) and while I did manage to get through it in two days (although, let it be noted that I was up until 1am this morning reading it), I hesitate to call it "light". Despite the fact that it carries with it no major tragedies or heartbreaks, it is still a recounting of someone's life, and dreams, and of the courage it takes to dive into the glorious unknown and embrace the experience, be it a soaring success or an utter failure. Maybe in literature, that's considered "light", but in life, it's just about the heaviest thing there is.

I loved the book--it is fabulous to every once in awhile read a book that leaves you feeling hopeful and lifted up at the end; and leaves you wondering, if you had that opportunity--what would your Le Cordon Bleu be?

The Other, David Guterson

2009-03-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile I'm relieved to read a book that I'm not madly in love with, just to be sure that I've not gone completely mushy in the brain and decided all writing is OMG, THE BEST BOOK EVER!

So I feel okay saying I just kind of liked Guterson's The Other. It's actually one of those books that I am appreciating more as I get farther away from it, realizing and "a-ha"'ing at the themes and the character developments that aren't necessarily subtle, but were lost on me as I tried to plow through the sometimes snoozer of a plot.

The Other the story of the narrator, Neil Countryman, and his life-long friendship with John William Barry. The two meet as runners in high school, competing against each other, and bond over their sense of adventure and love of the outdoors. When the time comes to pick a life's path, Countryman follows the more conventional, college, career, marriage and family path, while Barry veers off the beaten path, in an attempt to shed the trappings of materialism, as he has been obsessively reading about Gnosticism. He leaves college one day, walks into the woods, and lives, as the newspapers later describe, as a "hermit" for the remainder of his life.

Countryman periodically visits Barry, catching glimpses of the life Barry has created for himself in the wilderness, and the book essentially follows Countryman in his attempt to understand why his best friend has chosen this life for himself, and to support him and stay connected to him in whatever ways he can.

It is not until late in the the story that we begin to understand exactly why John William Barry is the way he is and why he has made this choice for himself. Somewhere around page 200, I started to find myself saying, "ahhhh, of course," and developing a big giant soft spot for John William. His life is a classic case of how our earliest experiences form our personalities and the way in which we are able to perceive and interact with the world around us.

In a very "Prayer for Owen Meany" kind of way, John William Barry touches the life of his best friend Neil, by setting an example of purity of purpose and dedication to his sense of self that goes above and beyond what one normally expects from a mere mortal. But John William's life goes beyond setting an example for Neil--in a very practical way, it allows Neil to fulfill his own life's sense of purpose and brings full circle the passion of two young men, joined in a race to the finish line.

While reading the book, I felt very "ho-hum"-ish, not loving it, not hating it. Just checking periodically to see how many more pages I had to read before I could go on to the next book. But after sitting back and thinking about it, I see that Guterson wove such an intricate tale of how we become who we become, who we influence, and how the choices we make for our own lives reverberate outside of ourselves like a stone on the water. Not a fabulous in-the-moment type of read for me, but an awesome sit-and-think-about-it-afterwards book.

A Conversation with Death: The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

2009-03-05T18:54:00.000-08:00

"I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away."

With this, the narrator of The Book Thief introduces himself. He is Death.

Rarely have I found myself so at once repelled and intrigued by a book. I started it over a year ago and was unable to get more than two or three pages in, because the prospect of reading 500-odd pages in Death's voice was more than a little bit disturbing to me. I'm the girl who wakes up in the middle of the night, struck with a throat-gripping realization that I'm going to die some day. And that my parents are going to die someday. And that my husband is going to die some day. And I really can't go any further down the line than that before I'm hyperventilating in the dark and trying to talk myself down off of my morbid little mental window ledge.

So clearly the idea of having to listen to Death talk to me about Nazi Germany didn't really appeal. But at the same time, I could not stop looking at the book. Wondering what story Death had to tell me about the book thief. And one of my best friends recommended it--she couldn't be steering me wrong, herself having dealt with so much death in the past few years. If she could tolerate Death's voice and come out the other side of the book feeling so strongly about it, I had to be able to give it a try.

And I have to say, I fell just a tiny bit in love with Death, as he is presented through the mind of Zusak.

Death tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a girl mercifully abandoned by her mother into the arms of a safe German family, shortly after she witnesses the death of her brother. This death haunts Liesel through most of the book. Even though she is unable to read, she steals the copy of The Gravedigger's Manual, which is left behind after her brother's burial.

Her foster father, Hans Hubermann, teaches her to read the book at night, when she is awakened from her slumber by the nightmare of her brother's death. As she learns to read, she becomes aware of the power of words and under a variety of circumstances throughout the book, finds herself stealing other books--either stumbling upon them and rescuing them from destruction (this is Nazi Germany, after all), or willfully breaking and entering the homes of others to obtain a new book for her collection.

Not long after being taken in as a foster child by the Hubermann's (the both of whom are depicted in such richness and compassion that I fell absolutely in love with them, even when Rosa is bellowing and threatening in her cranky mean-mama bravado), the family is joined by Max Vandenburg, a Jew hiding from the Nazis. He takes refuge in their basement and forges a friendship with Liesel that reaches into the outer stratosphere of poignancy. It is one of those connections that is achingly beautiful and timeless---a Boo Radley to Scout Finch type of powerful. The image of Liesel, a reluctant member of the Hitler Youth movement, and Max, a middle-aged, weak and terrified Jew, seeing each other as allies and friends, defying the mandate of the times, speaks to the power of the individual over tyranny.

Aside from becoming so attached to the characters and loving the irony of Death's compassionate and utterly human voice, I was struck by the theme of the power of words. A young, illiterate girl discovers and falls in love with the beauty of words at the same time a hate-filled, murderous dictator comes to power through the exploitation of words. The night of her town's book burning illustrates this---as Hitler demands the destruction of all pre-Nazi literature in her town, Liesel is compelled to rescue a book she finds left at the end of the burning--unable to part with the treasures that might lie inside the covers of the book, regardless of the crime it might be read it.

And what of Death himself? How is it possible that a reader can come to the end of this book and feel both sorry for, and comforted by, this grim reaper?! It is simply through his use of words---he chooses to share, through his words, the parts of himself and his experience that make us feel for him. He tells us how he is overworked and exhausted by Nazi Germany--how he himself is just a messenger, not a force to despise, but to pity,

"There were certainly some rounds to be made that year, from Poland to Russia to Africa and back again. You might argue that I make the rounds no matter what the year is, but sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls. A few bombs usually do the trick. Or some gas chambers, or the chitchat of far away guns. If none of that finishes proceedings, it it least strips people of their living arrangements, and I witness the homeless everywhere. They often come after me as I wander through the streets of molested cities. They beg me to take them with me, not realizing I am busy at it is. 'Your time will come,' I convince them, and I try not to look back. At times, I wish I could say something like, "Don't you see I've already got enough on my plate?!' but I never do. I complain internally as I go about my work, and some years, the souls and bodies don't add up; they multiply."

It isn't Death who makes these choices, at least in times of war. It is us. Death wants us to reassure us that he is, in fact, watching out for us, taking care of us in the best way he can, as he recounts in this description of visiting upon a gas chamber in an unnamed concentration camp in Poland,

"The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, slowing down, slowing down... Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fears."

It is impossible not to love this book. The characters, the narration, and the depth of heart poured into every word by Zusak make it one of the most powerful and beautiful books I've ever read.

Tuesday Teaser: The Book Thief

2009-02-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

"Many jocular comment followed, as did another onslaught of "heil Hitlering." You know, it actually makes me wonder if anyone ever lost and eye or injured a hand or wrist with all of that. You'd only need to be facing the wrong way at the wrong time or stand marginally too close to another person. Perhaps people did get injured. Personally, I can only tell you that no one died from it, or at least, not physically. There was, of course, the matter of the forty million people I picked up by the time the whole thing was finished, but that's getting all metaphoric. Allow me to return us to the fire."

I started reading this book yesterday and I have to say, I am addicted to it. It's hard to tear yourself away from a book about Nazi Germany where the narrator is Death. Seriously, Death. Never did I think that Death would have such a wry sense of humor, although I guess you'd have to, to be able to deal with that kind of work (which is how he describes it).

I figured out why I like the Tuesday Teaser so much; when I was a teacher, passages from texts were a huge part of my curriculum. As individuals and groups, my students often had to pull passages from the text and explain their significance. I spent years of my life looking for passages that contributed to thematic, symbolic or character development. I miss that. This challenge is a little tough for me, because I know I'm supposed to choose a random passage from a random page, but I admit that as I'm reading, I tend to get a passage in my mind and spend a few minutes trying to find it before I write this post. Oh well. Sue me. :-)

2009 Challenge: What's In a Name?

2009-02-15T22:44:00.001-08:00

Okay, so last year, I got all pseudo-uber-intellectual and decided I'd take on the Booker prize challenge. That got me through exactly three of the eight books I was going to read for that challenge before my brain turned to mush at the hands of Margaret Atwood.

Then, early in 2009 (well, earlier in 2009), I attempted to take on Tolstoy's War and Peace, to no avail. I maintain that I had a lousy translation of the book, but the fact of the matter could be that gone are the days when I could absorb the great literary canon with little to no effort, picking up symbolism and thematic development the same way a mathematician figures out nothing more complex than long division. Sigh. I guess when it comes down to it, moving from AP English to freshmen English, to middle school English, to Good Night Moon and the occasional crossword puzzle, I's gotten dumber, dagnubit.

So, rather than fishing for the loftiest reading challenge I can get my flailing braincells on, I though I'd focus on one that was a more random and entertaining, with no real intellectual merit, just a fun way to figure out my reading list for the next couple of months. This challenge simply asks me to pick books that have certain words or ideas in the titles. Here it is:

What's In a Name?

*Dates: January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009

*The Challenge: Choose one book from each of the following categories.

1. A book with a "profession" in its title. Examples might include: The Book Thief, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Historian

2. A book with a "time of day" in its title. Examples might include: Twilight, Four Past Midnight, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

3. A book with a "relative" in its title. Examples might include: Eight Cousins, My Father's Dragon, The Daughter of Time

4. A book with a "body part" in its title. Examples might include: The Bluest Eye, Bag of Bones, The Heart of Darkness

5. A book with a "building" in its title. Examples might include: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Little House on the Prairie, The Looming Tower

6. A book with a "medical condition" in its title. Examples might include: Insomnia, Coma, The Plague

*You may overlap books with other challenges, but please don't use the same book for more than one category.

So there's my challenge. I am going to start with The Book Thief, as it has been recommended to me at least a half dozen times. If anyone's got any other titles that fit any of these criteria, please feel free to suggest them; I really have no other books in mind at this point!

I spent the last few nights trying to get into a couple different books I got out of the library, but to no avail. This generally happens after hitting on a book that really moves me, like Moloka'i. So, since I already have the Book Thief, I will start that tonight...happy reading!!!

Moloka'i, Alan Brennert

2009-02-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

You know when you were in 7th grade biology class, and you got to the chapter on things like bacteria and other creepy crawlies that could get in your food or into your body? And remember how, every time you read about a new gross disease your body could contract, you were absolutely 100% certain you had symptoms of that disease and you were totally freaked out and sure your life was over? Was it just me? Tiny little neurotic 7th grade Sarah? Maybe.

Well, that's kind of what reading Moloka'i, by Alan Brennert, the story of a girl condemned to life on Hawaii's leper colony at the turn of the 20th century, was like. At least at first. I couldn't get a zit without poking at it and feeling relief that it was, indeed, painful to the touch and therefore was not some leperous lesion.

I knew very little about leprosy going into the book and learned quite about it about how it is contracted (it's not nearly as contagious as people thing and the hysteria around it reminded me much of how people initially responded to the idea of the HIV/AIDS epidemic) and who tends to get it (children between 5 and 15 years of age) and how it progresses (depends on the kind of leprosy you've got) and the history of it's treatment in the modern age (everything from witch-doctor brewed tea to western antibiotics), as well as the history of the disease in Hawaii. I remembered from reading James Michener's Hawaii that a leper colony existed at the turn of the 20th century (and did up until at least the 1980's) on the small island of Moloka'i, and was both horrified and fascinated, so when I saw Brennert's book, I jumped on the chance to read an entire book devoted to the subject.

Moloka'i is the story of Rachel Kalama, a young girl living in Oahu, the youngest daughter of a seaman and his wife. Rachel's spirit longs to join her father on his 8-9 month journeys out to sea and to mysterious and exotic foreign countries. Her family is close-knit and loving; husband and wife show affection and joke with each other and their children. Siblings love each other, but also rival each other for parents' attentions. Your typical, happy, family. Until one day, Rachel blossoms little red sores that are numb to the touch.

It isn't long before, at 7 years old, Rachel is whisked away from the clutches of her family (at the angry, jealous accusation of her older sister) and sent on the steamer Moloka'i, to the island of Moloka'i and the leper colony that has been established there.

The book follows her life on Moloka'i, with its heart-breaking losses, enduring hope and moments of small loving mercies. At times it feels like Brennert set out to fashion a new vision of Job, in the leprous body of a young Hawaiian girl in the 20th century. Rachel truly endures more heart-ache and loss than most characters I've encountered. I found myself becoming fiercely protective of her and angry at those who would do her harm or treat her as less of a human because of her disease. Brennert created such a compelling and sympathetic character in Rachel that I often found myself putting the book down, either out of sorrow or anger, until I could collect myself and move on with the story. Rachel's capacity for love and hope in the face of so many tragedies and such society-induced shame was inspiring.

The book is rich with characters who experience Moloka'i from a wide range of perspectives. Both the diseased and the "clean" live in the pages of this book and on the island of Moloka'i and through them, we get such a well-rounded view of what life was like for these people, it is hard not to become entirely wrapped up in the book.

Along with the lives of these individuals, the history of the time is chronicled as well; everything from the United States' take over of the islands, to Pearl Harbor, to the Japanese interment camps find their way into Rachel's story. That is my favorite thing about historical novels; having the drama of an individual's life placed against the backdrop of historical events, just as our unique life experiences unfold amongst the collective reality of our times.

The book is incredible and I was sad to see it end. It's a story that will stay with me for a long time.

Booking Through Thursday 1

2009-02-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

I read a few authors' blogs--Stephanie Taylor Wilder's "Baby on Bored", who wrote Sippy Cups are Not Far Chardonnay and Naptime is the New Happy Hour. I started reading Stephanie's blog actually before her books--I was on 14 long weeks of bedrest during my pregnancy w/ Ethan and I found Stephanie's blog through someone else's. I had no idea she was a published author, but she made me laugh so hard I almost peed (admittedly not difficult in the middle of the 2nd trimester). She has a wry, sarcastic, sometimes painfully honest perspective on parenting and her voice is so familiar and comfortable, the blog is one of my favorites.

I also read Jennifer Lancaster's (Bitter is the New Black, Such a Pretty Fat, Bright Lights Big Ass) blog, "Jennsylvania". She's ridiculously hilarious.

I've also read, but don't religiously follow, the blogs of both Stephanie Klein (Straight Up and Dirty, Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp), and Jess Riley (Driving Sideways).

I rarely look for information on their latest books; I'm far more interested in their stories and just hearing their voices (I'm in it for the comedy, mostly).

Tuesday Teaser: Moloka'i

2009-02-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

The explanation for Tuesday Teaser can be found by clicking on the "Tuesday Teaser" icon on the left side of my blog.

I'm currently reading Moloka'i, by Alan Brennert

Anger and doubt erupted again like lava, emotions entirely inappropriate for this place, this act. She sprang to her feet and bolted from the chapel, startling a sister about to enter, and retreated to the safety of her room. There she fell again to her knees, knitting her hands together in a tortured mimicry of prayer. Whenever she felt the anger bubbling up she would stop, take a few minutes to compose herself, then start again; but though the anger slowly cooled she found that oozing up between the words of contrition and adoration was a troubling fear. Fear of herself and what she was capable of, what she had done to that little girl; and fear that perhaps Sister victor was right, that contagion was all around them.

Just have to add, I am LOVING this book. Loving. More later.

The Reader, Bernhard Schlink

2009-02-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

I had hoped to love this book more than I did. I could never quite fall into step with the narrator's voice or feel much for either Michael or Hanna. There was such a stoicism in how Michael told the story of their affair and of Hanna's trial later on, it was almost impossible to rouse any emotion or empathy for them. Am I the only one?

I did find Hanna's conflict interesting--that she'd choose to take the blame for such egregious crimes over admitting to the degree to which she lacks education. It seemed like such a counter-intuitive thing to do; I'm still not entirely sure I understand why she makes the choice she does---is it pride or guilt? Does she feel that she deserves the harshest punishment even though she is not the one who masterminded the crime? Is the austerity with which she lives her life and pushes people from her done out of a sense of penance or arrogance?

I'd like to believe she lives her life and makes the choices she does as a form of atonement, but it's never entirely clear--she is so devoid of emotion for so much of the story, and given her crime, it's hard to give her the benefit of the doubt. There's only so much sympathy one can drum up for a Nazi, you know?

Away, Amy Bloom

2009-02-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe not "lighter", but at least this story goes a long way in restoring my faith in the strength of the human spirit.

Lillian Leyb comes to America after her family is viciously murdered in pogrom in Russia, a scene which plays out over and over in her mind in vivid and frightening detail throughout the book. She flees to a life in New York's Yiddish theater district, becoming mistress to both a theater owner and his son, while trying to put the memories of the past behind her. Until.

She learned that possibly, possibly, her daughter survived the pogrom and is currently living in Siberia with a family who rescued her. Without hesitation, Lillian leaves New York City and sets out across the country, from New York to Seattle to Alaska and to the Bering Strait. The intensity with which she strives towards this goal is heart-rending. Any parent wants to believe they'd do the same; under-take any obstacle or trial of strength and perseverance. But to travel in a railroad car broom closet, psyche out pimps and prostitutes, walk from Alaska to Russia (yes, I know Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, but still), with only the faintest hope of making the trip in one piece and with no set information about where to find your child? In Siberia?

The book falls short of being epic only because it's just too short. I wanted the book to be 500+ pages; I wanted there to be detail, more character development, more everything. I wanted more of Lillian's history, more scenes going across the country, more interactions with other characters.

My favorite part of the book, aside from Lillian herself and her fierce determination, was the way Bloom provides an epilogue for each character Lillian encounters, after she leaves them. As though their lives, after being touched by her, are set on a certain path and Bloom must let you know what comes of them, even though Lillian never will. It was brilliant and it made each character seem so much more real than they would have if they'd simply ceased to exist in the book's world once Lillian moved on.

So not really the "light" book I said I was going to read (I started Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People, but wasn't really feeling it), but it was well worth the emotional energy I spent on it.

Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

2009-01-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

Oh. My. God. I knew from the movie previews to expect suburban malaise. However. This book is suburbian malaise and existential angst hooked up to a car battery and high on crack.

Frank and Alice Wheeler are a couple of married suburbanites, stuck in the stereotypical, Leave-It-To-Beaver 1950's; or rather, right on the outside of it, as their home is adjacent to, but not actually IN the new Revolutionary Estates development with it it's homes and cars looking "like candy and ice cream". Each fancies themselves to be more interesting and passionate than the rest of those suburbanite couples, tucked in their perfect little homes with their perfect little lives. They scoff at those content with the mediocrity of life in the suburbs and compliment themselves on being oh, so much more interesting.

It was interesting to me that the first major action of the book is that of a play being put on by a small local theater group. As the play goes, in terms of it's success, so, in a way, does the story of Frank and Alice go. They are, in fact, living a lie, a sort of play within a play that they seem desperate to break out of. There are moments of shining hope and so-close-you-can-taste-it triumphs over their lives. And there are also crashing failures and upsets, until they reach, as individuals, and a couple, their ultimate breaking points.

As we learn about each character's childhood (the author seems fascinated with the idea of psycho-analysis; there is even mention of Freud's theory of penis-envy), we begin to understand what motivates them and why they are driven to be the superbly flawed and, at times, all but unlikeable characters that they are.

The beauty of this book is the characters around Frank and Alice. The meddling, nervous real estate broker and her half-deaf (and grateful for it) husband, Helen and Howard Givings--who Frank and Alice will be if they don't bust out of this rut and strive for the greatness they feel they are capable of. Their neighbors, the Campbells, who have settled into their malaise rather than struggling against it. And perhaps most interesting, the institutionalized son of the Givingses', John, who is the only character who seems to "get" Frank and Alice.

The book starts with a quote from John Keats that is as follows: "Alas! When passion is both meek and mild." Alice and Frank are each both of these things, in turns. They're strengths and weaknesses yo-yo throughout the story, but never find a middle ground, never find one another.

I expected pages of bitter disagreement and domestic strife in the book; I've seen the advertisements for the movie in recent weeks. What I didn't expect was to see the absolute and utter dissolution of the American Dream unfold before my eyes over the past two days. I could not sleep after turning the last page. While I cannot relate in any really authentic way to either Frank or Alice, in experience or sentiment, I could not help but be shaken all the way down to a very deep place in myself when I realized that there are people out there who can, and do, relate. Much in the same way as I did after seeing the film "American Beauty" years ago, I walked around today, watching couples and looking at houses in my neighborhood and wondering, "Who are they really, and what is the true substance of their lives and their relationship?"

Next, I'll be reading something a bit more light-hearted. My brain and heart need a break after this one.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See

2009-01-25T19:32:00.000-08:00

So fine; I gave up on War and Peace for the time being. There are too many books out there begging to be read for me to give up precious time slaving over a horrible translation of what I'm sure is a spectacular book, but which at this point, has no chance in hell of being remotely appreciated by me. So I will go back to it. Sometime. Maybe.

Instead, I spent part of my Barnes and Noble gift card (which I sadly burned through like it was a stick of butter set on top of a blazing oven) on Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. What a beautiful book. It is the story of Lily, who at the age of 80, an age few women in 19th-century China would have lived to see, looks back on her life and tells us of her greatest love and of her greatest sin.

The book's focus, a friendship between two women, was riveting and heart-rending. Paired as "laotongs", or, "Old Sames" (essentially soul mates) as children, Lily and Snow Flower forge a bond from their foot-binding days of girlhood until their last breaths. The contract of the laotongs transcends all other contracts and is unbreakable. Set against the backdrop of strict social customs, changing fortunes, arranged marriages, and the trials and triumphs of motherhood in a time and place where only boy babies counted, Lily and Snow Flower are each other's sources of strength and comfort. When separated, they communicate through "nu shu", or "women's writing", carefully inscribed on a silk fan.

The intricacies of social custom, and the stoicism with which women were expected to bear the inevitable circumstances of their lives made the book all the more heart-breaking. The process of foot-binding andmatch-making, and rituals of singing laments and well-wishes to the bride before she leaves her "natal" home for that of her husband's--all of these elements of the life of a Hunan woman at this time were described in such lyrical detail that the modern reader is both horrified and awed.

It isn't all beauty and loving commitment between Lily and Snow Flower, however. Their contract is threatened through the misunderstanding of a message written onto the secret fan. The irony that in a story based around the written communication between these two women, that it should be their "nu shu" messages that lead their friendship into peril was fascinating.

I've always found the dynamics of the friendships of women to be at least as interesting, if not more, than that of the relationships between men and women. Raised to be companions and competition, the potential for fiercely devoted love and bitter rivalry and jealousy is so much stronger than that between members of the opposite sex. Also, having always believed that a woman is far more likely to find her soul's true mate in a female friend rather than a boyfriend or husband, this book spoke to me of the immense power of friendship and the need to always keep your girlfriends close to your heart and mind, regardless of life's circumstances.

Next up: Revolutionary Road. I can't bring myself to spend a date night with Husband watching Leo and Kate tear it up as a miserable married couple, so I'm going to read the book instead.

I Must Confess...

2009-01-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

I am hating War & Peace.

It is so convoluted and the whole thing feels more like an endeavor in keeping track of names and making sense of the awkward language of what I have to assume is a lousy translation.

I'm only 200 pages in, more than two weeks after starting it; it's frustrating for me to not be able to get through a book faster, especially when reading it feels like such a chore. I'm not sure I can commit myself to reading the rest of the book, at least not without breaking up the arduousness of it with other, less brain-paining texts.

Not that I'm planning on filling my reading schedule with Danielle Steele or anything, but there are so many worthy books out there than I really want to indulge in it seems a shame to spend all my time trudging through something I'm not enjoying, or even retaining from one reading to the next. This has always been my struggle, though; not finishing a book I've started feels like failing and I don't "do" failing.

Anyone read War & Peace and want to tell me that it gets RIVETING by page 201?

2008 in Review

2008-12-29T19:42:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that whole Booker Prize challenge I pretended I was going to do? Well, I really meant to. I LOVED The Gathering, and re-reading Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha gave me a whole new appreciation for it I didn't get the first time I read it. Then Atwood and her Blind Assassin had to go and ruin it for me. That, and the fact that I read the same 50 pages of The Inheritance of Loss no fewer than three times, after putting it down, reading something else and returning to it. For some reason I just can't get into it. So I put aside the Bookers and just read some books.

Since I last posted, I have read both Mercy and Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, Saturday by Ian McEwan, I, Mona Lisa, by Jeanne Kalogridis, The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold, and Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.

I figured out what it is I love about Picoult--it's when she writes from the point of view of a teenager. Somehow she captures the raw angst of needing to be accepted by your peers, understood by your family, and all that comes with that. This is probably why Mercy, which I expected to be very moving, left me underwhelmed and why Nineteen Minutes disturbed me and touched me on so many levels.

I thought A Thousand Splendid Suns was even more amazing than The Kite Runner, perhaps for no reason other than because it focuses on the lives of two women rather than men. It was the first book in a long time that I found myself sobbing over.

The others were good, but didn't move me enough to recall any specifics this far from when I first read them. Because I read mostly at night before bed, I end up retaining less than I should.

So I had intended to read 50 books this year. I managed 27. Eh. Having been given a $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble and considering Los Angeles has about eleventy billion public library branches to choose from, I am hoping to hit at least 30 books this coming year. Maybe I'll surprise myself and get to 35.

Of course, I am about 30 pages into Tolstoy's War & Peace right now, so maybe I should be just be happy if I can get through that before this time next year.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

2008-10-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say more about this book, but the truth is, I feel like I read it with only one eye and half of my brain. No fault of the book's, it's just been a long month, fraught with dying cats and sleep-allergic children. So much of my reading time has been done either at midnight in emergency pet clinics, or at the end of a long day that started out exhausted and therefore, I have only the vaguest memory of what I read the night before and it makes it hard to string the story together cohesively in my brain.

The premise, though? Fascinating. A Jewish state formed at the end of WWII in Alaska, of all places, is about to reach the end of it's "lease" so to speak and the Jews who have called Sitka home for decades are about to be, as Jews often are, cast once again to the four corners of the earth, on their own, with not official state.

The main character, Meyer Landsman, is a sad, neurotic shell of a man, grieving the death of his sister, and divorced after a personal tragedy tears he and his wife, Bina Gelbfish, (who ends up being his boss) apart. Along with his partner, Berko, who is half-Jewish, half-native Alaskan Indian, Landsman sets out to solve a murder of a man who seems to have been simply a junkie down on his luck, shot in the head in his hotel room (the same hotel, incidentally, in which Landsman resides).

With all odds against them, including the government for which they work, what Landsman, Berko and Gelbfish discover is that this mere junkie was actually a pivotal part in a plan born out of hope and desperation as the Jewish Sitka settlement approaches its reversion back to Alaskan control and almost certain eviction.

For imagination and the sheer beauty in his use of language, I am sorry my reading of Chabon's book doesn't do it justice. It is gorgeously written and parts of it are geniusly funny. The characters pay homage to a sort of 1940's detective noir style of development, but their circumstances are so surreal, they don't end up seeming trite or simplistic. The plot itself, of a Jewish settlement in the most unlikely of places, is a testament to the creative mind of Chabon, and the underlying sadness of the people, at home, but not at home, living under the false-illusion of control and stability for 60 years and now faced with almost certain eviction and the desperate reality of having no place to call home, while it's not lamented openly on each page, weaves it's way through each character and their stories.

Given how absent-mindedly I read this book and how much I enjoyed it, I imagine that had I read it with both eyes and all of my brain, it would have blown me away.

2008-09-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta

A fascinating cautionary tales of the dilemmas presented by extremism, Perrotta's book brings together the unlikeliest pairing of "heroes" in Tim Mason and Ruth Ramsey. Ramsey, a sexuality educator who insists on bucking the "abstinence-only" policy implemented by a predominantly Christian-right school board, finds herself head-to-head with her daughter's soccer coach, Tim Mason, a recovering-addict-turned-Christian, after Mason spontaneously breaks into prayer at the end of a game.

The story weaves through each character's history and the experiences that brought them to this particular battle, which, ironically, turns out not to be much of a battle at all.

As he did in Little Children, Perrotta creates characters who are so human, so understandably and thoroughly flawed that the line between 'good guy' and 'bad guy' blur. Being a fairly liberal-minded person myself, I fully expected to scoff at Mason's character and was ready to see him vilified as the judgmental, hypocritical image of Christianity that often gets portrayed in a story that pits the religious right against just about anyone else. I was prepared to embrace Ramsey as my heroine, my voice of reason and champion of my social and political views (what can I say? I am a bit fired up these days...).

But it was not nearly that simple. While my fundamental beliefs about the issues weren't changed by the book (and I don't think it was Perrotta's intention at all to do so), my idea about the people behind the issues were. I found myself, over and over again, sympathizing with Mason and also being a little annoyed with Ramsey. Even more surprisingly, I found the characters sympathizing with each other and ironically, even finding a sense of kinship between them as they each in their own way end up alienating those who are closest to them.

Just as Perrotta challenged us to look more closely behind the facade of suburbia in Little Children, he illustrates in The Abstinence Teacher that rarely is anything as black and white as our society tends to want to make it. It's not a comfortable realization; we like to believe we are right in our beliefs and sometimes it's easy to close ourselves off to the other side's point of view in an attempt to feel more secure in our own ideas. It's even easier to forget the human face of the other side; Perrotta's book serves to remind us that that human face is there, whether we like it or not.

See Jane...

2008-09-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler

This is one of those books I am liking more now that I'm done with it and can think about the characters' experiences with a little distance between us. I didn't fall in love with any of them, didn't really feel compelled by them as I was reading. On one occasion, I found myself checking to see how many more pages I had to get through and was happy to find a huge chunk of pages at the end that were additional materials and not stuff I *had* to read.

But now that I've finished reading it, I am finding that it did plant little seeds of "oh, I did like that" all over my brain and I have to say it is a good read.

The best thing about the book, though, and the thing I appreciated and liked from the get-go, is the way Fowler pays homage to Austen through the structure of her own novel. Each chapter takes a particular Austen book, and uses the theme of that book as the backdrop for the tale of the character hosting the reading group that month. Obviously, if you've read Austen at all, that makes the story lines created by Fowler fairly predictable in nature, but it's still an interesting read.

I have to admit I've yet to get on board with the whole Jane Austen revival that's gone on as of late; there are about eleventy billion books being published today that go back to contemplate Austen's stories from the point of view of another character, or creating new stories branching off where Austen left off. I hesitate to pick any of those up because I have a hard time believing they can even come close to duplicating Austen's style or perfection. They all look like they'd be hokey romantic drivel to me and Austen's novels go so far beyond that, I think it might be insulting to try to pick up where she left off. But I don't think Fowler's book does that at all. She brings some of Austen's themes (and truly she does focus on the romance of Austen's stories in her own recreations, but in a unsentimental way, I think) into a modern circle of people and simply shows the timelessness of Austen's thematic content.

Not going to go down as my favorite book ever, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Straight Up and Fabulous...

2008-08-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

Straight Up & Dirty, Stephanie Klein

Girl crush, right here, my friends. I want to buy this woman a drink and maybe kiss her goodnight.

Klein's candid and almost uncomfortably honest account of getting through and over her divorce is one of the best reads I've had in a long time. When dating a bevy of men ("a pair and a spare") proves unsuccessful, Klein undergoes an at times painful journey of self-discovery that hit close to home in a way I've never encountered through the written word.

I'm finding that memoir is becoming far more riveting to me than fiction--had this book been fashioned about a character, invented inside the mind of a writer, it would have been good, probably great. But the fact that, as I'm reading it, I am constantly aware of the fact that this is a real, flesh and blood woman, sharing her real flesh and blood experience, it makes the act of reading the words a form of communication one just doesn't get with a novel. She could have easily created a character and written a "semi-autobiographical" account of a woman struggling to find herself, "loosely" based on her own life. But the rawness of memoir, especially this one, makes the story that much more alive. This is not a character, but a real woman, one who you might walk by on the side walk, or sit next to at a bar. And she lived this.

Not that it's an extraordinary or unusual experience she's gone through. When I was the age she is in this memoir, I went through a similar sort of experience, although it wasn't as messy as divorce. I went through a similar journey to find a sense of satisfaction, contentment and peace in my life. I knew other women had to have gone through it, too; I knew I was not unique in my grief and in the transformation I went through. But I've never read it before. Never seen it put out there so eloquently and beautifully.

Reading Straight Up & Dirty took me back to that time in my own life, to both the pain of loss and the elation of self-discovery and self-reliance. Tonight as I absorb the last bits of the book into my consciousness, I am so grateful to have picked up the book and to have not only read Stephanie's story, but to have reminded myself of my own journey to the woman I am today.

Back on track...

2008-08-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

Burning Bright, Tracy Chevalier

Oh. So. Good.

I loved The Girl with the Pearl Earring, so I assumed this book would also capture my attention. Add to that my abject adoration of all stories based in 18-th century London (the more down-trodden or plague-y the better, my friends), and my love of poetry and there was really no other reasonable expectation to have other than that I would fall madly in love with the characters, the setting, the story, the whole nine yards.

And I did. But only after having completed it and having contemplated it for a bit did I really get it. The story is that of the Jem Kellaway, a country boy from Dorset whose family moves to London after a family tragedy. He and his younger sister, Maisie, befriend rough and tumble Maggie Butterfield, the typical, hardened street urchin-y smart mouth who is savvy in the ways of London's seedy underbelly. Together Jem and Maggie befriend the poet William Blake, who lives next door to the Kellaway's, and who seems to see Jem and Maggie as more than simply two kids running through the streets of London looking for mischief.

The tension between opposites, and more importantly, what lies between the poles, is the main motif here. Jem, the country boy to Maggie's city girl. One seemingly representing innocence, the other experience. But as the story unwinds we realize that isn't always the case and that people are, at once, a mixture of these two ideas, depending upon the circumstances in which they find themselves. The loss of innocence, and the multitude of forms that loss can take, plays out over and over again in the pages of the story, each time painfully reminding the reader that pure innocence is fleeting and impossible to replace.

However, this loss of innocence doesn't bring with it only dispair--there are glimmers of hope and happiness sprinkled amidst warehouse fires, mob scene riots and exhausting treks across the country-side.

Initially I was disappointed with the ending of the story--it seemed, well, anticlimactic to me. There was no screamingly big finish--no great tragedy or overwhelming joy. There is the sense, simply, that life will go on for these people. My first impulse was to feel let down. But after a time I realized that this is precisely the intention of the novel--life is not lived in the extreme, in the realm of opposites--it's lived within the space in between those poles, balancing between innocence and experience.

I'm going to miss these characters, but given the conclusion Chevalier created for them, I will probably spend some idle time imaging with the future could possibly have held for them. And I've always thought that's the mark of a good piece of literature.

What? I read.

2008-08-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

I just don't seem to be able to remember to write about what I read. But seriously, I do read. Not as voraciously as I'd like to, but I sneak it in there. Soooo, what have I read lately?

Driving Sideways, Jess Riley

I really enjoyed this; I read it while undertaking a huge cross-country move of my own and appreciated the "gigantic new adventure"ness of it all.

After years of basically waiting to die, main character Leigh is faced with the fact that she just might end up living after all. She receives a new kidney and is given the "okay" to embark upon the coming-of-age adventure that so many of us take for granted, and at an earlier age, even--driving cross country.

She has some pretty serious expectations built up about what this trip will entail--everything from learning more about from where her donated kidney comes, to confronting the mother who left her and her overbearing, begrudgingly over-protective brother years earlier.

It's safe to say that NOTHING is as Leigh expects it to be as she journeys towards a clearer sense of herself and the grown-up she's been given the opportunity to become.

Yummy Mummy, Polly Williams

Well, I love me some British chick lit, so I was a sucker for this. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the premise being that of a once svelte and fashionable career woman having morphed into a frumpy, insecure milk-bar of a mother with zero self-esteem and a brooding sense of doom in her relationship. Who could relate to that (well, minus the doomy relationship part)?

I loved this book--it was not, overall, a *deep read* by any means. But I loved watching Amy peel back the layers of her experience as a mother to find the core of her being again. Since having my own child over two years ago, the identity shift a woman experiences when becoming a mother is of particular interest to me. And I found her moment of clarity--a walk in a London park that just happens to be my "happy place" (ah, Regents Park, how I pine for you and my view of the pond from my dorm room)--to be tear-worthy and motherhood/womanhood-affirming. And sometimes, even if it's just a little treacly (which I didn't think it was, but I've read that others did), we need that.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend
Christopher Moore

Seriously? So funny. Not being Christian, I'm not sure just how high it would rate on the "irreverent scale". Well, actually, since Jesus was a Jew and most of the knocks are at Judaism, and since I'm a Jew, I guess I didn't find it very irreverent--just freaking hysterical.

Premise? Biff, brought back to life in modern times, is tasked with telling the story of Jesus (um, Joshua) that no one knows. See, Biff was with him during those lost years, the ones when, according to Biff, he and Joshua traveled the East in search of the Magi who visited the manger the night Joshua was born.

This journey forms the basis of Joshua's later teachings and Moore is able to weave Eastern thought and religion into Jesus' message in a way that is effortless and, as absurd as the story can be, makes perfect sense.

Biff is hysterical--apparently he invented sarcasm and is very particular about who uses it and is really pissed off when they mangle it. One doesn't normally picture Jesus roaming the world with an over-sexed (seriously, he's got a thing for Mary. The Virgin Mary) ready-to-fly-off-the-handle sidekick. But in almost every way, it was absolutely perfect.

I was a little disappointed with the ending, but you know, it is what it is. Not like Biff could change all of that dying on the cross thing (although he did try). Interestingly, this book humanized the story of Jesus for me in a way that eleven years of Catholic school couldn't do. I think a bunch of nuns would probably clutch their rosaries in horror at that, but again, I kinda like that.

Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster

2008-05-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

I've never been a big memoir person. I generally don't "do" non-fiction. I plowed through them in lit classes in college because I had a deadline and I have a smattering of memoirs/autobiographies on my bookshelf that I've never read (no doubt the vast majority of them will be purged with this next move in the coming month). So I wasn't sure how I'd feel about reading Jen Lancaster when I started out with her trifecta of wickedly funny memoirs.

Now that I've closed the back page of the last of the three, I am sad. She has chronicled the rise and fall of her fancy shmancy career before becoming a writer, her life in the city and lastly, her battle to gain control of her weight. Each book is hysterically funny on its own, but having read them one right after the other (if life hadn't gotten in the way, I'd probably have inhaled all three in a matter of days---damn all that husband, child, household and friendship junk!)

Since I've never immersed myself in a memoir before, I'm not really accustomed to the feeling of "gee, I'll miss her," in the way I am feeling it right now. Sure, when I finish a piece of fiction, I am left feeling a bit of loss; the characters are gone and most likely never to be seen again, adrift in the space of my memory, probably destined to fade into vagueness (unless we're talking Atticus Finch or Tess of the D'Urbervilles). But this time, I finished the book and was very aware of the fact that the heroine of this particular *trilogy* is still out there, on a daily basis living a life that is fodder for more hysterical writing.

I was also fascinated, this being a memoir, that I could actually find myself saying, "God, I relate so much to this woman." Whether it was her abject love of all things high in calories and saturated fat or the fact that she can handle all aspects of laundry EXCEPT the folding and putting away part (I am SO like that), I found myself saying, "me, TOO!!" in giggly excitement at so many parts of her book, as though I was chatting with a new girlfriend, in that fun "honeymoon" stage of friendship when you're getting to know all of each other's stuff. (I hate the word "stuff", but my brain is fried right now, so please except my apology for using the biggest cop-out word in all of the English language).

I was hugely inspired by her decision to gain control of her body and find her way towards a healthy weight and lifestyle. As I chronicle (poorly) in my other blog, No More Fat Sarah, I have had a life-long conflict with my body and it's insatiable love of yumminess. Her progression from "okay, really, tomorrow I'm going to start the diet....really," to the last page of the book gave me a sense of not being alone. I have no "fat" friends. I am surrounded by lithe, skinny girls who wave their hands dismissively at me when I lament about my weight. Reading this book was like having a friend to kvetch with about it, even though Jen didn't have to actually listen to my end of the kvetch-fest.

I'm impatient for the next book, although I know right now she's still out promoting this one--it only came out a few weeks ago. So until her next book hits the shelves (she'd better be writing one as I type this...), I will have to be content with her blog, www.jennsylvania.com.

As for my next book, I am delving back into the world of fiction with Hanna's Daughters, by Marianne Fredrikkson.

Bitter is the New Black & Bright Lights, Big Ass, Jen Lancaster

2008-05-17T06:58:00.001-07:00

I am not worthy.

Wickedly funny--I routinely annoyed Husband by laughing out loud while he tried to sleep next to me. He was not amused, but it was worth it. Lancaster is, at times, beyond obnoxious, but more often than not says what you'd think, but wouldn't have the balls to say.

I love her. Currently reading her new memoir: Such a Pretty Fat. Will probably comment on it extensively in my fat-girl blog, No More Fat Sarah.

Posh, Lucy Jackson & Snow Angels, Stewart O'Nan

2008-04-17T19:03:00.001-07:00

And the gloom goes on!

I loved both of these books, but DAY-UM! Worlds o' hurt in each one of them.

Posh is the story of several characters whose lives revolve around the elite Griffin School, a private New York high school, filled to the gills with the teenagers of the rich and famous, rife with all the problems that lie under their glossy veneers. Initially I thought it was going to be a sardonic satire that was going to make me laugh grimly at the foibles of the self-important and arrogant. In a way, it did. Please, having taught at a school similar to Griffin myself, I could see parents I have dealt with in the sketches of minor characters, parents who come to complain to Kathryn "Lazy" Hoffman about their daughters giving blow jobs to boys during a house party, off campus, on a Saturday night, expecting the headmaster to be able to actually do something about it. Because god forbid they actually parent their own children, right?

Reminded me of the mother at the school I taught at who actually barred my way from mailing a deadline to the yearbook company until she had a chance to review the quality and quantity of prom pictures that highlighted her daughter.

Or the father who wanted to know why his son received a B+ instead of an A- on a paper and was actually waiting for me, in my class room, when I arrived, expecting me to go line by line through the paper with him---while my class waited.

Or the parents of my student who, for a home work assignment, simply downloaded and printed out Spark Notes, complete with graphics and advertisements, and handed it in as his own work. They took me all the way to the Dean of Students complaining that the zero I gave their son was unfair because when I told the class they had to summarize the three chapters they read for homework, I didn't specify that their summaries had to be in their own words. And the piece de resistance? The Dean agreed with them (they gave buttloads of money to the school), and I had to give the kid an actual grade for his "work".

But Posh is more than just a satirical look at these self-absorbed lunatics. It begins with a loss almost too painful to bear and ends with yet another loss that is a sucker-punch to the gut, even though you could see it coming a mile away. We tend to write off the rich and fabulous as simply that and Jackson's book shows that, if you scratch just a bit below the surface, they are much more. Rife with vulnerabilities, they are far more complex than you'd think by looking at them in all their Neiman Marcus'd glory.

O'Nan's Snow Angels takes you to a completely different world, to lower working-class, small town dysfunction. Told, for the most part, from the perspective of Arthur Parkinson, a teenager stuck in the midst of his parents' divorce, it's the story of relationships unraveling and how those involved cope. Or can't cope. And the extremes they go to when they can't make their lives work outside the realm of those failed relationships.

I clearly loved the misery (this seems to be what I love about literature), but I had a hard time loving the characters. Perhaps that's O'Nan's purpose, since they are all, in some way, very responsible for their own bitter unhappiness in life. But I was only able to wrap my heart around Arthur, mainly out of pure pity for his plight and the stoic way in which he attempts to deal with it all.

He was perfectly drawn as the mortified teenager who so does NOT want to hear his mother prattle on about all of his father's faults and cannot bear to hear his father talk about his new girlfriend, but can't bring himself to tell either of them to shut the fuck up about it. His stoicism and the "too-much-information" he endures at the hands of the very adults who are supposed to protect him highlight how selfish grown ups can be when faced with their own little personal tragedies.

In a 6 degrees of separation twist, he is also entangled in the dysfunction and tragedy that befalls his former childhood babysitter who is dealing with a violent and estranged husband. As if dealing with his parents' maelstrom isn't enough, his connection to Annie is beyond heartbreaking.

While the lives of adults around him shatter, he attempts to forge ahead in his first romantic relationship, the one shining hope in this story that love can conquer, if not all, at least some.

So, now I've taken a bit of a breather from the tragic misery and I'm reading hysterically funny misery, in Jen Lancaster, Bitter is the New Black. Only half way through it, but it is one of the funniest books I have ever, ever read.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards, and Starting Out in the Evening, Brian Morton

2008-03-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

D.o.w.n.e.r.s.

My students often asked me, "Ms. S., why do we only read depressing things? Why does a book have to be such a downer in order to be considered great literature?" My answer was always something along the lines of how human nature learns through tragedy and suffering and tends to just absorb joy. Unfortunately, we're not wired to learn from joy, unless it's tempered by pain. It's just who we are.

But man alive, these two books take the cake in the "depressing downers" category. Basic gist of both books: "You're going to die. Period. And you'll probably lose a lot of your dignity in the process. Oh, and all that time you're living before you die? You're basically alone, even if you think you're not. You're going to make major mistakes, float aimlessly most of the time, maybe thinking that what you're doing has some significance in the world. But you're most likely wrong. Maybe you'll be missed when you're gone; maybe you won't be. But you won't know either way, because you'll be dead. Have a nice day!!!"

Not entirely fair, of course. Each book has it's moments of inspiration and hope. But when you're writing a book that is essentially about mortality and what one leaves behind based on the steps they take during life, it's hard not to present a melancholy bleakness to the reader. Hell, only Shakespeare was ballsy enough to toy with the idea that he was made immortal through his writing. The rest of us kind of know, though we don't think of it during the day to day, that we've got a limited amount of time and influence on this earth.

But when you cram that experience down into 300 pages, litter it with hugely bad mistakes like giving away your newborn because she has Downs Syndrome and then telling your wife that baby died, you are concentrating the misery and futility of life into such a small space, it pretty much sucker punches the reader constantly.

I liked both books immensely; I clearly have a soft spot for the gloom. Edwards' Memory Keeper's Daughter takes you through the life of Dr David Henry, starting on the night that he delivers his twins, one of whom has Downs Syndrome. That night changes the course of his life in the most unimaginable way, as he gives his "defective" twin away and tells his wife that the little girl died upon birth. The story that follows weaves the tale of his own family's inevitable disintegration and the story of that cast-off child and the woman who becomes her mother.

I was never able to understand David Henry, or forgive him for the choice he made, beyond rationalizing that he so desperately wanted to create a world of perfection for his wife and a child with special needs marred that image so completely, he had to erase that factor to preserve his ideal. The results are disastrous for all involved (with the exception, ironically, of the Downs child herself and those involved in her life). It was so difficult to watch the unraveling of his family knowing that it all hinged on one bad choice, in one moment of his life. How awful to know that one's entire existence is marked irrevocably by a split second.

Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening is about exactly that. Not only is it a title of the main character's unpublished book, it is the idea of examining one's life, while nearing the end of it. At least that's the case for Leonard Schiller, a fallen-by the wayside author, once great, struggling to live long enough to finish his last novel. The others in the novel, a graduate student writing her thesis about Schiller, and Schiller's daughter, are also, though younger, struggling to etch out their identities, to make sense of who they are and what they want in life before it is too late for them.

The book is marked by a sense of such loneliness and the futility of life that I was often surprised by how much I loved the characters. They were so beautifully crafted and rich, I had a hard time always liking them because of their authenticity. When I taught high school, especially the advanced classes, where the literature was more complex and the characters multi-faceted, my students used to struggle with that absence of a clear "good guy" and "bad buy". They wanted the clear cut characterization of the Greasers and the Socs, but they got Gatsby instead, so flawed and sketchy, even though he was our "hero". I tried to explain to them that great literature doesn't draw one-sided characters--there are no "all good" heroes in great writing--what would the challenge be if you knew from the beginning who was going to "win"?

I saw this in Morton's characters. Heather Wolfe, the graduate student, is so well-meaning and desperate to make a good impression, but also is entirely caught up in her own ego, in her attempts to immortalize Schiller through her analysis of him, as though he had ever asked for her attention in the first place. At times I liked her, but at times she made my skin crawl with her phoniness and her need to "fit in" to her niche as an intellectual. But isn't that exactly the struggle of a young, ambitious graduate student (or any young person starting out in their chosen field)? To say and do what one needs to in order to solidify her name among those who can further her purpose while at the same time preserving the innocent passion that drew her to her chosen field in the first place? So, not always likable, but flawlessly drawn.

I loved both books, even though each left me feeling a bit of emptiness and a sense of "well, what does it all mean, then?" Each story was careful to leave the reader with a glimmer of hope and "all is right with the world, even though it will all end and you'll most likely be forgotten". I guess, though, that's the hardest, most painful, lesson for human nature, in all it's arrogance, to absorb and, if my theory holds, that's what makes it great literature in the first place.

The Birth House, Ami McKay

2008-03-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

It WAS a good read, but it was not all that I was hoping for or expecting. I think Ann Enright's The Gathering has ruined me for good in terms of expecting great things in every book I pick up. And as a side note, I heard an interview w/ Enright on NPR a week or so ago and was again mesmerized by the tale of Veronica and her brother, Liam. I am tempted to go read the story again, even though it was only a month ago that I finished it. Enright mentioned bits of symbolism I'd not picked up on (hence the "frustrated" in "Frustrated English Teacher"; I'm losing my analytical edge big time with these episodes of Dora the Explorer and hours at the play ground).

Anyhooo, back to McKay's Birth House. It was an interesting and enjoyable read, but I expected far more from the struggle between Dora Rare and the male obstetrician set on demolishing the tradition of midwifery during the early 20th century in rural Nova Scotia. What I got instead were a few examples of fiesty midwife spunkiness, one potentially explosive situation that is defused when Dora runs to the safety of Boston, where she mingles with her brother's love, who is a suffragette, and her artistic friends (this would be fascinating if it weren't for what Dora leaves behind her in Canada).

Initially I was very hopeful. The writing is beautiful, if not made of the same ethereal melancholy of Enright. We find Dora Rare, the only girl born to the Rare family in decades, learning the tradition of midwifery from the enigmatic Mrs. Babineau. There are hints that Mrs. B. fluctuates in the town's opinion from miracle worker to witch, a common dilemma faced by midwives throughout history. But even Mrs. B. gives up without much of a fight and Dora's thrust into the struggle against modern medicine on her own.

Far more time than I was hoping for was spent on Dora's personal life, or lack thereof. Had the story not held the promise of the great battle between the age-old tradition of women catching babies and the modern practice of child-birth as medicine, perhaps Dora's craptastic marriage and quest for a man to love her and for becoming a mother in her own right, would have been enough.

But as a woman who ended up with a c-section after only 9 hours of labor, and who sometimes still wonders "what if...", and who bristles against the idea that pregnancy is a medical condition and needs to be treated as such, I really wanted to see the midwife kick some serious OB ass. And it was just too neat a finish for me. No knock down, drag out, fight to the finish for the hearts and uteri of the women of Scot's Bay.

I did love the merry coven of knitters that Dora surrounds herself with and how they bond over cups of tea full of what essentially amounts to RU-486, circa 1919. After years of dropping babies left and right because their husbands can't respect their bodies well enough to leave them alone two days out of the month, the women take matters into their own hands. I loved that. And I loved how Mrs. B and Dora, in their roles as midwife, become the secret keepers of the town. They are vaults of the secret truths of the town's women; even those who scoff at them in public privately rely on them in times of trouble. These relationships were the most redeeming part of the book.

I will say I learned some interesting factoids, too; perhaps I'd been living under a rock, but I had no idea that vibrators were used in the early 20th century as a treatment for the diagnosis of "female hysteria".

To that end, I will say one other thing for McKay's book; it does a FABULOUS job of making the obstetrician look like a completely ignorant dumbass, and I loved that. He misses what is, though it is never called such, clearly a case of impending pre-eclampsia that made me twist in my seat with anxiety.

Had there been a little less about the marriage and a little more intensity in the struggle of midwife vs doctor, this book would have likely been one of my favorites.

Oh yeah, I have a book blog...

2008-02-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

Leave it to Margaret Atwood to totally annihilate my momentum. This is the third Atwood book I've started and attempted to muddle through and I guess I am just a bad feminist reader because damn if her books don't make me want to rip my hair out. It's her bizarre mixture of science-fiction futuristic societies blended with endless descriptions of frail, powdery, paper-thin old lady skin that makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

So I put The Blind Assassin down and have been pouting ever since. I hate not finishing a book. I've done a ton of first-page hopping in the past month because when I give up on a book, I become ravenous for others, but I can't commit to any.

It's seriously like getting over a failed relationship for me. After ditching a book I really had hoped would be a great read for me, I flit from one book to another, reading a page or two to see if it will appease me (generally fluffy chick lit in this situation) in my disappointed state. This time, though, I attempted to flit from Booker winner to Booker winner and that is just a brain-fuck; too deep, too intense, too demanding when I'm simply looking for a rebound from a bad read.

I've finally settled on Ami McKay's The Birth House, which is essentially the story of a midwife-in-training dealing with the infiltration of modern medicine and a male obstetrician in her domain.

It is a wonderful mix of a girly drama and historical fiction. Thus far I am enjoying it immensely, as it's feeding my "rebound" need as well as offering some actual literary quality, as opposed to my usual Bridget Jones-y type selections when in this frame of mind.

I have many thoughts on the book itself and the topic it covers, but I think I'll save it until I'm farther into the book.

Booker #3: The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

2008-01-19T08:39:00.001-08:00

Sigh. I am not nearly the sophisticated reader I once was. I've never really been able to enjoy Atwood (probably because the movie version of The Handmaid's Tale freaked me out to no end and I could never get past that), but I am really trying here. It starts with the main character describing her sister's death (an apparently suicidal joy ride off the side of a bridge) and the novel the sister has left behind, which she posthumously publishes.

So far the book is a surreal combination of this novel within a novel and a smattering of newspaper clippings of obituaries also pertinent to this main character's life. The obituaries are quite interesting; the novel within a novel? Well, it's a weird mixture of a torrid love affair and a freaky sci-fi, otherworld where horrible social conditions drive people to heinous crimes, apparently.

It is a looooong read and fairly slow, so I wouldn't expect to hear from me here anytime in the next week or so. I hope to get through it because I really feel like at 36 years old, I really should be able to say I've read at least one Atwood novel. Sigh.

Slim Pickin': Skinny, Ibi Kaslik

2008-01-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

I was drawn to this book because, as a chubby girl, eating disorders have always fascinated me in a twisted kind of way. The book is the story about a perfectionist medical student with daddy issues (shockingly, she's the one with the eating disorder) and her younger, athletic, academically-apathetic sister, who magically has the perfect relationship with the daddy in question.

It's not a bad book; it's actually listed for many Canadian book awards, from what the back of the cover says. Eh. I didn't really see anything award-worthy, although the final pages give themselves over to a poetic tone that is far lovelier than anything else in the book.

The book, in my opinion, tries to do too much. It's narrated in alternating chapters by the two sisters, which can be wonderful (think Joy Luck Club), but here it just takes away from the older sister, Giselle's, story because she is, after all, the main character. Holly, the younger of the two, just kind of lets us know about how her sister's problems are wreaking havoc on her life and oh, yeah, the ghosts. She sees ghosts. That part is never entirely fleshed out.

Neither is the boyfriend, really. I never quite understand his motivation for his feelings for the girls and I didn't really find him necessary to the plot.

I wanted something, if you'll pardon the term, meatier. I wanted to learn more about anorexia and the mindset that goes along with it. I already know about perfectionism and daddy issues. I wanted it to go deeper; for the character to come more to life for me. Perhaps only because Giselle's chapters were constantly interrupted by her sister's, I never felt connected to her or the story.

I guess it's from having picked this book up randomly after having poured myself into two Booker Award winners; this book isn't bad at all. It's a good read. But it's not Enright or Doyle and I couldn't help but hold that against it while I was reading.

Sob-Fest

2008-01-12T10:08:00.001-08:00

Yeah, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha broke my heart. I had forgotten the ending and even when I knew what was going to happen, when it it finally did, I was sad beyond words.

There is little in this world as tragic as a child's mind trying to grapple with adult issues and adult relationships, struggling to make sense of the angry words that fly across the dinner table, above his head. Childhood's innocence is fragile as an egg, and this kid's innocence is just cracked all to hell, way before it's time. The conflict in his mind and heart as to whose "fault" it all is and how can he lay blame on the two people he loves the most, is just wrenching.

Booker #2: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle

2008-01-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

I read this book a decade or so ago, but I swear I remember nothing of it save that I liked it and I vaguely feel like it made me cry.

I have to say, it's like Lord of the Flies and "A Christmas Story" rolled into one thus far. The story of Patrick Clarke and his little brother, Sinbad, and all their friends in this seemingly down-trodden Irish town slowing being taken over by the Corporation, is rife with random acts of compulsive violence and "triple dog dare you"'s that make the mother in me cringe. At the same time, the armchair therapist in me is trying to figure out where their pent-up, seeping rage comes from that they feel the need to constantly beat the snot out of each other for a laugh.

It's actually not hard to figure out, come to think of it. There are a bevy of reasons these young boys would feel and then bury their angst, given the circumstances of their lives.

A couple hundred pages to go and, like I said, I am fairly certain this one's going to make me full-on cry like a little girl.

The Gathering, Anne Enright--Booker Prize winner 2007

2008-01-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

Wow. What started as a vaguely ethereal, esoteric rambling about an invisible mother, turned into one of the most brutally painful and beautifully written stories of loss and hoped-for redemption I've ever read.

The main character, Veronica, spends a lot of time musing about her family; its past, in part how she imagines it and in part how she remembers it, and it's present, as she feels it. Her "Irish twin" brother has passed away and as the family gathers to mourn (whether it's real grief or obligatory in nature), she is forced to face a gut-wrenching memory that clarifies for her everything that has ever seemed "off" about the people she loves, including herself.

I really didn't expect to like it. It had a Virginia Woolf-eque stream of consciousness initially that has always turned me off. I am fascinated by the life of Woolf; I love the idea of Woolf, but not so much the words of Woolf. So I expected to have to trudge my way through this, semi-congratulating myself all the way for being a reader of such lofty and ambitious literature. But by page 100 or so, I was finding myself wishing for a spare minute in the day so I could steal a few pages, dying to know what happens next; not so much in an action driven sort of way, but in the sense that I just loved this narrator, was broken hearted for her, and wanted to spend a few more minutes with her.

I was satisfied when it was over, but truly wanted to know what happened next. I spent some time envisioning what would happen after the closing pages, had Enright chosen to take her story into the next chapter of this woman's (and her family's) life. This is one that will resonate with me for quite some time.

Done with Little Children

2007-12-23T16:16:00.000-08:00

Loved this book. I loved that each character was so very flawed and almost equally likable and dislikable at the same time. Where Desperate Housewives is over the top and American Beauty is miserably tragic, Little Children falls somewhere in the middle--realistic in it's angst, not expecting the reader to swallow massive amounts of tragedy, but not letting them off at the end with a shiny, happy ending, either. Perrotta definitely takes a big old dump on the idea of domestic bliss, no question, but it's not like the universe is out to get these people--they walk into their messes, eyes wide open and for no other reason than they want to. They are the "little children", acting on impulse on doing what satisfies the immediate need or want in them, not considering consequences until the final chapter.

Overall, it was a super easy and captivating read; I wish the characters HAD felt a bit more moral fretting over the situations they threw themselves into, but that would have defeated the metaphor of their childlike (or would "childish" be more appropriate) behavior. I did appreciate the allusion to Flaubert's Bovary that kept me wondering how the lives of these people would parallel that particular character's conflict and demise. While nothing quite as gruesome and dramatic as drinking arsenic, I can definitely see why Perrotta chose that classic as the reading group's literary selection. I think he could have also alluded to any of Austen's classics, as Perrotta is clearly poking fun at our society with the same satirical wink as Austen did in her time.

I'm off to read my first Booker Prize winner: The Gathering, by Anne Enright. I started it moments after completing Little Children and it is like jumping into the deep end of a cold pool in comparison to Perrotta's writing. Very stream-of-conscious-y and abstract-dreamy like. But I am already in love with the narrator Veronica and the way she paints the world around her with her poetic choice of words and the clearly complex relationships she is going to share with me. Can't wait to curl up tonight and see what happens next.

Wisteria all over the place

2007-12-21T08:57:00.001-08:00

Digging this book. Although, I have to say it makes me slightly uncomfortable, as it is suggesting such subversion in a nook of the world that up to this point, I have felt fairly comfortable in.

Perrotta looks at the lives of suburban mothers and fathers (they are, indeed the "children" his is referring to in his title, I believe) and peels back the "happy happy!" image we all strive to put forth. Think Desperate Housewives and American Beauty (he even gives this film a shout out in the first few pages), in writing.

One of the more interesting questions it's posing to me right now (140 pgs in), is HOW we get to this place. Who we were before marriage and children is, sometimes, so vastly different from who we become once we give ourselves over to these institutions that you can, he seems to be saying, lose track of who you really are in the shuffle of daily life.

I like to think that's not the case with my own family and those with whom I am close. Having become a stay at home mom in the past couple of years, I have definitely seen the women he writes about in the first few pages: the judgey schedule-nazi moms who always looks perfect (at least their own perception of perfection) and I have been the character Sarah (how fitting), who forgets to pack a snack for the play date (or a diaper--gasp!) and has to rely on the kindness of other moms to step up for me. I will say, my kinship with Sarah pretty much ends at that point--the clumsy, flustered anti-supermom.

I am curious to see what becomes of these "little children" and how they play out the little games they have going on now, consisting of what I think is going to end up being a fairly torrid affair, the stalking and harrassing of an ex-con, and some fairly kinky internet fetishism. This book is a much wilder ride, but just as thought-provoking as the last one I read.

The Whole World Over...is over

2007-12-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

I finally finished it. At 550-ish pages, it's one of the longest books I've read in awhile and I'm relieved it's over. I have to say, as I rounded page 400, I just wanted it to be over. I did like the story, but none of the characters ever really grabbed my heart and held on.

The end was relatively satisfying, but I'm not sure if it's because it was over or because it was a truly good ending. The climax of the book is a twist around page 500 that definitely upped my emotional investment, and drives the book to it's conclusion, but even with that unexpected twist, I called the ending far before that point. I knew where each character was going to end up, I just didn't know how they were going to get there.

I do think Glass has a talent for creating interesting family dynamics and honestly, she spins melancholy better than any other contemporary writer I can think of. Her ability to capture the subtle emptiness of life (all I can think of is late afternoon sun coming through the window into a dark room) isn't quite as impressive in this book as it was in Three Junes, but it's definitely there.

I hate saying negative things about books, especially written by authors whose work I have loved in the past. I generally close a book with a heavy heart and a teary eye (cheese-ball extraordinaire, I know), sad that it's over. This time I felt a pang of "oh, thank god it's over." I'm not sure if it's because of the book itself or because I have a list of "to be reads" a million miles long and for the past 300 pages, all I could think was "I wonder if Little Children or The Gathering is better than this."

I'm off to start Little Children, so I will let you know in a few days....

Diving In...

2007-12-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

In my attempt to be more serious about reading this year, I am jumping into my first reader's challenge, hosted by Deweymonster.

For my selections, I am choosing

The Gathering, Anne Enright
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Amsterdam, Iam McEwan
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle (I read this years ago but the only thing I remember is that I loved it)
Possession, A.S Byatt
Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre

And yeah, I'm still going to do the NYT Notable books (although I'd never for a second think I could get through all 100 of them); I believe that The Gathering is an overlap, so that takes care of that, right? Ethan's going to have to take some really long naps...

Oh, and The Whole World Over? I kind of fell in love with it a little bit last night.

To Read or Not To Read...

2007-12-07T08:45:00.001-08:00

My biggest struggle as a reader is often whether to power through a novel that is just not capturing me. I know I *should* (my least favorite word, by the way) because somewhere in there I might find a lesson to carry away with me or an image that takes my breath away. I do believe one gem of a description or one powerful character can make 500 pages of otherwise pointless stuff all worthwhile.

I can't believe I am saying it, but this is my dilemma with Julia Glass' The Whole World Over. I was so in love with her first novel, Three Junes, that I felt solid certainty that this book would move me in the same way. The characters in Three Junes and their tremendous senses of loss and melancholy haunted me for weeks upon completing the book. I even recall driving through Rock Creek Park, trying (poorly) to relate the story of these interwoven lives to Husband (who, though he snagged a first date with me by discussing Shakespeare, the sneaky man, is not a big reader himself). I closed that book with my eyes on the next masterpiece I could look forward to from her.

But here I am, 150 pages in, and I'm not in love yet. I'm not even really interested. So many characters to love, but I can't get there. I do love the Dickensian way she hops from one character to another, while knowing full well that somehow all of these paths are going to meet, in some way, before the book closes. And that meeting will be powerful and emotional and I know I'll cry and have to tell Husband all about it, too.

So I will continue to trudge through this, in the hopes that I fall in love. I rarely give up on a book, but when you look at the page number and realize you've got 350 pages left in a book that hasn't grabbed you by pp 150, it takes some serious deep breaths to keep muddling through.

Hopefully next time I check in, I will be eating my words.

Someone's Got Too Much Time on Her Hands...

2007-12-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I've got another blog. I probably won't write in this one with the same frequency as my "mommy" blog or the one where I exercise my self-deprecating (or is it self-loathing) tendency in my journey towards (or around) weight loss. But I wanted to start it nonetheless. Why? Because I haven't been in front of a class room in 2 years now and I rarely get to talk about one of the greatest loves of my love--reading.

One of my plans for the new year (I hate the idea of resolutions, so if I just play around with it semantically, that makes it way less cliche, right? sure), is to read more. Not that I've been staring blankly at walls for the past 2 years or anything like that, but I've really not been reading the type of literature that makes my brain light up, or that gives me the urge to sit down with a friend and a cup of coffee and just talk, talk, talk about the book until we've lost all sense of time and space.

So here I am, all Jodi Picoult'd and Phillipa Gregory'd out. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed almost every page of the eleventy billion of their books I've read, but the truth of the matter is, they don't really write stuff that resounds with me (except perhaps Picoult's My Sister's Keeper) and quite often I can't recall how one of their stories ended more than a week after I've finished it (and that's pretty sad considering Gregory's novels are based on a history I minored in during college).

My hope is to power through the New York Times' Notable Books of 2007 (http://tinyurl.com/3dszf8) and share some of my thoughts on each book I complete here in this blog. This is going to mean that I will be walking my contrite ass over to the library and paying some insane overdue fee for books that I forgot about during our kitchen remodel. They lived, in all their overdue glory, under a plastic tarp in my dining room for a good 6 weeks before I discovered them and realized I was probably going to have to get part-time job just to pay the library fee. But many of these books are in hardcover which makes them unbuyable for me because Husband would kill me if I came home with a dozen gigantic books. As it is I am about to donate a gazillion (I promise hyperbole in each and every blog I write, people) books to the library just so that we have room to, I don't know, WALK through our house. The size of our house and my love of the written word do not go well together, let's say.

So there it is. It seems to be fast becoming a tradition that a new year brings a new blog for me. That does not bode well for me in a few year's time. I will need more hours in the day, or for them to have perfected human cloning. As both are quite doubtful, I think I will just have to vow that this is the last blog coming out of me.

for now...