I've been ridiculously remiss in these last few months of the year about migrating reviews over here from LibraryThing and even missed out an edition of Packing for a Reading Retreat. I'm working on a Reading Retreat post for tomorrow, but in the meantime, I give you the twenty-one books that have most shaped my life. This post is based on a meme that floated around Facebook and LibraryThing a few weeks back, and is divided into two halves: the eleven books that have most stayed with me (ten positive influences and one negative one) and the ten books with which I did not connect. For each book, I give a brief explanation of why I included it in the list.
Eleven Books that Have Been Important to Me
1.) The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
My dad read LotR (and The Hobbit) to me when I was very small (five or six). It's probably the first mythology of any kind that ever meant anything to me and was certainly my first introduction to "grown-up" fiction in any sense. I have many memories of being read to at a young age (and of having my own books), but the nightly LotR reading probably instilled in me the idea that curling up with a good book is one of the Best Things.
2.) The Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
These were read to me (Mom, this time) so many times and I read them myself so many times that the events within them became a permanent part of my mental furniture.
4.) Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
Probably the first book that I felt proprietary toward. I loved it, I read it over and over, I carried it around in my pocket, I had parts memorized. When I discovered that a nice hardcover edition on my grandfather's shelves was abridged OMG, I started (but did not complete) a comparative study between the abridged version and the complete text, making notes about how the abridgement altered the meaning of the book. I was about eleven. What a snot I must have been.
5.) Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
This was required reading at some point in middle school (sixth grade? seventh grade?), and I hated it. I could tell it was going somewhere awful, I couldn't escape being taken there with it, it traumatized me, and it made me feel trapped, scared, and depressed. That was the first time a book had ever made me feel that way (and it was one of the few times school ever made me feel that way, too). It may be the only book I have ever truly resented being made to read, and just the thought of the stupid thing still makes me feel a little sick to this day.
6.) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Aside from just loving the story (which I did), this one is important because it was probably the first "classic" I read entirely of my own choosing and with no prompting from anyone else. I didn't struggle to read it, but it did require more "work" to get through than most things I read on my own at that age (about fifteen). For a kid who'd been reading way above her grade level for always, discovering that leisure reading could still be fun if it was also challenging was probably really important.
7.) Various Robert Heinlein books, including Time Enough for Love and I Will Fear No Evil
Heinlein gets a lot of flak for the way he wrote women (I don't disagree now that his female characters are problematic), but in my late teens his female characters who were smart and beautiful and unabashedly sexual (not sexy but sexual) were like a revelation to me.
8.) The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
A required text for a creative writing class in undergrad. Forever shaped the way I think about writing, reading, life, and what they're all for.
9.) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Romances can have substance! They can be worth reading after you already know who gets together with whom! I have much more complicated feelings (still positive) about P&P now, but that was the revelation then, some time in college.
10.) The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
In the summer between the two years of my masters program, I devoured HP 1-5 (all there was at the time). And rediscovered that reading can be pure, unadulterated fun. Thank heavens.
11.) A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
I would sooner give up any other ritual at Christmas (or any other time of year) than I would my annual reading of this brilliant little piece. Puts me in the perfect mood for Christmas, always, and straightens me out with the world and with myself (if necessary). An annual spiritual balm for me since high school.
Ten Books with which I Didn't Connect
1.) The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
I wanted to maneuver Holden Caulfield off a bridge even when I was his age.
2.) The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Could never work up any sympathy for (or interest in) any of the unlikeable characters mooning around in SL.
3.) Ulysses, James Joyce
What a brilliant writer Joyce was (The Dead, be still my heart). And what an amazing feat Ulysses is. But I could never warm to it. What a wretched reading experience it was (twice).
4.) Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
I always (I've read it at least three times) feel mired down in an impenetrable jungle of unintelligible murky images when I read Heart of Darkness.
5.) The Russians
I have not yet given up! I am determined to read at least one mammoth Russian novel before I die. I've tried Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and Doctor Zhivago. I just can't get into them. I have read some shorter works (The Death of Ivan Ilyich--three times! like Heart of Darkness, it was perpetually assigned to me throughout high school, undergrad, and grad school--Fathers and Sons, The Overcoat, some Chekov).
6.) The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
Die faster, Little Nell. Lord.
7.) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Like The Scarlett Letter, my chief problem with GoW was that I couldn't muster up any sympathy for the characters. That's a lot of ridin' around in the back of an old truck with the fambly if you don't care a lick for anyone. And don't even get me started on the everlovin' turtle.
8.) The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
The allegory drives me nuts, and I just never warmed to the world. I wonder if there's a division between Tolkien and Lewis fans--like if you love Tolkien you're less likely to love Lewis.
9.) Animal Farm, George Orwell
I have heard some people describe this as the only book they had to read for school that they loved. Not me, boy. I found it both disturbing and tedious, which might be the worst combo ever.
10.) Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut
It's supposed to be funny, right? I don't get it.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume IV
It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat," where I
imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading
retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do
nothing but read for a week. My imagined packing can fall into one of three categories:
"New to Me," for books I've never read before; "Old Favorites," for past
reads I'd like to revisit; and "Just in Case," for one book that can
always be counted on to save me if one of the other selections turns out
to be a dud. As the volumes of "Packing" pile up, I may share more "New to Me" choices and allow "Old Favorites" and "Just in Case" to appear only when a book which fits either category leaps out at me and demands to be recognized.
New to Me
tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed
If you don't know about Dear Sugar and The Rumpus, you ought. The Rumpus is an online magazine with reviews, essays, interviews and so on--often about and by people you want to hear from and likely won't anywhere else. And Dear Sugar is their advice column. And tiny beautiful things is a collection of those columns. This ain't Dear Abby I'm talking about with one or two paragraphs of advice anyone with a brain and more than a decade or two of living behind them could give you (not that Dear Abby isn't usually right on the money); Sugar's responses are full-blown personal essays in response to her reader's questions, which themselves are often longer than an entire typical newspaper advice column and and are frequently heartrending. Dear Sugar is less advice about what to do about something and more an invitation to contemplate what it means to be human and to discover how to be better at it. This one is at the very top of my "to-read" pile.
Seraphina, Rachel Hartman
Dragons! Seraphina is a young adult novel about human/dragon conflict wherein the dragons are sentient and eminently rational. Hartman cited Vulcans and a desire really to explore what a society based on individual rationality above all else would look like as part of her inspiration. She also reportedly listened to Italian polyphony and Breton bagpipe rock while she was writing. If she can put together a sentence, this basically cannot fail to be awesome, right?
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Doorstop-reads don't scare me off, exactly, but I'm often not in the mood to read them--usually because I have so many things I want to read now, now, now that I have a hard time committing so much reading time to one thing. But lately I find myself aspiring to a lot of chunkster reads all at once. Anna Karenina, The Forsyte Saga, War and Peace. And Les Mis calls to me more than any other. I'm not sure why (this notion predates the release of the recent movie, which I haven't seen. Actually, I've never seen any interpretation of the book.). Epic storytelling, tragic heroes, historical bits--all up my street. Or maybe it's just winter.
On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield
Oh, how I do love maps! World maps, fantasy maps, topography maps, ancient maps. I can just stare at a good one for yonks. So here's a book for me. On the Map talks history of maps and map-making, how maps shape our understanding of the world, maps in popular culture. I suspect this will be a book anyone with a map in her hall of the surrounding country "with all her favourite walks marked on it in red ink" will find fascinating.
Previous Editions of Packing for a Reading Retreat:
Volume III
Volume II
Volume I
New to Me
tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed
If you don't know about Dear Sugar and The Rumpus, you ought. The Rumpus is an online magazine with reviews, essays, interviews and so on--often about and by people you want to hear from and likely won't anywhere else. And Dear Sugar is their advice column. And tiny beautiful things is a collection of those columns. This ain't Dear Abby I'm talking about with one or two paragraphs of advice anyone with a brain and more than a decade or two of living behind them could give you (not that Dear Abby isn't usually right on the money); Sugar's responses are full-blown personal essays in response to her reader's questions, which themselves are often longer than an entire typical newspaper advice column and and are frequently heartrending. Dear Sugar is less advice about what to do about something and more an invitation to contemplate what it means to be human and to discover how to be better at it. This one is at the very top of my "to-read" pile.
Seraphina, Rachel Hartman
Dragons! Seraphina is a young adult novel about human/dragon conflict wherein the dragons are sentient and eminently rational. Hartman cited Vulcans and a desire really to explore what a society based on individual rationality above all else would look like as part of her inspiration. She also reportedly listened to Italian polyphony and Breton bagpipe rock while she was writing. If she can put together a sentence, this basically cannot fail to be awesome, right?
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Doorstop-reads don't scare me off, exactly, but I'm often not in the mood to read them--usually because I have so many things I want to read now, now, now that I have a hard time committing so much reading time to one thing. But lately I find myself aspiring to a lot of chunkster reads all at once. Anna Karenina, The Forsyte Saga, War and Peace. And Les Mis calls to me more than any other. I'm not sure why (this notion predates the release of the recent movie, which I haven't seen. Actually, I've never seen any interpretation of the book.). Epic storytelling, tragic heroes, historical bits--all up my street. Or maybe it's just winter.
On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield
Oh, how I do love maps! World maps, fantasy maps, topography maps, ancient maps. I can just stare at a good one for yonks. So here's a book for me. On the Map talks history of maps and map-making, how maps shape our understanding of the world, maps in popular culture. I suspect this will be a book anyone with a map in her hall of the surrounding country "with all her favourite walks marked on it in red ink" will find fascinating.
Previous Editions of Packing for a Reading Retreat:
Volume III
Volume II
Volume I
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Book Review: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
A fascinating novel, mostly made so by its intriguing structure and deft handling of many writing styles. Cloud Atlas
consists of six different narratives, each taking place at a different
time in history (and some in the future), dealing with different
characters, and employing different styles and methods of narration. The
novel begins with the narrative furthest back in time (call it
Narrative A), continues with the next narrative in chronological
succession (Narrative B), and keeps going through its several narratives
until it arrives at Narrative F, then works back in time through each
narrative once again. So the structure looks something like this:
ABCDEFEDCBA. Eventually it becomes apparent that there are connections
among these seemingly separate narratives, and Mitchell's skill in
handling this structure becomes increasingly clear as he works his way
back down his narrative ladder (on the EDCBA side, if you will). Working
the hints of connections into the first half of the novel strikes me as
something not overly difficult; backing out through the second half of
the narrative and picking up all those disparate threads to make the
whole create sense and answer questions seems like it must have been
mind-bogglingly difficult. For manipulation of this structure, for
making it work, I give Mitchell all the credit in the world. His
skill at working so well within so many different styles is also
remarkable. He succeeds, as well, in making the reader care about each
of his narratives, about all of his characters, despite wrenching her
away from each narrative just as it is getting really good and asking
her to invest in yet another scenario.
I came away from Cloud Atlas impressed by Mitchell's writing and his ability to reel one into a story and wowed by his handle on structure. But in the end I was never sure what all of that structural whizzbang was for (beyond being an incredible feat in and of itself). I'm not entirely sure what the novel means to say about the interconnectedness of people and events or about our ability (or inability?) to recognize those connections. Without that understanding I was left a bit befuddled. Which is not to say that I think this isn't a book worth reading. I think it is. There's enough here that is satisfying to outweigh that discontent in the end. And the novel avoids feeling like an experiment which succeeds technically but fails to tap into the emotional life of the reader. The novel is an amazing achievement, if not a wholly satisfying one. But absolutely worth the read, even if only to marvel at how Mitchell works that ABCDEFEDCBA structure. Seriously.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
I came away from Cloud Atlas impressed by Mitchell's writing and his ability to reel one into a story and wowed by his handle on structure. But in the end I was never sure what all of that structural whizzbang was for (beyond being an incredible feat in and of itself). I'm not entirely sure what the novel means to say about the interconnectedness of people and events or about our ability (or inability?) to recognize those connections. Without that understanding I was left a bit befuddled. Which is not to say that I think this isn't a book worth reading. I think it is. There's enough here that is satisfying to outweigh that discontent in the end. And the novel avoids feeling like an experiment which succeeds technically but fails to tap into the emotional life of the reader. The novel is an amazing achievement, if not a wholly satisfying one. But absolutely worth the read, even if only to marvel at how Mitchell works that ABCDEFEDCBA structure. Seriously.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume III
It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat" (though I am a touch late), where I
imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading
retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do
nothing but read for a week. I imagine my packing in three categories:
"New to Me," for books I've never read before; "Old Favorites," for past
reads I'd like to revisit; and "Just in Case," for one book that can
always be counted on to save me if one of the other selections turns out
to be a dud.
New to Me
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
I've had this one on hand for awhile now, but haven't cracked it open yet (though I have read Mitchell's Black Swan Green, which I gather is a very different sort of book, but which I enjoyed immensely). I saw a preview for the movie version of Cloud Atlas and I quite literally wrinkled up my nose and said, "Cloud Atlas Cloud Atlas? Like, David Mitchell? Is that what that book is about?" It was all science fiction-y-ish with the same actors playing different characters in different time periods. I sort of knew that there was an element of souls appearing in different eras or reincarnation or something in Cloud Atlas, but the feel of the movie preview sort of shocked me in being not what I expected from that book. But it looked like a movie I would like to see and it seems like a book I would definitely want to have read before seeing the movie, so it's been bumped up my mental list of books to read soon.
Canada, Richard Ford
I recently saw a tiny snippet of an interview with Richard Ford which made me think I really ought to read something by him. Canada is his latest, and I can't say that I picked it out of all his works for much more reason than because it is the most recent (and maybe because the story--a teenaged boy has to learn to fend for himself and avoid Child Services after his parents rob a bank--appealed to me).
The Time in Between, María Dueñas, trsl. Daniel Hahn
I have to confess that the cover and the first sentence ("A typewriter shattered my destiny.") are what drew me to this book and remain the chief reasons I want to read it. Though the setting (WWII, Europe), as always, appeals. I mean, who could resist that first line?
Old Favorites
The Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
This is the tiniest bit of a cheat, as I've already dipped in to these, but I am still very eager to carry on with them, so I call it fair. A recent review of the Little House books highlighted the darkness and danger of living on the frontiers, and that prompted me to want to reread these childhood favorites.
Just in Case
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
A beloved childhood read about a young man who sets out to seek his fortune and runs afoul of a dastardly uncle, is kidnapped, and then must make his way home through the Scottish Highlands during the turmoil in the years after the '45. A pretty solid adventure story with a fascinating setting and wonderful attention to historical and political detail.
Previous Editions of Packing for a Reading Retreat:
Volume II
Volume I
New to Me
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
I've had this one on hand for awhile now, but haven't cracked it open yet (though I have read Mitchell's Black Swan Green, which I gather is a very different sort of book, but which I enjoyed immensely). I saw a preview for the movie version of Cloud Atlas and I quite literally wrinkled up my nose and said, "Cloud Atlas Cloud Atlas? Like, David Mitchell? Is that what that book is about?" It was all science fiction-y-ish with the same actors playing different characters in different time periods. I sort of knew that there was an element of souls appearing in different eras or reincarnation or something in Cloud Atlas, but the feel of the movie preview sort of shocked me in being not what I expected from that book. But it looked like a movie I would like to see and it seems like a book I would definitely want to have read before seeing the movie, so it's been bumped up my mental list of books to read soon.
Canada, Richard Ford
I recently saw a tiny snippet of an interview with Richard Ford which made me think I really ought to read something by him. Canada is his latest, and I can't say that I picked it out of all his works for much more reason than because it is the most recent (and maybe because the story--a teenaged boy has to learn to fend for himself and avoid Child Services after his parents rob a bank--appealed to me).
The Time in Between, María Dueñas, trsl. Daniel Hahn
I have to confess that the cover and the first sentence ("A typewriter shattered my destiny.") are what drew me to this book and remain the chief reasons I want to read it. Though the setting (WWII, Europe), as always, appeals. I mean, who could resist that first line?
Old Favorites
The Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
This is the tiniest bit of a cheat, as I've already dipped in to these, but I am still very eager to carry on with them, so I call it fair. A recent review of the Little House books highlighted the darkness and danger of living on the frontiers, and that prompted me to want to reread these childhood favorites.
Just in Case
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
A beloved childhood read about a young man who sets out to seek his fortune and runs afoul of a dastardly uncle, is kidnapped, and then must make his way home through the Scottish Highlands during the turmoil in the years after the '45. A pretty solid adventure story with a fascinating setting and wonderful attention to historical and political detail.
Previous Editions of Packing for a Reading Retreat:
Volume II
Volume I
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume II
It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat," where I imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do nothing but read for a week. I imagine my packing in three categories: "New to Me," for books I've never read before; "Old Favorites," for past reads I'd like to revisit; and "Just in Case," for one book that can always be counted on to save me if one of the other selections turns out to be a dud.
New to Me
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
A retelling of The Iliad, as told by Patroclus. Readers of the last installment of "Packing for a Reading Retreat" already know that I am a sucker for retellings. The Ancient World and all the myths, legends, and epics that go with it have always been on the periphery of my imagination. I know they are out there, and I know bits of the stories, but, despite being fairly intrigued by them, I've never really dived in. Perhaps this retelling will inspire me to go to The Iliad itself. Song has gotten a lot of good reviews (I started hearing good things on LibraryThing almost immediately after it was published), so I'm excited to read this one.
The Cove, Ron Rash
Set during WWI in the Appalachians of North Carolina, The Cove is both a stranger-comes-to-town story and a love story. I've been meaning to read Ron Rash for a while, and I find myself drawn to stories set in or about the Appalachians since living in Tennessee and Virginia (though I have always lived in or near the Appalachian mountains).
Widdershins, Charles de Lint
I read a novel by de Lint a few years back, and, though I was ultimately somewhat disappointed with it, I was fascinated by de Lint's style, his used of both urban and fantastical settings, and his use of Hispanic mythology and mysticism. I've been saying I would try another by him since, and the cover of this one drew me in. De Lint is meant to be one of the masters of urban fantasy (and one of its pioneers), and I think he probably deserves a second go.
Old Favorites
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
I read and enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in my early teens, but I've never reread it. It was a bit of struggle for me at the time, and I know much of it went over my head then. The setting of early 20th-century New York appeals to me, and I'd love to read this one again with adult eyes.
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I have a hardback, beautifully illustrated edition of The Secret Garden that was given to me when I was six or seven as a Christmas present by a great-aunt who had a reputation for giving perfect presents. I know I read the story at least once, but my strongest memory of this book is just sitting and looking at the pictures, of reveling in the book as a beautiful object. I haven't looked at the book beyond a quick glance since middle school, and I plan to sit down with it some day soon and turn every page with relish.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
I love Jane Eyre for the way she stands up for herself and doesn't let fear stop her from doing things. My recent reading of The Flight of Gemma Hardy has rekindled a desire to read Jane Eyre again. It's been too long anyway.
Just In Case
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
The retelling of Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women in the story utterly engrossed me at sixteen. It's still the best contemporary telling of the Arthur stories and would be the perfect book to have along in case of running out of other things to read.
Past Editions of "Packing for a Reading Retreat"
Volume I
New to Me
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
A retelling of The Iliad, as told by Patroclus. Readers of the last installment of "Packing for a Reading Retreat" already know that I am a sucker for retellings. The Ancient World and all the myths, legends, and epics that go with it have always been on the periphery of my imagination. I know they are out there, and I know bits of the stories, but, despite being fairly intrigued by them, I've never really dived in. Perhaps this retelling will inspire me to go to The Iliad itself. Song has gotten a lot of good reviews (I started hearing good things on LibraryThing almost immediately after it was published), so I'm excited to read this one.
The Cove, Ron Rash
Set during WWI in the Appalachians of North Carolina, The Cove is both a stranger-comes-to-town story and a love story. I've been meaning to read Ron Rash for a while, and I find myself drawn to stories set in or about the Appalachians since living in Tennessee and Virginia (though I have always lived in or near the Appalachian mountains).
Widdershins, Charles de Lint
I read a novel by de Lint a few years back, and, though I was ultimately somewhat disappointed with it, I was fascinated by de Lint's style, his used of both urban and fantastical settings, and his use of Hispanic mythology and mysticism. I've been saying I would try another by him since, and the cover of this one drew me in. De Lint is meant to be one of the masters of urban fantasy (and one of its pioneers), and I think he probably deserves a second go.
Old Favorites
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
I read and enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in my early teens, but I've never reread it. It was a bit of struggle for me at the time, and I know much of it went over my head then. The setting of early 20th-century New York appeals to me, and I'd love to read this one again with adult eyes.
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I have a hardback, beautifully illustrated edition of The Secret Garden that was given to me when I was six or seven as a Christmas present by a great-aunt who had a reputation for giving perfect presents. I know I read the story at least once, but my strongest memory of this book is just sitting and looking at the pictures, of reveling in the book as a beautiful object. I haven't looked at the book beyond a quick glance since middle school, and I plan to sit down with it some day soon and turn every page with relish.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
I love Jane Eyre for the way she stands up for herself and doesn't let fear stop her from doing things. My recent reading of The Flight of Gemma Hardy has rekindled a desire to read Jane Eyre again. It's been too long anyway.
Just In Case
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
The retelling of Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women in the story utterly engrossed me at sixteen. It's still the best contemporary telling of the Arthur stories and would be the perfect book to have along in case of running out of other things to read.
Past Editions of "Packing for a Reading Retreat"
Volume I
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Not Until They're Twenty-Five
I'm engaging in a reread of the Harry Potter series this summer, something I enjoy doing every few years. I read Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets in quick succession, and was struck, as I always am on these rereads, by how really brilliant HP1 is and how exciting it would be to read these books for the first time as a child. I never had that experience--I was sixteen when the first Harry was published, seventeen before it was published in the US. And I didn't read any of them until I was nearly twenty and didn't quite realize the appeal until twenty-three. I suppose there might be an argument to be made that I came to Harry Potter at exactly the right time for me--during a summer in grad school when it was a thrill to rediscover how purely enjoyable reading can be. But I still return to that feeling that reading them at the age they were intended for would have been such a treat. Which inevitably leads me to a question: how might one share the Harry Potter books with children today?
One of the things I love about the Harry books is that they allow the children within them to grow and that the books themselves progressively "grow up" in vocabulary, style, and incident as Harry and co. get older themselves. This was almost certainly a great thrill for those children lucky enough to be the right age to start Harry when he first came out and interested and/or readerly enough to stick with him through book seven. An eight-year-old who started with Sorcerer in 1998 would have been just the same age as Harry himself when she read Deathly Hallows in 2007. How cool is that?
But this very "growing up" of the series is what I fear would make giving Harry to children today problematic. Suppose there is an eight-year-old of your acquaintance whom you think would enjoy these books. If she is a strong reader, she should be able to read HP1 on her own; if not, she should be able to enjoy it thoroughly if read aloud to her. Unless quite easily frightened, our eight-year-old (let's call her Rose) should be able to enjoy the small nastinesses, the sort-of scary monsters, and the kind-of creepy villain of Sorcerer's Stone without being upset by the book. The same is probably true of Chamber of Secrets and maybe even Prisoner of Azkaban.
But how many installments until you're afraid that the books are too old for Rose? It won't take her ten years to get to Deathly Hallows without J.K. Rowling's writing pace to slow her down, especially if she is really caught up in the story. How would you feel about little nine-year-old Rose reading about ethnic cleansing, children wiping their parents' memories to protect them, murder-by-snake, and kindly old men raising children so that they will be prepared to sacrifice themselves to save the world at seventeen? Those are only a few of the things of which my nightmares were made after I read HP7 at twenty-six. (M and I recently rewatched HP7: 1 & 2, and during the scene where Voldemort murders Charity Burbage, I muttered that any future children of ours would not be watching the movie until they were at least seventeen. That age got revised upward as the evening progressed.) I can't quite see letting Rose read Deathly Hallows before the teen years, but nor can I see telling Rose she can't read the rest of a story with which she has fallen in love. One could try to steer Rose clear of Harry altogether until she is thirteen or fourteen, but Sorcerer's Stone is just too perfect for the eight-to-eleven set not to share it at that age. And a thirteen-year-old might find the first two or three books too young for her, both in content and in style--and that might put her off the whole series. What a shame that would be. So, what to do?
I've heard the theory that one should let her children read whatever they want; that if they are old enough to comprehend a book, then they are old enough to deal with a book. Maybe. I've also read a good deal of theory about the prevalence of evil people, horrible situations, and tragedy in books written for older children and young adults--that dealing with such things in literature is an important part of children's development and their ability to deal with whatever is happening in their lives. I'll buy that. There's probably also something to be said for the notion that adults perceive horrors differently from children, that adults overestimate the effect unpleasantness in stories will have on kids. I was an avid and strong reader from a very early age and have no recollections whatever of my parents forbidding me to read any particular books; nor can I remember being really, truly disturbed by anything I read as a kid. I read a lot, I think, that was a bit beyond my comprehension and was unsettled by some of it, but struggling to find meaning in the books I didn't really understand was probably an integral part of my growing up.
All of which, I suppose, argues for letting Rose read the later Harry Potter books when she thinks she's ready for them. She'd probably read them under a blanket with a flashlight if her parents forbade them anyway. Better to be prepared, maybe, to know that your baby is going to show up at the side of your bed at three in the a.m. terrified of whatever twist her unconscious put on Dementors and Nagini and Killing Curses.
And no one can protect Rose from growing up forever. What a shame that would be.
One of the things I love about the Harry books is that they allow the children within them to grow and that the books themselves progressively "grow up" in vocabulary, style, and incident as Harry and co. get older themselves. This was almost certainly a great thrill for those children lucky enough to be the right age to start Harry when he first came out and interested and/or readerly enough to stick with him through book seven. An eight-year-old who started with Sorcerer in 1998 would have been just the same age as Harry himself when she read Deathly Hallows in 2007. How cool is that?
But this very "growing up" of the series is what I fear would make giving Harry to children today problematic. Suppose there is an eight-year-old of your acquaintance whom you think would enjoy these books. If she is a strong reader, she should be able to read HP1 on her own; if not, she should be able to enjoy it thoroughly if read aloud to her. Unless quite easily frightened, our eight-year-old (let's call her Rose) should be able to enjoy the small nastinesses, the sort-of scary monsters, and the kind-of creepy villain of Sorcerer's Stone without being upset by the book. The same is probably true of Chamber of Secrets and maybe even Prisoner of Azkaban.
But how many installments until you're afraid that the books are too old for Rose? It won't take her ten years to get to Deathly Hallows without J.K. Rowling's writing pace to slow her down, especially if she is really caught up in the story. How would you feel about little nine-year-old Rose reading about ethnic cleansing, children wiping their parents' memories to protect them, murder-by-snake, and kindly old men raising children so that they will be prepared to sacrifice themselves to save the world at seventeen? Those are only a few of the things of which my nightmares were made after I read HP7 at twenty-six. (M and I recently rewatched HP7: 1 & 2, and during the scene where Voldemort murders Charity Burbage, I muttered that any future children of ours would not be watching the movie until they were at least seventeen. That age got revised upward as the evening progressed.) I can't quite see letting Rose read Deathly Hallows before the teen years, but nor can I see telling Rose she can't read the rest of a story with which she has fallen in love. One could try to steer Rose clear of Harry altogether until she is thirteen or fourteen, but Sorcerer's Stone is just too perfect for the eight-to-eleven set not to share it at that age. And a thirteen-year-old might find the first two or three books too young for her, both in content and in style--and that might put her off the whole series. What a shame that would be. So, what to do?
I've heard the theory that one should let her children read whatever they want; that if they are old enough to comprehend a book, then they are old enough to deal with a book. Maybe. I've also read a good deal of theory about the prevalence of evil people, horrible situations, and tragedy in books written for older children and young adults--that dealing with such things in literature is an important part of children's development and their ability to deal with whatever is happening in their lives. I'll buy that. There's probably also something to be said for the notion that adults perceive horrors differently from children, that adults overestimate the effect unpleasantness in stories will have on kids. I was an avid and strong reader from a very early age and have no recollections whatever of my parents forbidding me to read any particular books; nor can I remember being really, truly disturbed by anything I read as a kid. I read a lot, I think, that was a bit beyond my comprehension and was unsettled by some of it, but struggling to find meaning in the books I didn't really understand was probably an integral part of my growing up.
All of which, I suppose, argues for letting Rose read the later Harry Potter books when she thinks she's ready for them. She'd probably read them under a blanket with a flashlight if her parents forbade them anyway. Better to be prepared, maybe, to know that your baby is going to show up at the side of your bed at three in the a.m. terrified of whatever twist her unconscious put on Dementors and Nagini and Killing Curses.
And no one can protect Rose from growing up forever. What a shame that would be.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Book Review: She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb
I'm not sure what made me pick up She's Come Undone and rip through it in less than two days, as I've always shied away from it before, thinking of it as one of those books about "Woman's Experience"--a topic which generally makes me cross (as if there could be such a thing). But I enjoyed She's Come Undone more than I expected to--the narrator's voice is engaging and pulls one right along, and Lamb creates characters and scenes seemingly effortlessly. The sentences read smoothly, and the novel is sophisticated in its movement. The final pages made me smile with happy satisfaction at the outcome of Dolores's story.
But something bothered me throughout my reading, and I'm still unsure of what, exactly, was the problem. Perhaps it was the relentless parade of wretched human beings in the book, people who seemed uninterested in, or incapable of, love in any of its guises and who were wholly uninteresting except in the specific ways they affected Dolores. Perhaps it was the wearying way nearly every man in the story was a misogynistic jerk. Or the disconnect I felt between the experience of Dolores, born in 1952 in Rhode Island, and my mother, born in 1951 in Pennsylvania. No reason, really, exists to think that two women of the same generation born in roughly the same part of the country would have similar experiences, but Dolores seemed to live in an entirely different world than the one my mother grew up in. Where were the kinds of good, loving, strong characters who inhabited Mom's stories of growing up in the fifties and sixties? Why was nearly every adult in Dolores's world so touched by and damaged by The Times In Which They Lived?
Or perhaps it was that the events of the novel began to feel like a checklist of Bad Things That Happen to Women (I'm going to get a touch spoilery here). Dolores witnesses verbal and physical abuse against her mother by her father; sees her parents go through a divorce caused in some part by her father's adultery; watches her mother have a nervous breakdown, spend time in a mental hospital, then come home and engage in an affair with a married man; flirts with a handsome neighbor and then is raped by him at thirteen and convinced by him that "their" indiscretion is her fault; becomes mentally depressed and morbidly obese; experiences the death of her mother in a horrible traffic accident; is maliciously and sexually teased by a boy at a college party who then calls her horrible names and destroys her property when she fights back; nearly commits suicide; spends four years in a mental institution; marries a man who threatens to leave her if she does not abort their child; has an abortion she does not want; gets a divorce; and eventually must give up on her dream of bearing children. While Dolores does learn to stand up for herself and eventually finds happiness; loyal, loving friends; and a good man (and the moments when she has these breakthroughs are satisfying and exciting), this litany of misery began to feel a touch dishonest. It is not that I disbelieve that all of these things could happen to one person (and I will say that Lamb deals with each one beautifully), but that I began to suspect that these events existed in the novel for reasons that had little to do with story. And that put me off a bit.
In the end, I was impressed by Lamb's handling of structure and sentences and, in some cases, character. But despite the satisfaction I felt in Dolores's eventual triumphs, I also felt manipulated by the novel. And that will always leave a sour taste in my mouth.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
But something bothered me throughout my reading, and I'm still unsure of what, exactly, was the problem. Perhaps it was the relentless parade of wretched human beings in the book, people who seemed uninterested in, or incapable of, love in any of its guises and who were wholly uninteresting except in the specific ways they affected Dolores. Perhaps it was the wearying way nearly every man in the story was a misogynistic jerk. Or the disconnect I felt between the experience of Dolores, born in 1952 in Rhode Island, and my mother, born in 1951 in Pennsylvania. No reason, really, exists to think that two women of the same generation born in roughly the same part of the country would have similar experiences, but Dolores seemed to live in an entirely different world than the one my mother grew up in. Where were the kinds of good, loving, strong characters who inhabited Mom's stories of growing up in the fifties and sixties? Why was nearly every adult in Dolores's world so touched by and damaged by The Times In Which They Lived?
Or perhaps it was that the events of the novel began to feel like a checklist of Bad Things That Happen to Women (I'm going to get a touch spoilery here). Dolores witnesses verbal and physical abuse against her mother by her father; sees her parents go through a divorce caused in some part by her father's adultery; watches her mother have a nervous breakdown, spend time in a mental hospital, then come home and engage in an affair with a married man; flirts with a handsome neighbor and then is raped by him at thirteen and convinced by him that "their" indiscretion is her fault; becomes mentally depressed and morbidly obese; experiences the death of her mother in a horrible traffic accident; is maliciously and sexually teased by a boy at a college party who then calls her horrible names and destroys her property when she fights back; nearly commits suicide; spends four years in a mental institution; marries a man who threatens to leave her if she does not abort their child; has an abortion she does not want; gets a divorce; and eventually must give up on her dream of bearing children. While Dolores does learn to stand up for herself and eventually finds happiness; loyal, loving friends; and a good man (and the moments when she has these breakthroughs are satisfying and exciting), this litany of misery began to feel a touch dishonest. It is not that I disbelieve that all of these things could happen to one person (and I will say that Lamb deals with each one beautifully), but that I began to suspect that these events existed in the novel for reasons that had little to do with story. And that put me off a bit.
In the end, I was impressed by Lamb's handling of structure and sentences and, in some cases, character. But despite the satisfaction I felt in Dolores's eventual triumphs, I also felt manipulated by the novel. And that will always leave a sour taste in my mouth.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Book Review: The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
(For the most part, if you know the plot of Jane Eyre, you know the plot of The Flight of Gemma Hardy, but I get a bit spoilery in my fourth paragraph for events specific to Gemma Hardy. The whole review will completely spoil Jane Eyre for you if you do not know it.)
I'm afraid that this retelling of Jane Eyre just doesn't quite work. Livesey's sentence-level writing is clean and impressive, and she has a knack for writing the kind of crisp prose that can effortlessly pull a reader along. And taken alone, Gemma's story serves as a decent character study. The problem is that Gemma's story cannot be taken alone. This is Jane Eyre, moved to Scotland in the 50s and 60s, and given some minor make-overs to make the plot plausible in the mid-twentieth century (Gemma's employer with whom she falls in love has a secret, but it does not involve a mad women stashed away in an attic--who would believe such a thing of a businessman in the late sixties? Or if one did believe it, the whole thing could not help but be a great deal more inescapably, irrevocably dark and sinister.) But transplanted to a world that is familiar to the modern reader, much of the plot of Jane Eyre becomes incredible. It is hard to imagine an aunt suddenly treating her niece as less than a servant among automobiles, telephones, jumpers, and boyhood dreams of playing soccer for England. It is difficult to see how a school could treat its pupils so poorly in days so close to our own. It is entirely possible that such things might have happened in this setting (the nineteenth century did not have a monopoly on cruelty, after all), but fiction does not hinge on what might be possible in the real world, but on what has been made to seem possible on the page. And Livesey fails to overcome her source material in making these Gothic-infused plot elements seem possible in the pages of her fictional world.
Jane's transition to Gemma encounters other obstacles as well. Mr Sinclair, the employer with whom Gemma falls in love, contains none of the mysteriousness of Mr Rochester, none of the sense of danger and intrigue wrapped up in enigmatic moods and veiled personal history. Blackbird Hall and the Orkney islands do not ooze with atmosphere and gloom as Thornfield Hall and the moors do. Mr Sinclair's secret is not terribly damning, and while it is believable that its revelation would make Gemma think twice about marrying him, her flight from him comes over as foolish and over-dramatic; Jane's flight from Mr Rochester and his attempt to commit bigamy through deceit (and the subsequent effect Jane may well have thought this would have on her soul) seems almost rational in comparison. This difficulty with suspension of disbelief is not helped by the fact that Gemma and Sinclair's love for one another reads like a result of the novel's paralleling Jane Eyre rather than a natural development springing from these characters themselves.
In fact, much of The Flight of Gemma Hardy appears to exist because it must do so in order to stay true to the source to which it is indebted. Reading the novel was a bit like going down a Jane Eyre plot point checklist. Confrontation with bratty older cousin? Check. Locked in a frightening room? Check. Sent off to a miserable boarding school? Check. Make friends with a doomed pupil? Check. Get job teaching the ward of a rich, absentee landowner? Check. Unwittingly help employer on the road when he returns unexpectedly? Check. And so on. While Livesey does infuse her telling with new elements, while she does, in many ways, make the story her own, her changes and updates to the tale often feel uninspired; they rarely made me think about Jane Eyre in new ways or provided much insight into how the story of a girl growing up with this particular set of disadvantages changed in one hundred years. I thought for a while that perhaps that sense of things not having changed much was the point of the novel, but if so the illustration of that fact falls flat. Having dismissed that notion, I considered the possibility that the novel was meant to illustrate how Jane Eyre, when looked at from a distance, becomes rather silly, how it might have seemed so to its contemporary readers, just as some of its plot elements seem unbelievable when placed in a (roughly) contemporary setting today. But, no, the book does not suggest to me, in its unfolding, in it careful retracing of the plot of Jane Eyre, any sort of critique of the original novel.
Except, perhaps, in the end. Finally, finally, in the last fifty-or-so pages, The Flight of Gemma Hardy departs from its strict adherence to the plot of Jane Eyre. Upon discovering that she may have family on her father's side still living, and in the aftermath of refusing a perhaps practical but certainly passionless proposal of marriage, Gemma (unlike Jane) goes in search of that family. And here are some of my favorite parts of the book. Gemma finds living relatives in Iceland and learns (as Jane does not), a fair amount about her childhood before coming to live with her aunt and uncle, about her family, about, as a result, herself. And Mr Sinclair comes to find her, rather than her going back to him. And they do not get married (though there's a strong intimation that they will, once Gemma comes to understand herself a little better). This is the sort of thing I was hoping the whole book would do--put a spin on the familiar story, show how Jane Eyre would be if she'd been born in the aftermath of World War II. And in some ways I suppose it does do that, but I never really felt that the novel was fully reimagining the original story.
I did so want to love The Flight of Gemma Hardy. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels, and I thought a retelling of it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, Livesey doesn't quite tap into that potential--I spent much of the novel wishing she (or someone) had reimagined Jane Eyre in its original setting, taking up the story from some crucial point in the original narrative and exploring what might have happened if Jane had made different choices. Alas. But I do give mad props to Livesey for trying, and on the strength of her prose, I will be looking out for some of her previous novels.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
I'm afraid that this retelling of Jane Eyre just doesn't quite work. Livesey's sentence-level writing is clean and impressive, and she has a knack for writing the kind of crisp prose that can effortlessly pull a reader along. And taken alone, Gemma's story serves as a decent character study. The problem is that Gemma's story cannot be taken alone. This is Jane Eyre, moved to Scotland in the 50s and 60s, and given some minor make-overs to make the plot plausible in the mid-twentieth century (Gemma's employer with whom she falls in love has a secret, but it does not involve a mad women stashed away in an attic--who would believe such a thing of a businessman in the late sixties? Or if one did believe it, the whole thing could not help but be a great deal more inescapably, irrevocably dark and sinister.) But transplanted to a world that is familiar to the modern reader, much of the plot of Jane Eyre becomes incredible. It is hard to imagine an aunt suddenly treating her niece as less than a servant among automobiles, telephones, jumpers, and boyhood dreams of playing soccer for England. It is difficult to see how a school could treat its pupils so poorly in days so close to our own. It is entirely possible that such things might have happened in this setting (the nineteenth century did not have a monopoly on cruelty, after all), but fiction does not hinge on what might be possible in the real world, but on what has been made to seem possible on the page. And Livesey fails to overcome her source material in making these Gothic-infused plot elements seem possible in the pages of her fictional world.
Jane's transition to Gemma encounters other obstacles as well. Mr Sinclair, the employer with whom Gemma falls in love, contains none of the mysteriousness of Mr Rochester, none of the sense of danger and intrigue wrapped up in enigmatic moods and veiled personal history. Blackbird Hall and the Orkney islands do not ooze with atmosphere and gloom as Thornfield Hall and the moors do. Mr Sinclair's secret is not terribly damning, and while it is believable that its revelation would make Gemma think twice about marrying him, her flight from him comes over as foolish and over-dramatic; Jane's flight from Mr Rochester and his attempt to commit bigamy through deceit (and the subsequent effect Jane may well have thought this would have on her soul) seems almost rational in comparison. This difficulty with suspension of disbelief is not helped by the fact that Gemma and Sinclair's love for one another reads like a result of the novel's paralleling Jane Eyre rather than a natural development springing from these characters themselves.
In fact, much of The Flight of Gemma Hardy appears to exist because it must do so in order to stay true to the source to which it is indebted. Reading the novel was a bit like going down a Jane Eyre plot point checklist. Confrontation with bratty older cousin? Check. Locked in a frightening room? Check. Sent off to a miserable boarding school? Check. Make friends with a doomed pupil? Check. Get job teaching the ward of a rich, absentee landowner? Check. Unwittingly help employer on the road when he returns unexpectedly? Check. And so on. While Livesey does infuse her telling with new elements, while she does, in many ways, make the story her own, her changes and updates to the tale often feel uninspired; they rarely made me think about Jane Eyre in new ways or provided much insight into how the story of a girl growing up with this particular set of disadvantages changed in one hundred years. I thought for a while that perhaps that sense of things not having changed much was the point of the novel, but if so the illustration of that fact falls flat. Having dismissed that notion, I considered the possibility that the novel was meant to illustrate how Jane Eyre, when looked at from a distance, becomes rather silly, how it might have seemed so to its contemporary readers, just as some of its plot elements seem unbelievable when placed in a (roughly) contemporary setting today. But, no, the book does not suggest to me, in its unfolding, in it careful retracing of the plot of Jane Eyre, any sort of critique of the original novel.
Except, perhaps, in the end. Finally, finally, in the last fifty-or-so pages, The Flight of Gemma Hardy departs from its strict adherence to the plot of Jane Eyre. Upon discovering that she may have family on her father's side still living, and in the aftermath of refusing a perhaps practical but certainly passionless proposal of marriage, Gemma (unlike Jane) goes in search of that family. And here are some of my favorite parts of the book. Gemma finds living relatives in Iceland and learns (as Jane does not), a fair amount about her childhood before coming to live with her aunt and uncle, about her family, about, as a result, herself. And Mr Sinclair comes to find her, rather than her going back to him. And they do not get married (though there's a strong intimation that they will, once Gemma comes to understand herself a little better). This is the sort of thing I was hoping the whole book would do--put a spin on the familiar story, show how Jane Eyre would be if she'd been born in the aftermath of World War II. And in some ways I suppose it does do that, but I never really felt that the novel was fully reimagining the original story.
I did so want to love The Flight of Gemma Hardy. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels, and I thought a retelling of it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, Livesey doesn't quite tap into that potential--I spent much of the novel wishing she (or someone) had reimagined Jane Eyre in its original setting, taking up the story from some crucial point in the original narrative and exploring what might have happened if Jane had made different choices. Alas. But I do give mad props to Livesey for trying, and on the strength of her prose, I will be looking out for some of her previous novels.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Packing for a Reading Retreat
I've never been on a Reading Retreat, but I've heard of them. Comfy accommodation in some secluded, scenic spot; meals provided; evening gatherings of other retreat attendees to discuss bookish things. No television, no phone, no obligations--nothing to do for a week but read, read, read. I've no immediate plans to go on such a retreat either, as paying handsomely to do something I can just about get away with at home with some forward planning always seems just a little too extravagant. But gosh, I'd like to. And sometimes I imagine what it would be like, and what books I'd take. Thus, about once every four months (I'll shoot for around 1 April, 1 July, 1 October, and 1 January), I'll share what I would pack for a reading retreat if I were lucky enough to be heading out to one soon.
I've done my share of packing for regular vacations, of course. And I always take too many books. It's just so hard to choose, and I'd hate to get there and realize that the book that I really want to read, the book that would be just perfect, is the book I left behind. The knowledge that I will almost surely be someplace where I can get another book, or borrow a book from a friend, has no effect on my overpacking. The books I pack tend to fall into one of three categories: something I've never read, or books that are new to me; books I've read before and would like to visit again, or old favorites; and one or two books that catch my eye after I thought I'd finished packing, or those that are just in case. So in each "Packing for a Reading Retreat" post, I'll pick three books that are new to me, three old favorites, and one just in case--and I'll say a little about each one. That's may still be too many books for a week, but who could choose?
New to Me
The Mirage, by Matt Ruff
From the front flap: "11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers." Chilling. And tantalizing. I have steered clear of, or been disappointed by, books I've read that center around 9/11, but this one intrigues me. Perhaps it is a suspicion that reading about those events turned on their head will be easier to stand, while still providing some insight. Perhaps it is just that I am fascinated by speculative fiction, with things that posit "but what if it were just this way?" Either way, I've heard good things, and this is the first 9/11 novel I've really wanted to read, rather than just thought I probably ought to. Here's hoping.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
Gemma Hardy loses her parents and then a kind guardian and is left in the care of a mean aunt. She subsequently goes away to school, hoping for a better life, only to find the conditions living there little better than staying with her aunt. Eventually she takes a job as an au pair, and finds herself intrigued by her employer. Yar, it's Jane Eyre, and consciously so. If there's anything that fascinates me more than speculative fiction, it's a retelling. And Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books, not only because I loved reading it, but because it was one of the few classics I read as a teenager entirely because I wanted to. It wasn't for school, it wasn't suggested by my mother, it wasn't to help me pass any kind of test. I'm a little wary of Gemma Hardy for that reason, but I've heard really good things about this one, too.
Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann, translated by John. E. Woods
I had to read Death in Venice for one of my comps a few years ago, and I expected it to be a slog. Au contraire! I loved it. Since then I've been picking up John E. Woods's translations of Mann's major works, but I've yet to sit down and read one of them. The Magic Mountain always seems like a too-intellectual introduction to Mann in long form, and I shy away from Doctor Faustus fearing it may wreck me somehow. Buddenbrooks strikes me as the least intimidating. And such a long novel would be the perfect thing for a weekend of uninterrupted reading.
Old Favorites
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Yes, yes, I hear many of you crying foul, claiming this is too obvious, demanding I pick something else. But this is no knee-jerk, I-always-want-to-read-Rings-again kind of a choice. M just reread The Hobbit the other week, and we've been dipping into the films of an evening here lately. And I've realized that it's been quite a while since I've read Rings in its entirety. There are always new things to discover in Tolkien, no matter how many times you've read him, and I always think that Rings suffers greatly from being read in snatches. One should really sit down with it for hours at a time and let oneself settle comfortably into Tolkien's style, let oneself get caught up in Middle Earth.
The Sound of Summer Voices, by Helen Tucker
My mother read the first chapter of The Sound of Summer Voices to me when I was home sick from middle school. (It was probably a nasty headache, otherwise I likely would have read it myself.) The story has a mystery to it, though it is not a mystery story, and I remember calling out what I thought were deeply important clues as she read. The story involves a pre-adolescent boy who decides that one of his aunts must actually be his mother, and follows him as he tries to find out the truth. Tucker has a knack for capturing small town life and the characters who live in them. And the plot is fun. I've been meaning to read this one again for a long time.
Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier
You gotta take along one slightly creepy book in case of thunderstorms. Rebecca is probably my favorite "slightly creepy" read. The atmosphere DuMaurier creates is tangible, and the mysterious goings on at Manderley hold up brilliantly even when you already know what all the fuss is about.
Just in Case
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
I can practically recite Pride and Prejudice without looking at the pages. And that's largely why it's here. It's an old, comfortable favorite, and will serve splendidly in cases of homesickness, duds, or freak-outs caused by The Mirage. Austen's language is so smooth that her sentences have a kind of soothing, inevitable rightness to them. And the characters are just delicious, the plot just twisty enough, and the humor just delightfully pointed.
I've done my share of packing for regular vacations, of course. And I always take too many books. It's just so hard to choose, and I'd hate to get there and realize that the book that I really want to read, the book that would be just perfect, is the book I left behind. The knowledge that I will almost surely be someplace where I can get another book, or borrow a book from a friend, has no effect on my overpacking. The books I pack tend to fall into one of three categories: something I've never read, or books that are new to me; books I've read before and would like to visit again, or old favorites; and one or two books that catch my eye after I thought I'd finished packing, or those that are just in case. So in each "Packing for a Reading Retreat" post, I'll pick three books that are new to me, three old favorites, and one just in case--and I'll say a little about each one. That's may still be too many books for a week, but who could choose?
New to Me
The Mirage, by Matt Ruff
From the front flap: "11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers." Chilling. And tantalizing. I have steered clear of, or been disappointed by, books I've read that center around 9/11, but this one intrigues me. Perhaps it is a suspicion that reading about those events turned on their head will be easier to stand, while still providing some insight. Perhaps it is just that I am fascinated by speculative fiction, with things that posit "but what if it were just this way?" Either way, I've heard good things, and this is the first 9/11 novel I've really wanted to read, rather than just thought I probably ought to. Here's hoping.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
Gemma Hardy loses her parents and then a kind guardian and is left in the care of a mean aunt. She subsequently goes away to school, hoping for a better life, only to find the conditions living there little better than staying with her aunt. Eventually she takes a job as an au pair, and finds herself intrigued by her employer. Yar, it's Jane Eyre, and consciously so. If there's anything that fascinates me more than speculative fiction, it's a retelling. And Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books, not only because I loved reading it, but because it was one of the few classics I read as a teenager entirely because I wanted to. It wasn't for school, it wasn't suggested by my mother, it wasn't to help me pass any kind of test. I'm a little wary of Gemma Hardy for that reason, but I've heard really good things about this one, too.
Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann, translated by John. E. Woods
I had to read Death in Venice for one of my comps a few years ago, and I expected it to be a slog. Au contraire! I loved it. Since then I've been picking up John E. Woods's translations of Mann's major works, but I've yet to sit down and read one of them. The Magic Mountain always seems like a too-intellectual introduction to Mann in long form, and I shy away from Doctor Faustus fearing it may wreck me somehow. Buddenbrooks strikes me as the least intimidating. And such a long novel would be the perfect thing for a weekend of uninterrupted reading.
Old Favorites
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Yes, yes, I hear many of you crying foul, claiming this is too obvious, demanding I pick something else. But this is no knee-jerk, I-always-want-to-read-Rings-again kind of a choice. M just reread The Hobbit the other week, and we've been dipping into the films of an evening here lately. And I've realized that it's been quite a while since I've read Rings in its entirety. There are always new things to discover in Tolkien, no matter how many times you've read him, and I always think that Rings suffers greatly from being read in snatches. One should really sit down with it for hours at a time and let oneself settle comfortably into Tolkien's style, let oneself get caught up in Middle Earth.
The Sound of Summer Voices, by Helen Tucker
My mother read the first chapter of The Sound of Summer Voices to me when I was home sick from middle school. (It was probably a nasty headache, otherwise I likely would have read it myself.) The story has a mystery to it, though it is not a mystery story, and I remember calling out what I thought were deeply important clues as she read. The story involves a pre-adolescent boy who decides that one of his aunts must actually be his mother, and follows him as he tries to find out the truth. Tucker has a knack for capturing small town life and the characters who live in them. And the plot is fun. I've been meaning to read this one again for a long time.
Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier
You gotta take along one slightly creepy book in case of thunderstorms. Rebecca is probably my favorite "slightly creepy" read. The atmosphere DuMaurier creates is tangible, and the mysterious goings on at Manderley hold up brilliantly even when you already know what all the fuss is about.
Just in Case
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
I can practically recite Pride and Prejudice without looking at the pages. And that's largely why it's here. It's an old, comfortable favorite, and will serve splendidly in cases of homesickness, duds, or freak-outs caused by The Mirage. Austen's language is so smooth that her sentences have a kind of soothing, inevitable rightness to them. And the characters are just delicious, the plot just twisty enough, and the humor just delightfully pointed.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Are you from the PAST?
I was born in the early eighties into a family with a mother who worked in an office, one grandmother who was the vice-president of a local bank, and another grandmother who was responsible for the bookkeeping and all money matters for her church. Our houses were filled with books, and you were generally more likely to walk into a room of people reading than of people watching television. Abortions and hormonal birth control have been legal all of my life. That a woman should have professional responsibilities outside of the home, that she should have control over the reproductive functions of her body, that she should read whatever struck her fancy, were all such normal, self-evident ideas that it didn't occur to me even to think about them until I was somewhere in my teens. And I can honestly say that I have never thought that my femaleness--its very fact alone--has ever been a cause for others to dislike me or behave condescendingly toward me or form any opinions about me at all. Until now.
I am not naive enough to think that this experience was universal for women my age, or even for those born a little later, a little more solidly into the post-Roe-v.-Wade era. And I know that the fight for women's equality--in popular culture, in politics, in the job sphere--have been going on all my life. And once I started to emerge a bit from the shelter of family life, I certainly saw it. But suddenly I feel it. Suddenly I feel like there are people out there who will think a certain way about me because I am a woman, and not because they have met me, or read what I've had to say, and come to a thinking conclusion. And some of those people appear to be the same people who think they ought to be the President of the United States. The president. The face of the nation. The singular embodiment of our country and the democratic ideals for which it stands. When Rush Limbaugh called an accomplished, intelligent young woman a slut before a national audience because he didn't like her politics, Mitt Romney, one of the forerunners for the Republican nomination for president, responded to the incident by saying that Limbaugh's words "were not the language [he] would have used." That Limbaugh would say something so distasteful, nasty, controversial, and off-point does not surprise me in the least. That so many people are trying to defend his statement, that a potential presidential candidate would so obviously fail to condemn it, saddens me, frightens me, and, frankly, makes me feel like shit.
And this is what I thought we had moved past as a society, this putting down of women, this shaming of women through their sexuality, this infantilizing of women, consciously or unconsciously, solely because they are women. That there is work still to be done in our culture if we want men and women truly to stand on equal ground, I have always known. But certain entrenched attitudes which reveal themselves in language, in jokes, in "glass ceilings," cannot help but take time to work themselves out, and while I don't like these things, I rarely see any maleficence, any nastiness, in them. They are unfortunate, and have great potential to harm, and should be worked against. But unintentional, culturally ingrained misogyny, while destructive and potentially insidious, is a far cry from hateful, shaming speech; from denial of access to health care; from removal of autonomy over one's body.
At first I thought that the nastiness of Limbaugh's invective was just an isolated incident--something that was exacerbated by the Republican Primaries and was blown out of proportion by the real (potentially not-nasty) concerns that some have over the question of whether birth control should be required to be covered by health insurance plans. But since the Limbaugh storm, it seems that every day I read about some similar (if not quite so shockingly blatant) attack on the strides women's equality has made. A new proposed bill in Arizona would allow employers to request to see women's prescriptions for contraceptives so they can determine whether women are using the pills for birth control or other medical reasons. Because of Arizona's employment laws, employers would be within their rights to fire women using the pill for contraception. Eat your heart out, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
But, the bill almost certainly won't pass, right? And there will always be some people whose beliefs are out of sync with prevailing national attitudes, right? Well, how about this New York Times article about the re-release of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which is touted as erotic? The article made me increasingly cranky the more I read. It suggests that the book is something to "pass around" in womenly spaces like exercise classes and school groups, that the book is teaching mothers how to be sexual again, that there is something slightly shameful in reading about sex, that more women may be reading erotica now because they can "hide" their reading on e-readers, that it has taken a book of this sort to get women reading. All these suggestions paint a picture of a culture that feels like something out of Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I don't know about you, but my world is not defined by a series of circles of women, I never stopped reading, and I don't need to pass around a dirty book in secret with my girlfriends to feel fulfilled at home with my husband. What is this, 1955?
All I can say is, "Push back." Don't let people get away with conflating their political views with misogyny. Don't let them treat you like children or some kind of second class citizen. If you start to feel shameful or dirty or bad because of what some people are saying, stamp those feelings out. There is no denying that being a woman will have some bearing on how your life unfolds and how others interact with you, but what you think, how you behave, are so much more important than what's between your legs. As for what you do with that, it's between you and, well, you. No government officials or media pundits need apply. And if you have a father or a grandfather or a brother or an uncle or a boyfriend or a husband or a son who has always treated you as a thinking, feeling, competent human being because it never occurred to them to treat you any other way, take a moment to give thanks for the positive influence they had on the person you have become.
The title for this blog post comes from The IT Crowd.
I am not naive enough to think that this experience was universal for women my age, or even for those born a little later, a little more solidly into the post-Roe-v.-Wade era. And I know that the fight for women's equality--in popular culture, in politics, in the job sphere--have been going on all my life. And once I started to emerge a bit from the shelter of family life, I certainly saw it. But suddenly I feel it. Suddenly I feel like there are people out there who will think a certain way about me because I am a woman, and not because they have met me, or read what I've had to say, and come to a thinking conclusion. And some of those people appear to be the same people who think they ought to be the President of the United States. The president. The face of the nation. The singular embodiment of our country and the democratic ideals for which it stands. When Rush Limbaugh called an accomplished, intelligent young woman a slut before a national audience because he didn't like her politics, Mitt Romney, one of the forerunners for the Republican nomination for president, responded to the incident by saying that Limbaugh's words "were not the language [he] would have used." That Limbaugh would say something so distasteful, nasty, controversial, and off-point does not surprise me in the least. That so many people are trying to defend his statement, that a potential presidential candidate would so obviously fail to condemn it, saddens me, frightens me, and, frankly, makes me feel like shit.
And this is what I thought we had moved past as a society, this putting down of women, this shaming of women through their sexuality, this infantilizing of women, consciously or unconsciously, solely because they are women. That there is work still to be done in our culture if we want men and women truly to stand on equal ground, I have always known. But certain entrenched attitudes which reveal themselves in language, in jokes, in "glass ceilings," cannot help but take time to work themselves out, and while I don't like these things, I rarely see any maleficence, any nastiness, in them. They are unfortunate, and have great potential to harm, and should be worked against. But unintentional, culturally ingrained misogyny, while destructive and potentially insidious, is a far cry from hateful, shaming speech; from denial of access to health care; from removal of autonomy over one's body.
At first I thought that the nastiness of Limbaugh's invective was just an isolated incident--something that was exacerbated by the Republican Primaries and was blown out of proportion by the real (potentially not-nasty) concerns that some have over the question of whether birth control should be required to be covered by health insurance plans. But since the Limbaugh storm, it seems that every day I read about some similar (if not quite so shockingly blatant) attack on the strides women's equality has made. A new proposed bill in Arizona would allow employers to request to see women's prescriptions for contraceptives so they can determine whether women are using the pills for birth control or other medical reasons. Because of Arizona's employment laws, employers would be within their rights to fire women using the pill for contraception. Eat your heart out, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
But, the bill almost certainly won't pass, right? And there will always be some people whose beliefs are out of sync with prevailing national attitudes, right? Well, how about this New York Times article about the re-release of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which is touted as erotic? The article made me increasingly cranky the more I read. It suggests that the book is something to "pass around" in womenly spaces like exercise classes and school groups, that the book is teaching mothers how to be sexual again, that there is something slightly shameful in reading about sex, that more women may be reading erotica now because they can "hide" their reading on e-readers, that it has taken a book of this sort to get women reading. All these suggestions paint a picture of a culture that feels like something out of Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I don't know about you, but my world is not defined by a series of circles of women, I never stopped reading, and I don't need to pass around a dirty book in secret with my girlfriends to feel fulfilled at home with my husband. What is this, 1955?
All I can say is, "Push back." Don't let people get away with conflating their political views with misogyny. Don't let them treat you like children or some kind of second class citizen. If you start to feel shameful or dirty or bad because of what some people are saying, stamp those feelings out. There is no denying that being a woman will have some bearing on how your life unfolds and how others interact with you, but what you think, how you behave, are so much more important than what's between your legs. As for what you do with that, it's between you and, well, you. No government officials or media pundits need apply. And if you have a father or a grandfather or a brother or an uncle or a boyfriend or a husband or a son who has always treated you as a thinking, feeling, competent human being because it never occurred to them to treat you any other way, take a moment to give thanks for the positive influence they had on the person you have become.
The title for this blog post comes from The IT Crowd.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Book Review: The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin
Ulin's long essay in book form (I'll estimate it's about 40,000 words) makes some good points about reading in the age of Twitter and texting and the pull of near-constant connectedness, and I certainly agree with his claim that what one might call "traditional" reading (that done with a paper book, not a device that can "do things," like look up words, log on to Facebook, or check e-mail) is important for the ways it cultivates and develops deep thinking and long attention spans. I was heartened that he does not cast the internet and e-readers and all things digital as the Devil, as some of conservative mind on this subject do, because I think doing so is unconscionably shortsighted and unhelpful. In one of the most interesting parts of the essay, Ulin references studies that show how internet usage actually changes our brains and discusses the likelihood that the initial rise of reading did so as well. There's no question that we're living at a cusp; we're changing ourselves, and we know we're doing it.
But for all of the good points and the interesting bits, The Lost Art of Reading is somehow unsatisfying in the end. I often felt as if Ulin were wandering away from his thesis, and while wandering can often be quite fruitful in an essay, sometimes he just didn't quite get anywhere useful. And while there were many moments in the text where I nodded and made little checks of agreement in the margin, there were also many places he didn't go that I thought the essay begged to get to. For example, he talks about how distracting hyperlinks can be to a reader of a digital text and discusses how this fragments one's reading but treats this as if it were a new experience in the digital age without making any reference to the long-familiar and (to my mind anyway) quite similar experience of reading a paper book that is densely footnoted. I also would have liked to have seen a fuller discussion of how "traditional" reading does that which other activities cannot do. Ulin calls literature a "voice of pure expression" (25), and makes a case for the act of reading as training for the kind of critical thinking necessary for anyone who hopes to engage in or understand political discourse. He seems to imply that that these things require "traditional" reading, but does not really explore why. Perhaps I am asking too much of this essay, perhaps I am asking it to do things it did not set out to do. But Ulin has jumped into turbulent waters here, and, while I agree with his conclusions, I'm not sure he's done enough to keep them afloat.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
But for all of the good points and the interesting bits, The Lost Art of Reading is somehow unsatisfying in the end. I often felt as if Ulin were wandering away from his thesis, and while wandering can often be quite fruitful in an essay, sometimes he just didn't quite get anywhere useful. And while there were many moments in the text where I nodded and made little checks of agreement in the margin, there were also many places he didn't go that I thought the essay begged to get to. For example, he talks about how distracting hyperlinks can be to a reader of a digital text and discusses how this fragments one's reading but treats this as if it were a new experience in the digital age without making any reference to the long-familiar and (to my mind anyway) quite similar experience of reading a paper book that is densely footnoted. I also would have liked to have seen a fuller discussion of how "traditional" reading does that which other activities cannot do. Ulin calls literature a "voice of pure expression" (25), and makes a case for the act of reading as training for the kind of critical thinking necessary for anyone who hopes to engage in or understand political discourse. He seems to imply that that these things require "traditional" reading, but does not really explore why. Perhaps I am asking too much of this essay, perhaps I am asking it to do things it did not set out to do. But Ulin has jumped into turbulent waters here, and, while I agree with his conclusions, I'm not sure he's done enough to keep them afloat.
This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.
Friday, July 29, 2011
August Reading
This time of year, if you hang out in reader-friendly places like bookstores and libraries or read things such as, well, most any newspaper, they are hard to avoid, those lists of suggestions for summer reading. I like lists of book suggestions--I like to see how many I've already read or heard of and to sneer delightedly at the inclusions I think are rot. But most of all I like them for the gems they sometimes reveal. Such lists are often how I am introduced to books that will later become some of my favorite reads. But I've never understood why such lists insist that a summer read must be light and diverting.
Oh, I understand the need for vacation reads or beach reads--the kinds of things that will occupy one slightly while what one is really doing is enjoying the sun and the sand. Or that will occupy one fully but without much effort while one is really waiting for the plane or train or bus to get there. But for most grown-up people, "vacation" means a week or so, and summer lasts a good deal longer than that. What is it about this time of year that seduces us (or just our booksellers?) into thinking that only the fun and frivolous will do? Is it a holdover from schooldays, when summer meant the release from obligations and heavy thinking and reading things one ought to read? Is it that the higher temperatures slow down our brains and make anything more taxing than the latest G.R.R. Martin too sweat-inducingly difficult? In his article on summer reads for the Barnes and Noble Review, Michael Dirda implies that it is both of these things: "No, what you want at this time of the year are the books that you can idly pick up, readily put down, then lazily pick up again, as you snooze in a hammock or toast in the sun." And he suggests many books that would be perfect for just that kind of reading.
I love to read that way, and some books simply can't be read in bits in-between catnaps in the sun. (The Wings of the Dove springs to mind.) So, suggestions for the snooze-and-sun crowd are welcome. However--and perhaps I'm the odd one out here--as much as I love a good snooze over a good book in the sun (or the shade), I can't imagine doing all of my reading in this way for three months any more than I can imagine eating nothing but grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob from June to September. And I'm just as likely to read in lazy snatches in winter: cuddled on the couch, under a cozy blanket, cat on my feet--yes? But no one ever makes "Winter Reading" lists or "By the Fire Reading" lists. I think they would contain much the same material as summer lists, with perhaps slight differences in setting to suit the season.
Dirda claims that summer is no time to do one's really heavy reading. "Save Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl for the bleaker days of February," he says. I'm sorry, but I call shenanigans. February is the last time of year anyone ought read Heidegger on purpose. Save Wodehouse and his ridiculous romp through the British a. for February, when you might really need it to lift you out of a winter funk. Do that heavy, demanding reading in summer when the light lasts longer and a refreshing walk through the brilliant sunshine can quickly restore your mood.
Perhaps the desire for light reads in summer reflects our fantasy of summer as a string of lazy afternoons when the pace of life slows to a crawl. Summer is sleepy, and summer reads must forgive us for dropping off while perusing them. But too much lazy, sleepy reading makes summer speed by. The pace may be pleasingly languid, but, come September, upon looking back over that much longed-for season, all seems a groggy haze. For me summer is a time for light, fun reads, yes, but it is also a time to settle fully into longer, more involving books. The long days, the lazy evenings--these are perfect for knocking off tomes like Vanity Fair or finally reading one of those monsters one just never seems to get to, like London: A Biography. Those lazy days of summer (if you're lucky enough to encounter any) allow time for the depth of concentration and contemplation necessary for some of those heavier reads. Gulp down those light summer reads on vacation, at the beach, before bed during the week. But set aside a couple of afternoons or evenings each week to read something that makes you slow down without dozing off, that makes you think, makes you engage, insists that you pay attention and get emotionally involved. You may just find that doing so slows down your summer and makes those coveted long days slip away more slowly.
Laura's Pretty Good Alternate Summer Reading List
(Compiled from Previous Summer Reads)
* Paradise Lost, John Milton
* Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
* Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
* Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
* Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
* Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
* The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
* The Ball and the Cross, G. K. Chesteron
* The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
* To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
* Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
* The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
* The Hamlet, William Faulkner
* The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
* Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
* The Chosen, Chaim Potok
* Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
* The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
* A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Oh, I understand the need for vacation reads or beach reads--the kinds of things that will occupy one slightly while what one is really doing is enjoying the sun and the sand. Or that will occupy one fully but without much effort while one is really waiting for the plane or train or bus to get there. But for most grown-up people, "vacation" means a week or so, and summer lasts a good deal longer than that. What is it about this time of year that seduces us (or just our booksellers?) into thinking that only the fun and frivolous will do? Is it a holdover from schooldays, when summer meant the release from obligations and heavy thinking and reading things one ought to read? Is it that the higher temperatures slow down our brains and make anything more taxing than the latest G.R.R. Martin too sweat-inducingly difficult? In his article on summer reads for the Barnes and Noble Review, Michael Dirda implies that it is both of these things: "No, what you want at this time of the year are the books that you can idly pick up, readily put down, then lazily pick up again, as you snooze in a hammock or toast in the sun." And he suggests many books that would be perfect for just that kind of reading.
I love to read that way, and some books simply can't be read in bits in-between catnaps in the sun. (The Wings of the Dove springs to mind.) So, suggestions for the snooze-and-sun crowd are welcome. However--and perhaps I'm the odd one out here--as much as I love a good snooze over a good book in the sun (or the shade), I can't imagine doing all of my reading in this way for three months any more than I can imagine eating nothing but grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob from June to September. And I'm just as likely to read in lazy snatches in winter: cuddled on the couch, under a cozy blanket, cat on my feet--yes? But no one ever makes "Winter Reading" lists or "By the Fire Reading" lists. I think they would contain much the same material as summer lists, with perhaps slight differences in setting to suit the season.
Dirda claims that summer is no time to do one's really heavy reading. "Save Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl for the bleaker days of February," he says. I'm sorry, but I call shenanigans. February is the last time of year anyone ought read Heidegger on purpose. Save Wodehouse and his ridiculous romp through the British a. for February, when you might really need it to lift you out of a winter funk. Do that heavy, demanding reading in summer when the light lasts longer and a refreshing walk through the brilliant sunshine can quickly restore your mood.
Perhaps the desire for light reads in summer reflects our fantasy of summer as a string of lazy afternoons when the pace of life slows to a crawl. Summer is sleepy, and summer reads must forgive us for dropping off while perusing them. But too much lazy, sleepy reading makes summer speed by. The pace may be pleasingly languid, but, come September, upon looking back over that much longed-for season, all seems a groggy haze. For me summer is a time for light, fun reads, yes, but it is also a time to settle fully into longer, more involving books. The long days, the lazy evenings--these are perfect for knocking off tomes like Vanity Fair or finally reading one of those monsters one just never seems to get to, like London: A Biography. Those lazy days of summer (if you're lucky enough to encounter any) allow time for the depth of concentration and contemplation necessary for some of those heavier reads. Gulp down those light summer reads on vacation, at the beach, before bed during the week. But set aside a couple of afternoons or evenings each week to read something that makes you slow down without dozing off, that makes you think, makes you engage, insists that you pay attention and get emotionally involved. You may just find that doing so slows down your summer and makes those coveted long days slip away more slowly.
Laura's Pretty Good Alternate Summer Reading List
(Compiled from Previous Summer Reads)
* Paradise Lost, John Milton
* Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
* Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
* Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
* Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
* Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
* The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
* The Ball and the Cross, G. K. Chesteron
* The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
* To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
* Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
* The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
* The Hamlet, William Faulkner
* The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
* Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
* The Chosen, Chaim Potok
* Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
* The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
* A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Where does one go for a good book around here?
Yesterday I talked about the particular ways returning to a place I used to live can be unsettling. But I'll note that in all those feelings of displacement there's been very few actual disappointments. In fact, aside from leaving behind our favorite pizza joint, there's really only been one. But it's a big one: where are the bookstores?
As far as I've been able to determine, there are only two within easy distance: the local shop downtown that's been there forever (established 1841) and a smallish (as big box stores go) Borders in the mall. Both would do as places to procure books (either will order for you most anything in print), but neither is a good browsing bookshop. Borders is too impersonal (an attribute that is far from common to all such large, big-business stores--I find Barnes and Noble to be very inviting) and the depth of their stock is abysmal. The local independent also has a (very) limited selection, but that could be excused in the name of supporting local business and local color. If only the shop were at all inviting. But whenever I go in there, I feel closed in by its cramped layout and pick up a subtle suggestion that the staff would just as soon I not hang about too long.
Yesterday, the prospects for impromptu book-browsing in Billport appeared dim. Today, they are positively depressing. Borders is closing all of its stores in the fall. I wasn't thrilled with that Borders in the mall, but it was at least a place to browse for books. And it made a lovely last stop in a stroll around the mall. I can only hope that a B&N (or even a Books-A-Million) might take over their premises.
I grew up with slim, but adequate, bookstore options. In my early and pre-teen years, there was the Paperback Booksmith in the mall and the book department in the Globe. Later there was the independent in town and Walden and B. Dalton stores in the mall. A big, stand-alone Borders did come to the parking lot near the old mall (somewhat surprisingly, it took over the building from a movie theater), but that was later, when I was about ready to leave for college. I did my book-browsing in the library during college and my masters degree (no funds), so the lack of great bookstores around me didn't matter so much then. My apartment in Knoxville was a five-minute drive from both a Borders and a Barnes and Noble, with another Borders a bit further a field. A local independent sat a few blocks from campus, and there was McKay's, a wonderful, brilliantly-organized used bookstore filling a warehouse-sized space. We were a two-minute drive from a Barnes and Noble in Roanoke, with another one at the mall, and a ten-minute drive from a local independent with a good selection of fiction and nonfiction, a nice mysteries room, and a brilliant children's and young adult wing. There was a Books-A-Million, a good used bookshop in the historic part of town, and a so-so paperback-swap type of used shop as well.
M and I have a fair amount of books. They would not rival the collections of some of the most serious readers and collectors of books, but most people who visit us, even those who are readers and book-people themselves, find the number of books in our possession to be impressive. Our collection numbers slightly shy of two thousand books, and we are always getting more. But we are not getting more at the rate that might be suggested by my preoccupation with bookshops. And in the last eight months or so, we've been trying to limit our book-buying a bit in order to save some money for the move. We've been going to the library more and making impulse-buys at bookstores less.
But the thing is, we don't go to bookstores just to buy books. If we did, the local bookshop downtown would serve our needs perfectly. If what we wanted wasn't on the shelves, we'd ask them to order it. Done and done. For that matter, if all we wanted to do was get a book, amazon or any other book website would do just fine. But we go to bookshops to go to bookshops. We go to be in the company of the books, to see what's newly come out, to explore the possibilities for future reading, even if we aren't in the market for book-buying that day. We browse. We have an outing. This is my pleasure a bit more than M's--I suspect he will miss it less than I will. Book-browsing is what I do when I want to get out of the apartment, when I get into a funk with what I'm reading, when my soul gets damp and drizzly and November-y. It isn't retail therapy, exactly, because buying something isn't necessary. It's the experience more than walking out of the shop with a new book that is the thing. (Though a new book doesn't hurt.)
And that is why the notion of only one, not-very-satisfying bookshop in town is so depressing and disappointing. I'm not worried about being unable to get books. I'm wondering what I'll do, where I'll go, when I feel like knocking people's hats off in the streets.
As far as I've been able to determine, there are only two within easy distance: the local shop downtown that's been there forever (established 1841) and a smallish (as big box stores go) Borders in the mall. Both would do as places to procure books (either will order for you most anything in print), but neither is a good browsing bookshop. Borders is too impersonal (an attribute that is far from common to all such large, big-business stores--I find Barnes and Noble to be very inviting) and the depth of their stock is abysmal. The local independent also has a (very) limited selection, but that could be excused in the name of supporting local business and local color. If only the shop were at all inviting. But whenever I go in there, I feel closed in by its cramped layout and pick up a subtle suggestion that the staff would just as soon I not hang about too long.
Yesterday, the prospects for impromptu book-browsing in Billport appeared dim. Today, they are positively depressing. Borders is closing all of its stores in the fall. I wasn't thrilled with that Borders in the mall, but it was at least a place to browse for books. And it made a lovely last stop in a stroll around the mall. I can only hope that a B&N (or even a Books-A-Million) might take over their premises.
I grew up with slim, but adequate, bookstore options. In my early and pre-teen years, there was the Paperback Booksmith in the mall and the book department in the Globe. Later there was the independent in town and Walden and B. Dalton stores in the mall. A big, stand-alone Borders did come to the parking lot near the old mall (somewhat surprisingly, it took over the building from a movie theater), but that was later, when I was about ready to leave for college. I did my book-browsing in the library during college and my masters degree (no funds), so the lack of great bookstores around me didn't matter so much then. My apartment in Knoxville was a five-minute drive from both a Borders and a Barnes and Noble, with another Borders a bit further a field. A local independent sat a few blocks from campus, and there was McKay's, a wonderful, brilliantly-organized used bookstore filling a warehouse-sized space. We were a two-minute drive from a Barnes and Noble in Roanoke, with another one at the mall, and a ten-minute drive from a local independent with a good selection of fiction and nonfiction, a nice mysteries room, and a brilliant children's and young adult wing. There was a Books-A-Million, a good used bookshop in the historic part of town, and a so-so paperback-swap type of used shop as well.
M and I have a fair amount of books. They would not rival the collections of some of the most serious readers and collectors of books, but most people who visit us, even those who are readers and book-people themselves, find the number of books in our possession to be impressive. Our collection numbers slightly shy of two thousand books, and we are always getting more. But we are not getting more at the rate that might be suggested by my preoccupation with bookshops. And in the last eight months or so, we've been trying to limit our book-buying a bit in order to save some money for the move. We've been going to the library more and making impulse-buys at bookstores less.
But the thing is, we don't go to bookstores just to buy books. If we did, the local bookshop downtown would serve our needs perfectly. If what we wanted wasn't on the shelves, we'd ask them to order it. Done and done. For that matter, if all we wanted to do was get a book, amazon or any other book website would do just fine. But we go to bookshops to go to bookshops. We go to be in the company of the books, to see what's newly come out, to explore the possibilities for future reading, even if we aren't in the market for book-buying that day. We browse. We have an outing. This is my pleasure a bit more than M's--I suspect he will miss it less than I will. Book-browsing is what I do when I want to get out of the apartment, when I get into a funk with what I'm reading, when my soul gets damp and drizzly and November-y. It isn't retail therapy, exactly, because buying something isn't necessary. It's the experience more than walking out of the shop with a new book that is the thing. (Though a new book doesn't hurt.)
And that is why the notion of only one, not-very-satisfying bookshop in town is so depressing and disappointing. I'm not worried about being unable to get books. I'm wondering what I'll do, where I'll go, when I feel like knocking people's hats off in the streets.
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