100 Books. 100 Journeys.

We've Moved! The New Home of Journeys

2010-09-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys!

For those of you who are still adding yourselves as followers to this blog...thanks, but we've moved! Come visit our new home over at http://100journeys.wordpress.com.

It's My Blogoversary!!!

2010-09-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

I would have posted about this earlier, but I've been busy fighting off Respiratory Hell Virus 2010. Seriously, it's the kind of virus where your hair hurts and you feel like you've been run over with a semi. So bear with me. :)

A year ago today I posted the first review for my blog, #100, The Magnificent Ambersons. 31 books later, I'm still having fun and am still as motivated as ever to make it through the list.

This blog was born out of the need to have a positive, fulfilling goal in my life, and it has definitely been that, and more. Here are just some of the ways this blog has changed my life.

1) Barnes and Noble and Half Price Books LOVE me!!!

2) I don't hate Hemingway (as much) anymore.

3) I always have something to read.

4) Best of all....I've met a whole bunch of really cool book bloggers and discovered some great book sites. You all have been very inspiring and encouraging! Thanks to all of you who comment on my stuff and keep me motivated.

Many more journeys to come! Stay tuned!

#69....The House of Mirth

2010-09-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

"In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives in the blood--whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands, but made up of inherited passions and loyalties--it has the same power of broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving."

Edith Wharton's beautifully crafted and passionate 1905 novel, The House of Mirth, poignantly depicts the hypocrisy and superficiality of upper class Old New York. Edith Wharton, raised as Edith Newbold Jones in the old-money New York family that spawned the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses", knew well the strictures and dissimulations of high society, and so was able to write about life among the glitterati with a 'been there, done that' ironic detachment that brings home to us how empty and despondent living that life must have been.

At the beginning of Mirth, Lily Bart's only desire is to marry well and live a life of luxury like that of her wealthy New York friends. Lily's father lost all of his money on Wall Street when she was young, and since then, Lily has sought to recapture the feeling of security that money once provided for her. As a single, beautiful socialite, Lily is constantly called upon by her richer friends to their luxurious country homes to fill a place at the card table, to help entertain, or to distract spouses from covert affairs happening right under their noses. As we discover, the rich of old New York have no scruples. They cheat on their spouses, borrow money from friends, amass gambling debts which send their less fortunate relatives into poverty, and backstab each other with heartless regularity.

Lily's desire to be as wealthy as her friends and live a life of ease is taken advantage of by her society friends, and it leads to her undoing. She is tricked into believing Gus Trenor's offer to invest money for her, only to discover later that he was giving her money, not investing it...with definite strings attached. Whoops. Lily is later thrown under the bus by another of her friends, Bertha Dorset, when she accuses Lily of having an affair with her husband George...when in reality Bertha had asked Lily along on the trip to keep George's attention away from her own extramarital affair. Thanks to this scandalous and untrue accusation, Lily is written almost completely out of her wealthy aunt's will and is left only enough money to pay back what she owes Gus Trenor. When society cuts Lily, she discovers that she does not have a friend in the world except her cousin Gerty Farish, an independent working woman, and Lawrence Selden, an attorney who falls for Lily but is rejected by her because he is not wealthy. They both try to help Lily imagine and create a new life outside of society, but this is unsuccessful, as Lily discovers that she is unfit for any life besides that of the affluential. But even the horrors of a dismal, 'dingy' life do not turn Lily to the Dark Side. When she is given a chance to get even with Bertha Dorset, which might have led to a triumphant return to society, she doesn't take it. An accidental overdose of sleep medication prevents us from ever knowing if Lily would have been strong enough to survive outside of the society spotlight. I am torn as to whether or not Lily would have made it.

This was my third re-read of The House of Mirth. The first time I read this book, it was as a disillusioned college junior, trapped in an English class I hated, with a professor I hated MORE. The second read was on the heels of my enthusiastic read of another of Wharton's books, The Age of Innocence, which I loved. I remember liking Mirth more than I had the first time. This third time was my most emotional and involved reading of this book, and was actually the first book on the ML list that engendered such emotion. I immediately empathized with Lily, who was only trying to recapture the questionable security of her own childhood by seeking wealth and stability, and was cast out onto an island without a friend and with nowhere to go as a result of her quest. I felt Lily's pain at being alone and rejected and misunderstood and lied about, probably because I had been in Lily's shoes at one time or another since I first read the book.

It was amazing to me, even though I knew what was coming in the plot and how the story would end, how involved I became in this story. I think it only proves that Edith Wharton knew well the harshness and heartlessness of the society she wrote about, and probably witnessed its woundings first-hand. I can completely understand why she would eventually leave her wealthy husband and New York for writing and Europe.

Grade: A-

Top Ten Tuesday

2010-08-31T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ah, another Tuesday arrives, and with it another visit to The Broke and The Bookish, who ask us this week who our top ten fictional heroines are. This should be fun!

1)Katniss Everdeen. I love her sassiness, her fearlessness as she hunts illegally to support her starving family and how she steps in for her little sister to go to the Hunger Games, knowing she could possibly die. Plus she gets to make out with Peeta...he sounds super hot. No one puts Katniss in the corner!

2)Elizabeth Bennet. I know she will be on everyone's list, but how can you not love a woman who would rather die an old maid than marry someone like Mr Collins, someone brave enough to stand up to mean old Lady Catherine, and hot enough to have Darcy pining away after her?

3)Melanie Hamilton. I know most people will say Scarlett O'Hara, but I loved Melanie and her persistence in believing only the best of people and being consistently loving even when people were trying to steal her husband.

4)Hermione Granger. Like me, a devoted bookworm and cat lover, but is also super smart, a hell of a witch and she has a great right hook. She also loves to show people up.

5)The Brass Monkey. From Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. She reminded me so much of my daughter, always getting in trouble and breaking stuff. I seriously laughed every time she appeared in the book.

6)Mia Thermopolis. The Princess Diaries series is one of my guilty pleasures. I love Mia's character, how even though her grandmother tries hard to turn her into royalty, she always remains true to herself, proving that tiaras go GREAT with Doc Martens and overalls.

7)Lily Bart. She refuses to marry someone she doesn't love in order to get out of money trouble, and even though people throw her under the bus, she resists the temptation to do the same, even if it meant regaining her place in society. She doesn't sell her soul to stay popular.

8)Susan Burling Ward. She was born wealthy, but gave all that up to move out West and rough it with the man she loved. Plus she found a way to bring her beautiful surroundings to life in her illustrations, at a time when women really didn't work.

9)Sophia Baines. Like Susan, she was born well-to-do, but when a quasi-elopement goes south, rather than running home to mommy and daddy, she puts on her big-girl pants and starts up her own pension to keep herself going. Also at a time when women were supposed to stay home and raise kids (like her sister did).

10)Celie from The Color Purple. Although she has a rough childhood and marries a total jerk, she finds strength in her women friends and turns it around by starting her own business making very comfortable pants. Plus she leaves the jerky husband and he comes back nice to her.

Can't wait to read all of your choices!

Having the End in Sight

2010-08-27T08:07:00.001-07:00

Okay, people. I have a confession to make. I had to take a break from The House of Mirth. Here's why.

1)This is my third re-read of this book. It's my first re-read on the entire ML list. Amazing that I've had to get 31 books in before there was one that I read. So I already know the ending, and because of that I'm not particularly motivated to finish it.

2)Even though I've read this book twice before, AND know the ending, I am more emotionally sucked into what is happening in this book than I've been both times before, AND more so than I have been with any other ML book. Every time Lily gets her heart stomped on and people are mean to her, mine is stomped on too. It hurts. I wonder why this is? Maybe it is because Edith Wharton really is that amazing!

So, I decided to give myself a break from Lily and the ML for a week or so. I've decided to toughen myself up emotionally by reading (gulp, I can't believe I'm admitting this out loud on a classics blog), The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I figure nothing should thicken my emotional skin more quickly than reading about a bunch of teenagers ruthlessly hunting each other down and killing each other.

Those of you who wonder if I am turning to the Dark Side by reading a YA novel on a classics blog, have no fear. This is a one-time deal and should show you just how badly I need to clear my literary palate right now.
Those of you who think less of me for this literary faux pas clearly haven't read The Hunger Games. It's amazing, and for those of you who loved the Harry Potter series, in terms of action, Hunger Games blows them away.

So, back to the main topic of the posting.....I wondered how many other readers out there feel about knowing the ending to a book, and how that makes you experience re-reading the book, or if knowing the ending makes you decide whether or not you want to re-read it. Do any of you out there ever read the last page of a book before you finish it? Come on, we've all done it once (or twice, or a lot....in my case. I admit it. I am a last-page readin' junkie). Can't wait to see what you come up with! And I seriously hope the odds are ever in Katniss' favor, because I like her.

10 Books I Haven't Gotten Around to Reading

2010-08-24T15:42:00.001-07:00

The Broke and the Bookish hosts a great weekly meme called Top Ten Tuesday. This week's Top Ten list subject is books that I can't believe I haven't read. In the past, once I've encountered an author that I have really hated, whether it was after one page or an entire book, I've kicked them to the literary curb.Forever. Kind of harsh, I know!

The ML list has been great because it has forced me to overcome some of these deep-seated literary prejudices and get out of my comfort zone. Best example: Hemingway. After struggling through The Sun Also Rises approximately 200 times during college, I vowed never to read one word Hemingway wrote ever again. Even if it was the word "and" or "chapter". And I did well keeping that promise until a couple months ago, when I read A Farewell to Arms and was forced to eat my words since I absolutely loved it.

Here are 10 books I have never gotten around to reading, in no particular order:

10. Great Expectations. I admit it. I have never read one word of Dickens. I can't tell you why except that the mood has never struck me. Seems like you would need a cold night and a roaring fire.

9. Lady Chatterley's Lover. I have never read any D.H. Lawrence either. From the looks of it, I'm going to be reading his entire repertoire by the end of the ML list. I have two books upcoming.

8. The Alchemist. Everyone says how fabulous this book is. I have picked it up at the bookstore about 200 times. Still haven't gotten around to it.

7. Jane Eyre. This is one of those books that you almost feel like you have read, because you've heard so many people talk about it that you even know the basic plot. I should still read it, just in case they were all wrong.

6. The Wings of the Dove. Or for that matter, anything by Henry James. I think we had to read Daisy Miller about five times during college and I was bored. Like crumbling into dust bored. Mr James will get the chance to redeem himself (or not) sometime soon on the list, as I believe the ML has his entire catalogue as well.

5. The Grapes of Wrath. Not a big Steinbeck fan after Of Mice and Men or East of Eden.

4. Northanger Abbey. I've read every other Jane Austen book like ten million times. No idea why I've never made it to this one.

3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Just to see what all the hype is about. Plus I sometimes feel like I am the only person in America that hasn't read it.

2. The Book of Mormon. Before you say this is weird, realize that I lived in Salt Lake City, UT, for three and a half years and was the recipient of about six Books of Mormon while I lived there. What are the chances that if you got the same book six times, you wouldn't ultimately crack it open, just to see if you were missing out on something?

1. The Scarlet Letter. The whole idea of punishing women for stuff men do all the time really ticked me off. Maybe this is another example of me thinking I know the plot?

Update on "The House of Mirth"

2010-08-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have had the pleasure of reading Edith Wharton's wonderful The House of Mirth before, you probably understand why I am totally horrified by the backstabbing and double standards of old New York. This book is like watching a car crash: you don't want to keep reading, but you can't put the book down.

Lily Bart has got to be one of the most tragic of heroines in 20th century literature. She is caught between two worlds: the world of the rich and carefree, which is the world she was raised to be part of, and the world of the less-rich and less-carefree, which she disdains as "dingy" even though she secretly envies her cousin Gerty's independence. It is an age where a woman's marriage determines who she will be and what she will have, and one almost never marries for love. She knows that marrying well will end her money troubles and society's whispers, but even though she has offers she still cannot bring herself to marry someone just for money. Nor will she marry someone who doesn't have money, because she cares so much for luxury and things that are beautiful and would hate someone who could not give them to her.

The only society Lily has ever been a part of is full of morally bankrupt individuals who scorn real friendship and admire only wealth and pleasure-seeking. Married women and divorced women with money are able to do what they like, but Lily, who is unmarried and not wealthy, is subject to the severe scrutiny of her peers for every move she makes. Double standards run high in Lily's circle. Her friends know she is not wealthy, yet she is expected to gamble at the same stakes they play at. She cannot be seen going into Selden's apartment without scandal, but her married friends conduct affairs that are barely concealed from their spouses and are well-known throughout society. It's just wrong!

I would not have lasted ten days in this time period. Women were not encouraged to be unique or let their true personalities shine through. Everyone 'conformed' or were cut by society, which was the kiss of death back then, and no one could ever say what they really thought. Spending time in the company of people as fake, vacuous and two-faced as Lily's 'friends' are described would have sapped my will to live. She had no one to turn to except Selden and Gerty. I cannot imagine a more lonely existence than Lily must have had, and Wharton does such a great job of garnering the reader's sympathy for Lily. I want to jump into this book and beat everyone that has been mean to her.

Here's Hop-pin'!!

2010-08-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late to the party, but better late than never! For those of you stoppin' by from the Crazy-For-Books Book Blogger Hop, welcome! We're all about the Modern Library's Top 100 Board's list from the last century...we're working our way up from the bottom of the list, and we're not stopping til we reach the top!

I'm about two weeks away from celebrating my blog's 1 Year Anniversary. Hard to believe I've been at it a year now! When I first began my blog, those of you die-hards that have been around for a while might remember that my initial quest was to read these 100 books in a 100 week time span. That lasted about three months! A remnant of this quest remains as my URL, since I am not computer literate and don't know how to change it :) While I'm sure my initial idea was logistically possible (as long as I didn't eat, sleep, or leave my house), I realized that classics could not be speed-read and enjoyed at the same time. So I opted for enjoyment, as life is short and reading is meant to be enjoyable. It might take me about three more years to finish the list, but I think I'll survive! It's been fun so far, and I have come across some amazing books I would never have picked up otherwise! Check out the reviews of the first 30 books on the left side of the screen.

Crazy-For-Books asks us this week how many blogs we follow. At this point, I'm following about 40 blogs religiously, most of which are other classics blogs that I've found on the Hop or by recommendations on other sites. The list is growing quickly, though....half the fun is tracking down other bloggers out there who are doing what I'm doing. I've learned a lot and even have to thank one of my new favorite blogs for the suggestion to implement the new commenting system we're using here now, which hopefully won't make you type in weird words like "zygreft" and sell your first-born just to leave a comment (which I hope you will...leave a comment, that is!).

Thanks for coming by! Hope to see you back soon!

Great Posts on Reading Classics

2010-08-18T08:06:00.001-07:00

I've found a couple of really great blog posts on some of the blogs that I follow that talk about reading classic novels and some of the challenges that come with them, as well as suggestions on how to tackle them, if you're trying to encourage yourself to read one. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) Desert Book Chick has a great posting on How to Read a Classic at her site. She was recently trying to motivate herself to read Anna Karenina (a GREAT book if you've never read it!).

2) Dead White Guys is putting together a series of articles on reading classics. The first one tackled becoming BFF's with the author; the 2nd talks about getting to know the author's intent. They are super funny and very enlightening.

3) Page Turners did a guest posting for Desert Book Chick on what defines a classic, and why we should read them.

Check these postings out. They are very encouraging and inspirational!

Ranking the 3rd 10 Books

2010-08-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Alexandria Quartet, we actually had 14 books in this group!

I was surprised when I went back to look at the grades I gave the last ten books I read to see how many were in the A/B range. There were only a couple in this group that really blew me away...the rest were really just okay for me, dawg. Besides maybe the first two, there aren't any others in this group I see myself picking up and reading again in the future. The overall themes of this 3rd group were darker. We had the kids that lost it on the pirate ship, the teacher who wanted to take over the lives of her kids, the seedy side of Hollywood, and people under house arrest. It would be nice if the next group of books was more upbeat!!!

Without any further ado, here's this group's breakdown, from 1 (best) to 14 (worst).
1) A House for Mr Biswas
2) A Farewell to Arms
3) Scoop
4) Balthazar
5) Justine
6) Mountolive
7) A Room With a View
8) Brideshead Revisited
9) A High Wind in Jamaica
10) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
11) Kim
12) The Day of the Locust
13) Finnegans Wake

#70....The Alexandria Quartet....Clea

2010-08-14T08:17:00.001-07:00

"I began to see too that the real 'fiction' lay neither in Arnauti's pages nor Pursewarden's--nor even my own. It was life itself that was a fiction--we were all saying it on our different ways, each understanding it according to his nature and gift."

Clea, the fourth and final installment of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, attemps to wrap up the lives and destinies of the characters we've grown to know, love and/or detest during this series. Darley is asked to return to Alexandria to drop off Nessim and Melissa's kid with Nessim, and while doing so, hangs out with all of his wacky buddies to see what they've been up to since he took off to be a hermit on the island. Here's the breakdown of what's been going on in Alexandria:

Nessim and Justine: after their little illegal weapons caper, they're under house arrest.
Scobie, the dead cross-dressing secret agent: after his homemade liquor killed a whole bunch of people, and touching his bathtub made a bunch of women get pregnant, he's now revered as a quasi-saint by the locals.
Capodistria: actually not dead as was once thought. The guy everyone thought was him floating in the water at the duck hunt was someone else. He lives in Greece now.
Pursewarden: still dead. As far as I know.
Clea: she's apparently still painting, but she hooks up with Darley for much of the book and kicks him to the curb by the end of it. She also has an unfortunate boating accident that changes her career.
Mountolive: he's getting married to Pursewarden's blind sister Liza. He's still PO'd at Nessim.
Pombal: he hooked up with a married lady, who gets sick and dies.
Balthazar: he fell in love with a guy and went psycho. He's recovering now though.

And that's it. Clea reads like the high school reunion you'd never want to attend. After how much I liked the first three books, particularly Mountolive, this book fell very flat for me. I wanted, and to be honest, expected everyone to have more dramatic life changes, like Nessim going in front of a firing squad or Justine dying of the clap. Durrell had created a world where nothing was really outside the realm of possibility. So I have to say I was surprised that he went this direction. The story just kind of fizzed out for me like one of those sparklers on 4th of July.

In closing, I'm not sorry I read this series. There were some shocking revelations throughout, which kept you guessing what would happen next. By the time I finished Mountolive, I was used to drama and misunderstandings and 'a-ha moments'. Clea was different from the other three books in that it was the only one of the books that went into fast-forward. Nothing new and amazing was revealed in Clea like in the other three books, and maybe that was why I didn't like it as much?

Durrell showed us there are always different angles, different views, different takes on any one situation, and it was like peeling back the layers of an onion. That was the take-home message for me from this series.

Grade: C+

Hop-Scotch

2010-08-13T05:46:00.001-07:00

For those of you joining us from the Crazy for Books Book Blogger Hop, welcome! Glad you're here. This site is your oyster...crack it open and take a look! It goes great with a good Pinot Grigio! I've dedicated myself and my reading free time, foregoing anything involving vampires, zombies, shopaholics and Stephanie Plum, to reading the Modern Library's Top 100 Board's list from the last century. We've been at it almost a year now, and I'm about thirty books through. So at this rate, by the time I'm done, the Modern Library will probably have put together their Top 100 list from this century! Right on!

The question the book blogger folks ask us this week is, how many books are on your TBR shelf? What a great question. When I first started the blog, I refused to go out and buy the next book on the list until it was time to read it, so that I wouldn't get all freaked out when I read the back cover and dread reading it. Well, that went by the wayside long ago when I realized half the books on the list aren't readily available at my neighborhood Barnes and Noble, and basically have to be exhumed from someone's basement and sold on Amazon.com. Thanks to the internet, and my newfound worship of Half-Price Books. I currently have 18 books on the shelf ready to go.

Those of you who are already following us here at Journeys, and are waiting breathlessly for my review of Lawrence Durrell's Clea, I'm about 15 pages from finishing it up. Let me tell ya, I cannot wait to be done dragging around a book that is roughly the size and weight of my car. Although my right arm is looking a bit more toned these days.

Thanks for stopping by!

Think About It Thursday

2010-08-12T05:46:00.001-07:00

1001 Books has started a weekly meme where she'll be asking questions about all things literary. So of course I had to jump on board!

This week's question asks where our favorite literary vacation spot would be. Sadly, she doesn't mean the wonderful beach on the Riviera Maya where you'd love to be lounging on a deck chair in the sun with endless margaritas while you read. What we're looking for is the time period you'd love to visit from one of the books you've read.

I would have to say, hands down, Jane Austen's England. I love, love, love the formality, the manners, the cool reserve. Telling people off with words like "thither". The quid pro quo on that would be as long as I could also somehow transform into Lizzy Bennet, make out with Mr Darcy for a while, and then simultaneously kick the asses of Mr Collins AND Mr Elton from Emma. That would rock.

Head on over and join the fun!

Hop, Hop, Hippety-hop

2010-08-06T07:39:00.001-07:00

Welcome to all of you stopping by courtesy of the awesome Book Blogger Hop, sponsored by Crazy-For-Books. Feel free to take off your shoes, plop down in a cushy armchair, and take a look around. It is my quest to read the Modern Library's Board's List of the Top 100 Books from the last century. Believe it or not, I am 30 books in, and still alive!

Crazy-For-Books asks us Hop participants this week if we like to listen to music while we read. I used to do this a lot when I was younger. I remember listening to Def Leppard's Pyromania while I was reading Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff in middle school. Don't ask how I came up with that combo. Now as I get older, I've discovered that I am losing the ability to concentrate on anything longer than a segment on TMZ about Snooki from Jersey Shore getting arrested....so as a result, I can't read, listen to music, pat my stomach and chew gum at the same time anymore. I do, however, get these goofy hairs that sprout out of my chin every now and then, so this getting older thing isn't all THAT bad. :)

Take a look around the site, and I have a question for all of you stopping by. How do you feel about reading the classics, and what is the last classic book you read?

Thanks for coming by!!!

#70....The Alexandria Quartet....Mountolive

2010-08-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

"He pondered deeply upon them during those long sleepless days and nights and for the first time he saw them, in the light of this new knowledge, as enigmas. They were puzzles now, and even their private moral relationship haunted him with a sense of something he had never properly understood, never clearly evaluated. Somehow his friendship for them had prevented him from thinking of them as people who might, like himself, be living on several different levels at once. As conspirators, as lovers--what was the key to the enigma? He could not guess."

In Mountolive, Lawrence Durrell's third installment of the dramatic Alexandria Quartet, Durrell takes a different turn from his previous novels Justine and Balthazar. We finally leave behind the whiny, depressed narrator Darley, and switch to an omniscent third person narrator who gives us the skinny on what's REALLY going on behind the scenes. Mountolive might well be called "Nessim", because a good portion of the novel takes place from Nessim's POV...and boy, is he not who you think he is.

David Mountolive, a Britisher who is briefly mentioned during Balthazar, meets up with the same wacky cast of characters from Justine when he spends time at the Hosnani household perfecting his Arabic. He develops a close friendship with Nessim (pre-Justine) and an even closer friendship (with benefits) with Nessim's mom Leila, who is tending her sick husband. We also get to know Nessim's younger, less attractive brother Narouz, who is a couple cards short of a deck, if you know what I mean. Mountolive returns to England, and after years in the diplomatic service is finally given an Ambassadorship back to Egypt. He hopes to hook up again with Leila, whom he has been corresponding with by letter since he left, and whose husband has finally died, but Leila becomes disfigured after a bout with smallpox and is afraid to meet him.

Through diplomatic channels, and thanks to one of Pursewarden's one-night-stands, Mountolive and we find out what Nessim's really been up to all this time. Apparently he's been shipping weapons illegally to Palestine in support of the Jewish cause. Which, if you've been keeping up, explains why he was so hot to marry Justine (she of the Jewish faith). We discover that Justine was sleeping with both Pursewarden and Darley to keep an eye on them in case they knew anything about Nessim, since Pursewarden is in the diplomatic corps and Darley is close to Melissa, who was dating someone who knew all about Nessim. When Pursewarden discovers the truth, he kills himself rather than turn in his friend, but tells Mountolive what he knows before he offs himself. Mountolive has to turn this information over to the British, and starts to see his friend in a whole new light. The Minister of the Interior, Memlik Pasha, is kept quiet by Nessim through bribery, and they both agree that no one need know which Hosnani brother was responsible for the diplomatic melee. So you guessed it...Narouz gets the blame and the gunfire.

There were good and bad things for me about Mountolive. Parts of it bored me to tears. It was way more historical and political than Justine or Balthazar, which were more gossipy and, at times, mopey and sentimental. The best part of the book, for me, happened once everyone started to figure out what Nessim was up to. I could not stop reading. There were a lot of "a-ha" moments....scenes from the first two books suddenly made sense. It made me want to go back and re-read the first two books again so I could put things together, or in case I missed stuff.

I have read that the next book, Clea is actually a sequel, not another POV on the same time period like the first three books, so I will be excited to finally move forward in time and see what happens to everyone.

Grade: B+

July '10's Literary Dirtbag

2010-08-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

This month's MLLD award goes to the adorable Emily Bas-Thornton, loving big sister and cold blooded murderer, from Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica. After murdering a Dutch sea captain on board a pirate ship, she sends five innocent pirates to their deaths when she doesn't tell the truth about the murder on the witness stand at their trial. And shows absolutely no remorse for any of it. Emily should be grounded for LIFE.

Welcome All Hoppers!

2010-07-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

For those of you stopping by from the Crazy For Books blog hop, welcome! We're about 1/3 of the way through the Modern Library's 100 Best Books from the last century. To get you up to speed on what we're all about, the book reviews for books 100-70 are on the bottom left. We read 'em, review 'em, and move on, and we're not stopping til we get to #1!

This week's Blogtastic question from Crazy For Books is, who is your new favorite author? I have to say that since I began the Modern Library's list, I have really begun to like V.S. Naipaul, who happily has written about a zillion other books besides the ones I have already read. I can't wait to get the ML list done so I can check out the rest of his work. His books always take place in really cool places I would be too chicken to get on a plane and visit...but luckily they are so descriptive it feels like you're there!

Thanks for stopping by!

Libris Interruptus....Books as Inspiration

2010-07-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Books not only entertain us, but sometimes can inspire us to try something we never would have before, or learn something new. What is the craziest/most interesting thing a book has ever inspired you to do, and which book was it? I can't wait to hear your answers!!!

#70....The Alexandria Quartet....Balthazar

2010-07-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

"'We live', writes Pursewarden somewhere, 'lives based on selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time--not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.'"

Just when you thought you got the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Justine and her wacky crew of friends and ex-lovers in Justine, Durrell turns everything upside down in Balthazar, the second installment of his Alexandria Quartet. Just to see if you were paying attention.

Our depressed hermit friend Darley sends his copy of his memoirs of his days in Alexandria and his love affair with Justine (basically the manuscript of Justine) to his buddy Balthazar back in Alexandria. Balthazar shows up on the island not only with the manuscript full of commentary, but corrections. Apparently, boy did Darley have a whole bunch of things wrong. "A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love," Balthazar states. So everything Darley wrote about his memories of Justine are either wrong, skewed, or incomplete. By the end of Balthazar, even Darley is doubting his reliability as a narrator. And so was I, big time.

The magic of Balthazar is that Durrell makes discovering these inconsistencies and gaps in Darley's story interesting. It's like seeing a house painted a cool color, and then finding out the owners had to mix four different paints to get it. It adds dimension and layers to the essentially one-sided story we're presented with in Justine. We learn, for example, that the secret agent Scobie is a cross dresser. We learn about Nessim's reclusive family, and how Nessim got Justine to agree to marry him in the first place. We learn why Justine ever got started with Darley in the first place....and boy, does THAT revelation hit Darley hard.

There are always two sides to every story...all of us know that. Durrell touches on this several times during Justine. But what really captivated me about Balthazar is how futile, how subversive a search for truth can be. Do any of us ever have a chance of finding out what's really true about anything? As humans, we cling to certain memories, block other things out, and color the way we remember things all the time. If you told the story of how you met your significant other to someone, and then had your significant other tell their side of the story, certain facts would be the same....but you'd have a whole other dimension to the story you were lacking before. Which one is true? Aren't both true, even though both stories have different information? You can start to see how the search for pure truth has captivated generations of philosophers.

This was the point that blew me away about Balthazar. We're tempted as readers to throw Justine in the trash and take Balthazar's account as the 'real' story...but knowing what we now know about individual truth, can we do this? Durrell masterfully not only discredits Darley as a narrator...but at the same time discredits everyone else. We learn that we cannot rely on anyone's individual chronicle as pure truth. Their stories fit together like pieces in a puzzle, but as stand-alone stories do not represent the whole truth.

As a disgusting side note, I got to experience the icky moment of seeing whoever owned this book before me writing the word "ME!" next to the sections where Pursewarden is described as picking his nose and taking his shoes off under the table in restaurant. Awesome. Excuse me while I go look for the Clorox wipes now.

Anyone looking for deep thoughts should check this one out. You really do have to read Justine first, though. Sorry.

Grade: A-

#70...The Alexandria Quartet...Justine

2010-07-21T04:33:00.000-07:00

"Far off events, transformed by memory, acquire a burnished brilliance because they are seen in isolation, divorced from the details of before and after, the fibres and wrappings of time. The actors, too, suffer a transformation; they sink slowly deeper and deeper into the ocean of memory like weighted bodies, finding at every level a new assessment, a new evaluation in the human heart."

How much can we rely on memory as truth, and how well can we really ever know another person? Lawrence Durrell tackles these questions in Justine, the first installment of his four-part Alexandria Quartet. Set in the ancient city of Alexandria, Justine is primarily the memoir of an unnamed man and his affair with a beautiful married Jewish socialite. Because of a horrifying incident in her past, Justine finds herself unable (or unwilling?) to be monogamous and so flits from affair to affair. Although her husband Nessim is presented with strong evidence of her affairs over the years, he is unable (or unwilling?) to believe it, until Melissa, the girlfriend of the narrator, comes to Nessim with her knowledge of the affair. Thinking two wrongs make a right, Melissa and Nessim begin an affair, which results in a child. When Nessim finally takes his revenge on the man who hurt Justine, Melissa dies, and Justine inexplicably flees her life in Alexandria for a Jewish kibbutz in Palestine, the narrator adopts the child and retires to a remote island to write about his memories of Justine.

Durrell uses two very unreliable sources of information to define Justine: memory, and the stories of her discarded lovers. Before we judge her as readers, we have to take this into account. As anyone knows, the further away in time an experience is, and the more wrapped in feeling it is, the more likely our memories of the experience will be skewed. Justine's previous husband wrote a book about her, but admits that his memories of their time together may not have been completely accurate: "Did this sort of thing happen so often or is it that my memory has multiplied it? Perhaps it was only once, and the echoes have misled me." The quote from the beginning of the post also emphasizes the deceptive truth of memory. We also have to account for the bias that results from the memories of past lovers. I would never want one of my ex-boyfriends to write a book about me and have people accept that as how I am. The narrator says it best: "How much of him can I claim to know? I realize that each person can only claim one aspect of our character as part of his knowledge. To every one we turn a different face of the prism." I think most of us agree that the part of the prism that would be reflected by an ex-lover might not be the most flattering picture in the world.

Durrell also challenges us to define love. Can you love someone when being unfaithful to them? Can you love someone through an intellectual avenue rather than just purely sexually? Can you really love something without a desire to possess it? My definition of a love relationship would be monogamy and commitment, which is the more conventionally accepted format...and clearly, Justine's definition is 180 degrees different from that.

I ended the book wondering why Durrell would want us to feel so negatively about Justine. Maybe it is my personal experiences and values that turned me against her.

I liked this book. It started a bit slow but grew on me. Happily I am not as turned off about reading the next three books as I was during the first few pages of Justine.

Grade: B+

Blog Shoppin'

2010-07-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

I "heart" used bookstores, especially since I started this blog. I have to give a shout-out to Half-Price Books for their great selection (even if I have to drive 20 minutes one way to get there) and to my husband, who unquestioningly indulges my book-buying sprees. :)

Here are today's finds, all upcoming for Journeys....

Light in August, William Faulkner
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin
The Rainbow, DH Lawrence
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
Deliverance, James Dickey
Women In Love, DH Lawrence
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

And here's the fun part...I got all of these books, in really good condition, for $38. Which averages out to $3.80 a book. Beat THAT, Barnes and Noble!!!!

#71....A High Wind in Jamaica

2010-07-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

"Grownups embark on a life of deception with considerable misgiving, and generally fail. But not so children. A child can hide the most appalling secret without the least effort, and is practically secure against detection. Parents, finding that they see through their child in so many places the child does not know of, seldom realize that, if there is some point the child really gives his mind to hiding, their chances are nil."

There were several take-home messages Richard Hughes passes along to us in his 1929 novel, A High Wind in Jamaica. We'll kick off this review with them right now.

1)Children can be more devious than adults.
2)Not all pirates are bad guys (something Disney took to the bank with their Pirates of the Caribbean movies).
3)Parents and other adults are clueless about the true nature of children.

The five Bas-Thornton children (ranging from ages 3 to 12) aren't like normal kids. They live in the ruins of an old sugar plantation in Jamaica, and are basically running wild. They spend their time hunting, climbing trees, playing with sticks and old bottles for toys, and torturing animals, until one day a freak hurricane blows away their house. Their parents decide to send the kids back to England since Jamaica has proven unsafe, but en route, their ship is boarded by pirates. These pirates are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. They take all five children onto their own boat as a way of inducing the captain of their ship to produce money. The captain mistakenly sees the pirates throw things overboard, and assumes he has drowned the children, so they quickly leave the scene. The pirate captain is now stuck with the children, whom he never intended keeping.

The kids adjust quickly to life aboard the pirate ship, and Stockholm syndrome kicks in. The pirates are never overtly cruel to the children and pretty much allow them to do whatever they want, and a quasi-attachment is created between the kids and several members of the crew. When the kids are taken to an entertainment while on land, the oldest boy falls and breaks his neck...but astonishingly, the children don't seem to be very upset about this development and don't show much interest in his fate. The pirates board another ship, and take the captain hostage. The oldest girl, Emily, is stuck in the cabin with the bound captain, and when he makes a move to try to escape, she stabs him repeatedly, and he later dies of his injuries. Again, very little remorse is shown on Emily's part. In fact, another girl, Margaret, is blamed for the incident, but is thrown overboard. Luckily she is rescued.

The novelty of having kids swarming all over the pirate ship wears off, and the captain, Jonsen, finds another ship and makes up a story about rescuing the kids. The kids are taken onto the new ship, but Emily tells the people on the ship what really happened. The pirates are hunted down and charged with murder of the missing captain and the older Bas-Thornton boy; however, without actual bodies, the eyewitness accounts of the children will be necessary to convict them. The kids are reunited with their parents, who also left Jamaica, and a lawyer tries to get the true story of what happened with the dead captain out of Emily, who won't talk. The other kids hardly remember what happened. When Emily is put on the stand at the trial, she tells of seeing the dead captain, but not why he died. Everyone assumes since pirates are bad that the pirates killed him, and they are all hanged. Emily goes back to her regular life, seemingly unaffected by everything that has happened.

I have mixed feelings about the book. On the one hand, it was very interesting to read an adult's account of the thought processes of children. It was interesting to see what Hughes felt would hit the radar of a child. For example, at the beginning of the book, two incidents occur that Emily, the oldest girl, ruminates about for much of the book: an earthquake and the violent death of their pet cat during the hurricane. These seem to be logical, traumatizing events that might upset most kids. However, what was disturbing to me is what DOESN'T seem to upset them. The children don't seem to be very fazed by the terrible storm during the hurricane and the subsequent loss of their house and most of their belongings. They don't seem upset to be set adrift on a boat without their parents, aren't upset about being shot at and taken onto a pirate ship, and don't seem to miss their brother when he dies. Whether this is a commentary on the adaptability of children, or their inherent selfishness and lack of attention, I'm not sure. Maybe a little of both.

Something else I found interesting was the unreliability of children as witnesses during a trial. Hughes notes that "the children listened to all they were told, and according to their ages, believed it....Who were they, children, to know better what had happened to them than grownups?" Basically, the difficulty of getting children to tell the truth, when they are heavily influenced by grownups, makes them difficult witnesses. The lawyer has Emily memorize answers to questions he'll ask her, which she does with no trouble...but never does she seem to question their truth or validity. After the lawyer interviews all the children (which is basically a joke, as the kids can't stay on the subject and are making stuff up), the lawyer admits to their father that "I would rather have to extract information from the devil himself than from a child". Emily's testimony, while accurate, describes the death of the captain, but does not tell the whole truth. This is enough to convict the captain and crew.

Overall, it was not my favorite book, due to its dark, foreboding feel, but the ending was good and there was suspense and momentum to the plot.

Grade: B

Doin' the Hop

2010-07-09T08:21:00.001-07:00

For those of you stopping by from the Book Blogger Hop at Crazy for Books, welcome! We're a little over 1/4 completed on our journey through the Modern Library's Board's List of the Top 100 Novels from the last century. New to the area? No problem.... we'll get you caught up in no time. Reviews on all the books we've read are on the left. And there are lots more to come!

The Crazy for Books crew have asked us to name our favorite 5 books, as a way of getting your attention as to what we're all about here at Journeys. Although I have TONS of favorite books, I will list the top 5 books I've read on my quest so far...just so you can see what you've been missing.

1)A House for Mr Biswas, VS Naipaul. Don't let the boring title fool you. The Nobel Prize people sure didn't when they handed Sir Naipaul the award in 2001. An epic novel spanning the life of a man whose quest for independence, respect and autonomy will captivate you.

2)Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner. Another wonderful family epic that takes you through the rocky marriage of a miner and an artist. Very moving and beautifully written.

3)Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie. Don't worry, the Ayatollah won't put a fatwa out on you for reading this. It would be worth it even if he did. A compelling epic set during the birth of Indian democracy, dream-like and hilarious.

4)Sophie's Choice, William Styron. Clearly there's no happy ending to this book. But it is emotional, moving and heartrending...and worth every tear you will shed.

5)The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett. Another gem of a book unfortunately trapped beneath a mundane title, it is the story of two sisters and their parallel lives during the early 1900's.

Lots of other treasures too on the list, but I only got to name 5. Hopefully that gives you some idea of what goes on here! Thanks for stopping by!

June '10's ML Literary Dirtbag

2010-07-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

Clearly, between Soccer Madness 2010 and the holiday weekend, I dropped the ball on nominating last month's Literary Dirtbag award. As tempting as it was to give the award to the entire cast of Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, I managed to narrow it down to one: Tod Hackett, the daydreaming rapist. Here's a quote, if you're unconvinced:

"If only he had the courage to wait for her some night and hit her with a bottle and rape her."

Congratulations Tod! I'm glad Faye gave you the Heisman.

#72...A House for Mr Biswas

2010-07-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

"Then one evening a great calm settled on him, and he made a decision. He had for too long regarded situations as temporary; henceforth he would look upon every stretch of time, however short, as precious. Time would never be dismissed again. No action would merely lead to another; every action was a part of his life which could not be recalled."

VS Naipaul's wonderful epic novel, A House for Mr Biswas, chronicles the life of Mohun Biswas and his quest to have a house of his own. Born inauspiciously to lower-class parents in Trinidad, Mr Biswas' life seems to be one catastrophe after another. Thinking Mr Biswas has drowned, his father searches a lake for his body, only to drown himself. When his family relocates, Mr Biswas is taken into training as a pundit, and when one day he steals a couple of bananas from the pundit, is forced to eat the rest of the bunch, which results in Mr Biswas' ongoing stomach problems throughout his life. His sign-painting business results tangentially in meeting his wife Shama, and her crazy family, the Tulsis. A love note sent to Shama is discovered by Mrs Tulsi, her mother, and he is then recruited by her family to marry her. Upon his marriage to Shama, Mr Biswas discovers that he is expected to assimilate, uncomplainingly, into her family. This includes living in a huge house teeming with children and all the other members of the Tulsi family, and submitting to their rules and expectations. Mr Biswas' independent streak collides with the communist society of the Tulsis, where no one is allowed to do anything differently or have anything better than anyone else. Children inevitably are born, and when Mr Biswas tries to build a house of his own, it is destroyed in a storm. His subsequent mini-nervous breakdown puts him on the road to Port of Spain to find a new job. He lands a job with the Sentinel, a newspaper there, and he moves his family there to get his children better schooling.

Things finally seem to get better for the unlucky Mr Biswas in Port of Spain. His newspaper job requires him to visit the poorest people there, to see who qualifies for a monetary prize as "deserving destitutes". His son Anand does well in school and gets private tutoring for his writing ability. When the Tulsi clan relocates to an estate in the middle of nowhere, the Biswases go with them, only to regret their decision and move back to Port of Spain. Unfortunately, the Tulsi widows send their children to the Port of Spain house too, to get better schooling, and the previous quiet and peace of the house is destroyed, as the house is overtaken by children. Anand wins a scholarship to college, and Mr Biswas is offered a job with the government, which allows him to begin saving money for his house. An opportunity drops into his lap at the end of the book, and Mr Biswas finally gets his house....but circumstances intervene to prevent him from enjoying it.

I loved every page of this book. Mr Biswas is an independent, comical character who refuses to submit to the expectations of the Tulsi clan. After all of the bad luck that comes to Mr Biswas, you want things to work out for him in the end. His ironical humor lights up the book and there were sections where I laughed out loud. His fears of having the Tulsi pundit, Hari, come to bless any special occasion in their family was hilarious, as were his descriptions of the 'readers and learners' in the Port of Spain house and the familial practices of the Tulsis. I respected him because unlike the rest of the Tulsi sons-in-law, he resists the inertia of mooching off the family and doing nothing. He goes out and finds a lucrative job, and despite the free room and board, works hard to save money to get his family a place of their own.

It was a bit startling to read about the social and economic differences between what we have here in the US and what Mr Biswas accepted as normal in Trinidad. Wives and children were beaten regularly, and these 'floggings' were actually sources of pride to them, and were treated humorously by Naipaul. By the middle of the book, I found them slightly amusing, since no one seemed to mind them and it happened so much. Mr Biswas was a bit different from the rest of the Tulsis, as he did not seem to beat either Shama or his kids with any regularity. The houses that they lived in sounded like little better than shacks or huts. Tree branches provided rafters, and corrugated iron provided roofs. I could completely understand why he wanted a good quality house, and I really appreciated mine after reading about how they lived.

This book is yet another reason I am glad I began reading the Modern Library's list. I would never have picked this book up had it not been on this list, and it makes me sad to think I might have missed it. I was very sorry it ended, as I wanted to know what happened to Mr Biswas' kids when they grew up. A big, chunky read at 564 pages, but one I enjoyed immensely.

This book is my third book for the Chunkster Challenge 2010.

Grade: A+

Surviving the Soccer Season...and Reading

2010-06-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight is our final soccer game of the summer season....WOOOO HOOOO!

I wanted to give an update on the absolutely fantastic read I've been working through: the wonderful A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul. This is a big, chunky read but it is so engrossing. It is about one man's quest to be self-sufficient and obtain (for him) the end-all, be-all of independence...a house he can call his own. Unfortunately, this quest is thwarted by his very controlling and communist in-laws, the Tulsis, who are a Trinidadian version of the Kennedys. Luckily Mr Biswas keeps his sense of humor and his wits about him, and finds small ways to rebel against their emotional terrorism. There are some very humorous parts, and the repartee between Mr Biswas and his wife Shama I find very humorous, as neither will back down from the other. I've also enjoyed reading about the Tulsi family and their very weird ways. They make my in-laws look tame, which (trust me) is a tough gig.

I'm a little over 2/3 of the way through it (the book weighs in at 564 pages) but it's gone very quickly. Should have a review for you soon.

Update

2010-06-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

I'm knee deep in soccer right now, as we just spent an entire weekend down in Rochester for a tournament (we got 2nd place!) and Aves has four games this week plus another tourney next weekend. But no worries! I am on the sidelines and chillin' in the hotel room happily devouring V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. I feel a good review comin' on!

Hope everyone else is staying busy and enjoying their summers!

#73...The Day of the Locust

2010-06-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

"But either way she would come out all right. Nothing could hurt her. She was like a cork. No matter how rough the sea got, she would go dancing over the same waves that sank iron ships and tore away piers of reinforced concrete. He pictured her riding a tremendous sea. Wave after wave reared its ton on ton of solid water and crashed down only to have her spin gaily away."

In the celebrity-obsessed society we have become in the last near-century, I am sure today's movie stars long for the days before paparazzi cameras relentlessly followed them into Starbucks to get their no-fat caramel latte in their sweatpants, or People magazine showed them busting out the cellulite in a too-small bikini on some remote island. I have always struggled to understand how people can wrench enjoyment from watching people's privacy get invaded, but I think most of us would agree that celebrities exist on a different plane than the rest of us. You make 50 million dollars a movie? You pay the price in other ways. Losing your privacy is just one of them.

For every famous actor or actress in Hollywood, you know there have to be somewhere in the vicinity of hundreds of people who don't make it, whose only aspiration is to be on TMZ in their underwear. In case you ever wondered what all of these unfortunate wanna-be actors and actresses do in their spare time to keep busy and/or how they cope with their disappointment, Nathanael West helps us out with that in his gritty, macabre novella, The Day of the Locust. West began his career as a novel writer, but when that didn't work out so well, he turned to Hollywood and screenwriting before his untimely death in 1940. West was therefore in a privileged position to see what happened to those unlucky folks who made it out to the promised land with their dreams in their hands, but then were chewed up and spit out by the Hollywood machine. Like West, Tod Hackett is a screenwriter and sometime painter in Hollywood. His particular interest is searching for people who "had come to California to die"--people who came to Hollywood for fame and fortune but didn't make it and became embittered and angry because of it. Tod wants to paint them into his masterpiece which depicts angry mobs and the burning of Los Angeles. When he's not out scoping for subjects (and I guess screenwriting, although it's never really mentioned) Tod hangs out with the wanna-be starlet Faye Greener, whom he secretly dreams of violently raping since she won't give it up to him. What a class act, right?

Well, in terms of stand-up human beings, Tod's not alone in Locust. West's novel overflows with the underbelly of society....dirty, violent, and angry characters, like the belligerent midget Abe Kusich, the cockfighting Mexican Miguel, and the cowboy with suppressed rage, Earle Shoop. All of the men lust after Faye, who sleeps with a couple of them and refuses to sleep with the others. Only one character stands out as somewhat decent; the goodhearted Homer Simpson, who comes to California because of his health, but ends up going crazy after his involvement with Faye and her weird collection of friends. The book ends with starstruck fans lined up at a movie premiere losing it and forming the mob that Tod has envisioned from nearly page one of the book.

This book, to me, was wall-to-wall crap. I have no idea what this book is doing on a list of the 100 best books. It's too horrible to even be on a list of the 100 worst books. It was dark, dirty and depressing, and I hated every page of it. I hated the cockfighting sequence so much I almost didn't finish the book (you know how I get with animal cruelty). I cared nothing for any of the characters, even Homer, whose character was the Biggest Doormat of All Time and therefore unworthy of respect or even sympathy. I kept waiting for something important to happen, like someone getting some self-esteem and deciding they needed better friends than that sorry group of people, or getting famous and getting a life, or one of them going psycho and killing everyone, but no one did. I guess I've never really been curious about what these wanna-be actors did to keep busy while they were waiting for their big break, or what they did once it became clear their big break would never come. Unfortunately, now I know.

The best thing going for it was that it was a quick read, only 202 pages. All I have to say is, thank God!!! If reading about what happens to people and how they cope after their dreams get crushed underfoot is your thing, you will love this book. I didn't.

Grade: D-

#74...A Farewell To Arms

2010-06-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

Ernest Hemingway (that's him on the left) brings his real-life experience as an Italian ambulance driver in WWI to life in A Farewell to Arms, a bittersweet story about love and war. Frederic Henry (we don't even find out his name until page 84!) is an American fighting with the Italians in the mountains of Italy. His doctor friend Rinaldi introduces him to Catherine Barkley, a British war aide, and they immediately fall in love. When Henry is wounded in the leg by shrapnel during an attack, he is sent away from the front for convalescence, and Catherine is there to help him after the knee surgery. She becomes pregnant with his child, but refuses to marry him, insisting that they are already married to each other in spirit.

When Henry recovers and is sent back to the front, the Italian war effort is weakening. During a retreat from the Austrians and Germans, Henry becomes separated from his unit (he is a lieutenant). When the Italian army begins to turn on itself and starts assassinating its officers for 'deserting their units' out of fear that the Germans have infiltrated their army, Henry escapes the firing squad, deserts the army, finds Catherine, and they take off for neutral Switzerland by boat, where they remain happily awaiting the birth of their child. Unfortunately, Catherine and the baby both die in childbirth, and Henry is left alone.

I did not expect to like this book. In fact, I was fully prepared to hate every page for the reasons I elucidated in my last posting about Hemingway. That being said, I was completely shocked and awed by how good this book was. It wasn't the most upbeat story in the world, but what it lacked in a happy ending, it made up for in momentum. It just rolled downhill like a rock, and like I said last night, I could not stop reading. I just knew there was going to be a bad ending, though. It's foreshadowed throughout the entire book. It feels like we spend nine months in the autumn/winter rain and cold; I was at a loss to remember any time in the book where it was sunny. Many characters close to Henry die or get hurt, and he ruminates often on death and what it means, which makes complete sense in a novel about war.

I was also shocked about how much drinking went on in this novel. Wine, vermouth, whiskey, you name it. Nurses sneaking alcohol up to patients in the hospital? Catherine drinking during her entire pregnancy? Ambulance drivers and soldiers drinking? Seriously, people! I guess Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and DWI's weren't hot topics back in the 1910's. As I mentioned in my last posting, I was also not pleased with Hemingway's wimpy female characters, except maybe Fergy, who really gave it to Henry about getting Catherine pregnant. While I can appreciate the role of women back in that era, it makes me very glad those days are over.

A great book and one I am glad that I read.

Grade: A

My first blog award!!!

2010-06-06T06:49:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Ilona over at The Friande for passing along to me my very first blogger award! I am so excited!!!

There are some quid-pro-quos for getting this award. They are as follows:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award

So in addition to displaying my horrible bookshelves last week to all of you, I need to come up with seven more unknown facts about myself that hopefully won't embarrass me too much. Here we go.

1)I met my husband on EHarmony five years ago. Those sites really do work!

2)I have lived in 13 of the 50 states.

3)I have a bachelor's degree in Biology from UNC, and a master's degree in Audiology from the U of Utah.

4)I have an incurable fear of flying, drowning, and clowns.

5)In my erstwhile teenage years I once drove into a cornfield. Don't ask.

6)My 12 year-old daughter is actually taller than me already.

7)I am a sports fanatic. I love to watch football, baseball and professional soccer.

So here are the lucky sites I have grown to know and love over the past 9 months I feel are worthy of such an honor. I'll be adding more as I discover more sites that I love. Keep it up guys!

Kristin's Book Blog

The Modern Library List of Books

Our Year in Books

100 Books

Dead White Guys

#75....Scoop

2010-06-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

"He sat at the table, stood up, sat down again, stared gloomily at the wall for some minutes, lit his pipe, and then, laboriously, with a single first finger and his heart heavy with misgiving, he typed the first news story of his meteoric career. No one observing that sluggish and hesitant composition could have guessed that this was a moment of history--of legend, to be handed down among the great traditions of his trade, told and retold over the reeking bars of Fleet Street, quoted in books of reminiscence, held up as a model to aspiring pupils of Correspondence Schools of Profitable Writing, perennially fresh in the jaded memories of a hundred editors; the moment when Boot began to make good."

Have you guys ever seen the Naked Gun movies with Leslie Nielsen, where he plays the bumbling cop Frank Drebin? Drebin is the worst cop imaginable, but somehow he always seems to be in the right place at the right time, catches the bad guys almost by accident, and comes out looking like the hero at the end. The Naked Gun movies are exactly what Evelyn Waugh's Scoop reminded me of when I began reading it. Waugh's hilarious and goofy hero, William Boot, wants nothing more than to live quietly in the country with his extended eccentric family and servants at his home, Boot Magna, writing a small nature column nobody reads called Lush Places. When another writer named John Courtney Boot's name is dropped by a local politician for a foreign correspondent job at the Beast, the job is mistakenly given to William, who only takes the job because he figures it is his punishment for the mistakes he made in his last article. Hilarity ensues as the clueless, gullible Boot is sent off to war-torn Ishmaelia, a fictional country in Africa. Arriving in Ishmaelia with a herd of seasoned foreign journalists and a hysterical mound of luggage, he is the only one of the journalists to resist being sent out of the Ishmaeli city of Jacksonburg on a wild goose chase and is therefore in the right place at the right time to get the uncontested scoop on the Soviet military coup no one saw coming. Suddenly William Boot's name is on everyone's tongue...but the last thing William wants is to be famous.

I thoroughly expected to plow through another dry Waugh book like Brideshead Revisited (see my review here), but was completely and happily disappointed in this when I read Scoop. I loved it. As he did in Brideshead Revisited, Waugh peoples his story with unforgettably unique characters, like the gold-digging Katchen, the stuffy, self-important Lord Copper, the obnoxious Uncle Theodore, and the passive-aggressive editor Salter. The part where Salter goes to Boot Magna in an attempt to drag the reticent William back to London for his award banquet is about the funniest thing I have read in a long time. The book wraps up with a section dedicated to the future of all of the characters, which was also quite humorous.

After the dark comedy of Jean Brodie and the nonsensical ramblings of the Wake, this book was much appreciated, and much enjoyed.

Grade: A-

May '10's Literary Dirtbag

2010-06-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

Since I have no idea if there were actually people in Finnegans Wake (and I was tempted to nominate James Joyce, believe me!!!), this month's Modern Library Literary Dirtbag Award goes to Teddy Lloyd from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Mr Lloyd definitely goes above and beyond all of the the required dirtbag qualities: married with kids, but having an affair with Miss Brodie and then having an affair with one of his teenage students. Plus I didn't like when he told Sandy she was ugly. I bet one of his past mistresses cut off his missing arm. :)

This Week's Blog Hoppin'

2010-05-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

A big welcome to those of you stopping by courtesy of The Book Blogger Hop, which I am loving more and more every weekend I check it out. There's nothing better than realizing I am probably the only person in the universe not currently reading and blogging on YA books. :)

Through the Hop I've found a couple of really great sites which continue to inspire me and crack me up. Our Year in Books inspired me to put my hideously embarrassing bookshelves on display, and if you haven't checked out The Friande's review of Winnie-The-Pooh, you need to...it's classic. I am also loving Dead White Guys...before I found her site, I had never realized how much of last century's best were written by...you guessed it...dead white guys. Plus I end up laughing every time she posts. :)

#76....The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

2010-05-28T07:10:00.003-07:00

"For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "that is the sort of thing they like."

The age-old concept of 'teacher's pet' runs amok in Muriel Spark's novella The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a short and enjoyable read. The liberated, outspoken and self-obsessed Miss Brodie is a teacher in her prime of life at a girls' school in 1930's Scotland, where she selects six impressionable ten year-old girls to be part of her 'set'. Instead of teaching them the usual school subjects like math and social studies, Miss Brodie tells the girls about her love affairs, her support of Fascism, and her conflicts with the other teachers at the school, which as you can imagine goes over very well with the conservative school administration. It is hinted at several times during the book that the principal, Miss Mackay, is looking for a reason to get rid of Miss Brodie, and hopes one of the six girls might provide her with that reason. The story follows Miss Brodie's continuing attempts to control the lives of her girls into their teenage years, trying to make them fit the roles she has cast them for even after she is no longer their teacher. The plotline moves seamlessly back and forth from the present time into the future, so we can see how Miss Brodie's girls 'turned out'. None of them really seem to become the 'creme de la creme' that Miss Brodie was grooming them for.

The six girls are typecast from almost page one. Rose Stanley is 'famous for sex', although she never does it. Monica is well-known for doing math in her head and getting pissed off. Mary is picked on constantly as the scapegoat. Eunice is the athletic one. Jenny and Sandy, best friends, write fictional tales about Miss Brodie's romantic escapades. We are told that one of these girls eventually betrays Miss Brodie to Miss Mackay, which results in Miss Brodie's firing and eventual downward spiral.

Miss Brodie also makes the mistake of getting involved with a teacher at the school, a one-armed art teacher named Mr Lloyd, who is married. His frustration in not being able to be with Miss Brodie results in his becoming involved with the six girls by painting them (all with Miss Brodie's face). Miss Brodie selects Rose to begin an affair with Mr Lloyd, but he chooses instead to become involved with Sandy, which goes against Miss Brodie's evil plan. Because Miss Brodie cannot have Mr Lloyd, she begins an affair with another teacher, Mr Lowther, whom she does not love but who loves her. When he cannot have her, and their affair becomes public knowledge when she leaves her nightgown under his pillow and it is discovered by the maid, he marries another teacher at the school.

I liked this book, but was sort of disappointed in the ending. The front cover of my book says that this book (printed in 1970) was now a "devastating movie". So I guess I was expecting Miss Brodie to do something dramatic and self-serving like shoot one or all of the girls, shoot one of the male teachers and/or herself, or blow up the school, especially after she tells the girls that the only way the school will get her to leave is if they assassinate her. They did keep mentioning that jar of gunpowder in the science room....hmmm. Maybe I have too vivid of an imagination. :)

A quick, quirky read with some slightly humorous parts. Recommended if you have nothing else on your TBR list.

Grade: B

Birth Year Reading Challenge

2010-05-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've decided to join Hotchpot Cafe's Birth Year Reading Challenge to see what other greatness the year 1972 might have produced besides me. :) The challenge has no limit for the amount of books to read, but you get a candle for every one you finish. Here are the books I've chosen:

The Water is Wide, Pat Conroy

The Water Method Man, John Irving

Green Darkness, Anya Seton

On the Night of the Seventh Moon-Victoria Holt

The Boys of Summer-Roger Kahn

Library Link-Up

2010-05-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

I like the idea that the gang over at Our Year in Books came up with so much that I am willing to put my two completely disorganized shelves of books up on the internet for all to see. The first pic is my is my shelf in the computer room. The middle two shelves are dedicated to the Journeys quest.

The next pic is the seldom-visited Scary Basement Shelf. Which as you can see holds my complete collection of Dave Barry's books as well as all of my boring graduate school books that for some reason I am too afraid to part with on the off-chance one of my professors shows up at my work with a quiz (I won't mention that I got my degree ten years ago). I am seeking help for this paranoia. :)

My Library Link-up refreshment? Vodka shots for everyone. Or at least, after looking at how awful my shelves look compared to everyone else's, maybe just one for me. Plus I would also make Chex School Fuel as it is the snack that rocks the universe.

10 Things I Hate about "Finnegans Wake"

2010-05-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

I am about a page and a half away from giving up on this book, folks. I thought I might share some of the reasons why, and those of you literary purists out there who will say that I didn't read ALL of the Wake and therefore can't have read the entire ML list will need to get over it. :)

10) When I stop reading it, and come back to it, I have absolutely no idea where I left off. I have probably re-read page 94 five times.

9) The actual main characters (if there are any) are never mentioned. Or if they are, he's given them twelve different names.

8)No plot whatsoever. I know, I know....that was a cop-out. Yet it's a LEGITIMATE cop-out.

7) All of the made-up words. If Dr Seuss didn't get his inspiration for all of his books from Joyce, I have no idea what a better source would have been.

6)The fact that I could probably open up the book and start reading at any point, and be able to understand what's going on just as well as if I started on page one.

5) I could also read every other chapter, or the book in reverse, and get the same result.

4) Six hundred pages of sentences like "Augs and ohrs with Rhian O'kehley to put it tertianly, we wrong?" It's enough to make you drink.

3) The embarrassment of carrying this book around for the last month and having people ask me what it's about, and I have to blither like an idiot about the fact that I have no idea.

2) When cleaning the catbox, going for a run, or dealing with the craziness at Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon seems like a better deal than reading this book, that's not okay.

1) It has taken me almost one month to read 100 pages. At this rate, I'll finish the book somewhere around my golden wedding anniversary.

The Book Blogger Hop

2010-05-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Jennifer at Crazy-for-Books came up with the awesome idea of the Book Blogger Hop, where you can list your blog if you have one and also find lots of other book blogs and bloggers on any literary genre out there! If you haven't been there already, go check it out! The couple of blogs I've linked to from her site are amazing, and I can't wait to find more. :)

It's a great way to meet new people and check out what others are reading. The Book Blogger Hop lasts from Friday-Monday every week, so spend a bit of time on your weekend hooking up with other bloggers who love to read!

"The Color Purple"

2010-05-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

"You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

Alice Walker's The Color Purple is a wonderful story about two sisters and their separate travels through life. Celie and her younger sister Nettie are African-American women who endure violent and abusive childhoods at the hands of their stepfather. Celie ends up having two of his children, who are taken away from her. When a callous local widower, Mr _________ (or Albert as he's known later in the story) is refused by Celie's sister Nettie, Celie is married off to him instead to help raise his bratty children. When Albert continues his advances towards Nettie and she continues to rebuff him, he sends her away from their house, and Nettie goes to live with an African American missionary family who are unknowingly bringing up Celie's children. She writes Celie a series of letters about her travels with the missionary family to Africa, which Albert hides from Celie.

Celie meets up with two very strong African-American female role models while married to the unfeeling and bossy Albert: Shug Avery, an independent singer and sometime-mistress of her new husband, and Sofia, the wife of her stepson Harpo. Both women are resistant to the efforts of men to put them in their place. Despite her relationship with Albert, Shug and Celie become the best of friends. Shug and Celie find the hidden letters from Nettie, and this discovery, along with Shug's money and encouragement, prompts Celie to leave Albert and start her own successful small business making very comfortable pants for everyone to wear.

Eventually Albert comes around to realizing what a good thing he had with Celie, and learns to respect her and love her. Nettie makes it safely back to America with Celie's grown children, and all are reunited happily at the end.

I loved this book. It switched seamlessly between the uneducated rural African-American dialect of Celie, and the articulate, educated voice of Nettie. The love these women are able to feel for each other, along with Celie's loving relationship with Shug, is inspiring after all of the hardships they have endured. Being raped by a stepfather, married as a child bride to a cold and uncaring man, and being separated from children would be experiences that would embitter even the best of us. But Celie manages to show strength of heart and spirit, as well as courage, despite this.

The typical polarities of white vs black, women vs men, Christian vs heathen, and traditional vs modern roles for women are all portrayed well and with sensitivity. There are some truly humorous parts to this story, which I didn't expect but thoroughly enjoyed. Never once did I feel that Walker was proselytizing me into a corner with her views. The passages about God in particular were simple and beautiful.

I was truly amazed and sorry to see that this book wasn't on the Modern Library list. I enjoyed every page and wished there was more at the end, which I really haven't for about the past five books I've read on the ML list. It was truly deserving of both book awards it received.

In closing, I would probably read more Pulitzer Prize winning books than I would National Book Award winners, based on my experiences from the Battle of the Prizes (American Version) Reading Challenge. I loved Angle of Repose, but wasn't that crazy about Augie March.

Grade: A+

Unfaithful

2010-05-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I've been cheating on Finnegans Wake.

Rose City Reader's Battle of the Prizes (American Version) Reading Challenge tasked me with reading three books: a Pulitzer Prize winner (I read the wonderful Angle of Repose) and a National Book Award winner (I read the long-winded The Adventures of Augie March), and a book that won both awards. Unfortunately (and inexplicably), none of these 'double dippers' were on the ML 100 list, so I had to read one that wasn't on the list. I chose Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

I have to say I am indebted to Reader for creating this challenge so I would find this book. It's fabulous. I cannot comprehend how a list of the Top 100 books of the last century could include banal tomes like Loving but not include a book this good. It's just not right.

I'll be posting my review of The Color Purple either later today or tomorrow. And then it's back to Finnegan. Sigh.

Literary Smackdown: "FW" vs "A Skeleton Key to FW"

2010-05-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

Heading into Chapter 4 of the Wake, I wanted to relay my experiences thus far with reading both FW and the Skeleton Key, in case some of you might have a little too much to drink some night and consider reading the Wake yourself.

What I have been doing thus far is reading the Key's summary of the chapter first, and then reading the corresponding chapter of FW, hoping against hope the Key's explanation will help me make sense of FW.

Here's an example of how that's gone down:

The Key's Chapter 2 Summary: From what I read, this chapter is supposed to deal with the effect of gossip on the destruction of HCE's reputation after he exposes himself to the two girls in the Park.

Makes sense, right? (Right?) Okay! So now I'm ready to plunge into Chapter 2 of FW, hopefully armed with some sort of a clue as to what might be happening.

FW Chapter 2 Summary: ?????????

Seriously, Joseph Campbell is amazing for even finding some sort of a storyline in the maelstrom of words that is FW. There were, at most, a couple of sentences, maybe even a couple of words in the whole chapter, that were even remotely related to Campbell's summary. They actually bust into song at the end of Chapter 2, a whole song that is devoted to HCE and his downfall. Believe it or not, that was the only section of Chapter 2 that made any sort of sense to me. This was alarming. :)

And so it goes. Onward ho!

Surviving Finnegan

2010-05-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

My Top 5 Favorite Insulting Names HCE was given after people found out about him and the girls in the Park (see pgs 71-72 for the complete rundown):

1)Hooshed the Cat from the Bacon
2)Sickfish Bellyup
3)Delights to Kiss the Man Behind the Barrel
4)Swad Puddlefoot
5)Hoary Hairy Hoax

Surviving Finnegan

2010-05-12T05:50:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/09/man_completes_public_reading_o.php

A great article about a guy in San Francisco who read the Wake out loud on a street corner last September.

Surviving Finnegan

2010-05-09T10:56:00.001-07:00

"There exists, of course, no substitute for the richly rewarding experience of plunging headlong into the Wake and wrenching loose some trophy of meaning from its still-unexplored depths."

The above sentence is, of course, from Campbell's Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, and not from the Wake itself, evidenced by the fact that there are no bizarre words like 'pthuck' or 'mumper' present and the sentence makes actual sense.

Anyone remember the urban myth from twenty plus years ago, about how if you played the Beatles' A Day in the Life backwards at a certain section, you were supposed to be able to hear "Paul is dead"? That kind of creepy stuff kept me up nights as a kid. Reading the Key is giving me the same sort of creepy feeling I got trying to play that record backwards. Campbell finds lots of hidden meanings and things buried in the Wake that I would never have noticed had I not read his book. Does it help me understand what's going on? To an extent. Does it still make much sense? NO.

When I finish each chapter (a Herculean effort in itself) I will be offering out my hypotheses of what I thought happened in each chapter. People out there have devoted entire academic careers to speculation over what the hell Joyce might be trying to say, so feel free to disagree with me. You're probably right.

Pam's Hypothetical Synopsis of FW, Chapter One: Everyone wants this guy named Finnegan to stay dead, because he's already been replaced by another guy, named HCE, who has a wife and family and is apparently some sort of pedophile. There were also a couple of museum tours in there, I think.

Surviving Finnegan

2010-05-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

"The babbelers with their thangas vain have been (confusium hold them!) they were and went; thinggging thugs were and houhnhymn songtoms were and comely norgels were and pollyfool fiansees."

FW Fact: Scholars estimate Joyce worked between 60-70 different languages into the Wake. Just some of the languages used are Dutch, Norse, Lithuanian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Polynesian.

Fun FW Tip of the Day: Type the above FW quote into a Microsoft Word document and watch your Spellcheck freak out!!! :)

Surviving Finnegan

2010-05-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

"And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the brekkers come to mournhim, sunny side up with care."

Yesterday was one of the happiest moments of my life, when Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake arrived on my doorstep. And not a moment too soon. Ten pages into FW, I'm a little confused....but here's the kicker....not completely turned off to it. I can't explain it. After the lethargic plot of Kim, I'm so grateful to not have to think too much and try too hard to keep up with a plot that just reading words, even nonsense words, is somewhat of a relief.

I've read several blogs about FW over the past few days, all with varying degrees of advice for how to read the Wake. The most interesting suggestion I came across was to read the book out loud. The writer says that since Joyce was Irish, and the Irish tradition of storytelling is oral (think of an Irish pub and all the songs!), the book is meant to be read out loud, and if you do this, it will make more sense. And scarily, he's right. When I started to sound out some of the words I couldn't read, it was then that the syllables turned into something lucid.

Campbell's book so far is very interesting. I've realized there's not going to be much in terms of a plot with FW, but there seems to be so much under the surface that I don't want to miss anything good. Kind of like an archaeological dig. I like riddles and hidden things in literature so this is a bit fascinating to me. The Key is actually very easy to read. Hopefully this open-mindedness will continue.

Surviving Finnegan

2010-05-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

"The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian mintrelsy."

Probably the best description of falling down since Eddie Murphy imitated his Aunt Bunny falling down the stairs in Delirious.

April '10's Literary Dirtbag Award

2010-05-02T15:02:00.001-07:00

My apologies for totally forgetting about this, in the wake of bribing myself to finish Kim.

April's MLLD Award goes out to the Russian guy from Kim who smacked the lama in the face and tears up his Wheel of Life picture that the lama worked so hard on. That was just wrong. I was glad when Kim rolled him down the hill and kicked him in the groin. I would have kicked him more than once there. Although in hindsight, I should probably thank this guy for bringing some action to an otherwise action-free novel. :)

The only other character who came close last month was Cecil Vyse from A Room With a View. I didn't think boring characters qualified as dirtbags so I couldn't really nominate him. :)

#78...Kim

2010-05-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

"I tell you I am fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more dam-tight places I get into."

I was actually introduced to Kim about twenty years ago without knowing it, when, as a Brownie Girl Scout, we played "Kim's Game". This game consisted of putting several different objects into a shallow box, that is initially covered over with a cloth. The cloth is removed for a minute or so, and your job is to look at everything in the box, try to remember as much as you can about what's in the box and what it looks like, and then write it all down when the minute is up and the box gets covered back up. The more you remember, the more likely you are to win.

Kim's Game is only a small part of Rudyard Kipling's novel. Kim is introduced to us as an Indian orphan who steps up to help a Tibetan Lama, who is on a quest to find a special river. The lama believes bathing in the river will remove all sin. Kim joins his quest, as he is also on a quest to find a red bull on a green background, which his father told him will come to help him. Kim and the lama set out on the Great Trunk Road, which is sort of the Indian version of a superhighway, and along the way, Kim unknowingly becomes involved in some espionage for the British through his horse-trader friend Mahbub Ali. They later stumble upon his father's Irish regiment, the Mavericks....whose flag has a red bull with a green background. Kim is 'adopted' by this regiment when it is discovered that the documents he has always worn around his neck show that he is part Irish. He is sent to a school for white children with the lama's money, where he learns English and is to be trained to be a surveyor. However, Kim is unable to let go of his Indian upbringing, and sneaks off on his vacations to spend time with Mahbub and his friend Mr Lurgan, learning about espionage and spying.

At the end of his schooling, he returns to the lama and their quest to find the river for 6 months before he will begin working for the government. He means to stay as the lama's student or 'chela', but along the way he discovers another spy, Hurree Babu, and saves him from danger. They track two Russian spies, and meet up with them, and when one of them attacks the lama, Babu takes the two men away so that Kim can take their notes, maps and letters. He and the lama continue to look for the river, but the lama becomes ill and so does Kim. At the end, the lama finds his river, Kim turns over the letters and maps to Babu and the government and everyone is happy.

In summary: I did not enjoy this book. There were days when I did not read it at all, and days where I read half a page and that was it. I found myself completely unconcerned with the fate of any of the characters, none of whom resonated with me. If they had all died at the end, I wouldn't have felt bad. Even the background 'spy' story wasn't that compelling, but those sections were marginally more interesting to me than the parts where they were wandering around looking for the river. All of the foreign names of the characters began to blend together; I had to look back in the book more than once to make sure I had them straight.

This was the first book on the list so far where I debated whether or not to finish it. I have to say that feeling was a bit surprising. Before I read Kim, I thought I had read some of the worst books of all time (i.e. The Magus, The Ginger Man, Loving, etc). But oddly, at no point even during the 600+ pages of The Magus did it ever occur to me to stop reading. It made me wonder if the books I had read before that I didn't like were actually all that bad. At least those books engendered feelings (even if it was irritation or hostility) whereas Kim was about as emotionally flatlined as you get. I would have a more emotional experience reading Webster's Unabridged Dictionary than I did reading Kim. :) I guess if there is any positive experience I got out of reading Kim, it would be that I learned something about myself and my reading preferences.

Well, I'm sure Kim will look like a trip to Paradise after I get started with my next epic adventure, Finnegan's Wake. Look out for my new featurette, Surviving Finnegan, premiering this week.

Grade: D

Update

2010-04-19T08:55:00.001-07:00

I hope all of you are having as nice of weather where you are as we're having here. It's heavenly.

Kim is going very slowly. I chalk that up to several things. 1)The nice weather....being outdoors gives me less time for reading, although I spent about an hour out on the deck reading yesterday, 2)We're totally taken in by back episodes of Entourage and The Tudors, and 3)the story for whatever reason is just not captivating to me. Maybe, as with so many of the books I've read, the story will mercifully pick up steam in the last 1/3-1/4 of the book, but right now, it's just another picaresque hero on the lam, with all sorts of strange friends, getting into countless scrapes and somehow worming his way out of them. It's like Under the Net in India. I really like the lama's character, but as with so many of the stories I've read lately, Kipling decided to pull his character out mid-story.

Am also wondering how Kim, Augie March, and Brideshead Revisited could be higher on the ML list than Angle of Repose.

I realize that with every page I read of Kim, I am one page closer to Finnegan's Wake. When I start that one up, I will be adding a new daily featurette to Journeys, called Surviving Finnegan, where I will be sharing literary frustrations, incomprehensible quotes, and possible hypotheses on what the hell Joyce is thinking (or smoking), just to keep myself sane. :) Feel free to check in and share your Finnegan experiences. It'll be a blast.

Pam

#79....."A Room With A View"

2010-04-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the things I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now… ‘Life’, wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’”

One of my favorite movies is While You Were Sleeping, a hilarious romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a stranger she sees everyday from afar, but has never officially met. Their lives collide when she comes to his rescue when he is attacked at a subway station, and while he is in a coma, is mistaken for his fiancée by his family. Bullock’s character, Lucy, is without any family in the world, and she is taken in as one of their own by Peter’s family. Because she is so happy to finally be loved and be part of a family, she doesn’t correct their assumption about her relationship with their son, figuring as long as he’s comatose no one will know the truth, but the weight of lying to his very loving family begins to weigh on her conscience….especially when she begins to fall for Peter’s brother Jack. Things get complicated when Peter regains consciousness and actually proposes to her. Lucy realizes that she must come clean with everyone before making the biggest mistake of her life. If you haven’t seen it, rent it now.

E.M. Forster’s novel, A Room With a View, reminded me so much of this movie, because the two main characters are both named Lucy and both struggle with the impact of telling lies to their friends and family. Forster’s novel begins in Florence, Italy (ironically where Lucy from While You Were Sleeping wants to go on her honeymoon), where we meet young, innocent Lucy Honeychurch and her maiden lady chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. The ladies have just arrived at an Italian pension and are distressed because they were promised rooms that would have a view of the Arno River. They’re overheard by an older man, Mr Emerson, who agreeably offers to switch rooms with them, since a view doesn’t matter as much to him and his quiet son, George. This is agreed upon, and Lucy and Miss Bartlett become intimately involved from this act with the Emersons (who are thought unsuitable) and the other pension guests: the annoying parson Mr Beebe, the radical author Miss Lavish, and later, another self-obsessed parson, Mr Eager. Lucy is portrayed as a woman with her own thoughts and feelings, and is not as conventional as those around her would prefer. She gets into trouble when she goes sightseeing alone, and witnesses a murder in the Piazza, but luckily faints into the arms of the erstwhile George, who falls in love with her at that very moment. When he kisses her on an outing into the hills, which Charlotte witnesses, both women flee Florence for Rome, where Lucy meets the stuffy, insufferable Cecil Vyse. He proposes to Lucy three times, and she finally accepts on the third occasion, even though her family and most of her neighbors hate him because he is a snob and hates people.

Back in England, at the Honeychurch home at Windy Corner, Lucy discovers that Cecil has arranged to let a cottage in town to none other than the Emersons. George befriends Lucy’s brother Freddy, and as they spend more time together, Lucy begins to warm up to George, until the one day where George tells Lucy that she cannot marry Cecil because 1)Cecil’s a snob and hates people, 2)Cecil doesn’t allow Lucy to have her own thoughts and feelings and is trying to brainwash her, and 3)George loves Lucy and knows she loves him too. He kisses her again. Although Lucy lies to George about her feelings for him, later that night she breaks off her engagement with Cecil because she knows George is right about him. She then lies to her family, telling them there is no one else she is more interested in, and that she wants to go traveling in Greece, instead of admitting she is trying to escape George. Plans are set in motion for her to go to Greece when she discovers that the Emersons are moving away so that George can get away from her. He does not know the engagement is over. On her way out of town, Lucy meets up with Mr Emerson, whom she initially lies to about going to Greece with Cecil, but then breaks down and tells him about the end of her engagement. Mr Emerson encourages her to go find George so they can be together, and that telling lies and making big mistakes is the worst part of life. The book ends with her marrying George and having her whole family pissed off that Lucy lied to them instead of just being honest. Like Lucy in While You Were Sleeping, Lucy Honeychurch's honesty with herself in the end brings her love.

I have to admit that although I liked A Room With a View, it wasn’t the page-turner I think it could have been. I expected to blow through this book in three days, but it took almost two weeks. The last 1/3 of the book was really good, but for me, the middle 1/3 dragged horribly. Up until George moved to Windy Corner, it was seriously boring, partly because I hated Cecil, and partly because Cecil was making Lucy boring. I also have to wonder if all clergymen in 19th /early 20th century England were as stuffy and pompous as they seem to be portrayed so frequently in classic literature. Jane Austen, I believe, wrote the book on irritatingly proper and self-centered country parsons— I hate Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice more than anything. I just have a hard time believing that men of God, who are ostensibly supposed to love all God’s children, could be so obsessed with money and social status. But that seems to be how it was!

My heart also went out to Lucy’s character. Although it created a big mess, I understood why she wasn’t forthcoming with her feelings for George. She had Charlotte telling her that he was a socialist, and the negative feelings of the other pensioners in Italy towards the Emersons didn't help. I noticed that she seemed to warm up to George when her brother started to get along with him. Having Cecil’s thumbs-up when he arranged for them to be in Cissie Villa seemed to recommend them as well. She didn’t want to disappoint her mother, who initially seemed excited by her engagement to Cecil, but then at the end, is relieved when she calls it off. So in that sense Lucy was not the only one who was lying!

Not my favorite of the list so far, but definitely not the worst. Here's hopin' the other Forster books upcoming will have a bit more drive to the narrative.

Grade: B+

Libris Interruptus...Phillippa Gregory and "The Tudors"

2010-04-06T05:25:00.001-07:00

Waiting for the warmer weather to arrive, and finding that A Room with a View is somewhat on the boring side, I've turned to watching back episodes of Entourage on HBO (hilarious if you've never watched it) and I've also picked up the first season of The Tudors, a great series on Showtime about King Henry VIII and his wives. As a complete devotee of Phillippa Gregory and her wonderful books about Henry VIII, I was very excited to watch this series, and so far I have not been disappointed. The guy who plays Henry (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is HOT. The scenery and costumes are gorgeous. Sam Neill is beyond evil as Cardinal Wolsey. Plenty of sex, intrigue and action. Who could ask for more?? The new season starts up on Showtime this coming Sunday at 9pm ET. Check it out!

March '10 ML Literary Dirtbag Award

2010-04-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

Drumroll, please....after much thought I had to give it to Simon March, Augie's big brother in The Adventures of Augie March. I re-read the part the other night where he ripped off his mother-in-law's shirt right in front of everyone because he didn't like the way she dressed, and I just got PISSED OFF. No one has the right to do that, no matter how rich and/or successful they are. He would probably go to jail in this day and age, anyway, so I can be comforted with that. He was also so smarmy about his success and his money. I hate people like that.

Plus I hate guys that have affairs as a rule. It wouldn't have hurt Simon to class it up a little and not 'ho himself around but unfortunately he had to go Full-on Dirtbag. Also guys that don't own up to their responsibilities (even if Renee didn't have the kid, he still should have been ready to step up, at least financially) are scum. So he has well-earned this month's award. Congrats to Simon.

Books to Movies..."Brideshead Revisited"

2010-03-31T05:44:00.001-07:00

BR was the first movie I have watched that was based on one of the ML books I've read. Before watching the movie, I read several reviews of the movie online, and most people were lukewarm about it, saying that it didn't follow the book, etc. Most of the actors in the movie, excepting Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain and the guy from the Harry Potter movies who plays Professor Dumbledore as Lord Marchmain, I had never seen before. Plus I didn't really love the book. So my expectations weren't incredibly high...thus I was pleasantly surprised by the movie.

I'll start with the positive. For the most part, the movie followed the book. The scenery was beautiful. The house they picked to act as Brideshead was gorgeous and almost exactly as I had pictured it myself. My daughter, who for some inexplicable reason watched the movie with me, pointed out that this same house was used in Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties. I'll have to check that out. :) The acting, I thought, was very good. The girl they picked to play Julia was gorgeous. Rex Mottram was just as smarmy as I had pictured him in the book, and they even had the tortoise, although Julia's initials weren't in the shell. Emma Thompson was perfect as the cold, calculating Lady Marchmain (but when isn't she wonderful?). Overall, it was nice to see what I'd read brought to life.

The negative. The movie, as movies often do, took some liberties with the book, but I'm not sure that the liberties really detracted from the overall story. The movie developed the love story between Charles and Julia much earlier than the book did, having them fall in love in Venice during the visit to see Lord Marchmain (Julia didn't even go with them to Venice in the book). Sebastian sees Charles kissing Julia and that moment is used as the reason for Sebastian's downward spiral and distancing from Charles. Sebastian's character was way more flamboyant and overtly homosexual than his character in the book...which I actually didn't enjoy. I guess I preferred the book's more 'under the table' treatment of Sebastian's persuasion than I did seeing it outright. I felt that Waugh left it up to the reader to decide whether or not that dimension to Charles' and Sebastian's friendship existed. A scene from Julia's debutante ball in the movie didn't exist in the book. Her engagement to Rex is announced there and Sebastian accuses Charles in front of everyone of 'wanting to sleep with his sister'. There is also a scene in the movie between Charles and Rex where Charles asks Rex to divorce Julia, and Rex agrees to, on the condition that Charles give Rex two of his "jungle pics" as payment. This didn't happen in the book either.

Overall, I'm not sorry I watched it. Sadly I think I had a better feeling about the movie than I did the book. My daughter has encouraged me to track down more of the movies from the books I've read, as every book I've read has become almost a household name for us. :)

Grade: B

March '10's Literary Dirtbag Nominees

2010-03-30T13:05:00.001-07:00

Am having a dilemma as to who to pick for March's MLLD. Front runners are the following:

1)Rex Mottram from Brideshead Revisited: Total dirtbag and probably the guy I will end up picking. Slimy politician who 'converts' to Catholicism in order to marry Julia (and I say 'converts' lightly, because he basically told the priest he'd agree with anything he said). He also gets Julia the tortoise with her initials in diamonds imbedded in the shell, which I thought was BEYOND HORRIBLE. He also has affairs with other women....but so did most of the other people in BR.

2)Simon March from The Adventures of Augie March. He started out okay as the studious bookworm, but ends up being this super-angry guy who is successful in business but a real jerk. He yells at everyone, makes fun of his mother-in-law for the way she dresses (actually rips her shirt off in one scene), and is mean to his wife Charlotte. Plus then he has the affair with Renee, thinks she got pregnant and doesn't want the kid. What a lowlife.

#80...."Brideshead Revisited"

2010-03-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

"I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember."

Brideshead Revisited is the reminiscence of Charles Ryder, a British military captain stationed in England during World War II. As his platoon is moved through the British countryside, they end up at Brideshead, a mansion no one is familiar with except Charles, who makes up for all of them by not only knowing of Brideshead intimately, but also knowing the family who used to live there. Arriving at Brideshead brings up Charles' memories of the past and the Marchmain family.

Charles meets Lord Sebastian Flyte, the son of Lord Brideshead, at Oxford, where Charles is studying to be a painter. Sebastian is wealthy, happy-go-lucky and irreverant, and introduces him to the 'wrong' group at Oxford, which includes Anthony Blanche, an all-out homosexual, and Boy Mulcaster, who will be his future brother-in-law. Sebastian becomes a very different person though, when he brings Charles home with him to stay at Brideshead. He is very close-lipped about his family, drinks a lot, and is also resistant to his family's Catholicism. The Marchmain family, consisting of the separated Lady Marchmain, his two sisters Julia and Cordelia, and his older brother 'Bridey', welcome Charles into the family, and Lady Brideshead tries to enlist Charles' help with Sebastian's alcoholism. Charles refuses, and continues giving Sebastian money to drink, although Sebastian is convinced that his family is turning Charles into a spy. Sebastian is eventually pulled out of Oxford, and Charles quits Oxford as well to attend art school, where he becomes an architectural painter and makes his living on the decay of the British aristocracy by painting all of the grand old homes before they are sold or torn down.

Fast forward several years. Charles' painting career is on the rise and he is married to Celia, Boy Mulcaster's sister. They have two children and Charles knows that Celia has already had indiscretions with other men. When he arrives back in New York after painting jungle ruins, he and his wife board a ship to take them back to England. On board is none other than Julia, Sebastian's beautiful sister, who is also struggling to escape a loveless marriage to an unpopular politician. Charles and Julia begin an affair, which is soon known by all but is not looked on favorably by Julia's Catholic family. Charles and Julia plan to divorce their respective spouses to marry each other. This plan proceeds until the elderly, ailing Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead to die. Religion having always been a sticking point between the Catholic Julia and the agnostic Charles, Lord Marchmain's death returns Julia to her religion, and she gives up Charles so that she will no longer live in sin. In the end, when Charles re-visits the chapel at Brideshead during his military stay, there is some intimation that Charles may have taken on Catholicism too.

I have to say that I was very disappointed in this book. Those of you who loved it, go ahead and blame it on the circumstances of my cat Frank's unhappy passing last week and the ensuing depression that followed. Besides wondering why there are so many drunks named Sebastian in 20th Century literature, I kept waiting for the story to take off, and to me it never really did. The most interesting characters, Sebastian and Anthony Blanche, almost completely drop out of the story by the middle of the book, and even Lady Marchmain dies pretty early on. Call me a purist, but I can never really root for characters who cheat on their spouses, so Charles and Julia lost my sympathy too.

On the Catholic angle. I read that Evelyn Waugh was a Catholic convert, and his conversion obviously meant a great deal to him. It was interesting to me that Waugh has several of his main characters converting to Catholicism by the end of the book. These conversions all seem to happen as a result of a major life change. Sebastian goes to live with monks abroad when no one else will take him in, and Julia is reconciled with the Church when her father dies. Lord Marchmain is converted on his deathbed when he receives the Last Rites. Charles himself even comes around to the Catholic faith at the end, most likely because of losing Julia, when he kneels in the Brideshead chapel and prays.

Interestingly enough, I am also in the middle of watching the movie version of Brideshead, with Emma Thompson playing Lady Marchmain. So far, excepting a couple of scenes, the story has been fairly true to the book. The movie is playing up the possibly homosexual angle on Sebastian (which I guess never really occured to me when I was reading the book, but may have explained why he got depressed when Anthony Blanche left Oxford and why he stayed with the cripple Kurt) quite a bit. Sebastian is positively flamboyant in the movie. Julia also seems to be playing a more central role in the movie than she did in the book. She accompanies them to Venice to visit Lord Marchmain, which didn't happen in the book.

Overall, just okay for me. And this book didn't have a tough act to follow after Augie March.

Grade: B-

Libris Interruptus...Requiem for a Feline Friend

2010-03-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

In September of 1995, I drove to the Chapel Hill Animal Shelter in search of a friend. Most of my college friends had already graduated, and I had half a semester to go. I went in that day, and knew at first sight the kitten that would be going home with me. He was a long-haired, orange cat with black freckles on his lips and paw pads. When I took him out of the cage, he crawled up onto my shoulders and laid down there, purring away. I named him Frank, after Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, and after Frank Sinatra, who had made a comeback with the whole 'swing dancing' thing that was at that time sweeping the nation.

Over the last fifteen years, Frank and I have traveled all over the country together. He's lived with me in five states: North Carolina, Maryland, Utah, California, and here in Minnesota. He was there when I had my daughter in 1998 as a scared single mother, and was there when I got both my bachelor's degree in 1995 and my master's degree in 2001. He was there when I got married in 2007 and in fact did his damndest to win over my non-cat-loving husband. He managed to tolerate his cat sister Fiona, even when she bit his ears and ate his food, and loved nothing more than laying in a warm, sunny spot and having his chin rubbed. No one could ask for a better friend than Frank was to me all those years.

Frank and I took our last trip together three days ago. I came home from dinner to see him dragging his rear left leg behind him and meowing piteously. He hadn't been eating hardly at all as of late, and was spending most of his time sleeping, as old cats do. I knew something was wrong. I took him to the emergency vet, and the unfortunate news came out that he had a blood clot that had paralyzed his back leg. The vet gave him very little time, if any, and told me that his quality of life would be beyond awful if I allowed him to live. The decision was made that my boy needed to be free of pain and be in a better place. I was there when it happened and it was very peaceful.

Those of you who bore with me when I bawled my way through The Call of the Wild (and Buck lived!!!) can imagine what condition I was in Thursday night. It was, to date, one of the hardest hours of my life. I feel sorry for Evelyn Waugh, because even if Brideshead Revisited is a fabulous book, it's not touching me at all. Every day gets a bit easier, but reminders abound everywhere. My orange boy will always be here with me and for me, in spirit.

Those of you who have pets, love your animal family members for all the time you have with them.

Ranking the 2nd 10 Books....

2010-03-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

If I can say one thing about the 2nd ten books I've made it through on the list, it's this: The quality of writing got WAAAAAAYYY better. I had a much harder time ranking the books this go-round because I liked so many of them. Unlike the last ten books, where there are at least five I am all for throwing in the fire pit this upcoming summer, I can say I honestly enjoyed 7 of the 10 of this group. Even the bottom 3 weren't anywhere near as bad as The Magus. It gives me hope that things can only get better, which is why I started reading the list at #100 and working upwards. Hopefully that trend continues!

Unfortunately in the upcoming group of ten, we have the dreaded Finnegans' Wake, plus a Hemingway book (NEWS FLASH: I am not a fan of Hemingway). There are also two Evelyn Waugh books so if I don't love Brideshead Revisited I'm in trouble. So it should be an interesting couple of months.

Here's my ranking, 1 (best) to 10 (worst):

1 Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
2 The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett
3 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
4 The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
5 Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
6 The Call of the Wild, Jack London
7 A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
8 The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
9 Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
10 Loving, Henry Green

#81..."The Adventures of Augie March"

2010-03-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

"Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can’t use he often can’t see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn’t correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn’t try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.”

Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March is a tour-de-force through the American life of its picaresque hero, Augie March. Augie is the middle child of a lower class family, living with his ambitious older brother Simon, mentally challenged brother George, and his mother, who was deserted by Augie’s father. The majority of the novel chronicles Augie’s journey to find himself and his purpose in life, which seems to be neverending, as Augie has absolutely zero attention span and can’t seem to commit to anyone or anything. At different points in the novel, he is an eagle-trainer, Merchant marine sailor, book-stealer, secretary to a millionaire, shoe salesman, law student, personal assistant, socialite, and strike organizer, and he lurches between love affairs in much the same way. He is a “born recruit”, due to his compassionate nature and gullibility, and because of this, finds himself unknowingly sucked into bad or difficult situations throughout the book. Augie manages to make it through these rough situations with the help of his friends and family, who disappear and resurface throughout the story constantly. He at last finds the stability and the love he has been seeking…but you get the feeling that the quest isn’t over yet, even at the end of the book.

I didn’t have a problem so much with the plot of the book, which definitely kept things interesting. You never knew what Augie would end up doing from page to page. I think my major hurdle with this book was Saul Bellow, not so much Augie. I would say it took me the first quarter of the book to get a handle on Bellow’s writing style, which consists of about three sentences per page (periods were definitely at a premium) and descriptive prose aplenty, which doesn’t always make for interesting reading. I tend to prefer plot over descriptions, so it was no wonder that Chapter 5 alone took me three days. The style of this book reminded me strongly of Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net, which if you’ve read my review (here) was not a fave. Both characters were on quests of self-discovery, both waxed prolific about their philosophies of life, and both relied on friends to help them out of their various scrapes. I tend to prefer Augie over Under the Net’s Jake Donaghue, since Augie was very compassionate and went out of his way to help people. I’m still not sure what the he** Jake was supposed to be doing. :)

Anyway, 586 pages later, I know everything there is to know about Augie March, and I am reasonably sure my life has not changed substantially because of this book. A book like this naturally begs the question of why finish books you don't like, when there are so many others out there to enjoy. And my answer is this: When you're on a quest to complete any project out there, there are always going to be enjoyable parts, and then not-so-enjoyable parts. Reading through this list, 20 books in, I have found some real treasures, and some real junkers. Finding the treasures make getting through the junkers worthwhile. :)

This book fulfills the second book needed for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version (National Book Award winner in 1954) and is another book down for the Chunkster Challenge, at a hefty 586 pages.

Grade: C+

Books to Movies

2010-03-20T18:59:00.001-07:00

Holy cow! I have twenty pages to go of Augie. Whooo Hooooo!!!

Family and I went from beautiful 60 degree weather here in the Cities last week to mid-thirties this weekend. Talk about depressing. The original forecast for today was actually for snow, which we didn't get, so by no means am I complaining. :)

As we wait for the spring thaw to arrive, I hit Blockbuster on Friday afternoon and picked up a couple of movies to watch this weekend. We've blown through four of them, two of which are books I have read (not for the Journeys list, though). The first was Angels and Demons. Truth be told, I was so grossed out by Brown's very graphic descriptions of the priests' murders that I skipped large portions of the book. I was surprisingly pleased by the movie, which did not show the actual murders but just the bodies afterwards (which was okay). Tom Hanks was great again as the stoic academic Robert Langdon, and Ewan McGregor completely satisfying as the seemingly pious, double dealing Camerlengo.

The second movie my daughter talked me into was Twilight. Many readers on Kris's site One Hundred Books have bashed this book into oblivion, and I have to admit I was a bit bewildered at all of the hullabaloo around this book when it first came out. I was probably the only 30-something woman here in town two years ago NOT walking around with a copy of this book. Everyone assured me I HAD to read it immediately, manically pressing their own dog-eared copies into my hands, like missionaries with Bibles, to take with me. I finally broke down and read Twilight about a year ago, and I don't even think I finished it. Too teeny-bopper for my taste, and the whole vampire thing didn't hit my radar. I watched the Twilight movie today with my obsessed 12 year-old daughter, and while the movie was marginally better than the book (and the mean vampire James was somewhat hot), it was still not (in my mind) worthy of all of the mania that is currently sweeping the nation.

Hopefully I will wrap up Augie and friends tonight or tomorrow and review.

Update from the Halfway Point..."The Adventures of Augie March"

2010-03-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

A big 'thank you' shout-out to those of you who confirmed my initial suspicions that Adventures would be slow going. Getting through Chapter 5 alone took me three days. Bellow has a way of hyper-describing every feature of every character and forgetting to throw in a period every now and then to break things up. It made for some long going there.

Once I got past Chapter 5, though, an amazing thing happened. The book got better. A lot better. Bellow's still not using many periods, but at least he's throwing some actual adventures into the plot rather than just serial descriptions of everyone Augie's ever met. I've actually looked forward to picking the book up the last few days, and am beginning to feel some hope that I might actually finish it.

Update...and A Cry for Help

2010-03-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

The Adventures of Augie March is so far making me feel like I have the world's worst case of ADHD. I am completely unable to concentrate on this book--the deep, dark, non-distracting hole I needed for Lord Jim wouldn't even help me out with this one. The worst part? Saul Bellow also seems to have ADHD, because Augie March is all over the place plot-wise. Bellow will describe one character for like four pages and then that character completely disappears into the story, never to be mentioned again. Augie runs from job to job, house to house, person to person, and I can't keep anyone straight. The character names of Friedl and Kreindl alone are enough to confuse anyone!!!

Anyone who's made it through this book and has found something redeeming about it...please throw me a life preserver here!!!

#82....Angle of Repose

2010-03-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

"There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone."

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose is a beautiful, triumphant, bittersweet epic that brings together the lives of his main character, Lyman Ward, and his grandparents. Lyman is a historian, confined to a wheelchair by a bone disease and an amputated leg, living in California in the house his grandparents built. His wife has recently left him for someone else, and rather than looking towards a bleak future, or living in the painful present, Lyman chooses to delve into the past by writing a book about his famous grandmother, Susan Burling Ward. Enlisting the help of his caretaker's free-spirited daughter Shelly, he begins to go through the papers and letters his grandmother left behind to piece together her life story and the unusual relationship she had with her husband, Oliver.

Susan Burling is an Easterner, living among the wealthy literati, attending art school. Her life changes on the night she meets Oliver Ward, a quiet, gentle miner from the West. When Susan's love interest, the wealthy Thomas Hudson, marries her best friend Augusta, Susan decides to marry Oliver and move West, having little or no idea of the trials and hardships that will accompany the life of a cultured woman in the uncivilized wilds of California and Idaho. As the trusting Oliver is screwed in business again and again by unscrupulous opportunists, Susan becomes dissatisfied with her life and disappointed in her husband, and turns to her writing and drawing to support her growing family. While pining away for her past life back East, she misses out on the present and pushes those who love her away, until the one day she makes a fatal mistake and causes a tragedy that permanently damages her marriage. As he goes through Susan's papers, Lyman begins to see the parallels between the mistakes his grandparents made and his own life, and in the end, "wonders if I am man enough to be a bigger man than my grandfather."

I cannot say enough good things about this book. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay area for a few years, Stegner's descriptions of the ruggedness of the California, Colorado and Idaho landscapes are dead-on and beautiful. His depictions of marriage as either an intersection of two lives, or two lives that lean against each other but never connect, is profound. The message of forgiveness for past wrongs, never taking anything for granted, and living each day firmly in the present is one that will stay with me for a long time. I was completely brought into the story, hoping against hope that Oliver would find the security and opportunity he was repeatedly denied, and that Susan would learn to accept her situation rather than continue to resist it. Alas, I was disappointed on both fronts.

This was a beautiful story depicting the culture clash between the civilized East and the uncivilized West. Finding out that it was based on the life of a real woman, Mary Hallock Foote, made the story even more compelling. Everyone should read it.

This book also counts towards both of the reading challenges I have set for myself this year...The Chunkster Challenge and the Battle of the Prizes, American Version. Those are on the sidebar if you want to join up too.

Grade: A+

February's ML Literary Dirtbag

2010-03-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

After much debate (and about 100 more pages of Angle of Repose) I've chosen Anna Quayne as this month's MLLD. The Death of the Heart kicks off with her whining to her friend about Portia's messy room (hello? Has she ever met any teenagers EVER?), and admitting she's read Portia's diary on the sly and doesn't like what she sees. She kind of has a thing going with Eddie, whether it's against her will or not, because she encourages her husband to hire him at his business to get him out of her hair, and at the end begs her husband NOT to fire Eddie even though he deserves it. She knows exactly the kind of guy Eddie is, yet she lets Portia hang out with him. It made me really glad that she doesn't have kids of her own, and made me hope beyond hope that Portia got the hell out of Dodge after the year was up.

I have about 25 pages left of Angle of Repose, so a review should be forthcoming. :)

February's Nominees for ML Literary Dirtbag Award

2010-02-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, folks, it's about that time. And for the first time since I began Journeys, I am actually having to 'reach' a bit to come up with someone truly deserving of this award this month, which is a nice and welcome change after months of enduring obvious, over-the-top scumbags like Sebastian Dangerfield and Gerald Scales.

Here is what I have so far. Feel free to vote in the poll on the sidebar, or you can email me your candidates too:

1)Anna Quayne from The Death of the Heart: the prim-and-proper, cold-as-ice, sneaky diary-reading guardian of poor Portia Quayne. She probably also had something going on with Eddie. What a great role model.

2)Yvette from A Bend in the River: it sounds like she slept with anyone with a pulse. What a 'ho.

3)Augusta Hudson from Angle of Repose: the supposed best friend of Susan Ward, she is rich, uber-possessive, marries the man Susan loves, and then proceeds to hate the man Susan ultimately marries, leaving Susan constantly torn between her best friend and husband. Way to be supportive, Augusta!!! She grates on my last nerve.

Coming to Theaters....

2010-02-26T05:53:00.000-08:00

I was shocked this morning when I went to IMDb.com and discovered that no one has ever made Angle of Repose into a movie. From what I've read (and I'm about 2/3 through the book), this is a story just BEGGING to be taken to the big screen. The scenery alone from A of R would be phenomenal.

Well I did a little more digging and it turns out Angle of Repose is in development as we speak, with Castle Rock Entertainment. Whoooo hooooo!!! No cast list or anything yet, so I was wondering from those of you who've read the book, who your ideal cast list for this one would be.

Update

2010-02-20T09:35:00.001-08:00

You know you've been watching the Olympics for too long when curling starts to look like fun.

Angle of Repose is great so far. It's a very easy read. It became even more interesting to me when I discovered today that it is based on the life of a real woman, Mary Hallock Foote, who was a writer and illustrator like Stegner's fictional Susan Burling Ward. Like Susan, Mary was also Eastern born, well bred and very literary, who married a miner and followed him to the wilds of California and Idaho. Her articles and illustrations of her experiences were published in magazines back East; they helped people visualize the unsettled and 'uncivilized' parts of the American West.

Here is a great link to learn more about Mary Hallock Foote, her husband Arthur and their Western life, and see some of her awesome illustrations.

http://www.idahohistory.net/prospector_feb04.pdf

Libris Interruptus...Book Returners Anonymous

2010-02-19T05:40:00.000-08:00

Have any of you out there ever returned a book to a bookstore for any reason...and what was the excuse you gave the clerk when you returned it? I was unemployed in the Winter of 2008-09 and I read Bernhard Schlink's The Reader in, I kid you not, about 6 hours (a really good book if you haven't read it yet). I returned it to Target because 1) I knew I wouldn't read it again because it was super-sad, and 2) it was still in beautiful condition. They asked no questions. I returned Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth to Barnes and Noble last year after reading a grand total of 50 pages and deciding it was the most boring book I had ever read....and I was honest with the lady at the counter. And I know most people love that book with a devotion that borders on papal reverence, so I was super disappointed.

What about you guys?

#83....A Bend In the River

2010-02-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

“People lived as they had always done; there was no break between past and present. All that had happened in the past was washed away; there was always only the present. It was as though, as a result of some disturbance in the heavens, the early morning light was always receding into the darkness and men lived in a perpetual dawn.”

A Bend in the River follows the story of Salim, who retreats from his ancestral home on the western coast of Africa and takes over a small trading goods store deep in the wilds of central Africa, at a bend in the river where civilization and the lack thereof intersect. Salim takes this job for several reasons: uprisings in his hometown, escaping from an unwanted engagement, and wanting to make something of himself. He is warned by the previous owner of the store, Nazruddin, to know ‘when to get out’. Salim arrives to see he will be living on the fringes of existence, in a town that has gone back to bush and rubble after colonial rule. He befriends other ‘foreigners’ who live in the town, and when a slave boy, Metty, is sent to him from his parents, he employs Metty in the shop.

Salim is also responsible for Ferdinand, a boy from the jungles who will be attending school in the town. Salim jealously watches while Ferdinand gets the schooling, education and opportunities that are closed to him. When the country is taken over by an anonymous President, new things begin to happen in the town. Modernization arrives in the form of the “Domain”, a series of modern buildings and a ‘polytechnic’, where Ferdinand gets to attend more school and Salim’s friend Indar, also from the upper-class coast, arrives as a speaker. Unlike Ferdinand, who blindly spouts the dogma he is taught at school, Indar has concerns about the direction of the country, as Salim has had all along. Through Indar, Salim meets Yvette, the young wife of Raymond, a man whom the President favors. Salim begins a passionate affair with Yvette, but when Raymond’s favor drops with the President, things go sour for Salim and Yvette. At the same time, things also start to go sour for the town. There are tribal uprisings and attacks against the President and his minions. Shop owners who have been there forever sell out and leave. Salim begins to feel the nervousness of being trapped, and decides to visit Nazruddin in London, where he becomes engaged to his daughter Kareisha. Upon returning to settle accounts in the town, he finds that the President has sold his shop to someone else, and he is under suspicion from the police. When he is imprisoned, Ferdinand, who has risen to the post of commissioner, bails him out of jail and puts him on the first steamer out of town before the arrival of the President, who is coming to execute everyone of prominence in the town.

One of the main themes of the book is a Latin saying inscribed on the town lycee building, Semper Aliquid Novi (‘always something new’). It is so appropriate to the seeming impermanence of settlements in Africa. The ruins of colonial buildings are still visible in the town, which begins to grow anew after independence and again under the Presidential rule, and Salim realizes that the current civilization he is living in could just as easily be reduced to rubble:

“The ruins, spread over so many acres, seemed to speak of a final catastrophe. But the civilization wasn’t dead. It was the civilization I existed in and in fact was still working towards. And that could make for an odd feeling: to be among the ruins was to have your time-sense unsettled. You felt like a ghost not from the past, but from the future. You felt that your life and ambition had already been lived out for you and you were looking at the relics of that life. You were in a place where the future had come and gone.”

Nothing seems to stay the same in Africa. Even the rise and fall of people in the President’s favor, such as Raymond’s rise and fall from grace, and the improbable rise of Ferdinand, an African raised in the jungle, show that importance as a human being can also be changed at a moment’s notice, and someone with the President’s ear one day can be ignored and forgotten the next.

Another element of the story I found fascinating was Naipaul’s treatment of African history. Salim says that, as Africans, “we never asked why; we never recorded”, since natives were unable to read and write. They relied on the oral tradition of passing stories down among family members. Salim, in talking about a story he heard from his grandfather, notes that “without my own memory of the old man’s story I suppose that would have been a piece of history lost forever.” Africa has to rely on educated Europeans, like Raymond, to record their history for posterity. However, absent from these dry European histories, which rely primarily on documentation, are the true experiences of the African natives and their traditions and beliefs. Salim becomes very angry reading over Raymond's journal articles, saying:

"[Raymond] gave no reasons and looked for none; he just quoted from the missionary reports. He didn't seem to have gone to any of the places he wrote about; he hadn't tried to talk to anybody....He knew so much, had researched so much. He must have spent weeks on each article. But he had less true knowledge of Africa, less feel for it, than Indar or Nazruddin or even Mahesh....Yet he had made Africa his subject."

A lot of noise has been made in other reviews about Naipaul’s treatment of women in this novel. Women seemed to fall into one of two categories: modern working woman, and object of obsession. Ferdinand’s mother, Zabeth, is a single mom who runs her own business in the bush, and Salim’s fiancée, Kareisha, is still single at 30 and becomes a pharmacist. Shoba, who is idolized by her husband Mahesh, and Yvette, who really seems to get around, aren’t portrayed as particularly ambitious women, who rely on the men around them to bring them their security. I did not enjoy the scene where Salim loses it and beats up Yvette, but I don’t think it says anything overarchingly negative about all women everywhere.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River. And my enjoyment was unexpected, and definitely wasn’t enjoyment in the traditional sense. The story was dark, foreboding, and at times apocalyptic in its story of the rise, fall and disappearance of civilizations and rule in the wilds of Africa. Not usually my thing at all, but I have to admit I was sucked into the story, and was actually begging Salim to do as Nazruddin told him and “get out” when things started to go badly in town. The ending was a bit ambiguous for my taste, but that's probably the way Naipaul wanted it to go down. This book should remind all of us how lucky we are as Americans to have stability, democracy and education in our country.

Grade: B+

Update

2010-02-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

YES! I really am still reading "A Bend in the River", even with so many exciting things going on right now that are distracting me from reading, such as:

1)The Olympics
2)NBA All-Star Weekend
3)The Daytona 500
4)"Holmes on Homes", and
6)the catbox

We did actually get up off the couch at some point today, believe it or not!

I've posted some Twitter updates on random thoughts on ABITR. The story might be a bit slow, but there are some profundities that have jumped out at me from Naipaul's writing. Hang with me...I will be finishing this one up in the next couple of days, in between snowboarding and figure skating. :)

Libris Interruptus...Worst ML Book of All Time?

2010-02-10T04:46:00.000-08:00

So I was reading Kris' blog at http://onehundredbestnovels@blogspot.com, and she threw out the question to her readers of what they considered the worst book of all time. I've read about and heard from tons of people how awful the obvious books like Ulysses, Augie March, Finnegans Wake, etc are. What I'm wondering from you guys is, besides those books, are there any others on the list you feel have no business being there??

Ch-ch-ch-changes....

2010-02-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hey gang...

A big 'welcome' shout-out to those of you who have joined my blog over the last month. Glad to see you here! Those who have been around a while, thanks for hanging around.

You may have noticed the dearth of postings over the last week or so. Or not! Thinking things over, I realized that chapter-by-chapter play calls on all the books I'm reading is probably not encouraging anyone to read the books on the list (in fact, it may be discouraging some of you from reading them altogether...which with some of the books would not be a bad thing...TRUST ME :) . So I've re-written my reviews on Books 100-84, and will be waiting until I finish future books before giving you the lowdown. So there'll be fewer blog posts...but don't worry! The Literary Dirtbag Awards will continue! And I'll be Twittering about the books daily, so you can check in with me there to see how the books are going and/or offer moral support.

I guess the other, more obvious excuse I should give is that A Bend in the River is not wow-ing me with its literary merit. Or much else, for that matter. But that's never stopped us here at Journeys!

Read on! And keep those comments comin'!

Pam

The Battle of the Prizes, American Version Challenge!

2010-02-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've decided to take this one on, as I have two books upcoming that apply to this challenge. The Battle of the Prizes requires you to read three books: a Pulitzer Prize novel, a National Book Award novel, and then a novel that won both. I'm choosing Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (#82 on the list) for my Pulitzer book, The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (#81 on the list) for my National Book Award book, and I'm not quite sure yet what I'll do for my "double dipper". Maybe E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. Wish me luck!

You can join this challenge too at http://www.rosecityreader.com/2010/01/challenge-battle-of-prizes-anerican.html.

#84...The Death of the Heart

2010-02-01T16:24:00.001-08:00

"Happy that few of us are aware of the world until we are already in league with it."

Elizabeth Bowen, author of The Death of the Heart, was “greatly interested in "life with the lid on and what happens when the lid comes off.” To make a long story short, Bowen liked to write about what would happen if people didn’t apply filters before acting or speaking, and ended up doing or saying socially unacceptable things. Throw that situation into emotionally repressed 1930’s Inter-War England, and already we have the makings of a fascinating and potentially explosive plot line before even opening the book.

In The Death of the Heart, we are introduced to the Quayne family: Anna and Thomas, who have taken in Thomas' half-sister Portia after the death of Portia's mother, Irene. Portia and Thomas have the same father; their father had an affair with Irene, and Thomas' mother forced her husband to divorce her, marry Irene and have Portia in order to punish him. Mr Quayne eventually dies, and after Irene dies, the dreamy, lonely Portia is sent to live with Thomas and Anna for a year per Mr Quayne's dying wish. The emotionally stifled Anna is less than thrilled with the arrangement; the book begins with her whining to her friend St Quentin about Portia's messy room and admitting that she's read Portia's diary, which included some unflattering remarks about all of them. Portia also has the misfortune to fall in love with Eddie, a shiftless, irresponsible jerk, who leads Portia on yet keeps her at arm’s length. Portia’s diary and her desperate need to be loved in an emotionally sterile household bring events to a head in the Quayne household.

Anyone who has ever felt different, misunderstood or alone will immediately sympathize with Portia’s plight. A child who was born under socially questionable circumstances, who lived a rather free and unconventional life abroad with her mother prior to moving to England, is then thrown into a situation where the pressure is on to conform and repress how they really feel. How awful that would be. It's no wonder that Portia befriends Major Brutt, an awkward, unemployed gentleman who sends her puzzles, and falls for Eddie, a morally bankrupt social pariah, because they are 'different' like she is, and because she is so desperate to feel understood. Portia’s diary throws the Quayne household into disarray because Portia does not hold back in her writing about how the people around her behave, and what her true thoughts are about them. Rather than understanding that Portia should be allowed to have a private place where she can unburden her thoughts and feelings, and minding their own business, the Quaynes whine about feeling unnatural and spied on. When Anna reads Portia’s diary, she is shown a side of herself that contradicts her own view of herself, which makes her uncomfortable.

The real beauty about the ending of Heart is that Portia’s discovery that Anna has read her diary, and the other characters’ discovery of this as well, forces people to admit things or discuss things that would never have come to the surface. You are left wondering if people will change once these revelations are made, but not with much hope.

Anyone who loves a good comedy of manners will be all about this book. A great read.

Grade: A-

January '10's Modern Library Literary Dirtbag Award Winner

2010-01-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

I had to go with fire chief Willie Conklin from Ragtime. Reading that section where he harrassed Coalhouse Walker just made my blood boil. I am always embarrassed to remember that there was an unfortunate time in this country's history where that sort of treatment of African Americans was acceptable, and that scene in Ragtime was no exception. I was pissed off when I read that. Willie Conklin was not only a racist scuzzbucket but was also a giant coward, because he went and hid under a rock when Coalhouse was looking for him. I think he got off easy when all he had to do was restore Coalhouse's car.

RIP J.D. Salinger....Jan 1, 1919-Jan 27, 2010

2010-01-29T05:40:00.000-08:00

I was very sad to hear last night of the death of J.D. Salinger, author of #64, The Catcher in the Rye, at 91 years old. I remember reading this book both in college and in high school and loving it; who didn't think at that age all adults were 'phony'? :) I already have it on my shelf and am looking forward to reading it as a grown-up.

It's been amazing to me, reading through this list, how many of the authors have already passed away, which I guess is what happens when you're reading a list of books from the last century. I think the only other authors I've read on the list that are still alive are Salman Rushdie and E.L. Doctorow. Having success as a writer and ending up on a list like this is its own immortality, though, isn't it?

#85....Lord Jim

2010-01-23T09:21:00.000-08:00

"It is impossible to say how much he lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me now--and to himself always. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live."

Pete Rose is arguably one of the most famous baseball players of our time. Here in Minnesota, we're all about Joe Mauer and his batting titles, but Rose in his heyday made Mauer look like a minor leaguer. According to Wikipedia, Rose is the MLB leader in "hits (4,256), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), and outs (10,328), with three World Series wins, three batting titles, one MVP Award, two Gold Gloves, the Rookie of the Year Award, and 17 All-Star appearances at an unequaled five different positions (2B, LF, RF, 3B & 1B)".

However, none of that mattered in 1989. Rose had retired from baseball in 1986, but unfortunately, it came to light that during his years as a player and manager for the Cincinnati Reds, Rose had placed bets on his team as high as $10,000, always picking the Reds to win. It was felt that a player betting on baseball, even in favor of his own team,"jeopardized the integrity of the game". Rose was banned from baseball and put on the "permanently ineligible" list. He did not openly admit to the allegations until 2004. A career that should have been enshrined long ago in Cooperstown was permanently disgraced.

Joseph Conrad wasn't around to see what happened with Pete Rose, but the main character of his 1900 novel, Lord Jim, would have completely understood the pain associated with making a major mistake in your professional career that would taint the rest of your life. Jim is a regular guy who turns to a life on the sea as his trade. Jim is loving life as the chief officer of a boat called the Patna until one night when things go terribly, horribly wrong. The boat hits an underwater wreck and begins to fill with water. Jim prematurely panicks and jumps ship along with the other crew members, arriving back on land only to find the ship didn't actually sink and he is now under investigation for deserting his post. He is prohibited from ever being a ship captain again. Utterly humiliated, Jim hops from one menial job to the next, always skipping town whenever the Patna comes up in conversation. He is finally given an opportunity to start completely over in a small tribal community, where he is revered by the locals with the title of "Lord" Jim, until the day when trashy white sailors arrive on the island and threaten everything Jim has tried to escape. He is given a chance to redeem himself for his past and prove that he is not the coward he has been branded as.

I have found over a lifetime of reading that there are some books out there that you can coast through without having to read every word deliberately, yet still be able to follow the the story. And then there are books so wordy and dense that you feel like you have to crawl into a deep, dark, non-distracting hole for about a month in order to even find the story. Unfortunately, Lord Jim was one of the latter books for me. Conrad takes basic sentences like "the sky is blue" and turns them into a page-long paragraph, semi-colons, run-ons, and adjectives aplenty. I found myself re-reading sentences just to make sure I got every word, and then going, "Geez, was THAT all he was trying to say??" Someone should have let Conrad know that he could have bored a hole in himself any time and let the adverbs out.

The disappointment for me with Lord Jim was not that the story was bad. In fact, the last 1/3 and the ending were really good. The disappointment for me was how hard it was to slog through the first 2/3 of the book. It was like walking through two-foot deep snow, something we know all about up here in the Great White North.

The take home message? If you love what you do for a career, don't make the one major mistake that will screw it up forever. And if you decide to pick up Lord Jim, find your deep, dark, non-distracting hole in advance.

Grade: C

A Book Challenge I Can Sink My Teeth Into!

2010-01-19T07:08:00.000-08:00

Since I am reading all of these hefty books, why not get some credit for it? :) I've signed on to do the "Mor-book-ly Obese" challenge for 2010, meaning that I've got to read 6 books or more of 450+ pages. If you haven't signed on for this one, do it!

http://chunksterchallenge.blogspot.com/2009/12/welcome-to-challenge-2010.html

#86.....Ragtime

2010-01-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

The 2005 movie Crash, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture, revolved around everyday, multi-ethnic people who collide with each other in Los Angeles amid racial and social tensions. Along these same lines is E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, which focuses on a Jewish family, an African-American family, and a Caucasian family that all come together over a period of years in New York and change each other's lives.

Just like the plot of Crash, several stories occur simultaneously in Ragtime. The book opens in turn-of-the-century America with a traditional upper class Caucasian family living in New York. One day the mother discovers a live African-American baby buried in their backyard; she finds the mother of the baby and both the mother, named Sarah, and her baby move into the house. At the same time, a family of Jewish immigrants arrives from overseas, and are so financially strapped that both parents and the young daughter work in the mills, until the father hits it big with his 'moving pictures'. The father of Sarah's baby, a decent and successful musician named Coalhouse, is harrassed by several white firemen because of his color, and his car is vandalized and Coalhouse is sent to prison when he tries to protest. Sarah dies while trying to secure Coalhouse's release, and Coalhouse goes on a rampage to get revenge, killing firemen and blowing up firehouses. How it all ends up, you'll have to find out for yourself.

There are lots of little substories involving famous people like Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, JP Morgan, and Henry Ford, who also mingle with varying ways into the lives of the three families. Their stories, however, are nowhere near as fascinating as those of the fictional characters, and almost seem like afterthoughts dropped into the story. I'm not sure if Doctorow felt his story would be more interesting with real-life personages, or if he wanted to use the real-life personages to give the story a historical perspective. I think the story would have been just fine without them, personally.

I enjoyed this book a lot. Once I got used to the back and forth style of writing Doctorow uses while switching in between all of his characters, it was easier. He used short, concise sentences, which surprisingly didn't detract from the detailed picture he was trying to create. The narrative definitely sucked you in and had you caring about the characters and wondering how everything would turn out for everyone. I was so PO'd reading the section about Coalhouse's harassment. It is unfathomable to me that there was a period in this country where it was acceptable for anyone to be treated that way.

The front cover of Ragtime calls it "the astonishing bestseller about America", and while it only spanned maybe 15 years of American history, it displays our country at a time of innocence that would never happen again, before World War I, the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement and before terrorism and Communism really got going. It was strange to see famous people walking around in the book without paparazzi trailing their every move or without a posse of bodyguards. Those were really the days! Now movie stars can't even go to Starbucks without escorts.

An enjoyable read you won't be sorry you picked up.

Grade: B-

#89.....Loving

2010-01-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

I was super-psyched to read Henry Green's Loving. Having loved Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of The Day, I was ready for another book exposing what really goes on in the servants' quarters of manorial England. All of the basic plot elements for a great story were there: naughty children, rich widows, cranky housemaids, adultery, embezzlement, blackmail, and backstabbing, all crammed into 200 pages. Unfortunately, Green never found a way to weave these great elements together in a cohesive and interesting way.

On the positive side.... no one ever got more accomplished around the house than I did this week, instead of staying on track and reading this book. Catbox? Unbelievably clean. Basement? Completely reorganized. 1000-piece Twilight puzzle with 90% black pieces? I was on it! My husband is campaigning to have me read nothing but Loving for the remainder of my life.

Ok, so back to the book. The first 100 or so pages were unreadable. Couldn't get into it at all. I actually had to start the book over three times before I could catch on to what was happening. Here's an attempt to sum up the plot, just for the sake of being thorough: a manor house in Ireland during WWII is the setting of Loving, where a rich old widow lives with her daughter-in-law while her son is off fighting in the war. That's about all we learn about the 'masters'. The rest of the time is spent on a rather motley and clueless collection of 'servants', most of whom don't seem to work very hard and elicited no emotions from me other than irritation.

If Green wants readers to feel the boredom, isolation and paranoia his characters experienced by living in a huge castle out in the middle of nowhere during a war, he succeeded with me. I almost wished the castle was in London so the Blitz could happen, just to give the characters something of substance to do and worry about. I also wondered if Green wanted to show us that servants have very superficial, boring lives and that nothing of consequence ever happens to them. Because that was another take-home message for me. 99.9% of this story revolved around "nice cups of tea", idle chitter-chatter, and people freaking out about lost gardening gloves for like fifteen pages.

I’ve read other books on the Modern Library's list, like Tobacco Road, for instance, that didn’t have huge and involved plots but somehow managed to be 200 times more captivating than this book was. I was extremely disappointed in the ending. Green just sort of lopped it off like a dead branch, and it doesn't go with the rest of the story at all. Maybe he got tired of the story himself and just decided to end it. I can’t say I blame him. This book was beginning to have an Under the Net stream of consciousness feel to it, like it would never end, so I am glad he figured something out.

The bottom line on this one? If you're really into the servant/master thing, check out The Remains of the Day. I promise you won't be sorry. But if you really need motivation to get some household chores done, pick up Loving. Your husband will thank you.

Grade: D

2010-01-04T11:15:00.001-08:00

"You would think that I could adequately summarize a quick-reading 150 page book; but I can't even begin to describe what it is like. I'm starting to think that I've found an indicator of "Best Novels of All Time" - that property that you can't sit down and convey the experience of reading them to someone else, and when you try, you feel like you are a high-school student writing a book report."

I read this comment on Doug Shaw's Modern Library Top 100 review blog at http://www.dougshaw.com/top100.html (excellent, by the way) and I cracked up laughing. He is so right on. I remember trying to explain to my husband the plots of books like The Magus and Tobacco Road, and feeling like an idiot. "Well, there's this guy, and he goes to this house, and all these people dress up and do weird plays and stuff, but he keeps wanting to go back there anyway...." I mean, really! If your spouse was spending all this time reading books, and you asked what one was about, and you got this as an answer, how cracked up would you think your spouse was for reading more than one page, much less finishing the entire book?? I credit my husband for not throwing me and my 13 finished books out into the snow.

#87....The Old Wives' Tale

2010-01-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

"These visions of herself seemed beautiful to her, her childish existence seemed beautiful; the storms and tempests of her girlhood seemed beautiful; even the great sterile expanse of tedium when, after giving up a scholastic career, she had served for two years in the shop--even this had a strange charm in her memory.

And she thought that not for millions of pounds would she live her life over again."

I’ll start out by saying this about Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale: if you have ever been a wife, a parent of a ungrateful teenager, or you just love family sagas, you will love this book with a capital L. This was exactly the type of book I hoped to encounter by reading the Modern Library’s list: a book I had never heard of, would never have picked up by chance, and an engrossing story. It makes wading through all the Maguses and Ginger Men worthwhile.

In The Old Wives’ Tale, we are introduced to the well-to-do Baines family, who live in a small town in England and run a successful drapery shop there. Mr Baines, the head of the family, suffered a stroke when his daughters were small that paralyzed the left half of his body. He spends the day in bed being tended to by various members of his family. His wife runs the shop and manages the family. The Baines daughters, Constance and Sophia, couldn’t be any different. Constance is a people-pleasing, non-ambitious model daughter who enjoys working in the shop, but her sassy younger sister Sophia is busting at the seams to get out of the drapery business.

Sophia wants to be a teacher, but changes her mind when she meets Gerald Scales, the Dirtbag of all Dirtbags, and elopes with him to Paris to spend his inheritance. They go through the money in about three months, and then Gerald deserts Sophia. She rises to the occasion though, becoming a successful pension owner in Paris during the war. Dependable Constance stays in town to inherit the drapery store, marry its chief assistant, Samuel Povey, and raise the most self-centered, unappreciative son in the universe, Cyril. Both women outlive their husbands and meet again in their old age to live out the remainder of their lives together.

I loved, loved, loved this book, start to finish. There were enough twists and turns that you never knew what would happen next, or like me, you tried to predict it and ended up wrong. Both women were likeable, strong, sympathetic characters, neither of whom had remarkable lives, but Bennett makes their stories compelling nonetheless. Sophia’s character was fascinating to me. She made the stupid mistake of picking the wrong man, but found the inner strength to make lemonade out of lemons without sacrificing her pride and running back to her family. For the time period this book took place in, she was a thoroughly modern woman. Constance’s life was more run-of-the-mill; I would have loved to send Super Nanny to her house to help her put the smack-down on Cyril.

Enjoy this one. It’s my favorite so far.

Grade: A+

Moment of Truth.....Dec 2009

2009-12-29T13:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, people. I have a confession to make.

Having taken the Barnes and Noble gift card I got for Xmas (my folks, in-laws and husband being proud financial contributors to the blog) out to pick up my copy of Ragtime this past weekend, I got a big reality check when I 'peeked' and saw the size of two upcoming books, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce and The Education of Augie March by Saul Bellow. It was at that moment that I realized that the challenge I have set for myself of reading 100 books in a 100 week time span is not only an impossible task, but is also an undesirable one.

When I began this blog, 100 weeks felt like an eternity. I felt sure I could get each book on the list read in a week's time. What I didn't realize was that some of the books would be 600+ pages, some of the shorter books would actually take longer to read than the bigger books, and that some of the books would be so engrossing that I would unsconsciously slow down and savor them like fine wine. Silly me....I also forgot to factor in time for having a full-time job, being a mom, sleeping, etc.... not to mention the craziness of the holidays! Suddenly books that should have taken a week were taking two or three....and the clock was ticking!!!

As the weeks flew by on my countdown, and I fell further and further behind, the relaxation I've always enjoyed from reading disappeared. I felt like I 'had' to read, just to keep up; like I was going through the motions to get the book done, not to take it all in. It wasn't right!!

Therefore, after much reflection, I've decided to change my blog title to 100 Books. 100 Journeys, because each book is a unique and interesting journey, with characters taking me to different places and times, dealing with unique situations. I will still be blogging as regularly as before, the main difference being I won't be stressing myself out with a deadline, and I will be able to enjoy (or not enjoy, as the case may be) each book MORE. I hope you'll stay with me! It will still be a challenge just to get through these 100 tomes of literature, believe me!! And soccer season is just around the corner!

Happy New Year to all, and Happy Reading!!!

Pam (SocrMom78)

#88...The Call of the Wild

2009-12-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

"Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or murmur soft love curses, but he whispered in his ear, "As you love me, Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered."

I do not love animal stories, especially ones where animals get hurt or die. Old Yeller traumatized me for life, as did Turner and Hooch. Yes, I know animal death is all part of the great Circle of Life and everything (yes, I bawled through The Lion King as well) but when you get right down to it, animal stories are just something I avoid like the plague. Period. Marley and Me will never, ever be on my TBR list.

So as you might guess I was jumping for joy to read Jack London's mini-epic The Call of the Wild. I spent most of the first 40 pages fighting back tears for Buck, a dog who is suddenly uprooted from a loving and happy home to hauling heavy sleds, barely getting enough food to make it through a day, sleeping wet and cold in the snow every night, and not to mention occasionally being attacked by humans or other dogs. Buck is able to dig deep to find the will to not only survive, but thrive in his new environment, and along the way does meet up with some very ethical and loving humans. Thank God.

Despite the animal angle, I found Call to be very well written. London is good at expressing the shock and denial any of us humans would experience in such a dramatic change in living conditions. Watching Survivor or Lost, you see people doing essentially the same thing Buck does…getting past social niceties and doing what they have to do to survive, no matter what else happens.

If animal stories are your thing (and I won't tell you if Buck makes it or not) pick up The Call of the Wild.

Grade: B-

Commenting on TIME Magazine's Top 100 Books....

2009-12-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

I printed out TIME Magazine's Top 100 books of the 20th century (from 1923-2000), just to compare with the Modern Library's list, and of the last 11 books I have read, only four are on the TIME list...Midnight's Children, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Sheltering Sky, and Under the Net. You'll have to excuse my complete stupefaction as to how a book like Under the Net made it and Sophie's Choice DIDN'T make it. Glad I'm not reading THAT list!!!

At least they excluded The Magus. :)

We'll check in more with TIME's list later as we roll further through the ML list; in the meantime, I've added the link to the "100 Books Extras" on the sidebar.

#90....Midnight's Children

2009-12-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world."

I have to admit I had my apprehensions about reading anything by Salman Rushdie. All his name brought to mind was what happened when I was a teenager with his book The Satanic Verses, which already sounded sacrilegious to my Catholic-raised mind. Turns out the Ayatollah Khomeini agreed with me; the book contained what he perceived as a blasphemous reference to the prophet Mohammad. Khomeini issued a fatwa (basically a death sentence) for the British-born Rushdie. He was forced to live in hiding for years, and Iran and the UK actually broke diplomatic relations in 1989, thanks to his book. Those out there who don’t think writing a book can change your life, think again!

In Rushdie’s 2nd novel, Midnight’s Children, our narrator, Saleem Sinai, is born exactly at midnight on August 15, 1947…the very day India becomes independent from Britain. But Saleem’s time seems to be running out, as he is mysteriously beginning to disintegrate into millions of pieces, so he begins to tell the story of his extraordinary family. He begins with his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, a foreign university trained physician who falls in love with his wife piece-by-piece as it is shown through a hole in a sheet, so he falls in love with her before he even sees her face. Their daughter Mumtaz steals her older sister’s boyfriend Ahmed away from her, but upon marrying him, she realizes she does not love her husband. She resolves to fall in love with her husband piece by piece, much like Aadam did with Naseem. She saves the life of a Hindi entertainer from a Muslim mob, and he reads her palm and predicts she will have an extraordinary son. In Bombay, where they rent a mansion from a Britisher, William Methwold, Amina and another poorer woman become pregnant at the same time, and both deliver right at midnight. The babies are switched by ayah Mary Pereira, so that the rich baby will be poor and the poor baby will be rich. Saleem is actually the baby of the British Methwold and the poor woman, who dies after giving birth, but he is unknowingly raised as the son of the Sinais.

Saleem is not a beautiful baby. He has patchy colored skin, very light blue eyes, is unable to blink, and has a huge nose. Soon afterwards, his sassy sister Jamila, also known as the Brass Monkey, is born, who grows up as a tomboy-ish attention seeker, setting fire to people's shoes and breaking stuff. Saleem gets all kinds of special gifts during the novel, such as reading people's minds, killing people in his sleep, an extraordinary sense of smell, and the ability to communicate with people who are far away in his head. Saleem finds out that the living 581 ‘midnight’s children’ are from all over India, and have special gifts that are more extraordinary the closer they are born to midnight. He creates the Midnight Children’s Conference (MCC), where all of them can meet, in his head, between midnight and 1am every night, to talk about their gifts and what to do with them. Here Saleem meets Shiva, the baby he was swapped with on his birthday and the true son of the Sinais. Shiva has huge knees with which he can crush people, and he is a member of a rough gang. Saleem’s parentage is discovered when Saleem needs a blood transfusion and the doctor realizes that Saleem’s unique blood type could not have come from either Amina or Ahmed. The Brass Monkey has now become the favored child and his father barely acknowledges his existence, and she becomes a famous singer. As Saleem grows, the children of the MCC grow as well, and begin to take on the beliefs and prejudices of their parents, so that no one gets along. He meets up with one of the other Midnight’s Children, Parvati, who has gotten pregnant by Shiva, and they get married and she has her son Aadam on the night of India's Emergency. He has huge ears and doesn't make sounds. The Widow, the leader of India, has found out about the MCC through Shiva, and goes about rounding up all of them when she begins leveling the slums as part of a 'beautification' project. All except those who are dead (Parvati dies) are taken into custody and all have hysterectomies and testectomies to prevent their magical skills from living on. What she does not realize is that Shiva got a bunch of other women pregnant, so the legacy of the MCC will live on.

There was really no way to quickly summarize Midnight’s Children, so I didn’t try; nor did I want to. To do so would not have done justice to the richness of the story and even with my long summary, there are still important plot aspects and symbolism I didn’t get to…but I have to leave you something to discover for yourself. The third section of the book was a little harder to get into with all of the war stuff, and I had to reread that section twice because I felt like I was missing things. There were also many historical personages from the Indo-Pakistan conflict with very similar sounding names so that made it sort of confusing as well. I had to go to Wikipedia a few times while reading to learn about Indira Gandhi (who was apparently the inspiration for 'The Widow’), the Indian Emergency and Partition, and this really helped me understand what was going on in the story.

East vs West, poor vs rich, modern vs traditional….all are struggles that the heterogenous country of India went through to become the democracy that it is today. Saleem tells us on the first page of the book that ‘his destiny is insolubly chained to that of his country'. He is born on the day of India’s independence, of poor Indian and wealthy English parents, with both bloodlines visible in his physical features, and throughout the book, he shares his fear of crumbling into 600 million pieces (at that time the population of India). The struggle between the traditional and the modern is also highlighted in the battle of wills between Naseem and Aadam, as they definitely don’t see eye to eye on the role of women and raising children.

After I read this book, I was mad at myself for waiting so long to pick up a Rushdie novel. I am sure I will again in the future.

Grade: A

Ranking the 1st 10 Books...

2009-12-03T05:29:00.000-08:00

Ten books in, I'm not quite sure I knew what I was signing up for when I started this blog. I know for certain that I would never have bought any of these books, or read them, had I not seen the Modern Library list and decided to do this, so for sure this challenge has opened my eyes to new literary vistas.

I think I also had very high expectations for this list....maybe too high. Several times I've begun a book on this list, expecting (hoping?) it will be this unbelievable tome of classic literature that will change my life forever, and then I've ended up disappointed and disillusioned by the end of it, always asking the same question: How the he** did this book get on a list like this? There have GOT to be better books out there from the last century than Under the Net!!!

What's been interesting is going to other sites like Amazon.com and LibraryThing.com and reading other people's reviews of the books after I've read them. It's so crazy how the same book can evoke such different responses in people. Here's a quote from a reader reviewing The Magus on LibraryThing.com: "It changed my life in so many ways and without my realising, pushed me into the career that I'm in. I've visited it again and again so many times." Not only do I shiver to think about what career path The Magus would inspire someone to start (cult member? porn star? flight attendant?), but I know for sure the only way I would ever visit The Magus again and again would be to use it as a doorstop. :)

Here's my ranking of the first ten books, from best (1) to worst (10).

1 Tobacco Road
2 Ironweed
3 Sophie's Choice
4 The Magnificent Ambersons
5 The Postman Always Rings Twice
6 Wide Sargasso Sea
7 The Sheltering Sky
8 The Magus
9 Under the Net
10 The Ginger Man

#91....Tobacco Road

2009-12-01T16:29:00.000-08:00

As a book blogger, I try to read lots of reviews of the books that I’m reading or have read, just to see if I'm way off base with what I'm thinking about a book. Every once in a while, I’ll see a review where book editors and professional bloggers way smarter than me have all raved about a book and how profound/hilarious/interesting/etc it was (i.e. The Ginger Man). It is then I have to step back from the computer, and ask myself, What did they see about this book that I didn’t?? Am I really that dense?

A good example of this is Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road. From what I read, this book most likely was not supposed to be funny. In his review of Tobacco Road on his website, Doug Shaw commented that “a less perfect writer would have made you laugh with the events of this story”, and many of the reviews I read on LibraryThing.com didn’t think it was funny at all, or categorized the book as “dark comedy”. Well, I gotta tell ya. For all the laughing I didn’t do with The Ginger Man, I more than made up for it with Tobacco Road. I laughed like a hyena throughout this book, to the point where I was forced to read excerpts like the following to my husband and daughter because they couldn’t understand why I had tears rolling down my face:

“Now Lord, I’ve got something special to pray about. I don’t ask favors unless they is things I want pretty bad, so this time I’m asking a favor for Pearl. I want You to make her stop sleeping on a pallet on the floor while Brother Lov has to sleep by himself in the bed. Make Pearl get in the bed, Lord, and make her stay there where she belongs. She ain’t got no right to sleep on a pallet on the floor when Lov’s got a bed for her. Now, You make her stop acting like she’s been, and put her in the bed when night comes. I was a good wife to my former husband. I never slept on no pallet on the floor…. And when I marry another man, I ain’t going to do that neither. ….So You tell Pearl to quit that.”

Hilarious, right? Well, maybe you had to be there.

The lowest rung of Southern society is brought to life with the Lester family in Tobacco Road. If you’ve read Gone with the Wind, think the Slattery family, the “poor whites” who barely existed except off the charity of their rich planter neighbors. The patriarch of the family, Jeeter Lester, loves farming more than anything else in the world, although he’s so broke that he hasn’t been able to buy any fertilizer or seeds to actually farm, and his family of five is slowly starving to death in what could euphemistically be called a shack in rural Georgia. The Lesters used to own all the land around them, but they became so poor that they mortgaged it all away, and what credit they had was cut off when their lone planter neighbor moved away. Most of the other Lester children have gone off to work in the cotton mills, but Jeeter loves to farm too much to do that. Since he clearly can’t farm, his career consists of begging, starving and whining, not necessarily in that order.

The majority of the book had me in stunned disbelief, as I watched this family get chance after chance to improve their standing in life, and then watched them blow the chance in the worst possible way, or watched them resist making any changes whatsoever. Were they so ignorant that they couldn’t see opportunities to take advantage of, or just so lazy that they couldn’t be bothered, or just unable to adapt to change? A tough call there. Jobs at the mill, where money could be made, were there for the taking; yet no one in the Lester household even talked about a steady job. Money that could have been spent on seeds or food was spent on stupid stuff like snuff. The amount of time Jeeter spent begging from neighbors and relatives could have been well used for more profitable endeavors. Yet he clings to his love for the land and farming, when it’s pretty clear to everyone that he can’t do it.

To me, this family illustrated Darwin’s notion of "survival of the fittest" to a T. People who don’t capitalize on their environments and/or aren’t motivated enough to do even the most basic things to maintain existence get winnowed out. I think I would have felt more pity for them had they actually tried to save themselves and failed. It’s hard to feel sorry for people who don’t help themselves out. Therefore, my alternative was to laugh at their stupid choices and tragic-comedic fates. So I did.

I enjoyed this book very much. Definitely a sleeper at #91 on the ML list.

Grade: A-

#92....Ironweed

2009-11-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

"A man ain't afraid of goin' back."

"Technically a weed is any plant that is unwanted or a nuisance", explains The Suburbian Agrarian on his website, http://suburbanagrarian.blogspot.com/2008/02/plant-of-week-tall-ironweed.html. Places like Home Depot and fertilizer companies make a killing (pun intended) on trying to help homeowners control weeds. Weeds like ironweed (called so because of its tough stem) generally have very brief, unremarkable lives, aren’t highly valued by people because of their less than aesthetic appearance, and as anyone knows that's ever tried to get rid of dandelions, weeds have a way of coming back, again and again and again.

I'm sure William Kennedy had the image of ironweed in mind when he wrote about Francis Phelan, the main character of his book, Ironweed. This book is the third of a series of seven books that Kennedy wrote about goings-on in his hometown of Albany NY. Francis is a homeless drifter/one-time baseball player/recovering alcoholic and his drifter friends as they try to make ends meet in the streets of Albany. In the present, Francis is trying to pull his life together; he's got a homeless semi-girlfriend Helen, also once-upon-a-time famous as a singer, and a drifter friend named Rudy. But Francis’ checkered past is just as present. Ghosts from Francis’ past, some of whom he killed, converse with Francis and even follow him around. He is haunted by his role in the death of his infant son, which drove him to abandon his family and turn his back on everything he knew.

I loved this book. It had such a fantastic message. Even though Francis had his fifteen minutes of fame and lost it, which would have embittered anyone, and even though he has committed cold-blooded murder several times, Francis is a resilient, compassionate character who survives (like the plant ironweed), commands your sympathy, and does not let his situation get him down. He survives hunger, cold, homelessness. He proves his humanity as he collapses at the grave of his baby son, and reaches out to those around him to help them, like taking care of Helen and giving his dinner to Sandra before she dies. Even the murders Francis committed are revealed as self-defense. When the chance comes for Francis to reunite with his family, forgive himself, and leave his past behind, you are truly rooting for him to return to them and forgive himself.

I am sure William Kennedy didn’t live on the streets like Francis Phelan did, but he sure writes like someone who knew what it was like to have nothing, and appreciate everything, like Francis did. Totally recommended.

Grade: A-

#93.....The Magus

2009-11-23T18:06:00.001-08:00

My husband loves psychological thrillers. One of his repeat Christmas gift requests is the Saw box set. The Saw movies come from the Silence of the Lambs genre, and usually depict people that are given a choice between a gruesome, horrible death, and….well….an alternative gruesome, horrible death. “I love that they mess with my head,” he said, when I asked him what the appeal of watching people dig through boxes of razor blades with bare hands was. Suffice it to say the appeal of these movies is completely lost on me, which is why we do not currently own any of them.

Subsequently, the appeal of John Fowles’ 656 page epic The Magus, was also lost on me. Mind games abound in the story of Nicholas Urfe, a middle-class Englishman who ditches his non-committal girlfriend Alison and signs on to teach school on the remote Greek island of Phraxos. That’s apparently not all he’s signed up for. Nosing around on the island, he has the misfortune to meet Conchis, a rich and psychic recluse. Strange things happen whenever Nicholas spends the weekend at Conchis’ house. Conchis tells stories that are ostensibly about his own life, and then portions of the stories are brought to life by the people that live and work for him. Unlike the rest of us, who would run like hell if we saw someone walking around wearing a jackal head, something keeps pulling Nicholas back to Conchis’ house. One of those somethings is the elusive and beautiful Julie, one of Conchis’ friends and the biggest tease of them all. As the story progresses, the lines between fact and fiction become blurrier and blurrier, and Nicholas becomes lost in the bizarre world Conchis has created for him. Does he ever escape? How will this experience change his life?

Honestly? I was pretty much done by page fifty. I sat through Conchis' meandering 20-page stories, only to find out five pages later that they're all lies, and then five more pages later, find out that even the lies are lies. Ad nauseum. By the end of the book I no longer knew who the bad guys were, or who the good guys were, or if there were any good guys, for that matter. Who do you root for when everyone is screwed up? It turns out by the end of the book that Conchis has woven this surrealistic world specifically for Nicholas to teach him a lesson about the kind of person he is, and everyone in Nicholas’ life has been in on the game BUT Nicholas. I couldn’t help feeling a certain kind of pity for him by the end…but then again, he was kind of a dirtbag. I know a couple of guys from my high school days who would be GREAT candidates to go through this, if Conchis is still out there and needs new people :)

So in the end? Not my thing. Kind of like the Saw movies, but without the razor blades. It didn't work well for me as a novel, but it works awesome as a doorstop in the house on a windy day.

Grade: D-

#94....Wide Sargasso Sea

2009-10-29T19:07:00.001-07:00

"Coming from the Antilles’, he declared, ‘with a terrifying insight and … passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World”. Ford Madox Ford, describing the writing of Jean Rhys.

Jean Rhys certainly knew her subject when she wrote about Bertha Mason, the tormented ‘madwoman in the attic’ of Bronte’s Jane Eyre in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. Born on the island of Dominica, daughter of an English doctor and a Dominican mother, Rhys was also a child of mixed blood who was treated as an outsider in England, where she went to live with her aunt, because of her accent and mannerisms. Bertha Mason, introduced to us as Antoinette, is also a child of mixed blood who is treated as an outsider on the island of Jamaica, where she lives. Mixed blood is considered to be of lower status than black or white in the island’s society. Her mother Annette marries a wealthy Englishman but goes crazy when her house is burned to the ground and one of her children dies. After Annette’s death, Mr Mason takes care of Antoinette, sending her to school and to live with her Aunt Cora. Antoinette’s marriage is arranged to a man who is never named, but is assumed to be Mr Rochester of Jane Eyre. Her checkered past follows her to the island of Dominica, where a distant relative begins to fill Mr Rochester’s head with poisonous thoughts about his new wife and her family, intimating Antoinette could go the same way as her mother. Because Mr Rochester cannot be persuaded to think otherwise, the self-fulfilling prophecy becomes true.

Like any underdog story, the story of Antoinette’s turbulent childhood and the self-fulfilling prophecy of her madness is compelling and tragic. Rhys portrays the racial discrimination and isolation Antoinette experiences with great poignancy, having endured it herself to some degree in her own childhood. The stubborn blindness of Mr Rochester, who married for money and not love and who crushes his wife’s spirit by changing her name into something as ugly as Bertha, is infuriating. You will want to crawl into the pages of this book and beat him.

I haven't read Jane Eyre (believe it or not) and so I came to the end of this book wondering if I missed some subtle nuances in this story because of that; but as a stand-alone story I thought it was very well-written. You would have to have a heart of stone not to root for and sympathize with Annette’s plight.

Grade: B+

#95....Under the Net

2009-10-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

"Events stream past us like these crowds and the face of each is seen only for a minute. What is urgent is not urgent for ever but only ephemerally. All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, like itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing."

Iris Murdoch’s 1954 novel, Under the Net, has been described as an example of the ‘picaresque’ novel, which Wikipedia terms as “an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road”. There is no better one-sentence summary of Under the Net and its roguish ‘anti-hero’, Jake Donaghue, out there. Jake, a thirty-something, self-obsessed, angst-ridden slacker who spends his time translating cheesy French novels and mooching off his friends, is kicked out of his house by his ex-girlfriend. Having no real source of income and lots of free time, Jake decides to hunt down another ex-girlfriend for a place to stay, and it is there that the long-winded and pointless escapades of an uninteresting, unemployed single guy begin. Fiances of old girlfriends, horse racing, dog-stealing, binge drinking and skinny dipping abound in spades, as Jake flounders around London trying to find himself, or a place to stay, whichever comes first.

One thing I noticed (and disliked) about this novel was the amount of time Murdoch spent in Jake’s head. The book was essentially written like one long stream-of-consciousness, like Jake’s brain with closed-captioning. In keeping with the Existentialist tradition, of which Murdoch was a proponent, she gets into the minutiae of Jake's life in order to more clearly define him....what he thinks about people, what he thinks they think about him, why he's going to do something, what might happen if he does it, what he thinks people will do when he does this....ad nauseum. It was ‘too much information’ for me, personally. I wasn’t sure if I didn’t like Jake’s character because I knew everything he was thinking, or if he just wasn’t all that interesting. Probably a bit of both. Hugo, the one character I would have liked to know more about, and someone Jake found so interesting that he wrote an entire book on his philosophy of life, would have made a much more fascinating main character, but alas, Murdoch chose to go with Everyman instead. Lucky us.

I’ve read several other reviews from people who loved this book and its irreverant style. I hate coming to the end of books feeling like I missed something, but I just didn’t find it with this one, and I blame myself.

Grade: C-

#96...Sophie's Choice

2009-10-07T13:59:00.001-07:00

"Is it best to know about a child's death, even one so horrible, or to know that the child lives but that you will never, never see him again? I don't know either for sure. Suppose I had chosen Jan to go...to go to the left instead of Eva. Would that have changed anything?" She paused to look out through the night at the dark shores of the Virginia of our destination, removed by staggering dimensions of time and space from her own benighted, cursed and--to me even at that moment--all but incomprehensible history. "Nothing would have changed anything," she said."

For two weeks after the attacks on September 11, 2001, I was unable to sleep with the lights off. I lay curled in my bed every night, with the horrifying and grotesque images we were constantly being shown on TV scrolling through my head like the CNN crawl. I was firmly, irrationally convinced that the terrorists would show up any minute in my tiny little town of Chico, California, and take over. Watching the unimaginable happen that week--airplanes slamming into buildings, buildings I had visited as a child collapsing--anything seemed possible. The terrorists had not only invaded New York, they had invaded my head.

When people talk about the Holocaust, most people point to the horrifying number of people killed in the concentration camps over a 5-6 year period. What many people don't focus on is how many walked away from that. Barrington James estimates that 6.5 million Jews survived the Holocaust. Imagine what the survivors of the most atrocious violation of human rights ever in our history must have witnessed while in captivity...and then imagine not only trying to live with those images in your head night after night, but also trying to live with the guilt of being one of the 'lucky ones' when so many others died. It makes my television experience of 9/11 look painless by comparison.

William Styron’s fifth novel, Sophie’s Choice, published in 1979, is a very deep and intense story that takes readers into the heart of the Holocaust, told from the viewpoint of one who endured and escaped its persecutions, and her attempts to live with what she experienced. Stingo, the book's main character, is a dislocated Southerner and embittered wanna-be author, who befriends Sophie, a Polish emigrant, and her paranoid schizophrenic Jewish boyfriend Nathan, in a Brooklyn boardinghouse. Sophie and Nathan’s relationship is tormented and passionate, and it is in between their arguments that Sophie opens up to Stingo about her experiences of the Holocaust from her life in Poland, leading up to the terrible choice she is forced to make on the platform at Auschwitz. The struggle of Sophie and Nathan to deal with their pasts and their own personal demons is heart-rending and uncomfortably fascinating. Kind of like a car crash; you don’t want to see it, but you can’t look away.

It is Styron’s treatment of memory and how the characters chose to remember events that happened in their lives that touched me the most during the course of the novel. When Sophie would tell a story to Stingo, she would begin with the glossed-over, more palatable version, but then later would tell the true, much more painful version. The lies the characters were telling to themselves to escape the guilt and sadness they had experienced, while understandable, were heartbreaking. I was not sure at times that Sophie was lucky to have escaped with her life. Is it harder to live with the memories of something awful, or to be dead? That is the question Styron asks.

In the end, Styron shows us that the dead of the concentration camps were not the only victims of the Holocaust. Those who lived through its horrors like Sophie, and those who stood passively by, like Nathan, were just as deeply affected. The true horror of the Holocaust is and always will be that it was allowed to happen at all. Thanks to the experiences and images of the Holocaust, horrible events in our modern times like the genocide in Bosnia and 9/11 no longer go unchecked and ignored. Sophie’s Choice is a fantastically deep and moving novel I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.

Grade: A

Libris Interruptus...Bedside Table Confessional

2009-09-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

Taking a break from the lighthearted fiction I've been reading lately :)

I woke up this morning and realized that, in addition to Sophie's Choice, I have three other books stacked up on my nightstand, all of which I am about halfway through reading. Wondering if maybe I should seek some help. :) Here is what I currently have stacked up:
Julia Child, My Life in France
Philippa Gregory, The White Queen
George Washington's Mount Vernon (don't ask! :)
Anyone else out there incapable of reading one book at a time? Share with us what you're in the middle of. We should support each other!

#97....The Sheltering Sky

2009-09-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

“And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time.”

The Sheltering Sky was Paul Bowles’ first novel, and his most famous. Seeing as Bowles spent the majority of his life as an American expatriate living in Tangiers, Morocco, there’s no one better equipped to write about the experiences of clueless American tourists in the wilds of Northern Africa. And that is the basic premise of Sky: an American couple, Port and Kit Moresby, and their friend Tunner have decided to do some traveling in and around this area of Africa, despite travel warnings in this area which Port knows about but neglects to mention to his wife or friend. Port is already unfaithful to his wife within the first six chapters, and Kit’s pretended or real nonchalance sets up the dynamic that is to continue between the couple. As the group travels deeper into Africa, they get further from civilization as they know it, and that’s when things get interesting. The experience of what was to be a fun foreign sojourn changes three lives forever.

When Sky was first shown to Doubleday Publishing in 1949, it was rejected because it was not felt that the book was really a novel. It’s not hard to see why Doubleday might have felt this way. It reads somewhat like a travelogue of Northern Africa, and may have been thought to be more autobiographical than fictional. The descriptive language Bowles uses is pure and beautiful. Bowles obviously gives his setting great importance and wants the reader to see where they are. You can feel the flies as Port drives the jeep through the swarm. You can smell the garbage laying around the hotel in Ain Krorfa. Having never been to Africa, I needed Bowles' help to imagine what it would be like, and he definitely came through for me.

Against this rich backdrop are the morally questionable characters of Port, Kit and Tunner. Interestingly, Bowles keeps them at an emotional distance from the reader by pointing out their myriad faults early and often, emphasizing lies, infidelity and insecurity. I never felt truly sympathetic to anyone except maybe Tunner, who is the quintessential third wheel and keeps getting the shaft. What made this book fascinating for me was how each character reacts to the diminishment of civilization in their environment. Tunner freaks out about weevils in their soup, yet Port and Kit unhesitatingly finish their entire bowls of soup despite this. Kit’s desperation and helplessness in the middle of nowhere, far from medical care when Port becomes sick, is palpable. How well would any of us hold up in this same situation? How much does it take for someone to be pushed across the line between sanity and insanity?

The last third of the book was, for me, where the momentum really picked up. Finally, I cared about one of the characters, yet still in a limited way. I wanted to know what would happen to Kit and if she would make it out of the wild. Not all of the book was coherent or readable (the section describing Port’s typhoid delirium is a good example), but the overall message of living every day in the present because there may not be a tomorrow is profound and sobering. It didn’t make me want to go on a trip to Tangiers any time soon, but thanks to Paul Bowles' beautifully descriptive prose, I was able to visit it in my imagination just as if I had been there.

Grade: B-

#98....The Postman Always Rings Twice

2009-09-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

"I'm not what you think I am, Frank. I want to work and be something, that's all. But you can't do it without love. Do you know that, Frank? Anyway, a woman can't. Well, I've made one mistake. And I've got to be a hell cat, just once, to fix it. But I'm not really a hell cat, Frank."

James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, refused to be locked in to his reputation as a member of the “hard boiled school of crime fiction”, commenting "I belong to no school, hard-boiled or otherwise". In fact, Cain had wanted to be an opera singer, but didn’t have the voice for it. As a journalist for the Baltimore Sun and the New York World in the 1920’s, Cain was probably exposed to sensationalist stories similar to the story he tells in Postman, which is reputed to have been based on a real life case. Drifter Frank Chambers is the wrong man in the wrong place, when he walks into a small café in the middle of nowhere and collides with Cora Papadakis, the wife of the café’s owner. Frank takes a job there and sparks fly between them, and Cora decides the only way out of her loveless marriage is for the two of them to kill her husband Nick. Nearly caught on the first attempt, the second attempt is successful, but brings more consequences than either Frank or Cora imagined.

Cain’s main characters were “often self-destructive, or used by stronger women.” Postman is no exception to this. Although Frank has a rough edge to his character, Cora is truly the ‘hell cat’ she describes herself as. Their affair is passionate, anything but tender, and unfortunately Nick’s death does not bring them the happiness they seek. Both toy with the idea of killing each other and Cora even gives Frank a chance to do this. Accountability for crimes is a dish best served hot.

As I’m sure millions of other readers have done, I looked throughout the book for any mention of a postman ringing twice, or even once, and came up with nothing. I found this quote to explain the title’s origin on Wikipedia:

"With the "postman" being God, or Fate, the "delivery" meant for Frank was his own death as just retribution for murdering Nick. Frank had missed the first "ring" when he initially got away with that killing. However, the postman rang again, and this time the ring was heard."

The book was rather short and the story pretty straightforward. Like with any murder mystery, it was very suspenseful and I do believe everyone got what was coming to them in the end. Not high in the profundity department but enjoyable nonetheless. Anyone from the John Grisham school will be happy.

GRADE: C+

#99...The Ginger Man

2009-09-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

"When things are bad you keep telling yourself they can't get worse. Then they get worse. And stay that way until you're so weary and screwed you can't even worry anymore. It gets like that. So damn bad that you have to cheer up or die."

Picture for a moment the most decrepit, angry, shiftless, lascivious, drunken guy out there. Turns out you’ll have barely scratched the surface of Sebastian Dangerfield, JP Donleavy’s protagonist (if that’s even the correct word) in his 1955 first novel, The Ginger Man.

In 1950’s-1960’s Britain, an artistic movement arose, called Kitchen Sink Realism, which, according to Wikipedia, “often depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons living in rented accommodation and spending their off-hours in grimy pubs to explore social issues and political controversies"... “with stress on the banality of life”. There is hardly a better description of the basic plot of The Ginger Man to be found anywhere. Sebastian is supposed to be attending the university and raising a family, but unfortunately he seems to be doing anything but that. The story follows Sebastian’s never-ending trail of self-destruction through the pubs, slums, and beds of Dublin and London. Throw in some wife-battering, debt evasion, and petty theft, and you've got all the elements for a tale that Dorothy Parker of Esquire Magazine called, right on the cover of my book, "Lusty, violent, wildly funny." Drunk people are funny sometimes, right? (Right?). Honestly, I think there was only one part of the book that made me laugh, but it definitely wasn't what I would call 'wildly funny'. Slightly humorous, perhaps. Maybe Parker should have stuck with lusty and violent. Then I would have been more prepared for what was coming.

Reading the above, one would think that Sebastian Dangerfield has no chance of evoking any emotions other than disgust and loathing. However, they would be wrong. He also evokes exasperation and scorn. There was not a hole black enough and deep enough anywhere to throw him into, which was my only regret at the end of the novel, and I ran out of hope that he would help himself out and grow up by about page six. If JP Donleavy’s purpose in writing The Ginger Man was to show the seedy side of life and evoke strong emotions, he definitely succeeds there.

GRADE: D-

#100...The Magnificent Ambersons

2009-09-06T18:02:00.001-07:00

"In the days before deathly contrivances hustled them through their lives, and when they had no telephones--another ancient vacancy profound responsible for leisure--they had time for everything: time to think, to talk, time to read, time to wait for a lady!"

This quote from the first chapter of Booth Tarkington's 1919 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Magnificent Ambersons, sets us up to enter the changing world of the turn of the century America. Horses and buggies are being swapped for "horseless carriages". Factories are springing up everywhere. And in the midst of a small midwestern town lives the ‘old money’ Amberson family, around whose fortunes the interest of the town revolves. There is only one heir to the Amberson fortune, George Amberson Minafer, and he is spoiled beyond belief and utterly ridiculous. He feels everyone else not an Amberson is "riffraff" and beneath him, and he shows nothing but contempt for the technological marvels that are changing the world around him. Georgie discovers several universal truths about money during the course of Tarkington’s novel: that it doesn’t buy happiness or guarantee forgiveness, doesn’t quell gossiping tongues, and, to misquote Tarkington, it’s “rahthuh bettuh” to ‘do something rather than be something’.

Tarkington’s two most sympathetic characters, Lucy Morgan, Georgie’s love interest, and his father, Wilbur Minafer, are excellent foils for the spoiled, upper class Georgie. Lucy represents the rise of ‘new money’, as her middle-class father becomes successful with his ‘horseless carriage’ and Wilbur, whose marriage to Georgie’s mother Isabel was reputed to be ‘beneath her’ represents the ‘save, don’t spend’ maxim, knowing that wealth is not end-all, be-all. Both are good natured, loving people who are more closely in tune with the world and its changes than Georgie is. You get the feeling after reading Ambersons that Tarkington wanted his readers to feel negatively about the entitled upper class, sitting on its money and contributing nothing to society. It definitely came across loud and clear.

In real life, Tarkington’s family fortunes followed much the same path as the fictional Ambersons, and thanks to that, Georgie’s resistance to the changes that occur both in his surroundings and in his immediate family is real and believable. Like Georgie, Tarkington was not a big believer in higher education, dropping out of both Purdue and Princeton Universities without graduating. Like Georgie, the Tarkingtons were upper class but suffered a decline in their fortunes with the Panic of 1873. Tarkington knew what it was like to go from something to nothing; and at the story’s conclusion, he leaves it up to the reader to decide if Georgie will make it after all.

I enjoyed this book, although I don’t know that it was Top 100 of the Century worthy. The story was well-told and had plenty of plot twists. The momentum of Georgie’s downward spiral kept the story moving, and I really had no idea until the end how it would all end up for him. With today’s societal obsession with the rich and famous, Georgie’s story of riches to rags and quest for redemption in the eyes of those who love him is still as relevant and absorbing today as it was back at the turn of the century.

GRADE: B+