"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

"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

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

"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....

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

"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...

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