Naked Without Books

So LOL Seollal Update: The End

2012-01-24T14:53:00.000-08:00

My So LOL Seollal Reading Adventure ended with a whimper. Not even a full-throated whimper. A wimpy whimper. I had trouble reading. I want to blame it on the cold weather. My brain felt crumbly, like the topping on apple crumble. Oooh, apple crumble. That sounds nice, right about now, served up with a nice hot cup of coffee.

Anyway...

On the last day of Seollal, I managed to read less than 50 pages of Shutting Out The Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger. Published in 2006, this book examines hikikomori, the young people who feel burnt out by the pressures of Japanese society. Their way of coping is not to cope. They drop out of everything and retreat to their bedrooms. The author wrote in the introduction that later on in the book, Japan will be compared with its closest neighbor, South Korea. I'm very much looking forward to that part, if I can ever get my brain out of PARK.

Teri, on the other hand, ended her So LOL Seollal not just with a bang, but a whole fleet of fireworks. No apple crumble brain for her! She finished The Apothecary's Daughter by Julie Klassen, breezed through The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and in the waning hours of the challenge, started Fools Rush In by Janice Thompson. She didn't seem keen on finishing it though ("The dog's name is Yorkie-Poo") and moved on to Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins.

Thanks, Teri! Let's do this again, same time next year. Or why wait? Let's cook up another challenge!

Last thoughts: If I'd really been thinking about this, I would have included a book about a dragon, perhaps a reread of The Paper Bag Princess. Better luck next year. I guess I have a while to figure out what's next on the Chinese calendar.

So LOL Seollal Update: Getting All Canadian

2012-01-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was the snow, but I woke up feeling all North NORTH American today, and before the little bit of white stuff had melted off good and proper, I had finished these two Canadian books:

The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood. Atwood has got dystopia down flat. Readers who enjoyed 2003's Oryx and Crake had to wait several years for this companion novel, but it was worth the wait. After the "Waterless Flood" (brought on by a mad scientist type in the first novel), two women, Ren and Toby, are in seclusion. Ren has been locked into her workplace, a sex establishment called Scales n' Tails. Toby, who has been hiding from her former rapist/kidnapper, is holed up in a beauty spa called ANooYoo. While dealing with their current problems (imminent starvation, brutal escapees from Painball, genetically altered pigs with human brains) both of them flash back to their days in God's Gardeners, an eco-cult whose members dress in hemp and under the guidance of Adam One, tries to blend religion and science evenly. They are portrayed both humorously and sympathetically. This is the second book in a trilogy. I hope we don't have to wait several years for the third book.

Something Good - Robert Munsch. Tyya goes shopping with her father (who looks a lot like Mr. Munsch) and she tries to improve on her father's healthy (and boring) food choices. Chaos ensues when the father tells Tyya to stand still and not move. Tyya is mistaken as a doll and marked with a $29.95 price tag. Judging by the dialogue, I have a feeling that Munsch wrote this book shortly after a viewing of Frankenstein (1931). There's a fun version on YouTube with Munsch himself doing the hono(u)rs.

Page count for So LOL Seollal: 120

I'm not sure what's up with Teri. She gave me a book today that I reallyreally want to read, (but can't until April *sob*) then she disappeared again. She must be deep in the pages.

Edited to add:

Teri sez:
I finished Against All Odds (a thriller type of novel) and am 69% through Apothecary's Daughter. That's a good read. Enough for tonight! I'm "Read out" for today. :) Page count on Sunday: 261. Monday: 361.

Teri and Susan's So LOL Seollal Reading Adventure

2012-01-22T06:14:00.000-08:00

Time goes fast here. It's Seollal again, which is how the Koreans refer to Chinese New Year. The country will devote itself to this holiday for 3 days: Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Transportation of all kinds will be nightmarishly crowded. It's a great time to stay home and turn pages.

With no conveniently nearby ancestors to worship, no beautiful hanbok to wear and no plump red envelopes coming our way, my mean reading machine friend Teri and I have decided that this is the perfect time for our first joint reading challenge:

So LOL Seollal

Over the next 3 days, we will periodically count up books and pages read. We've decided not to skip sleep (although pajamas seem to be emerging as the preferred dress code) and generally aim for having fun. If you're in Korea, or just in your pajamas, you're welcome to join us.

Books On The Move

2012-01-17T20:42:00.000-08:00

Oh, come on, I know you've got more books than that!

After seven years in Korea, I'm finally going to move from a studio apartment to a one-bedroom apartment. This highly desired piece of real estate is just across the parking lot in the same complex, so my move won't be the big production it was back in 2009. Still, it will be somewhat of an undertaking because of the approximately 550-600 books that must move with me. (It was around 300 in 2009.) Unless I can assemble a team, it's going to be like eating the elephant.

Upon hearing about the move, my son compared me to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), the famous book hoarder, and frankly, a guy after my own heart. In his lifetime, he amassed thousands of books and manuscripts. Much of the latter was on vellum. Phillipps moved house only once. His family's possessions took a couple of days to move. His library took eight months with a team of strong men working from dawn to dusk. Is vellum heavy? Just curious. Luckily, that's not one of my challenges.

For a hilarious account of Phillipps' obsession, check out this book, which is where I saw the above anecdote. The chapter devoted to him is titled "Crazy About Books". Many of Sir Thomas's questionable antics with books have my WTF? light blinking rapidly, but I also sheepishly harbor some admiration for him because he went overboard and with such gusto.

I'm going out to look for some sturdy boxes now.

Talking About A Resolution

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

My friend Val from Faraway Hammer suggests that we "make promises not resolutions" for the upcoming year. It's a nice idea, but a little too sweet and gentle for my sensibilities. Also, it seems a little convoluted. The promise should be written so that it's all soft and cuddly on the outside, but the kernel of the desired change should shine through. Too easy to get tangled up in the dual skeins of syntax and semantics, so no promises for me.

Although I don't do a spectacular job of keeping them, I like the idea of resolutions, and I admire the other forms of the word: Resolve, resolute.  It's thrilling to start the blank page that is January 1 and seriously, even frowningly think about what I want to accomplish. There's a sternness that invigorates me. I must have gotten it from some Puritan ancestor. Of course, I'm also in favor of Lent lasting longer than 40 days.

First, I must examine my resolute state at this time last year and see how it held up:

1. Read for charity. I'll go a penny a page again.
Almost $300 for someone. Probably Cambodia.

2. Read for challenges:

100+ Challenge
Yay, 112!

The Pulitzer Challenge
I didn't neglect it, but not exactly balls to the wall, either.

The Newbery Challenge
Ditto.

The Canadian Challenge - 4 down, 9 to go before July 1.
Still pulling my toque down to hide my ashamed face.

The Support Your Local Library Challenge - I'll try for 20 this year.
Only 9.

Mad Men Challenge - books from the late 50s and early 60s.
A modest showing. Enough to warrant an extra olive in my martini.

The TBR Dare
LOL. Lasted a mere 24 days before getting dazzled by the shelf of another.

Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge
Only 5. I wanted to do more. Really, I did.

The Western Challenge - starts in May.
Willa Cather and I galloped over the prairie together. I discovered Buddies in the Saddle. Not a bad year for this cowgirl; I'll have another helping of beans and cornbread.

3. Read internationally.
It seems as though my passport gathered some dust on this one.

4. Participate in both the April and October 24-hour Readathons.
Yes and Yes!!!

5. Read more books written before 1900.
A mere 4 books. My snobbish inner bookworm is fanning herself while studiously ignoring me.

6. Read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The unsanitized version.
I done it, as Huck would say.

7. Curtail book spending - this is going to hurt.
I tried, but after I got the e-readers my resolve crumbled like a package of stale crackers.

8. Don't hesitate to DNF. Give it till page 49 then Zzzzzt! The Russian front!
I still hesitated to cast a book aside, but when I did, I was more upfront about my struggle.

PURPOSEFUL, STEELY-EYED RESOLUTIONS FOR 2012

1. Only TBR books until April 1.
2. Read 113 books in 2012
3. Read more Chunky Monkeys (500+ pages) and fewer Skinny Minnies (-100 pages)
4. Reduce the amount of books in my studio apartment (recent count: 500-600)
5. Read more internationally. Not just English and Canadian books. Get some exoticism going.
6. Find a new name for this blog.*
7. Participate in both Readathons.
8. Read for charity -- a penny a page.
9. More book/movie comparison/contrast posts **
10. Olden is golden (more books before 1900)

*I'm taking suggestions
** I'll get my moviehound son to hold me to this resolution. It'll be fun.

TBR Double Dare: Pieces of April

2012-01-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

So far, so good. I'm nearly through week 1 and I've only read things that have been mouldering on my to-be-read shelf. There's a richness nearly beyond compare stacked up on that 7-foot wooden structure.

There are hundreds of choices, but of course this contrary bookworm wants what she doesn't have and can't read until after April 1 if the TBR Double Dare is to be successfully completed.

Friday found me poking through a box of book giveaways at the office. I came home with:

Dust To Dust - Timothy Findlay. Canadian author!
Salads (recipe book). Maybe this book will turn my eating habits around forever. Nah.
The Black Monk - Anton Chekov. I can never resist those cute little palm-sized Penguin 60s.
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse. I tried to read Hesse in high school because he was so "meaningful", but quickly lost interest. I'll go back and see if my lost interest was justified or just the mark of an immature reader.

A day before that, my friend Teri gifted me a Kindle copy of The Gathering by Anne Enright. I heard that this Man Booker winner is grim and depressing -- everything I love in a novel.

Last night, I went wild on Amazon, in search of Taylor Caldwell books. I ordered two: Wicked Angel (1965) and Captains and the Kings (1972). I also wanted a nice hardcover first edition copy of A Prologue to Love, but the bookseller wouldn't deliver to South Korea.

"All of this is off limits till April 2."
Repeat as necessary.

I've got pieces of April...it's a morning in January.

The Books of 2011

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

[December]
112. The Adventures of Tintin: The Broken Ear - Herge
111. Just Kids - Patti Smith
110. A Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell (re-read)
109. The Misanthrope's Guide to Life (Go Away!) - Meghan Rowland and Chris Turner-Neal
108. The Mist - Stephen King
107. Darkness Visible - William Styron
106. Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K. Jerome
105. I'm Not the New Me - Wendy McClure
104. Last Exit Before Toll - Neal Shaffer
103. An Old-Fashioned Girl - Louisa May Alcott
[November]
102. Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father - John Matteson
101. Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin
100. Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
99. Everyday Foods in War Time - Mary Swartz Rose (Foodies' Reading Challenge)
98. Joe - Larry Brown
97. The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt (Canadian Book Challenge 5)
96. The Blue Sweater - Jacqueline Novogratz
95. Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick (Bookleaves Book Group)
[October]
94. U and I - Nicholson Baker
93. Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
92. The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti - Rick Geary
91. The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans - Rick Geary
90. The Onion Field - Joseph Wambaugh
89. Untitled Thesis - Valerie Hamer
88. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood (Canadian Book Challenge 5)
87. Shock for the Secret Seven - Enid Blyton
86. Wilderness Tips - Margaret Atwood (Canadian Book Challenge 5)
85. Joshua Then and Now - Mordecai Richler (Canadian Book Challenge 5)
[September]
84. Please Don't Shoot My Dog - Jackie Cooper
83. The Jump-Off Creek - Molly Gloss
82. Are You Really Going To Eat That? - Robb Walsh (Foodies' Reading Challenge)
81. Before I Go To Sleep - S.J. Watson
80. Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay (Bookleaves Book Group)
79. Dance on the Earth - Margaret Laurence (Canadian Book Challenge 5)
78. Puzzle for the Secret Seven - Enid Blyton (Cracked Spinz Book Group)
77. My Thoughts Be Bloody - Nora Titone
76. Little Men - Louisa May Alcott
[August]
75. Becoming Jane Eyre - Sheila Kohler
74. Get Out of Bed! - Robert Munsch (Canadian Book Challenge 5, Support Your Local Library Challenge)
73. Andrew's Loose Tooth - Robert Munsch (Canadian Book Challenge 5, Support Your Local Library Challenge)
72. Show and Tell - Robert Munsch (Canadian Book Challenge 5, Support Your Local Library Challenge)
71. Thomas' Snowsuit - Robert Munsch (Canadian Book Challenge 5, Support Your Local Library Challenge)
70. I Have To Go! - Robert Munsch (Canadian Book Challenge 5, Support Your Local Library Challenge)
69. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
68. Nashville Chrome - Rick Bass
67. Maria's Wedding - Nunzio De Filippis, Christina Weir and Jose Garibaldi
66. American Bee - James Maguire
65. Shit My Dad Says - Justin Halpern
64. Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood (Canadian Book Challenge 5)
63. The Boxcar Children - Gertrude Chandler Warner
[July]
62. Here If You Need Me - Kate Braestrup
61. Sorry to be so Cheerful - Hildegarde Dolson
60. A Stolen Life - Jaycee Dugard
59. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
58. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter - Simone de Beauvoir (Paris in July Challenge)
57. Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig
56. The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
55. The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure
54. Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
[June]
53. 127 Hours - Aron Ralston
52. A Hell of a Woman - Jim Thompson
51. The Road Past Altamont - Gabrielle Roy (Canadian Book Challenge 4)
50. 50 Below Zero - Robert Munsch (Canadian Book Challenge 4, re-read)
49. In a Lonely Place - Dorothy B. Hughes
48. Go The F**k To Sleep (audiobook) - Adam Mansbach, Samuel L. Jackson
47. A Visit from the Good Squad - Jennifer Egan (The Pulitzer Project)
46. Bound for Glory - Woody Guthrie
45. Spoken from the Heart - Laura Bush
44. John Barleycorn - Jack London (Support Your Local Library Challenge)
43. The Help - Kathryn Stockett (Bookleaves Book Group)
[May]
42. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway (re-read)
41. Room - Emma Donoghue (Canadian Book Challenge 4)
40. My Antonia - Willa Cather (The Western Read-Along Challenge)
39. Martin Eden - Jack London (Support Your Local Library Challenge)
38. Hardboiled Hollywood - Max Decharne
37. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery (Bookleaves Book Group)
[April]
36. Scott O'Dell (Who Wrote That? Series) - Hal Marcovitz
35. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White (re-read, The Newbery Project)
34. Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell (Bookleaves Book Group, The Newbery Project, Reading Madly Challenge)
33. The Grifters - Jim Thompson
32. Cake Wrecks - Jen Yates (Foodies' Reading Challenge)
31. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - Horace McCoy
30. Happy Birthday Or Whatever - Annie Choi
29. The Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney (Canadian Book Challenge 4)
[March]
28. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Cracked Spinz Book Group)
27. 84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
26. Lucky - Wes Tooke
25. Another Bullshit Night In Suck City - Nick Flynn
24. True Grit - Charles Portis (Bookleaves Book Club, re-read, Page-to-Screen Challenge)
23. The Cariboo Horses - Alfred Purdy (Canadian Book Challenge 4)
[February]
22. Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir - Graham Roumieu (Canadian Book Challenge 4)
21. Carrie - Stephen King (re-read)
20. The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton Readalong, The Pulitzer Project, Page-to-Screen Challenge)
19. Adventures with the Buddha - Jeffrey Paine (Support Your Local Library Challenge)
18. Your Right To Be Beautiful - Tonya Zavasta
17. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen (Bookleaves Book Club)
16. To Paris Never Again - Al Purdy (Canadian Book Challenge 4)
15. The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton
14. Book Lust To Go - Nancy Pearl
13. Mother Love, Deadly Love - Anne McDonald Maier
[January]
12. Parched - Heather King
11. The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason (Bookleaves Book Club)
10. Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell (Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge)
9. White Noise - Don DeLillo (Bookleaves Book Club)
8. Veronica - Mary Gaitskill
7. Loving Frank - Nancy Horan
6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth - Jeff Kinney (TBR Challenge)
5. Hitch-22 - Christopher Hitchens (TBR Challenge)
4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (TBR Challenge)
3. A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler (The Pulitzer Project, TBR Challenge)
2. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (Bookleaves Book Club, TBR Challenge)
1. The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe (Reading Madly Challenge, TBR Challenge)

2011's Whole Damn Shootin' Match

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

A few from Bybee's Class of 2011

Total number of books:
112

Pages read:
29,797

Average # of pages per book:
266 pages

Library books:
9

Kindle/Nook books: (New category this year!)
19

Fiction:
61

Nonfiction:
42

Poetry:
2

Audiobooks:
1

Graphic Novels:
6

Book/Movie Experiences:
5 (I meant to have so many more)

Shortest Book:
I Have to Go! - Robert Munsch (23 pages)

Longest Book:
A Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell (725 pages)

Newest Book:
The Misanthrope's Guide to Life - Meghan Rowland and Chris Turner-Neal (September 18, 2011)

Oldest Book:
An Old-Fashioned Girl - Louisa May Alcott (1870)

Hit Me Baby One More Time (books I reread):
True Grit - Charles Portis
Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
A Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell
Carrie - Stephen King

Chunky Monkeys (books with 500+ pages) :
4

Skinny Minnies (books with fewer than 100 pages) :
15

Funniest Book:
Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir - Graham Romineau

Saddest Book:
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick

New Miserable Experience
(books I finished but didn't really care for) :
Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter - Simone De Beauvoir
Little Men - Louisa May Alcott
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay
Please Don't Shoot My Dog - Jackie Cooper
Joshua Then and Now - Mordecai Richler
The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery

Book I feel guilty for not liking:
The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

There's Good in Goodbye (The DNF Files):
Three Generations - Yom Sang-Seop
The Criminal - Jim Thompson
A Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s - Ann Douglas
Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits - Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi

I'll Tumble 4 Ya (books I really liked):
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Hitch-22 - Christopher Hitchens
Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell
The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton
The Cariboo Horses - Al Purdy
The Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney
Room - Emma Donoghue
American Bee - James Maguire
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
A Stolen Life - Jaycee Dugard
My Thoughts Be Bloody - Nora Titone
Are You Really Going to Eat That? - Robb Walsh
The Jump-Off Creek - Molly Gloss
The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt
Joe - Larry Brown
Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father - John Matteson

You From Around Here? (Author Nationality):
Belgium - 1
Canada - 16
England - 7
France - 3
Ireland - 1
Russia - 2
Scotland - 1
South Africa - 1
South Korea - 1
United States - 77

Male authors: 59
Female authors: 51
Co-authors: 2

Books written before 1800: 0
Books written 1800-1899: 4
Books written 1900-1960: 22
Books written 1961-1999: 29
Books written 2000-2011: 46

Pulitzer prizewinners:
4 (3 fiction, 1 biography)

Happy discoveries:
Wendy McClure, Patrick DeWitt, Meghan Rowland and Chris Turner-Neal and The Sheila Variations

2011 Challenges completed:
Paris in July
The Western Readalong
The Foodies Challenge
Edith Wharton Readalong
100+ Challenge

Canada Try:
4th Canadian Book Challenge 11/13.
Sigh. No real maple syrup down the front of my Habs jersey.

Happy Book Year -- Time for some reading resolutions!

Bridge Book

2011-12-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

For the first time since December of 2005 (The Human Stain), I think I'm going to have a 'bridge book' -- a book that I start in one year and finish up in the next.

It's Taylor Caldwell's fault. My longtime literary crush on her suddenly burst into ardent flame over the holidays. After polishing off A Prologue to Love, I found another of her books, The Wide House (1945) on my TBR and was compelled to begin it even though I had to go back to work the day after Christmas and The Wide House qualifies as a Chunkster.

Call it the grumblings of a fussy old bookworm, but bridge books annoy me. I like to have the decks clear and everything counted up tidily for the old year and the new year ahead of me clean and bare, but shining with possibilities. I have the same feeling when I have an unfinished book at the end of a readathon.

Although bridge books offend my OCD bookworm, the downside of finishing a book in the late hours of the old year is that the finish might come too early. Back in 2008, I was aiming for my first triple-digit year. I hit my dinger (Endurance) somewhere around 6 pm on December 30. Basking in my triumph, I decided not to start another book until January 1. Although you could count that time in mere hours, it felt interminable. By 11 pm on the 31st, my fingernails were all bitten down and I was pacing around my apartment carrying Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. As soon as the midnight fireworks were done, I cracked the cover.

Last year, I finished my book (Stuff) mid-afternoon on the 31st. I flew from the US to Korea the following day, and by the time I settled in my airplane seat for the long flight, I was ravenous for the printed page. I ran through The Best of Everything like pigs through the corn.

The beauty part of the bridge book seems to be that since a lot of the heavy lifting has been done in the previous year, a reader can hit the ground running and almost immediately begin posting stats for a new book year. There's also not that aching withdrawal. Some year though, I'd like to strike that perfect balance and finish a book just before the clock strikes twelve.

The DNF Files: Three Generations - Yom Sang-seop

2011-12-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

From the book jacket:

Touted as one of Korea's most important works of fiction, Three Generations (published in 1931 as a serial in Chosun Ilbo) charts the tensions of the Jo family in 1930s Japanese-occupied Seoul. Delving deeply into each character's history and beliefs, Yom Sang-seop illuminates the diverse pressures and impulses that drive them. This Korean classic, often compared to Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters, reveals the country's situation under Japanese rule, the traditional Korean familial structure, and the battle between the modern and the traditional. The long-awaited publication of this tour de force is a vital addition to the Korean literary canon available in English.

I'm terribly disappointed with myself for not getting along better with this book. After about 50 pages, I thought it was meandering, and I chafed against its rhythms. Maybe it's the book. Maybe it's me. I don't know. When I first found it, I was excited to be reading a Korean novel that was both literature and a slice of history. This is in my DNF files, but it may be a short stay before it goes back on the TBR.

Christmas Shopping Gone Wrong: A Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell (1961)

2011-12-20T07:57:00.000-08:00

I had to wheedle and beg a United States member of Bookcrossing to send me her copy of A Prologue to Love a few years ago. She didn't want to ship it overseas; I had to sweeten the deal by swapping a couple of fairly new books with her, the titles of which I've long forgotten.

So glad I did. Whenever I'm in the mood for some comfort reading, A Prologue to Love satisfies like no other novel. I've got it out again and am reading it. Knowing the book so well, I can just dip in anywhere, and since it's nearly Christmas, I thought I'd go to the scene that turns the main character into a miser and recluse for good. She was already on the road, but the results of her unfortunate Christmas shopping trip gave it the final twist.

For those unfamiliar with this novel, A Prologue to Love (1961) is the story of Caroline Ames, the world's richest woman. I believe this fictional character is loosely based on Hetty Green, a wealthy miser known as "The Witch of Wall Street.".

Caroline's beginnings are like something out of Dickens or Bronte. Born sometime around 1860, she's growing up in extreme poverty in a town outside of Boston. She's motherless because her mother got sick and her father was too cheap to call a doctor in time. Caroline's father, a millionaire, is always away traveling and he is revolted by her because she resembles his father, an artist who found fame only posthumously after keeping his own family penniless for years. Caroline can't see that her father despises her. She worships him.

Even though her father doesn't like her looks, he recognizes that she is intelligent, and begins a systematic training to make her a miser like himself. He starts with fear, telling her that people with no money are no better than stray dogs and deserve, like the dogs, to be laughed at and kicked away. He tells her that she must not spend any money. She must save it against that eventuality. John Ames doesn't let her in on the fact that he's one of the richest men in the world. Naturally good and noble, Caroline begins to grow sullen towards her other relatives and her friends, who are alarmed at what her father is doing to her.

Now living in Boston with her father and her aunt, Caroline realizes that for the first time, it's permissible to exchange Christmas presents. Her father frowned on it all her life. Caroline makes a plan to go Christmas shopping. Mindful about getting the most for her money, she makes a plan to take the horse-drawn streetcar to the low-rent side of Boston and shop for gifts at a store there that she frequented with her beloved nurse and housekeeper when she was a child.

While Caroline is in the store, engrossed in picking out items from the rather shoddy stock, her purse strap is deftly cut from her arm by a thief. Noticing that it's gone, she believes that she left it on the streetcar and starts to run out the door with the would-be purchases still in her hand. The store cop thinks she is one of many shoplifters that he sees on a daily basis, and pulls her back in the store. When she struggles, he slaps her. Then the cop notices that there's something different about her, even though she's dressed in ill-fitting and shabby clothing like most of the other customers. He drags her back to the owners' office, and they interrogate and abuse her, saying that she's probably a whore because her hands aren't rough from menial labor.

Caroline tells her story about losing her purse and they laugh at her. She's too rattled to ask for a messenger to be sent to her aunt's home on Beacon Street, but the store cop grows more uneasy because he's noticed that even though she's scared, she's sporting an upper-class accent. She looks well-fed, her hands are smooth and her hair is clean and fixed neatly.

Finally, Caroline convinces them that she's telling the truth and the men all have an "oh shit" moment. Since she's young (about seventeen), they cajole her into believing that it was all a misunderstanding and no hard feelings. They give her the cheap crap for free and have her sign a paper (which she doesn't read because she's too upset) promising not to hold them liable for anything. They send her home in a hired hack, and the driver pulls up to the servants' entrance. Too intimidated, she waits till he drives off then creeps around to the front door.

Her aunt finds Caroline in her bedroom, still in her hat and coat, shaking. She figures Caroline got a chill, then when she finds out that Caroline lost her purse, she shrugs off the lost seventy-five dollars. The girl won't confide in her -- or anyone, till much later in the novel -- but the shrewd and observant aunt notices after that day, Caroline begins dressing a a little bit better and carries a purse with a stout strap in a stranglehold grip all the time. More than her father's corrupt teachings, this Christmas incident will inform the rest of her life.

I absolutely love this book. It should be made into a movie, or even better, a miniseries.

Canape Reviews

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

mantinga.co.uk So yummy and so clever

I don't know about you, but I could live on canapes. If I were stinking wealthy, I'd hire a chef or two that had majored in hors d'oeuvres at Le Cordon Bleu or wherever and give them orders to keep 'em coming. Breakfast lunch and dinner. Savory and sweet. Kistchy offerings to amuse me, featuring that nacho-flavored cheese in the aerosol can. Retro nibblings, like mini pigs-in-the-blankets and devilled eggs for that Proust-y side of me. Healthy bites, like baby vegetables for when I'm feeling Puritan and austere. Appetizers from abroad, so that I might feel all smarty and pleased about the expatriate side of myself. And of course, canapes shaped like triangles, because that's my favorite food shape.

I should never try to write a blog entry when I'm really more interested in food entry. Anyway, here are some morsel-sized reviews of books I've read lately. It embarrasses me slightly to admit that they began life as Facebook statuses, but I rearranged them on a silver-plated tray and added some garnish. Enjoy!

The Mist - Stephen King. A short novella that was originally part of Skeleton Crew. After a summer storm, a heavy mist descends across Maine, and there are eely tentacled monsters in it capable of destruction on a large scale. Townspeople trapped in the local food market wonder if it's an army experiment gone way wrong. I've always been rather fond of foggy weather; now I'm not so sure. Looking forward to downloading the movie version, which was directed by Frank Darabont, who has also directed other works by King, including The Shawshank Redemption.

Darkness Visible - William Styron. Short memoir of Styron's bout with depression back in the mid-80s. A little sparse, but even brief encounters with depression should be recorded, since it's a sneaky disease that is still difficult to understand. Styron's labyrinthine sentences are so beautifully structured.

Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K. Jerome. Sequel to Three Men in a Boat. Ten years after their trip down the Thames, George, Harris and J. decide they need a bicycle trip in the Black Forest. Starts out hilariously (I'm positive that Robert Benchley was influenced by Jerome -- that sly befuddled style) but turns into a travelogue then goes off the rails on a crazy train and becomes a critical analysis of the German people. Hugh Laurie read this on the BBC back in 2002, so I tried to imagine his voice. It got me over the rough spots.

I'm Not the New Me - Wendy McClure. After an unpleasant encounter with a photo of herself doing karaoke in Las Vegas, Wendy hies herself off to Weight Watchers and starts an online journal about her weight-loss called Pound. It's not the typical weight-loss memoir; Wendy doesn't feel comfortable being an inspiration for others. Frank, humorous, and thoughtful. The vintage WW recipe cards are a hoot. Read this one as well as her most recent book, The Wilder Life.

Last Exit Before Toll - Neal Shaffer. Graphic novel. Businessman Charles Pierce feels like he's sleepwalking through his life. His car breaks down in rural Virginia and it takes days to fix it. During that time, the locals make him feel welcome and he begins drifting into a new and comfortable kind of life. I didn't care for the ending at all.

Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin. 1967 horror novel that still packs a chill or two. This copy has an excellent introduction by Chuck Palahniuk, who pointed out that in horror novels, people usually encounter horror somewhere other than their own home (like a haunted house), so Levin's book was groundbreaking.

Everyday Foods in War Time - Mary Swarz Rose. Written in 1917-18, this short (107 pages) book exhorts U.S. citizens to do their patriotic duty by cheerfully enduring the rationing of "wheat, meat, sugar and fat" but also illustrates how to get the most nutritional bang for their buck. Recipes included. An interesting look at history through food. I'd like to read more of Swarz's work.

Joe - Larry Brown. The setting is 1980s rural Mississippi. It's like William Faulkner and Jim Thompson got together and went on a bender then drove drunk over to Erskine Caldwell's place to see what kind of trouble the three of them could get into. Joe is a rough character, but he's got a noble cast to him. His counterpart, Wade Jones, is one of the most despicable fictional creations you'll ever encounter. He's the equivalent of crud on the bottom of your shoe.

The Blue Sweater - Jacqueline Novogratz. Nonfiction. A woman trained as an international banker and primed for Wall Street uses her education to go to Africa and discover, by trial and error, the best ways to help the poorest citizens succeed with their small businesses. This book will help me to be more thoughtful about how I contribute to charity.

Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick. I was reading this over Halloween weekend and it was a hell of a lot scarier than the usual horror fare. Great research, reporting and excellent writing about the most enigmatic nation in the world and its strange government. My admiration for the sheer gutsiness and determination of Koreans increased a hundredfold.

U and I -Nicholson Baker. Baker, best known as the author of Vox, delves into his hero-worship of John Updike with his usual prickly and picky flair. Fun for Updike fans or Baker fans, or both, like me.

Hope you enjoyed snacking on my reviews. I don't see any parsley stuck between your collective teeth -- I'd tell you; I really would.

Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin

2011-12-12T05:10:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else think that the cover of this book is a little creepy? Doesn't the woman on the cover look sort of doll-like, waxen? Even that shadow across the top part of her face doesn't quite save it from that posed look. Maybe it's the hand, too. Oooh, look! I'm being distraught!

Please Look After Mom is the story of a family whose elderly matriarch gets lost on a Saturday afternoon at Seoul Station when she and her husband come from the country to the big city to visit their grown children. The family searches for Mom and in flashbacks, each feels guilt in whatever part they played in her disappearance, but the search efforts seem pretty lackluster.

I'm so grumpy. I wanted to absolutely love this book and I don't. I don't hate it -- I'm disappointed with some of the author's choices, but I love being able to recognize the history, culture, traditions and locations of the country I've lived in for the past seven years. I also understand that the novel is going to play to Korean sensibilities much differently than it will play to someone with Western sensibilities. I'm really pleased that it's an international bestseller. Ever since I moved to South Korea in 2004, I've been waiting for that breakout hit.

'Hit' proves to be an apt word because author Shin unmercifully beats her characters as well as her readers over the head with the following message: MOM GOOD. FAMILY BAD. In case the reader is in doubt, the parts of the book with the aloof, cranky older daughter (a novelist) and the horrible, self-centered philandering husband are written in second person, which gives the feeling of a tongue-lashing without end.

Seen through the family's eyes, Mom was perfect, but her gifts were taken for granted until she was gone. She's a lot like O-Lan in The Good Earth, every breath a sacrifice for someone, mostly her children. Seeing Mom in flashback, contriving for her family and trying to keep everyone from going hungry was admirable and made for good reading, but it just went on and on. Mom becomes too good to be true; she strains credulity. Likewise, the family, particularly the husband, is a little too shitty. Shin lays it on with a trowel and it starts to have the opposite effect that she intended.

But wait! Mom is not only the Korean version of O-Lan -- Mom is Korea itself. Mom is kind and selfless Old Korea and the family represents thoughtless and soulless Modern Korea, which has run off and totally forgotten her. She can wander through the darkest and dankest alleyways in Seoul, bruised and bleeding and time slips away while her family argues about what should go on a 'missing' poster that has a bad picture, erroneous information and a stingy reward.

Does every book about Korea have to be an allegory? For example, An Appointment with my Brother by Yi Yun-Mol was good, but of course the narrator is South Korea and the brother is North Korea. Why does Mom have to be Korea? Why can't she just be an old lady that got lost at Seoul Station? It feels like Kyung-Sook Shin is straining too hard to force in all the elements of good literature.

Speaking of straining: The novel is told from four points of view: Oldest daughter, oldest son, husband, then Mom herself. Four parts would have been an appropriately somber touch, since the number four in Korean sounds like the Chinese word for death. However, Shin returns to the oldest daughter -- the novelist -- for a fifth section that feels awkward and amateurish and drags it all down. If you just stopped after the fourth section, the novel would feel so much richer and you wouldn't miss a thing. I promise.

Perhaps I would like the movie version of Please Take Care of Mom better. I'm pretty sure there will be one. I'm confident that this novel can be interpreted successfully. Of all the art forms in Korea, cinema seems to be the one that is leaps and bounds ahead of the others. A filmmaker would have a lighter and defter touch, using images to imply and inform. Maybe a competent and wise scriptwriter adapting the novel would pare down the dialogue and even give that clunky final section the heave-ho. I hope so; I really want to love this story on some level.

Happy 181st Birthday, Emily Dickinson

2011-12-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Emily Dickinson has been on my radar most of this year. Since I moved to the English department in March, I have seen the poster below every day.

Then Park Joo-Young, one of the Korean professors in the English department, came back from her sabbatical. She wrote her dissertation about Emily Dickinson, so we talked a lot about her one day at lunch. Joo-Young's got a complete Emily shelf in her office. Everytime I see it, I sigh with that weird emotion lodged between bliss and jealousy.

After that, I was reading about Noah Webster for the History of the English Language class I'm teaching. Sadly, the first edition of his dictionary wasn't a big seller, and he had to mortgage his house. He finished the second edition right before he died in 1843. This edition was also not a hit, but Edward Dickinson of Amherst, Massachusetts bought a copy in 1844 for his home library, and guess who carried it around for years and years and read it "...as a priest [reads] his breviary -- over and over, page by page, with utter absorption"? Teenaged Emily! I love it that she, a pubescent little pipsqueak, was infinitely smarter and cooler than the fusty old guys who told Webster that his lexicon was too radical or that he was mad. "Vulgar" (as in common) was another epithet they liked to throw at him.

The Webster/Dickinson connection made me notice that Emily's birthday was about to roll around again. Before you gasp and say, "You really are a lit geek, aren't you?" I must hasten to say that it's not that difficult to keep Emily's birth date in my head because it's only one day off from mine.

When I was in high school, I adored Emily Dickinson's poetry so much that I would lie and tell people that my birthday was December 10, rather than the following day. I was born fairly early (a little after 5 am) on the 11th, so I bristled at the unfairness of missing sharing a birthday with Emily by only a few hours. Things seem to have worked out finally, thanks to living overseas and the 14/15-hour time difference: Friends and family call me on the 11th to say happy birthday and it's still the 10th there! Lame? Yes, but I intend to enjoy it as long as possible.

Anyway, I wanted to do something to remember Emily's birthday this year. My friend and co-worker, Mike was working hard on his songwriting and we were talking about verses, image progression and bridges and the like and I began to imagine that I could write a song, too. Well, I can't. It's harder than it looks. I barely missed the boat for December 10, but as far as meter and talent go, that frigate is way out to sea and I'm just stumbling around on the dock looking for an oar. Happy Birthday anyway, Emily!

TBR Yikes!

2011-12-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

Yikes! is right. There's no other word for my TBR shelf.

Did I say 'shelf'? It's time to unpack my plural forms.

Final TBR count: 298 books. Yikes.

TBR Try Again

2011-12-01T04:52:00.000-08:00

I've got to try this challenge again. I only made it to January 24 last year, so there's room for improvement. This time, the challenge will be approached with great seriousness. (Actually, C.B. said to have fun, but I'll do that, too.)

Part of the problem is that I really don't have a TBR shelf. All my books are mingled together in sections: Baseball*, biography, books about books, Canada, Children's lit, fiction, Flashman, graphic novels, L'Amour, Korea, movies, noir, nonfiction, Pulitzer, presidents.

Even though it might...even though it will make me whimper, I must re-shelve and designate each shelf 'TBR' and 'Already-read'. With a big visual reminder in my face, perhaps I can stay on track. Feeling resolute but apprehensive. Exactly how many books are on my TBR shelf? Time to find out. Stay tuned.

*Mostly baseball, with a couple of books about soccer

Happy 179th Birthday, Louisa May Alcott! (And Bronson, Too)

2011-11-29T02:23:00.000-08:00

Louisa May Alcott 129 years ago, when she was 50.

"November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.
"That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.
Little Women (1868)

November 29 is Louisa May Alcott's birthday. She'd be 179, a far cry from her days as a little woman. Coincidentally, she was born on her philosopher father's 33rd birthday, so Bronson Alcott, who seems so typically Sagittarius, gets his own cake with an infernal 212 candles. Better make it apple or carrot cake -- or maybe just an apple or a carrot. Bronson was a hardcore vegan way before it was in vogue.

I really didn't expect to be saluting Louisa May on the anniversary of her birth. Earlier this year I was ticked off at her when I read that she worked really hard to get my beloved Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned in Massachusetts. Yes, it's true, Huck has got those problem chapters towards the end that make readers want to dig Mr. Clemens up and rap him on the head with Aunt Sally's thimble, but book-banning!? Yikes. That was a hard pill to swallow (I snarled through most of my rereading of Little Men), but Louisa May and I are okay now. I'm just going to pretend that it was one of the horrible side effects of the mercury poisoning.

I'm all warm and sunny about Alcott again because I have just finished Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson. This 2007 dual biography nabbed a Pulitzer the following year and rightfully so. Matteson is everything a reader wants in a biographer. He's done his research (sometimes painfully, as in reading through everything Bronson Alcott wrote -- he should have gotten an award just for that), he doesn't feel that he has to shoehorn all of that research into the book, he's a wonderful blend of intelligence and warmth (He really responds to his subjects and their writings. I had to smile at how relieved he seems as he shows evidence that Bronson, like all of us, gets better as he gets older), and he's a wonderful storyteller. Matteson can write. There's nothing of the visual glue pudding that research-based writing so often resembles. Would it be wrong of me to whine and cajole and order people to their bookstores or computers to get this book immediately?

I'm now reading An Old-Fashioned Girl, Louisa May Alcott's 1870 follow-up to her smash hit Little Women. I shied away from it for years (as I did most of Alcott's other fiction; if Jo wasn't in it, I couldn't be bothered), but since John Matteson liked it, I'm reading it on his say-so, and am about halfway through. Dude was right. I'm enjoying it. Polly Milton, a small-town girl goes to visit her best friend's family. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw and their three children are well-off but a little too caught up in their own individual lives. Compared to her own family, Polly finds them a little dysfunctional and finds ways to brighten their lives during the six weeks she's there. After she leaves, the story jumps ahead six years. Polly comes back to Boston to make her own way as a music teacher and her life intersects with the Shaw family again. There are some preachy parts (Alcott could have fit with ease into a pulpit, if women had been allowed back then) but overall, she tells a pretty good tale.

My Alcott shelf is still pretty full. I've got Moods, a novel that Louisa May Alcott always felt dissatisfied with -- According to my new crush John Matteson, she revised it at least twice. I also have her 1873 novel Work (I remember reading an excerpt in my undergraduate Women's Literature class); Pauline's Passion and Punishment (not sure when it was written, but it must be some of her A.M. Barnard stuff, judging by the title) and another biography, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. I'm scared that I won't like the Reisen biography because I loved Eden's Outcasts so damn much. Ooops. Maybe I should refrain from using swear words in Alcott's birthday post.

Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

2011-11-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

Understood Betsy (1916) is the story of nervous, sickly city kid Elizabeth Ann, who is an orphan living with her two aunts. One of the aunts is elderly and in poor health. The younger one is kind of high-strung and very much a helicopter aunt, although this was the days before helicopters. One day, the older aunt gets really sick and must be cared for full-time. Elizabeth Ann is shipped off to her mother's cousins who live on a farm in Vermont. In less than a year, quailing Elizabeth Ann is transformed into healthy, hearty Betsy who has survived and thrived in the country life and in a country school. She has changed from being afraid of everything (including having to use her own brain) to being quite clever, resourceful and aware of the world around her.

This book made me nostalgic for Vermont -- although I've never been there -- and hungry for creamed potatoes and applesauce and oatmeal and all sorts of good, plain cooking. I developed a bit of a girl crush on Cousin Ann, who is the antithesis of Aunt Frances, the helicopter aunt. With just a few words, she is able to put Betsy's old-ladyish worrying into perspective. On the subject of examinations, (which make Betsy a nervous wreck) she remarks how she always liked them because they seemed fun, like 'taking a dare':

"Someone stumps you to jump off the hitching-post, and you do it to show 'em. I always used to think examinations were like that. Somebody stumps you to spell 'pneumonia' and you do it to show 'em."

When Betsy continues moaning about her mistakes, Cousin Ann cuts her off with: "It [failing the examination] doesn't matter if you know the right answers, does it? That's the important thing...I guess Hemlock Mountain will stand right there just the same even if you did forget to put a b in doubt."

Betsy's little country school seems to be of great interest to the author and she describes it often in loving detail, contrasting it with Betsy's city school experiences. The teacher checks Betsy's levels in each subject and puts her in seventh grade reading, third grade spelling and second grade arithmetic. Then she sets Betsy to helping first grader Molly with her reading lesson.

Betsy is perplexed: "What grade AM I?"

The teacher laughs. "YOU aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in!"

After describing the teacher's methods, Fisher ends the chapter by saying significantly, "It was only a poor, rough, little district school anyway, that no Superintendent of Schools would have looked at for a minute, except to sniff."

I should have suspected something, but it wasn't until the teacher encouraged the girls to bring their dolls to school that I smelled me some Montessori. I was right. A quick little trip to Wikipedia revealed that Dorothy Canfield Fisher worked with Maria Montessori in Italy a few years before she wrote Understood Betsy. Fisher introduced the Montessori method to the United States with her book A Montessori Mother (1912).

In the midst of Betsy's being and becoming, there's an odd little chapter about one of her little classmates whose alcoholic father is neglecting him. The father's not shown as cruel, like Huck Finn's Pap, as in quick with a blow -- it's more like he's too drunk to even notice the boy is alive. Thanks to Betsy's initial outspoken remarks about little Claude's wretched condition, some of the neighbors finally intervene to find a better place for him to live.

I totally loved this book. Even Fisher's authorial intrusion didn't bother me as much as it usually does, as it seemed very sensible and knowing and caring like the Putneys. I love how Betsy's self-confidence and critical thinking skills grow exponentially with each day she spends with Uncle Henry, Aunt Abigail and Cousin Ann. I loved Understood Betsy so much that I went out and found a couple of other (adult) novels by Dorothy Canfield Fisher: The Bent Twig (1915) and The Brimming Cup (1921). I also found Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook.

Shock for the Secret Seven

2011-11-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

Photo Credit: Enid Blyton Society

If I could just forget Helena Bonham Carter and her performance in Enid, I could probably cozy up to Enid Blyton's books -- especially those boarding school ones.

My second outing with Blyton was grand. I liked Shock for the Secret Seven ever so much better than Puzzle for the Secret Seven. First of all, there's that nifty publication date, 1961. Secondly, it seems as if there's a lot more drama in this one. Peter, who is frighteningly Type A for such a young lad, gets a little too caught up in Secret Seven meeting protocol and provokes Jack into quitting. The others shame Peter into writing a note of apology (he makes them all sign it -- Scamper the dog, too) but Jack icily replies:

"Dear Secret Six,
Thank you for your note and apology from Peter. Sorry, but there's nothing doing. I'm finished with you. I'm forming a club with Susie [his bratty sister] Binkie [her equally bratty friend], Bony [A French exchange student] and three others. We'll be the Secret Seven -- and you'll be the Secret Six.
'Jack'

Oooooh. Sick burn.

Right after Peter and the gang decide to struggle onward without Jack, a mystery pops up in their little village. Someone is a dognapper, and this person is stealing expensive and valuable dogs. Among many others, Pam's grandmother's white poodle goes missing, Matt the shepherd's collie Shadow disappears, and then dear old Scamper vanishes in broad daylight while the Secret Sev...Six are having a meeting and trying to figure out who the thief is. Meanwhile, Jack (who has decided that he'd rather go it alone than form a new Secret Seven) is on the case, and he cracks it wide open. As Blyton says, "Good old Jack! Good old everybody!"

Jack graciously accepts Peter's invitation to return to the group, which changes that pesky Six back into Seven and saves the series. As for the villain, let's just say that I was left with a bad impression of both the Royal Mail and men with small feet. Oh well, it's nothing that can't be fixed by some gorgeous hot buns and a cup of steaming cocoa.

Canadian Book Challenge 5: The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt

2011-11-10T19:38:00.000-08:00

I'm in danger of burbling because I loved The Sisters Brothers so much. I'll try to keep the squeeeeing! and the exclamation points to a minimum. I love everything -- the cover, the title, the storytelling style, the story itself, the characters, the setting...I feel like I'm going to squeee! again.

Thanks so much to Jessica and Unruly Reader for bringing this book to my attention. When Jessica said that it reminded her of O Brother, Where Art Thou? my interest was piqued, but then Unruly said the magic words: True Grit.  And she was damn right. It's like Patrick deWitt ate True Grit every day when he was growing up and it's in his cells. I love when authors internalize a certain book and when they write their own it's so good and, as a bonus, you can see the other one shining up at you like a gift. It's not copying or being derivative; it's all about creativity, and there's something higher and purer at work. It's like Margaret Mitchell and Vanity Fair. It's like that guy who wrote The Laments, George Hagen. He seems to have slept with The World According to Garp under his pillow every night.

How to describe this delightful picaresque novel about two outlaw brothers so everyone will want to read it?   True Grit meets Pulp Fiction meets The Coen Brothers.   I'm so pleased that The Sisters Brothers has already received a lot of attention and awards. If it were up to me, I'd hand Patrick deWitt the Pulitzer for fiction right here and now.  He's eligible, isn't he? Someone say yes!

I want everyone to read this book.  Really, really, really, really. I'll gladly forego the niceties of conversation from here on out. This is what my sociolinguistics might sound like until I get what I want or until people start avoiding me:

Person: Hi, Susan. How are you today?
Me: Hi. Fine. Go read The Sisters Brothers.
Person: OK...what have you been up to?
Me: I just finished The Sisters Brothers. It's shit-hot good. You should read it.
Person: Err, OK. See you later.
Me: Call me after you've read The Sisters Brothers.

I'm guessing that there has already been interest in this novel as a movie project, and I can't wait. In the meantime, I'm going to seek out Patrick deWitt's first novel, Ablutions.

The DNF Files: The Criminal - Jim Thompson

2011-11-04T04:47:00.000-07:00

Anywhere you go, I'll follow you down
I'll follow you down but not that far...

I was so disappointed in The Criminal (1953) that even though it's very short (128 pages) I couldn't bring myself to finish it. The book started out promisingly enough but instead of sticking with one point of view and following it down whatever brambly path to hell that it might travel, Jim Thompson doodles around with every possible character and angle in a murder case from the accused teenager to his parents to the press to the law. Holy jumping viewpoint.

He could have pulled it off because he is Jim Thompson, James Myers Thompson, the baddest-assed, nicotine-stained mofo to ever stand at the intersection of Crazy and Corrupt, but he didn't allow himself a long enough venue in which to tell his story well. The Criminal merely reads like a bunch of rough notes. I can't even accuse him of phoning it in. It's more like he sort of scowled at the receiver from across a dingy, badly lighted room.

If Thompson couldn't be bothered, then I can't be bothered. I am one damned annoyed broad, but don't get me wrong; I still love the hard-bitten bastard and his twisted world view.

Canadian Book Challenge 5: Who Brought the Cat?

2011-10-29T01:06:00.000-07:00

In early October, I was all about Margaret Atwood. Wonderful Atwood and her dry, ironic tone. You've probably read her, but have you ever heard her speak? It's one of the true pleasures in a civilized world. I could listen to her all day.

The first Atwood book for this month (my first ever was the 1976 novel Lady Oracle) was a 1991 short story collection called Wilderness Tips. this has been on my TBR shelf for a couple of years. There are some books, like this one, that I hoard like candy because I know I'm going to enjoy them thoroughly and I'm heightening my delight by delaying it. Sometimes that doesn't always work out. I'm thinking of Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill. My fault, not Gaitskill's. When a book sits on your TBR for 5+ years, your expectations can get wildly over-inflated.

Anyway, this was not the case with Wilderness Tips. I knew I would enjoy it and I did. First of all, it contains one of my very favorite short stories, "Hairball", which I first read when it was published in The New Yorker under the title "Kat". Kat, an editor for a fashion magazine in Toronto with a reputation for her edgy style has been hospitalized with a large but benign ovarian cyst. The cyst is removed, and the surgeon saves it for Kat as she requested. While she's recuperating, her married lover whom she has transformed from provincial to cosmopolitan, maneuvers himself into Kat's job and maneuvers her out the door. "Gerald couldn't edit the phone book," Kat thinks, upon hearing that "Ger" is her replacement. I love that line; I can hear Atwood saying it! The current-me loves "Hairball" as much as the much-younger-me did. If you were to read only one story in this collection (but why stop there?) my vote is for this one.

After "Hairball", others I enjoyed were "True Trash", "The Bog Man" and "Death by Landscape". "Weight" was vintage Atwood; a woman is raising money for a battered women's shelter in memory of her friend Molly who was murdered by her spouse. The woman is having lunch with a rich company owner and she bitterly notices that he's viewing the whole thing as a prelude to a seduction. "Isis in Darkness" is one of two stories from a male point of view about a would-be poet who develops a lifelong fascination with an enigmatic female contemporary who is much more gifted than he is. The title story and the last story "Hack Wednesday" I didn't find very strong or interesting in comparison to the others.

My other Atwood read was the 2003 Oryx and Crake, a dystopian novel. The book begins with Snowman who is sleeping in a tree, clad only in a sheet and starving to death. The weather seems to be all messed up and he has to be on guard against threatening and obviously genetically engineered animals like pigoons and wolvogs. There seem to be no other people around except the very odd green-eyed herbivores that Snowman refers to as the Children of Crake, who treat him kind of like a monster and kind of like a prophet. They have created a theology about Oryx and Crake, and always ask Snowman questions about them. Oryx was a a former sex slave who Jimmy and Crake both loved.

Snowman tries to make sense of his world by going back into his past when he was Jimmy, a young boy who grew up in the Compound, where extraordinary people lived (those gifted at science and technology). At school, he becomes friends with Crake, a brilliant and strange newcomer. During these recollections, Jimmy/Snowman makes an actual and treacherous journey back to Crake's top-secret lair, the ironically named Paradice Project.

In the early pages, Oryx and Crake feels a little bit like The Road, but during the passages detailing Jimmy and Crake's teenage years, Atwood's dry wit is apparent. She writes adolescent males so well. She even gets pretty silly with her names for animals and names of products and the video games and websites Jimmy and Crake play and visit, some of which seem creepily familiar. I'm now reading The Year of the Flood, which was published several years later. It is a companion piece to Oryx and Crake. Jimmy's in dire straits at the end of Oryx and Crake, so I hope that he'll turn up or some mention of him will be made in The Year of the Flood.

This huge dip into Margaret Atwood's work makes me sad that my TBR pile of her books is dwindling. After I finish The Year of the Flood, all that will be left is The Tent. It might be time to venture into the pleeblands for more Atwood.

The Elvis Game

2011-10-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sheila at The Sheila Variations is always so nicely obsessive about books, theatre, film, music -- in short, everything I enjoy reading about. She delves and delves into her subjects until you think she can't come up with anything else, and then she comes up with yet another handful of pearls. Brief is not her middle name and I love her for it. I found her last year when I was doing a little of my own obsessing about Harriet the Spy and Louise Fitzhugh and I've been a faithful fan ever since. The way she tears into her topics with such gusto is beautiful and frightening. Did I mention her intellectual generosity? She'll never be accused of merely phoning it in.

Lately, Sheila has turned her predilection for obsession as well as her crackling intelligence and her dizzying writing talent upon The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Young Elvis? Old Elvis? All the Elvises. Any age, any angle, any order.  She's seeing Elvis through a prism, or maybe Elvis is the prism. She's reading about him, she's watching him, she's and loving and analyzing everything. Her delight has become my delight. Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (born January 8, like Elvis) comes to mind. I still smile at the thought of him sitting politely with Bush through all those U.S. State dinners back in 2006, his mind fixed purely on going to Graceland. He'd love Sheila's retrospective.

This lush cornucopia of Elvis has been going on at The Sheila Variations for about a month now. At first, I merely wanted to put on my Elvis Greatest Hits CDs and reread Peter Guralnick's two-volume biography and page through a curious little number on my TBR called The Psychological Elvis (or something like that), but I was so into Elvis by now as well that it just wasn't enough. Maybe a viewing of Kid Creole or Roustabout or Flaming Star? Perhaps my secret guilty pleasure A Change of Habit?  Keeping pace with American retail, I got a jump on the holidays by playing Blue Christmas.

I'm not a huge Elvis fan, but he seems embedded in my life. For me, there was no time before Elvis. We had his albums at home. I grew up being taken to every single Elvis Presley movie that came out during the 1960s then the concert films in the 1970s. For several years, my mom cleaned house to the strains of her Promised Land 8-track. ("Strains" might be the wrong word. She turned it WAAAAY up. Elvis sounded like a drunk. The whole duplex shook.)

When Elvis died, I obsessed about he and my dad both being born in 1935.  For the next week or two, when my dad was at home, I hardly let him out of my sight. I followed him from room to room. When we went to the mall in Oklahoma City, I didn't want to shop. I sat on the bench next to him. "What?" he said irritated.

I shook my head. You could die, I thought. I didn't want to say it; I didn't want him to worry. Even at the mall, Elvis was all over the piped-in music (not Muzak, for a change) -- old stuff, new stuff. My father liked Elvis' last single Way Down because J.D. Sumner was doing those impossibly low notes, and he, like Elvis was a rabid Southern gospel fan.  Southern gospel irritated me, but I did like Sumner's backing vocal and my father was a 1935 model so I tried to dampen down my usual surl and look for things we could mutually appreciate.

All of this has been churning around inside me while I've been visiting Sheila's blog this past month. A couple of mornings ago, I woke up and clearly realized that my longing for Elvis had gone all the way to the bone and taken a peculiar turn. What I really wanted, I couldn't quite have: I wanted to play the Elvis Game again.

The Elvis Game was something my friends and I concocted in third grade (1969-1970). At least three people were needed for the game: A person we dubbed 'the stuck-up dookie brain', an Elvis and the audience. The SUDB was an authoritarian figure always trying to show Elvis how to sing and dance or behave without his customary soulful vocals and trademark gyrations. Elvis would dutifully try to follow these strictures but eventually he would break free and revert to type and the audience would go wild. The SUDB was all sorts of things: a minister trying to teach Elvis how to sing dull, deadly hymns in church while stiffly holding a hymnbook; a stern teacher trying to keep Elvis from making school fun; a drill sergeant attempting to show Elvis proper lockstep marching; and someone that I can't remember that was supposed to admonish Elvis when he wanted to break out and sing The Star-Spangled Banner at a rock-and-roll tempo. (Someone's mother actually yelled at us for that one, saying we were unpatriotic, we were bad Americans for egging someone on to "mock our national anthem.")

The Elvis Game was entertaining because all of the roles were fun. It was a laugh to be the SUDB and adopt an overdone, bossy, straitlaced tone, then crumble into exaggerated frustration; it was always good to be Elvis and be as opposite as the SUDB was telling you to be, while politely agreeing. (My crowning success as Elvis was when I was sternly instructed by the SUDB to "teach arithmetic properly" and I did a sultry --or rather, an 8-year-old's interpretation of sultry -- rendition of the multiplication table to the tune of Love Me Tender. I'm pretty sure I got most of the products wrong, but I even had the SUDB laughing hysterically.) Even being part of the audience was great because you could yell and shout ideas and help raise the outrageous bar. For example, I once coaxed ("coaxed" sounds too gentle) my little brother to don my stringy brown wig and "be" Ann-Margaret.

Sheila's view of Elvis seems much the same as our view in that long-ago backyard game: An Elvis quick to spot bullshit and incapable of dissembling. Not a hint of stuck-up dookie brain about him. He was all about delight and his cool went beyond posturing; it was transformative. Sheila is capturing this. Junichiro Koizumi understands it. I appreciate in varying degrees the performer who was Elvis Presley, but the one I carry in my heart is actually a compilation of eight and nine-year-olds from The Elvis Game.

Readathon: The End

2011-10-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

Which hour was most daunting for you? Hours 8 and 9 were rough.
Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? You can never go wrong with graphic novels or YA.
Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? No.
What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? The challenges were so interesting.
How many books did you read? 3 and 32% of a 4th book
What were the names of the books you read? (unpublished, untitled thesis), The Onion Field - Joseph Wambaugh, The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans - Rick Geary and The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti - Rick Geary
Which book did you enjoy most? The Onion Field
Which did you enjoy least? The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans
If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? Continue with the brief but quality comments to the participants.
How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? Very likely What role would you be likely to take next time? Maybe 80% reading and 20% cheerleading

This is my first totally non-fiction readathon.

Pages read during Hour 24: 70

Total page count: 638

Readathon: Hour 23

2011-10-23T04:04:00.000-07:00

Books read: The Onion Field -Joseph Wambaugh
The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans - Rick Geary (graphic novel)

Books finished: The Onion Field

Pages read: 86

Food: Chocolate-covered almonds

Less than 1 hour to go!