Dolce Bellezza

The Savage Detectives. Group Read Sans Moi

2012-01-27T19:05:00.000-06:00

I tried. I really did. But, I abandoned The Savage Detectives on page 216. The first part grabbed me, at least better than the second part which had more or less random people giving snippets of their encounters with the central characters. Part One tells of Juan Garcia Madero, a seventeen year old poet relating his escapades with the two "visceral realists", Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, who walked into his literature class one day. He is entranced by them, as any seventeen year old would be, but that doesn't make them any different than others who entrance him. Especially the Font family with daughters Maria and Angelica. Or, any other female for that matter.

When I heard the word savage in the title, I assumed it mean savage as in fierce. I didn't equate it with savage as in undisciplined. I found it impossible to continue with a novel containing characters for whom I have neither respect nor interest. Reading about life in the '60s and '70s, the wild antics of teens who know no boundaries and have no goals, reminds me too much of the fools with whom I went to school. What's so noteworthy about the lost souls of a few troubled decades?

I do respect that this is considered one of Bolano's greatest oeuvres (although I far preferred Monsieur Pain and I'm very much enjoying The Third Reich). I do respect that he is paying homage to Latin America and avant garde poetry. I did find great interest in this particular passage:

Joaquin Font, El Reposo Mental Health Clinic, Camino Desierto de los Leones, on the outskirts of Mexico City DF, January 1977. There are books for when you're bored. Plenty of them. There are books for when you're calm. The best kind, in my opinion. There are also books for when you're sad. And there are books for when you're happy. There are books for when you're thirsty for knowledge. And there are books for when you're desperate. The latter are the kind of books Ulises Lima and Belano wanted to write. A serious mistake, as we'll soon see. Let's take, for example, an average reader, a cool-headed, mature, educated man leading a more or less healthy life. A man who buys books and literary magazines. So there you have him. This man can read things that are written for when you're calm, but he an also read any other kind of books with a critical eye, dispassionately, without absurd or regrettable complicity. That's how I see it. I hope I'm not offending anyone. Now let's take the desperate reader, who is presumably the audience for the literature of desperation. What do we see? First: the reader is an adolescent or an immature adult, insecure, all nerves. He's the kind of fucking idiot (pardon my language) who committed suicide after reading Werther. Second: he's a limited reader. Why limited? That's easy: because he can only read the literature of desperation, or books for the desperate, which amounts to the same thing, the kind of person or freak who's unable to read all the way through In Search of Lost Time, for example, or The Magic Mountain (a paradigm of calm, serene, complete literature, in my humble opinion), or for that matter, Les Miserables or War and Peace. Am I making myself clear? Good. so I talked to them, told them, warned the, alerted them to the dangers they were facing. It was like talking to a wall. Furthermore: desperate readers are like the California gold mines. Sooner or later they're exhausted! Why? It's obvious! One can't live one's whole life in desperation. In the end the body rebels, the pain becomes unbearable, lucidity gushes out in great cold spurts. The desperate reader (and especially the desperate poetry reader, who is insufferable, believe me) ends up by turning away from books. Inevitability he ends us becoming just plain desperate. Or he's cured! And then, as part of the regenerative process, he returns slowly-as if wrapped in swaddling cloths, as if under a rain of dissolved sedatives-he returns, as I was saying to a literature written for cool, serene readers, with their heads set firmly on their shoulders. This is what's called (by me, if nobody else) the passage from adolescence to adulthood. And by that I don't mean that once someone has become a cool-headed reader he no longer reads books written for desperate readers. Of course he reads them! Especially if they're good or decent or recommended by a friend. But ultimately, they bore him! Ultimately, that literature of resentment, full of sharp instruments and lynched messiahs, doesn't pierce his heart the way a calm page, a carefully thought-out page, a technically perfect page does. I told them so. I warned them. I showed them the technically perfect page. I alerted them to the dangers. Don't exhaust the vein! Humility! seek oneself, lose oneself in strange lands! But with a guiding line, with bread crumbs or white pebbles, and yet I was mad, driven mad by them, by my daughters, by Laura Damian, and so they didn't listen." (p. 185)

This is one of my favorite passages, ironically penned by a man within an asylum. But, it was simply not enough to cause me to continue, laboriously, through a book I found with little or no meaning to my life. Richard gave me permission to abandon it if it didn't work for me. So begging his forgiveness, I threw in my towel, frustrated with my failed attempts to appreciate The Savage Detectives.

(There will be many more thoughts about this book throughout the weekend, but I'll be in Florida and unable to update my post with fresh links or respond to comments left here. For now, let me link to Caroline's from Beauty is a Sleeping Cat.)

Crossing The Bridge of Sighs by Susan Ashley Michael and Give-away

2012-01-25T17:24:00.001-06:00

As I walked around the city, I let my eyes wander upward to a world of rooftop gardens, frescoes, friezes, and family crests that I'd never before noticed. That is how one morning I discovered Saint Martin carved in high relief above the door of a priest's home close to the San Martino Church. The soldier was stained by time, his sword and foot broken off and lost. But he was on horseback and didn't need his foot. And someone had cared enough to patch the white marble with resins to prevent further cracking. It was true: Every day something was lost in Venice. There was always something to be retrieved, cleaned, mended, and cherished. Once upon a time I wanted everything to be perfect and in order, but life isn't like that. Life is like Venice.

When travel writer Claire discovers her husband has been unfaithful with his Parisian lover, she leaves him to discover her own life in Venice. The scene of her throwing his elegant clothes into the lagoon from the side of the gondola is redolent of times that I, too, have wanted to rid myself of the past. As if simply throwing away someone else's belongings will purge that person from one's life. It isn't that simple, because in the process of forging ahead, we must also examine our own hearts. Our own wants. Our own imperfections.

Fortunately, Claire has friends in Venice. Her dear friend Josie not only bakes her delightful cookies (fregolata, the recipe for which is included with other Italian delicacies in this book) and makes her thick, creamy cups of cappuccino, she secretly writes a personal ad in the hopes of finding someone who can heal Claire's heart.

It is an unsuspecting Claire who thrills to the meeting of Max, with whom she quickly becomes entranced. And the more mundane Michael who introduces himself after seeing her on a landing dock? Who seems to truly love her? He is appreciated, but not adored, as he seems rather dull in comparison to the charisma of Max's passionate style. Whom will Claire choose? With whom will she find an answer to the fulfillment she seeks?

In her book, Crossing The Bridge of Sighs, Susan Ashley Michael reminds us to seek the truth in all things and beware of false beginnings. She also shows us the lovely parts of Venice which makes me ache to return to this city containing, amongst its many bridges, the Bridge of Sighs.

I am giving away a copy to one lucky reader; simply leave a comment with your email should you wish to enter the drawing. The winner will be announced a week from today.

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

2012-01-23T00:21:00.007-06:00

I feel like I've just been living in Kashgar, an Islamic city located within the People's Republic of China, with Millicent, Lizzie and Eva. I've eaten the dates, apricots, melons and bread, drunk the tea, and admired the women who are wives of Mohammed living under his 'care' as long as they obey.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) and Evangline English have come to Kashgar in 1923 with Lizzie's friend, Millicent, to be missionaries. Millicent has brought her Bible, and strong intentions; Lizzie has brought her Leica camera to photograph their story, and Evangeline has brought her diary for it is her plan to write a book, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, which Mr. Hatchett has promised to publish.

On the way to their destination, in the very beginning of the book, these women come upon a young girl giving birth. Millicent is able to help in the birthing process, but the severing of the umbilical cord is construed by the bystanders as a murder. Now they must hide away, in Kashgar, until it is decided what should be done with Millicent.

And the baby? She is taken by Eva, named Ai-Lien, and loved with all of Eva's heart.

Interspersed between this story, are chapters in present day London telling of Frieda, a young girl with a sorrowful past. Her parents have been 'victims' of the 1970's: believing in free love, freedom from possessions, freedom from religion, and consequently find themselves free from nothing. Frieda feels herself being pulled away from the romance she has shared with married Nicholas, and drawn toward the stranger, Tayeb, whom she has found sleeping outside her door one night.

This novel contains everything I love: a multi-layered story line, a puzzle to sort through, travel to exotic places, and the issues of adoption, faith, and love. It is absolutely beautifully written, a novel that I read in 24 hours because I could not put it down. This novel will not be available until July, 2012, so I thank Bloomsbury publishers for sending it my way. I cannot suggest it strongly enough, and I know it will surely be one of my favorite reads for the year.

You can visit author Suzanne Joinson's blog here and her website here.

Sunday Salon: Looking To The End of January. And Beyond.

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-06:00

photo credit here

The close of January brings many things. My birthday on the 30th. My mother's on the 31st. The end of the Japanese Literature Challenge 5. Basically, there are 9 days left to read that one book of Japanese literature which qualifies you. Or, if you've read one book perhaps one book more...

I never seem to read as much as my fellow participants. Still, I'm pleased with what I was able to finish for my own challenge this year:

Strangers by Taichi Yamada
Inspector Iminishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
Villain by Shuichi Yoshida
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui
The Buddha in The Attic by Julie Otsuka

How can one pick a favorite? Impossible! I loved Villain and Inspector Iminishi Investigates for their wonderful mystery, Thousand Cranes and The Buddha in The Attic for their mood, Strangers for the thought-provoking quality that still has me puzzling out the meaning. For that matter, so does 1Q84 which remains my least favorite of Haruki Murakami's books.

If you so choose, please leave me the title of one or two of your favorite Japanese books. I'd like to add them to the suggested reading list for the Japanese Literature Challenge 6 which will begin in June, 2012, as well as have them for my own reading pleasure.

Speaking of reading pleasures, are you ready for February?! That is when the Venice in February Challenge 2012 begins which I am co-hosting with Ally of Snow Feathers. It was her brilliant idea, and I'm so enthused about it I've already read Death in La Fenice by Donna Leon, Across the River and Into The Trees by Ernest Hemingway, and most of Pictures of Italy by Charles Dickens. When it officially starts, I'm looking forward to reading many more books and hosting a few give-aways. Also, Frances is going to join me in reading Henry James' The Wings of The Dove. We're going to read it in our own time, and post about it at the end of the month. Please feel free to join in!

Saturday Snapshot

2012-01-21T09:01:00.003-06:00

I stepped outside to see how much snow had fallen in the night and found mysterious tracks adjacent to my reading child statue (left). I loved how they were caught in the snow, just my reader and some scurrying creature who passed her in the night.

(Also, the bella donna is back in my header. I missed her far too much to replace her afterall.)

You can find more Saturday Snapshots at home with books.

Death At La Fenice by Donna Leon

2012-01-17T07:14:00.002-06:00

Commissario Brunetti is such a likable policeman.

Brunetti, for his part, earned slightly more than three million lire a month as a commissario of police, a sum he calculated to be only a bit more than what his father-in-law paid each month for the right to dock his boat in front of the palazzo. A decade ago, the count had attempted to persuade Brunetti to leave the police and join him in a career in banking. He continually pointed out that Brunetti ought not to spend his life in the company of tax evaders, wife beaters, pimps, thieves, and perverts. The offers had come to a sudden halt one Christmas when, goaded beyond patience, Brunetti had pointed out that although he and the count seemed to work among the same people, he at least had the consolation of being able to arrest them, whereas the count was constrained to invite them to dinner.

And, he works in such a beautiful city.

Brunetti walked up toward the hotel, still lighted, even at this hour when the rest of the city was darkened and sleeping. Once the capital of the dissipations of a continent, Venice had become a sleepy provincial town that virtually ceased to exist after nine or ten at night. During the summer months, she could remember her courtesan past and sparkle, as long as the tourists paid and the good weather held, but in the winter, she became a tired old crone, eager to crawl early to bed leaving her deserted streets to cats and memories of the past.

But these where the hours when, for Brunetti, the city became most beautiful, just as they were the same hours when he, Venetian to the bone, could sense some of her past glory. The darkness of the night hid the moss that crept up the steps of the palazzi lining the Grand Canal, obscured the cracks in the walls of churches, and covered the patches of plaster missing from the facades of public buildings. Like many women of a certain age, the city needed the help of deceptive light to recapture her vanished beauty.

This was a wonderful novel of mystery, uncovering the reasons behind the death of a famous maestro, who was discovered bent backward from poisoning after the intermission of Traviata. Donna Leon writes of her characters vividly and her mystery masterfully. I especially enjoyed the vicarious trip to Venice upon each page.

I highly recommend this for the Venice in February Challenge to come.

Even though the kitties were ready

2012-01-16T11:17:00.003-06:00

to help take down Christmas, I was not.

I'm thinking that the origami I made from the printed word could quite possibly be snowflakes for January...

if you use your imagination.

Sunday Salon: The Library Phantom

2012-01-15T10:27:00.001-06:00

Thanks to my good friend Kevin, I was alerted to the fact that there has been a library phantom at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh. Apparently, a librarian was walking through a reading room when she came upon this:

followed by this:

with these words:

"'This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas...' said a note, addressed to the Library by its twitter name "@ByLeavesWeLive". There was no artist signature, no one to thank. The staff, totally nonplussed, asked on their blog if anybody knew who made it. They described the gift as a "poetree" and waited. Nobody claimed authorship."

Then, at the National Library of Scotland, there appeared this:

"The scene was carved from a book, a mystery novel by Ian Rankin, one of Britain's bestselling crime writers. It seemed like a visual pun, because the book's title was Exit Music."

The mystery deepened when in one of Edinburgh's local movie theaters there appeared these:

Next, there was a dragon at the Scottish Storytelling Centre:

then two more scuptures at the Edinburgh International Book Festival:

The final scupture was found at the Central Lending Library:

Perhaps one of the most interesting things of all is that the artist's identity remains a secret. A fitting solution to a perfect mystery, in my opinion.

(Of course, don't forget to view the Joy of Books animation here.)

The Savage Detectives...Do Not Be Discouraged

2012-01-13T09:18:00.003-06:00

If you're like me and want to read like Richard, Parrish, Stu and Frances when you grow up, you might have to obtain some books which are beyond your general purview. Books like A Void by Georges Perec. Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas. And The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano.

I was all excited when I found The Savage Detectives in our local library. I went out late in the night to get it, as a matter of fact, while still on Christmas vacation. I eagerly opened the first page, read about ten more, and threw up my hands in despair. Stymied, again. (Like the first time I read something by Haruki Murakami.) Faced with terms I couldn't define (such as visceral realism), countries I've never visited, and authors or poets I've never read before, I felt at such a disadvantage that I put the book on my return-to-the-library pile and hoped to forget about my failure.

Until Richard emailed me back. Among other comforting words, he left me this paragraph which helps immensely:

Anyway, the first and third parts of The Savage Detectives (the ones written in a diary format) are kind of traditional in the sense that they become plot-driven with a more or less linear trajectory. The crazy cast of characters and all the writer talk is often over the top, so it may be hard to decipher at all times when Bolaño is mocking or telling truths through the narrator. One important thing to be aware of is that the narrator is a teenager who is in effect describing a certain time period in Bolaño's own life in mid-1970s Mexico City. The Belano and Ulisses Lima characters are fictionalized versions of Bolaño and his best friend, the poet Mario Santiago, who along with many of the other characters in the novel, belonged to a group called the infrarrealistas; these poets, dropouts, artists, etc. terrorized poetry readings much like the visceral realists do in the book. This was a generation of bohemians still influenced by '60s youth culture, and the story the narrator tells is in large part a coming of age story set against this countercultural environment.

I picked up the novel again last night, determined to proceed, and now find myself near page 100 eager to get back to the story tonight after work. So:

Thank you, Richard.
Don't be discouraged other readers, if you were, because there's hope.
I'm now looking forward to the discussion at the end of the month.

Mailbox Monday

2012-01-09T07:08:00.001-06:00

Reamde by Neal Stephenson: "If you are a Stephenson fan who believes “Snow Crash” and “Cryptonomicon” (1999) are his greatest novels, “Reamde” will come as very good news, for in many ways it can be read as a thematic revisitation of those excellent precursors. Once again Stephenson is asking us to think about virtual worlds and information storage; once again, by God, he makes reading so much fun it feels like a deadly sin." ~New York Times

Ugly to Start With by John Michael Cummings: "Ugly to Start With punctuates the exuberant highs, bewildering midpoints, and painful lows of growing up, and affirms that adolescent dreams and desires are often fulfilled in surprising ways." amazon.com

What did you get in your mailbox? Find other mailboxes at home with books.

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

2012-01-08T13:34:00.000-06:00

'Some mistakes...just have greater consequences than others. But you don't have to let that night be the thing that defines you.'

It's hard to type a review with tears in your eyes, and on your cheeks, and falling into the keyboard, but I'll try. Because I just finished Me Before You and I have to write about it now.

There are millions of love stories out there but few that get to the core of what the couple means to one another, a meaning beyond physical attraction and personal fulfillment. But the story JoJo Moyes has written of Will Traynor and Lou Clark goes exactly there.

We meet Will when he is a successful businessman, leaving his gorgeous girlfriend to go to his high powered job. It is a brief introduction, for on the second page he is struck by a motorcycle. From then on, we see him as the quadriplegic he has become.

Enter Louisa Clark, who's lost her job at the Buttered Bun cafe. She is employed by Will's mother to be his caretaker, although she has had no experience with the medical needs of a quad. What she does know, however, is how to be witty, how to be colorful, how to bring more than a spark of joy into Will's life.

What she doesn't know is that Will has promised his parents only six months until he goes to Dignitas in Switzerland, a place where he can die because he cannot bear the life he is forced to live. It is a life with no control, no capabilities, no choices left but one.

This is a complex novel, examining much more than the love between two people. It also examines how our lives can enrich one another, and how we can reach beyond our fallibilites and limitations to show how much we truly care. It is very powerful and deeply moving.

Many thanks to Penguin Books UK for sending me Me Before You by JoJo Moyes.

Read JoJo's blog here.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie: Group Read Invitation

2012-01-07T18:08:00.000-06:00

So glad that I saw a post on Mrs. B's blog, The Literary Stew, about reading Rushdie's Midnight's Children. She and Arti, of Ripple Effects, have decided to read this most worthy work beginning in March. Having never read anything by Salman Rushdie before, this book seems the perfect place to start.

Synopsis from the Man Booker Prize site: Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, at the precise moment of India’s independence, the infant Saleem Sinai is celebrated in the press and welcomed by Prime Minister Nehru himself. But this coincidence of birth has consequences Saleem is not prepared for: telepathic powers that connect him with 1,000 other “midnight’s children” – all born in the initial hour of India’s independence – and an uncanny sense of smell that allows him to sniff out dangers others can’t perceive. Inextricably linked to his nations, Saleem’s biography is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

Accolades: Midnight’s Children, was published in 1981. It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers’ Award and the English-Speaking Union Award, and in 1993 was judged to have been the ‘Booker of Bookers’, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award’s 25-year history.

Also, Midnight's Children is being made into a film for October, 2012.

The reading plan is as follows, with a post for each of the dates below:

March 31 -- Book One
April 30 -- Book Two (Part A ending with 'Alpha and Omega')
May 31 -- Book Two (Part B starting with 'The Kolynos Kid')
June 30 -- Book Three

Won't you join us? We'd love to have you!

Christmas Past

2012-01-06T07:43:00.001-06:00

It's the last day of ~~Winter Break~~ Christmas Vacation for me. I wish I had a lovely photograph of snow to put above my post, but we've had what my husband called "a Tennessee Christmas": lots of gray, rainy weather. It hasn't dampened my spirits.

This was such a lovely two weeks off. They began with my mother and I baking Christmas cookies together while listening to the radio playing glorious music like Handel's Messiah. And each day after that was more special than the one before, from Christmas Eve services with lit candles (I hope they never stop doing that in church, the whole sanctuary holding real flames atop real candles which always seem to burn your hand no matter what holder they're stuck into) to praying for my son's safety on New Year's Eve.

I was able to read so many books! I read Across the River and Into The Trees by Hemingway, Believing The Lie by Elizabeth George, Loving by Henry Green, The Buddha In The Attic by Julie Otsuka, The Bastard by Kim Novak, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane, and now I'm finishing up a new book from Penguin UK called Me Before You by JoJo Moyes. Then I will be concentrating on The Savage Detectives for Richard's and Rise's group read.

There's not much you can give me in the way of presents beyond time to read and time with family. I spent every minute I could with my parents before they left for Florida; then last night my son and I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol before having dinner at Stir Crazy. My boy, my 21 year old man son, sitting across the table from me with a Bud Light. Weird, but wonderful, to see him growing up.

"What are you doing tomorrow, Mom?" he asked.

"Sitting and reading," I replied. "You know, on my 'island', alone with a book. My favorite thing to do."

And from then on, it was tease me about my 'island'. "Look at Miss Ten and Two", he said from the passenger seat as if his driving record is such that he can mock my safety. "She'll be reading on her island tomorrow."

Which is today. Which I will do because on Saturday? It will be time to take down the creche. The tree. The crispy garland over the mantle. My origami ornaments on the little tree on my bathroom counter. Christmas will be officially over.

But, what a Christmas it was.

Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane

2012-01-05T10:28:00.004-06:00

"You know," Cawley said, toeing the grass at his feet, head down, "I've built something valuable here. But valuable things also have a way of being misunderstood in their own time. Everyone wants a quick fix. We're tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don't even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed. Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress. This is not news. Not news at all. It's always been so." Cawley raised his head. "So as many powerful friends as I have, I have just as many powerful enemies. People who would wrest what I've build from my control. I can't allow that without a fight. You understand?"

Shutter Island is an absolutely riveting book, one I was not able to put down since I checked it out with The Savage Detectives two nights ago. It's the story of Teddy Daniels, U. S. Marshall, who comes to Shutter Island in search of a missing woman, Rachel Solando. Ashecliffe Hospital is on Shutter Island, a psychiatric hospital, or penitentiary, for the criminally insane. And it is there that he finds people and events and codes which lead us all to a mind-bending conclusion.

At first I thought this novel was like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, where the doctors win over their patients by giving unnecessary lobotomies. But each connection I had to another book proved utterly false. There was no way I could predict the truth about Shutter Island that Dennis LeHane slowly revealed. What an amazing novel.

“The novel is brilliantly conceived and executed. . . . Its shocking outcome kept me awake deep into the night, as I began to grasp what the author had done to my innocent mind.” ~Washington Post Book World

The Savage Detectives Group Read

2012-01-03T18:47:00.000-06:00

I'm off to the library in a moment because it actually has three copies of Roberto Bolano's novel The Savage Detectives. I told Richard, who's hosting the group read along with Rise, that this must be some sort of sign as our local library rarely has anything for people who don't crave Nora Roberts.

Anyway, the 2011 Roberto Bolano Reading Challenge will be drawing to a close while at the same time 'ushering' in the new year with the group read of The Savage Detectives. Richard says,

For those not very familiar with the work, The Savage Detectives is the 1998 novel/pistol to the head of magical realism that provided the commercial and critical breakthrough to set the Chilean Bolaño on his path as the most important writer to come out of Latin America since Gabriel García Márquez. Many Bolaño fans consider it Bolaño's best work--yes, even better than his posthumous, much more critically-lauded 2666--and while I won't get into that argument here, I can see why some people might feel that way given its livewire writing style, narrative experimentation, and scabrous humor.

How can you say no to that? I can't, and so I'm off to the library as initially stated. Perhaps you'll join us?

The Buddha In The Attic by Julie Otsuka

2012-01-01T19:35:00.000-06:00

COME, JAPANESE!

One of us on the boat became pregnant but did not know it, and when the baby was born nine months later the first thing she would notice was how much it resembled her new husband. He's got your eyes. One of us jumped overboard after spending the night with a sailor and left behind a short note on her pillow: After him, there can be no other. Another of us fell in love with a returning Methodist missionary she had met on the deck, and even though he begged her to leave her husband for him when they got to America she told him that she could not. "I must remain true to my fate," she said to him. But for the rest of her life she would wonder about the life that could have been. (p. 15)

WHITES

Most of them took little notice of us at all. We were there when they needed us and when they did not, poof, we were gone. We stayed in the background, quietly mopping their floors, waxing their furniture, bathing their children, cleaning the parts of their houses that nobody but us could see. We spoke seldom. We ate little. We were gentle. We were good. We never caused any trouble and allowed them to do with us as they pleased. We let them praise us when they were happy with us. We let them yell at us when they were mad. We let them give us things we did not really want, or need. If I don't take that old sweater she'll accuse me of being too proud. We did not bother them with questions. We never talked back or complained. We never asked for a raise. For most of us were simple girls from the country who did not speak any English and in America we knew we had no choice but to scrub sinks and wash floors. (p. 44)

CHILDREN

Soon we could barely recognize them. They were taller than we were, and heavier. They were loud beyond belief. I felt like a duck that's hatched goose's eggs. They preferred their own company to ours and pretended not to understand a word that we said. Our daughters took big long steps, in the American manner, and moved with undignified haste. They wore their garments too loose. They swayed their hips like mares. They chattered away like coolies the moment they came home from school and said whatever popped into their minds. Mr. Dempsey has a folded ear. Our sons grew enormous. They insisted on eating bacon and eggs every morning for breakfast instead of bean-paste soup. They refused to use chopsticks. They drank gallons of milk. They poured ketchup all over their rice. They spoke perfect English just like on the radio and whenever they caught us bowing before the kitchen god in the kitchen and clapping our hands they rolled their eyes and said, "Mama, please." (p. 74-5)

TRAITORS

Perhaps the church would intervene on our behalf, or the President's wife. Or maybe there had been a terrible misunderstanding and it was really some other people they had meant to take. "The Germans," someone suggested. "Or the Italians," said someone else. Someone else said, "How about the Chinese?" Others of us remained quiet and prepared to leave as best we could. We sent notes to our children's teachers, apologizing to them in our broken English for our children's sudden and unexpected absence from school. We wrote out instructions for future tenants, explaining to them how to work the sticky flue in the fireplace and what to do about the leak in the roof...We did last loads of wash in our laundries. We shuttered our groceries. We swept our floors. We packed our bags. We gathered up our children and from every town in every valley and every city up and down the coast we left. (p. 103)

A DISAPPEARANCE

People began to demand answers. Did the Japanese go to the reception centers voluntarily, or under duress? What is their ultimate destination? Why were we not informed of their departure in advance? Who, if anyone will intervene on their behalf? Are they innocent? Are they guilty? Are they even really gone? Because isn't it odd that no one we know actually saw them leave? You'd think, says a member of the Home Front Commandos, that one of us would have seen something, heard something. "A warning shot. A muffled sob. A line of people disappearing into the night/" Perhaps, says a local air-raid warden, the Japanese are still with us, and are watching us from the shadows, scrutinizing our faces for signs of grief and remorse. Or maybe they've gone into hiding beneath the streets of our town and are plotting our eventual demise. Their letters, he points out, could easily have been faked. Their disappearance, he suggests, is a ruse. Our day of reckoning, he warns, is yet to come. (p. 124)

In The Buddha In The Attic, Julie Otsuka creates a piercing look at what it meant to be a Japanese woman coming to America just before WWII. Her writing in this novel uses a collective voice; the women tell their story in one pronoun such as "we" or "our". This method unites them in purpose and spirit, while showing me, an American, just what they endured. The Buddha in The Attic is as powerful a work as I found When The Emporer Was Divine to be, one which does not illict false sympathy but rather true empathy, from her readers.

Times' 100 Best Books

2011-12-31T15:05:00.000-06:00

A - B

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

C - D

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

A Death in the Family by James Agee

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Deliverance by James Dickey

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

F - G

Falconer by John Cheever

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

H - I

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

L - N

Light in August by William Faulkner

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Lolita byVladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

~~Loving~~ by Henry Green

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Money by Martin Amis

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

Native Son by Richard Wright

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

1984 by George Orwell

O - R

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

S - T

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre

The Sun Also Rises byErnest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

U - W

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise by Don DeLillo

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

(Find the list here.)

Pulitzer Prize Winners

2011-12-31T15:04:00.000-06:00

The Pulitzer Prize Challenge

2011-A Visit From The Goon Squard by Jennifer Egan

2010-Tinkers by Paul Harding

2009 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2008 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2007 - The Road (McCarthy)

2006 - March (Brooks)

2005 - Gilead (Robinson)

2004 - The Known World (Jones)

2003 - Middlesex (Eugenides)

2002 - Empire Falls (Russo)

2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Chabon)

2000 - Interpreter of Maladies (Lahiri)

1999 - The Hours (Cunningham)

1998 - American Pastoral (Roth)

1997 - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (Millhauser)

1996 - Independence Day (Ford)

1995 - The Stone Diaries (Shields)

1994 - The Shipping News (Proulx)

1993 - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Butler)

1992 - A Thousand Acres (Smiley)

1991 - Rabbit at Rest (Updike)

1990 - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Hijuelos)

1989 - Breathing Lessons (Tyler)

1988 - Beloved (Morrison)

1987 - A Summons to Memphis (Taylor)

1986 - Lonesome Dove (McMurtry)

1985 - Foreign Affairs (Lurie)

1984 - Ironweed (Kennedy)

1983 - The Color Purple (Walker)

1982 - Rabbit is Rich (Updike)

1981 - A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole)

1980 - The Executioner’s Song (Mailer)

1979 - The Stories of John Cheever (Cheever)

1978 - Elbow Room (McPherson)

1977 - None given

1976 - Humboldt’s Gift (Bellow)

1975 - The Killer Angels (Shaara)

1974 - None given

1973 - The Optimist’s Daughter (Welty)

1972 - Angle of Repose (Stegner)

1971 - None given

1970 - Collected Stories by Jean Stafford (Stafford)

1969 - House Made of Dawn (Momaday)

1968 - The Confessions of Nat Turner (Styron)

1967 - The Fixer (Malamud)

1966 - Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter (Porter)

1965 - The Keepers Of the House (Grau)

1964 - None given

1963 - The Reivers (Faulkner)

1962 - The Edge of Sadness (Edwin O’Connor)

1961 - To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

1960 - Advise and Consent (Drury)

1959 - The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Taylor)

1958 - A Death in the Family (Agee)

1957 - None

1956 - Andersonville (Kantor)

1955 - A Fable (Faulkner)

1954 - None

1953 - The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)

1952 - The Caine Mutiny (Wouk)

1951 - The Town (Richter)

1950 - The Way West (Guthrie)

1949 - Guard of Honor (Cozzens)

1948 - Tales of the South Pacific (Michener)

1947 - All the King’s Men (Warren)1946 - None

1945 - Bell for Adano (Hersey)1944 - Journey in the Dark (Flavin)

1943 - Dragon’s Teeth I (Sinclair)

1942 - In This Our Life (Glasgow)

1941 - None

1940 - The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)1939 - The Yearling (Rawlings)

1938 - The Late George Apley (Marquand)

1937 - Gone with the Wind (Mitchell)1936 - Honey in the Horn (Davis)

1935 - Now in November (Johnson)

1934 - Lamb in His Bosom (Miller)

1933 - The Store (Stribling)

1932 - The Good Earth (Buck)1931 - Years of Grace (Barnes)

1930 - Laughing Boy (Lafarge)

1929 - Scarlet Sister Mary (Peterkin)

1928 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Wilder)

1927 - Early Autumn (Bromfield)

1926 - Arrowsmith (Lewis)

1925 - So Big (Ferber)

1924 - The Able McLauglins (Wilson)

1923 - One of Ours (Cather)

1922 - Alice Adams (Tarkington)

1921 - The Age of Innocence (Wharton)

1920 - None

1919 - The Magnificent Ambersons (Tarkington)

1918 - His Family (Poole)

Henry Green Week

2011-12-31T09:14:00.000-06:00

Stu at Winstonsdad's blog is hosting a Henry Green Week from January 23 through January 29. Since this is the first time I'll be reading anything by Henry Green, I've chosen his book Loving * Living * Party Going.

"This volume brings together three of Henry Green's intensely original novels. Green explored class distinctions through the medium of love, incidentally revealing, says John Updike in his reverent introduction, "what English prose fiction can do in this century." Loving brilliantly contrasts the lives of servants and masters in an Irish castle during World War II, Living those of workers and owners in a Birmingham iron foundry. Party Going presents a party of wealthy travelers stranded by fog in a London railway hotel while throngs of workers await trains in the station below. Each novel amply illustrates why Green was one of the most admired writers of his time." (back cover of the Penguin edition)

"The most gifted prose writer of his generation." V. S. Pritchett

"Green's books remain solid and glittering as gems...They are not, like so many contemporary noels, mere slices of life but highly successful attempts at making art give meaning to life." -Anthony Burgess

"The most original...the best writer of his time." -Rebecca West

I've just finished Loving which reminds me so much of the original Upstairs, Downstairs as well as Downton Abbey. It is a wonderful portrayal of the servants in the castle, such that I feel I am dwelling among them.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

2011-12-30T13:01:00.001-06:00

When one of my book clubs chose Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin for our next read, I was only mildly thrilled. Until I read it.

This novel tells the story of Larry and Silas, two boys who grew up together but apart. Setting the distance between them is race, privilege, and the fact that Cindy Walker is dead. Larry is blamed for her death, as he is the one who was last seen with her; he had taken her on a date which he hoped would finally bring him acceptance by his peers. When she forces him to drop her off so that she can meet her real boyfriend, she never appears at 11:00 that night where they'd agreed he'd pick her up. Her disappearance causes Larry, and consequently his family, to be even more ostracized than before.

But this novel is so much more than a mystery, a murder, a plot. Tom Franklin has written of rural Mississippi in a way which made me feel I was there, living it, myself. He creates such characters that they live and breathe off of the page, making my heart ache with compassion for the sorrows and misunderstandings each person endures.

Ultimately, it is a tale of friendship. Of brotherhood. Of overcoming wounds inflicted by hate, fear and poverty. It is a powerful, wonderful novel.

Find more thoughts here, here, here, here and here.

Across The River and Into The Trees by Hemingway

2011-12-28T08:12:00.002-06:00

The Gran Maestro was gone and the Colonel looked at the girl and then at the Grand Canal outside the window, and he saw the magic spots and changes of light that were even here, in the end of the bar, which had now by skillful handling been made into a dining room, and he said, "Did I tell you, Daughter, that I love you?"

"You haven't told me for quite a long time. But I love you."

"What happens to people that love each other?"

"I suppose they have whatever they have, and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness forever."

Across The River and Into The Trees is a painfully beautiful book. If you think, as I once did, that Hemingway is only about guns and war, shooting and bullfighting, drinking and women, think again.

This novel is about Colonel Richard Cantwell, aged 50, with a heart which has been given to more than his 19 year old Italian lover, Renata. His heart has been wounded by an earlier marriage, by lost battalions in WWII, and by coronary disease which causes him to swallow two tablets with gin more frequently than can possibly be good for him. But it is comforted and stirred by his love for Renata.

We are only allowed a glimpse into the life he has with Renata in Venice, a life which appears to be available to them only on the weekends, only occasionally, and for that is all the more treasured. We live with them for the briefest 24 hours, as Richard waits for her at the Gritti hotel after duck shooting. She comes to him, in all her youth and beauty, and we read of every exquisite detail with breathtaking slowness.

This has to be my favorite Hemingway book so far, one I will look for in hardcover to add to my collection. Who can write like this man? Who can tell of a fifty year old hardened Colonel who loves an Italian girl as his "one and best and only true love" more poignantly than Hemingway?

No one.

Softhearted or Snark?

2011-12-28T07:10:00.001-06:00

In the course of my blogging travels, I occasionally come upon a blog which is written with a quick wit. It is funny, and piercing, and pointedly critical. As I read further down, I see that each post is actually filled with snide remarks. For me, a little of this goes a long way.

When teaching children to write, we ask them to find a voice. "Think of your audience," we say. "To whom are you writing?" And so I'm asking, do you prefer to read a blog whose writer's voice is gentle? Or, do you prefer a blog filled with snark? It's engaging, to be sure.

But, after awhile, it's exhausting. To me.

Mailbox Monday

2011-12-26T09:22:00.006-06:00

I have had three lovely books arrive recently, sent by their authors for the upcoming Venice in February Challenge. Each looks fabulous, each will be given away as a prize after I review it in February.

The first is The Four Seasons by Laurel Corona. It is a novel of Vivaldi's Venice. "In glittering 18th-century Venice, music and love are prized above all else--and for two sisters coming of age, the city's passions blend in intoxicating ways. (back cover)

The next is Crossing The Bridge of Sighs by Susan Ashley Michael. "When Claire finds her husband in the arms of a handsome Parisian, her life has reached a turning point. She believed that, along with her profession as an established travel writer, she would have a perfect marriage and a beautiful baby. With her world newly shattered, she travels to Venice where she seeks the comfort of her quirky friend, Josie. Unprepared for love's unpredictable itinerary, Claire finds herself wooed by two men...for Claire, love remains as precarious as life in this watery city." (back cover)

The third is The Venice Experiment by Barry Frangipane with Ben Robbins. "Lured by Venice's colorful history, Barry Frangipane was determined to experience its labyrinth of walkways, canals, and bridges, as more than just a tourist. With this in mind, he convinced his wife Debbie to join him in this grand experiment, a year long cultural immersion in the most legendary city on earth. Through their initiation into Venetian society, Barry and Debbie discovered the close-knit family of inhabitants and innumerable cultural oddities of living in Venice, the improbably city built upon millions of tree trunks driven into the mud sixteen centuries ago. From the exasperating bureaucracy to high tides endangering their ground-floor apartment, these expatriates get far more than they bargained for." (back cover)

I'm so excited to read these, and I hope you'll consider joining us for the Venice in February Challenge 2012, the only requirement for which is to read one book set in Venice.

(Find more mailbox contents at Let Them Read Books.)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T07:25:00.002-06:00

After all the waiting, all the anticipation, all the hope, Christmas is finally upon us. Yesterday, my mother came over, and we baked all day while we laughed, and talked, and drank pots of tea. We made dinner rolls, potatoes au gratin, gingersnaps, and a traditional cookie for my family called Ribbon cookies (which are layers of poppy seed, chocolate with pecans, and cherries in the dough). So delicious.

The doorbell rang unexpectedly at noon, bringing my father with a bag full of steaming pastrami and corned beef sandwiches from Schmaltz's deli. "Oh, good!" I said, "you brought us some bagels for the Christmas tree!" We love to joke, my dad and I, and we don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone in the process. The three of us sat around the table with coffee, and joyfully shared the sandwiches in the middle of a gray Friday afternoon.

The point is, for me? Christmas is made of these times, these surprises, these unexpected gifts of time. Like when my son showed up to my classroom on Tuesday with McDonald's for lunch. He was an hour and a half early, but he sat and talked with the kids, and what matters is that he came. For me.

I don't really care about the presents under the tree. All the food is nice, all the parties are fun, all the sighs of relief when everything is prepared are so satisfactory. But, the best parts of Christmas are the moments with my loved ones. The time to be quiet. The knowledge that our Saviour has come. For us.

God bless you today, tomorrow and for all of 2012.

(Loved the collection of little trees which can be found here.)

Going Forward

2011-12-22T20:36:00.004-06:00

2011. My fifth year of blogging, and what is there to show for it? 100 template changes. 80 books read. The 5th Japanese Literature Challenge hosted. And so few comments left on fellow bibliophiles' blogs I'm almost embarrassed.

I don't aspire to be a powerhouse of a blogger, with a page rank of 6 or more and a row of ads in my sidebar which support me in the manner to which I've become accustomed.

I just want to read the books which call out to me and share the most spectacular. I want to indulge in the classics, the international, the unusual and often obscure books. I want to share challenges together; 2012 will bring the Japanese Literature Challenge 6, as well as the first Venice in February challenge. They both promise to reveal exciting works which I can't wait to discuss.

Thanks for bearing with me in 2011, with the way that I bounce from template to genre with the attention span of one of the third graders I teach. I look forward to all that 2012 will hold. I look forward to sharing it with you.