The Bluestocking Society

The Big Move

2008-05-19T19:27:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking about switching to wordpress for a while now. And today is the today. Please update your feeds and links: http://thebluestockings.wordpress.com.

Oh, What a Literary Weekend!

2008-05-19T13:34:00.002-06:00

Friday night, I met Stephenie Meyer, vampire authoress extraordinaire. The thousand-seat venue was, of course, packed. The doors opened at 5:00 p.m. The event started at 7:00 p.m., when Stephenie took the stage and answered preselected questions for maybe fifteen minutes. Then we (me, my mother-in-law, and three of my sisters-in-law) waited for three more hours for our turn to have our books signed. We went. We met. We had our books signed. Good times.

On Saturday, my sister-in-law Maren and I went to the Provo City Library to meet Shannon Hale, fairy tale authoress extraordinaire. Shannon was scheduled to arrive at 2:00 p.m., but had not shown by about 2:35 p.m. Whilst we were waiting, Maren and I made two predictions, both of which turned out to be true.

Prediction #1. Our spot in line was directly in front of the elevators. I predicted that Shannon would step off of this very elevator and we could just convince her that this was the front of the line. Well, my prediction held partly true—Shannon did get off of the elevator right in front of us, but we did not attempt our line lie.

Prediction #2. Maren mentioned that she thought that Shannon Hale and Stephenie Meyer were good friends. Maren then postulated that Shannon was late because she was hanging out with Stephenie Meyer. As we finally reached the front of the line and engaged in witty banter with Shannon, the truth came out. Shannon was late because she was hanging out with Stephenie. Maren and I, in our line-waiting, chocolate-enhanced silly moods, reacted to this news as if we were thirteen year olds. We turned and pointed at each other and screamed something like “We knew it!”

I have to say that meeting Shannon Hale was better than meeting Stephenie Meyer. Poor Stephenie Meyer was already in her third hour of signing books (with at least two more hours ahead of her) when we finally reached the front of the line, and we could tell she was a little past her peak. On the other hand, we reached the front of Shannon’s line about forty-five minutes after she arrived. Shannon was pleasant and engaging and told us a funny story about Libba Bray. She also personalized our books.

I’m glad that I live in an area that authors actually visit. I really want to support current writers and their work. Leif Enger is going to be doing a reading and a signing in Salt Lake next week, right during book club. Dilemma.

Comfort Food

2008-05-19T12:03:00.003-06:00

I requested Comfort Food from my local library after Trish’s pseudo-review of it. (In fact, she blames her inability to review other books to CF’s readability.) I have, of course, seen the Friday Night Knitting Club sitting on the bestseller’s shelf of my local Borders for months. Trish’s review, though, made me want to read CF first. I did, even though it took me a while to get into it. In fact, I read The Host and Maps and Legends after starting CF. However, once I got into the rhythm of the thing, I couldn’t put it down. Literally. I stayed up WAY past my bedtime last night finishing it.

Gus, our hero, is a food TV star who has hosted a number of her own shows. As she approaches her fiftieth birthday, she is informed that the ratings are way down on her current show, Cooking with Gusto!, and that she is to be part of a new show with the former Miss Spain. Hilarity, of course, ensues. The story is lovingly weaved by the author. Though the ending is wrapped up tight with the bow, I could tell that Katie Jacobs loved her characters too much to end it any other way.

The writing was charming and, at times, hilarious. I liked the current-ness of the subject matter. References are made to a number of recent events and pop culture icons. Also, I liked the behind-the-scenes feel to the TV show. Most of all, I liked the friendly tone of the novel. (Despite my overall positive reaction to the book, I must mention one pet peeve--everyone is thin!! Even the former tennis star turned junk food addict. I hate that.) CF has no pretentions and will likely appeal to a large audience. It’s definitely not high brow literary fiction, but I’m okay with that.

Comfort Food, by Katie Jacobs (75) * * * *

Maps and Legends

2008-05-19T11:51:00.002-06:00

I’m not a big nonfiction reader. I generally prefer my books with to be fictive. Sometimes, though, a nonfiction title will catch my eye, as did Maps and Legends, recently released by Michael Chabon. Maps and Legends is a collection of Chabon’s essays. The essays and their arrangement were infinitely readable. I scarfed down essay after essay about maps and comic books and Sherlock Holmes and Israel. My favorite essays, though, were those that comprised the last half of the book—the essays about Michael Chabon’s own writing adventures. I love writing about writing, which is the main reason I checked out this book.

Michael Chabon has a nice writing style that is difficult to describe. It’s affable and talkative and at the same time, erudite and literary. I’m now working on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I'm sure I'll be as pleased with it as I was with Maps and Legends.

Maps and Legends, by Michael Chabon: (55) * * *

Booking Through Thursday (6)

2008-05-15T10:51:00.003-06:00

This week's meme:

Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?

Do you ever read manuals?

How-to books?

Self-help guides?

Anything at all?

I usually don't read the "accompanying documentation" if I can help it. Yawn. I can usually figure things out without the manual. However, I did read the entire manual for my digital camera and went out and purchased a manual for Adobe Photoshop. It's the exceptions that make the rule, eh? My husband and I cannot assembly to-be-assembled things together. He reads each step in the manual very methodically while I like to jump in and start building.

As I mentioned last week, I don't read how-to books or self-help guides. I generally loathe the self-help genre. I eschew the section in the bookstore. I spit in its general direction. Of the self-help books I've read, most of them could have been whittled down from 250 pages to about 10.

Yes, yes, I read. Mostly, though, I read the fiction. Lots and lots of the fiction.

The Host

2008-05-14T18:43:00.007-06:00

Stephenie Meyer’s new book, The Host, is about aliens, the way her Twilight series is about vampires. The Host is being billed as Meyer’s first novel for adults. I was therefore expecting more from this book than from the vampires. However, this book is written in almost exactly the same style as the teen romances found between the covers of the Twilight series. Once I stopped expecting literary fiction and accepted that the only thing that made this an “adult” book is the fact that the main character is twenty-one rather than seventeen, I enjoyed it more.

The world has been taken over by aliens. Aliens who inhabit the human bodies and live exactly the way humans do. Sort of. Without all the violence and money. Anyway, Wanderer, our hero alien, has previously lived on eight planets and has decided to give the newly conquered earth a try. She gets inserted into Melanie’s body. Melanie was a human insurgent, who tried to commit suicide rather than be used as a host. Most humans fade away when an alien is inserted into them. Not Melanie. Melanie and Wanderer are forced to coexist in the same body, sharing the same memories and experiences. They eventually unite in their hatred of a Seeker (an alien who hunts down remaining humans) and fall in love with the same human. They go off in search of the human and find romance, adventure, and true happiness.

The story is good, even, dare I say, spellbinding, if a little treacly. The main characters, Melanie and Wanderer, are well drawn. But, at 600+ pages, this novel could have used a trim. In spite of the length, I cruised through the slow patches. The major theme--the nature of humanity--was nicely touched on but not wallowed upon. I thought the desert setting was very effectively used. Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I must note that I think the author should have stuck with the first ending and not ventured on into the happy-let’s-see-how far-I-can-stretch-believability ending. Overall, worth the read.

The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (75) * * *

(I'm excited to meet Stephenie Meyer on Friday!)

Poetry Tuesday - Mary Oliver

2008-05-13T21:08:00.004-06:00

During the summer of 1997, my aunt gave me a copy of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems. The collection won the National Book Award. My aunt's copy was dog-earred and loved. I have loved it (and Mary Oliver) ever since. Here's one of my favorites:

Poppies

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of drakness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blad
from hooking forward--
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But also I say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight--

and what are you going to do--
what can you do
about it--
deep, blue night?

Booking Through Thursday (5)

2008-05-08T09:20:00.003-06:00

Today's meme:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

I admit it. My name is Jessica, and I like to read books about grammar and writing. I have lots of writing guides in my library. (Most stay in my nightstand.) Some recent additions include: Making a Literary Life, by Carolyn See; The 3 a.m. Epiphany, by Brian Kiteley; and Story Structure Architect, by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. My wishlist in this area most urgently includes Michael Chabon's new Maps and Legends. I like reading grammar books like Sin and Syntax but I don't seem to buy them. I tend to buy books shelved in the "Literary Criticism" section of the bookstore: How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Reading Like a Writer, etc.

My old standby reference books/manuals include The Chicago Manual of Style, Black's Law Dictionary, and The Bluebook. I, of course, have many others including Webster's Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary, a thesaurus or two, and a Spanish/English dictionary. I also have a book or two about Spanish grammar.
I don't have any "how to" books but maybe those will come once I buy a house.

The New Yorker, 4/14/08

2008-05-07T14:10:00.003-06:00

I haven't been keeping my on my New Yorker review. For the past couple of weeks, I've had this particular issue stashed in my purse for reading emergencies. I'm retiring it today and putting another issue in my purse, so I thought I would do a quick rundown of my favorite articles.

Annals of Law - Camp Justice: The next stage at Guantanamo
Written by the author of The Nine, this article looks at the potential ways the new President might deal with Guantanamo. Thought provoking, if a little too detailed.

Profiles - Somebody Has To Be in Control: George Clooney and the art of fame
This article was interesting but seemed to only graze the surface of who George Clooney is. At first, I was disappointed by that but then I realized that that is the point. George just won't let anyone in.

Fiction - "The Lie" by T. Coraghessan Boyle
This story drew me in in a way that many New Yorker fiction stories fail to do. I read the whole story, start to finish, with no skimming. I didn't like the story. Wait. I didn't like the protagonist. I related. To a point. Young man, disillusioned with wife, baby, job, life tells lies. Just read it.

The Alchemist

2008-05-07T13:55:00.006-06:00

I'm not quite sure how to go about reviewing this fable of a book. Let's start with the basics:

Title: The Alchemist
Author: Paulo Coelho (translated by Alan R. Clarke)
Date Published: 1993
Pages: 167
Genre: Fiction?? (Borders has all of Coelho's books shelved under "Metaphysical Studies")

My Favorite Quotes

"Now I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years."

"I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living."

Character List (in order of appearance)

The alchemist
The boy
The merchant's daughter
The Gypsy woman
Melchizedek, the King of Salem
Owner of the bar
The young thief
The candy seller
The crystal merchant
The Englishman
The leader of the caravan
The camel driver
The Bedouins
Fatima
The guard
The chieftains
Three armed Arabs
Band of rival tribesmen
The monk
The refugees from the tribal wars

Settings (in order of appearance)

Andalusia (Spain)
Tarifa (Spain)
Tangier (Africa)
Oasis (Africa)
Desert camps of waring tribes (Africa)
Coptic monastery (Africa)
Pyramids (Africa)
Andalusia (Spain)

Summaries
Prologue - The alchemist reads a story about the lake who weeps when Narcissus is killed.
Part I - Shepard boy has a dream about the pyramids for the second time. He goes to a Gypsy woman who interprets the dream in exchange for a tenth of his treasure if he gets it. At the Tarifa village, the boy meets Melchizedek, the King of Salem who helps him start on the path of his Personal Legend. In Tangier, Africa, the boy is robbed. He meets the crystal merchant. The boy decides to give up on his Personal Legend.
Part II - The boy works for the crystal merchant for a year, making the business very profitable. He leaves the crystal merchant, once against following his Personal Legend. He joins a desert caravan and meets an Englishman who teaches him about alchemy. When the caravan reaches an oasis, he meets his true love Fatima. He listens to the Soul of the World and is told about a coming attack on the oasis. He warns the chieftains and is made counselor of the oasis. He meets the alchemist and leaves the oasis with the alchemist to head for the pyramids. Along the way, the boy learns to listen to his heart. The boy performs a miracle and turns himself into the wind after conversing with the desert, wind, sun, and "the hand that wrote all." The pair reach a Coptic monastery where the alchemist turns lead into gold. The boy is left alone and goes to the pyramids. He is robbed and beaten by some refugees, one of whom tells the boy of his dream about a treasure in Andalusia.
Epilogue - The boy goes to Andalusia (to the church where he started) and finds a great chest of treasure there. He then heads back to get Fatima.

The Bottom Line: This story is presented in parable/fable form. While there are many benefits to telling the story in the parable format, plot and especially character development are somewhat lacking. However, it is hard to ignore the simple prose and the powerful message contained in this little book. The story is very readable. It made me think about my own "Personal Legend" in the context of my own life and beliefs. I think the universality of this book is what has made it such a success. It is definitely worth the read.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (75) * * * *

LibraryThing Meme

2008-05-07T13:47:00.003-06:00

This list of books is (or was at one time) the most unread on LibraryThing.com. The meme asks readers to categorize the books using a variation on the key below.

Key
Asterisk – I own the book
Bold – I’ve read the book
Italics – I’ve started the book
Stricken – I hated the book
Underline – on my current TBR list

THE BOOKS:

* Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
* Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
* One Hundred Years of Solitude
* ~~Wuthering Heights~~
* The Silmarillion
* Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
* The Odyssey
* Pride and Prejudice
* Jane Eyre
*A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’s Wife
* The Iliad
* Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
* Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
* Atlas Shrugged
* Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
* The Historian
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
* The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
* Frankenstein
* The Count of Monte Cristo
* Dracula
* A Clockwork Orange
* Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
* The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
* 1984
* Angels & Demons
* The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
* The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
* One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
The Corrections
* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
* Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present day
Cryptonomicon
* Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
* Beloved
* Slaughterhouse-five
* The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
* Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
* On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
* The Hobbit
* In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers

TOTALS
Books read: 21
Books owned: 51
Books hated: 1
Books TBR: 15 (really all of them not already read)
Books not finished: 5

Poetry Tuesday - How to Read a Poem

2008-05-06T11:10:00.004-06:00

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” Kahlil Gibran

Reading poetry is a challenging enterprise. I have scoured the vast resources of the internet in search of some simple tools to make the initial encounter with poetry a little more pleasurable.

Websites

I found the following "The 11 Basic Steps to Reading a Poem" here.

Step 1: Read through the poem to get a sense of it.

Step 2: Identify the sentences and independent clauses (circle the periods, exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons). For some reason, people always forget that poetry is made up of complete sentences.

Step 3: Read a few lines to figure out the meter (figure out how many stresses there are in a typical line).

Step 4: Note the rhyme scheme (look for a pattern).

Step 5: Read the poem out loud. Try to follow the rhythm. If you do this you'll hear where the poet plays with the rhythm. And you'll hear the rhyme scheme.

Step 6: Look up any words you don't understand.

Step 7: Re-read the poem out loud.

Step 8: Mark off any sections in the poem. These sections may be speeches given by a character, discussions of a particular topic, changes in mood, or a new stage of an argument.

Step 9: Re-read the poem.

Step 10: Figure out the tone -- the emotion -- of the poem.

Step 11: Re-read the poem.

A similar checklist approach to reading poetry can be found here.

An excellent three-tiered approach based on skill-level can be found here.

Books

The Poetry Foundation has excerpted the first chapter of How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch here. The 16 sections of the book deal with 16 different ways of thinking about a poem. My favorite section is Give a Common Word the Spell. I love the way poetry makes me think about words and language in a new way.

I recently purchased Rhyme's Reason by John Hollander as a treatise on poetic form. Thus, far I have been unimpressed by the book's organization but somewhat pleased with the content.

I also own Harold Bloom's The Art of Reading Poetry but have not yet delved into it.

Finally, I have heard Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook touted as a must for all poets and poetry readers. It's on my wishlist.

Any other suggested poetry resources?

Standing in Line

2008-05-06T10:37:00.002-06:00

Today I arose at an ungodly hour* to go and wait in an interminable (well, it did terminate eventually) line to get tickets to stand in Stephenie Meyer’s presence with a thousand other lunatics. There’s no explaining it. People slept outside. They brought tents and children. They voluntarily SLEPT ON CONCRETE. Then after the pleasure of standing in line, we all forked out the cashola for one freshly minted copy of The Host plus an additional $10 for the event ticket. And there I was #475. Granted, I did not spend the night. I arrived at 7:00 a.m., freshly showered, hair properly coiffed, and bedecked in appropriate clothing. Does that make it better?

The only reasonable entity in this whole scenario is Borders. Borders sold 1000 copies of The Host in a little less than an hour. 500 in Provo; 500 in Murray. Not bad. Even with the 40% discount for us lucky Borders Rewards card holders. That’s me. A Borders Rewards card holder. Worth the 8:00 a.m. opening and the extra staff at the bargain price of just-barely-above-minimum-wage. Definitely worth it for them. The marketing genius. I bow down. Well, mostly I just stand in line and hand over the moolah.

Now the above ranting may make me sound bitter about the line-standing. And now that I put it in print, I think I am. A bit. Mostly because I see more line-standing in my future. Standing in line with the other 1000 ticket holders to fight for six seats together in the giant auditorium. Standing in line, again, with the other 1000 ticket holders to get THREE BOOKS EACH signed by her holiness. Probably standing in line to get overpriced bottled water and will-shrink cotton t-shirts.

This is how deep my love of the books goes. I do. I love the books. I just like ‘em more in the godly hours.

*Any hour prior to me getting nine hours of sleep—all other hours are, by elimination, godly.

Booking Through Thursday (4)

2008-05-01T14:52:00.002-06:00

Today's meme:

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….

I would buy a John Grisham book at the airport book store. Not my first choice, but it would definitely keep me entertained for a few hours. Something more literary would be difficult for me to concentrate on in the midst of a family emergency. Should there not be time for even a John Grisham pit stop, I would ask a flight attendant for a book. Sometimes airplanes have relatively impressive libraries because of the books other passengers leave behind. Another option would be reading the ebooks on my BlackBerry, though I can only do that for short spans of time without going blind.

Poetry Tuesday - Good Poems

2008-04-29T18:48:00.005-06:00

Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, is a lovely collection of lyrically poems from classic and modern poets. There is something here for everyone in the well-designed categories: O Lord, A Day, Music, Scenes, Lovers, Day’s Work, Sons and Daughters, Language, A Good Life, Beasts, Failure, Complaint, Trips, Snow, Yellow, Lives, Elders, The End, The Resurrection

Here is one of my favorites from the collection (the Sons and Daughters category):

I Stop Writing the Poem
Tess Gallagher

to hold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.

This poem is a study in contrasts. Living/dying, girl/mother, giant/small, arms/hands, etc. In fact, it embodies my contrasting feelings on domesticity: bitter and condemned/calm and proud. I particularly like the contrast between the "giant shirt" and the "small girl." A woman/womanhood is a metaphor here for writing a poem, I think. Writing a poem is hard and often gets interrupted, but it's something worth coming back to and teaching to the next generation. I'll keep coming back to this poem.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

2008-04-28T21:37:00.011-06:00

As part of the novella challenge, I read Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote this weekend. The novella is quite short, only 85 pages in the version I read. Still, unraveling the intricacies of Holly Golightly would take up many more pages. For a critical analysis go here.

Holly is twenty years old. She has a somewhat questionable past in that, at fourteen, she married a much older Texan with a slew of children. She had a brief stint in Hollywood, and we find her living in New York, living off of tips she gets from men in bars. She makes a weekly pilgrimage to Sing Sing to deliver a "weather report" to a mafia boss named Sally Tomato. In the brief glimpse that we get of Holly Golightly's life via the narrator, Holly has a cat. The cat, though, has no name.

"We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like."

At the end of the story, Holly dumps the cat in a rainy alley and tells the driver to drive away. Before they get to the end of the block, she jumps out of the car and goes in search of the cat, to no avail.

"I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on
forever. Not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away. The
mean reds, they're nothing. The fat woman, she nothing. This,
though: my mouth's so dry, if my life depended on it I couldn't spit."

The narrator promises to go in search of the cat, and Holly continues on her way to the airport, out of the story. The narrator spends days looking for the cat and when he does, the cat has found a home. Perhaps Holly did too.

I loved this story. I love Holly Golightly. I love the way she describes her particular form of depression as the "mean reds." I love that the only cure for a particularly bad case of the mean reds is a trip to Tiffany's. I love how all of the characters in the book fall in love with Holly for different reasons and in different ways. (I also love the movie.) Mostly, I love the themes of the futility of taming a wild animal and of our life's search for home.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote: (55) * * * *

The Whaleboat House (Amagansett)

2008-04-25T11:28:00.006-06:00

The Whaleboat House, by Mark Mills, is a murder mystery. It takes a meandering approach to the genre. Character development relatively irrelevant to the plot takes up much of the almost 400-page novel. As far as the murder mystery part of the plot, I thought it was thin, at best. Though much time is spent on character development, it is mostly the “good guys” who are being developed. The lack of development of the “bad guys” made it difficult to believe the motivations behind the killing. Also, the clues were revealed in a disconcerting jumble. In fact, the killer is revealed in a sort of off hand manner—very anti-climatic.

Two minor complaints:

Fishing jargon. I know Mills was trying to give life to the setting, but I felt that the fishing jargon was not explained well enough for a layperson to understand. For example, there is a scene where the characters are harpooning swordfish and something important happens with the keg. Now, to me, keg means a barrel with alcohol in it. The importance of the scene, though rested on the reader’s understanding of just what a keg is in this context.

Sex. I’m not really a book prude. I can handle a sex scene or two, but these sex scenes were not only totally irrelevant to the plot but cheesy and explicit in a manner reminiscent of Danielle Steel.

Overall, I thought this was a fairly mediocre, meandering read.

The Whaleboat House, by Mark Mills: (75) * *

Booking Through Thursday (3)

2008-04-24T09:48:00.001-06:00

Today's prompt:

Do your reading habits change in the Spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don’t have a garden? More light fiction than during the Winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack?

Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the Spring as you do the rest of the year?

I haven’t yet determined exactly the cause of my reading habits. For the most part, I think, I generally read the same kinds of things in the spring as I do in the rest of the year. I’m not a gardener (blackest thumb, though I try occasionally), so no new spring reading there. (Also, I’ve noticed that my gardening acquaintances tend to read about gardening in the winter. They pick seeds out of catalog's and whatnot.) Anyhow, as a fiction aficionado, I have noticed more of a willingness to try out the nonfiction in the winter. Also, I probably give in to some more “beach reads” in the spring/summer—probably more as a result of the excellent marketing on the part of my local bookstores than my shifting moods.

Poetry Tuesday - "From Montauk Point"

2008-04-22T21:24:00.004-06:00

I recently started reading The Whaleboat House (also known as Amagansett) by Mark Mills. The book starts with a beautiful poem ("From Montauk Point") by Walt Whitman:

I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps--that inbound urge and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.

I love the way that poetry, and perhaps particularly Walt Whitman, can make me feel something I already knew but feel it in a more profound way. The waves, constantly seeking the shore, are things that I've always known but now I know better and more deeply.

The vocabulary of this poem is exquisite. The poem is in constant motion via the gerunds: absorbing, viewing, tossing, curling, seeking. I like the nature images: eagle, beak, sea, waves, wild, snowy, caps, shores. It is interesting to note that the only man-made object in the poem is the ships. The ships in the distance stand in direct contrast with the mighty eagle's beak.

In fact, the poem seems to center around a contrast of the height of the eagle and the lower level of the sea. The eagle, with it's unmatched view of the world below, can take it all on and see the big picture, the pulsing and seeking of the waves. The location of the eagle's height is enhanced by the religious imagery evoked by "Eastward" and by the imagery of mountains evoked by "caps." The ships, in contrast, are tossed with waves, down in the foam. The poet, here, has a special view that allows him to see the world from a different perspective than the mortals down in the ship.

I'll stand with Whitman up on the eagle's beak as often as I can.

"The Way up to Heaven": A Feminist Reading

2008-04-22T21:15:00.003-06:00

In “The Way up to Heaven,” Roald Dahl blatantly critiques the accepted societal roles of women in the mid-twentieth century while simultaneously critiquing the way the feminists went about achieving their aims.

The main character in “The Way up to Heaven” is a housewife by the name of Mrs. Foster. Mrs. Foster has an important character flaw. She has “an almost pathological fear of missing a train, a plane, a boat, or even a theatre curtain.” The fear would throw her into quite a state, so much so that her left eye would begin to twitch and the twitch “refused to disappear until an hour or so after the train or plane or whatever it was had been safely caught.” This nervous flaw is the instigator of the entire plot. Dahl sets up the story by introducing Mrs. Foster and her nervous tendency and then begins the next paragraph by saying, “It is really extraordinary how in certain people a simple apprehension about a thing like catching a train can grow into a serious obsession.” This is much like an outside commentator coming in—an example of authorial intrusion. The purpose of this intrusion is to preface the story with the message he wants to get across. That is, to point out the fact that people often take a small thing and turn it into an unnecessarily large thing. Within the context of the story, it is likely that Dahl is referring to feminism.

As Dahl moves into the story he paints a picture of both Mr. and Mrs. Foster and their relationship. Mr. Foster is given a position of power in the marriage as Dahl describes his reaction to his wife’s “foolishness.” Mr. Foster “must have been well aware of her state,” and “must have known—that she would never dare to call out and tell him to hurry. He had disciplined her too well for that.” The “discipline” that Dahl describes speaks of the power that men had over their wives. By describing Mr. Foster in this way, Dahl illustrates the power position customary in society in the mid-twentieth century.

As the protagonist of the story, Mrs. Foster is mentioned many times. However, Dahl never mentions her first name in the story; he always refers to her as Mrs. Foster. In contrast, he does mention her husband’s full name of “Mr. Eugene Foster.” By only allowing us to view the protagonist as Mrs. Foster, Dahl illustrates that women were given definition in society only through their husbands. Women had no role of their own. The seemingly small decision on Dahl’s part to exclude Mrs. Foster’s first name actually tells much about the society of his time.

In accordance with this lack of personhood, Mrs. Foster is described as an “unhappy lady,” and a “poor woman” who “had developed a great yearning to set eyes on her grandchildren.” Through this description, it is obvious that Mrs. Foster is not content with the life she leads. The adjectives “unhappy” and “poor” are skillfully used to lead the reader to feel sorry for Mrs. Foster. However miserable she may be, Dahl does not neglect to mention that, “Mrs. Foster was and always had been a good and loving wife” and had “served him (Mr. Foster) loyally and well.” The phrase “was and always” implies that Mrs. Foster perpetually and unwaveringly fulfilled her domestic duties. However, it does seem clear that she was not happy with the idea of remaining in the purely domestic realm for the rest of her existence. In fact, as the story opens, she is excited about her upcoming escape to Paris to go visit her beloved grandchildren.

On the morning she is to fly out, her husband keeps her waiting and as she waits her thoughts default into stream of consciousness. Two of her thoughts are particularly important as Dahl explains her relationship with her husband. The first is that she “did not really wish to live out her days in a place where she could not be near [her grandchildren],” but she “knew, of course, that it was wrong and in a way disloyal to have thought like these while her husband was still alive.” This last sentence foreshadows what happens in the rest of the story because Mrs. Foster knew it was “wrong” to have such thoughts “while her husband was still alive.” She realizes that her wishes and desires cannot be fulfilled while her husband is still in her life. This sentence also allows us insight into Mrs. Foster’s motivations as the story progresses. Her motivations at this point seem contradictory. Society has instilled in her a duty and a loyalty to her husband while sacrificing her own comfort, but at the same time she is feeling that she must do something to fulfill her duty to herself—a duty that has never been recognized, let alone fulfilled. Mrs. Foster knew that her needs were not being fulfilled and that that should be remedied, but she also could not immediately and completely “discard” her sense of duty towards her husband.

The second important thought is that “it had taken months to persuade her husband to allow her to go” and “he might easily decide she should cancel the whole thing.” The idea that Mrs. Foster did not have the free agency to go visit her daughter whenever she chose to again points out the immense power Mr. Foster has over his wife. In fact, she is almost like the child, begging to be “allowed” to go—allowed to be released from her duties as a housewife and escape, even if just for a while. “He might easily decide she should cancel” illustrates that if he made a decision, she was obligated to go along with that decision, though she may disagree. With all of the power in Mr. Foster’s hands, it is not surprising that Mrs. Foster has reached a critical point in her marriage.

Along with the decision-making power in his marriage, Mr. Foster also has the power to torment Mrs. Foster. He would keep her waiting “and his manner [was] so bland that it was hard to believe that he wasn’t purposely inflicting a nasty private little torture of his own on the unhappy lady.” The phrase “nasty private little torture” shows Mr. Foster’s true character. However, Mrs. Foster does not see that he is “purposely inflicting” pain upon her until they are getting into the car to go to the airport. Mr. Foster makes the car wait while he runs inside the house to look for a present he was going to send to his daughter. “At this point Mrs. Foster suddenly spotted a corner of something white wedged down in the crack of the seat where her husband had been sitting.” The knowledge that her husband had been tormenting her on purpose does not seem to immediately influence Mrs. Foster in the story. However, as we see, Mrs. Foster begins to embrace the feminist motto, “the personal is political.” One of the key elements of the feminist movement in the 1950s and 60s is the removal of the “personal.” It wasn’t about discarding personal family duties and responsibilities; it was about the “political” oppression that was taking place. The unreasonable assaults by her husband are no longer just things that Mrs. Foster can look past; the relationship, to her, has become “political.”

After the realization that her husband is intentionally cruel, she runs up to the house to get him. As she inserts her key into the lock, she “was about to turn it—and then she stopped…Yes—quite obviously she was listening…trying…to analyze these sounds that were coming so faintly from this place deep within the house.” Mrs. Foster apparently “analyzes” the noises and hurries to the car without her husband. Dahl describes “a peculiar hardness had settled itself upon her features. . . . She felt remarkably strong and, in a queer sort of way, wonderful.” This physical change to “her features” is a signal to the reader that something significant has occurred. Going to the airport without her husband is quite clearly against the nature of Mrs. Foster, though oddly, she felt “strong” and “wonderful.” In the story, Mrs. Foster stepped outside the boundaries of societal behavior and has made a decision on her own. However, it is left to the reader to “analyze” the sounds that Mrs. Foster heard and that caused her to act so drastically.

After this somewhat vague, yet important, pivotal moment, the story continues with Mrs. Foster going to Paris, spoiling her grandchildren, writing weekly letters to her husband, and then coming home. At this point Dahl gives readers two tidbits of seemingly unimportant information. First, Mrs. Foster wrote weekly letters to her husband containing things like, “Now be sure to take your meals regularly, dear, although this is something I’m afraid you may not be doing when I’m not with you.” Again, Dahl is foreshadowing the tragic ending by including the irony of letters concerning food. This also points out a bit of Mrs. Foster’s true character. Second, when Mrs. Foster was leaving Paris, “there was something in her manner and in the things she said that appeared to hint at the possibility of a return in the not to distant future.” These two fragments of information prove very important. Mrs. Foster is apparently playing the role of devoted housewife—concerned about her husband’s well being in her absence. However, as the story demonstrates, Mrs. Foster is struggling with the warring tensions of her own needs and her duties to her husband. Mrs. Foster had reached the explosive level, but Dahl explains that the “pressure was released in some . . . manner.” At this point in the story it is unclear to the reader how Mrs. Foster’s pressure was released, but the change in her is obvious.

When Mrs. Foster arrives in New York, there is no one to meet her at the airport. She takes this information in stride and takes a taxi home. Dahl’s creative brilliance is revealed when the reader discovers how Mrs. Foster had released her steam. Mrs. Foster arrives home, finds no one, goes into her husband’s study, and dials the telephone. After the call, “she replaced the receiver and sat there at her husband’s desk, patiently waiting for the man who would be coming soon to repair the elevator.” This concluding sentence sheds light on the entire story. Mrs. Foster “patiently” waited for the repairman to come and find her dead husband in the elevator. In the end, she won. Mrs. Foster escaped from her tyrannical husband, and is now free to go live near those grandchildren she loves so dearly. Dahl tells a powerful story about feminism that ends with the feminist winning. Or did he?

Roald Dahl is considered by many to be a master storyteller. In “The Way up to Heaven,” Dahl is clearly making a statement about the feminist movement and how oppressed women can and were being pushed too far. In this case, Mrs. Foster is presented as an oppressed and somewhat tortured wife. So, it’s clear that Dahl is making a statement about feminism, but what is that statement? On the surface it seems that he is arguing for women—after all, doesn’t Mrs. Foster gain the ultimate victory over her torturous husband? However, after examining Dahl’s other works and some biographical information, the answer may not be that clear. As one critic stated, “Womanhatred is at the core of Dahl’s writings.” While this may not prove entirely true, there is no doubt that Dahl harbored some “womanhatred” in his soul. In many of his works, both for adults and children, the antagonist is a woman who eventually gets beaten in some form or another. Take, for example, James’ two despicable aunts in James and the Giant Peach. After mistreating poor James for years, they are eventually squashed by the giant peach.

Reevaluating “The Way up to Heaven” from an anti-feminist point of view provides some insight into Dahl’s potential message. One signifier that may indicate an anti-feminist position on Dahl’s part concerns Mr. Foster’s tormenting of his wife. Dahl says things like, “assuming (though one cannot be sure) that the husband was guilty,” and “it is by no means certain that this is what he did [kept her waiting unnecessarily].” The fact that he makes the reader “assume,” while not being “certain” of the husbands actions, allows for the interpretation that it was all in Mrs. Foster’s head. After all, it is entirely possible that he didn’t keep her waiting unnecessarily; perhaps he just didn’t like to leave early. This, too, allows for an assertion against the feminist movement. As stated earlier, Dahl makes the point at the beginning of the story that, “It is really extraordinary how in certain people a simple apprehension about a thing like catching a train can grow into a serious obsession.” After a close reading of the text an interpretation of this statement could be, “It is really extraordinary how in certain women a simple apprehension about a thing like being a housewife can grow into a serious obsession.” While it is not clear that this is the interpretation Dahl would advocate, the story does not allow for it to be ruled out.

The other possible signifier of an anti-feminist undertone is the horrific ending. Mrs. Foster intentionally leaves her husband in a broken elevator before she goes on a six-week vacation to Paris. This ending seems to be doling out poetic justice, but it could also be read as a sadistic feminist getting her way at last—going from “personal” to “political” and taking the “political” into her own hands. This potential criticism of the feminist movement is relayed in an inconspicuous way. However, the critique is planted there for those who wish to see it.

In “The Way up to Heaven,” Dahl systematically lays out his story and beckons the reader to follow him through Mrs. Foster’s ordeal. In the end, it seems as though she has won her battle—the evil, oppressive husband is gone. However, Dahl also leaves the reader with the vague feeling that perhaps Mrs. Foster’s “victory” should not be viewed as a victory at all, but rather as an outlandish response to trivial issues.

Emma, Part I & Close Reading

2008-04-18T13:48:00.005-06:00

I’ve lately been reading Emma, by Jane Austen. (Though I was temporarily derailed when I found Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos in the bargain bin at Borders.) Anyway, I started reading Emma in earnest because of the PBS Masterpiece Classic series “The Complete Jane Austen.” I have now viewed at least one movie version of all six of Jane Austen’s principal novels, though I’d only previously read Pride & Prejudice. And, I must admit, viewing the movie version of Emma before reading the book has helped immensely. Actually, I’m not sure if it is the movie itself that is helpful or just knowing the progression of the plot. In any case, I find myself reading more closely, picking up more textual clues about people’s true characters and Emma’s subtle, but important, misperceptions.

This experience with Emma made me reevaluate my reading skills and methods. I’m a compulsive, rapid reader. I tend to read and dump. (Likely a product of college English classes where professors would schedule a mere week for the reading of Anna Karenina or Dante’s Inferno.) I generally don’t read closely. Having just completed a book, I probably couldn’t tell you what color hair the heroine has. I jump over “unimportant” details like that, partly because I like to imagine the characters myself and partly because I’m in a hurry. I think miss a great deal in my hurry.

All of this reflection made me recall a chapter in Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer on close reading. In the very first chapter, Ms. Prose advocates getting back to reading basics and focusing on close reading, paying attention to the words and sentences and paragraphs.

Several websites supply variations on the theme of "how to conduct a close reading." See websites here and here and here and here. Though lists and suggestions are a good place to start, the lists, I think, are a little too narrow. Most of them anticipate close reading conducted on short works of fiction like poetry or excerpts of longer works. It seems to me that close reading should be applied to all kinds of reading: literature, poetry, newspapers, technical manuals. Rather than a technique used in English papers, close reading should be a method, a form inseparable from our reading.

This definition of close reading sums it up for me: a method in which you pay close attention to a text, either in order to observe striking features generally or in order to answer specific questions concerning that text.

In light of the above, I hereby resolve to amend my reading habits by:

Slowing down and enjoying the experience, the moments, of reading
Reading with a pencil in hand
Looking up words I don't know
Pausing occasionally to contemplate what I've just read

Love Walked In

2008-04-18T13:24:00.005-06:00

For the first two-thirds of this book, I was in love. The prose was so taut and engaging, I didn’t want to put the darn book down (even though I am technically supposed to be reading Emma). The cultural references alone (books, movies, music) were enough to keep me riveted. I loved the pert and unique language of the adult heroine: Cornelia. Also, the author was very adept at creating very different, very believable voices for the two protagonists: Cornelia and Clare.

So, when the last act came around, I was disappointed. I think the author had so much to accomplish in those last few chapters (especially with making the plot conform to the romance formula) that the writing was focused on accomplishing the end, rather than telling the end. Plot twists and turns abound in that third act, some, even, that I felt weren’t true to the characters.

Some other minor complaints: (1) The chapters alternated between Cornelia (in first person) and Clare (in third person). While I generally liked the technique, it was disarming to have to switch from first to third person every few pages. (2) All of the characters were unrealistically beautiful. (3) This isn’t related to the book, but I think Sarah Jessica Parker is all wrong to play Cornelia in the movie. Cornelia is described as five feet tall with dark, pixie-cut hair, with a face resembling that of Audrey Hepburn. Come on.

Love Walked In, by Marisa de los Santos: (75) * * *

Booking Through Thursday (2)

2008-04-17T13:11:00.004-06:00

Here is the meme:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

My response is that it depends. I keep a dictionary in my husband's nightstand (no room in mine), so if I'm reading in bed and come across a word I don't know, I'll usually look it up. If no dictionary is available but I have my BlackBerry, I'll head to dictionary.com. If there is no dictionary, paper or digital, around, I'll try and remember the word for later. And, many times, I've just used to context to get sometime of meaning and kept plowing on through the book. I hereby resolve to do better.

Poetry Tuesday - Celebrating National Poetry Month

2008-04-15T11:43:00.003-06:00

As you may know, April is National Poetry Month. Many people mock it. See comments made here. Some comment on how a national poetry month may actually deter people from wanting to read poetry. See article here.

Still, I think it is a good reminder to make poetry a part of your life. The people behind poets.org suggest 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month. See here.

Two of my favorite suggestions are (1) to memorize a poem and (2) to start a commonplace book.

Memorize a Poem

The following are the only two poems that I can currently recite from memory in their entirety:

“The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

“Lazy Jane” by Shel Silverstein

Lazy
lazy
lazy
lazy
lazy
lazy
Jane.
She
wants
a
drink
of
water
so
she
waits
and
waits
and
waits
and
waits
and
waits
for
it
to
rain.

See the accompanying drawing by Shel Silverstein here.

Start a Commonplace Book

According to poets.org, a commonplace book is one in which a reader copies their favorite poems and quotations into notebooks to form their own personal anthologies.

I’m starting this today (and you should too)!

Booking Through Thursday, on Monday

2008-04-14T10:16:00.002-06:00

Apparently, I (along with several others) misinterpreted the challenge of last week's Booking Through Thursday. See my post here. The challenge, apparently, was to take the two sentences from page 123 of the book and connect them with some original material. Though I thought the two sentences from The Fall stood well together, here is my attempt at rectifying by response. In fact, I am so repentant that I came up with two, rather short, alternative responses:

So I crossed over to North Africa with the vague intention of getting to London.

I had never been to London before, but I imagined I’d recognize it. After all, I’ve read Dickens and Doyle and Austen.

We children of the mid-century don't need a diagram to imagine such places.

* * *

So I crossed over to North Africa with the vague intention of getting to London.

I had never traveled to London before, but I imagined I’d recognize the path—up through the pyramids, passing by the running bulls, the upright tower (as opposed to the leaning one), and a little stream to arrive in the West End.

We children of the mid-century don't need a diagram to imagine such places.

I'll try to be a better reader this Thursday.

Booking Through Thursday

2008-04-10T14:24:00.005-06:00

Cool new book thing: a weekly Booking Through Thursday Challenge. Today's challenge is:

Pick up the nearest book. (I’m sure you must have one nearby.)
Turn to page 123.
What is the first sentence on the page?
The last sentence on the page?
Now . . . connect them together . . .

I am currently reading The Fall by Albert Camus. Here is my entry:

So I crossed over to North Africa with the vague intention of getting to London. We children of the mid-century don't need a diagram to imagine such places.

Rather charming, eh?

The Magic of the Information Age - A Blog Tour

2008-04-08T16:36:00.003-06:00

J. Scott Savage is writing a five-part YA series. To launch the first book, Farworld-Water, he is holding what I'm sure is one of the first blog tours ever. See the announcement here.

I'm signing up to get an ARC to review here on the blog. Look for that this summer.

Poetry Tuesday - The Poets Laureate

2008-04-08T15:35:00.003-06:00

I have always liked the idea that there is a poet laureate. The government (or at least some part of it) believes in poetry enough to create an official post for it. This Poetry Tuesday is thus dedicated to the poets laureate of the United States of America and of Great Britain.

First up, the Britains.

The job description:

The realm's official poet
Member of the royal household
Charged with writing verses for court and national occasions (such as for a Royal Wedding or the New Year)
Awarded the position for life (more recently, the term of office has changed to 10 years)
Chosen by the British reigning monarch, from a list of nominees that the Prime Minister compiles after a poet laureate dies
The salary has varied, but traditionally includes some alcohol

The Poets Laureate of Great Britain:

1599: Samuel Daniel
1619: Ben Jonson
1637: Sir William Davenant (a godson of William Shakespeare)
1668: John Dryden
1688: Thomas Shadwell
1692: Nahum Tate
1715: Nicholas Rowe
1718: Reverend Laurence Eusden
1730: Colley Cibber
1757: William Whitehead, on the refusal of Thomas Gray
1785: Reverend Thomas Warton, on the refusal of William Mason
1790: Henry James Pye
1813: Robert Southey, on the refusal of Sir Walter Scott
1843: William Wordsworth
1850: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on the refusal of Samuel Russell
1896: Alfred Austin, on the refusal of William Morris
1913: Robert Bridges
1930: John Masefield, OM
1967: Cecil Day-Lewis, CBE
1972: Sir John Betjeman, CBE
1984: Ted Hughes, OM, on the refusal of Philip Larkin
1999: Andrew Motion (for a ten year period)

Next, the Yankees:

The job description:

Serves as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans
Seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry
Appointed annually by the Librarian of Congress and serves from October to May
In making the appointment, the Librarian consults with former appointees, the current Laureate, and distinguished poetry critics
The position has existed under two separate titles: from 1937 to 1986 as “Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” and from 1986 forward as “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.” The name was changed by an act of Congress in 1985
The Laureate receives a $35,000 annual stipend funded by a gift from Archer M. Huntington
Minimal specific duties in order to afford incumbents maximum freedom to work on their own projects while at the Library
Gives an annual lecture and reading of his or her poetry
Introduces poets in the Library's annual poetry series
Not necessarily expected to compose works for recitation at government events or in praise of government officials

The Poets Laureate of the United States of America:

1937-1941 Joseph Auslander
1943-1944 Allen Tate
1944-1945 Robert Penn Warren
1945-1946 Louise Bogan
1946-1947 Karl Shapiro
1947-1948 Robert Lowell
1948-1949 Leonie Adams
1949-1950 Elizabeth Bishop
1950-1952 Conrad Aiken (First to serve two terms)
1952 William Carlos Williams (appointed but did not serve)
1956-1958 Randall Jarrell
1958-1959 Robert Frost
1959-1961 Richard Eberhart
1961-1963 Louis Untermeyer
1963-1964 Howard Nemerov
1964-1965 Reed Whittemore
1965-1966 Stephen Spender
1966-1968 James Dickey
1968-1970 William Jay Smith
1970-1971 William Stafford
1971-1973 Josephine Jacobsen
1973-1974 Daniel Hoffman
1974-1976 Stanley Kunitz
1976-1978 Robert Hayden
1978-1980 William Meredith
1981-1982 Maxine Kumin
1982-1984 Anthony Hecht
1984-1985 Reed Whittemore (Interim Consultant in Poetry)
1984-1985 Robert Fitzgerald (Appointed and served in a health-limited capacity, but did not come to the Library of Congress)
1985-1986 Gwendolyn Brooks
1986-1987 Robert Penn Warren
1987-1988 Richard Wilbur
1988-1990 Howard Nemerov
1990-1991 Mark Strand
1991-1992 Joseph Brodsky
1992-1993 Mona Van Duyn
1993-1995 Rita Dove
1995-1997 Robert Hass
1997-2000 Robert Pinsky
1999-2000 Special Bicentennial Consultants: Rita Dove, Louise Glück and W.S. Merwin
2000-2001 Stanley Kunitz
2001-2003 Billy Collins
2003-2004 Louise Glück
2004-2006 Ted Kooser
2006-2007 Donald Hall
2007-Present Charles Simic

And, to wrap things up here is a poem from the current U.S. poet laureate, Charles Simic:

In the Library

for Octavio

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

—Charles Simic

Cannery Row

2008-04-01T21:07:00.002-06:00

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.”

Cannery Row is even more than that—it’s people. It’s Lee Chong and Dora and Mack and the boys and Frankie and Tom and Mary Talbot and Henri the painter and the old Chinaman and Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy (and Darling) and Doc. Doc is as much the main character as anyone in the story. “And everyone who thought of him thought next, ‘I really must do something nice for Doc.’” Doc and his collecting really inform the whole story and provide a tie among all of the characters. Doc collects sea things as Steinbeck collects the denizens of Cannery Row—with understanding and absolution.

The vignette narration style allows Steinbeck to include dark elements while keeping the overall tone a notch above neutral. The undercurrent of darkness is, though, rather dark. In the first chapter, Horace Abbeville shoots himself on a heap of fishmeal. In the third chapter, William kills himself by shoving an ice pick through his heart. In chapter twelve, a famous writer’s entrails are thrown into a ditch and carried off by a little boy and his dog. In chapter eighteen, Doc is shocked when he finds a woman’s body in the reef. (“The eyes were open and clear and the face was firm and the hair washed gently about her head.”) In the twenty-eighth chapter, Frankie, a young boy with mental problems, is institutionalized for stealing a present for Doc, the only person who was ever kind to him. And, finally, in the penultimate chapter, a gopher builds the perfect home for a posterity of gophers, but cannot find a female to mate with, loses two toes on his front paw, and eventually has to move away “to a dahlia garden where they put out traps every night.”

The quote that perhaps sums up the book for me is: “There is no explaining a series of misfortunes like that. Every man blames himself.” As with most Steinbeck novels that I’ve read, I think the underlying message is that life is hard and heartbreaking, but people are resilient and will not only survive but proliferate.

Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck: (55) * * * * *

Poetry Tuesday - William Butler Yeats

2008-04-01T14:29:00.009-06:00

One of my favorite poets is William Butler Yeats. I'm a sucker for Modern British writers.

Here are two of my favorite Yeats poems with some commentary:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1890)

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
_______
I love the way this poem sounds. Each word was carefully placed in its line. "Bee-loud glade" and its accompanying line is my favorite-sounding part of the poem.

The first stanza of the poem contains a flurry of daytime activity - "nine bean rows," "hive for the honey-bee," and "bee-loud glade." The second stanza slows down a little to a pace more akin to night - "peace comes dropping slow," "dropping from the veils of the morning," "midnight's all a glimmer," and "evening full of the linnet's wings." The third stanza is about action "night and day." Innisfree is always calling.

The whole poem has a solitary, self-reflection vibe. According to my Norton Anthology, Yeats wrote this poem after his father read him some passages from Walden. Each of the elements of the poem play into the aloneness - especially the title (Innisfree = "in is free") and the nature references ("water lapping" "evening full of linnet's wings"). I can escape into the language of this poem.

A Coat (1912)

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But he fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
_______

This poem contains a rather obvious self-rejection of Yeats's earlier style. I like the simple language and compact message.

I particularly like the imagery of a writer's works being made into a coat, a covering. But Yeats's covering was to be viewed only by those who had earned it. It makes sense it me - parading literature or art in front of those not able or willing to appreciate it cheapens the art. Also under fire in the poem are other "artists" who just imitated Yeats's style. In fact, Yeats would rather be naked (i.e. not write at all) than write for simpletons or the imitators. I think this poem expresses a yearning to be understood on a higher level and an aspiration to achieve more as a poet.

The Novella Challenge

2008-03-31T10:42:00.005-06:00

The challenge is to read six novellas by September. For the purposes of the challenge, a novella is defined as a work of fiction between 100-250 pages.

The challenge starts tomorrow, so I thought I would list my selections:

Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann
The Fall, by Albert Camus
The Unknown Masterpiece, Honore de Balzac
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

I finished The Uncommon Reader and Cannery Row before the official start date, so I'm not counting those. Wish me luck.

The Uncommon Reader, Part II

2008-03-31T10:18:00.004-06:00

Immediately after finishing The Uncommon Reader I was disappointed. The last few pages were a little strange.

However, letting the experience age over the weekend made me realize that the novella was definitely worth the read. As I mentioned in Part I, there are many good reviews out there about this book. Let me just add the following:

I thought the ideas conveyed about reading were innovative. All book lovers love books about loving books (and they are plentiful). However, this book made me think about book-loving in the context of public opinion. Illustrative of this is an exchange between the Queen and her personal secretary:

“I feel, ma’am, that while not exactly elitist it sends the wrong message. It tends to exclude.”

“Exclude? Surely most people can read.”

“They can read, ma’am, but I’m not sure that they do.”

“Then, Sir Kevin, I am setting them a good example.”

I have always been of the opinion that people who don’t read on a regular basis are somewhat questionable—not to be completely trusted, not up for a position as a bosom friend. It has never occurred to me, though, that the non-book lover might view the book lover with a similar suspicion.

Alan Bennett is an artful writer. The writing and dialogue flowed throughout. I even, upon reflection, enjoyed the turn towards the end to writing. I do disagree, somewhat, though, with the statement that reading is not doing.

*Also, as an aside, I thought the few (and far between) crude comments were out-of-place and disappointing. It also made it so I couldn’t recommend the book to my somewhat sheltered book club.

In all, I highly recommend this little book about reading and the Queen.

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett: (55) * * * *

Book Report & The Uncommon Reader, Part I

2008-03-28T10:14:00.004-06:00

Is “Fiction Friday” too trite? Probably. Good thing I didn’t pick it. Plus, if I set up too many weekly features, I’ll have to come up with something everyday.

I have had a book-ridden week. Sadly, that left little time for reading. On Wednesday night, I went out with two women from my church to discuss the intricacies contained in The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. See my review here. Last night, I hosted my regular book club. The book was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. We had a very nice discussion over tea. It was a perfect beverage and book for a blustery day. Anyway, I was very pleased with the discussion. It made me realize that there is a lot of redeeming qualities to the book, even though some of the writing was atrocious. See my review here.

My reading horizon is now quite cluttered. I started reading Emma after the PBS Masterpiece Classics presentation on Sunday. Then I put Emma on pause to read The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett universally beloved among booklovers and bookbloggers. See blogs here and here and here. I will finish The Uncommon Reader today, hopefully on my lunch break. Then it’s probably back to Emma, unless I decide to hurriedly devour the next book club selection, The Whaleboat House (also known as Amagansett) by Mark Mills. I also checked out Cannery Row from the library, so I’m going to try and squeeze that in before I have to return it in two weeks.

I like having so much to look forward to.

In The Uncommon Reader, the Queen of England suddenly, and quite by accident, becomes a book addict. This has interesting consequences for both her personal and her public lives. I’ll do a full review this weekend after I finish the book, but I have been thinking a bit about the Queen’s reading methodology. She always reads with a notebook and pencil in hand, jotting down passages that catch her attention.

I haven’t ever really read while taking notes, unless it was a textbook and I was reading it for a class. I have thought for sometime now that it would be interesting to start a kind of book journal in which I record my contemporaneous reactions to books, jot down good (or bad) quotations, and thereby keep a log of my reading activities. This has also been a subject of interest on other blogs of late. See here and here and here. How do you people out there read and record?

Poetry Tuesday: Spring

2008-03-25T09:48:00.004-06:00

Here are a few poems on spring in an effort to hurry it here.

The Enkindled Spring

by David Herbert Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,

Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration,

Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among

This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed

About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

The Green Linnet

by William Wordsworth

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed

Their snow-white blossoms on my head,

With brightest sunshine round me spread

Of spring's unclouded weather,

In this sequestered nook how sweet

To sit upon my orchard-seat!

And birds and flowers once more to greet,

My last year's friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest

In all this covert of the blest:

Hail to Thee, far above the rest

In joy of voice and pinion!

Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,

Presiding Spirit here to-day,

Dost lead the revels of the May;

And this is thy dominion.

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,

Make all one band of paramours,

Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,

Art sole in thy employment:

A Life, a Presence like the Air,

Scattering thy gladness without care,

Too blest with any one to pair;

Thyself thy own enjoyment.

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees,

That twinkle to the gusty breeze,

Behold him perched in ecstasies,

Yet seeming still to hover;

There! where the flutter of his wings

Upon his back and body flings

Shadows and sunny glimmerings,

That cover him all over.

My dazzled sight he oft deceives,

A brother of the dancing leaves;

Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves

Pours forth his song in gushes;

As if by that exulting strain

He mocked and treated with disdain

The voiceless Form he chose to feign,

While fluttering in the bushes.

Late February

by Ted Kooser

The first warm day,

and by mid-afternoon

the snow is no more

than a washing

strewn over the yards,

the bedding rolled in knots

and leaking water,

the white shirts lying

under the evergreens.

Through the heaviest drifts

rise autumn’s fallen

bicycles, small carnivals

of paint and chrome,

the Octopus

and Tilt-A-Whirl

beginning to turn

in the sun. Now children,

stiffened by winter

and dressed, somehow,

like old men, mutter

and bend to the work

of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;

by five o’clock

the chill of sundown,

darkness, the blue TVs

flashing like storms

in the picture windows,

the yards gone gray,

the wet dogs barking

at nothing. Far off

across the cornfields

staked for streets and sewers,

the body of a farmer

missing since fall

will show up

in his garden tomorrow,

as unexpected

as a tulip.

in Just-

by E. E. Cummings

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old baloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles

far

and

wee
______________

HAPPY SPRING!

Book Indecision – March 2008

2008-03-24T10:25:00.002-06:00

I finished Dr. Laura’s atrocious "book," The Proper Care and Feeding Husbands, and Three Cups of Tea last week. Since then, I have been unable to commit to the next book.

I am currently about halfway through the following:

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin
Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
The 3 A.M. Epiphany, by Brian Kiteley
Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
1776, by David McCollough
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire

I have started reading the following:

In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Emma, by Jane Austen
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
September, by Rosamunde Pilcher

I have purchased, or otherwise obtained, but have not yet read, the following:

The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, by Jane Austen
The Fall, by Albert Camus
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho
The Illiad & The Odyssey, by Homer
The Murder Room, by P.D. James
The Life of Pi, Yann Martel
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

Any suggestions for what I should read next?

Poetry Tuesday

2008-03-18T15:57:00.004-06:00

I think every Tuesday is in need of a bit of poetry.

On this, the inaugural Poetry Tuesday, I want to share two of my current favorite poems. Both of them come from a project called Poetry 180. Poetry 180 is a project started by Billy Collins, former poet laureate, in an effort to bring poetry into the lives of high school students. Despite the purpose of the project, these poems aren't just for high schoolers. There is a Poetry 180 book, but the website has all of the poems on it.

Anyway, here are my two favorites:

#23
Tour
Carol Snow

Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or -- we had no way of knowing -- he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.

#53
Selecting a Reader
Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Poetry makes me happy.

The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands

2008-03-18T15:45:00.004-06:00

The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands is based on the premise that men are simple and rather stupid. The thesis then, on that basis, is "give him direct communication, respect, appreciation, food, and good lovin', and he'll do just about anything you wish--foolish or not."

Dr. Laura Schlessinger demeans men throughout the book, constantly noting that a man is "inexorably dependent upon the approval, appreciation, and acceptance" of the woman. That may be true, but his self-worth is and should be based on more than that.

The book also blames women for every marital ill--real or imagined. Woman are even blamed when men have affairs, view pornography, neglect their responsibilities at home, or abandon their families.

I do have to admit that the book, and therefore Dr. Laura, does have some good points about the damaging effects of the feminist movement. Also, some of the advice about husbands is well taken, if taken and used in small doses.

However, I lost all regard for the book in the chapter on marital sex. Dr. Laura argued that a wife should "be expected to have sex when [she doesn't] want to just because he wants to." This is because the wife expects "him to go to work and earn money to support the family even on days he didn't feel like it." Wow. Dr. Laura also noted that housekeeping and childrearing are not personal enough to repay a husband for his hard work. However, she ignores the corollary: that working and protecting are not personal enough to repay a wife for her work.

In short, this book is overly simplistic, narrowly constructed, and over-rated.

The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands, by Laura Schlessinger: (75) *

Three Cups of Tea, Part II

2008-03-17T20:36:00.005-06:00

Three Cups of Tea contains a hint of a beautiful story. There were parts that made me tear up. Some of the parts that made me tear up were touching; other parts that made me tear up were painfully written.

Greg Mortenson is really an American hero. His work in Pakistan and Afghanistan is truly amazing. David Oliver Relin is an American journalist. His work, at least on this book, is not so heroic. The following are some of my favorite, terrible sentences from the book:

“And by the time the rising sun iced the hanging glaciers of Masherbrum pale pink, like a gargantuan pastry dangling above them at breakfast time, Mortenson had agreed to shift the funds his board had approved for the doomed Khane school upside to this village whose headman had traveled so far downriver to educate himself.” (p. 206)

“And rippling out from Mortenson’s headquarters in Skardu, over the parched dunes, through the twisting gorges, and up the weather bound valley of Baltistan, the legend of a giant infidel called Dr. Greg was likewise growing.” (p. 210)

“In the fall of 2003, at the desk of his aviation company in Rawalpindi, as he tried to arrange a flight for Mortenson to Afghanistan, now that the CAI’s work in Pakistan was on firm enough footing for him to leave, Bhangoo’s boss, the bull-like Brigadier General Bashir Baz, ruminated on the importance of educating all of Pakistan’s children, and the progress America was making in the war on terror.” (p. 310)

As the above sentences might indicate, the writing in this book was painful, to say to the least. Some of the folks on Amazon suggested skimming through most of the book. I don’t know if that is necessary, but it might save you a few tears.

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin: (55) * *

Three Cups of Tea, Part I

2008-03-12T16:19:00.002-06:00

At the halfway point in this book, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t usually read nonfiction. This book is about a guy, Greg Mortenson, who went to Pakistan to climb K2. After a failed attempt at the summit, he got lost on the way down and ended up in a remote village called Korphe. The people of Korphe were so nice to Greg that he promised he would come back and build a school. The book chronicles all of the events I’ve just described through building the Korphe school and 50 some odd other schools in the region.

The beginning dragged a bit for me - mostly because I was lost by all of the climbing jargon and horrendous descriptions. Now, however, I find myself pretty compelled. I even teared up a bit when the book described the sacrifices the people made to help build the school.

I’m reading it for a book club, and I’m glad for that. It’s not a book I would have picked up on my own, but (at least so far) it is probably worth the read.

The New Yorker, 2/25/08 & 3/3/08

2008-03-05T20:22:00.002-07:00

The New Yorker – Feb. 25, 2008

This issue of the New Yorker didn’t speak to me as much as some of the others have. There were, though, as always, some interesting items.
The Political Scene: On the Bus – this article chronicles some of the adventures on the McCain campaign trail.
A Reporter at Large: Big Foot – this article looks into the costs, environmental and otherwise, of “going green.”
Books: Our Free-Spending Ways - this article examines the rationality, or not, of “free shipping.”

The New Yorker – Mar. 3, 2008

Here are the highlights of this edition:
· Annals of Science: Numbers Guy - this article interestingly explores how our brain processes different mathematical concepts.
· Pop Music: The Amy Winehouse Phenomenon - Sasha Frere-Jones pokes some holes into current music trends.
· On Television: Breaking Bad - this review of the new fx show was rather harsh.
· The Current Cinema - the movie reviews this week: “Vantage Point,” “The Counterfeiters,” and “Definitely, Maybe” were very insightful. I want to see all three movies now.

Divisadero, Part VI

2008-03-05T14:11:00.004-07:00

I finished Divisadero last night. I was glad to be done with it. I don’t really know how to accurately express how I feel about the book. Individual segments of it were engaging and interesting and very poetic and lyrical. BUT I didn’t feel like the whole book worked together.

The first part of the book, as I’ve said before, revolved around the little eclectic family on a farm in northern California. After a violent episode, Anna runs away, and Coop, after he recovers, also runs away.

The next part of the book deals with the individual and damaged lives of Claire, Coop, and Anna. At the end of the second part, Claire is driving Coop, who has amnesia, to see the farmer/dad.

The third part of the book focuses on the life of the writer that Anna is researching and the people in his life.

I just don’t know how to make it all fit together. Overall, I’d give it three stars.

Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje: (35) * * *

Divisadero, Part V

2008-03-03T09:14:00.004-07:00

I am getting towards the end of Divisadero. This book has taken some serious time and effort to get through. I can’t exactly pinpoint what about it is so difficult. Some of it is that it takes place in several different places in several different eras and has several different narrators. In fact, the narrator sometimes changes from third person to first person, which can be disconcerting.

I don’t know yet where all of the characters are going to wind up. There are still the three main characters: Claire (in CA), Coop (in NV and CA), and Anna (in France). However, some of the other characters (like the dead French author that Anna is researching and Anna’s French-gypsy lover) have begun to feel like main characters because of all the back story. Right now, Claire has an amnesia-stricken Coop, and they are on their way to see the farmer/father. I don’t know what it is all building up to, but I’m excited to find out.

Maybe “excited” is overstating it a bit, but I am ready to find out and have the book be done. Maybe the ending of Divisadero will change my mind, but I would recommend reading In the Skin of a Lion rather than Divisadero, if you are going to read just one of Michael Ondaatje’s books.

OTHER READINGS

Old Testament: I’m just past the part where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25: 29-34) and then Jacob dresses up as Esau to trick Isaac into giving him the father’s blessing (Genesis 27). I know that there are several explanations for Jacob’s obtaining the birthright and blessing by cunning and trickery, but it is still hard to swallow. Next up is the material from Genesis that spawned Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Good times.

In Defense of Food: I just started this book last night. Fascinating stuff. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the history of the food industry. The second part deals with the development of what the author calls the “Western diet” and its relationship to modern diseases. The last part has suggestions for following the book’s mantra: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. I like it so far because it is a realistic way to look at eating and disease and the relationship between the two.

Divisadero, Part IV

2008-02-21T09:15:00.004-07:00

I am finally beginning to see what this book is doing. I probably should have seen it earlier. The story starts out with all of the main characters (Coop, Anna, Claire, and farmer father) in one, not exactly intimate but cozy, place. As the result of violence, the group is splintered and damaged. The rest of the book examines the damaged individuals as they seek solitude and healing in their new lives.

This kind of thing has been done before. I'm sure there are thousands of examples, but I can only think of two off of the top of my head: A Time to Kill and Lovely Bones.

Michael Ondaatje delves deeper than the others, I think. He is able to forge through the characters and show the duplicity that necessarily attends when you hide from the past. It will be interesting to see whether there is a reunion at the end of the book. I’m guessing that there will be a physical reunion but not a restoration of what was.

I guess the point is that you can’t really be restored after something like that happens. You can heal, but there will always be scars.

Other readings:

The Old Testament plods along. Last night, I got to the part where Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:26) These parts of Genesis are not quite as fluid as the retellings might suggest. The instruction not to look back is not told with sufficient notice of the consequences. Also, the Lord/angels (it’s unclear) tell Lot to go to the mountains and he whines about it being to far and remote and uncivilized, so he/they acquiesce to him going to another village (which Lot eventually as to leave for the mountains anyway). If he/they are that lenient with Lot, why not give Lot’s wife the benefit of the doubt? Plus, I’m sure that she had spent a lot of time nesting and making a home there. What if she just wanted one last glance? It doesn’t mean she wanted to go back, necessarily. It just seems a little harsh.

Also, I’ve read this before, but I was shocked that Lot offered his two virgin daughters to the lusty mob of apparently bisexual men “to do ye to them as is good in your eyes.” (Genesis 19:8) And Lot was the most righteous guy in the city. Hmmmm . . .

Divisadero, Part III

2008-02-20T09:22:00.001-07:00

The book continues. The “action” is still focused on Anna in France. The plot moves along slowly, but not in an obnoxious way. The book gets me to slow down and think about random things like a reaction to a bee landing on a guitar, like the idea that visiting a lover’s house might deliver a message of commitment, and like how a person can avoid her life by becoming enmeshed in someone else’s. The images are also very memorable. One that stayed with me is Anna and Rafael swimming in a pond that requires them to lay on their backs in order to be completely immersed.

I like the book. As I mentioned, it’s very lyrical. I just have no revving need to get to the end. I read a few pages a night and can put it down. I don’t know where the story is going to go, so I’ll just let the author take me there at his own pace.

I don’t think I would want to read a book like this all of the time, but it is working for me lately where I’m very tired at night.

The New Yorker, 2/11 &18/08

2008-02-20T09:10:00.003-07:00

This issue of The New Yorker had much more in it for me than I expected. I read several of the articles all the way through.

The Talk of the Town feature discussed Obama and the Clintons. The article had a very candid examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, but, as most of the media is doing these days, tended to veer in Obama’s favor.

The Shouts & Murmurs feature also revolved around the presidential campaign with a quiz about the candidates. It was very enlightening. My favorite question was the following:

Who said what?

11. John Edwards

12. Hillary Clinton

13. Barack Obama

14. John McCain

15. Mike Huckabee

16. Bill Richardson

17. Mitt Romney

18. Rudy Giuliani

(a) “Americans are looking for a change.”

(b) “Our time for change has come.”

(d) “Look, what we need is change, there’s no question.”

(e) “I know that I have been an agent of change.”

(f) “I want to make change but I’ve already made change. I will continue to make change. . . . I embody change.”

(g) “Not only can I talk change with you, I’ve lived it.”

(h) “We don’t mention September 11th nearly as much as people think.”

*The answers are (11) c, (12) f, (13) b, (14) e, (15) a, (16) d, (17) g, (18) h.

It made me laugh about the rhetoric that people choose to swallow.

Then there was an article about a murder in Poland that was solved by, among other things, the detectives reading the murderer’s novel. Good times.

Alice Munro’s short story “Free Radicals” left me a bit puzzled. The ending was kind of open to interpretation, so if any one out there in blogland has read it, let’s discuss.

Finally, John Updike’s Book section reviewed a new collection of the novels of Flann O’Brien. Let’s just say that the review was not favorable. Updike doesn’t like O’Brien, and he found a rather blatant error in the introduction to the collection. It would make me sad to have John Updike call me out like that in The New Yorker. It’ll probably get blamed on the fact-checker who works for free parking.

Divisadero, Part II

2008-02-15T14:58:00.002-07:00

Even though I haven’t been posting (life is crazy), I have been faithfully reading a bit of Divisadero each night. I love Michael Ondaatje, but his books require exertion. Every time I pick up the book, I feel like I should be taking notes and making charts. That isn’t to say that the book is unreadable. In fact, you could just read it straight through and completely understand the storyline. It’s just that there is so much more under the surface. Also, I frequently reference a dictionary when reading his works. (Check out madrone, for example, which appeared in the first couple of pages.)

Ondaatje is primarily a poet, so the language is very lyrical and visual. For example, in yesterday’s reading, he described a woman’s singing as if the notes had no scaffolding. (I don’t have the book with me or I would quote it exactly.) The description just spoke to me. I could see notes falling off of a treble clef.

Anyway, the first chapter of Divisadero, so far, has set up three major story lines. The first is the family in Northern California that I spoke of in Part I. The second is Coop going off on his own in the gambling world in Las Vegas and other places. The third is Anna, grown up, living in a remote part of France and researching some dead French author. The story goes in and out of different time periods, which gives it an almost timeless feel. It doesn’t really matter when the events are happening in relation to each other.

I expected most of the book to deal with the first story line. Since I’m only 75 pages and one chapter in, I’m excited to see where the story leads me.

Other Readings

Old Testament: I’m working through Genesis. Have you ever noticed that God told Noah to take seven of some of the animals? (Genesis 7:2-3) Also, those poor animals of which there were only two were forced to procreate with each other. (Genesis 8:17) What if they didn’t like each other, especially after months on a stinky ship together? (This may be sacrilegious, but maybe that’s what happened to the unicorns.)

Divisadero, Part I

2008-02-11T11:17:00.001-07:00

I started Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje over the weekend. I didn’t get much reading time in, though, because I was either playing with the family or sleeping.

Despite the limited time I gave to it, Divisadero pulled me in right away. The prose is so different and yet easy to read. The story begins on a farm in Northern California. There is an old farmer, who is a widower, the farm hand, Coop, and the farmer’s two daughters, Anna and Claire. The farmer’s wife died in child birth while having Anna. Another mother died in child birth the same day, orphaning a little girl, so the old farmer adopted Claire. About the same time, Coop’s family was brutally murdered by a hired hand. Coop, who was four, hid for days before coming out and identifying the murderer. The old farmer took Coop in and is teaching him how to run the farm.

With such a cast of characters, I’m excited to see where this goes. It feels almost steinbeckian so far.

Newspaper Update: Over the weekend, I did manage to keep up my commitment to absorb more news. I watched the primary returns on Saturday on CNN, I read most of the Saturday USA Today, and I read most of the Sunday New York Times. Today, I’m going to try to read at least the first section of the Deseret News.

The Sweet Far Thing, Part V

2008-02-08T22:55:00.001-07:00

So, I finished it. I slept better afterwards. I'm glad it's over. I enjoyed the process of reading the book, but I'm glad it's over. I think that says a lot. Some books (most recently The Shell Seekers) stay with me for days after I finish them. This book, though, stayed with me while I was in the midst of it, but a purging occurred the moment I turned the last page.

Some reviews have mentioned some disillusionment with the ending. I was okay with the somewhat less-than-perfect ending. The only issue I had with the ending was the sacrifice of two of the characters for the apparent sake of sacrificing the characters, rather than propelling the plot.

I don't want to say too much. I liked the book. I liked the series. I liked Gemma Doyle. But, overall, I was disappointed by the last installment. Also, I must note that the ending of this book reminded me of the ending of the movie The Return of the King. I kept finishing chapters that felt like the end and there would still be more. Overall, it gets three stars.

The Sweet Far Thing, by Libba Bray: (75) * * *

Sigh. Today, I ventured again into Sam Weller's in Salt Lake City. I bought Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje's new book. I might have to venture there before getting back to The Golden Notebook.

Book Recommendations

2008-02-07T11:12:00.005-07:00

Recently, I've been asked by a couple of different people for some book recommendations. Since it's hard to recommend books to people without knowing their particular reading style, I've tried to come up with a system that communicates how much intensity and energy is required from a particular book. All of the books recommended below are currently in my “Top 30 Books of All Time.” So, in my opinion, they are all worth the read.

Book Recommendation System:

(75) - Swift read: shorter books, easier vocabulary

(55) - Middling read: average intensity in length, themes, and vocabulary

(35) - Epic read: dense prose, difficult thematic elements

84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff

(75) * * * * *
Real letters sent by an American writer to a British bookstore clerk

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett

(55) * * * * *
Amazing book about the Stockholm Syndrome
Some people prefer to ignore the last chapter
Some sexual scenes, but not overly explicit

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

(35) * * * * *
My favorite Steinbeck so far
Interesting biblical themes re: Cain and Abel

In the Skin of a Lion, by Michael Ondaatje

(35) * * * * *
Beautifully and densely written book that made me feel what it was like to live in early-20th Century America
Some of the same characters appear in The English Patient

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

(55) * * * * *
Romantic and gothic
WAY better than Wuthering Heights

Marley & Me, by John Grogan

(75) * * * * *
Puppies!
Made me laugh out loud and shed real tears

Old School, by Tobias Wolff

(55) * * * * *
Boys at a boarding school are visited by famous writers

Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger

(35) * * * * *
Haunting story of two kids surviving in Minnesota

Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen

(55) * * * * *
My favorite book of all time
Romance and social commentary

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

(55) * * * * *
My favorite recent read
Narrated by Death
Takes place in Nazi Germany

The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene

(35) * * * * *
Landscape book about a Catholic priest in Mexico

The Sweet Far Thing, Part IV

2008-02-07T10:02:00.001-07:00

We have turned a corner! I see resolution and falling action in the near future. Gemma has finally resolved to do SOMETHING. Sure, she’s leaning a little toward the evil side, but I think she’s already beginning to see the error in that path. Also, the love story is beginning to come together. At last! Only a mere 200 pages left to go! (I think I’ve used up my daily quota of exclamation marks!)

There are too many questions left to answer at this point, so I haven’t quite arrived at the “lets create thought questions” stage of the book. I believe that may happen on the morrow, though.

I didn’t follow through on the newspaper resolution yesterday, but I did spend some time reviewing the Super Tuesday results at http://cnnpolitics.com. Does that count?

My other reading activities of yesterday included the first chapter of Genesis. I think I’m going to give the Old Testament a looksie. We’ll see how that goes. At a chapter a night, I’ll finish some time around February 2011. That’s a long row to hoe. Indeed.

The Sweet Far Thing, Part III

2008-02-06T15:16:00.002-07:00

So, this very cool website, www.kevinandamanda.com, makes fonts out of people’s handwriting-for free, if you’re lucky. This font that you see here is made from my very own handwriting. It’s crazy.

Anyhow, on to the books. I’m STILL reading The Sweet Far Thing. I’m now about 500 pages in. I still like it a lot, but I think, at this point, I’m just reading it to see how it ends, not for the joy of reading. And that’s okay with me, I guess.

Some elements of the book are a little aggravating though, so hold on for some light venting. Gemma, the heroine, has a bit of a problem making decisions. Any decisions-big ones, little ones, ones that might save the whole universe. Also, it’s driving me crazy that there is absolutely no one in the book that you can trust. I think it takes a special skill for a writer, of say a mystery novel, to create suspense while still maintaining appropriate sanity levels. The fact that Gemma, in this book and in the other two in the series, has absolutely no one to confide in or bounce ideas off of drives me completely insane. I know that Gemma’s aloneness is one of the themes of the book, but I think Libba Bray has taken it too far in this case. Grrr . . . Also, some of the more lubricious elements make me uncomfortable. There. I said it.

In other reading news, I have left The Golden Notebook forlornly collecting dust by the side of my bed since Saturday. Maybe I’ll be able to plug through the last 300 pages of TSFT and return to TGN tomorrow. Here’s hoping.

With the recent swarm of interest in politics and the article on reading I talked about yesterday, I’ve made a resolution to read the newspaper everyday. We currently subscribe to The Deseret News, mostly for the crossword puzzles (me) and the movie/tv news (husband). This week I’m going to spend a little time after work perusing the news sections. We’ll see if my life is altered for the better.

Cheerio.

-Jessica

The New Yorker, 2/4/08

2008-02-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

February 4, 2008
I recently subscribed to The New Yorker. I’ve always been in love with the idea of the magazine, but, most of the time, the content is a bit supercilious for my taste. But when I got a great offer on a two-year subscription in the mail, I couldn’t resist.Anyway, the first issue came yesterday. I skimmed through it and read half of a couple of articles and was done. Sigh. I want to like it, I really do.

December 24, 2007
On a related note, NPR did a story on a December 2007New Yorker story last week. The story is called “Twilight of the Books” by Caleb Crain. The article asserts that reading is on a serious decline, with only 46.7% of Americans asserting that they had read a work of creative fiction within the last year. Since reading is an occupation and topic dear to my heart, I was fascinated by both the statistics and the hypothesis in the article. Crain asserts that, since books and the printed word are no longer the primary means of human communication in the digital age, the world is going to have to reanalyze how it converses with itself. Check it out!

The Sweet Far Thing, Part II

2008-02-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

So, I’m 350 pages in to The Sweet Far Thing, and I’m not even half way!! What is it about trilogy writers? (Or series writers in general, for that matter?) The first book is a good solid 300-500 pages. The second book adds perhaps a hundred or so pages more. THEN, the third book is monstrous. A few examples illustrate my point:

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, by Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty = 432
Rebel Angels = 592
The Sweet Far Thing = 832

The Twilight Series*, by Stephenie Meyer

Twilight = 512
New Moon = 608
Eclipse = 640
Breaking Dawn = ?

*The Twilight Series was originally supposed to be a trilogy, but the third book was so long they made it into two books!

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

The Fellowship of the Ring = 398
The Two Towers = 725
The Return of the King = 1137

*I think The Lord of the Rings was originally written as one book and was then broken into three books by a publisher.

His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass = 368
The Subtle Knife = 304
The Amber Spyglass = 480

The Bourne Trilogy, by Robert Ludlum

The Bourne Identity = 544
The Bourne Supremacy = 646
The Bourne Ultimatum = 672

The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone = 309
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets = 352
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban = 448
Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire = 734
Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix = 896
Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince = 672
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows = 784

Okay, so my theory doesn’t ALWAYS hold up, but it seems that publishers are more willing to let authors be verbose as the series or trilogy goes on. (Also, I have a related theory that editors and publishers get more lax about the editing process as the series and the author becomes more and more popular.)

The Sweet Far Thing, Part I

2008-02-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

So, I caved on Saturday and purchased the final book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy in hardback. (Sam Weller’s, my local independent bookstore, was having an awesome sale so Matt and I went crazy.) Anyway, I am about 300 pages into The Sweet Far Thing. Each chapter I read in the series makes me change my mind about Libba Bray and her writing style. The books are set in Victorian England, largely at a finishing school for girls. However, many of the elements and character traits are pretty modern. For example, one of the main characters, Ann, cuts herself. Another character, Felicity, was sexually molested as a child by her father, a well regarded admiral. Further, the heroine, Gemma, thinks a lot like a modern girl would. She often makes witty asides in her head. Also, the book makes a clear statement about the limitations on women’s lives during that time and, perhaps, during these times.

One of the most frustrating things about the story, for me, is the relative lack of knowledge any of the characters, and therefore the readers, have about the “realms”—a kind of alternate, magical universe. Without a list of rules to follow, it is hard to suspend disbelief and allow the characters to flitter about in the realms. Also, it sometimes feels as if the author makes up the rules as she goes along.

In any case, the books are terribly readable. I find myself reading several chapters in one sitting. I would recommend the books to older teens (say, over 14) and adults who are not turned off by teenage wist.

*More on The Golden Notebook soon.

The Golden Notebook, Part I

2008-02-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

After finishing two books in the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray (with the last book in the trilogy not available in my local Border’s), I decided that I would take a break from young adult fantasy and take on Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. The description on the back of the new Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition drew me in:

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

I love the idea of the notebooks. I got a mere twenty pages into the nearly seven hundred page tome last night (with not a mention of any notebooks). So far, it all takes place in an apartment. The exchanges between Anna, the main character, and her friend Molly are surprisingly engaging, even though the topics are rather mundane.

I’m exciting to get into the book, especially since it was a staple in the feminist’s library in the 60s and because of the unique storytelling—letting the reader see the protagonist from the first person point of view in the notebooks and from the omniscient third person point of view in a novel within the novel.

We’ll see how it goes.

Wanted

2008-01-29T15:11:00.001-07:00

Smart, funny, slightly off-centered people who are willing to read at least two books a month and discuss all things literary and cultural with a forthcoming group of bluestockings.

Please respond to this posting with your name, age, educational pursuits, email address, and top five favorite books.

Welcome

2008-01-29T10:08:00.001-07:00

blue·stock·ing [bloo-stok-ing]
–noun
1. a woman with considerable scholarly, literary, or intellectual ability or interest.
2. a member of a mid-18th-century London literary circle