Nine Books in July

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption - Laura Hillenbrand.


The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie - Wendy McClure.

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch.


Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig.


Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Perennial Classics) - Simone De Beauvoir.


The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot.


A Stolen Life: A Memoir - Jaycee Dugard.


Sorry to be So Cheerful - Hildegarde Dolson.


Here If You Need Me: A True Story - Kate Braestrup.

July 2011: Book (Nook) Buying

So much to confess this month!  This isn't chronological order, but I'll get the big purchase out of the way first:  I went into Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago and bought a Nook.  I'm totally charmed with it (I mean charmed with her, for she is a girl and her name is Dorothy as in Parker, Gale, Hughes and Thompson).  There's something so close to magic about sitting in Starbucks, McDonald's or Taco Bell (places with wi-fi in this particular town) and suddenly getting a desire to read something and being able to make it appear within a couple of minutes. 

Dorothy came into my life bearing three books: Little Women, Pride and Prejudice and Dracula and the capacity for so many more.  Of course, I had to test that out immediately.  Over a marvelous tea lemonade in Sedalia's Starbucks store, I made my first e-book purchase:  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  It arrived so quickly that I nearly squeeeeeed in public.

After a few days, I wanted to do the magic again.  I'd just been to Hannibal, Mark Twain's hometown, and had a hankering to read Life on the Mississippi.  Off I went to McDonald's to nurse a $1.00 sweet tea and shop.  By the time I got down to the ice at the bottom of the cup, I not only had LOTM (for 99 cents!), but I had also bought The Autobiography of Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I was supposed to read that last one over 25 years ago in Mr. Shanahan's American Novel class, but didn't get around to it, and still felt a little guilty about blowing off the assignment.  Never too late.  (In a related note, I nearly named Dorothy Larry after McMurtry and Shanahan.)

I am slightly touched with new techie fervor, but  I could not let the sweet paper bundles be.  Here's what I toted out of Real Live Bookstores during July:

1. Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand.  Still mourning my lost-on-the-subway copy, I purchased another as soon as my plane landed in Dallas.

2. The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure.  Purchased at my local indie bookstore because I am a big fat Bonnethead and proud of it.

3. Here If You Need Me - Kate Braestrup.  I found this treasure at the local used bookstore.

4. Please Don't Shoot My Dog - Jackie Cooper. I love books about Old Hollywood.  This one also came from the used bookstore.  Smells so good. The store, I mean.

5. A Stolen Life - Jaycee Dugard.  My mom wanted to read this book after she saw the interview with Dugard on 20/20, so I found it for her at Wal-Mart.

6. Valley of the Dolls - Jacqueline Susann.  This one is my friend Doreen's fault.  It's her favorite campy movie, so she urged Katie and me to watch it right before my trip to the States.  That damn theme song by Dionne Warwick is turning out to be a forever earworm.  I don't take Doreen's cruelty to heart though; every bookworm summer should feature at least one Classic Trashy Read.

7. Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder.  After Mom found out that Laura and her family lived for a short time in the same county she was born and brought up in, she decided that perhaps there was merit in my being a Bonnethead.   I used the opportunity to run back to the used bookstore and introduce her to the series.  I wanted to start with Little House in the Big Woods, but it wasn't there.  I toyed with the idea of getting my favorite, The Long Winter, but settled on the one with the same name as the TV show.

Where's Waldo, I Mean, Rhett?

I know that the book is called Rhett Butler's People, but I didn't think the emphasis would be on the last word in the title. I somehow thought that Rhett would be the main character and the biggest part of Donald McCaig's companion piece to Gone With The Wind would be narrated from Rhett's viewpoint.

RBP was a hard novel to get into at first.  I despised McCaig's way of summarizing months and years into these little hard horse apples of sentences.  Also, where the hell was Rhett's cool, suave and ironic tone?  Who were all these other people? Why was Rhett always exiting the novel?  Why couldn't the reader follow him?

When Rhett's sister, Rosemary was introduced, I decided to stay with it, although Rhett still stayed decidedly offstage for the most part.  And here came more characters to digest.  Finally, Rhett took a trip to a certain barbecue at Twelve Oaks.  His first take on Scarlett O'Hara reeks of narcissism:  My God!  She's just like me!

Speaking of Scarlett, we get a huge dollop of her point-of-view, but it doesn't quite sound like her, in spite of a few carefully placed "Fiddle-dee-dees".  Actually, quite a  few of the GWTW characters get their say, even little Bonnie Blue, which was a little cringe-y.  (She saw her dad carry her mom up that staircase). McCaig had some fun with Melanie Wilkes.  I enjoyed her parts in the narrative (mostly letters to her new buddy, Rosemary Butler).  Turns out that Melanie emphatically enjoyed knocking boots with Ashley!  She was also wise to Scarlett's designs on her husband.

What really made me warm up to RPB was the mention of an embroidered yellow silk shawl that Rhett brought Rosemary from Nassau.  Something about it seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it.  Even when Rosemary's  little girl loved to play with it and pretend she was a bird, I still couldn't get it.  Then, after something bad happens to little Meg, Rosemary implores Rhett (love that infusion of Victorian melodrama!) to give the shawl to the woman he truly loves.  She knows it's Scarlett.  So Rhett does, and what does Scarlett do with it? 

Then it hit me:  Margaret Mitchell told GWTW readers that Scarlett laboriously picked out all the embroidery and stitched it up and made it into a sash for Ashley to wear.  Yikes!  Donald McCaig tells readers of RPB that Rhett saw Ashley wearing it and put two and two together.  Then Rhett proceeded to toy with Ashley about the sash and about who gave it to him, and flustered the hell out of him.  Ashley was embarrassed, but Rhett came off looking like a huge masochist.  I was embarrassed for him.  When he disappeared from the novel that time, I was almost glad to see him go.

McCaig would warm me up then turn me cold again.  All through the book, it's assumed that Belle Watling's bastard, Tazewell, belongs to Rhett.  Since everyone is insisting so damn hard, then of course he can't be.  Rhett is like the Sphinx on the subject.  Belle isn't saying either, but she enlists Melanie's aid in reforming her image, as she hopes to win Rhett's heart while Scarlett is still safely married to Frank Kennedy.  When the secret of Tazewell's parentage finally comes out after years and years and YEARS, it's kind of like:  "Oh, okay.  Zzzzzzz."  Tazewell!  Ugh, what a name!  It felt like a pebble in my ocular shoe. 

On the plus side, I very much liked the direction McCaig went with the characters and the setting and action post-I don't give a damn.  It gave RPB some much-needed life at that point, and was a big improvement over Alexandra Ripley's imaginings.  Still, RPB suffers from overcrowding, and a shortage of the title character.  On the other hand, maybe Rhett is too cool for this sort of thing.

Paris in July: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter - Simone de Beauvoir

Nelson Algren, who is best known for his novel The Man with the Golden Arm, was Simone de Beauvoir's lover  for a short time when she was staying in New York City in the 1950s.  After they broke up, he gave a magazine interview in which he said something about how Beauvoir talked so much that he had to fight the urge to put his hand over his mouth and tell her to shut up.  I find Algren's comment boorish and ungentlemanly, but after reading Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, I certainly understand the impulse.

In her 1958 memoir (the first of many), Beauvoir paints a thorough picture of growing up bourgeois in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s.  She was educated at Catholic schools, and because of her relentlessly inquiring mind, she soon found problems with the whole system and became an unbeliever, much to her devout mother's chagrin.  Her disillusionment got off  to a flying start when the priest who was preparing her class for their First Communion, (to put them on their guard against too much curiosity) told them the story of a young girl whose parents didn't restrict her reading and she read everything she wanted and as a result, she lost her faith and grew weary of existence.  The priest tried to help her, "but her soul was too seriously contaminated and she committed suicide a few days later."  Bookwormy little Simone was indignant that God didn't rush to the aid of someone who wasn't evil, she just loved books too much.

Beauvoir loved her parents, particularly her father, but as she grew into an awkward adolescence, he took every opportunity to ridicule her appearance.  He told her he was proud of her for being a good scholar, but he scorned her for her intellectual bent and her desire to go on and take an advanced degree, although he had always said that Simone and her sister would have to make their own ways in the world since his business ventures had been unsuccessful and there would be no dowries for them.  Beauvoir's portrayal of his behavior seems to indicate that he was intimidated by her.  Her mother was set on making sure that Simone's every move reflected proper behavior and that she would eventually become a good Catholic wife and mother.  From an early age, Simone had no interest in anything remotely maternal -- she didn't even like animals -- and the thought of having a husband in such close proximity every night filled her with horror:  "At night, when you go to bed, you wouldn't be able to have a good cry in peace!"

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is masterful is capturing the claustrophobia that pervaded young Simone's life.  Her parents restricted her reading, monitored her social contacts, made her account for every waking moment and even opened her mail and read it before she could.  This all continued until she was well into college.

This memoir is ferociously intelligent, but there's a little too much relentless self-examination in minute detail.  Beauvoir recounts her story in ruminating paragraphs that are sometimes more than a page long.  Also, there are no pictures, which is my pet peeve for most nonfiction.  When Beauvoir finally started making steps away from her stultifying family and into the intellectual atmosphere where she flourished, (oh yeah, there's a classmate named Jean-Paul who's casually mentioned towards the end of the book) I couldn't even feel happy and relieved for her because I felt so beaten down by her blathery writing style.  I only felt happy and relieved that I was coming to the end of the book and would never have to read it again.

Summer Stack

Below is a list of books that were neatly stacked up on my mom's coffee table and on the bedside table in the guest bedroom awaiting my arrival.  Most are from her book-reading friends.  A couple are things I ordered when I was still in Korea and had sent to my US address.  One is actually the result of my total susceptiblity to the siren song of the local indie bookstore. Which books belong in which category?  Let's look closely:

Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig.  I really don't like the trend of novelists bouncing off of a beloved classic, but will admit that some attempts are better than others.  I also feel kind of oogy and unpleasant when the Margaret Mitchell Estate hand-picks authors they deem suitable to write the sequels to Gone with the Wind that will inevitably be written.  I suspect that not only do they hand-pick, they breathe all over the manuscript and squabble about content. Having said all of that, I'm willing to give Rhett Butler's People a try.  For all of his prominence in Gone with the Wind and his snappy repartee with Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett is a rather shadowy and interesting character, deserving of a novel of his own. As the years have passed since my first reading, Rhett reminds me more and more of an antebellum Sam Spade.  No, he wasn't a private detective, but he could have been.  The Pinkertons would've snapped him up in a second.   I'm looking at the title page of Rhett Butler's People.  I'm slightly sweating and practically praying that McCaig didn't...mess Rhett up.  (Mom's Reading Friends category)

Sorry to be So Cheerful - Hildegarde Dolson.  A 1955 collection of witty essays and sketches that were first published in places like The Village Voice and The New Yorker.  I read this book years ago and remember it being even funnier than We Shook the Family Tree.  Did my memory play a trick on me?  I'll know in a few weeks.  I'm so delighted to have this book that I'm saving it up like a piece of candy. (Frenzied Overseas Ordering category)

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese.  I received this book from a favorite blogger last year, but can't exactly remember who.  I'm almost sure it was Softdrink from Fizzy Thoughts.  So many good things have been written about this book that I'm a little scared of all the hype, but I'm going to go ahead and read it so I won't have to scan other bloggers' reviews anymore. (Frenzied Overseas Ordering category -- Softdrink had a drawing and I entered and won)

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch.  I really don't want to read this.  Having read the first few pages, I know that Pausch is dying from cancer.  He and his wife were having some creepy discussions -- almost arguments -- in which he wants to go out in a blaze of glory with one last kick-ass lecture about the meaning of life and she's petulantly reminding him that if he does this lecture, he'd miss her birthday, which would be the last they'd celebrate together.  I'm proceeding with trepidation, but it's short, so I can muscle through.  If I had my druthers, I'd rather read How Shall I Tell the Dog? by Miles Kington, which is a memoir that deals with the author's iminent demise. (Mom's Reading Friends category)

The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure.  Everytime I come to America, my Little House on the Prairie mania (which is mostly book, with strong accents of TV)  kicks smartly into overdrive.  I loves me some Laura.  What's keeping me from pointing my mom's car towards Mansfield, Missouri right this very minute?  Not to mention that I'm still mourning that I missed Allison Arngrim's book signing at the Great Mall of America last summer.  Maybe this summer will be when I finally get to see the only episode of Little House on the Prairie that I've never seen -- the one where Laura gives birth to baby Rose.  Wendy McClure lets that "calico sunbonnet freak flag fly" for all of us nerdy bonnetheads. This book would not let me leave the bookstore without it, I swear, although Ma Ingalls would not approve of either my use of oaths or my spendthrift ways.  As a bonus, the book was mistakenly swathed in not one, but two dustjackets, so I guess it's ready for a long winter.  (Siren Song category)

June 2011: Book Buying

Somehow, I managed to practice a little restraint this month.  I bought 2 books:

1. The Victoria Vanishes - Christopher Fowler.  A mystery.  A Bookleaves book group pick.  I don't know why I bought it.  I don't care for mysteries and I didn't think I would make it to the meeting.  I read the first chapter.  That's it for me.  I'll see if this book can find some love among my friends, neighbors and co-workers.

2. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House - Jon Meacham.  I've been circling this book for months.  Suddenly, one of The Spawn's friends popped up online to announce that he was selling some books for 5,000 apiece (approximately $4.60).  I moved swiftly, then was glad I did.  Hardcover copy!

I don't think I can behave myself in July.  Two things:
1. I'm vacationing in the USA.
2. I really want an e-reader.