March Reading: Reading Is On The March. (Not To Mention The March Sisters)

My subway stop. I've got the Kindle out and ready to go as soon as I see the steps.

Only 8 books for March.  I started a new job, and you know how that can throw a reader out of whack. I am loving the hour of subway travel Monday-Friday which has helped carry me farther into the 19th century than I've been since 1986, when I took both "The Novels of Jane Austen" and "The American Renaissance" classes during the summer semester.  That was painful and almost unmade me as a reader, but this has been great, because I'm always briskly happy when I start a new reading project and manage to maneuver into an end seat on the subway.

 Here's how it all went down:

1. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott.  I love Little Women.  Primally, permanently. For some reason though, it got on my nerves a bit during this reading. My hackles rose at Jo's family acting all sniffy about her scandal sheet writing.  She was only doing it to bring in money so Marmee could take sickly Beth to the seashore in the summer!  They spent her money then told her she should direct her energies towards something more wholesome. It's funny how I have different reactions to the book each time. When I read it in 2005, I was dazzled by the Marches' frugality.

2. The Fortune of the Rougons - Emile Zola. This novel is the first one in the 20-volume Rougon-Macquart series. Zola thought it should be subtitled "The Origin" since readers first come to see how the highly ambitious Pierre Rougon splits with his widowed mother and his younger brother and sister who are the products of his mother's love affair with a smuggler. Zola is also interested in heredity and assiduously notes how Pierre's mother's mental problems manifest themselves in her children and grandchildren. The Fortune of the Rougons is also a political story, detailing the 1851 coup d'etat that marked the beginning of The Second Empire. The greedy, grasping Rougons are waiting and watching, determined to come down on the right side, be it with the republicans or the royalists.

3. Quiet: The Power of Introversion in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain.  With every page I read of Quiet, I felt more and more fascinated and also very relieved.  Here's a clip of the awesomely-steeped-in-awesomeness author Cain, giving some of the highlights of her book.  She has also done a wonderful TED talk.

4. The Kill - Emile Zola. The Rougon-Macquart connection in this novel is Aristide Rougon, who has renamed himself "Saccard".  Aristide is the youngest son of Pierre Rougon.  In the first novel, he was an inept young journalist, working for an equally unimpressive newspaper, The Independant (sic). A few years have passed and he's sharpened up a little and made a fortune in real estate. To keep up appearances, he lives in wasteful luxury with his young second wife, Renee and his son from his first marriage, the debauched Maxime.  The two young people have an affair that kicks off in the family hothouse. Zola almost makes it seem like the flowers made them do it.  The Kill was made into a movie in 1966, directed by Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda. The title is The Game is Over.  Annoyingly, Vadim made the decision to update modern-day Paris.

5. The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola.  Zola gets all foodie and the results are divine.  There are two R-M connections in this novel: Lisa Macquart, who is the daughter of Antoine Macquart, Pierre Rougon's half-brother and Claude Lantier, a painter who is Lisa's nephew. (Claude's mother is Gervaise, the main character in L'Assommoir.)  Lisa is married to Quenu and they run a charcuterie in Les Halles, the huge food market in Paris.  The plot involves Quenu's brother, Florent who was a prisoner on Devil's Island.  Although he has served his time, he still has revolutionary dreams despite the firmly bourgeois Lisa's attempts to get him settled. Sometimes Zola gets a little weighted down with too many characters and endless pages of description, but it all works to his advantage here.

6. Blonde - Joyce Carol Oates. Oates' subject for this novel, Marilyn Monroe, and her glass-shards-in-your-skin writing seem fitted for each other.  Oates dispassionately relates her version of events based on Norma Jeane's life and inexorably shows how everyone around her was mesmerized by her beauty, but since it was a curvaceous and sexual kind of beauty, it was only a matter of time before they (photographers, Hollywood brass) figured out a way to make it into a product for consumption.  Meanwhile, inside there's a smart girl, but she's too trusting and too nice, and the abuses pile up.  Unsurprisingly, the character that comes off the best is "The Playwright", based on Arthur Miller, Monroe's third husband.

7. The Conquest of Plassans - Emile Zola.  A poorly dressed priest with a dubious past suddenly blows into Plassans, the Rougon-Macquart hometown one day with his devoted mother.  The pair rent a room on the upper floor in the house of Francois and Marthe Mouret, who are cousins and both related to the R-Ms. (Pierre's mother is their mutual grandmother.) Although the priest is an object of mockery at first, slowly everyone in town falls under his spell.  It's fascinating to watch Zola do crazy, but this novel had too many minor characters and too much small-town politics for my taste.  I almost packed it in, but Zola came through with a delightfully savage ending and did Naturalist literature proud.

8. Abbe Mouret's Transgression - Emile Zola.  I wish I could read French because I have a feeling that Zola's first translator, E.A. Vizetelly, bowdlerized the text unmercifully. There's a dank, soap-opera feel to the whole thing. The title character, Serge Mouret is a priest and the younger son of Francois and Marthe Mouret.  Zola gives the impression that the streak of craziness that runs through the family coupled with a life of chastity seem to be responsible for Serge's high-strung temperament. When Serge cracks up, the cage match between religion and nature is on. In this book, the bulk of Zola's descriptive powers go towards an impossibly fecund garden that is supposed to remind readers of Eden.  The cast of characters is much smaller and it's a fascinating group peopled with grotesques. Serge's uncle, Doctor Pascal (the only sane person in the whole bunch) makes an appearance, torn between trying to help and standing gobsmacked, watching the nuts fall out of the family tree.

My plans for April include making more progress with Zola, including tracking down a biography of him.  I've also discovered a series of a different kind -- Stephanie Plum.  If the Rougons and Macquarts start getting to me, Stephanie will be my palate cleanser.  Plum sherbet.

February Full of Books

What a great month!  In spite of packing and moving house and unpacking, I was able to sink into reading for hours on end and successfully continue with the TBR challenge.  I'm glad this challenge has forced me to finally experience these beauts that have been on my shelf for so long:

1. The Man With The Golden Arm - Nelson Algren.  This novel was the first winner of the National Book Award.  Polish-Americans on the rough side of Chicago just after World War II.  The title character is Frankie Machine (Majcinek), a card dealer who was wounded in the war and came back with a taste for morphine.  Gritty subject matter with a jazzy inflection.  Is this an audiobook?  If not, I have a suggestion for the perfect narrator:  Tom Waits.  There's also a movie version starring Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine.  Good cast, but the script is a little hammy-handed.

2. View From The Cellar - R.W. Watkins.  I rhapsodized about Watkins in the previous post.  By the time I was done with his fond and searching look at The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, I was all fired up to reread...

3. The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane - Laird Koenig.  At 214 pages, this suspense novel packs a hell of a punch. It's lean and mean and elegant.  It's like Shirley Jackson at her best.  I want to join forces with R.W. Watkins to give this book (and the almost-as-cool movie) a much-deserved renaissance.

4. I Want That!  How We All Became Shoppers - Thomas Hine.  So glad I got this disappointing book on sale for only a dollar.

5. Mr. Popper's Penguins - Richard and Florence Atwater.  I keep thinking not about the book, but about plucky Florence Atwater who carried on with her husband's penguin story after he had a stroke and could neither speak nor write. She rewrote parts of it and submitted it to a couple of publishers before it was finally accepted.  Mr. Popper's Penguins went on to win a Newbery Honor medal in 1939.

6. How Did I Get Here From There? - Claire Rayner.  This was a book I almost tossed aside, unread.  I'm so glad I had a change of heart and got to learn about this fascinating person.

7. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman.  A huge culture clash between a Hmong family who immigrated to Merced, California and the local medical community over how to treat an epileptic little girl. Anne Fadiman presents the little girl's -- Lia Lee -- story and in alternate chapters, provides background history about the Hmong.  Fascinating.  Brilliant book.

8. Life's That Way - Jim Beaver.  Beaver, a character actor, is best known for his roles as Ellsworth in Deadwood and Bobby in Supernatural.  He's also a fine writer.  Life's That Way had its beginnings as an e-mail journal that he kept for a whole year, beginning when his wife, actress Cecily Adams was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.  Jim Beaver's writing is sad and wise and wry.  In my mind, I could hear his actual voice.  If this had been an audiobook, I would have bawled even harder.

9. Get Carter - Ted Lewis.  AKA Jack's Return Home.  Jack Carter returns from London after several years to attend his brother's funeral.  It's being said that his death was an accident, but Jack has his suspicions which  get bigger as thugs and small-time crooks in the area try to strong-arm him into paying his respects and getting on the next train out.  Jack's not exactly the docile type, though, and God help the men (and women) who stand in his way.  A gritty look at the seedy side of northern England.  The movie, starring Michael Caine as Carter, is even better.

10.  Who Was Elvis Presley?  - Geoff Edgers.  A juvenile biography of The King.  Edgers took a cue from Peter Guralnick and couldn't hold back his scorn about Elvis' movie career.  Other than that, it's a pretty balanced look at the entertainer with interesting side notes about the world and culture he came from and was living in.

11. So Big - Edna Ferber.  Winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  I liked this story of Selina Peake DeJong, a gambler's daughter who married a dim bulb of a Dutch-American farmer and settled on the outskirts of Chicago.  Even beaten down by poverty and hard work, she never loses her capacity to appreciate beauty and for self-expression.  Although she wants and gets the best for her son, Dirk, she's a little bewildered and appalled when he gives him his dream of being an architect to get rich quickly as a bond salesman, since she also knows there is beauty in struggle.  For me, Ferber is the female Sinclair Lewis.  They both have such sturdy, Midwest American styles.  No one could mistake them for writers from anywhere else. I didn't care for a later effort of hers, Saratoga Trunk (1941), but I really enjoyed So Big and look forward to reading more of her work.  Edna Ferber appears briefly as a character in the Dorothy Parker biopic Mrs. Parker and The Vicious Circle (1994).  Lili Taylor gives an intriguing performance as Ferber, slightly awkward around the Algonquin Round Table wits who ridicule her for her overtly dogged approach to writing.

Work started up again on Monday, but I'm happy about teaching the Children's Literature class again this semester.  I'm making each student in the class select a Newbery winner to read and report on as part of their final grade.  I noticed today that one girl was carrying Rabbit Hill (the 1945 winner), which I've never read.  Maybe I can work in a Newbery or two on my own during the Readathon in April.

Twelve To Start 'Twelve Part Two

9. Strength In What Remains - Tracy Kidder.  Kidder, whose powers of observation should not be compared with those of lesser mortals, trains his fine journalistic eye on Deo, a young medical student from Burundi.  He escapes genocide not only in his home country, but when he flees to neighboring Rawanda as well.  He is smuggled onto a plane to New York City in 1994 and arrives with $200 in cash.  Deo is homeless that first year, but thanks to the efforts of an indefatigable former nun and her network of resources, he is able to enter Columbia University during his second year in the USA.  As if Deo's story wasn't already compelling enough, he decides to return to still-dangerous Burundi and open a clinic in the town where his mother and father settled after the war.  Along the way, Deo worked for for Dr. Paul Farmer, who is the topic of Kidder's 2003 book Mountains Beyond Mountains.  Both are must-reads.  From the TBR shelf.

10. Shutting Out The Sun - Michael Zielenziger.  The author's initial look at hikikomori, (a syndrome in which teenagers and young adults feel overwhelmed by the pressures of Japanese society and retreat to their bedrooms for years on end) turned into a look at practically every aspect of Japanese culture.  He also discusses women in their 30s and 40s who refuse to marry and have children -- the Japanese refer to them as "parasite singles".  It seemed strange in the latter part of the book to see Japan and South Korea compared and Japan coming up wanting.  Usually, Japan is praised for being wonderfully civilized and Korea is seen as pretty rough around the edges. Illuminating, but there was some unnecessary repetition in the text.  From the TBR shelf.

11. Julie of the Wolves - Jean Craighead George.  I can't believe I missed this book when it first came out.  Excellent story about a 13-year-old Eskimo girl, Miyax (English name Julie) who flees her arranged marriage and ends up lost on the Alaskan tundra.  She is able to survive because of the hunting and gathering skills her father taught her and also because of her savvy in learning wolf "language".  She does this so successfully that the leader of a wolf pack accepts her, feeds her and protects her.  The research that went into this book is astounding, and Jean Craighead George's naturalist background stood her in good stead and she deservedly picked up the Newbery gold medal in 1973.  Miyax has to eat some questionable things in order to fight off starvation, so this is one of the rare books in which I didn't feel hungry when the characters were eating.  I can't praise this book enough.  From the TBR shelf.

12. Philip Hall Likes Me.  I Reckon Maybe. - Bette Greene.  The setting for this 1974 Newbery Honor book is Pocahontas, Arkansas, the rural community in which Beth Lambert's family's farm is next to Philip Hall's family's farm.  Beth is in love with Philip Hall, but he's also her favorite competitor.  Just as often as not, she comes to his rescue rather than the other way around, although he is supposedly "the first best at everything".  Although it is wonderful to see a smart, strong girl as a role model, this book is such an odd mixture of hokey humor and women's liberation consciousness-raising that I couldn't warm up to it.  I could hardly believe that this was the same author who wrote the beautiful, incomparable Summer of My German Soldier.  Philip Hall Likes Me.  I Reckon Maybe. is part of a trilogy featuring these same characters, but I think I'll stop with this one that was already on my TBR shelf.  I'm not giving up on Bette Greene, though.  The Drowning of Stephan Jones (1991) is on my definite wishlist.  

Twelve To Start 'Twelve Part One

I read 12 books this month.  I'm pretty happy, but I always wish I could read faster and more.  My friendly reading rivals, Teri and Chris, are galloping away from me.  They're riding their books (well, Teri is on her Kindle) like the most seasoned of jockeys. The lines of type are like their reins.  All I can see is dust.  


Oh, stop it, Bybee.  Stop your sobbing.  Bookworms don't cry-yi-yi. I wonder if Frankie Valli likes to read.  What would he think of my January books?

1. The Wide House - Taylor Caldwell.  I've decided that Caldwell reminds me of a mix of Ayn Rand and George Eliot.  Like Rand, she loves her crank philosophies and her characters are fond of speechifying.  Thankfully, she is more like Eliot, because these characters feel fairly real and she's capable of juggling several storylines and bringing them to a satisfying finish.  The Wide House was like Middlemarch Lite.  Written in the early 1940s, I could totally see it as a movie from that excellent era of moviemaking.  Good stuff from the TBR shelf.  I can hardly wait for April and I can dive off of this hot tin roof that is the TBR Double Dare and into the Taylor Caldwell I've got waiting so patiently for me -- Captains and the Kings and Wicked Angel.

2. The Stranger/The Outsider - Albert Camus.  The story of Mersault, a young man from colonial Algiers who is long on sensation and short on emotion.  A day at the beach turns out to be no day at the beach.  Camus was influenced by James M. Cain, so the first part of The Stranger is gritty and noir-ish, but it was the second part, after Mersault's arrest, that really grabbed me.  I was disappointed in the final scene in the novel, for it seemed crudely jury-rigged to prove a point, but he won me back again with that searing final sentence.  The Cure wrote and recorded a song about the pivotal scene in the novel.  From the TBR shelf.

3. The Lonely Polygamist - Brady Udall.   I scented some John Irving influence in this novel about a man with four wives and 28 children (circa the late 1970s) and it smelled great!  Good on Brady Udall for staying with the character of Golden Richards and fleshing him out and making him a fully sympathetic character.  Although the story is also told from the viewpoint of Rusty, Golden's wayward young son, and Trish, the fourth wife, there's none of that choppiness that works so well in cinema but  not always so well in novels.  Udall takes his time with the characters and the book is big, sprawling and warm and full of humor, sadness and surprises.  This book barely made it onto the TBR shelf; I decided that I had to read it in the waning hours of 2011.  I'm so glad I did.  Highly recommended.

4. The Bad Seed - William March.  Stephen King made a list of villainous characters, and scary little Rhoda Penmark made it into the top five!  That's pretty good for someone not much older than that number.  How old is Rhoda, anyway?  In the 1957 Penguin edition I read, she was 10 years old, but I keep reading reviews that mention her age as eight.  When did her odometer get reset?  She's also brunette, but who could ever forget Patty McCormick's blonde braids in the 1956 movie version?  Potato chip reading -- one chapter called for another.  From the TBR shelf.

5. Now In November - Josephine W. Johnson.  Hmmmm.  I don't recall ever seeing a title drop in the first three words of a book. This is the 1935 Pulitzer fiction winner.  Johnson wrote Now In November when she was in her early 20s.  This Depression-era novel about a family who is forced back onto the mortgaged family farm after the father's business in the city fails reads like John Steinbeck and Emily Dickinson got together for a writing rendezvous that Willa Cather popped in on at intervals.  Johnson's writing about nature also makes me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins and sprung rhythm.  

Life on the Haldmarne farm is bleak and difficult, and during the ten years that the story covers, they barely manage to eke out on the side of survival.  Arnold, the father isn't cut out for farming, and the land, never good to begin with, gets worse with a long and cruel drought (spelled "drouth" here).  Kerrin, the eldest daughter, is always angry and wild-acting.  If readers don't pick up that she's a little off in the upper story from the first pages, there's a really good hint when she compares the father to mad King Lear and remarks that she likes Goneril the best of the daughters.  Marget (the narrator)  and Merle, the younger daughters, work hard on the farm while trying to find consolation in the nature around them. 

 In the year of the drought, a young man named Grant comes to the farm as a hired hand.  He connects easily with the family, and also introduces the father to modern agricultural realities as he takes part in a dairy strike to protest the rising cost of milk.  All three daughters are affected by his presence.  (Fun fact:  The man Josephine Johnson met and married a few years after Now In November was published  was also named Grant.)  This novel wrings at your heart because you realize that when it was written, the Depression, the Dust Bowl and hard times were so far from over.  From the TBR shelf.

6. Ronald Reagan:  A Graphic Biography - Andrew Helfer (story), Steve Buccellato and Joe Staton (art).  A mixed bag.  I admired Helfer's scrupulous research, but thought that he got bogged down in tedious detail when describing Ronald Reagan's ascent into politics.  The cynical tone worked well for me, though, and the accompanying art was brilliant.  From the TBR shelf.

7. The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood.  I waxed eloquently here.  Well, I probably just waxed.

8. Something Good - Robert Munsch.  So I say to Robert Munsch, "Look, Bob -- I'm old, I'm friggin' old, I truly am."  I tell him that I can't be reading all these kiddie books that are 24 pages in length.  I tell him that I need to be filling in my gaps in the classics with fattish tomes like Tristram Shandy and Bleak House.  Check out my stern visage, dude!  But does Bob listen?  No.  Pretty soon I'm snorting with laughter and Bob's like, "Yeah, we got 'er on the go again.  Aboat time."

[to be continued...]

Skimpy Reviews

To the books below:  Sorry for my skimpy words.  It's not you, it's me.  Blame my fragmented mind.  Blame my new and sudden three-hour class on Mondays, "History of the English Language".  Ordinarily, my mind hums along in book review mode, but not anymore. Now it takes any opportunity to go skittering off to dictionary.com and wondering about skimpy (possible 19th century combination of scant and scrimp) and what it means and its derivation.  Ditto skitter (possibly Norwegian skutla, "to glide rapidly").  Ditto ditto (from the Italian detto, meaning said).  Sigh.  You see what I'm up against.  It's like the girl who has a dream about a girl who has a dream about a girl who...(dream: Old High German troum).  No!  Enough! (enough: Old English genog).

Little Men - Louisa May Alcott.
 I must have read an abridged version when I was a child -- one that had had most of the treacle siphoned out.  A veritable tag team of baby talk and sermonizing.  Sometimes they almost collide in mid-air.  I did notice something interesting, though:  a couple of times when the kids at Plumfield ran to Jo with one of their "little" problems,  the author made a point of saying that Jo was busy with something else (like writing) or she was trying to take a few minutes for herself.  It was sort of like muttering under her breath in a quick aside.  Alcott was really out to get Jo.  First, she wouldn't let her marry Laurie then she put Jo in a life that would have given Louisa herself hives.  I don't really like this book or the characters anymore except for one -- Dan, the ruffian orphan who shows up at Plumfield unexpectedly.  He is the sole proof from Little Men that Alcott had the stuff in spades when it came to creating characters.  I'm glad he's in Jo's Boys and I wish he could have had a novel to himself.  With the modern trend of authors riffing on classics, he's got a good chance.

Puzzle for the Secret Seven - Enid Blyton.
I finally made my acquaintance with a Blyton book, but I seem to have spoiled things for myself by watching Enid, a movie about Blyton that came out a few years ago and stars Helena Bonham Carter in a less-than-sympathetic performance as the prolific children's author.  That movie totally colored my reading experience.  Help is on the way, though.  My friends Val and Paul read the Famous Five and the Secret Seven as children and now again as adults.  They're in the middle of an email discussion about their 'double vision' which they've agreed to let me share with everyone here.  I can't wait.

Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay.
An American journalist living in Paris is covering the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv, which was a roundup of mostly Jewish children by the French police.  As she learns more about their fate, she also discovers that one of the families is linked to her husband's family.  The 1942 story line is so vivid and horrific that the 2002 events seem bland and uninteresting and the characters cardboard-ish by comparison.  Whatever its flaws, the novel is far superior to the 2010 movie version starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Aidan Quinn, which is breathtakingly bad.

Before I Go to Sleep - S.J. Watson.
Christine, a middle-aged woman living in London, really got whacked with the amnesia stick.  Not only does she have no memory of her past, she has no ability to create new memories.  Everything she learns from one day to the next gets erased when she goes to sleep for the night. Author Watson in his debut novel brings it and brings it and brings it.  Wow.  A first-rate thriller.

The Jump-Off Creek - Molly Gloss.
A short but brilliant novel about Lydia Sanderson, a strong-willed woman who pulls up stakes in Pennsylvania when her husband dies and sets out to homestead in 1890s Oregon.  One of the best novels ever about the hardscrabble experience of pioneers.  I can't praise it highly enough.

Please Don't Shoot My Dog - Jackie Cooper.
 Despite the title, which refers to director Norman Taurog's solution for a pint-sized actor who wouldn't cry, Cooper seems curiously remote from his days as a child star.  His story gains more focus during his teens, his time in WWII and his determination to make the transition from childhood and Hollywood to an adult actor on Broadway.  He got lucky and broke into TV in its infancy.  Since much of TV was live in the early days, this was perfect for theater-trained actors.  Shortly after that, he got into the business end of show business and became vice-president of program development at Screen Gems which produced many popular shows like Bewitched, The Flying Nun, and The Partridge Family among others.

 In this autobiography, Cooper has plenty of gossipy and racy (and kind of creepy...thinking about the Joan Crawford one here) anecdotes about some of the people he knew in the movies and in television, but sometimes he comes off as defensive or occasionally, just plain dense.  These tendencies are thrown into even sharper focus because he and his ghostwriter made the decision to allow people from Cooper's life tell their side of the story in short paragraphs interspersed throughout the book.  The effect is more tiresome than illuminating, and it all feels like hack writing.  A better title might have been Please Don't Shoot My Dog of a Book.

January, 2011: Reading & Reviewing, Part 2

Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell. I've found a new author to love and admire. He was right there all along under my nose in my own home state! Winter's Bone is as bleak and spare as its title. In spirit, this novel is very close to True Grit. In a part of the Missouri Ozarks that most definitely would not remind readers of Branson, 16-year-old Ree Dolly's father has gone missing. He used the family's dilapidated old house as collateral for part of his bond, and if he doesn't turn up for his court date, Ree, her mentally fragile mother and two little brothers will lose their home. Ree sets out to find her father and meets with incredible opposition, even from her closest kin. The movie version of Winter's Bone is brilliant as well. Daniel Woodrell's style has been christened "country noir". It certainly fits. I'm looking forward to reading and enjoying more of his work, particularly Tomato Red and Woe To Live On.


A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler. In this 1993 Pulitzer fiction winner, Vietnamese immigrants to Louisiana speak about their experiences in the old world and the new. It seems very daring that Butler decided to tell these fifteen stories from the Vietnamese viewpoint, but he's delicate, sensitive and very knowledgeable about that culture, so it works beautifully.



The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins. Finally, a young adult series that I can truly love. The Hunger Games are a yearly occurence in a future dystopian North America, now called Panem and divided into twelve districts, ruled by a wealthy and corrupt Capitol. Two young adults, aged 12-18 are selected from each district as a "tribute" to fight to the death the young people selected from the other eleven districts. The last person left alive receives fame and riches. The whole bloody spectacle is broadcast as a reality show. As the novel begins, 12-year-old Primrose Everdeen has been selected as a tribute from District 12, one of the poorer regions of Panem. Her older sister, Katniss, a seasoned hunter and poacher, volunteers to take her place. Collins' pacing is excellent and she doesn't flinch from presenting the violent aspects. Although it is by no means a funny book, I couldn't repress a sickly smile at how her take on this most gruesome of reality shows is pitch-perfect and so similar to what we see on television all the time now. Now that I'm invested in Katniss as a character, I'd like to finish the trilogy (Catching Fire and Mockingjay), but I don't see how they can pack as much of a wallop as The Hunger Games.


White Noise - Don DeLillo. Douglas Coupland fans, come and see how your author was influenced by this 1985 novel. The writing is hilarious, but the story as a whole never worked for me. The characters are cartoonish, two-dimensional and it feels so unsatisfying. I'm almost sure that this was DeLillo's point, but it was hard going. I would enjoy this story so much more in another form -- a graphic novel or a movie, for example.


Veronica - Mary Gaitskill. I didn't feel engaged by the main character, Alison, a former model down on her luck and less so by her friend, Veronica, who died of AIDS. (Their story is told by the technique of continuous cross-cutting from the past to the present, so that wasn't a spoiler.) I've been an admirer of Gaitskill's writing since her first collection of short stories, Bad Behavior came out back in 1988. I was so caught up in her edginess that I didn't notice until this novel what a gift Gaitskill has for imagery. Parts of Veronica verge on poetry. Mary Gaitskill reminds me of Lorrie Moore, except imagine Lorrie on recreational drugs in a fuck-you-the-world-is-shit kind of mood.


Parched - Heather King. At the age of thirteen, Heather King drank her first beer and took a headlong dive into the bottle that lasted twenty years. She reviews her entire life and her early years seem unremarkable. Quotations from Psalms and the Gospel begin each chapter, so one can be sure that spirituality played an important part in her recovery. There are also shadowy references to Catholic writers and practices studded throughout the book, so I wasn't surprised to read in the biographical note that she attends a Catholic church in Los Angeles. King's writing is at its best when she's describing her horrific and often pathetic drunken behavior, and I was agog at her description of how she managed to successfully complete law school during her sharp downward spiral. Clearly, she's brilliant. There's a sequel to this book that I'm hoping to find. Parched reminded me of another very good alcoholic memoir by Caroline Knapp called Drinking: A Love Story.

January 2011: Reading & Reviewing, Part 1

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Books read in January: 12

Total number of pages: 3,768

The Best of Everything - Rona Jaffe. I read this for the Reading Madly challenge. Three young women -- Caroline, April and Gregg -- go to New York City to live, work and fall in love. The latter is usually with disastrous results, since most of the men in the novel are white-collar shits. Caroline, who works her way up in a publishing company, seems to be the model for secretary-turned-ad copywriter Peggy Olson in Mad Men. What struck me about this book is how well-written and nicely edited it is. Most of the chapters are on the short side and episodic, so you can parcel The Best of Everything out to yourself in delectable slices or gobble it down whole, like I did. I'd love to cap this one off with a viewing of the 1959 movie.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain. I made sure that my internal culture clock was moved back to 1840s Missouri before I started this novel because I didn't want to be distracted by the liberal use of the N-word. In spite of this preparation, I still had a few nasty optical speed bumps. (I should say shoals rather than speed bumps, since the setting is the Mississippi River.) Aside from that, it was a great read -- most of the time. I was surprised at how much Huck and Holden Caulfield sound alike, for Huck has a bit of a depressive streak. Books don't usually make me cry, but I have to admit that I had something in my eye when Jim related his memory about his little daughter, Elizabeth. Then there were those last chapters at Tom Sawyer's relatives' farm! Mr. Clemens, I love you to bits, but what the hell? No spoilers, but I wanted to take Aunt Sally's thimble and crack it upside your gorgeous white head. Chapter The Last has some trouble spots as well, but it fits the previous action much better and restores to the ending that wonderful feeling of the river. I'll be scratching my head about that one part for a long time, though. Next summer, I'm planning a trip to Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain grew up. I've never been there. People tell me that it's a huge tourist trap, but a tourist trap connected to literature suits me right down to the ground.

Hitch-22 - Christopher Hitchens. I had a little trouble keeping up with his discussions about various political situations in different countries, but I enjoyed reading his portraits of his mother and father, his friends, including Martin Amis, Edward Said, Susan Sontag and Salman Rushdie, his first trip to the United States, his eventually becoming a U.S. citizen and the relatively late-in-life bombshell discovery that his mother's family was Jewish. This is a solid, well-crafted memoir.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth - Jeff Kinney. There's so much I love about this series: 1. The graphic novel aspect 2. It looks like a kid's diary, right down to the laborious-looking printing and the lined paper. 3. Greg's mother's name is Susan. 4. Rodrick's band is called "Loaded Diaper", which they spell in Motley Crue fashion. 5. Manny, the littlest Heffley boy is drawn about as big as a flea. 6. That grubby middle school feeling is captured perfectly. 7. Greg's hapless friend Rowley, who is first afraid he'll "catch puberty" then is elated when he starts sporting a huge Cyclopsian zit on his forehead. 8. Greg is so often oblivious in that cusp-of-adolescence way. 9. Greg reminds me a little bit of Doug Funnie. I really miss that show. 10. There's always a potentially fun event that the adults manage to turn into a cluster, like the talent show in the first book and the "Lock-in" in this book.

Loving Frank - Nancy Horan. I shied away reading this book for a long time because I thought it had the reek of chick-lit on it. Then I resisted it anew after reading T.C. Boyle's The Women because it covered similar ground and I was sure it wouldn't be as creative or audacious as Boyle's book. After spotting a copy at my friend Leigh's apartment, I finally decided to go for it. There is a little bit of overlap, and the storytelling is much more straightforward, but it has its own way of grabbing the reader's attention. My impression about chick-lit was wrong. The focus of the book is on Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress. Her giddiness at the beginning of their affair was predictable and annoying, but there's a gradual sea-change and readers see an intelligent portrayal of a complex woman who has an enormous capacity for self-delusion and we can feel and sympathize with Mamah's sharp shocks as she slowly emerges from her cloud. If this novel is filmed, it will take a talented and subtle actress to pull this off. I nominate Molly Parker, who played Alma Garrett in Deadwood. Ultimately, I recommend that people read both Loving Frank and The Women, in that order -- you get kind of a Mobius strip effect as a bonus.

The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason. Although it's technically very well-written, I couldn't warm up to this novel about a piano tuner, Edgar Drake, who is mysteriously summoned to Burma in 1886 for the express purpose of tuning an Erard grand piano. The pacing is decidedly 19th century, which I admire Mason for pulling off, but the long journey to the mysterious Dr. Anthony Carroll seems to take forever and the book starts to feel like the Burma edition of Lonely Planet. Once Edgar and Dr. Carroll meet, there is some mystery about the man, but there's not as much tension as one would expect because it's all jumbled up with Edgar's rhapsodizing about what a paradise Dr. Carroll lives in and we're back to Lonely Planet. There's also a lovely and mysterious Burmese woman who smells like spices and speaks perfect English and touches Edgar's hand fairly often and gets him all feverish...or was that the malaria? Finally, Things Happen in about the last 20 pages, but it's all rushed and confusing. I struggled with this book for 6 weeks and felt as if my effort had not been repaid in kind. Even so, I feel a little guilty for not liking the book better, since a couple of people in BOOKLEAVES thought it was wonderful. If you liked the gauzy quality of The English Patient and the journey-into-the-jungle aspect of Heart of Darkness and your preferred reading is travelogues, then you'll enjoy The Piano Tuner.

6 reviews down, 6 to go.

A Few More Stray Reviews

This wraps up everything I read in 2010. Whew.

We Shook The Family Tree - Hildegarde Dolson.

I wrote about this humorous memoir, published in 1946 here but I got parts of it confused with parts of Dolson's 1955 follow-up, (which I actually like a little bit better) Sorry To Be So Cheerful. Guess what I did soon after that?

Composed - Rosanne Cash.
I have been a huge Rosanne Cash fan since that summer day in 1981 when I went to Peaches, a record store in Tulsa and bought her 1979 album, Right or Wrong, then went back to my then-boyfriend's parents' home and laid it on their turntable. Composed is a surprisingly literary memoir. Sometimes, it seems extremely introspective as if Cash were writing to herself rather than to an audience of readers, but I admire her tastefulness, her intellect and her dazzling ability to see connections in practically everything.

The Long, Gone Lonesome History of Country Music - Bret Bertholf
This book is juvenile nonfiction and it's also a picture book. Right out of the gate it suffers from an identity crisis. It doesn't really succeed as a picture book because the color palette is too dark and muddy. As far as the nonfiction goes, there's a lot of names and expertly-done caricatures of country stars from the past, but many of them are just presented as names and faces and that's all. Only the keenest and most interested young reader would be motivated to Google for more in-depth information. Also, the book has the dual disadvantage of being out of date and being about a genre that is maniacal in its drive to always produce the newest flavor of the month, (even if that flavor tastes increasingly of cheap plastic) and very young country fans have no bridge to tie yesterday to today. I can only see this book appealing to someone like myself or Sam from Book Chase because both of us enjoy and appreciate the history of country music and we're old enough to get most of the references. One final complaint: There's no bibliography, which is inexcusable. Even if the people reading the book are only waist-high and seriously believe that Hannah Montana is a real person and that french fries with ranch dressing and bacon bits is a balanced meal, they have a right to a list of original sources.

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things - Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. Stuff starts out with the cautionary tale of the Collyer brothers, whose hoarding in their New York City brownstone led them to a horrific end in 1947. Frost and Steketee present other cases for our consideration, from those who mindfully struggle with parting with even the smallest, most insignificant objects to those who are living in such extreme filth but still believe it's not their problem, but rather the problem of friends, family or the authorities who find their lifestyle alarming. Animal hoarders are profiled, and also very young children with hoarding tendencies who have been brought to Frost and Steketee by concerned parents. There's a brief overview of how philosophers throughout history have viewed owning possessions and a look at how and why an increasing number of Americans have hoarding issues of different degrees. Frost and Steketee aren't judgmental or know-it-all about this disorder. Their willingness to discuss the contradictory theories and raise the questions that still puzzle them is refreshing.

A Few Stray Reviews

Here are some of my reads during December:

In The Woods - Tana French.
This novel was the December BOOKLEAVES selection. I really didn't expect to like it at all because I'm not a big mystery fan, but I ended up liking it very much. Rob, a police detective based near Dublin and his partner, Cassie are put on a murder case that happened in the country near an archaeological dig. It also happens to be the same place where, 20 years before, Rob (then called Adam) and 2 of his best friends went missing. The friends were never found and Rob/Adam was found safe a couple of days later, clinging to a tree with no memory of what happened. The more seasoned mystery readers in the group were able to spot the murderer almost immediately and guessed at another character's involvement. I got really caught up in the intricately choreographed way Rob and Cassie would interrogate suspects -- it was my favorite aspect of the novel. Some readers groused that one of the mysteries was never solved, but I didn't mind -- it seemed more realistic. I'm looking forward to reading more of Tana French's work.


Holidays on Ice - David Sedaris.

I read this one because my co-worker Brian saw that I was at 97 books and he wanted to nudge me closer to triple digits. We swapped Sedaris -- I gave him Me Talk Pretty One Day. Holidays on Ice seems a little uneven, but the first offering in the collection, "The Santaland Diaries", which is about his sojourn as a department store elf, is definitely worth your time. I was reading it while eating lunch alone at Lotteria (Korea's version of a fast food burger chain) and I laughed suddenly and loudly. The three ajummas at the table next to me jumped and stared.


Dream Story - Arthur Schnitzler.
Although I've never seen the movie Eyes Wide Shut, I was definitely interested in this 1926 Austrian novel, the source material. Too soon, I found myself borstrated with the draggy, semi-surreal plot. Dream Story is less than a hundred pages, so I was able to tough it out, but I won't be turning it into a Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge. Thanks anyway to my book buddy Paul (who's got all those great Jim Thompson novels!) for the loan.

The Rule of Saint Benedict - St. Benedict. Faulkner Guy passed this slim volume to me several months ago, and I finally read it, making it book #100 for the year. (Not only is Faulkner Guy Faulkner Guy, he is Medieval Guy.) In 73 short chapters, Benedict of Nursia lays out a constitution and laws for living in a religious community and he touches on almost every detail of daily life including the election of an abbot, obedience, daily labor, the twelve degrees of humility, prayer, diet, reading scripture at mealtimes, punishment and how to dress and behave while traveling away from the monastery. Although there are rules for everything except breathing, they seem thoughtful and moderate, and there is a degree of democracy present. This book was written around 530, but Benedict's vigorous and clear writing has aged well.
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Ride The River - Louis L'Amour. This novel is part of the Sackett series, and the only one featuring a female Sackett, 16-year-old Echo. After spending her whole life in the mountains of Tennessee, Echo journeys to Philadelphia to collect an inheritance. The lawyer with the money advertised as minimally as he could, in hopes that no one would ever come forth, but Echo saw the notice by chance. Now he intends to cheat her, but Echo's smart and ready to kick ass if needed. L'Amour made some of the clumsiest style choices in 20th century fiction. There's too much exposition and the book could spawn several rounds of drinking games since Echo repeats herself so much, but if you like a snappy plot and the reassurance that the Sacketts always come out all right, you might enjoy seeing this hillbilly Katniss in action.
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The Quiet Little Woman - Louisa May Alcott. I read this during Christmas week for the All About Alcott Challenge. Back in the 1870s, three sisters were huge fans of Little Women and decided to pay homage to the March sisters and Alcott by creating their own literary magazine. Alcott heard about this and kindly contributed to their effort the three stories in this volume, all with a Christmas theme. There's nothing of Jo March here, the character that gives Little Women its fire and energy. On the contrary, these anemic, sentimental tales seem more like they could have been authored by Beth from her sickbed. The Quiet Little Women is nice as a stocking stuffer for a grade school girl or for devotees of Louisa May Alcott who would like to get their hands on absolutely everything she ever wrote, but the latter group should be advised that they will need a good strong dose of A.M. Barnard afterwards.

Reader's Block-tober

I can't help but be a little disappointed -- only six books for October. With huge amounts of classroom prep and a conference to attend this month, I ran into a little bit of reader's block. I had counted on the Readathon to bring up my numbers and make the rest of my journey to 100+ books a cakewalk, but it just didn't happen. (Well, the Readathon happened, but I didn't.)

It's not all gloomy news, though -- I made some progress on a couple of challenges. Here's what got read:

1. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer. An enormously satisfying war novel. I discussed it a little more here. I'm hoping to find out more about the alleged movie remake.

2. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane. The book and the movie!

3. The Lost City of Z - David Grann. I thought the Arctic explorers were tough guys, but they had nothing on Percy Fawcett, a middle-aged former army officer who carved a career out of exploring the Amazon repeated times for the Royal Geographic Society. Fawcett seemed to have a freakishly strong constitution, since he survived countless brushes with death in hostile (man and nature) conditions and he was possessed with an iron will. He was also simply obsessed.

In 1925, Fawcett embarked on a quest to find an ancient and highly-developed civilization that he staunchly believed had existed in the jungles of Brazil. He took along his son Jack and Jack's best friend, Raleigh Rimmell. The trio was never seen again, although many tried to locate them for decades.
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Nearly 80 years after Fawcett's disappearance, reporter David Grann decided to investigate. Meticulous research, crisp reporting and mesmerizing writing by Grann coupled with dozens of captivating photos from the past and present make this book worthy of every bit of praise it has received since its publication last year.

4. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon - Crystal Zevon. I'm really disappointed in this oral biography/memoir of singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. Whether his songs were goofy, sardonic, cutting, edgy, tender or just plain good storytelling wedded to the perfect pop hook, Zevon was startlingly and unfailingly brilliant at his craft. I expected the same level of perfection with the story of his life.

Instead, fans have been presented with a chronologically-arranged volume of anecdotes from people who were in (and out) of his life. Many of the names are familiar -- Jackson Browne, for example -- but many are not, which makes things a little confusing. A list explaining who they are and how they fit in finally appears, but as an appendix. Hardly any of them have a talent for the good anecdote.

Crystal Zevon (Warren's former wife and lifelong friend) has thrown everything, including frequent glimpses into Zevon's diaries. Again, there's no sense of discernment. Unfortunately, Zevon's private writings reflect almost zero of his genius for writing and the dullness is painfully repeated by multiple entries. Since Crystal Zevon was close to Warren, the book suffers from over-subjectivity and has a claustrophobic quality at times.

Zevon had a dark side and he could be a nasty and mean SOB even after he stopped drinking. I've never objected to seeing any of my literary, cinematic or musical heroes and heroines portrayed with warts galore, but let it be done by a biographer (such as A. Scott Berg or Blake Bailey) whose talents in this area are equal to Zevon's talent in songwriting. A little distance and objectivity would greatly benefit the story of this enigmatic performer.

5. True Grit - Charles Portis. I gulped this 1968 novel down in a couple of sittings. With the coolness and steeliness of purpose that a Harry Callahan or a Paul Kersey might exhibit, 14-year-old Mattie Ross engages the services of one Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn to help her track down Tom Chaney, the hired hand who killed her father. The incident is recounted by Mattie 50 years later. She's a powerful, quirky and often unintentionally funny narrator. When it comes to voice, Portis has all the goods.

In this edition, there's a very entertaining afterword by Donna Tartt, who also read the audiobook. I'm squeamish at worst and uncertain at best when it comes to the spoken book but I'd tramp through the pattiest of cow pastures in cowboy boots a size too small to get my ears next to this one.

6. The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald: Thirty-Five Years Later - Sheilah Graham. A lovely mixture of literary and Hollywood gossip, although it irritated me that Sheilah kept having to remind her readers how irresistible she was to men, from her short-lived engagement to the Marquis of Donegall at the beginning of the book to her almost-seduction at the hands of Gary Cooper near the end of the book. It's nice that she and Scottie (Scott and Zelda's daughter) remained friends. Fitzgerald aficionados will probably feel as if they've seen much of the same ground covered before.

August, 2010: Sweating and Reading and Reading and Sweating

Ten books this month. Not bad, considering that my brain was slowly and systematically being melted in the hellish heat of my apartment (which, in retrospect fit in rather well with my Joyce Carol Oates and Jim Thompson outings). My best reading moments were on the subway and in the Dunkin' Donuts in Itaewon. Both locales were so nicely icy.

1. My Sister, My Love - Joyce Carol Oates. When I read an Oates novel, it feels as if my face is pressed too close to everything and Oates's prose just hammers and hammers away at you. But I keep coming back for more and have, since I was barely out of my teens. Oates's take on the JonBenet Ramsey case focuses on the shadowy figure of the slightly older brother, Skyler. Oates gives her version of the case a resolution -- the same way I always thought perhaps it played out in real life.

2. Royal Flash - George MacDonald Fraser. This was even more fun than the first book! A take-off of The Prisoner of Zenda.

3. Pop. 1280 - Jim Thompson. This novel is a later reworking of The Killer Inside Me, with the same theme of the affable small-town sheriff with a dark side. As always, I'm surprised by the flashes of real hilarity that show up in Thompson's nightmarish landscapes. In 1981, this book was made into a well-regarded French film called Coup de Torchon with the setting changed from West Texas to a colony in French West Africa.

4. Savage Night - Jim Thompson. Written in 1953, this is one of Thompson's stranger offerings. A hit man comes to a small college town in the east. He's a vicious killer on the lam who looks many years younger than his actual age and has a number of infirmities. In spite of the drawbacks to his health and appearance, in typical pulpy Thompson fashion, the babes in the book can't wait to get him into bed. On the other hand, Thompson's narrators are unreliable. This book had many disturbing images, but seemed to suffer from slow pacing then finally disintegrates into an incoherent mess that's meant to pass for surrealism.

5. The Getaway - Jim Thompson. This 1959 novel basically follows the plot of the 1972 movie starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as Doc and Carol McCoy, bank robbers and murderers on the run. The writing is a little sloppy, but the pacing is good and Thompson's superb storytelling carries the reader along swiftly. Life on the lam is a little grittier for the McCoys -- they hide in a hollowed-out manure pile for days in one episode -- and reading about their ultimate fate (no warm and folksy Slim Pickens character here!) helps a reader to understand why Stephen King counted Jim Thompson as one of his influences. Of the three Thompson books I read this month, this was my favorite. I still want to read 3 more Thompson novels: A Hell of a Woman (1954), After Dark, My Sweet (1955) and The Grifters (1963).

6. Gone To An Aunt's: Remembering Canada's Homes for Unwed Mothers - Anne Petrie. I wrote about this book and 3 others in my Canadian Challenge post.

7. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordecai Richler. I raved about this in my Canadian post.

8. You Gotta Have Wa - Robert Whiting. This book about Japanese baseball is really more of a look at cultures colliding. I could really feel for the American baseball players who came to Japan to play and the immense culture shock that awaited them both on the field and off. Just change Japan to Korea and baseball to English teaching and you've pretty well got a glimpse into the life of an expat in Asia. I wish there was an updated version of this book; the baseball salaries that were so enticing sound so paltry now. Also, I'd like to see how many gaijin are playing in Japan these days.

9. The Diviners - Margaret Laurence. THE Canadian novel!

10. Piling Blood - Al Purdy. I'm not much for poetry, but I'm glad to discover Al Purdy.

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I'm pretty happy with my numbers for August. Returning to work and my busy schedule this semester threatens my quest for 100+, but I've signed up for the Readathon on October 9.

July 2010: What I Read

This has got to be one of my stranger lists of reading-by-the-month:

1. Korea: A Walk Through The Land of Miracles - Simon Winchester. Back in the late 1980s, Simon Winchester set out to walk across South Korea. Most of his observations were spot-on, and I was happy to see that he walked very close to where I live now, but overall, I'd prefer a little less about Winchester (especially about how he's so irresistible to Korean salon girls, ew) and a little more about Korea.

2. The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson. Even with the movie version recently released, it was difficult to find any of Thompson's novels. I finally had success at a Borders in Kansas City. Dang. I wasn't expecting Thompson to be so compulsively readable, so twisted and nightmarish or so darkly humorous at turns. This sick and brilliant foray into the mind of a psychotic killer made me jumpy and I was glad that people were nearby. In spite of feeling so disturbed, my appetite was whetted for more of Thompson's work. Fellow CRACKED SPINZ crony Paul brought back Pop. 1280 and Savage Night from England and I can't wait to read them.

3. The Plump Pig - Helen & Alf Evers. I sat close as Mom did a read-aloud. We'd both forgotten that while the title character was still living with the skinny farmer, he skipped going to the trough at mealtime and ran around the yard to get thinner, so that he might fit in. He only grew plumper and sadder. Sigh. Hooray for the plump family who was out for a drive one day!

4. Tinkers - Paul Harding. Ever since reading and loving The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao two years ago, the successive winners of the Pulitzer Prize have seemed really muted, very quiet in tone by comparison. Tinkers reminded me so much of Gilead, (Two old men in reflection at the end of their lives) except Tinkers was a little more metaphysical and Gilead seemed more religious/philosophical. I admire Harding's novel, but it was like peering for treasure in fog.

5. Blockade Billy - Stephen King. I'm more used to Stephen King going on for hundreds of pages. This entertaining novella (you can tell that King loves the language of baseball and relishes an opportunity to dive right in and use it with great abandon) felt like it ended before it got started properly. The other title in the volume, a long short story called "Morality" didn't seem to go with the title offering.

6. Nurse Nancy - Kathryn Jackson, Corinne Malvern. My preschool favorite appeared before me in a toy store in Amana, Iowa. I had to have it. They still include the decorated plastic bandages on the title page, although the ones in my orginal copy were different shapes like stars and hearts.

7. Somewhere To Belong - Judith Miller. The story of two young women in 1877 with Amana Colonies as the backdrop. Johanna has lived in Amana all her life and wonders about life beyond the colonies. Berta's parents have abruptly moved to Amana after living a well-to-do lifestyle in Chicago. Johanna is assigned the job of teaching angry, rebellious Berta how to fit in at Amana. Berta is the fish-out-of-water that enables the reader to see inside the Utopian community. Miller's depiction of the day-to-day rigorous schedule is instructive, entertaining and, since Berta and Johanna are put to work in the kitchen, mouthwatering. Both girls' families are harboring secrets, and both girls are determined to know exactly what's going on. Meanwhile, a man from another part of the Colonies has begun to show an interest in Johanna. Since Christian fiction and romance are not my favorite types of reading, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this wholesome novel. Recommended to me by Mom, who says she "lived every minute of it", which is her ultimate praise for a book.

8. Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser. Harry Flashman, the bully who terrorized younger and smaller students at Rugby school in Tom Brown's School Days (in one memorable scene, he and one of his thuggish friends attempt to literally roast Tom in front of the fire!) picks up writing his "memoirs" where Thomas Hughes left off. Being expelled from Rugby for drunkenness doesn't slow Flashy down; he decides to join the military. In quick succession, he's shuttled off to Scotland, India then Afghanistan, the latter to his great unease. Flashman makes no bones about being a self-professed "lily livered" coward who rarely thinks beyond his next ride (you can take that however you want) or his next drink. Flashman's smart-ass narrative keeps the action moving swiftly and Fraser, the "editor" of this series of memoirs, provides notes backing up Flashman's amazing historical accuracy or clarifying a few points. I'm now reading Royal Flash, the second volume of the series. Ooooh, gorgeous stuff...it's like candy. Flashy's a rake, a ramblin' man, a villain, a coward and a certified gold-plated bastard, but he's hilarious and I can't help loving him.

June, 2010 Reviews and Comments

I'm trying not to get too far behind on my reviews like I did last year. Only 6 for June, but really high-quality, engrossing reads:

1. Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn. A cute-but-deep epistolary novel about letters being banished from the alphabet on a small island in the United States. As the book progresses, the correspondence gets a little stranger and more convoluted because use of the outlawed letter carries harsh punishment. Dunn gives readers plenty to think about in the areas of superstition and censorship. Thanks to Shanna for passing this one on to me.

2. Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby. Who better to get me ready for World Cup than my beloved Nick? I'm pretty familiar with Nick the booklover, and Nick the soccer fanatic has many of the same qualities. Hornby details his obsession with the fortunes of London Arsenal since he was 11 year old. He's really interesting when he gets into fan mentality. Highly recommended.

3. Love and Hate in Jamestown - David A. Price. According to Peggy Lee, "Captain Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair". Except they didn't. John Smith was in his late 20s when he sailed from England to Virginia to establish a settlement at Jamestown. Unfortunately, he was with a bunch of losers who had been hanging on their family trees like so much rotten fruit till their fathers dispatched them to the New World. Even then, the wastrels thought that they'd never have to work because they'd be tripping over huge chunks of gold every time they went to the privy.

Only Smith (not noble born like the rest) seemed to have an understanding about the amount of work needed and the diplomatic skills to manage the delicate situation between the colony and the various Native American tribes living around Jamestown. When Smith wasn't around or wasn't in charge, things got ghastly very quickly. The Starving Time chapter makes for horrendous reading.

Meanwhile, there was Pocahontas. She saved Smith from her father Powhatan's edict of execution, but she was a child of 10 or 11 years old. She and Smith crossed paths once or twice more, but only fleetingly. Pocahontas ended up marrying an Englishman, John Rolfe, having a son, being presented at court then dying very young.

Price is an excellent writer who describes things very keenly and keeps the prose moving swiftly while still rolling out the facts. Now that I've read this book, I'd like to go back and watch the 2005 Terrence Malick film. My only complaint about L&HIJ that there were no pictures with the text.

4. The Black Pearl - Scott O'Dell. When Ramon finds the pearl of the title, also known as The Pearl of Heaven, he believes that his fortune has been made, but an ancient fisherman warns him that he's only succeeded in incurring the wrath of the sea monster living in their area. Kind of like Steinbeck's The Pearl for the elementary school set.

5. How Soccer Explains The World - Franklin Foer. Most countries feel strongly about soccer, but their culture plays a big part in how they express that love....or ambivalence, in the case of the United States. Standout chapters include a look at hooligan fans in the United Kingdom, an in-depth look at Foer's personal favorite team, Barcelona, Female Iranian fans protesting being banned by clerics from seeing matches and the fish-out-of-water story of how a player from Nigeria came to play for the Ukraine. Foer was so effective in communicating his love for Barca that I was really pleased to subsequently see Spain win the World Cup.

6. Interpreter of Maladies-Jhumpa Lahiri. All 9 of these stories are brilliant, but the title story is the showstopper. I'm smiting my forehead because I took so long to get around to reading this 2000 Pulitzer prizewinner. Jhumpa Lahiri is on the same level as Chekhov or Carver or Mansfield. Did I already say brilliant? I'll definitely be reading more of her writing.

February: Reading & Reviewing Part 1

Because of my little slump, I only read 9 books this month, but I gave myself a double-shot of perspective. Looking at last year's journal entries, I saw that I'd only read 8 books by the end of February. I'm now at 22 books, and I didn't get there until April 17. Triple digits can happen again.

Even though vacation has ended and I'm back to serving up grammar and vocabulary Monday-Friday, March promises to be a great month. I have some inviting gaps in my schedule that dovetail nicely with my plans to get back to procuring library loot. I'm looking out the window now at my library. It's about 6:30 pm as I write this and that weird wedge-shaped thing is glowing with a soft green light as if tenderly beckoning me.

Cracked Spinz will resume meetings after a long hiatus and maybe we'll get some new members. The university hired about 15 new teachers. Here's hoping that some of them will be bookworms. Anyway, here's what I read this month:

1. Wild Swans (memoir) - Jung Chang. Not only is this a memoir, it's a history of 20th century China seen through the eyes of Jung Chang, her mother and her grandmother. It was heartbreaking to read about how fervently her parents believed in the Communist Party and their shock and disbelief at how Mao revealed himself over time to be nothing more than an evil despot. All of their dedication and sacrifice came to deep and profound loss and grief. I knew almost nothing about the Cultural Revolution, so this book was an eye-opener. If you get a chance, read it. You won't find a more incredible or well-told story. I'm really glad that my co-worker Canadian Cool loaned me her copy.

2. Great Expectations (audiobook) - Charles Dickens, Hugh Laurie. I won't say that I'm now an audiobook fan, but I truly enjoyed this one. My dearest crush Hugh Laurie narrates masterfully, and creates a wide and pleasing variety of voices and accents for each of his characters. Surprisingly, his best one (and the most moving) was for Miss Havisham. GE was the book that finally made me fond of Dickens, so I was pleased to revisit Pip and his world.

3. Bud, Not Buddy (novel) - Christopher Paul Curtis. This outstanding 1999 juvenille novel won the 2000 Newbery Award as well as the Coretta Scott King book award. It's 1936 and 10-year-old Bud (not Buddy) Caldwell has been in and out of orphanages and foster homes since his mother died when he was 6 years old. After he's put in another terrible foster home, he runs away and decides to hit the road and look for his real father. Going by a flyer that his mother saved, Bud is under the impression that a musician called Herman E. Calloway, who is the leader of a band called "The Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!" is his real father.

Curtis based some of the story on his colorful family history, and obviously did some great research about the time period. Bud and the other characters sound authentically 1930s. My favorite scene in the book involves Bud, who is on the road, lining up late at a soup kitchen for a free breakfast and being denied access. A couple with children see his plight and pretend that he's theirs. The scene is written for comedic effect, but there's a poignancy to it, too. I'm eager to read Curtis' other novels, particularly 1963 - The Watsons Go To Birmingham.

To be continued...