Reading Roadblock: The Angry Scribble In My Left Eye

 I don't know any three-year-olds right now, so I haven't been hanging out with any lately. How then can I explain the dark scrawl, the angry scribble in my left eye? The scribble on top of flyspecks on a dirty window on a cloudy day.

Here's what the ophthalmologist believes: Some of the vitreous fluid (it's like jelly, baby) in my eye broke off and is floating around. There's also some blood in the eye. Eventually, the floaters will calm down and/or my brain will learn to ignore the scribble. I can't wait. 

This really puts a crimp in my reading. Really been struggling to finish Fresh Off the Boat, but if the book were a song, my eye would be the static drowning it out. Eddie Huang, I loved your funny, savage footnotes, but not so much anymore. Can barely see them.

Audiobooking? Yeah, not so much. I listen to audiobooks in the car, and guess what? I can't see well enough to drive. 

Speaking of audiobooks, funny story. The one I was listening to (before this eye thing happened allofasudden on Sunday afternoon) was How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. It's a historical view of LSD, magic mushrooms and the like. I was into the book so much that when my eye went wonky, I thought for a fleeting moment that I'd been so strongly influenced by my reading that I'd somehow sent myself on a trip. First cheese and now...this??? But alas, no mind-bending experience for me. Instead, it's like that Dorothy Parker anecdote in which the bartender asks her, "What are you having?" and Dorothy Parker replies, "Not much fun."

I can still watch television. Michael, Dwight, Jim, Pam, Kelly, Meredith and the rest of The Office are still hilarious through my scribbled-on eye.

I spy with my little eye the ophthalmologist again on Monday. Meanwhile, I remain blurrily, cloudily, speckly, and scribbly your Blue-Hearted Bookworm on pause.

Angry At You...And Your Books, Too???

I heard something both intriguing and disturbing this week: An acquaintance of mine (I'll call her 'Reedy'; she's wonderfully, quirkily bookwormy) and I got together. Over coffee, we were having a lively conversation about books we'd recently read, books on our wishlist and books we were looking forward to coming out next year. We were both especially Squeeeeee! about The Mirror and the Light, the final book in the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel.

I told Reedy about finding some sort of orangey-red sauce in my recently library read, Born Round by Frank Bruni, and how I would ordinarily be a little bit eww, but under the circumstances, it seemed forgivable. She asked if I smelled the page to try and figure out what the previous reader had been eating. Uh, no. She said she always does that. Except when she sees Cheeto fingerprints, which is all the evidence you really need.

The conversation flowed on with the coffee, and I mentioned wanting to read City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert and The Body by Bill Bryson (I got the latter for my birthday last week).

Reedy made a disgusted face. "I'm not going to read either one of those. I wouldn't read them if you paid me."

"Why not?"

"My cousin gave them to me. And I'm mad at her."

Well. Relatives can be all over the board, but if they're generous with books, you can overlook a few things! Can't you? I know I could.

"Reedy, you can't be mad at the books. They didn't do anything."

"I don't care. They sat there on the shelves, just glaring out at me and I kept getting more and more repulsed when I looked at them. I couldn't even stand them in the house. I felt like throwing up."

I didn't like the sudden and ominous appearance of past tense verbs. I tried to ignore them: "Bring the books to me. I don't know your cousin."

"I don't have them anymore," said Reedy.

"Oh my God." I was having terrible visions. "Reedy, you didn't throw them away, did you?"

"Of course not. I'm not crazy. I donated them to the Salvation Army. But there are copies in every fucking bookstore around here. I see them everywhere I go. Even Walmart. Ugh."

I thought I was going to cry, or something next-door to it. "I wish you'd brought them to me. I would have even given you some money for them."

"I don't care. I did you a favor. Those books had her nasty mojo all over them."

So, anyway. I'm torn between annoyed at missing out on free new books and genuine fascination at this quirky(?) behavior. I don't understand, and I promise that if I'm ever mad at you, I may be snarling with contempt, but for your books, there'll be nothing but the utmost tenderness in my heart.

The Guy Who Bought A Dozen Books

In Dollar Tree last Saturday, a middle-aged guy staggered up to the register under the weight of twelve hardcover books. He plopped them down on the counter at the cash register. They were all copies of the same book: HRC, a biography of Hillary Clinton.

Hmm, I thought. He either really loves or really hates Hillary. I didn't have to wait long to find out. He announced to the cashier and everyone behind him in line that he was a Republican, but he was buying this book for friends who needed to know the truth.  The last phrase was said with a significant smirk. He paid his 12 dollars plus tax and headed out the door.

Horse's ass, I thought, bristling. Not because he's Republican, but because he doesn't get it. If he were a Democrat brandishing twelve books about Trump, he'd still be a sorry jerk. That is a prime example of how NOT to do books and friends, friends and books.

It's so easy to go wrong when buying books for other people. You love it; they hate it and sneer at your taste. They lived every word of the story; you wonder at the fissures in their brain that make them enjoy such slop. Still, the parties have engaged in a sharing experience. Varying degrees of thoughtfulness have played a part. Although their attempts at connection and communication may have fallen short, they have made themselves vulnerable, which is admirable and touching.

But that guy at Dollar Tree? What's that? His "friends", indeed. I wonder how they will accept his offering. How many of the twelve will go unread and end up being window props and coasters? The noise that those books made as they thudded to the counter sounded like a pile of bricks falling and his intended method of delivery seemed in keeping with that sound.

Halloween Week Reading Part Two

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson.  I finally got around to reading this 1886 novella, and I was a little disappointed. The idea was brilliant, but Stevenson's choice to have everything filtered through Jekyll's lawyer, Utterson, gives the story a stogy, constricted, airless feel. The story gets back on track and finishes strong in the last part, but meanwhile, what a slog.

Rather than the text, I wish I had picked up the Classics Illustrated version pictured above, or taken in the 1930s Fredric March movie.

 Next October, I think I'll read Valerie Martin's 1990 novel, Mary Reilly which tells the famous tale  from the viewpoint of a female servant in Henry Jekyll's house.

Then You Can Start to Make it Better

2015 is just barely underway and I'm already in my second book slump! Last weekend I felt the slumpiness coming on and I deftly fended it off with the fresh and witty Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister. I love the idea of a series with Mrs. Parker as a ghost. The quips flow like alcohol, but Meister did her homework and the reader gets to see the Dorothy with a strong social conscience and unresolved personal issues. The specter is also...hmmm, how can I put this delicately? Horny!

Anyway, a fun read. If I'd had any sense, I would have gone on with Meister's just-released follow-up Dorothy Parker Drank Here. But no. I must have shown the soft, white part of my neck because the next week found me mired in slumphood and moving through these three books as if swimming in molasses:

1. A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin. I am enjoying the story, but I've hit a wall. It's not Martin. It's me.

2. Vincent van Gogh - Naifeh and Smith. I'm halfway through, but it's hard work even when I'm not in a slump. I don't understand. Naifeh and Smith have an engaging style. I fairly whistled at my reading when I read their biography of Jackson Pollock which is also a lengthy tome.

3. Burmese Days - George Orwell. I threw Orwell into the mix because I've learned over the years that he can fix anything. Also, in these last days of my expat life, I thought it would be something to hang onto and ride out this arid interval. No joy.

Thursday found me moodily clicking through my blogroll. Everyone can read but me. I happened upon my longtime favorite Shelf Love and Teresa was talking about A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and how it's dark and depressing. She mentioned Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.

 I sat up straighter and ceased scowling. In one of those flashes that illuminate everything, I knew that it was time to read Jude. Jude would get me out of this reading slump. I searched my Kindle and found a copy that I had downloaded during a short-lived fervor to read only 19th century authors.

Now it's Sunday afternoon. So far, so good. Or bad, as is the case with Jude Fawley. Actually, he's on an upswing because his barbarous wife Arabella has just decided to quit him and emigrate to Australia and he's once again free to pursue his studies. I've just started Part Second, as Hardy calls it and I'm reading! Really really reading. What a relief.
 

What A Strange Non-Reading Week It's Been

He can't read. If he could, page-turning would be a challenge.

Color me crabby. After my terrific reading streak, I went into a slump, and I haven't been able to settle into a book since last Wednesday. The most I've done is dip into a couple of re-reads, skimming and skipping at will.

Here's what I've been doing with my time:

• Packing
• Going to the post office
• Trying to figure out what is deserving of international postage
• Trying to interest people in my stuff
• Watching old episodes of Family on YouTube
• Making stacks of books
• Eating bungeoppang
• Working on the Nano project
• Doing conversation tutoring on Wednesdays

Although my life is full, I still feel the need. The need for read! 

Age 2. I couldn't read yet.  

Misplaced Bookworm: A Failure to Communicate

In this day and age of social media, how could I possibly lose track of someone?  It seems that I have done just that. To compound my shame and annoyance, this person is MALE, so I can't blame it on she-got-married-and-changed-her-name.

I've lost all my contact information for Pablo, my bookish co-worker from Gumi.  I wrote about him regularly in this blog.  During those first few years in Korea, if I hadn't had him to exchange books and movies with, life would have been -- well, I don't want to over-dramatize, but it would have been a lot less nice.  A lot less civilized.  He left our workplace and I followed a year or two later, leaving town.  We met up once after that, and exchanged a few emails.  Then, nothing.  That was five years ago.  Social media isn't Pablo's thing, so I don't think I'll find him on Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn...

Carelessness and complacency.  I allowed a perfect storm of old phone numbers stored in lost old cell phones and a couple of defunct email accounts to sever the last links.  I relied on our mutual buddy, CanadaBoy to always keep this information, while he was relying on me.  I was so sure I had Pablo's email.  I would have sworn to it in court.  The whole mess boils down to a failure to communicate, and not just on my end.  I cared, but I was busy.  I have a hatful of crap excuses.  The truth is: I wasn't paying attention.

This is even more maddening because just last spring, Pablo popped up in the comment section of  my post about oatmeal.  I was feeling frustrated about not finding it in the grocery stores here, and he offered advice:

...

Try Googling Nice Deli Korea for your oatmeal fix.They're based in Pusan I think and will deliver.
Came across your blog purely by chance and surprised to see you're still in Korea!
Pablo

I followed his Blogger link, but no joy.  No blog.  I guess he just uses his account to comment on the odd blog here and there.  He wrote that he came here 'purely by chance'.  So does he read me regularly now, or was that a one-off?  Is there any hope that he'll pass this way again?

As for going to Gumi and hunting him down, I don't remember exactly where he lives.  I don't remember the name of the bakery where he went/goes every week to get 'proper' bread.  He's not much of a social butterfly either, so I can't go downtown and poke my head in every bar looking for a 6 ft. 4 Welshman who likes Jim Beam or Jack Daniels or one of those liquors with a first name and a surname.

Korea's in my rearview mirror come spring, and there's a small list of people that I want to see once more before I go.

Pablo, where are you?

Update:  
Found him!  Luckily, I was a little slow to technology, and I used to write everyone's contact information in a journal.  It was just a matter of locating the journals and laboriously paging through all my cringeworthy entries.  And there he was.  We've talked on the phone, and he and CanadaBoy and I are planning a reunion.  I am very squeeeeee!

Summer Reading, Part 3

 August

This was a rough month; hardly anything I read pleased me.  I hate when that happens because my dream is to drift from book to book to book in an amiable reading mood -- kind of like Huck Finn on his raft.  Alas, during August I was constantly knocking up against the shoals and biting down hard on my corncob pipe.

The Flight of the Phoenix - Elleston Trevor.  The best thing about this novel (and the two movies it inspired) is the neat plot twist involving the rebuilt plane and its designer.  Other than that, it seems a bit workmanlike.

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight - M.E. Thomas.  The author of this memoir (?) is pretty weak sauce when it comes to advancing her argument that she is a sociopath.  Her attempts to shock are lame.  She often contradicts herself. She swears she's beautiful, brilliant, charming and captivating, but her lumpy and disjointed prose style belies those assertions.  Did I mention that when she's rhapsodizing about her looks she sounds like a Judith Krantz novel?  I'd like to believe that a real sociopath's writing and editing would be icily precise.  I was shocked, but certainly not in the way M.E. Thomas intended.

Cookoff:  Recipe Fever in America - Amy Sutherland.  I absolutely loved this book about the world of competitive cooking.  Author Sutherland goes on the circuit to chicken, garlic, beef, chili and barbecue cookoffs, a jambalaya cookoff (Rice has a vertical seam, and one should be able to see it if it's cooked properly! Who knew?) and the motherlode of all cooking contests, the Pillsbury Bake-Off.  Sutherland's descriptions of the look and aroma of dishes jump right off the page, and her profiles of the quirky, obsessed contesters are equally entertaining.  A perfect summer read, but delectable any time of the year.

Anchored In Love - John Carter Cash.  Anchored In Love is a memoir of John Carter Cash's mother, June Carter Cash.  He doesn't seem to know much about her life before he came along that hasn't been covered before.  After he does show up in her story, he loses focus and it becomes his memoir.  The book also has a dull, dogmatic and stifled feel that can be traced to its being published by Thomas Nelson, a well-known Christian publishing company.  John Carter Cash wanted to write his mother's story himself rather than having it done by a biographer that didn't know her, but June Carter Cash would have been better served by an objective eye.

The Surrendered - Chang-Rae Lee.  This novel started off so well, but the subplot with the missionary's wife was annoying, and Lee seemed to get too caught up in flowery, operatic writing at times.  However, I must salute the efficiency with which he disposed of two characters at once.  It was meant to advance the plot.  Not sure it helped, but it's nice to see what he's capable of.

My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe.  I thought the title was a bit of a misnomer -- I was picturing Howe surrounded by and selling all sorts of toothsome Korean cuisine.  Instead, it seemed like a generic convenience store in New York City. The only thing that made it "Korean" was that he went into the business with his Korean mother-in-law and his wife.  There was also a subplot about Howe's other job as an editor at The Paris Review, and his encounters with his boss, the legendary George Plimpton.  Nothing really seemed to go together and Howe doesn't have that manic dash that could have made it work in spite of everything.  The book was translated into Korean.  I wonder how that audience responded to the book.

Hattie Big Sky - Kirby Larson.  Hattie Inez Brooks, a 16-year-old orphan who has been shuttled from one relative to another decides to try her hand at homesteading in Montana when her uncle dies and wills her his claim.  Pretty 1800s, right?  Surprisingly (to me), this takes place during World War I.  Author Kirby Larson manages to cover a lot of ground in this Newbery Honor book.  First, Hattie must do a daunting amount of work to prove on her claim and this is all new to her.  The reader also gets a taste of what's going on overseas because of the letters Hattie receives from her old school friend Charlie.  At home, Hattie's new neighbors have troubles of their own.  The husband is a real stand-up guy, but since he's German-American, the cloddish townspeople don't see it that way and he and his family are constantly persecuted.  I liked how Larson obviously did her historical research, but she didn't lay it on with a trowel.  Also, the voices seem true for the time. While I was reading, I kept thinking that Hattie Big Sky would make a perfect Hallmark movie.

Bookworm, Interrupted

There was a bitch in the BEL (Busan English Library) yesterday, and it was me.

I'm usually mindful of the fact that when I am out in public, I'm not just me.  I represent all Americans.  It's up to me to make a good impression on the Koreans.  It comes with living and working in another country, and I usually step up and try to be pleasant and helpful if someone wants to practice chatting in English or needs help with English homework.

Yesterday though, I didn't quite meet my standards.  The Bookworm Inside Me refused to yield.

There I was, sitting in my proper section of the library (the Orange Corner), reading a book.  I was pretty caught up in it when I felt someone plop down next to me and say "Excuse me".

I reluctantly dragged my eyes off the page and my brain out of 1910s Deep Valley (okay, I confess: I was reading a Betsy-Tacy book) and the woman launched into a grammar question about when it's appropriate to use a colon and when it's appropriate to use a relative clause.

I was supremely annoyed, and couldn't even force a smile.  My thoughts probably showed on my face: 

 Shit. Nowhere to run to.  Nowhere to hide.

Go away, I'm reading.  

Give me a break! It's the weekend.

The nice part of me struggled for control:  Aren't you ashamed of yourself?  Look good for America!

I don't feel like explaining grammar!  Now that I've finally got a proper library to hang out in, I want to relax and read without the threat of having to pull a mini-lesson out of my butt at a moment's notice!

You're reading a Betsy-Tacy book, for God's sake.  It wouldn't kill you to break off for a few minutes.  Quit acting like you're an animal and she's gotten too close to your food dish.

Grrrrrrrrr!

I couldn't bring myself to be entirely rude, but I was pretty terse with my explanation, and I served it up with a pleasepleasepleaseleavemealone expression. I also kept my book open, and as soon as she got up, I went right back to reading before she'd even walked off.

It's just like Julian Smith says: 

If you ever interrupt me

You can bet you're gonna see

The nasty me, the nasty me, the nasty me...

During my next visit to the BEL, I've got to find a place where I can be concealed and still remain in my proper area of the library.  Perhaps I could enlist the aid of the staff, but I think it would go like this:

Cruel in Cheongju

Every time I visit my friend Teri in Cheongju, I always feel a bit of a sucker punch when we go downtown:

Notice the little satellite sign that helpfully reads "page 12".  What was I to think?  What would YOU think?

The first time I saw this, I was walking, yes indeed.  I was smiling, striding.  The theme from Chariots of Fire was crescendo-ing in my head, as were plans to move to Cheongju forthwith.  I rounded the corner smartly, looked past the coffee shop with an expectant smile and saw this:

My smile froze and fell.   I whipped through the five stages with a speed that would have impressed Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

"A clothing store? No way.  The bookstore is probably upstairs, or around here somewhere. I just gotta look harder."

"What. The. Actual. Fuck.  Who in the HELL is responsible for this bullshit?  What kind of stupid idiot names a clothing store BOOK MARK???"

"Maybe there are some books about fashion inside. I don't mind; I can read about fashion, even if it's in Korean.  I really don't mind."

"Why go on??????  What's the use???  Later on, I'll be hungry and I'll probably see a sign that says Cheeseburger in Paradise and it'll just be another superfluous clothing store that markets size 0 clothing."

"Sigh.  Book Mark.  It's a clothing store, sure enough.  Sad but true.  Where's my camera?"


How many other bookworms walking about in Cheongju have felt the sting of this cruel mockery?  I guess it's mean and petty to hope that all of Book Mark's shoppers are merely of the window variety, but I can't help it.

Not My Emily

One of the things I like about my Kindle is that it shuts itself off when it's been idle for a while. Even better, it displays sketches of famous authors.  Alexandre Dumas looks downright cuddly.  Mark Twain looks like he's being dashingly portrayed by Sam Elliott. Charlotte Bronte has been prettified, but not too much. Harriet Beecher Stowe looks so grandmotherly -- like she might slip you a just-baked gingerbread cookie.  John Steinbeck is handsome in a startlingly contemporary way.

Emily Dickinson?  Not my favorite picture of her.  Why didn't they choose the famous one?  That's the Emily I see when I'm reading her beautifully economical slant-rhymes, not this creepy-eyed thing in a clown collar.  I'm actually reminded more of Emily Bronte.  The woman in this picture looks fully capable of seeing Catherine Earnshaw's ghost at the window and dreaming up a brooding, detestable character like Heathcliff.

My Fill of Phil

I'm never going to read Philip Roth again.  I don't care if he wins another Pulitzer.  If he does, I'll read the book by proxy.  I don't care if he appears to me in another anxiety dream.  I'm done.  If he passes away, I'll feel bad that I wrote this post, but only for a while. I'll deal with it.

Arrrgh, PhilipfuckingRoth.  I've been sweet and the most patient of readers, but American Pastoral was like the dentist's drill on a rotten jaw tooth.  Reading him feels like you're late for work and your shoes and purse and keys are being held hostage by a ranting lunatic in sad, gray underwear who has got both morning breath and a mean streak a mile wide.

I want my props though, because I read 5 of his books.  Five!  Spread out over more than a couple of decades.  My 20something, 30something, 40something, etc. bookworm self just never warmed up to him.  I'll never stop being mystified at those who are fans of his work.

These are the books I read:

1. When She Was Good.  I was attracted to this one because I always liked the "little girl with the curl" rhyme.  (Come to think of it, Philip Roth reminds me of that little girl.)  Lucy Nelson seems like a less dangerous version but equally intense version of Merry Levov in American Pastoral.  Roth seems to enjoy grinding her down in scenes with that sick-making husband of hers, Roy.  I got my copy from my aunt.  It had a purple dust jacket.  I can't imagine why she bought it or imagine her reading it.  I bet she flung it, and that's how I ended up with it and then on this multi-decade slog.  Thanks, Auntie.

2. Goodbye, Columbus.  Even when Roth was in his late 20s, he was a ranting old guy.  I loathed this book, especially the title story.  Why did it get so much praise?  There was something terribly wrong with the American reading public's taste back in the late 1950s. There were definitely some disturbing fissures. I cite this and also Atlas Shrugged as an example.

Almost-read:  Portnoy's Complaint.  I was in middle school, and I heard it was filthy.  Naturally, I wanted to read filth.  I grew bored, skimming and searching for choice passages.  I finally abandoned the book at the point where Portnoy was in the bathroom (masturbating, if I remember correctly) and his mom kept standing at the door, knocking and shouting inquiries about his bowel movements.

Almost-read:  The Breast.  I was in college, and trying to read *serious* modern American literature.  This was short (96 pages).  I could do it...or not!  Professor David Kepesh turns into a life-sized female breast.  I hadn't encountered Kafka yet, and I thought this was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard of.  Back onto the library shelf it went.

3. The Human Stain.  This is the only Roth book that I actually have some fondness for.  I decided to give it a try after reading Quicksand and Passing, both by Nella Larsen.  I was irritated that the story was filtered through Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, but Roth was rocking the irony, and it worked for me.  Satisfied, I followed it up with a viewing of the 2003 movie version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Wentworth Miller as the older and younger versions of Coleman Silk, the man with a 50-year-old secret about his identity.  Gary Sinise was Zuckerman. (Can you love an actor, and that love is based almost solely on his eyebrows?) The whole cast was excellent, except Nicole Kidman seemed out of place.

4. The Plot Against America.  Flushed with success about The Human Stain, I was all ready to read Roth's alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh becomes president in 1940, rather than FDR getting a third term.  I was expecting something really great like Philip K. Dick's The Man In The High Castle, but Roth's view of events left me feeling flat.  He also rushed into a silly ending, like he'd gotten all cranky just as he was coming into the homestretch and needed a nap.

5.  American Pastoral.  This was the book Roth was pissed at me for not having read in my anxiety dream about him.  Still, several years went by before I finally read it.  The way it came about was that I couldn't decide which Pulitzer to attack next, so I wrote titles I hadn't read on strips of paper and had The Spawn, who was visiting for the weekend draw one out.  Thanks, Kid -- that's ten days of my life I'll never get back again.

Ugh, how did that thing get a Pulitzer?  I haven't felt so disillusioned since I flung Atlas Shrugged out the window back in 2005.  An interesting premise, but again, everything is filtered through Nathan Zuckerman, and that takes up a chapter or two before the novel gets properly started.  Properly raised daughter of a former high school athletic star and a former Miss New Jersey grows up to be a terrorist.  But first we've got to wade through the history of glove making.  A little goes a long way.  The day-to-day routine of raising bulls for breeding?  Oh, come on.  Maddeningly meandering.  And sex!  When Roth writes about sex, it's not earthy, like John Updike, or kind of jaunty like Larry McMurtry -- it's revolting.  I actually feel nauseated reading descriptions of sex scenes written in his crabby accent. Not only were they gross, they came off as a little perfunctory. A literary cold shower.  And what about that fork-in-the-eye ending that was like a half-assed Mobius strip?  I had to return to the beginning of the book and Zuckerman's plodding, which didn't improve my feelings for Roth.

So, anyway.  Like I said: All done!  No more Roth.  The closest I even plan to get to him again is by reading Leaving a Doll's House by Claire Bloom.  I know I will be able to relate.  We both have had our fill of Phil.

Nostalgic For A Movie That Was Never Made: Mr. Popper's Penguins c. 1930s

I read Mr. Popper's Penguins for the very first time this week, and it's now my newest favorite Newbery book.  Now, time for the movie.  No, not the Jim Carrey version that was released last summer.  Instead, I want the version that was playing in my head as I was reading.  

Oops.  It doesn't exist.   

 Okay, then.  Put me in a time machine and send me back to the 1930s.  My movie version is a beautiful, silvery black-and-white, crisply directed comedy. In terms of cinematography, it looks like Casablanca..  At first, I was thinking screwball comedy, but I'm under the impression that the screwball designation would  require the movie to have farcical elements and more adult themes, like courtship and marriage.  Mr. Popper's already married and he and Mrs. Popper seem more like a good team, great buddies.  Also, who needs farce with Captain Cook and Greta and all their cute little penguins?  Well, maybe a little farce would work.

I like Paul Muni and Frederic March because they're pretty hammy and always fun to watch, but  I can actually see James Stewart as Mr. Popper.  He can do scruffy and Mitty-ish, coming home from painting houses and always dreaming of exploring in the Arctic.  I was also thinking of Cary Grant, but more for the scenes in which he's training the penguins.  He could show off his early training in gymnastics and tumbling.  But that last scene?  [sorry, spoiler] Who would believe calmly letting Cary Grant run off to the North Pole for 2 years?  I'd be jumping in after the boat, doing my best forward crawl.  Maybe if he blacked out a tooth or two, and didn't bathe or change throughout the whole picture.

For Mrs. Popper, I've got several ideas.  Claudette Colbert (intelligent and resourceful), Joan Blondell (I like her slightly pop-eyed look and she doesn't have a terribly affected voice) but Myrna Loy is my favorite.  She can do that combination of dryly ladylike and good sport effortlessly, like in The Thin Man and she transitioned well to mom roles.

Bill and Janie, the Popper kids?  Doesn't matter, because they are firmly in the background.  There's a picture in the book of the whole family, penguins and all, promenading down the street.  First it's Mr. and Mrs. Popper, then half the penguins, then the kids, then the remainder of the penguins.  That's about the size of it,  so any kids would do.  Not some 30s moppets that would mug shamelessly every time the camera got close.

What about a director?  Frank Capra?  Preston Sturges?  Michael Curtiz?  I thought of the latter because I imagined him cursing the penguins and the animal trainers in his famously fractured Hungarian English.  Plus, his pictures always have nicely fast pacing.  There's also a moment at the end of the book in which there's a sudden and decided change of plans.  Curtiz could totally rock it.  Just look at Casablanca's "Round up the usual suspects" scene.

Adapted for the screen by...?  There was plenty of talent back then, but since I'm having some fun with this, I choose Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.  They'd probably hate their assignment, but they could go out for a lunch of hot-fudge gins and come back and make it funny and very, very smart.

I can't believe the Golden Age of Hollywood dropped the ball on this one!  If someone is nostalgic for something that absolutely never existed, does it still count as nostalgia?

Bridge Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

The DNF Files: The Criminal - Jim Thompson

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

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

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

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

Canadian Book Challenge 5: Joshua Then and Now - Mordecai Richler

I like the idea of this book better than the actual book.  It's a comic novel done up like a mystery, but there are parts of it that feel so dated.  There is also a long middle section that feels interminable.

 Joshua Then and Now starts out promisingly:  Joshua Shapiro, a middle-aged Canadian TV journalist is recuperating from a serious accident, his wife has disappeared and he's just been outed because some tender and salacious love letters that he wrote to a young novelist 20 years before recently came to light and has been published.  He's being guarded from the nosy press by his father-in-law, a Montreal senator and his father, an ex-boxer turned loan shark heavy. But is Joshua inside upset and quivering?  No way!  He's  reading the old correspondence and laughing like crazy at the inventiveness of his side of it.  Also, what about those black silk panties the police detective sees him wearing a few days before the accident?

My favorite scenes in the book are with young Joshua and his unconventional family in 1930s and 40s Montreal.  His father is always having to go into hiding because of the nature of his work.  His mother has plans to embark on a career as a stripper, and she makes her debut at the party after Joshua's bar mitzvah.  In another amusing episode, Joshua's father attempts to simultaneously give him religious instruction and information about the facts of life during the Days of Awe.

 I also liked the parts about English financier Jack Trimble, who seems to have out-Gatsbyed Gatsby.  Joshua Shapiro regards him with loathing and Trimble seems to be the villain of the piece if you style it as a mystery but I couldn't help finding him interesting and having a bit of a soft spot for him.  Joshua and Trimble were alike because of their outsider status and dogged quests to settle old scores, so maybe Joshua was feeling a bit of self-revulsion.

I usually love this kind of novel because it makes me feel smart because I have to keep track of the jumpy timeline and the characters, but this book made me cranky.  I think it's because too large of a section of the novel is set during Joshua's adult years in the 1970s where he's spending time with his wife's crowd, a bunch of decadent WASP-y types.  I was having flashbacks to my Harold Robbins-reading days.  By the time Joshua revisits Spain (the 1950s experience and its 1970s followup are crammed together confusingly), I was starting not to care and merely soldiered on to the end.  I would have dropped this book into the DNF file without a moment's thought if I hadn't wanted to rack up some Canadian points for the challenge.

I don't recommend this book, but I would really like to see the 1985 film version with James Woods as Joshua and Alan Arkin as his father.  Richler adapted his own novel for the screen.  I wonder if he kept the same storytelling device.  Aside from the excellent casting, the movie can't help but be better than the book if only because Richler had to trim a lot of his original bloated excess.

Even though I didn't care for Joshua Then and Now, you can't kill my love, Mordecai Richler!   I have plans to both read and watch Barney's Version.

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

Part of my problem is that I'm so completely over Southern American fiction written by women.*  Blame it on the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and their Divine Secrets and their subsequent Bloom.  They accomplished what Anne Rivers Siddons could not, although she came close.  I cracked.  I wolfed down that final praline, packed up, scrambled over that last jasmine bush and  ran off in search of my Inner Yankee Male.

I read The Help because of my Bookleaves book group.  It was a pretty fast read; author Kathryn Stockett knows how to keep a story going.  Although I was racing along, a hum of irritation started up in my bookworm nerve endings and got louder as the novel went on.

This book is The Secret Life of Bees, except inverted.  Both books take place in the early 1960s in the deep South and the Civil Rights movement is starting to catch on.  Three wise black women help Lily, a confused and abused young southern girl in Sue Monk Kidd's book.  In The Help, a wise young southern girl-woman named Skeeter helps three confused and abused black women.  Everyone else is spineless, villainous, prejudiced or crazy in both books. Sometimes, they dip a toe in all those categories like Skeeter's mom and Lily's dad.  Lily and Skeeter both have that thin cutesy, folksy plaintive voice (and so does Daisy Fay from Fannie Flagg's first novel, come to think of it) that drives me dippy.  Nails on the chalkboard. 

Another thing that gave me the fantods was all that hinting.  I don't mind when a writer lets something drop in the first chapter, and I go right over it, um hmm because when she picks it up again at the end, I go Oh yeah...and I feel all smarty and pleased with both the writer and myself.  But I  don't feel smarty and pleased when a hint or an allusion gets dropped again and again AND AGAIN like a big brass spittoon on my bare foot.  I feel like snarling.  I feel as if the writer thinks I'm a dumbass that can't remember 35 pages back.

It would have been bad enough if Stockett had done it once, but she turned her hint bag upside down and shook it like a Polaroid picture.  She hinted repeatedly about:  What Minnie did,  what Skeeter's asshole boyfriend's ex-girlfriend did,  there was that wtf?-ery about Celia and Johnny and finally, the truth about Constantine.**  Everyone in the book sighed and opened and closed their mouths so often when the subject of her disappearance came up that I was reminded of that Zombies song Time of the Season. "Oh come on, spit it out," I grumbled more than once.  When they finally did, it was usually a letdown.

One last thing:  Stockett did her research for The Help.  She carefully, meticulously researched her time period.  I know it because I crashed into a historical or cultural reference every time I turned the page.  JFK.  Medgar Evers.  To Kill A Mockingbird.  Bob Dylan.***  The Surgeon General on smoking.  Tabs on beer cans.  It felt like too much furniture in the room.

So, after all that bitching and carping, I have to admit that I'm going to try and catch the movie version when it comes out in August.  I'm a little disappointed that Aibileen isn't being played by Morgan Freeman (that's whose voice I heard in my head during her sections in the book), but I want to see Cicely Tyson and I'm intrigued by the casting of Bryce Dallas Howard as the evil Hilly Holbrook, a gal who really loves her pie.  After the movie, I'm really done with you, Female Southern American Literature.  I'm closing my door.  Unless you're a Zora Neale Hurston book, don't come a-knockin'.

*This type of fiction and I had a good long run, starting with Gone with the Wind when I was 12.

**I kind of liked Kathryn Stockett's choice of a name for this character.

***Wes Tooke in Lucky: Maris, Mantle and My Best Summer Ever also used To Kill a Mockingbird and Bob Dylan to establish an early 1960s setting. As much as I love Harper and Zimmy, isn't there some fresh way to express this?

Things You Shouldn't Say In The Children's Section Of The Bookstore

What the hell. Even the very youngest readers know that sometimes, nothing but a curse word will do:

Shit. shitshitshit.

Remember that fancy foray through What The Book? gift card and all? 48 hours later, I'm smiting my forehead (making it rhyme with "horrid") and realizing that I left without the ONE book I went in there to get:

April 17 is my Bookleaves Book Club's 100th book/meeting, so to celebrate, we decided to each read a Newbery winner and discuss our choices. I was determined to finally read the Newbery winner of 1961, Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell. It's also celebrating an anniversary: it's been part of the select Newbery circle for 50 years now.

My forgetfulness two days ago seems to be part of a trend with this book. I looked for it at Gwanghwamun's Kyobo bookstore in March, but I remembered the title as Julie of the Wolves. Kyobo didn't have a copy. Veronica posted a Newbery Winners list on our Facebook page a few days after that. Ooops. Armed with the correct title, I made plans to pick it up when I went to Seoul again...and there you go. I don't see how I could have forgotten. I'm practically living and breathing Children's Literature this semester.

I could read a different Newbery winner, but now, nothing else will do. These glitches have made me wary. If I ask someone to send it to me, it's bound to get lost. The only thing that will do is that I must go and fetch it myself. There's a long subway ride in my very near future.

February: Reading But Not Loving

In the case of these two reads, I felt love quite often, but it was like the love in tennis. Zero.

The Foreign Student - Susan Choi. The story takes place in 1955 in a small southern university town. The title character, Chuck (Chang) Ahn, has just come from Korea to be a university student. Determined to succeed, he is also afflicted with dark memories of the recent war in his country. He is also inexplicably drawn to Katherine who is dealing with her own past.

Choi's explanation of how the Korean Conflict began is as lucid as any I've read in fiction or even nonfiction. Her research was thorough and well-done. One of the characters, Charles Addison, could have justly been presented as an unsympathetic monster, but he emerges as human, sometimes kind and even has a likable, slightly rakish charm. There's another minor character -- Chang's best friend who becomes a Communist -- that is written interestingly, but he disappears from the novel fairly quickly. There's also a chapter in which Chuck is employed at a book bindery in Chicago that is grimly funny. A batty old woman who works with Chuck always tells him to be on the lookout for money hidden in books. When he fails to find any, she accuses him of quietly pocketing his findings, so he has to plant a few bills here and there himself to keep from falling under suspicion.

Okay, that's everything I liked about the book. Now here comes the loathing:

• The dramatic story of Chang Ahn's experiences during the war are told in chunked-up flashbacks that are buried under an Anne Rivers Siddons-like present-day story. The effect is muffled and annoying. It's like some of those later Elvis Presley recordings in which they bury The King's vocals way down in the mix underneath the cheap blare of instrumental brass and shrill background singers.
  
• The situation between Charles Addison and Katherine is more icky than dramatic.
  
• Katherine and Chuck don't seem to have any chemistry at all. Their scenes together feel like sausage being forced through the grinder and into the casing that constitutes the plot and setting.
  
• Katherine and Chuck are too much in their own heads for too long at a stretch to make for interesting reading.
  
• Glee, Katherine's southern belle mother starts out as a giddy Amanda Wingfield type, then after she falls ill, she drops the dizzy act and morphs into something straight out of Steel Magnolias. I'd already built up a huge cache of contempt for her because of the way she treated the younger Katherine, so when she showed up in the novel again after a long interval, I was resistant to her new, slightly more sympathetic personality.
  
• There's no feeling of being in a foreign country during the scenes when Chang is in Korea. The author never mixes in Korean words. This would have come in handy at one point when she's bumbling all over herself trying to describe hanbok, the traditional Korean costume. I'm pretty sure that most Koreans wouldn't describe this garment as "loose pajama-like trousers".
  
• I don't know if Choi was trying to be profound or cute or what, but both of the men that Katherine loves (Charles Addison, Chuck/Chang Ahn) have the same initials. I half-dreaded all the way through the book that one of the characters would notice this and lapse into deep philosophical thought, but mercifully, Choi just let it lay there.
  
• Finally, (this isn't the author's fault) the cover for this copy isn't captivating at all. It's pretty in a prim, middle-aged sort of way. It made me think of Jan Karon and I don't want to.
  
  
  Wicked - Gregory Maguire. A parallel novel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz about the life of Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West. There is also a great deal of political and social commentary about the state of things in Oz. In addition, there are numerous discussions about what constitutes good and evil.
  
  
  
  
  I would like very much to see the musical of the same name based on this book. I believe that I would enjoy it in that form immensely. I would rather watch this musical every day of the week than have to read the book ever again -- except for the first 150 pages. During that part of the novel which describes Elphaba's early life, I was entertained. After that, the fun packed its bags and my reading experience began to resemble wading through partially dried concrete.

......................................

• For reasons that no one in the story could fathom, Elphaba was born with green skin. In case you forgot that detail, Maguire reminds the reader on almost every page. Guess what? She's green! Her skin is green. She's green-skinned. Emerald. Celadon. Jade. Kiwi. By the way...she's GREEN!!! I have an idea for a drinking game...Wicked is available on audiobook, isn't it?

• I hope I'm not scarred for life after reading that one uh, romantic scene between Elphaba and her Winkie paramour, Fiyero, but if I am, I guess it's a good thing that I'm at midlife. Arrgh. Ewww. Bad visuals. I need to go scrub my brain.
  
• There are too many long and boring philosophical and political discussions among the characters. Zzzzzzzz. Worse yet, Maguire simply pressed "repeat". This is one of the reasons I believe the musical would be superior to the book.
  
• I find it difficult to reconcile the Witch with which we're all familiar with the one presented in the novel. It feels like pieces from two different puzzles in the same box, but Maguire seems to think that if he keeps valiantly bashing away he's going to create a full, cohesive picture.
  
• Maguire has that tin ear for dialogue that I noticed with James Cameron's script while watching Titanic. For example, the latter part of this novel is set in the first years of the 20th century. One minute, the characters are speaking in a stiff, mannered style. In the next minute, someone uses a phrase from a later time. I'm only complaining a little, though. The rest of the narrative and dialogue was so boring that the anachronisms gave me something to help me regain focus -- even if only for a second -- before I began nodding and drooling again.
  
• Except for Elphaba, it's difficult to distinguish which character is speaking. They're all pretty full of hot wind -- more than enough to get Dorothy and Toto back to Kansas.

Abridged Too Far

I dipped my toe into the audiobook waters, but now I'm thinking of pulling it back out, drying it off and never going in again.

Recently, I bought an audiobook of Black Boy, Richard Wright's 1945 memoir of growing up in the Jim Crow American South. I paid more than $20 USD for it, and I'm disappointed in what I got for the money.

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The news is not all bad. Black Boy was performed back in 1973 by Brock Peters, who is best known for his role as Tom Robinson in the movie version of To Kill A Mockingbird. His reading is mesmerizing and fits perfectly with Richard Wright's powerful prose.

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What's left of the prose, that is. When I was at the bookstore and I saw that the audiobook was abridged, alarm bells should have gone off in the library of my mind, but I sauntered to the cash register without concern. Abridged. So what? A few skillful editorial cuts here and there. No problem, right?

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Wrong. Take away Peters' performance and the audiobook fails on every other level. First of all, the tape starts with Peters reading an anecdote from Richard's early life. The title of the book is not introduced and the author's name goes unmentioned. Second of all, Wright's brilliant and harrowing narrative is spoiled by choppy editing -- it's like they went in there with pruning shears. In addition, not only is the editing choppy, it's clumsy. Later in the audiobook, Richard references something that happens when he was six years old. If I hadn't read an excerpt from Black Boy when I was in college, this reference would have made no sense at all, since the incident was never related in the audiobook, so I imagine that many listeners were puzzled.

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Wright's book is approximately 450 pages long. The 2-tape audiobook clocks in at less than 2 hours and there's almost 3 minutes of dead air at the conclusion. All of this was annoying enough, but to add insult to injury, the audiotape only covers Part 1 of Black Boy, the years that Wright lived in Mississippi. Part 2, "The Horror and the Glory", which details his years in Chicago is completely omitted. That omission isn't mentioned in the packaging; I found it out when I visited Amazon this morning and compared the memoir with what I'd just listened to.

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Black Boy is an amazing work, full of raw anger and power and it deserves better than shoddy treatment. This audiobook needs to be redone by a company who values quality and integrity in all parts of production. Sadly, Brock Peters died in 2005, but there must be a voice actor out there who could do justice to Richard Wright's memoir.

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If it weren't for Brock Peters, I wouldn't waste any time before flinging this audiotape. I'm going to put it aside and do what I should have done in the first place: Find Black Boy in book form, read it properly and steer clear of the audiobook section of the bookstore in the future.