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.
 

That Was the Slump That Was

A couple of weeks ago, I had a reading slump. I still read, but only fitfully, dipping in and out of books.

These were the only two books I could manage. It's an odd pairing:

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Marie Kondo. I understand this choice. I'm moving. My life is all about the tidying process right now. My Korean apartment is similar to her Japanese apartment. I see what she's saying. More importantly, I damn well need to see what she's saying and do likewise. Everything is changing and I could use the magic.

The other book was Taylor Caldwell's 1961 novel A Prologue to Love.

This choice is no surprise, either. A Prologue To Love is a perennial comfort read. When I got to Korea, I realized that I didn't have a copy, so I went on Bookcrossing and played my Poor-Bookworm-in-a-foreign-country card with someone who had a copy.

 99% of my collection is sailing towards the USA, even as I write these words, but APTL is still with me. I'm bringing it on the plane, this battered copy with the $1.25 cover price. I paid .95 for my first copy, back in eighth grade.

I don't know why I love this book so much. I've tried Taylor Caldwell's other novels, but they don't interest me. The Captains and The Kings comes close, but it covers some of the same territory as APTL.

This is one of those books I hardly ever read from start to finish anymore. The last complete read-through was in 2011. Before that was 1996. One year in December, I dipped in and read about Caroline's disastrous Christmas shopping expedition.

During this slump, I opened up the book at the part in which Caroline has become the richest woman in the world, and now she's one of the richest people. It's the early 20th century. She's in her fifties and she's struggling to get her interpersonal relationship stuff together and also deal with her emotional baggage about her father. While she's at it, she's going to ruin her unscrupulous cousin Timothy who is all for a war in Europe because he can profit handsomely from it. It's partly a revenge thing.

Good stuff! I wish this book were back in print so everyone would talk about it.

So anyway, I'm out of the slump, but only just. Maybe once I'm moved out of my apartment I'll feel more like my old bookworm self.