2015 CHALLENGE: Chunkster Challenge: COMPLETED

COMPLETED

I even passed by stretch goal by reading 17 chunksters this year. This is a challenge I often struggle with and I read almost three times as many chunksters this year as I normally do. Several were particularly slow going, ether for good reasons, like Nabokov's Collected Short Stories, or not, like Guard of Honor that may have won the Pulitzer Prize but hasn't stood the test of time.

My chunkster jag this year is part of the reason I am going to fall short of reading a 100 books i 2015, and far short of my usual 110 or so. It looks like I'll come in right around 95.

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The CHUNKSTER CHALLENGE was started by Wendy at Caribousmom and is now hosted by Vasilly at 1330V. The sign-up page is here.

The basic idea is to read books with 450 pages or more. E-books and audiobooks count, as do collections of short stories, essays, or poems. Pretty much the only thing that doesn't count is graphic novels.

This is a self-motivating challenge. Now that audiobooks count, I am going to set a goal of 12 books, with a stretch goal of 15.

BOOKS FINISHED

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1024 pages)

The Collected Stories by Vladimir Nabokov (720 pages)

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (512 pages)

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (512 pages)

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi (525 pages)

The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies (480 pages)

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass (528 pages)

Night Fall by Nelson DeMille (528 pages)

Personal by Lee Child (544)

The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington by Gregg Herken (494)

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (771)

Wickford Point by John P. Marquand (464)

A Bromfield Galaxy: The Green Bay Tree, Early Autumn, and A Good Woman by Louis Bromfield (Pulitzer Prize winner) (639)

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall (624)

Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (Pulitzer Prize winner) (635)

Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding (496)

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (480)

BOOK POSSIBILITIES

We'll see what others pop up.

NOTE: Updated December 24, 2015

Review: A Pillar of Iron

A goal accomplished always makes me happy. Reading A Pillar of Iron, Taylor Caldwell's fictional biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero, was not a goal of mine. But once started, it was a battle between me and the book and I was determined to finish it!

It's actually a great book. Cicero was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, a lawyer, philosopher, and statesman of Rome. The story is fascinating; Caldwell delves heavily into original materials like Cicero's letters, books, and speeches; and her descriptions make ancient Rome lifelike. But it is dense! And long -- 700 pages.

I'd like to amend my law school transcript to get extra credit in Constitutional Law.


OTHER REVIEWS

UNRV History

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will list it here.

NOTES

A Pillar of Iron counts as one of my books for the Chunkster Challenge, as well as knocking another one off my TBR challenges list.

2014 Challenge: Chunkster Challenge

COMPLETED!

I read six books, as I had hoped to do. There is still time to reach my stretch goal of eight before the challenge ends.

The CHUNKSTER CHALLENGE was started by Wendy at Caribousmom and is now hosted by Vasilly at 1330V. The sign-up page is here.

The basic idea is to read books with 450 pages or more. 

They have changed the rules some this year.  For the first time, apparently beaten down by the fuss, they are allowing e-books and audiobooks.  I'm a traditionalist and I understand the spirit that motivated the original "paper books only" rule, so I am going to limit myself to big fat paper tomes.

Also gone are levels at which to sign up.  This is now a self-motivating challenge.  My goal is to read six chunksters in 2014, with a stretch goal of eight.

BOOKS FINISHED

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. At 1168 pages, this was a massive chunk of a book.  This omnibus edition contains the three books of the trilogy that made Undset a Nobel Laureate: The Wreath, The Bride, and The Cross.  As engrossing as the story was, I think I've had my fill of medieval Norway for a while.

Murder on Board: Three Complete Mystery Novels (The Mystery of the Blue Train, Death in the Air, and What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw) by Agatha Christie.  Two of the mysteries in this omnibus edition featured Hercule Poirot; one featured Miss Marples.  All were entertaining as can be.

The Rich are Different by Susan Howatch.  My hardcover edition had exactly 800 pages.  Although some pages were longer than others, overall the story moves at a brisk clip, following the financial and romantic adventures of New York investment bankers from the free-for-all of the 1920s, through the Great Depression, to the eve of WWII.  Howatch is the master of shaggy, intergenerational sagas -- she really knows how to spin a tale.

A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell.  This 780-page novel is a fictional biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero in the story of Rome in the days of Julius Caesar. It is great history, packed with political philosophy, just don't expect a book version of HBO's Rome.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.  I loved this novel about creative, strong women living in Africa during World War II and London in the 1950s, criticizing their men, questioning their careers, and quitting the Communist Party. That is, I loved it until the last 150 pages or so of my 600-page addition, when I felt it became repetitious and muddled.

A Wanted Man by Lee Child.  I love all Jack Reacher books and this was no exception.  All 600+ pages when by in a blink.

A Man of Parts by David Lodge.  This fictional biography of H. G. Wells focusses on the many love affairs in his life.  It was very good, but felt much longer than its roughly 450 pages.

MY BOOK POSSIBILITIES

There are many chunksters already sitting on my TBR shelves that may finally get my attention this year.  I am going to start with the first three because they cross over with my personal TBR challenge I call the 2X14 Challenge:

The Stories of Vladamir Nabokov (720)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (960)

More Matter: Essays and Criticism by John Updike (928)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (862)

Redemption by Leon Uris (848)

The Charm School by Nelson DeMille (816)

Ancient Evening by Norman Mailer (800)

The Life of Noel Coward by Cole Lesley (608)

UPDATED: November 17, 2014

Review: Independent People

Independent People, first published in Iceland in 1934, secured Halldór Laxness his Nobel Prize in 1955. It is the grim saga of Bjartur of Summerhouses and his family, early 20th Century "crofters" -- subsistence sheep farmers who live in a sod house with the sheep on the ground floor and the family huddled in the upper level. The semi-literate characters starve through the winter and spring until they can grow a few meager vegetables in the home field and sell their scrawny sheep in the fall.

The book is rich, although the plot is meager, following Bjartur from the acquisition of his farmstead through the loss of two wives and three children. Vivid scenes punctuate long passages describing geography, weather, and peasant conversations about sheep ailments and Icelandic politics. For example, in one scene, Bjatur clings to the furry antlers of a reindeer as the animal drags him across a half-frozen river. Meanwhile, his first wife -- about ready to give birth alone in the hut -- kills and butchers a ewe, salts down the meat, and then gorges herself on a pot of offal stew. The cognate, while false, is apt.

Dark humor is woven into the story but does little to lighten the somber mood. With the cadences and vocabulary of Icelandic epic poetry, Independent People reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy. Many readers praise the book's genius; others will find it a heavy slog.

OTHER REVIEWS

CaribousMom

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  At just under 480 pages, it also counts as one of my Chunkster Challenge books.

Book Beginnings: Independent People

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

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MY BOOK BEGINNING

In early times, say the Icelandic chronicles, men from the Western Islands came to live in this country, and when they departed, left behind them crosses, bills, and other objects used in the practice of sorcery.

-- Independent People by Halldór Laxness, first published in 1946. Laxness was Iceland's most famous author and only Nobel Laureate.

This story of subsistence sheep farmer Bjartur of Summerhouses is set in the 20th century, but feels like an ancient epic.  So far, it reads like a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien and Thomas Hardy.

Independent People counts as one of my choices for the 2013 European Reading Challenge.  It also brings me one step closer to my goal of reading at least one book by every Nobel Laureate.

Review: Just Enough Liebling

A. J. Liebling is best remembered for the long piece journalism he wrote for The New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963. A native Manhattanite and avid gourmand, his favorite subjects were food, Paris, boxing, and horseracing.

Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer is a collection of his best pieces from that magazine and other publications. Organized by category, the articles cover dining in Paris; Liebling's experiences as a World War II correspondent in Tunisia, liberated France, and a merchant marine convoy; life on the make in New York; boxing; journalism; and Earl Long of Louisiana, Huey Long's brother who stepped into the gubernatorial seat after Huey's assassination.

Like John Mitchell (Up in the Old Hotel), his friend and contemporary at The New Yorker, Liebling delighted in his subjects and had a keen eye for the kind of detail that makes a story blossom. He put himself into the stories as an active narrator, often with self-deprecating humor. For example, one of the strongest and most memoir-like of the essays, "Quest for Mollie," begins with Liebling passing a dead American soldier on a transport route through northern Tunisia and leads to him tracing the dead man's colorful history back to the bars and union halls of Hell's Kitchen. Liebling took his quest personally, concluding:

It cheers me to think there may be more like him all around me – a notion I would have dismissed as sheer romanticism before World War II. Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.

It is just this personal connection with his subjects that make Liebling's essays as full of human interest today as when he first wrote them.

OTHER REVIEWS

Up in the Old Hotel by John Mitchell, here on Rose City Reader

If you would like your review of any of Liebling's books listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.  (If you reviewed Up in the Old Hotel and would like it listed, please leave a comment with a link on my review post for that book and I will add it there.)

NOTES

Just Enough Liebling is one of the non-fiction books I read for the TBR challenges I am doing this year. Because Liebling's first love was food, every piece in the book -- even those about boxing -- talk about food.  So this also counted as my first book for the 2013 Foodies Read Challenge.  Finally, at 534 pages, it was the first chunkster I read for the 2013 Chunkster Challenge.

I am also adding Just Enough Liebling to my French Connections list because of the section on dining in Paris and the WWII pieces about France.

Review: Personal History

 

Katharine Graham deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography, Personal History. Graham lived a fascinating life, from her childhood of wealth and privilege, through her tumultuous marriage to Phil Graham that ended in his suicide, to her increasingly powerful role at the helm of the Washington Post Company.

Graham's father bought the Washington Post in 1933. Her husband ran it during their marriage. When she took over after his death, she had no real work experience, no concept of the magnitude of her new job, and little support from the male-dominated publishing industry.

Learning as she went, and making many mistakes along the way, Graham grew the Washington Post Company into a media powerhouse. Under her watch, the company went public, became famous -- or infamous -- for its coverage of the Watergate scandal, and broke the unions' stranglehold of the newspaper industry after a five-month strike.

Throughout these busy years, Graham also maintained a dizzying social and community life. She traveled extensively, held positions on several professional and academic boards, and hobnobbed with politicians and other prominent figures, including among her friends the likes of Truman Capote, Henry Kissinger, and Warren Buffett.

Her first-hand account is crisply written, unflinching, and honest, but always dignified.  She discusses her family relationships and friendships, but without any intimate details.  The focus most definitely is on her public and professional life, which makes it all the more interesting.        

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of Personal History listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I've been meaning to read Personal History for years and finally got around to it to complete the 2012 Chunkster Challenge.

Review: The Book and the Brotherhood

Iris Murdoch’s 1987 novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, is subtitled “A Story about Love and Friendship and Marxism,” which pretty much sums up the themes of her 23rd novel but only hints at the scope and complexity of the story.

The book begins when a group of longtime friends meet at an Oxford ball only to have their sentimental reunion jarred by the reappearance of their charismatic former leader, David Crimond. Years earlier, as young, liberal university students, the group had agreed to fund Crimond's writing of a book on their political philosophy. The book never materialized and the brotherhood never came to much. Now Crimond is back and bent on rekindling his affair with one of the women.

The story swirls around this original group of friends, pulling in siblings and other relatives, lovers, and hangers on. Lots of things happen with these people, from ice skating parties to suicide pacts, in between which they ponder and discuss the moral vacuum of Marxism, the possibility of religion without a personal God, the Platonic ideal, abortion, real estate, marriage, and parrots.

Murdoch is at the top of her game with this novel. She is droll in the telling, but forgiving with her characters, never sarcastic, and comfortable with moral ambiguity as she tells their stories without drawing conclusions or passing judgment. There is no pat ending and the various storylines demand further contemplation long after the cover closes.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Book and the Brotherhood on Hannah Stoneham's Book Blog
The Book and the Brotherhood on Musings
The Sea, the Sea on Rose City Reader

If you would like your review of this or any other iris Murdoch book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

The Book and the Brotherhood was 602 pages long, so counts as one of my 551 - 750 page books for the Chunkster Challenge. It also counts for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf challenges.

Review: Oscar and Lucinda

 

Oscar and Lucinda is a strange book. Or, more precisely, it is a normal book about strange people. There is nothing experimental about the writing and there are no long philosophical passages. It definitely falls in the "good yarn" category of novels. But the main characters are odd birds – awkward misfits who end up doing unusual things because they can't do otherwise.

This Booker Prize winner by Peter Carey is a historical novel set, almost entirely, in the mid 1800s, mostly in Australia. Oscar is the son of an English marine biologist of such fervent Low Church beliefs that he beat his son for eating a Christmas pudding. Lucinda is an Australian orphan of independent mind and means, who invests half her fortune in a glass factory.

The two are drawn together by their mutual love of gambling. Oscar put himself through university by playing the ponies. Lucinda is dithering away the other half of her money on cards. The book is as much about gambling addiction as it is about anything else, although there is plenty in there about other 19th Century preoccupations, like religious sectarianism, natural sciences, sea travel, and geographic exploration.

None of the characters are particularly likable, or have much depth, despite the rich detail of the narrative. The ending is abrupt and half-baked. But the story is a grand, mesmerizing kaleidoscope of Australian history and human nature that never let's go of the reader's imagination.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my Booker choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.  It also counts for the Mt. TBR Challenge, the Off The Shelf Challenge,  the TBR Pile Challenge,  and as one of my 450-550 books for the Chunkster Challenge.

Review: Witness

 


Whittaker Chambers was an American communist and Soviet spy who broke with the Communist Party in 1938 and later denounced the other members of his underground cell to the House Un-American Activities Committee and a New York grand jury. His testimony eventually lead to the 1950 perjury conviction of Alger Hiss and launched a decades-long battle between the Left and Right over which man was the real villain. The controversy seems to have petered out, at least in the mainstream, since both the US Russia released formerly-classified Cold War records identifying Hiss as a Soviet agent.

In 1952, Chambers published Witness, his autobiography and apologia. Starting with his childhood, Chambers explains his attraction to communism, his involvement in the communist movement in America – first in the open party as an organizer and writer for the Daily Worker, later in the underground – how his growing Christian faith lead to his break from the party, and how his Quaker principles lead to his testimony against his former fellow-travelers.

Chambers spent ten years as a writer and editor for Time Magazine, so he knew how to wield a pen. His story is organized, his arguments persuasive, and his writing is moving, sometimes even beautiful. The drawback is that Chambers took his serious subject seriously – there is not a glimmer of humor in the whole 800 pages. Still, it is an amazing story and much of it reads like a spy thriller, well, an egg-heady spy thriller. 

Witness isn't a quick or easy read, but as a first-hand account of a fascinating episode in American history, it is worth the effort. Christopher Caldwell summed it up well when describing the book:

Confession, history, potboiler -- by a man who writes like the literary giant we would know him as, had not Communism got him first.

OTHER REVIEWS

Cindy Simpson for American Thinker (2010)
Brothers Judd (2001)

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Witness is on the National Review list of Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century.  It counts for several of my 2012 challenges: Chunkster, Tea & Books, Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, TBR Pile, and Memorable Memoirs.

Review: The Gate House

The Gate House is the sequel to Nelson DeMille's wildly popular mafia thriller/farce, The Gold Coast, picking up ten years after John Sutter's blue blood wife shot her mafia don lover.  Now John is back in the aristocratic Gold Coast section of Long Island, having spent three years sailing around the world and seven years as a London tax lawyer.  Susan Stanhope Sutter, his ex-wife, is also back from her exile in Hilton Head.  Unfortunately for both of them, the dead don's son has also moved back to the neighborhood, determined to avenge his father's death and take over his empire.

Those many thousands of readers who loved The Gold Coast will either enjoy this revisit to favorite territory or find it a desperate re-tread.  I fall into the first camp.  I was pleased to catch up with John and Susan, and DeMille had me laughing all the way through.  It is an excellent send-up of snooty East Coast high life, with clever dialog and plenty of one-liners.

The book poses a conundrum, however, fr those who didn't read the first one.  For one thing, the first one really is better.  There is no point reading the sequel instead of the inaugural.  But anyone who reads The Gold Coast for the first time can't immediately move on to The Gate House because DeMille exhaustively rehashes the original plot -- it would be torture.  The only way to enjoy the sequel would be to read the first one and then wait a couple of years. 

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book or The Gold Coast listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the TBR Challenges I am doing, as well as the Chunkster and Tea & Books Challenges.

Review: Glittering Images

 

Glittering Images is the first book in Susan Howatch's Starbridge Series, a fictional account of the Church of England in the 20th Century set in the Salisbury–like diocese of Starbridge. Glittering Images takes place in the 1930s, during the Anglican Church's debate over modernizing English divorce laws.

The Reverend Dr. Charles Ashworth is a polished Cambridge academic who prefers writing about medieval Christian theological disputes to active ministry. His mentor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sends him to secretly investigate the Archbishop's rival, the charismatic Bishop of Starbridge, to determine if the Bishop's alternative household arrangements are as innocent as they appear or a sleazy ménage à trois sure to bring scandal on the Church.

Ashworth's integration into the Bishop's household culminates in his own traumatic breakdown – a major plot transition Howatch handles masterfully, gradually turning the story inside out. Only when Ashworth (with guiding counsel from an astute Anglican monk) untangles his own psycho-spiritual mess is he able to solve the mystery of Starbridge.

Howatch turned to the religious themes explored in Glittering Images after experiencing her own spiritual epiphany. The book is certainly Christian in outlook and subject matter, but in execution bears all the marks of Howatch's earlier pop-fiction family sagas. The fast-turning pages are full of gothic suspense, moody imagery, sex, scandal, and drama. May the rest of the Starbridge Series be this good.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book, of any of Susan Howatch's books, listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my two 450 to 500 page books for the Chunkster Challenge, as well as one of my choices for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges.

Review: World Without End

World Without End is the sequel to Ken Follett's spectacular Pillars of the Earth. Pillars takes place in the 1100s, during the construction of the fictional Kingsbridge cathedral; World takes place 200 years later, also in Kingsbridge, but lacks a single event as a unifying focus.

It is the lack of focus that makes World disappointing. It is entertaining, but a pale shadow of Pillars. The story starts with the need to build a new bridge for Kingsbridge. Roughly the last third of the story is about the plague coming to England. There are ongoing storylines about the conflicts between the honest and hardworking heroes and heroines and the greedy, corrupt, or violent villains.

But it often feels like Book Without End, as the storylines drag on and repetitively on for over 1,000 pages. Pillars was long too, and had plenty of soap opera-like side stories, but was grander in scope and it provided loads of interesting historical information along with an exciting tale. World, on the other hand, feels like a modern story involving characters with very modern sensibilities crammed into a Medieval setting.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book posted here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

World Without End counts as my first book for the Tea & Books Challenge (books over 750 pages), as well as one of by books for the following challenges: TBR Pile, Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, and Chunkster.

Review: Sacred Hunger

Barry Unsworth won the 1992 Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger, his incredible novel about independence, madness, duty, dominance, justice, suicide, loyalty, greed, hope, commerce, power, family, culture, desire, violence, education, marriage, politics, philosophy, self-doubt, government, fatherhood, adventure, friendship, and pride.

And slavery. Specifically, British slave trade in the 1700s. William Kemp stakes his failing fortunes on a slave ship to ply the "Triangle Trade" of selling English manufactured goods to African slavers, slaves to Jamaican sugar plantations, and sugar to England. He installs his nephew, Matthew Paris, a heretical and bereaved scientist seeking to escape his tragic past, as the ship's physician.

When things go horribly wrong with Kemp's plan, his son Erasmus vows to restore the family fortunes and good name, culminating in his obsessive journey to the swamps of colonial Florida to find a rumored Utopian society of ex-slaves and sailors, governed, he fears, by his hated cousin.

Whew! There is a lot going on in the 600+ pages of this gorgeous and horrible and wonderful story. To say that Sacred Hunger is engrossing barely touches the surface. True, Unsworth's main characters live in their heads more than their hearts – little is shown about their emotions beyond anger or pride. Instead, Unsworth focuses on the doubts and hopes that drive William, Erasmus, and Matthew, explaining that "doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing" these men had in their tragic lives.

Sacred Hunger is a book that will keep any reader thinking for a long time after the amazing plot concludes.

OTHER REVIEWS

Hotchpot Cafe

If you would like your review of this or any other Barry Unsworth book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Sacred Hunger counts as one of my Booker Prize choices for the 2011 Battle of the Prizes, British Version and as my final book for the 2011 Chunkster Challenge.

Review of the Day: Worth Dying For

 

Worth Dying For is Lee Child’s 15th book featuring ex-military cop, Jack Reacher. This one has Reacher fighting the bad guys in Nebraska farm country, 60 miles from the nearest local police.

All Reacher books could have the same review: “A breakneck thriller that will keep you up late turning pages.” These books are all about action, excitement, and plot. Not that the plots are complex, but there is always a lot going on. The central story is always Beowulf fighting Grendel – the big, strong, stranger who sweeps in to protect the townsfolk from a monster.

And it works. Over and over. These books are paperback crack.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this, or any other Lee Child book, listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the 2011 Chunkster Challenge.  Although, I have to say that these 525 or so pages went by a lot faster than most.  500+ pages of the adventures of Jack Reacher aren't like reading The Adventures of Augie March, for example.  No criticism intended for either Child or Bellow.

Review: Cathedral

Nelson DeMille's Cathedral may be the best thriller ever written. Big words, but it's hard to think of another so well constructed and executed.

It's St. Patrick's Day in Manhattan and the city is gearing up for the big parade. Things go wrong when an IRA splinter group seizes hostages and takes control of St. Patrick's cathedral. Faced with impossible demands and bombs set to take down the cathedral at dawn, police, the National Guard, politicians, diplomats, and the Catholic Church scramble to come up with a plan.

This is a book you drink in – it doesn't even feel like reading. DeMille is a genius storyteller who knows to keep his writing out of the way of the action and make dialog snappy and realistic. Action and dialog are all there is. He tells where, what, who, when, and how and describes what things look, sound, smell, taste, and feel like. But he wastes few words on the thoughts or emotions of his characters, or any big themes that can't be gleaned from the facts described.

The only speed bump is readjusting to the pre-cell phone, pre-internet world of 1990 when the book was first published. But once passed that, the story hurtles along to the very last page. In fact, the story is more of a nail-biter now, in this post-9-11 world where buildings do actually fall down, than it would have been when it first came out.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of Cathedral or any other book my Nelson DeMille listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my four choices for the Chunkster Reading Challenge. It is only the second book I've read for the challenge, so so it is a good thing the challenge runs through the end of January. Maybe I can read two more by the end.

Wendy at caribousmom is hosting this fun challenge again this year.  The challenge post is here.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Cathedral

 

"The tea has got cold."

-- Cathedral by Nelson DeMille.

A deceptively benign beginning for a story that takes off like a shot and never stops.

This counts as one of my four choices for the Chunkster Reading Challenge. It is only the second book I've read for the challenge, so so it is a good thing the challenge runs through the end of January. Maybe I can read two more by the end.

Wendy at caribousmom is hosting this fun challenge again this year.  The challenge post is here.

Review of the Day: The Food of France

The Food of France, Waverley Root's encyclopedic tome, deserves its status as a culinary classic. First published in 1958, updated by the author in 1966, and still in print, the book remains the definitive treatise in English on French cuisine.

The book is best known for its structure. Root famously organized the book based on the type of fat predominantly used in the cooking of certain sections of France. The "Domain of Butter" is the largest area, covering a big swath across the middle of the country and points beyond, including Paris, Normandy, Bordeaux, Burgundy, and the western mountains. The "Domain of Fat" includes Alsace-Lorraine, Languedoc, and other regions that use lard (primarily pork and goose fat). Olive oil dominates the cooking in Provence and the rest if the "Domain of Oil." The only section of the country that does not fit Root's general scheme is the Pyrenees region, including Gascony and the Basque country, where people cook with butter, lard, and olive oil – sometimes combining two or even all three in the same dish.

Within each general category, Root breaks down the cuisine by region. Each chapter follows the same format, with Root describing the geography and climate of the area; its history, including its earliest settlers, rulers, architecture, and incorporation into France; its agriculture production; its culinary specialties; and, finally, its wine or other beverages.

The most absorbing parts of the book are about the history of each region. Root goes back sometimes to the earliest history, providing interesting tidbits such as where the Greeks planted wine grapes, or how Brittany shares a common language with Wales because they both have a Celtic background, or where to find the dividing line between Gothic and Romanesque architecture. He also enjoys linguistic history, offering useful explanations for how certain words evolved that clear up confusion about several place names and culinary terms.

When it comes to describing the food of each region, Root focuses on regional cuisine bourgeoise, or "home cooking," rather than heute cuisine, which he derides as "international hotel and restaurant cooking [that] appears all over the world on menus whose French is usually as bad an imitation of the real thing as the cooking is likely to be." He works from the angle that all cooking, like politics, is local, and focuses mostly on rustic dishes made from what can be grown, grazed, hunted, or fished from the immediate area.

Compared to the lively historical and linguistic anecdotes, the descriptions of the food grow a little stale by the end of this long book. The value of the book is its thoroughness. Unfortunately, this means reading about many regional "specialties" that are very similar to the "specialties" of neighboring regions. After the first 300 pages or so (or even earlier for the less patient reader), whether a region serves its cabbage and mutton stew in one dish, or serves the meat separately, is not an enthralling distinction.

Another minor letdown – and one that runs contrary to complaints about the length of the book – is that Root often gives no description of the foods he lists. He may state that such-and-such region makes a very good cheese, or is known for its sausages, or makes a particular type of wine, but says nothing about the characteristics of these products. For readers used over-the-top, mouthwatering descriptions of yummy delicacies, such scanty descriptions are not satisfying.

Despite these small disappointments, food lovers will still love The Food of France. It is a landmark in culinary writing and worthy of the reverence it inspires.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This is on my French Connections list and is the first book I am reading for the Foodie's Reading Challenge. It will also count as one of my Chunkster Challenge books, coming in at exactly 450 pages, plus an introduction.

Teaser Tuesday: The Food of France

"Though Champagne plays an important role in the history of France it does not play an important role in the history of French cooking.  It presents indeed, the anomaly of being the only important wine region in the country which has not produced on its own soil an appropriate cuisine to accompany its wine."

-- The Food of France by Waverley Root.

This is a terrific book! It is easy to understand why it is such a classic because it is a comprehensive review of the culinary development of all the regional foods of France.  The first section, which I am reading now, is called "The Domain of Butter." How great is that? 

This is on my French Connections list and is the first book I am reading for the Foodie's Reading Challenge. It will also count as one of my Chunkster Challenge books, coming in at exactly 450 pages, plus an introduction. 

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Review of the Day: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

MODERATE SPOILER ALERT

(No details, but don't read if you want to avoid even a general description of the type of crime involved.)

Because I have a general rule about avoiding books about serial killers or that involve sex crimes, I probably would never have read Stieg Larsson's blockbuster The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  But my book club picked it, so I gave it a go.

And I am glad I did.  There was plenty of sexual violence, but it was not as graphic as I had feared. And the serial killer part was all in the past, or at least the past tense.  There were no grisly scenes of murders being committed right then and there.  That is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. I've read more vivid details about murders in newspaper stories.

The story was much more complex than I had expected from the book's popularity.  Carl Mikael Blomkvist, a magazine writer and publisher in disgrace after being found guilty of criminal libel, accepts a job from an aged industrialist to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his grand niece Harriet years earlier.  Blomkvist eventually teams up with Lisbeth Salander, an ace investigator willing to bend the rules to get her answers.  The two discover that Harriet's disappearance is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the odd and evil Vanger family.  Meanwhile, Salander has her own problems to deal with and Blomkvist wants to redeem his reputation and learn the truth of his nemesis's financial and political shenanigans.  Whew!  That's a lot.  No wonder the book is almost 600 pages long.

The story has a lot in it that makes it even more interesting than a typical, well-written mystery with a complex plot and good pacing.  For one thing, it's Swedish.  Just the novelty of a Swedish book makes it compelling.  And then there's the whole thing that Larrson died after delivering the manuscripts for the three books in the series.  Rest in peace and all that, but I admit that the finite set appeals to the completist in me.

More substantively, Lisbeth Salander may be the most interesting detective in forever.  She's brilliant, amoral, physically tiny, socially inept, and tough as nails.  She's got the sexual morals of an alley cat, but then they all do.  Maybe it's a Swedish thing.  She has a tragic childhood history that was hinted at but not explained, leaving the backstory for the sequels.  I'm willing to risk the nasty crimes to learn more about her.

I'm glad I read it.  I will read the next two, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest.  The audio books are supposed to be terrific, but I think I will stick with the paper books because I can read them faster than I can listen to them.  That way, I can move quickly through the creepy parts.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Blue Bookcase
The Scarlet Letter
Man of la Book
Bibliophiliac

(If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

NOTES

At 590 pages, this counts as one of my books for the Chunkster Challenge.