Review: Advise and Consent

Advise and Consent, Allen Drury’s 1959 Pulitzer winner, thoroughly covers the machinations of the Senate confirmation process as that august body deliberates the nomination of a controversial figure for the post of Secretary of State.

Although long and sometimes exhausting, Drury’s landmark novel is a rewarding book for the patient reader. At over 600 dense pages, this is not a quick read. The first 100 pages seem especially slow as the characters are introduced and the stage set. This behind-the-scenes look at the Senate may have been more interesting before 50 years of televised politics in general and C-SPAN in particular leached any tantalizing mystery out of Senate subcommittee hearings. Once the story builds up steam, however, it powers right along.

The candidate under consideration, peacenik Bob Leffingwell, has his avid supporters, including the somewhat Machiavellian President who nominated him. But he faces stiff opposition from those who think he will be unable to protect America on the brink of a nuclearized Cold War with an increasingly belligerent Soviet Union determined to send men to the moon to claim it as Soviet territory. While the details of the controversy seem anachronistic now, the underlying issue of diplomacy versus military might is as pertinent today as it was 50 years ago.

What is most interesting is that Drury keeps party politics out of it. He does not name either party, and the battle over Leffingwell’s nomination is all within the President’s own liberal party that holds the majority in the Senate. The minority, presumably conservative, party is relegated to the sidelines.

In the end, Leffingwell’s confirmation comes down to character issues as much as his political opinions. The heart of Drury’s story is that, when an unsavory part of Leffingwell’s past arises, instead of having the Senate’s decision turn on the underlying facts, the controversy centers on how Leffingwell and his supporters, including the President, deal with the facts, and what their conduct reveals about their essential worthiness as national leaders. Again, the details of the scandals involved seem quaint now, but the principal debate over what weight to give to politicians’ personal lives still rages.

Stylistically, Drury follows formal conventions, with third-party narration, traditional dialog format, discretion in all things sexual, and one particularly distracting gimmick in that many characters share the same first names. For instance, the nominee and the Senate Majority leader are both names Robert and both go by Bob. Context usually makes clear which one is under discussion, but it seems odd that no one ever mentions that they have the same name. There are also two Hals, two Toms, and two Johns (but no Mikes, Marks, or Daves). Maybe it is more like real life to duplicate names, but some literary customs are there for a reason.

The writing is a little stuffy, but the tone suits the subject matter and helps raise it above a run-of-the-mill political thriller. A sample passage demonstrates Drury’s intricate style as well as his purpose of thoroughly presenting the Congressional system:

The system had its problems, and it wasn’t exactly perfect, and there was at times much to be desired, and yet – on balance, admitting all its bad points and assessing all the good, there was a vigor and a vitality and a strength that nothing, he suspected, could ever quite overcome, however evil and crafty it might be. There was in this system the enormous vitality of free men, running their own government in their own way. If they were weak at times, it was because they had the freedom to be weak; if they were strong, upon occasion, it was because they had the freedom to be strong; if they were indomitable, when the chips were down, it was because freedom made them so.

Although it takes some endurance to get through such a thicket of prose, the effort is worthwhile, which is why Advise and Consent remains the most popular, perceptive study of Congressional American politics on the shelves.

NOTES

This book was my Pulitzer choice for the Sunshine Smackdown -- Battle of the Prizes Challenge.

OTHER REVIEWS

Policy Review

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

Subscription Disaster! Subscription Drive!

Oh no! While trying to update my subscription links to allow subscribing by email, I think I just deleted my original subscription link and blitzed all my subscriptions. For all those kind enough to subscribe to Rose City Reader, a sincere thank you and a request for a BIG FAVOR -- please sign up for a new subscription! I do not want to lose you and I really did not mean to delete you! For those who do not currently subscribe, please do! Now you can sign up with a reader or by email. You can also follow the blog through google -- use the "Follow Blog" button in the navigation bar above or go to the followers widget in the right-hand column. THANK YOU!

Mailbox Monday

I've been inclined lately to post my weekly book acquisitions because so many seem to be flowing in these days. This past week, most really did arrive in the mail, so this is officially part of The Printed Page's Mailbox Monday feature. Wall Street by Steve Fraser (I am reviewing this for the July edition of the Internet Review of Books) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (a late, but much appreciated, birthday present) Women in Their Beds by Gina Berricault (winner of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner prizes) A Bromfield Galaxy by Louis Bromfield (including three novels: the Pulitzer-winning Early Autumn, The Green Bay Tree, and A Good Woman) Au Revoir to All That (from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program) The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan (another National Book Critics Circle prize winner) Birds by Jeffrey Fisher (my favorite cover of all of them) When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro Atget's Paris, part of the Icons series published by Taschen Panoramas of Promise: Pacific Northwest Cities and Towns on Nineteenth-Century Lithographs by John W. Reps The last four did not come in the mail. I got them at Ampersand when I went in to spend the $25 gift certificate I won in the April contest on Reading Local. The monthly prize is now up to $100 in gift certificates.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Atget's Paris

"Eugene Atget is the photographer of Old Paris." -- Atget's Paris, from the Icons series published by Taschen. Eugene Atget was a French photographer known for his "documentary" photographs of Paris taken in the early 1900s. According to the prologue in the book, "He will be remembered as an urban historian, a genuine romanticist, a lover of Paris, Balzac of the camera, from whose works we can weave a large tapestry of French civilization." This splendid little book was part of the stash I got at Ampersand while spending my Reading Local contest winnings. Thanks Reading Local!

15 Books

Good thing one of the official rules about Booking Through Thursday is that you do not have to answer on Thursday, because I missed this one. But I like it and thought I would participate, even if late. The title this week was "Sticky" and the topic is: “This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.” My list, in no particular order and not necessarily with much explanation for why it stuck with me: Sophie’s Choice by William Styron (one of my Top 10 favorites) Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (my "desert island" book) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (still the only Civil War novel I enjoy; another Top 10 favorite; one of the few books I have read more than once) Warlock by Jim Harrison (Harrison's funniest, goofiest book; the one I recommend to many first time Harrison readers) The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (my childhood favorite) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (my high school favorite; another that I have read more than once) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (my college favorite, but I'll never get through it twice) Parliament of Whores by P. J. O'Rourke (if you like Ayn Rand, you'll love P. J. O'Rourke) The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (a treasure recently found) Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille (the best of its kind) The Age of Reagan by Steven F. Hayward (a really good biography) Love Among the Chickens by P.G. Wodehouse (my first Wodehouse book) Pale Fire by Vladamir Nabakov (genius) Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (diabolically clever; I have read it twice -- once out loud to Hubby) Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (a book I recommend often; the thinking reader's Da Vinci Code)

Review of the Day: March

The trouble with novels about the Civil War is that they are bound to follow a requisite formula, and Geraldine Brooks’s Pulitzer-winning March is no exception. All the familiar scenes, themes, and elements are there: lonely letters home, the smoke-filled chaos of battle, stealing a dead person’s boots, whipping a slave, selling a slave’s family members, a slave revolt, Southern gentility, Northern rough manners, soldiers trashing the plantation, buildings burning, having no food but root vegetables, and the mandatory amputation of limbs with hand tools.

Civil War novels only distinguish themselves with what gets used to string together these common essentials. Brooks differentiates her book by using a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee abolitionist as her protagonist and developing a personal relationship between him and a beautiful, educated house slave.

Brooks also plays a little literary game, in that Mr. March is the father of the eponymous Little Women in Luisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel. This might be a more compelling device if Little Women were more compelling. Not knowing anything about the fictional Mr. March, Brooks fashioned him after Alcott’s colorful father, Amos Bronson Alcott, an innovative educator, friend of Thoreau and Emerson, experimental farmer, and strict vegetarian. Weaving Thoreau and Emerson into the story, as well as the fanatic abolitionist John Brown, was an interesting touch. But March’s vegetarianism – discussed often and at length – was a distraction that added nothing to the story.

Overall, March is well-written and tells a good story. For a reader new to, or completely enamored with, Civil War novels, it would be a great read. But there is not enough novelty to capture the fancy of more jaded readers.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Biblio Brat
 Medieval Bookworm
Rebecca Reads

Please leave a comment with a link if you would like your review posted here. .

List of the Day: Serious About Series

Inspired by Literary Feline's similar collection on Musings of a Bookish Kitty, I am going to use this spot to keep a list of the various series I have read or am in the process of reading. It is, essentially, a list of lists -- what could be more appealing?

The "What's Next" website makes finding all the books in a series a snap. And if they do not have a particular series available, they are happy to hunt it down and add it -- just email them.

Alphabetical, by author: Cara Black's Paris-based Aimee Leduc mysteries James Lee Burke' Dave Robicheaux mysteries Lee Child's Jack Reacher series John Lescroart's San Francisco-based Dismas Hardy mysteries Barbara Parker's Gail Connor mysteries (finished) Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko mysteries Julia Spencer-Fleming's Clare Furgusson mysteries Olen Steinhauer's Eastern Europe series P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves series These are mostly mysteries, with the exception of the Wodehouse books. As I think of other series, I will add them.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Stylish Sheds

"Virginia Woolf had it right." -- Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways: Big Ideas for Small Backyard Destinations by Debra Prinzing. That is just a lead in to discussing Woolf's idea of A Room of One's Own, which Prinzing thinks is a good one. But Prinzing proposes that the ideal room should be a shed. A very nice shed, mind you. Our new (old) house has the original 1912 garage in the back yard (as well as a functioning modern garage built into the hill at the side of the house). The old garage would barely be big enough for a car, even if it weren't landlocked. But it will make a perfect potting shed/retreat. Oh, I have big plans for that little shed. Hopefully Prinzing will give me some ideas.

Author of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald was my favorite author when I was a dreamy-eyed high school girl and read The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night until the covers about fell off. I read all the novels and most of the short stories before graduation.

Lately, I have wondered if Fitzgerald's work would appeal to me as an adult the way it did as a teenager. Enough time has passed that, with the exception of Gatsby that I remember well, to read his books would be to read them anew. It may be time to give that a try.

Those I have read at least once are in red.

NOVELS

This Side of Paradise (1920)

The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

The Great Gatsby (1925)

Tender Is the Night (1934)

The Last Tycoon (published posthumously, 1942)

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS (as published, with duplicates)

Flappers and Philosophers (1920)

• "The Offshore Pirate"
• "The Ice Palace"
• "Head and Shoulders"
• "The Cut-Glass Bowl"
• "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"
• "Benediction"
• "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong"
• "The Four Fists"

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

• "The Jelly-Bean"
• "The Camel's Back"
• "May Day"
• "Porcelain and Pink"
• "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
• "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
• "Tarquin of Cheapside"
• "Oh Russet Witch!"
• "The Lees of Happiness"
• "Mr. Icky"
• "Jemina"

All the Sad Young Men (1926) (hard to find)

• "The Rich Boy"
• "Winter Dreams"
• "The Baby Party"
• "Absolution"
• "Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les"
• "The Adjuster"
• "Hot and Cold Blood"
• "The Sensible Thing""
• "Gretchen's Forty Winks"

Taps at Reveille (1935)

• "The Scandal Detectives"
• "The Freshest Boy"
• "He Thinks He's Wonderful"
• "The Captured Shadow"
• "The Perfect Life"
• "First Blood"
• "A Nice Quiet Place"
• "A Woman with a Past"
• "Crazy Sunday"
• "Two Wrongs"
• "The Night of Chancellorsville"
• "The Last of the Belles"
• "Majesty"
• "Family in the Wind"
• "A Short Trip Home"
• "One Interne"
• "The Fiend"
• "Babylon Revisited"

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (1960)

• "The Ice Palace"
• "May Day"
• "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
• "Winter Dreams"
• "Absolution"
• "The Rich Boy"
• "The Freshest Boy"
• "Babylon Revisited"
• "Crazy Sunday"
• "The Long Way Out"

The Pat Hobby Stories (1962)

• "Pat Hobby's Christmas Wish"
• "A Man in the Way"
• "'Boil Some Water - Lots of It'"
• "Teamed with Genius
• "Pat Hobby and Orson Welles"
• "Pat Hobby's Secret"
• "Pat Hobby, Putative Father"
• "The Homes of the Stars"
• "Pat Hobby Does His Bit"
• "Pat Hobby's Preview"
• "No Harm Trying"
• "A Patriotic Short"
• "On the Trail of Pat Hobby"
• "Fun in an Artist's Studio"
• "Two Old-Timers"
• "Mightier Than the Sword"
• "Pat Hobby's College Days"

The Basil and Josephine Stories (1973)

• That Kind of Party"
• "The Scandal Detectives"
• "A Night at the Fair"
• "The Freshest Boy"
• "He Thinks He’s Wonderful"
• "The Captured Shadow"
• "The Perfect Life"
• "Basil and Cleopatra"
• "First Blood"
• "A Nice Quiet Place"
• "A Woman with a Past"
• "A Snobbish Story"
• "Emotional Bankruptcy"

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1989)

• "Head and Shoulders" (Feb. 1920)
• "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (May 1920)
• "The Ice Palace" (May 1920)
• "The Offshore Pirate" (May 1920)
• "May Day" (July 1920)
• "The Jelly-Bean" (Oct. 1920)
• "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (May 1922)
• "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (June 1922)
• "Winter Dreams" (Dec. 1922)
• "Dice, Brassknuckles, & Guitar" (May 1923)
• "Absolution" (June 1924)
• "Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les" (July 1924)
• "The Sensible Thing" (July 1924)
• "Love in the Night" (Mar. 1925)
• "The Rich Boy" (Feb 1926)
• "Jacob's Ladder" (Aug. 1927)
• "A Short Trip Home" (Dec. 1927)
• "The Bowl" (Jan. 1928)
• "The Captured Shadow" (Dec 1928)
• "Basil and Cleopatra" (Apr. 1929)
• "The Last of the Belles" (Mar. 1929)
• "Majesty" (July 1929)
• "At Your Age" (Aug. 1929)
• "The Swimmers" (Oct. 1929)
• "Two Wrongs" (Jan. 1930)
• "First Blood" (Apr. 1930)
• "Emotional Bankruptcy" (Aug. 1931)
• "The Bridal Party" (Aug. 1930)
• "One Trip Abroad" (Oct. 1930)
• "The Hotel Child" (Jan. 1931)
• "Babylon Revisited" (Feb. 1931)
• "A New Leaf" (July 1931)
• "A Freeze-Out" (Dec. 1931)
• "Six of One" (Feb. 1932)
• "What a Handsome Pair!" (Aug. 1932)
• "Crazy Sunday" (Oct. 1932)
• "More Than Just a House" (June 1933)
• "Afternoon of an Author" (Aug. 1936)
• "Financing Finnegan" (Jan. 1938)
• "The Lost Decade" (Dec. 1939)
• "'Boil Some Water- Lots of It'" (March 1940)
• "Last Kiss" (Apr. 1949)
• "Dearly Beloved" (1969)

OTHERS

"Magnetism" (short story, 1928) (available to read on-line)

The Vegetable (play, 1923)

The Crack-Up (essays, 1945)

NOTES

Last updated April 19, 2012.

If anyone else is reading all the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and would like to keep track here, please leave a comment with a link to your progress report and I will add it to this post.

More Books!

I don't even like garage sales, but I've had the bug the past few weeks. This weekend I lucked out with a church rummage sale and a couple of estate sales in addition to the usual garage and yard sales. Portland being such a bookish town, there were even two yard sales devoted entirely to books. What fun! Finding books for a dollar or less does not lead to the noblest of literary pursuits. Instead, it lets me indulge my quirkier books tastes, like kitchy local cookbooks, mid-century pop fiction, and random memoirs. Which explains some of the following titles on my loot list: California Street by Niven Busch A Pillar Of Iron by Taylor Caldwell The Instrument by John O`Hara Victoria and Albert by Evelyn Anthony Gone Whaling: A Search for Orcas in Northwest Waters by Douglas Hand The Devil's Mode by Anthony Burgess O, How the Wheel Becomes It! by Anthony Powell Rebel Without Applause by Jay Landesman What's for Dinner?: Dinner Menus with Some Very Special Recipes by Maryana Vollstedt (1975 edition) How To Read and Why by Harold Bloom The English Garden by Clay Perry Laughing Out Loud by Myron Cohen Easter Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family by Jill O'Connor One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis

Review: Inside the Red Mansion

German-born, Oxford-educated journalist, Oliver August, spent seven years tracking the story of Chinese businessman/gangster/fugitive Lai Changxing in order to write Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China's Most Wanted Man.

By the time August arrived in China in 1999 as a London Times reporter, Lai was already on the lam, the subject of a massive criminal investigation by the Chinese government. August followed Lai’s trail geographically, socially, and mythically – renting an apartment in Xiamen, Lai’s home base; visiting the Lai's pleasure palace, the Red Mansion; talking to anyone he could find who ever met Lai; and parsing internet rumors of Lai that painted him as either the greatest entrepreneur of modern China, a Mafioso-style criminal, or a Robin Hood combination of both.

Lai’s story is a fascinating one, but the book is much larger than his story. Oliver uses Lai’s individual reinvention from illiterate peasant to billionaire tycoon as the vehicle to discuss the tumultuous decades of China’s reinvention as a dominate market economy. He gives enough of China’s 20th Century history to give context to the story, and he uses clues about Lai as topical springboards for examination of different aspects of modern Chinese life.

For instance, Oliver writes about popular midnight golf because he heard Lai liked to play, the world’s largest fois gras farm because Lai knew the enterprising owner, and an “underground” Christmas pageant attended by 5,000 Chinese Christians because he read a rumor that Lai had converted.

Oliver’s discussion is not merely anecdotal and entertaining, although it is both. His analysis of the political and cultural climate in China is astute, and he does not shy away from tackling the bigger issues facing the country – primarily the need for transparency in government, democracy, and the rule of law. As Oliver explains, rogues like Lai flourished because the government in Beijing needed them to change the economy while the government continued to maintain “official” positions contrary to the economic upheaval. Only when the government changes will real change come to China.  

OTHER REVIEWS

(Please leave a comment with a link if you would like your review posted here.)

Review of the Day: The Fourth Hand

The Fourth Hand by John Irving was not a captivating read -- just barely entertaining enough to drag through to the end.

Everyone has their Irving favorites, usually starting with The World According to Garp; and there are mixed feelings about others, like A Prayer for Owen Meany. But The Fourth Hand is not enough of a novel to arouse much emotion one way or the other.

Without giving away the story, it is simply too hard to buy into the woman's obsession with the hand or the man's love for the woman. And, in a very un-Irving way, there were many loose ends -- several characters with prominent parts in the beginning of the book disappear without a trace. We are told that the protagonist changed, and that the "new" Patrick Wallingford is not like the "old" Wallingford, but why did he change? And why did his changing necessarily meant that characters would disappear?

It was like Irving packed the first half of the book with typical Irving situations and characters, then got bored with the whole thing, so spent the second half resolving it all in the fastest, most simplistic, straightforward way he could. Which is the only way to finish reading it as well.

OTHER REVIEWS

(Please leave a comment with a link if you would like your review posted here.)

Opening Sentence of the Day: Advise and Consent

"When Bob Munson awoke in his apartment at the Sheraton-Park Hotel at seven thirty-one in the morning, he had the feeling it would be a bad day." -- Advise and Consent by Allen Drury Drury won the 1960 Pulitzer prize for this best selling novel about the Senate's consideration of a controversial candidate for Secretary of State. It is my Pulitzer pick for the Battle of the Prizes Challenge. At over 600 pages, it would also count for the Chunkster Challenge, had I signed up in time.

Oh S**t!

Here's an idea for an English major thesis: "Scatological Motifs in First/Breakout Novels by Male Authors." I came up with this idea while reading The Floating Opera, John Barth's first novel. There is a whole subplot about a crazy old man who stored his own waste in pickle jars. Which reminded me of a similar storyline in John Franzen's novel The Corrections (not his first, but definitely his breakout novel). Booker Prize winners Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre also have excrement-related scenes, as does, I seem to recall, The River Why by David James Duncan. What gives? Why do writers -- and it seems to be male writers -- feel a need to write about this subject? Does the freedom to write anything they want prompt some need to be naughty, like a teenager left home alone with the liquor cabinet? Or is there some deeper, Freudian connection between first novels and toilet training? It is not that I didn't enjoy the books mentioned (well, I could have skipped Vernon God Little), but I would be happy to never read another passage discussing bodily waste. Please let me know of other books that should be included on my list, so I will know what to avoid. And you never know -- there could be a lit major out there looking for a thesis idea who would appreciate the extra titles. THE S**T LIST The Floating Opera y John Barth The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen Life of Pi by Yann Martel Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre The River Why by David James Duncan

List of the Day: The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction

The BBC awarded its first Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 1999. The prize "is the richest non fiction prize in the UK, worth £20,000 to the winner. . . . [T]he prize aims to reward the best of non-fiction and is open to authors of all non-fiction books in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts." A few non-fiction books are included in some of the Must Read lists here on Rose City Reader, but this is the first exclusively non-fiction list I have posted. I enjoy non-fiction more and more, but my default reading choices are novels. To remind myself to read more non-fiction, I have adopted this list -- it is a short one, the books are contemporary, and (so far) only one is pure military history. A couple, shown in blue, are on my TBR shelf right now, but I haven't read any of these books yet. 2008 The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale 2007 Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran 2006 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro 2005 Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of BS Johnson by Jonathan Coe 2004 Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder 2003 Pushkin: A Biography by TJ Binyon 2002 Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret MacMillan (the American title is Paris 1919) 2001 The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh 2000 Berlioz Volume 2: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns 1999 Stalingrad by Antony Beevor If anyone else is reading these prize winners, please leave a link in a comment and I will add it to this post.

Book Give-a-Way: Home Sweet Home

I have a few home-themed books up for grabs. No fancy rules, just first come, first served. If you would like one of these books, please leave a comment and I will make arrangements to get it to you.* All are in "Like New" condition. They have been sitting around on my shelf for a while, but not getting any attention. The Home Owner's Journal: What I Did and When I Did It This is an actual journal that you fill in and use to keep track of improvements and projects on your house. I got it for my new house, but ended up with several similar journals that I received as house warming gifts and I only need one. This is good, particularly if you are building a new house or doing a whole-house remodel, because it is organized room-by-room and includes sections to note everything -- floor coverings, light fixtures, window treatments, etc. The Complete Home Improvement & Decorating Organizer This is another interactive home journal, very similar in content to the first one, but larger in size, with more room to write. It may include more sections on interior decorating, but there is space in the other to include that information too. Attics: Your Guide to Planning and Remodeling Our plans changed -- no attic remodel for me. Lots of pretty pictures, good ideas, and practical advice. Ortho's Guide to Decks & Patios This is definitely a hand-on guide to building your own deck or patio. Great stuff, but I can barely handle a garden spade, let alone power tools. * U.S. only, please.

So Many Books! Kind of a Mailbox Monday Thing

Summer weather hit the usually soggy City of Roses this weekend, inspiring all kinds of summer impulses, like cocktails on the back porch, washing the cars, and poking through boxes of garage sale books. I found a couple of garage sale treasures and also picked up a couple of others while out enjoying the glorious weather. In no particular order: Beck: A Book by John Updike Proof by Dick Francis Enquiry by Dick Francis Forbidden Bread by Erica Johnson Debeljak (a LibraryThing Early Reviewer book) Sexing the Cherry (on Erica Jong's list) Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates by Michael Bond (an HMD from my sister) I Was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (also on the Jong list) Youth and the Bright Medusa by Willa Cather (short stories)

Happy Memorial Day!

Review of the Day: Great Expectations

Great Expectations is one of the Dickens books I never read because I was sure I had read it. I knew all about spooky Miss Havisham in her wedding dress with her moldy, spider-filled wedding cake, so I must have read it, right? No, I must have watched the dreary 1970s movie version somewhere along the line and missed out on the real thing.

Too bad it took so long to get around to this one because Great Expectations is a whale of a good read. It is chock-o-block full of Dickens’s extraordinary characters, it is clever and funny, and there are exciting adventures, like prison breaks, murders, and a kidnapping. Orphan Pip goes from helping escaped convicts on the moors to keeping Miss Havisham company before being taken up by an unknown benefactor and taught to be a London gentleman. All goes awry before adult Pip can win the heart of his beloved Estella, but he learns important lessons and all comes right in the end.

As it turns out, all came more right in the end of the version I read than originally planned by Dickens. He changed the original melancholy ending in subsequent editions and mine used the later, happier ending. Having gone back and compared the two, the original seems more integral to the story. Either way, what a wonderful book. I wish I had read it 25 years ago, like I thought I had.


OTHER REVIEWS
Dolce Bellezza (warning: contains spoilers)
Book Psmith

Opening Sentence of the Day: Nell Hill's Style at Home

"We do things a bit differently at Nell Hill's, my home furnishings and accessories store in Atchison, Kansas, population 11,000." -- Nell Hill's Style at Home by Mary Caroll Garrity. I don't know from Atchison, Kansas, but I plan to spend this long weekend feathering my nest and am looking for inspiration. The letterpress card used for the title caught my eye and the pictures inside are luscious.

Challenge Progress: The Sunshine Smackdown -- Battle of the Prizes

The first reviews are in from participants in the Sunshine Smackdown -- Battle of the Prizes! Caitlin at Chaotic Compendiums posted her review of Sophie's Choice, her National Book Award winner. Joy at Joy's Blog posted her review of The Optimist's Daughter, her Pulitzer pick. And Tea at Living Life and Reading Books has put up her review of National winner Middle Passage. Tea has opted to read two National winners and two Pulitzer winners, rather than one of the double dippers. Thanks! It is not too late to sign up. The challenge runs through Labor Day (September 7) and it only takes three books to complete. Find the details here.

Review of the Day: The Floating Opera

Published in 1956, The Floating Opera was John Barth's first novel and a finalist for the National Book Award. According to the back cover, The Floating Opera is, "among many curious things":

the story of the day when Todd Andrews, hero and narrator, confirmed bachelor, convinced nihilist, practicing lawyer, rake, saint, cynic and potential suicide, decides not to commit suicide.

Like other books that supposedly take place in one day – most famously, Ulysses; more recently, Saturday – Barth’s novel really tells the story of Andrews’s entire life, including the loss of his virginity, his macabre WWI experience, the death of his father, and the long-running affair with the wife of his best friend.

In classic picaresque tradition, Barth uses humor and adventure to examine the most serious of subjects. And he succeeds – it is funny, primarily in Barth’s clever wordplay and in the juxtaposition of ordinary, small town life such as the old men murmuring away the day on the sunny bench outside the general store or the audience appreciation of the rinky-dink showboat vaudeville show, and the extraordinary issues Andrews faces as he plans his suicide, such as the nature of marital fidelity and the value of life.

Barth is best known for The Sot Weed Factor (which made the All Time-100 list) and Giles Goat-Boy (one of Anthony Burgess’s 99 favorites). Floating Opera is far shorter than either of the others makes for an accessible introduction to an author vaunted in post-grad lit programs but not often popularly read.

Re-Run of the Day: The English Major

While in Boston for my step daughter's graduation from medical school, I am re-running a couple of earlier reviews. This one was first posted on November 17, 2008. For newcomers to Jim Harrison’s work, The English Major is a delightful introduction to the fiction of this sometimes overlooked American treasure. Fans will enjoy another boisterous romp along Harrison’s literary highway, although the particularly jaded among them may find the themes getting a bit tread worn. When Cliff and Vivian split after a long marriage, sixty-something Cliff heads off on a mind-clearing road trip inspired by a childhood map of the United States, while Vivian stays in Michigan launching her real estate career with the sale of his family farm. Along his journey, Cliff falls into an affair with a former student, reconnects with his big shot son in San Francisco, visits an old buddy at a snake farm, and undertakes his magnum opus of renaming all the states and birds. The pages are filled with Harrison’s usual wit; curmudgeony charm; and musings on food, liquor, round bottoms, favorite dogs, and just how square peg loners can adjust to living in round hole society.

Re-Run of the Day: Wide Sargasso Sea

While in Boston for my step daughter's graduation from medical school, I am re-running a couple of earlier reviews. This one was first posted on November 22, 2008. I am perfectly ambivalent about Wide Sargasso Sea. Every reaction I had to the book is balanced by its opposite reaction: • The moody, languid prose captured the tropical setting; I longed for a more direct narrative. • The switches in perspective deepened the relationships among the characters; it was frustratingly difficult to track who was saying what and when they were saying it. • The themes of madness, alcoholism, cruelty, and love were fascinating; the characters were all horrible and it was awful to watch them destroy themselves and each other. • The connection between the heroine and the insane wife in Jane Eyre is an inspired literary device; the tie-in with Jane Eyre is a manipulative gimmick. See what I mean? Everything I like about the book, I dislike about the book. Equipoise. But it made it to both the Modern Library and Radcliffe lists of best novels of the 20th century, so the half of me that disliked the book is at least pleased to have accomplished two tasks.

Re-Run of the Day: In Hovering Flight

While in Boston for my step daughter's graduation from medical school, I am re-running a couple of earlier reviews. This one was first posted on December 3, 2008. The characters in Joyce Hinnefeld’s first novel, In Hovering Flight, fall into two teams that could be called “the Artists” and “the Suits.” The Artists include the heroine, Addie Sturmer Kavanagh, an avid birder, artist, and environmental activist; her husband Tom, a literature-loving ornithology professor; their daughter Scarlet, a poet; Addie’s two best friends; and various supporters, fans, and hangers-on. The Suits include Addie’s archenemy, a big-shot land developer; corporations; Republican Senators; publishers; college administrators; and the like. All these characters come into play, directly or through recollection, as Addie’s loved ones gather to mourn her recent death and consider her dying wishes, some of which are unorthodox or even illegal. Hinnefeld’s writing is elegant and she tells an emotionally complex, multi-layered tale. The problem is that the Artists are all good and the Suits are all bad. Sure, there is some variation and even tension among the Artists themselves. There is the acknowledgement that Addie’s “moral superiority” puts off her loved ones; that some of her ardor may stem from untreated depression rather than healthy concern; and that her fellow activists may be too extreme. But the Artists are fundamentally right in their interests and outlook. The Suits (none fleshed out as characters) range from evil fiends to buffoons. There is absolutely no question about which team we are expected to root for. Just as the issues are clear to Hinnefeld, team membership is as well. There is no crossover, except as object lessons. For example, the scientific side of Tom’s profession and character is shown in poor contrast to Tom as a writer, musician, and lover of bird songs. Likewise, although Scarlet’s first love Bobby suffers adolescent tragedy, it is his involvement with corporate America that brings him close to death – both slowly with alcohol and quickly with an office in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Bobby is redeemed only when he abandons the world of the Suits and returns to the Artists’ fold. Hinnefeld means well, that is clear. In Hovering Flight is an earnest novel dealing with heavy subjects (cancer, death, environmental degradation, art, infidelity, autism, motherhood, and suicide, for instance). But Hinnefeld offers no sugar to help the medicine go down. The book is devoid of any humor: there are no jokes, quips, or even wry observations. The book takes itself too seriously and comes across as the same sort of smug, self-righteous lecture Addie herself was wont to give.

Re-Run of the Day: So Many Books, So Little Time

While in Boston for my step daughter's graduation from medical school, I am re-running a couple of earlier reviews. This one was first posted on December 18, 2008. Sara Nelson had a great idea for a book lover’s book: She would spend one year (2002) reading a book a week and writing about it, compiling her efforts in So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading. Although she started off with a list of 26 or so books that she wanted to read, there was not a lot of rhyme to her reason. She did not have a definitive list like Pulitzer Prize Winners, or Books I Meant to Read in College But Never Did, or anything like that. She ended up choosing the books each week in a pretty spontaneous fashion. Likewise, she did not have a formula for how she wanted to write about the books. She did not want to simply write reviews of the books she read. She wanted to write about each book’s connection to her personal life, such as what was going on in her life that made her chose a particular book, personal views that made her react to a book in a certain way, or memories a book conjured. In keeping with her theme, I considered my own personal connections with So Many Books as well as the books Nelson read. As she described, I decided I would try “matching up the reading experience with the personal one and watching where they intersect – or don’t.” There were a lot of intersections. Following Nelson’s bibliophile footsteps led me through familiar territory. For example, she and I share an aversion to over-hyped books (White Teeth and Everything is Illuminated are two we both avoided), we both think Philip Roth is the cat’s pajamas, and we had the exact same reaction to Anthony Bourdain when we read Kitchen Confidential (hard crush followed by exasperation and a desire to break up – although he and I have since reconciled over The Nasty Bits). And there several places where are reading paths did not cross. Unlike Nelson, I very rarely abandon a book once I start it. I can think of only two – A Frolic of His Own and some V.I. Warshawski mystery. Nelson seems to favor contemporary novels and does not share my taste for nineteenth century books (although it is hard to tell from just one year of reading). Nor does she share my compulsion for prize winners and “must read” lists. But the biggest personal jolt I got from So Many Books was realizing that Nelson is living the life I, as an English Lit major back in the ‘80s, had planned for myself. She lives in New York – in Greenwich Village no less – where she works for a magazine and writes books. She married an interesting man at a reasonable age and has one child. That is pretty much what I had in mind for myself until, a month before college graduation, my life took a turn for the old-fashioned when I fell in love with a local newspaper reporter and stayed in Portland, where we married at what now seems the ridiculous age of 23. Of course, had I gone to New York, my life would have been different, but not better. I would not have gone to law school, so I would not now have a profession I find enormously satisfying, I would not have met and (after taking a marital Mulligan) married my adored husband, and on and on. It’s not like I sit around pondering what my life would have been like had I followed my original post-college plans, but reading Nelson’s book really stirred up some memories and a few what-might-have-been fantasies. Which was what Nelson hoped would happen. She wanted to write about how books “get to” her personally. Hers certainly got to me.

Opening Sentence of the Day: India: The Rise of an Asian Giant

"The Indian giant is rising like Gulliver after being released from the web of threads with which he had been pinned down." -- India: The Rise of an Asian Giant by Dietmar Rothermund. This book about India's economic rise by a German scholar has not gotten much play yet. But it looks interesting and, judging from the opening line, it is not going to be horribly dry.

Review of the Day: Fear of Flying

What a surprise! I put off reading Fear of Flying for years, afraid it was just some outdated, feminist apologia. I was wrong. It is funny, charming, and completely engaging. I was alternately reminded of Philip Roth, Woody Allen, Two for the Road, and Sex and the City. Loved it!

OTHER REVIEWS

Regular Ruminations

Favorite Author: Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is a master of literary fiction. Some of his earlier books take some strange turns and are downright weird in parts, but his later novels are astonishingly elegant. He has a lot of years ahead of him, so the best may still be yet to come.

Listed below are McEwan's novels and short stories.  I left off screenplays and other dramatic works.  Those I have read are in red; those on my TBR shelf are in blue. If anyone else is reading the McEwan Bibliography, leave a comment with a link to your progress report and I will post it.

First Love, Last Rites (short stories)

In Between the Sheets

The Cement Garden

The Comfort of Strangers

The Child in Time

The Innocent (reviewed here)

Black Dogs

The Daydreamer

Enduring Love

Amsterdam

Atonement

Saturday

On Chesil Beach (reviewed here)

Solar

Sweet Tooth

The Children Act

Nutshell

NOTES

Last updated September 15, 2018.

Review: The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth is a What If? historical novel. The idea is that, instead of FDR, anti-semitic Charles Lindbergh gets elected President in 1940, after running on a strong isolationist platform. It is a good yarn, as well-written as any of Roth's novels.

Politically, the book is particularly interesting because, while the Republicans are the anti-Semitic bad guys and the heroes are the liberal Jewish family of the charming 9-year old narrator (little Phillip Roth), Roth's clear message is that it is wrong for America to turn its back on evil, especially if that evil will then infiltrate America. It seems that the lesson Roth tries to get across is that liberals can be hawks -- and should be to protect the American way of life.

That lesson may come across more clearly in the audio book narrated by Ron Silver. Silver described himself as a “9-11 Democrat” and is a robust hawk in the war on terror.

The Plot Against America is very entertaining, as much for the central story as for the side stories about being a young, Jewish kid in Newark in the 1940s. Worth reading. Or, better yet, listening to, because Silver does an incredible job.

OTHER REVIEWS

Ross Douthat
Books 'N Border Collies

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

Review: The Stettheimer Dollhouse

The Stettheimer Dollhouse is a little gem, appropriate enough for a book about miniature art.  The dollhouse itself – designed by, built for, and painstakingly decorated by Carrie Stettheimer from 1916 to 1935 – is itself a work of art.  It is also, to its lasting fame, filled with actual paintings and sculptures created for Stettheimer by some of the leading artists of her day.

The dollhouse is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York.  The book is a small catalog of the dollhouse exhibit, filled mostly with pictures, with written descriptions of each room of the dollhouse.  There is also a preface by the museum curator, a brief history of the dollhouse by Sheila Clark, and a reprint of the original remarks written by Stettheimer’s sister Ettie when she donated the dollhouse to the museum after Carrie’s death.

What the book was not intended to provide but noticeably lacks is an in-depth biography of Stettheimer.  She and two sisters never married, the three living with their mother in Europe and New York.  Florine was an artist who only came to modest fame after her death.  Her enchanting portrait of Carrie is reproduced in the book and a black and white miniature version hangs framed in the dollhouse dining room.  Ettie was an author.  Unfortunately for her own creative endeavors, the role of house manager and hostess fell to Carrie, who devoted her energies to running the house for the four women and hosting “one of the most notable literary and artistic salons of early twentieth-century New York society."  Carrie's dollhouse was her only artistic outlet.  These sketchy details create a melancholy picture.

Hopefully someone will pick up where this book leaves off and write a definitive biography of the Stettheimer sisters. In the meantime, The Stettheimer Dollhouse is a charming introduction to this distinctive family.

OTHER REVIEWS

Ready When You Are, C.B.
Kittling: Books

Happy Mothers' Day!

Author of the Day: Kingsley Amis

Lucky Jim is a favorite of mine, ever since I read it in college. Kingsley Amis's description of a hangover being like a huge raw egg rolling around inside Jim's skull has stayed vivid with me for years.

The Old Devils, which won the Booker Prize, was a great novel about friendship, fame, identity, and booze. The Green Man was entertaining, although veered alarmingly into science fiction there at the end. The Alteration, an alternate history imagining England if there had been no Protestant Reformation, was a quick read that gave a lot to ponder.

Amis wrote novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Those I have read are in red. Those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue. Many are out of print.

1947 Bright November (poems)

1953 A Frame of Mind (poems)

1954 Fantasy Portraits (poems)

1954 Lucky Jim

1955 That Uncertain Feeling

1956 A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956

1957 Socialism and the Intellectuals (a Fabian Society pamphlet)

1958 I Like it Here

1960 Take A Girl Like You

1960 New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction

1960 Hemingway in Space (short story, Punch Dec. 1960)

1962 My Enemy's Enemy (short stories)

1962 The Evans County

1963 One Fat Englishman (reviewed here)

1965 The Egyptologists (with Robert Conquest)

1965 The James Bond Dossier

1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 (as Lt. Col. William "Bill" Tanner)

1966 The Anti-Death League (Burgess favorite)

1968 Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure (as Robert Markham)

1968 I Want It Now

1968 A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957-1967

1969 The Green Man

1970 What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Questions

1971 Girl, 20

1972 On Drink (reviewed here)

1973 The Riverside Villas Murders

1974 Ending Up

1974 Rudyard Kipling and his World

1975 The Crime of the Century

1976 The Alteration

1978 Jake's Thing

1979 Collected Poems 1944-78

1980 Russian Hide-and-Seek

1980 Dear Illusion: Collected Short Stories

1983 Every Day Drinking (reviewed here)

1984 How's Your Glass? (reviewed here)

1984 Stanley and the Women

1986 The Old Devils

1988 Difficulties With Girls

1990 The Folks That Live on the Hill

1990 The Amis Collection

1991 Memoirs

1991 Mr. Barrett's Secret and Other Stories

1991 We Are All Guilty

1992 The Russian Girl

1994 You Can't Do Both

1995 The Biographer's Moustache

1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage

2001 The Letters of Kingsley Amis, Edited by Zachary Leader

NOTE
Last updated on February 24, 2018.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Alteration

"Hubert Anvil's voice rose above the sound of the choir and full orchestra, reaching the vertex of the loftiest dome in the Old World and the western doors of the longest nave in Christendom." -- The Alteration by Kingsley Amis In this alternate history novel, there was no Protestant Reformation and the Catholic church is the only (Christian) game in town. Church higher-ups have their eye on musical marvel, ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, as the next great castrato. Ewwww . . . where is this going?

Book Notes: Skeletons on the Zahara

It is a running joke in our house that my husband's favorite books all contain the line, "And then, we had to eat the sled dogs." Yes, he mostly reads history books and historical biographies, but his favorite favorite books involve arctic adventure, shipwrecks, exploration, cannibalism, lost treasure, and the like. So when Hubby recommends a book, I give him a long hard stare before I take him up on it. I even cross examine him: "Is it all about battles? Does anyone freeze to death? Does it involve cannibalism?" When he answered "no" to the above questions, I agreed to read Skeletons on the Zahara, his recent favorite and one he has been recommending to everyone he talks to. It sounded fascinating -- in 1815, shipwrecked New England sailors are captured in the Sahara desert and forced into slavery. An interesting slice of history from the pirate age. Now, halfway through, I am struggling to finish and I have a new question to ask before I read any book Hubby suggests: "Does anyone in the book drink urine?" I am too German to stop reading a book once I start, but this one is testing my resolve. It was bad enough to read about slaughtering a pig while adrift in a lifeboat, eating it raw and drinking its blood. But drinking urine -- human and camel, so far -- is a major theme of this book. Including a Moby Dick-like digression into the science and anecdotal history of shipwreck survivors drinking urine. Hubby owes me, big time.

Favorite Authors

Over in the right-hand column, you will see that I added a new feature -- a list of my favorite authors. The idea is to list all the authors whose works I plan to read in their entirety, eventually. Each name links to a post with either a complete bibliography, a list of novels, or at least a particular series that I am working on. So far, the list includes: Cara Black James Lee Burke Lee Child Penelope Fitzgerald Richard Ford Jim Harrison John Lescroart Martin Cruz Smith Julia Spencer-Fleming William Styron Anne Tyler John Updike Simon Winchester Right now, the list is heavy on mystery writers because if I like a particular book in a series, I want to read the entire series. But there are many authors I have to add, including Anthony Powell, Iris Murdoch, Vladimir Nabokov, P.G. Wodehouse, Philip Roth. It it going to be a long list. Like with my award winners and Must Read lists, if anyone is working on reading the entire bibliography of a particular author on my list, please leave a comment on that author's post with a link to your progress report, and I will add the link to my post.