Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

I'm Booking It is hosting in March.

The one book I got last week was one I really wanted, so I am quite excited. It is from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I must be making some progress on that list.



One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming.  This is the latest in her series featuring Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyn. It is one of my very favorite mystery series and I have read all the others, so I am looking forward to this one right away. 

Also last week I got -- but not for myself -- a Kindle.  It is for my stepdaughter's birthday present.  She's in veterinary school and will be spending the summer in Africa, teaching chicken farming or goat husbandry or something along those lines. She asked for the Kindle because she won't be able to haul enough book books there with her.



Any thoughts on this new 3G Kindle compared to the old one?Does she need to get a case for it, like with an iPod?

And any suggestions for the best free eBooks? I'd like to put a couple of books on there for her, but I blew the birthday budget with the gadget itself.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest

"An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War."

-- The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson.

This is the third volume of Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy," after the blockbuster Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (reviewed here) and the better Girl Who Played With Fire.

This one is entertaining enough, but has more filler than the first two.  There is a lot of pedantic explaining of Swedish bureaucracy and, in one passage that verged on parody, the paperwork involved in installing a home security alarm.  I'm 70% of the way through it and it hasn't yet gripped me like the first two.

I am late to post an opening sentence, because I just now switched from the audiobook to the book book when I found that I had messed up loading one of the cds from the library to my iPod. I don't usually post an opening sentence for audiobooks, but now that I have the book in my hands, I can copy the words.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Wise Blood

"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."

-- Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.

I swung by the library the other day and found several new audiobooks, including this classic that I have never read. It shows up on several of my lists: Anthony Burgess's Best 99 Novels, Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women, and The Observer's 100 Greatest Novels of All Times.

Literary Blog Hop: How Funny!

Every other Thursday, The Blue Bookcase hosts a "Literary Blog Hop" for blogs "that primarily feature reviews of literary fiction, classic literature, and general literary discussion." 

I'm a week late for the latest Hop because I missed the post last week while traveling for work. Drat! I hate it when work interferes with my hobbies!

But I am going to jump on this bandwagon even if I am a week late, because they used my question. Each week, in addition to hopping around and visiting some terrific book blogs, participants answer a bookish question. My question was:

Can literature be funny? What is your favorite humorous literary book?

Lucia answered for the BB crew and made a good case for Pride and Prejudice.  Good choice.  P&P is definitely witty, even if it isn't laugh out loud funny.

I definitely think that good literature can be funny.  Even early on, novels could be humorous. Tristram Shandy, for example, is hilarious -- just where was Uncle Toby wounded in the war?

There are plenty of good writers who leaven their literature with humor, such as Charles Dickens, who often had funny people doing and saying funny things.  David Lodge and Jim Harrison are contemporary examples.  They rely less on the verbal sight gags of Dickens, and more on characters saying and thinking funny things. 

Then there are authors who make good literature out of humor.  P. G. Wodehouse was the king of this.  His plots were minimal and repetitive.  He used the same characters over and over -- even if they had different names, they were recycled from other books.  But no one can be so clever and so nimble with words without writing well.  He was so good at what he did that he made it look easy, but it is the most difficult writing there is.

If I had to pick one favorite funny book -- and I do, since I wrote the question -- it would be Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.  He is known for the humor in his books, but Lucky Jim is his best known and most popular.  It is the book that made me realize that literature could make you laugh.  I still get a chuckle out of his description of a hangover feeling like a large raw egg yolk rolling around inside his head.

There's my answer.  Better late than never.  Now I'll go hop around and see what other examples people came up with.  And please leave suggestions in comments.

 

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: Honolulu

"A soldier took us to the Honolulu police station at the corner of Merchant Street and Bethel Avenue, along with most of the other displaced women of Iwilei.  Many were barely clothed, railing about the ransacking of their homes and the theft of all their worldly goods."

-- Honolulu by Alan Brennert. This is for my March Book Club. 

 

I am only about halfway through and enjoying it a lot. It's quite a story. 

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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

I'm Booking It is hosting in March.

I got one book last week:

Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Strycker, published by OSU Press.

I got an ARC of this earlier that I passed on to Kim at Page After Page.  This is the published book.  I am going to give it to my step-daughter who is in veterinarian school and has been known to go on crazy animal-related adventures herself. 

Review of the Day: Maps and Shadows

Maps and Shadows is Krysia Jopek's gripping novel based on the true-life travails of the author's father and his family during World War II. When the Russian army invaded Poland in 1939, it deported the family – and thousands of other Poles – to Siberia, where the father Andrzej and oldest son Hynryk logged the frozen forests while the mother Zofia, daughter Helcia, and toddler Jozef tried to keep the family from starving or freezing to death.

That was just the beginning. Shifting war-time allegiances resulted in release from Siberian slave labor, but separation and years of danger for the family. Forced to disperse, the family found itself swept from Siberia to Iran, Palestine, Italy, Uzbekistan, Africa, and England before finally settling in America.

This is an incredibly story about a seldom-considered aspect of WWII. It is quite short and reads more like non-fiction than a novel, but is still a compelling look at how war affects ordinary people.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

NOTES

The same publisher, Aquila Polonica, has a non-fiction book out called The Ice Road by Stefan Waydenfeld that is a more in-depth account of the Polish deportations to Siberia during WWII.  My husband read that one and was mesmerized by the story.  He thought it was a fantastic book. 

Review of the Day: Bech

Bech: A Book is John Updike's novel-in-short-stories about a fictitious American novelist named Henry Bech. It is the first of a trilogy, followed by Bech is Back and Bech at Bay. This first volume includes seven stories, originally published between 1965 and 1970, compiled in book form in 1970, along with a forward written by Bech, an Appendix of supporting materials, and a bibliography -- all part of the fictional story.

Henry Bech's first novel had brought him fame; his second a certain measure of artistic cache. But his third, five years in the writing, was an overambitious, muddled mess. He fleshed out this meagre bibliography with a collected edition of essays, reviews, and other "miscellany"; an anthology published in England; and a smattering of magazine pieces.

This mixed career made Bech a candidate for "cultural exchanges" sponsored by the State Department, and the first three stories find Bech in Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The next three focus on his personal life as a middle-aged bachelor trying to find his way during the cultural upheaval of the late '60s. The final story, "Bech in Heaven," sees the hero getting exactly the recognition he deserves.

Unlike a couple of recent stories-as-novel books (Olive Kittredge and Let the Great World Spin, for example), in which the connections get pretty thin, Bech actually reads like a novel. The stories flow in chronological order, following Bech through this fallow period in his career and personal life.

Perhaps the funniest part of the book is the ersatz bibliography at the end. Updike's parody is spot-on perfect, tracing Bech's career through early schmaltzy stories in The Saturday Evening Post ("Home for Hannukah," 1944), to articles in Esquire and The New Republic following the popularity of his first two novels; from critical acclaim for his first novel to critical condemnation for his third; followed by a few graduate studies theses, foreign criticism, and, finally, an article by Gloria Steinem in New York Magazine, "What Ever Happened to Henry Bech?"

Updike is in top form throughout. In a break from his usual themes of suburban WASP angst, he channels his inner Saul Bellow to create an angst-ridden, Jewish, New Yorker. And he pulls it off. The book is funny and touching and very masculine. Updike's writing is intelligent, but without gimmick. Bech is a reminder that a good book can edify as much as entertain.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

NOTES

This has renewed my faith in Updike after my somewhat disappointing run in with The Witches . . . and The Widows of Eastwick a few months back. I am working on reading all of John Updike's novels, but I find that I love some of them, and others leave me cold.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Honolulu

"When I was a young child growing up in Korea, it was said that the image of the fading moon at daybreak, reflected in a pond or stream or even a well, resembled the speckled shell of a dragon's egg."

-- Honolulu by Alan Brennert. This is for my March Book Club.  I don't know anything about Korean immigrants to Hawaii, so this should be very interesting.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Maps and Shadows

"Everyone has a story."


Maps and Shadows by Krysia Jopek.  This is a novel based on the WWII experiences of the author's relatives, who were sent to Siberia from Poland during the war, then spent years drifting around the Middle East and Africa before reuniting and moving to America.

Everyone may have a story, but most are not likely to be as fascinating as this one.

Teaser Tuesday: The Indiscretions of Archie

"He looked like a horse with a secret sorrow. He coughed three times, like a horse who, in addition to a secret sorrow, had contracted asthma."

-- The Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse.  I chose this teaser because it is a good example of what makes Wodehouse funny. He comes up with funny descriptions -- a horse with a secret sorrow. No one says that, but it seems perfect when you read it. And then the poor man becomes a horse with a secret sorrow with asthma. It's silly. But it's funny too.

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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

The Library of Clean Reads is hosting in February.

I ended up with a fun selection of books last week:



The Leaves of Fate by George Robert Minkoff, the third volume of his In the Land of Whispers trilogy about Jamestown and America's earliest days.  I understand that this one is good on its own, but being the completist that I am, I'll have to get the first two, The Weight of Smoke and The Dragons of the Storm. 



Murder in the Library of Congress by Margaret Truman, because I am on a vintage mystery jag.



Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes, because vintage espionage is part of the same jag.



The Biographer's Moustache and The Folks That Live on the Hill, both by Kingsley Amis.



Karen Brown's Germany: Exceptional Places to Stay & Itineraries, to help me plan a trip to Bavaria.

Review of the Day: Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall is as rich in texture and detail as the sumptuous tapestries Henry VIII hung in his palaces. Hilary Mantel tells the historical story of Henry's early reign and break from the Catholic Church from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from obscure beginnings to work for Cardinal Thomas Woolsey and then Henry himself.

The focus of the story is the political, religious, and Parliamentary maneuvers endeavored so that Henry could annul his marriage to Katherine, with whom he had a daughter, Mary, but no son. The machinations in themselves are interesting, involving diplomatic missions to France to get the support of the French king, court intrigues, assassinations, and imprisonment of political enemies.

What sets the book apart is Mantel's delving into the ideas behind the machinations. Henry's efforts to wrest power from Rome occurred during the religious upheaval of the Protestant reformation, but Henry himself was no Protestant. He belived Martin Luther and his followers to be heretics and opposed publishing the Bible in English. He didn't want to start a new Church; he just wanted to be head of the Catholic Church in England. But Protestant ideas were in the air, and Mantel weaves them into the story, presenting Cromwell as a Lutheran sympathizer and others within Henry's inner circle as ardent believers.

Another idea Mantel explores is the role of England's Parliament in the monarch's affairs. It was during the reign of Henry and the other Tudors that England's Parliament coalesced into its modern form. Henry used Parliament to ratify and thereby legitimize his decisions. Mantel looks at the political theory behind these events, offering an understanding of where they fit on the political continuum from total control by the Church to constitutional monarchy.

This blending of ideas and action make Wolf Hall fascinating. The addition of myriad details of daily life in the early 16th Century, the fact that so many characters shared first names, and Mantel's technique of overlapping conversation with the speakers' mental observations make the story hard to follow on occasion. But just as it is not necessary to trace a single thread in a tapestry to be dazzled by the overall creation, Wolf Hall is no less a masterpiece for getting a little tangled now and then.

OTHER REVIEWS

Bibliofreak

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

NOTES

Wolf Hall won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was my Booker choice for the 2011 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.  There is still plenty of time to sign up for the challenge, which doesn't end until January 31, 2012.

Review of the Day: 365 Thank Yous

A few years back, John Kralik found himself in a bad spot. His law firm was struggling, his health was poor, his marriage existed only on paper, his girlfriend was going to dump him, his adult children weren’t speaking to him, and he was 40 pounds overweight.

Out for a lonely hike on New Year’s Day, Kralik had a sort of last gasp idea to try to make his life better by being grateful for what he had instead of focusing on everything going wrong. Inspired by a polite note from his girlfriend – and a box of unused office stationery – he decided to write 365 thank you notes as a way to make him concentrate on the good in his life.

365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life is the result of Kralik’s experiment. He hand wrote thank you notes to his children, his clients, his employees, his friends, his doctors, and even his Starbucks barista. His life changed profoundly for the better. Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say that Kralik was in a much better position at the end of his project.

His story is a little bit “power of positive thinking,” but much more analytical and far less saccharin than the premise may suggest. Good things happened to Kralik when he wrote his thank you notes, but it is clear that it was the efforts behind the notes that caused the changes.

For example, Kralik decided to start with what he thought would be an easy note – one thanking his older son for his Christmas present. But when he went to send the note, Kralik realized that he didn’t have his son’s address. They were so estranged that he didn’t even know where his son lived. He had to call for the address, which led to his son inviting him to lunch, where his son finally paid him back $4,000 he had borrowed. It was the effort of reaching out to his son that lead to the beginning of a reconciliation, the elimination of Kralik’s resentment over the money, and, incidentally, the easing of some of Kralik’s financial stress. It was the thank you note project that set the ball in motion.

The book is filled with similarly encouraging anecdotes. Each will hit readers differently, some inspiring more than others. One that caught this lawyer’s attention was about how writing notes to clients who paid their bills on time forced Kralik to assess which of his clients were worth keeping and which needed to be cut loose -- an important business lesson for any professional.

All in all, 365 Thank Yous is a terrific, uplifting book that reminds us all to really focus on the good in life and to express our gratitude in simple, sincere ways. If it also promotes a proliferation of handwritten notes, I’m all for it.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

NOTES

I send a big THANK YOU to my law partner Mark O'Donnell for giving me this book.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Indiscretions of Archie

"It wasn't Archie's fault really."

-- The Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse.

Snow is falling here in Portland.  This is definitely the weekend to tuck in with a funny Wodehouse classic.

Overlook Press is reissuing Wodehouse's books in a spiffy edition all with these bright, graphic covers.  I have about a dozen of them now and plan to collect more.

A Venice Book List: Bella Città; Bellissimi Libri

Venice is at the top of my armchair travel destinations. It is such a magical city. I love to be there. I love to think about it. And I love to read about it.

This is a list of books about Venice, including fiction, non-fiction, and cookbooks. It is not a comprehensive list. These are the books about Venice that are on my TBR shelf now (in blue), on my wish list, or that I have already read (in red).

There is a much lengthier list of Venice books on a great website called Fictional Cities, along with lists of books about Florence and London. 

Any suggestions? Please leave comments.

The general list is in alphabetical order, by title. Following that is a list of mysteries by Donna Leon featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, all set in Venice. The lengthy series is listed in publication order, starting with the first book in the series.

GENERAL LIST

Alibi by Joseph Kanon (novel)

The Aspern Papers and Other Stories by Henry James (short stories)

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt (non-fiction)

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (novel)

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (novel)

Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier (short stories)

A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich (non-fiction)

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain (non-fiction) (reviewed here);

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (novel)

Locations by Jan Morris (non-fiction) (reviewed here)

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (play)

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro (short stories)

Serenissima by Erica Jong (novel) (reviewed here)

The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin (non-fiction; abridged)

Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (novel)

Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth (novel)

Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell (novel)

Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark (novel)

A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi (non-fiction)

A Traveller's Companion to Venice, edited by John Julius Norwich (non-fiction)

Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes (novel)

Venetian Holiday by David Campbell (novel)

Veneto: Authentic Recipes from Venice and the Italian Northeast by Julia della Croce (cookbook)

Venice Observed by Mary McCarthy (non-fiction)

The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (novel)

The World of Venice: Revised Edition by Jan Morris (non-fiction)

DONNA LEON'S

COMMISSARIO GUIDO BRUNETTI MYSTERIES

Death at La Fenice

Death in a Strange Country

Dressed for Death

Death and Judgment

Acqua Alta

Quietly in Their Sleep

A Noble Radiance

Fatal Remedies

Friends in High Places

A Sea of Troubles

Willful Behavior

Uniform Justice

Doctored Evidence

Blood from a Stone

Through a Glass, Darkly

Suffer the Little Children

The Girl of His Dreams

About Face

A Question of Belief

Drawing Conclusions

NOTE: Last updated December 28, 2012.

Teaser Tuesday Two-fer

"He thought intelligence a function of the individual and that groups of persons were intelligent in inverse proportion to their size.  Nations had the brain of an amoeba whereas a committee approached the condition of a trainable moron."

-- Bech: A Book by John Updike.

This is a novel-in-short-stories about a fictitious American novelist named Henry Bech. It is the first of a trilogy, followed by Bech is Back and Bech at Bay. 

This has renewed my faith in Updike after my somewhat disappointing run in with The Witches . . . and The Widows of Eastwick a few months back. 

"In most places and at most times, appreciation of savor in food has usually gone cheek by jowl with appreciation of beauty in women. The pleasures of the table have a natural affinity with the pleasures of the bed."

-- The Food of France by Waverley Root.  Well said, Waverly. 

While not given much to anecdote, Root does occasionally offer this kind of amusing generalization in his comprehensive account of the regional foods of France.

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.

Happy Birthday, George Washington!

The story of Washington chopping down the cherry tree loomed large in my childhood, but I never think of it as an adult. It took me a minute to think why a hatchet symbolizes George Washington.

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

The Library of Clean Reads is hosting in February.

I got two books last week:



Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption by William Cope Moyers.  The author is the son of Bill Moyers and a former journalist himself.  He struggled with drugs and alcohol for years, before getting himself cleaned up.  He now is the vice president for external affairs at Hazelden Foundation, which provides addiction treatment and recovery services across the country.

I saw Moyer speak here in Portland last week.  He is an ardent speaker who told his story with animation and humor. Hopefully the book will be just as good.



Maps and Shadows by Krysia Jopek.  This is a novel based on the WWII experiences of the author's relatives, who were sent to Siberia from Poland during the war, then spent years drifting around the Middle East and Africa before reuniting and moving to America.  It looks terrific and I am going to turn to it soon.

Vicarious Opening Sentence: Sunken Klondike Gold

"If you travel to southeastern Alaska by water, your route will likely include Stephens Passage, a part of the Inside Passage between Skagway and Juneau."

Sunken Klondike Gold: How a Lost Fortune Inspired an Ambitious Effort to Raise the S.S. Islander by Leonard H. Delano.

It's actually my husband reading this book, which is why this is a "vicarious" opening sentence.  He nabbed it off my stack of Guilt List books the day it arrived.  It is just his kind of book -- a real life adventure story about sunken treasure, chock-o-block with photos of the salvage operation and historical pictures of the Klondike Gold Rush and people involved in the ship's sinking.

From what I observe, he loves this book. For one thing, he keeps exclaiming while he reads, "I love this book."  Other clues are: "This is a terrific book!" "These pictures are amazing!" And, "What a story!"

Review of the Day: 99 Novels

99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 by Anthony Burgess.

It was the arrival of 1984 (the year, not the book) that inspired Burgess to compile a list of what he considered to be the 99 best novels published since 1939. He explains his inspiration in the introduction:

For thirty-five years a mere novel, an artifact meant primarily for diversion, has been scaring the pants off us all. Evidently the novel is a powerful literary form which is capable of reaching out into the real world and modifying it. It is a form which even the non-literary had better take seriously.

Why he chose to include only books published since 1939 is a little less clear. Burgess says only that "it is more poetic to begin with the beginning of a world war and to end with the non-fulfillment of a nightmare." His book choices, like his timeframe, are his alone. He chose books that brought him reading pleasure, but also "concentrated mainly on works which have brought something new – in technique or view of the world – to the form."

Each book, discussed in chronological order, gets only about a page, sometimes two, of Burgess's keen analysis. He briefly describes each book and a little about its circumstances, such as its historical context, how it fits in with the author's other work, or how it was received. He explains why he thinks it is significant and why he enjoyed it. Then he usually wraps up with a pithy little conclusion, such as, "The vitality of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning compensates for its faults of form," or "Written in the middle of the swinging sixties, it has a very clear vision of Western moral decay."

His mini-reviews are generally compelling. Some make you want to hole up with a particular book immediately; others engender respect for the choice, but little actual excitement. For instance, after reading 99 Novels, I am eager to crack the spine on The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark ("Brilliant, brittle, the production of a fine brain and superior craft"), but not looking forward to Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, a post-apocalyptic story written entirely in a made-up dialect ("This novel could not expect to be popular . . . [b]ut it seems to me to be a permanent contribution to literature").

It becomes apparent that Burgess was drawn to novels exploring the concept of free will. In particular, several of the books he chose deal with the exercise of free will in the face of religious tradition or political tyranny and suicide as an expression of free will. In discussing these concepts, Burgess doesn't avoid spoilers, probably because his analysis requires looking at the whole story. For those who enjoy the process as much as they payoff, this won't matter, but be warned.

The best part of 99 Novels is the introduction, in which Burgess expounds on the art of fiction, what he thinks makes a good novel, and the joys of reading. Filled with such gems as "BOOK can be taken as an acronym for Box of Organized Knowledge," and including a fervent apologia for popular fiction, this essay should be required reading for any bibliophile.

NOTES

The list of 99 novels Burgess chose can be found here.  I've read several books because they were on this list and greatly enjoyed them.

If anyone else is reading the books on this list, please leave a comment on the list page with links to any related posts and I will list them there.

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.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Because You Might Not Remember

You, for instance,
coming upon these words
not exactly by accident
or design.

-- from "Coincidence," the first poem in Because You Might Not Remember by Don Colburn.

I don't consider myself much of a poetry reader, but I do try now and again to fix that.  My friend Kirsten Rian, a talented poet in her own right as well as a teacher (and artist, and singer, and all-around Renaissance woman), helps by emailing a poem every Monday.

Now I have taken the plunge into this beautiful little book -- a "chapbook" although I don't know where the term comes from -- of poems by Don Colburn.  Last evening, over martinis, Hubby and I dabbled with reading a few out loud to each other (always good to spice things up now and again).

Our favorite was this one because it reminded us of neighborhood conversations we've had over the years:

EACH YEAR

Each year we gossip about the trees,
how the dull oaks browned before they burned
or maples and sycamores let go too soon,
their rioting a shade less vulgar this time,
the stolid dogwood late to catch fire.
When the curled wan papery beech leaves cling,
maybe deep into winter, we wonder what has ended
all that flourishing, what might last.
We remember drought, rain, frost,
the strickening wind --
whether it came or didn't come.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Bech: A Book

"Dear John,
Well, if you must commit the artistic indecency of writing about a writer, better I suppose about me that about you."

-- Bech: A Book by John Updike.

This is from the fictitious forward by Henry Bech, hero of Updike's novel-in-short-stories.  The stories, published between 1965 and 1970, tell of the exploits of an American novelist.  This is the first of a trilogy, followed by Bech is Back and Bech at Bay.

So far, this isn't like anything else I've read by Updike.  Bech seems more like a Saul Bellow hero.  I am enjoying the book tremendously.

I'm Famous!

I've been blurbed!

My review of The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt by Rulka Langer is quoted on the back of the reprinted edition.



This was one of my favorite books of 2010.  Subtitled "War Through a Woman's Eyes," it is a lively, personal memoir about the WWII German invasion of Warsaw.   

My full review is here. There is a hefty quote from my review on the back of the new edition, along with a glowing compliment from Alan Furst, author of Spies of the Balkans and other really good historical spy novels.

From my review:

An incredible book . . . thoroughly absorbing and quick to read . . . deserves a wide audience . . . would make an excellent book club choice, especially for readers who enjoyed  Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, The Diary of Anne Frank, or Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.

I feel like the Book Blogger Queen for a Day!

Chunkster Reading Challenge

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

This one runs through January 31, 2011, just like my Battle of the Prizes challenges, the American Version and British Version.  Maybe I can coordinate if I find some fat prize winners.

Since I didn't reach my chunkster goal in 2010, I am scaling down a bit in 2011 and signing up for the "Chubby Chunkster" level this year.  That means reading four books over 450 pages long.

One idea was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.  I planned on that one being my "big book" for 2011, but now it looks like that won't happen, so maybe 2012?

My Reviews

The Food of France by Waverley Root (reviewed here)
Cathedral by Nelson DeMille (reviewed here)

NOTE: Last updated on December 3, 2011.

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.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

The Library of Clean Reads is hosting in February.

Last week was my birthday, so I got a couple of books for presents. I also got a couple for myself and a new release from Hawthorne Books.

The Chronology of Water: A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (from Hawthorne)



Of German Ways by Lavern Rippley (one of my birthday presents from a friend who knew I would love it)



Weekends for Two in the Pacific Northwest: 50 Romantic Getaways by Bill Gleeson (from my mom for my birthday)



The Crime of the Century and Difficulties With Girls, both by Kingsley Amis (I got these for myself after my mom introduced me to ThriftBooks.com, my new favorite book site).