How Cool!

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon won the National Book Award last night.

I just got this book last week. I feel so lucky. And so cutting edge!

I want to go read it right now.

Review of the Day: Titus Alone

Titus Alone is the final volume of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy about the 77th Earl of Gormenghast. In Titus Groan, the eponymous first volume, Peake created the elaborate world inside castle of Gormenghast and introduced readers to the extended Groan family and their court of retainers and hangers-on. Volume two, Gormenghast, picked up when Titus was a schoolboy, allowing Peake to focus on the antics of a mangy band of professors responsible for Titus’s education.

This last volume is not really an extension of the glorious saga of the first two books, but its own story of Titus’s adventures after he leaves Gormenghast. It is much shorter than the first two, giving Peake less room to develop the intricate descriptions and side stories that make the others so seductive.

The plot moves forward in fits and starts as Titus tries to find his way back to Gormenghast, or at least back to surefooted sanity. There are gaps in the narrative and some characters disappear quite abruptly.  And the story is emotionally ragged as Titus and several other characters are, for no clear reason, quick to anger and violence.  Scenes go instantly from potentially humorous to disastrous, and then the story moves off in a different direction, leaving the reader struggling to catch up.   

Overall, Titus Alone lacks the polish and delightful detail of the first volumes, which makes it a letdown.

OTHER REVIEWS

Bibliofreak

See also, The Voice of the Heart: The Working of Mervyn Peake's Imagination
by G. Peter Winnington

Judging from other reviews I’ve read, I’m not alone in my assessment. But there are some fans who very much enjoyed the third volume and make a case for its literary and entertainment value.

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

NOTES

My review of Titus Groan is here. My review of Gormenghast is here.

The Gormenghast Trilogy shows up, in whole or in part, on Anthony Burgess's list of his favorite 99 novels and on the BBC's Big Read list.

Teaser Tuesday: The Sea, the Sea

"At that moment I heard a terrible sound, a sound which in fact I had been dreading ever since I embarked upon my perilous adventure.  Hartley upstairs had suddenly started screaming and banging the door."

-- The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, a novel about an aging playwright/director/actor who retires to the North Sea coast of England. This teaser makes it sound a little more thrilling than it is. It is a wonderful, fantastic story, but more about people and ideas than scary adventure. Murdoch knows how to pace the story, though. Just when it starts to seem too talky, something startling happens, like in this scene.

I love this book, even though it is taking me a while to read. I enjoy it so much that I don't want it to end.  (Also, I took a break to read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I reviewed here.)

The Sea, the Sea won the Booker prize in 1978. I am reading it for my  Battle of the Prizes, British Version challenge. It will also count as one of my Chunkster Challenge reads.

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

Mailbox Monday

 

Knitting and Sundries is hosting Mailbox Monday in November. Thanks Julie!

My mailbox overfloweth last week. Actually, only the first three came in the mail. But I did a little library book shop hopping when I was out in the suburbs and found several books I'd had an eye out for or at least caught my eye.



Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (a National Book Award finalist)



The Hanging Tree: A Starvation Lake Mystery by Bryan Gruley (from the Internet Review of Books, for review)



Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris (my first order from Book Depository)



Walk There! 50 Treks In and Around Portland and Vancouver by Laura O. Foster (a tiny book with a big picture)



Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine by Jochen Hemmleb (for Hubby, because they may have to eat the sled dogs -- his high water mark for literature)



The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope (I'm going to tackle the series, but first I have to figure out which ones I own)



Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer (it caught my fancy)



The Red Scream by Mary Willis Walker (Edgar winner)



Brazil by John Updike (because I am working on reading all of his books)



The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (on the All-TIME 100 Top Novels list)



Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope (I know nothing about this author, but this is the second of her books that I've bought in the last month. Why? I don't know why they have been appealing to me.)

And because I have been on a big mystery kick, I got a stack of pocket paperback mysteries:



Knockdown by Dick Francis (I am tearing through his books these days)



The James Joyce Murder by Amanda Cross (seemed appropriate after my Finnegans Wake diatribe the other day)



Some Buried Ceasar by Rex Stout (I just started the Nero Wolf series)



The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook (another Edgar winner)



A Venetian Reckoning and Acqua Alta by Donna Leon (because I read the first book in this series, Death at La Fenice years ago and always meant to read the rest)

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Night Gardener

The crime scene was in the low 30s around E, on the edge of Fort Dupont Park, in a neighborhood known as Greenway, in the 6th District section of Southeast D.C.

-- The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos.

Great opening -- if you need to give directions to a cab driver.

It is time to get this book off my Guilt List.  I won this in a giveaway so long ago that I cannot retrace my steps through the blogosphere to find who gave it to me. Thank you, whoever you are!

Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly Opening Sentence event now hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.  I'm a day late this week.