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.

Literary Blog Hop: Don't be Difficult!

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

Each week, in addition to hopping around and visiting some terrific book blogs, participants answer a bookish question.  This week's question comes from Debbie Nance at Readerbuzz:

What is the most difficult literary work you've ever read? What made it so difficult? 

Ingrid answered the question for the Blue Bookcase crew this week. Her essay on Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus is excellent. I read Goethe's Faust in college, but never Mann's retake. Ingrid makes a good case for doing so.

For me, that question is a lead pipe cinch to answer, because I've read Finnegans Wake. If anyone who has read it does not pick it as the most difficult book, he is lying.

Before I started FW, I knew nothing about how it was written and had no idea that it was so crazy. I knew that it is Joyce’s magnum opus, that it took him 17 years or so to write, and that he had staff helping him research.

I also knew from reading about FW that it all takes place in one night, but is a history of all time, and that the main dream character feels guilt about something he did in a park with two "temptresses" and for vaguely incestuous feelings he has towards his daughter. I "knew" these ideas only in the sense that I read about their existence. But by 100 pages or so into the book itself, I still had no actual comprehension of them. Or anything, for that matter. The closest I could get would be a vague suggestion of some of these themes from sentences like this:

And so they went on, the fourbottle men, the analists, unguam and nunguam and lunguam again, their anschluss about her whosebefore and his whereafters and how she was lost away away in the fern and how he was founded deap on deep in anear, and the rustlings and the twitterings and the raspings and the snappings and the sighings and the paintings and the ukukuings and the (hist!) the springapartings and the (hast!) the bybyscuttlings and all the scandalmunkers and the pure craigs that used to be (up) that time living and lying and rating and riding round Nunsbelly Square.

Yep. That's what the entire book is like. All 620 pages. Made up words, foreign words, amalgamated words – crazy stuff. I never understood an entire paragraph; only occasionally comprehended an entire sentence, and definitely only short ones; and was delighted at every word I caught. I read it for the experience of reading it, but gave up trying to understand it after the first page. Yes, I tried reading it out loud, and that helped – but only to a point. I decided to just let it flow over me and enjoy the sounds like poetry or music.

And I was so pleased with myself for finishing it. I was free to "shun the Punman" after months of effort. I was also a little concerned, because I seemed to understand it better after about page 500. I hoped this meant it just hits an easier patch as it gets to the end. I hoped it did not mean that I had learned enough FW language to comprehend more, because then I would have been tempted to start over at the beginning!

Of course, that is what Joyce intended. He wanted to publish FW in a spiral binding without covers, so there would be no official beginning or end and people would read it non-stop. As it is, it starts in the middle of a sentence. The final sentence in the book is the beginning of the sentence that starts the book.

Finnegans Wake was definitely the most difficult book I have ever read. It is not that I hated it. It was incredibly frustrating, but it has poetic beauty. I do not think anyone should read it unless they are compulsive about finishing their book lists (like me), or are really into James Joyce. But I like the idea that there is a structure to it (even if I couldn't follow the structure). For me, it was like that famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. I do not like it. I think it is weird. It takes too long to look at and there are so many things in it that I do not understand. But, I admire the mind and talent that created it.


That said, I was thrilled to be done with FW! When I finished it, I keep thinking of that joke about the 85-year-old, widowed rabbi who goes into the confessional at St. Mary's and says to the priest, "Father, I just had sexual relations with a 24-year-old aerobics instructor." The priest says, "But Rabbi, why are you confessing? You aren't Catholic." The rabbi says, "Confessing? Are you kidding? I'm telling EVERYBODY." That was me – I told EVERYBODY.

And now you can "suck it yourself, Sugarstick"!

Happy Veterans' Day! Happy Anniversary!

Happy Veterans' Day! Especially to all my family and friends who serve or served in the military.

This is also our 10th wedding anniversary. We got married on November 11, 2000. Our marriage "marches with the years" so we always know which anniversary it is.

The traditional 10th anniversary gift is aluminum. Aluminum?

Chunkster Challenge: Updated

I kicked myself for not signing up for this last year because I read enough books to meet the requirements. So I signed up this year for the "Mor-book-ly Obese" level, which means reading six 450+-page books (or three 750+-pagers).

I got off to a slow start, but I am catching up. I've now finished three books, am halfway through a fourth, and will be reading a fifth for book club in January. So I will only need to find one more and read it by January 31, 2011 to complete the challenge.

REVIEWS

Three Loves by A. J. Cronin (reviewed here)

Echoes by Maeve Binchy (reviewed here)


The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (reviewed here) 

IN THE RUNNING

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (which I am halfway through and am reading for my Battle of the Prizes: British Version challenge)

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (which my book club is reading for January)

Them by Joyce Carol Oates (which I am reading for my Battle of the Prizes: American Version challenge)

NOTES

Last updated November 10, 2010.

Review of the Day: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

MODERATE SPOILER ALERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OTHER REVIEWS

The Blue Bookcase
The Scarlet Letter
Man of la Book
Bibliophiliac

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

NOTES

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

Teaser Tuesday: The I Hate to Cook Book

Another good gambit, when a Potluck is under discussion, is to move in fast with the dessert. You say, "Girls, I'll bring my wonderful Hootenholler Whiskey Cake!"

-- The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken (50th Anniversary Edition).

She goes on  to give a recipe for some kind of easy, dense pound cake that you wrap in aluminum foil and keep in the fridge like a fruitcake for six months, adding extra whiskey occasionally.

Count me in!


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!

Only one book came into my house last week, thanks to a bookish chain letter I did a couple of months ago. This is now the third book I got from the chain letter. Not the 36 it was supposed to generate, but I am amazed that it worked at all. I've been a sucker for chain letters all my life, but this is the first time I ever got any response.



California's Over by Louis B. Jones.

It is something about a crazy family in the Bay Area in the 1970s. It looks pretty good, and I have an odd personal book rule of reading books with pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge on the cover because they remind me of when I lived in San Francisco.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The I Hate to Cook Book

"When my mother wrote The I Hate to Cook Book in 1960, hers was a world with too few hours, not enough days, and never enough time."

-- From Jo Bracken's Forward to the 50th Anniversary Edition of The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken.

"Some women, it is said, like to cook."

-- From Peg Bracken's Forward to the original 1960 I Hate to Cook Book, reprinted in the anniversary edition.

I am reading this from cover to cover, like a real book. The recipes are great, in that church supper kind of way that 1960s cookbooks tend to have -- lots of condensed cream of mushroom soup (known as "the casserole maker" at my house) and things served on rice. But the best parts are Bracken's funny asides and tips, like this one for making "Indonesian Curry":

. . . Simmer it all from half and hour to an hour, while the rice cooks.

This gives you a nice breather. You may now put your feet up and have a highball, or else you may dirty up a lot of little dishes with

chopped peanuts
chopped green onions
chopped almonds
toasted coconut . . . .

to serve as side boys with your curry. Take your choice. 

Bracken wrote humorous newspaper and magazine pieces, and several books, about cooking and housekeeping. She clearly had a huge influence on the housewives of my mother's generation, since my friends and I grew up with meals I now recognize from The I Hate to Cook Book: pot roast made with dried onion soup mix, a "Mexican" casserole made with taco chips, Turkey Tettrazini, etc.

What seems funny now is that Bracken wrote for an audience of housewives looking for an excuse to cook quick, easy meals -- they hated to cook.  Today, women (and men) don't need an excuse for wanting a homecooked meal that doesn't take hours to prepare.  This is still the book for them.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review of the Day: Let the Great World Spin

 

 

Let the Great World Spin is a collection of short stories that form a novel centered around Philippe Petit’s 1974 high wire act between the Twin Towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Center. Petit’s remarkable performance was real and paints a bittersweet, nostalgic backdrop for the fictional stories of a dozen or so seemingly disparate characters who all, it turns out, are connected.

Colum McCann won the 2009 National Book Award for this collection, the main storyline of which concerns an Irish monk on his own sacred mission to help a group of streetwalkers in Queens. A police roundup triggers a series of events that leads to tragedy but ends, ultimately, on a happier note. The monk, the prostitutes, his brother, his lover, a pair of campy would-be artists, a group of mothers mourning their sons dead in Vietnam, a criminal court judge, nascent computer hackers, and assorted others people the cast of this 1970s New York City variety show.

The collection is a little uneven: some of the various narrators’ voices are more authentic than others, several of the hand-offs seem overly choreographed, and the significance of Petit’s tightrope act as a unifying theme is vague. But overall, Let the Great World Spin is an exuberant and satisfying book.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

NOTES

This was my National pick for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version challenge.  I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout -- another collection of short-stories-as-novel -- for my Pulitzer prize pick. The challenge runs through the end of January 2011, so there is still time to sign up.

Hopping

The Blue Bookcase has started a "Literary Blog Hop" for blogs "that primarily feature reviews of literary fiction, classic literature, and general literary discussion." Today is the very first LBH.

I'm in!

The first of the weekly "prompts" is: Please highlight one of your favorite books and why you would consider it "literary."

That's the kind of subject that makes my head spin.  The answer that comes immediately to mind is "Such and such book is 'literary' because I read it and I only read 'literary' books."  But that tautology begs the question.

The gals at The Blue Bookcase offer some guidance:

Literature has many definitions, but for our purposes your blog qualifies as "literary" if it focuses primarily on texts with aesthetic merit. In other words, texts that show quality not only in narrative but also in the effect of their language and structure. If your blog focuses primarily on YA, fantasy, romance, paranormal romance, or chick lit, you may prefer to join the blog hop at Crazy-for-Books that is open to book blogs of all genres. (Note: if your blog does not fit the above qualifications it may be removed from the Linky list. . . .)

My take away, for purposes of this hop at least, is that "literary" means well-written and non-genre. It looks like some mysteries or espionage could sneak in, but no teen-age vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, shoe shoppers, or bodice rippers. But I had better get it right or I could be booted from the list.

The problem is that this brings me back to my original answer. I don't think I need to make a case that the prize winners and "must read" books from my lists (see right-side column) are "literary."   So I will fall back on my usual pitch for why Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is my favorite novel ever.

Hands down, my favorite "book" on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list was A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.  Although commonly listed as one work, Dance is actually 12 novels, originally published separately but commonly published in four volumes of three novels each, called "The 1st Movement," "The 2nd Movement," etc.

Dance follows a group of characters in England from 1914 through WWII and up to 1971. The plots of the individual novels are less important than the entwining of these characters as they move in and out of each others lives over the years.

It definitely meets TBB's criteria of aesthetic merit, with beautiful language and a cohesive structure in addition to an absorbing story.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

"It happened every year, was almost a ritual."

-- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

I would have gone with a semicolon myself, but who am I to flyspeck a mega-bestseller?

My book club is reading this and I am torn about what I think of it. It is not as graphic as I had feared, but still, my book club doesn't usually sit around discussing sadistic serial killers.


Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly Opening Sentence event now hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. 

Review of the Day: Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge is Elizabeth Strout’s collection of short-stories-as-novel that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The stories are set in the small town of Crosby, Maine, and crabby Olive Kitteridge makes an appearance – even if brief – in each of them.

The stories are well executed, creative, and peopled with varied but realistic characters. Individually, many of them are emotionally striking. Strout can really get to the nub of a story.

The problem is that as a collection, the stories are exhausting. Crosby may not be the bloodbath that Cabot Cove is, but there are plenty of suicides, grisly murders, violent and petty crimes, adultery, abuse, sickness, brutal deaths, and dysfunction to dampen any reader’s spirits. None of the characters are happy and there is precious little humor to leaven the depressing tales.

OTHER REVIEWS

Caroline Bookbinder (Carin liked it much more than I did and named it her 2009 Book of the Year)

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

NOTES

This was my Pulitzer pick for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version challenge.  I read Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann -- another collection of short-stories-as-novel -- for my National Award pick. The challenge runs through the end of January 2011, so there is still time to sign up.

I am working my way through all the Pulitzer winners.  For others doing the same, please visit my main Pulitzer Prize post and leave a comment with a link to your related posts.

Opening Sentence of the Day: One Good Turn

"He was lost."

-- One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson.

Not a riveting opening sentence. But within a few paragraphs, we are right in the thick of things, with a random act of road rage that sets off the second Jackson Brodie mystery.

Kate Atkinson is brilliant.  All the cliches apply to her -- a gimlet eye, tart observations, keen wit, etc., etc.  She could write about a trip to the hardware store and it would be an exemplar of subtle, spot-on observations about human nature, contemporary culture, and family relationships.

My problem with Atkinson is that I don't want to "use up" her books, so I put off reading them. I have to remind myself that they aren't going anywhere. I can always read them again.

Teaser Tuesday: The Sea, the Sea

"The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains.  Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied."

-- 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 book has swept me away. It is long (502 pages in my edition) and dense, but I am content to flow along with the story.

This 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!

Only one book came into my house last week, but it looks great. I have been in a mystery mood lately, maybe because of Halloween. I got this when I was running made up errands last weekend -- I needed to pick up a gravy strainer at Kitchen Kaboodle and dropped in at Broadway Books on my way.

The Circle by Peter Lovesey.

Happy Halloween!

Review of the Day: Origin

Origin is an emotional, atmospheric mystery set in the icy winter of Syracuse, New York. Crime lab technician Lena Dawson has an intuition for danger – and a keen sense of smell – that take her out of the fingerprint lab and to the heart of a series of mysterious baby deaths.

Lena’s talents, which she attributes to her incredibly unusual infant upbringing, brought her public acclaim in a prior case, but also earned the enmity and mistrust of several co-workers. She must battle office resistance as well as baffling circumstances to find the connection among the dead babies and solve what she knows are murders. But to do so, she must also find, and face, the answers about her own past.

This is Diana Abu-Jaber’s fourth book, but her first mystery, and she combines the best of literary fiction and genre writing. The plotting and pace of the mystery are very good, but Abu-Jaber does not stint on developing deeper, underlying ideas about personal identity, isolation, and dependency.

This is an all-around great book for any reader looking for a mystery with meat on the bones.

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

Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of two earlier novels, Arabian Jazz and Crescent, and a memoir called The Language of Baklava. She was born in Syracuse, New York, and now lives in Portland, where she teaches at Portland State University.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Sea, the Sea

"The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine."

-- 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 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.




Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly Opening Sentence event now hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.