Piles of Books

It's been ages since anyone besides Karen has posted. Thanks for keeping it up, m'dear!
Bookwise, it's been a somewhat frustrating summer. I feel like I've read less than normal, which is probably true, and I have a pile that I don't think I can finish (a never before seen phenomenon). I'm also reading too many books at once, which makes completing anything difficult. Some highlights, I guess, of my recent reads I'll provide. Sorry for the Yodarific syntax. I'm trying to remember, Karen, what questions you've posed. But I can't, so I guess I'll just ramble about my books.
My most exciting literary find this summer has been Allegra Goodman. Her first novel, "Kaaterskill Falls", took my breath away. Her most recent is called "Intuition" and it's very, very different from KF, but is also magnificent. Goodman has a way of engrossing the reader that I've rarely seen before. The worlds she creates are thoroughly captivating and realistic, and few authors are able to capture me in those worlds as quickly as she does. Her characters, similarly, are real, and she writes of serious issues without judgment. I'm excited to read her other novels.
"The History of Love," for the new and exciting Strangers with Candy book club, was fun. It's the kind of book that I expected a lot from, and received a lot, but not as much as I was hoping. When I finish a book, I expect to cry or feel some sort of heavy emotion (Goodman's make me feel like I've been hit by a truck, for example). I was satisfied with HoL, but not captured. I really enjoyed the book, and there are a lot of layers worth exploring, and I loved her writing, but I needed more of an emotional hook. I needed to care a bit more about the characters.
I read, quickly, "Water for Elephants," which is a big deal book-club type book right now. "Spangle" is an epic, slightly trashy, circus novel from the 1980s, and is one of my favorite books ever. This paled in comparison, but was enjoyable enough.
My current pile includes "Remains of the Day", which has gotten a lot of press, was made into a movie, and comes highly recommended. It's about a butler, and I like it, but I'm having trouble caring. It's very quiet, possibly too quiet. I'm also reading "March", about the father in "Little Women", and some book about the rise of anti-Semitism in medieval Europe (approximately). It's a loan from my crush du jour, and so I'm obligated to read it. And finally there's "The Confessions of Max Tivoli" by a local author. I was excited to read this, especially because I liked his first novel and this was supposed to be even better. Thus far I'm not entranced. Why have I lost my momentum? Aagh. Also on the docket for upcoming days are "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" which I want to read for the title alone; the Harry Potter series, because I just got the paperback of HP6; and the entire oeuvre of Barbara Kingsolver. I also have a huge stack of other books from the library and from my $100 graduation gift certificate to Kepler's. I need to move faster on these books if I'm going to make a dent in my pile.
I'm always daunted by my book list, but never before have I been daunted by my book pile. Partly I think this may be because I work with people who read more than I do, and because I hang out with people (ie, Seth), who read better than I do. I'm not used to feeling insecure about my reading abilities. Hopefully the momentum that may have been jumpstarted with "Intuition" and "Water for Elephants" will follow through to these other books and I can move on with my life.
I did like "Princess Academy", Karen. The twist was a bit predictable, or maybe unnecessary, but it was a sweet book. I'm all about judging books by their covers and making snap purchases. There's a legitimate question for you all: they say never to judge a book by its cover. How then, are we supposed to judge them? And what's wrong with judging by the cover? The design of the book tells us a lot about its intended audience, and often about the book's story. I, for one, sometimes judge books by their titles and the feel of the cover (matte versus glossy, usually). Sometimes I'll judge based on the scent of the book's pages. These things are part of the reading experience, and so why shouldn't they be part of the selection process?

That's all I've got tonight. Sleep beckons. Hope you all are well! Happy reading!

Into the Light

Yay! I'm very excited to be back on my computer. We had a power blackout that lasted about 24 hours on my street because a transformer blew out in my neighbor's yard. I was scared that I was missing somthing crucial, but I checked my email and learned that I hadn't missed anything at all.

I finished The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I haven't read anything else by her, but I could see what Alyssa meant when she wrote that it was obviously an early work (heavily paraphrasing). It's a simple story, simply told. I started thinking with a Southern accent, which is always a good sign (I like any excuse to think with a Southern accent). I liked her style for the most part, except for her habit of ending a section by tacking on a metaphor about a bird in a tree or whatever. I'm excited to see how she grows in The Poisonwood Bible.

I've also started reading The Corrections. Possibly a bad idea after Kingsolver. Their writing styles are very different, and I keep thinking that Franzen is making everything way too convoluted. It's not pretty the way De Bernieres is pretty, but more artsy and modern stream-of-consciousy. I don't know if I'm meshing with it right now. So to take a break from it, I'm rereading The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, a book from my childhood that I love. I'm also reading it to counteract the effect of reading Princess Academy, a book I bought on a whim for Alyssa. Never judge a book by its pretty pastel cover. Or its book flap. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't really accomplish what it wanted to do. The characters were wooden, the plot contrived, and the ending...can we say deux ex machina (pronounce it properly for me, Laura, because I can't manage it)? Ok, maybe not quite. But it was lame-o. I apologize, Alyssa. I like to be spontaneous and choose books at random, but sometimes it just doesn't work out.

I'm closing my eyes

I saw that you have a draft post going, Bronwen, but I stopped myself from looking.

I scrapped the Hemingway because I forgot where I put the book and took up with Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee instead.

There are those books that make you say "Wow" when you read them, even though you aren't quite sure you could say why. This was one of them. It was a painful book to read, because it's full of reality. Nothing is unambiguous. You feel as though the story could be a true story, because the characters are full of complexity and act as real people do, inexplicably. When I finished the book, there were no definite conclusions but somehow that felt right, because the way the book is written, the reader experiences things as the protagonist (meh on the term...he's a bit of an anti-hero) does, and you know that he just goes on living. But at the same time I felt that maybe I didn't really understand anything at all, and the answers to my questions were in the text, and I was just too ignorant to recognize them.

Which brings me to the question of "getting" a book. After reading the conclusion, most of the time I have this moment when I'm holding my breath, remembering everything I've read and wondering whether I really "got" the book. Then, whether or not I liked it. The former tends to have a heavy impact on the outcome of the latter. If I don't feel like I really understand a book, I can't bring myself to say that I liked it. Not that it isn't a "good" book, in that it is well-written and thought-provoking. But I wouldn't put it on my favorites list, or want to read it again and again. Do any of you distinguish between a good book and a book you liked? Is it necessary to "get" a book for it to be good or likeable?

Finally

I finally finished Corelli's Mandolin. I threw myself a little party in my room and had a bit of a victory dance.

Why did it take me so long? Several rather bad reasons: a) it was longer than 200 pg (aka the length of your typical children's book/YA) and b) I had issues with motivation because I committed the cardinal sin of reading and skipped ahead to skim the ending.

Despite all that, I stuck with it, because the characters drew me in. There's this catlike animal called Psipsina that was just so CUTE I squealed every time she made an appearance. Captain Corelli was adorable, and I really resent the fact that they put Nicholas Cage on the cover of my book because gaaaah gross miscast. The same goes for Penelope Cruz, for whom I harbor an inexplicable resentment (the Tom Cruise connection?). Pelagia, the character Penelope plays, is terribly entertaining. Despite the whole epic nature of the story, the characters are very real because De Bernieres animates them with a sparkling, playful sense of humor amid the tragedy. There is also a deep nostalgia, in the Odysseus sense of longing for home as well as in the longing for history. I guess the author took the whole Greek thing to heart, and it shows in his writing. There's one passage that communicates that pretty well that I particularly enjoyed when I read it, because it somehow articulated the overwhelming feeling of the sublime that you get when you finish a hike to the top of a mountain (after the wheezing stops):

"The second thing that struck me, curiously enough, was the incredible size and antiquity of the olive trees...they made me feel strangely ephemeral, as though they had seen people like us a thousand times, and had watched us depart. They had a quality of patient omniscience...here it was possible to place one's hand on that antique bark, look up at the fragments of sky that glittered through the canopy, and feel dwarfed by the sensation that others might have done this very thing under this very tree a millennium before."

Fun fun. I'm reading Hemingway now, because he's terse, and I could probably learn something from him.

I feel like an old lady

I realize that I always say I'll respond to your compelling posts, and then never do. This time is no different. One point I want to raise and a book list, and then I need to sleep (England/Portugal had me up far too early this morning). I was hanging out in the young adult section at work today, shelving bright pink books, when I realized how many of them are about explicit sexual topics. Example: The Lipstick Party, I think it's called. A high school sophomore invites a bunch of people over to her house for a "lipstick party", hence the title. There have to be six girls and six guys, one for each color of the rainbow. Each girl puts on lipstick and gives each guy oral sex, so the guys all end up with rainbow-hued genitals. The point, I'm not sure. Turns out, though, that someone has gonnorhea, and by the end of the book, something like 2/3rds of the sophomore class at this high school have the disease. I clearly just gave away the plot, so sorry if any of you were going to read this. The point, from the author's and publisher's perspective, is to teach kids to engage in safe sexual practices. Plenty of the other books, though, don't seem to have any redeeming social qualities: The Crush Diary, The Gossip Girls, The Clique Sisters (or something), and so on. The Lipstick Party is more explicit, I think, than any of these other books, but they all kind of revolve around ditzy girls being manipulative and using sex as a social method. Two questions, I think, emerged for me: 1. Were these around when I was a kid? I certainly never read them. I did skip a whole lot of YA, though, so it's possible I just missed them. And my parents never censored my reading (I've thus read a lot of really strange and inappropriate stuff), but I can't imagine they would have been okay with their twelve-year-old daughter reading about oral sex parties. Which leads to 2. Do kids read these things and process the messages? Do their parents care? I feel like a prude, but I'm not sure twelve-year-olds need to know about the dangers of oral sex? Maybe I'm naive or sheltered, but is this really an issue for most middle schoolers? Just some thoughts. And I realize I misspelled gonorrhea. Maybe that time it was correct. Anyway, some food for thought.

Now for the list:
This week was Phantom Tollbooth, Crossing California, and The Moffats, I believe I said. I surprised myself by finishing all three. Partly because I didn't leave the couch for three hours this morning. Phantom Tollbooth, as always, was magnificent. Crossing California was enjoyable, but ultimately too long and lacking any true point. And The Moffats was remarkably dated (yeah 1941), but still cute. Not as good as I'd remembered, but a good hour-long read.
I've started The Princess Academy, and I like it so far. I'm also planning to read something from my pile of library books (Skeletons on the Zahara, about Africa, maybe, or The Lake of Dead Languages which I got for the title), and something from my ever-increasing pile of books that I've bought at Kepler's (possibly Alice Munro's Runaway or Orhan Pamuck's Snow). And then there's my nine months worth of Believer Magazines (Dave Eggers' wife's magazine about books. I love it.). Bronwen, I know I just emailed you, but I have the Philip Pullman books for you, if you want to borrow them.

Okay, c'est tout. One of these days I'll actually respond, instead of just posing new questions.

happy reading!