Stupid "system"

I just found a scrap of paper in my bag with three book titles on it, from when I had found a bunch of books I had read an indefinitely long time ago, realized I had to just get them out of my room, and then forgot to return them until 5:05 p.m. when I had to be somewhere and just dumped them. So I don't know when I read them or exactly when I even returned them, but at some point I enjoyed the smooth literary stylings of Marina Fiorato (Daughter of Siena), Amanda Cross (In the Last Analysis), and Clare Clark (Beautiful Lies). Except not that smooth.

Daughter of Siena was mildly entertaining; set in 18th century Siena, it's a story of love and politics centered on an especially dramatic Palio. It was interesting reading about the Palio, but I have no idea how well the author did her homework, so it just made me want to go get a non-fiction book and learn more about Siena. Although I guess that's good. I wouldn't add this one to my list of historical fiction books that teach you / make you want to learn more, though. It was also SUPER predictable, but there you go. I feel like I've read another book by the same author - maybe set in Murano/Venice? If she's just making a living going around researching and writing novels set in fascinating Italian cities, more power to her, however the books turn out!

The Amanda Cross book was one in an anthology of (theoretically) important / very good mysteries, and maybe it was when it was published, but I could barely keep my eyes open. A female academic solving a murder (which occurred during the victim's last - scheduled - therapy session, ha) should be right up my alley, but the story and protagonist were boring as hell, the language (especially the dialogue) was stilted, and apparently the publishers didn't believe in springing for a copy-editor. That last just irks me.

I had read Clare Clark's The Great Stink, and as I recall I was looking for her next book, Savage Lands, set in colonial Louisiana, which was checked out when I came across Beautiful Lies. I just now read the NYT review, and I think if I had at the time I probably would have still checked the book out - and on purpose, as it were - but maybe liked it better. I think it just wasn't what I was expecting, and by the time I realized what kind of book it was meant to be, I had lost interest. It also opens very, very slowly and I didn't warm up to the main characters for a while. But I did, eventually, and came to appreciate the story more. And I don't think there's any denying that she's a very good writer. And this reminds me to check on Savage Lands again...

oh, well

I'm in the middle of a bunch of books, and have definitely finished some I haven't written about yet. My system is most decidedly failing me. But I did finish one on the bus ride to work this morning, Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper (2012). This is pretty classic Morton - jumping between England and Australia, between big-deal time periods (WWII London figures heavily here), strong and memorable women, and Big Secrets. That's not to say that being classic Morton isn't a good thing, of course. Her books are eminently readable, quite decently written, and have some lovely language in them. They're just not especially earth-shaking. But I don't think they're meant to be. They are what they are, and very good for it. I saw the surprise ending, if that's what it was meant to be, coming a ways off, but I enjoyed the book no less for that. I definitely got caught up in the story, and had to stop myself from getting teary on the Number 1 bus - then again, old people on their death bed get to me these days. Anyhow, liked it, would recommend it. Good for curling up under the covers or in front of the fireplace, or a lazy day in the grass. Or the bus!

Reading-Adjacent

Interesting little piece about note-taking, including as related to reading.

Personally, I'm always torn, because I would love to write in a book and really interact with it, especially for turning back to later, but I also hate getting my books messy, and it's not always possible to just write a short note. When I first started grad school I tried keeping a literal note-book: it was just a lined paper notebook, and I'd put the page number, quote whatever passage had stuck me (this was in school books), and then comment. Except sometimes the quotes would get super long and unwieldy, and the comments would start meandering...I think they'd be possibly-to-really interesting to read now (if I ever find them) and potentially could provide little-to-great insight into the workings of my mind if I am every being biographed someday after I get famous and die, but not really that useful in the foreseeable future.

Anyhow:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/11/note-taking-in-a-clickable-age/#.ULUxoDXigEo.blogger

Confused / inspired

I just looked at the "Chronological" page, and I finished no books between 10/22 and 11/10? That can't be right. In fact, I know it's not right - just off the top of my head, as I consider it now, I know I read some okay book with Siena in the title. But I guess I never got around to noting it.

Anyways, I know for a fact that I both started and finished a book on Saturday, November 10, 2012 because I was on a plane, headed San Diego, and it didn't even come close to lasting through the Boston to San Francisco leg of the trip. The book: Cane River, Lalita Tademy.

It was kind of okay, though, which was cool. This was one of the last books I got well over a year ago (probably a couple years at this point), early in the days of this blog, when I was SUPER hung over one day and grabbed a stack of paperbacks from the bargain carts outside of the Harvard Bookstore. There was a PD James it took me over a year (I think) to read, the first of those mysteries about the female Episcopalian exorcist (Merry something?), one or two others (?), and this. It sat on my shelf for a while because the Oprah seal of approval, prominently displayed, worried me a bit - I was being snobby.

But last Friday evening I got the the BPL at 4:59pm and wasn't able to get in to pick up the book I had ordered for the trip, and I didn't want to waste money, so I made myself pick something to read on the plane from the unread paperbacks I had at home. This one was pretty fat (500+ pages) so I figured it would work.

It ended up being relatively interesting, both as a story and as a concept. The author started investigating the history of her family, and ended up learning a lot about the women in her family who had been slaves in Louisiana and then lived through the period preceding and following the Civil War and Reconstruction. Then she ended up writing a novel featuring the people she had learned about. It's kind of a cool idea, and I think I was especially drawn to it on Saturday (I plowed through those 500 pages) because I recently took up the challenge of writing, with the help of my grandfather, the story of the women in his life, his mother and grandmother, who dealt with the challenges of being black in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Northeast with some help from men (fathers, brothers, friends), but largely on their own. There were also illustrations of documents the author had unearthed (slave bills of sale, wills) and old portraits, which definitely enhanced my reading experience and is also something I had been thinking would be important for me own project. Cane River was explicitly the story of generations of women, who persevere sometimes with the aid of, but largely despite the shortcomings of, the men in their lives. I think I forgot it under my bed at R&M's place, but it was good. And a good reminder to me that even non-historians - maybe ESPECIALLY non-historians - can do decent research and tell a good story.

My grandmother passed away on Tuesday after declining for a few weeks; it was in the midst of all of that that I asked my grandfather if he'd help me with "our" project. I wanted something to keep him busy, and also to remind him that even if we're not blood, since he's my father's stepfather, he's my family, my grandfather in every way that matters, and nothing, including my grandmother's death, will change that. Potentially this project could turn into the subject of a class I'm planning on taking next semester, on writing a nonfiction book, but it's important to me because of him, and of my grandmother, a strong woman in her own right who would have loved the story and loved that my grandfather and I are doing it together even more. But it's a daunting project whatever I do with it, so Cane River was a nice reminder and inspiration, even if it wasn't the best book ever.

Yay!!!

Something MARVELOUS has happened.

And in other news, I read Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer. Good? It's meant to be a young adult novel, I guess, so maybe that's why I wasn't super blown away (not to say that there aren't some great YA novels out there, I suppose), but I wasn't... It's Fforde, so it's funny, but it wasn't hilarious, and a lot of it seemed a bit heavy-handed. Wow, giant corporations are bad, etc. This is the first in a two-book (so far) series, I think, but I probably won't search out the second.

Still can't wait for the Shades of Grey sequel though!!!

Also - I can't say why, but YAY!!!

more

Running out the door, but finished Charles Finch's A Burial At Sea the other day (Tuesday night maybe?). Fine.

Random trend?

So, now in 2 books I was reading at the same time I've come across the plot device of old-timey English woman is being blackmailed over, or worried about being blackmailed over, her youthful indiscretions and the resulting nude "postcards" getting out after she's married a socially prominent man. Really? Was this that common? Or just tired?

Anyhow, in the one I finished over the weekend, Lady Emily sets things right in the end in A Crimson Warning by Tasha Alexander. I think I am over this series. I checked it out of the library knowing it would just be light fluff, but also knowing this was a weekend where I was going to be in serious need of some light fluff. But...meh. I was just bored a lot, and the writing isn't anything to write home about, so to speak, and the characters are flat and the plot developments predictable. The dashing husband isn't even that exciting. I think it didn't help that I read this shortly after the Sebastian St. Cyr books, and those are actually much better, I think, although still not exactly great literature. They're similar, though, in featuring ahead-of-their-time women who are intellectually curious and strong-willed, but the whole "yes I wear a corset but I am an independent woman hear me roar!" thing can be so overdone so easily. It just felt old here. Wealthy woman who defies expectations of her society alongside a dashing, slightly dangerous man. Smoldering glances and carriages. YAWN.

Regency gluttony

In between wanting to die Friday-Saturday (at least Thursday was fun!), I plowed through the three latest Sebastian St. Cyr books, What Remains of Heaven (early July 1812), Where Shadows Dance (later July 1812), and When Maidens Mourn (August 1812).

I also read, at some point a while ago, This Bright River, by Patrick Somerville (2012), which was fantastic. Well- and creatively- written and compelling, with engaging characters.

***

Could say more but I've got to go into Copley to hit CVS & Shaws so I figure I might as well drop off the C.S. Harris books, clear some shelf space.

Cleaning

Clearly losing interest in this blog...

But, The Bellwether Revivals, by Benjamin Wood (2012), had intriguing, memorable, and finely drawn characters (even the supporting players were fleshed out nicely), a captivating plot, and was well written.

The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise, by Julia Stuart (2010), was entirely different, beyond being set in England, but also excellent. I suppose both also deal with loss and regret, too, I guess.

I've gotten entirely confused about which books in the Sebastian St. Cyr series I've read (and the blog is failing me - see, if you can, a bunch of complaints about that here and there in the blog), as is the fact they all kind of blend together. So I ended up picking up from the library (the BPL, not Widener) Where Serpents Sleep (2008), which I had totally already read before. Whoops. But it was good for reading while snuggled under the blankets on a dreary night. And I bet I said it the last time I read this book, but while the titular St. Cyr feels like a very familiar type, Harris has in her "new" (in this book) female lead, Hero Jarvis, a fresher character, although still not a super original one.  Hey - set in England too!

And also in England - four for four! - the latest (I think?) Inspector Lynley mystery, Believing the Lie (2012). This one came out right around the time last year I went to California, and I really wanted to get it, because these and the Douglas Preston / Lincoln Child Inspector Pendergast (or whatever the hell his name is) tomes always seem to pop up in airport bookstores and they're so perfect because they'll last even me through a long flight. But they're also so freaking expensive (not for books, I guess, but in general paying $25+ for a book I'll knock off once kind of offends me), so I didn't, and then kept forgetting to track it down. But I eventually got it from the BPL and enjoyed it. No work of great art, but George writes pretty well, at least given what else is out there in the same family. BUT. BUT. I wanted to smack the editor upside the head. While I am sure the phrase "it's just not on" is widely used in the U.K. or whatever, it was used constantly in this book. Like, in one part, it was used at least once on 4 consecutive pages. And coming from the mouths of police and civilians, grandparents and grandchildren, ennobled masters of industry and suicidal teens. Just...no. Someone should have done something about that. But (and in a good way), I appreciate that George does a good job with interweaving and balancing multiple story lines (I was especially happy to see that Havers' continues) and perspectives. She also took the interesting approach of showing us the death at the center of the mystery, and then letting the characters stumble through figuring out what happened (more or less).

No time

Busy at work, need to run soon to see the eye doctor during "lunch," then back to work...but the library wants my books back, so I need to get at least a little something down on (virtual) paper.


Last weekend (last two weeks? I'm not sure) I re-read Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches and then read the recently published Shadow of Night. Now not only are there vampires and witches, they're time travelling. OBVIOUSLY. But Harkness knows her history, and while the random historical-name dropping is OUT OF CONTROL in Shadow of Night, it's still kind of fun to read, especially the glee and perturbation of a historian suddenly walking around in the past...I think my head would explode, in a good way, if it were me. Anyhow, that part of the book(s) I like, Harkness' eye for period details and stuff. The rest...meh. I also finished the book feeling a bit let down by the author: she makes a reference in one of the last chapters (the last chapter) to the death of a fairly significant character, but without ANY explanation of what happened, and also has an other random character pop up after the "events" of the previous May. I get that she's trying to keep her readers hooked, and will no doubt get into it all in the next (final?) book, but it was handled awkwardly - I actually started flipping back trying to figure out if I had missed a whole chapter somewhere, and when I went online to check it out (I was that confused) it turns out so had a lot of readers. Stringing your audience along is one thing, bewildering them is another.


Totally different, totally amazing - John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's The Lifespan of a Fact. I can't say enough how much I love this book. I laughed out loud and also had super deep, philosophical conversations with myself on the nature of Art and Truth (generally while in the shower or at the bus stop, but whatever). Super fun, super smart. Twists you brain up in a good way. I kept wondering how "real" the process/conversation described in the book was (and the book itself, by extension), and then remembered that part of the point of the book was that it shouldn't matter, but then wondered how much that was, itself, a construct meant to carry the book along... good times.

Fail

So, I think when I tried to make this blog private, I f*cked up the whole thing. Because now I can't search within it, and the entire point of the blog was so that I could keep track of what I've read. For example, I don't know what number in a series of mysteries I've read up to, and I wanted to search the author's name and see which one was the last I commented on, but nothing's coming up. And I KNOW I've written about other books in the series, but nada on the author or main character - and the author's name should be tagged, too, but I can't figure out how to search the tags.

I may need another page, where I just list the title and date of reading (approximate), and then I can use that to go back and locate fuller descriptions/reactions (if they exist)?

This is such b.s.

NB - right after I (huffily) wrote all the preceding, I found a spot in the inner mechanics of the blog where I can search the labels...so, helpful (found the entry in [this particular] question), but still not perfect - esp. if I remember the title but not the author, since I only use authors and themes as labels. But I'm not sure the dated list idea really works, either, since I'd need to scroll down a whole long list looking for the title which sounds annoying.

Last bag!

Also last walk to work (well, bus stop - I DID have a huge bag of books) today from the apartment - Monday I'm moving and then Tuesday I'll be commuting to Cambridge from Brookline for the first time...


Mostly books I never get around to reading, like:

Lightning Rods - Helen DeWitt (2011)
Not sure why I have this; I read something else by the same author, I think, but if it's the book I'm thinking of, I didn't love it, so I'm not sure that I would have sought out another one.


In the Kitchen - Monica Ali (2009)
I think because Brick Lane was checked out?

The Abruzzo Trilogy - Ignazio Silone (2000)
Well, OBVIOUSLY because it's all stories set in Abruzzi[/o]! And also because it just makes me sad how little comes up when you search for books about (or in, or vaguely near) Abruzzo.

Dirty South - Ace Atkins (2004)
Heh. The title just makes me laugh. I am totally sure I grabbed this one off the shelf based on the spine along.

Leeches - David Albahari (2011)
I either read something else by Albahari and really liked it, or read something I really liked and then Albahari was mentioned either in a quote on the back or acknowledgements or something?

A Feather on the Breath of God - Sigrid Nunez (1995)
The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy (1958, 2007)
These two are both totally different, but also both kind of concerned with the whole coming-of-age / blossoming into womanhood / etc. thing. And well praised. They're also both small paperbacks and I am really tempted to hold on to them and just pack them since they wouldn't take up too much space.




And a book I read half of last Aug./Sept (I think):

Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape - Kirk Savage (2009)
I really liked this book, solid public history, but it's larger than a normal book and pretty heavy, which made it next to impossible to read in bed, and that's pretty much the only place/time I had to do any reading over the last year, so it kind of languished on the blanket chest.

And one I read half of some other time:
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree - Tariq Ali (1992-2000: confusing)
I liked this, I'm not sure why I never finished it. I think I was always waiting until I could give it a good chunk of sober, not-exhausted time, and never found it...

More than halfway there!

Today I brought in the third of four big bags of books, huzzah! The system has gotten a bit confused, so some are books I've read and others are books I never got around to reading.


The former:
Ruth Rendell, The Saint Zita Society (2012)
Okay, but kind of boring.

Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (2012)
I really rather liked the writing here - calm, confident, subtle but with these glimmering lovely phrases - and the plot, about a couple in the Alaska Territory in the 1920s who find, or create from their longings and the winter itself, a little girl for them to love is original, although clearly inspired by a Russian fairy tale (from before fairy tales were so safe) that also features in the book. The characters are nicely drawn and, appropriately enough for an author from Alaska, the environment - the land and the animals and the weather and the seasons - is a remarkable character on its own. Plus, I just really like the author's name. More at: http://www.eowynivey.com/snowchild.shtml

Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died A Lot (2012)
Wicked funny; what else can I say? It wasn't the most enthralling of plots/mysteries for Thursday Next to unravel, but I feel like with this series, it's not about plot (other than the hilarious randomness of the plot, of course), but about going along for the really funny ride. And there were lots of puns and snarky little quips and in-jokes, so it was a good ride. I also LOVED the Richard Dawkins reference:

'So religion could trump science after all,' said Miles with a smile. 'That'll be a turn-up for the books.'
'Mind you,' added my father, 'at least you forced Him into revealing His existence.'
'That was unexpected,' admitted Joffrey, 'and very welcome - the billion or so former atheists now on board [with a universal-deity religion, combining all previous religions] really boosted the membership and bargaining powers.'
'Didn't Dawkins shoot himself when he found out?'
'Yes,' replied Miles sadly, 'a great shame. he would have been excellent GSD bishop material. Single minded, a good orator, and eyebrows that were pretty much perfect.' [81]

I ALSO appreciated "running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees." [7]

Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home (2012)
Really well written story about a adolescent girl in the late 1980s whose world is turned down when her uncle is diagnosed with AIDS and then passes away, and as her relationship with her parents and sister falls apart as she discovers, and negotiates the existence of, her uncle's partner. Strangely lovely; the author captures the turbulence and insecurities of the protagonist's age well, and makes a series of unlikely situations and events believable and relatable. More at: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/214920/tell-the-wolves-im-home-a-novel-by-carol-rifka-brunt

Connie Ann Kirk, Emily Dickinson: A Biography (2004)
Ugh. I think I read half of this forever ago, because I felt bad I didn't know more about Dickinson, esp. as an Amherst-lover, and maybe because I was going to read a different bio or a novel about her and wanted background? In any case, I never finished it.

Charles Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (2010)
This one was good, but I wasn't familiar with all the texts, so I kind of unintentionally gave up on the book because I wasn't getting that much from it. It's a cool idea though: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300163865


The latter:

Amanda Eyre Ward, Close Your Eyes (2010)
A mystery of some kind?

Andrea Stuart, Showgirls (1996)
I thought this was a biography of Josephine Baker, but apparently it's about a lot of female stars, from Marlene Dietrich to Madonna. So...I might not check it back out. I thought Stuart did a good job with Josephine Bonaparte, so JB seemed like it would be interesting, but I'm not sure this is really high on my list.

GRRR

And in today's installment of "my procrastination skills are way better than my planning skills" we introduce Shopping Bag #1 of Books I Checked Out and Never Got Around to Reading's contents:

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafron, trans. Lucia Graves (2004)
Saw it somewhere?

Some Sing, Some Cry, Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza (2010)
I think...one of the authors wrote something else I had heard good things about?

Hood, Emma Donoghue (1995)
It's the woman who wrote Room, I HAD to read her other stuff. But it's this sad-looking, beat-up library binding and never jumped off my shelf at me...

The Case of the Missing Servant: from the files of Vish Puri, India's 'Most Private Investigator', Tarquin Hall (2009)
I actually started this one, and never made it past the first few chapters. Oops.

The Birth House, Ami McKay (2006)
I think I picked this one up because I read something good about McKay's recent book, and it wasn't in the library, so I requested this one instead. Something about old-timey Canada.

Rebel Yell, Alice Randall (2009)
No clue. Maybe I just saw the title on the spine one day and thought it was funny?

The Last Brother, Nathacha Appanah, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (2010/2007 French)
No idea.

The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock (2011)
NO idea. Especially because, this sounds mean, but the author sounds like a hillbilly, so I don't really see myself being instantly captivated by the spine...

GAH

 MOVING.
It is NOT FUN.

Last night (post sitting around and then being rejected for jury duty, barely-pre the beginnings of the sore throat that was a full-blown 100 degree fever when I woke up) I was complaining to D about not knowing where to start packing (one week before move day, awesome job, self) and he said "books." Which is always the obvious answer because the things I have most of are books and clothes/shoes. However, I realized just after doing the cookbooks and food books (two HEAVY boxes of just those) that I was going to run out of boxes really quickly. So, after conferring with R, I decided to make a list of all the library books I haven't read yet, return them to the library over the course of the week, and get them back later, so I don't need to worry about moving them. There were over two grocery bags full of books I haven't read yet. Including one that I have apparently renewed five times - and it's a six month borrow. Yikes.

I also have a grocery bag full of books I've read and haven't written about, so I lugged most of them back today. Since there's no way I will have time to review them until after the move, and by then I just won't, they are, in no particular order:

Brom, The Child Thief - retelling, sort of, of Peter Pan. Surprisingly good. 2009.

Tana French, Broken Harbor - I think I recalled this from myself, whoops. Obviously great. 2012.

Oliver Potzsch, The Hangman's Daughter - okay. 2012 (English translation by Lee Chadeayne)

Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre; and Other Episodes in French Cultural History - so great. 1984. [I had flagged "The Rousseauistic readers of prerevolutionary France threw themselves into texts with a passion we can barely imagine, that is as alien to us as the lust for plunder among Norsemen" (251) and a quote from Marc Bloch "'A good historian resembles the ogre of legend. Wherever he smells human flesh, he knows that there he will find his prey.'" (263)]

Laura Miller, The Magician's Book: A Sceptic's Adventures in Narnia - really enjoyable. 2008.

Chris Adrian, The Children's Hospital - REALLY interesting / engaging / challenging. 2006.

History Through Fiction

Teaching history by using fiction (novels, plays, movies) as a means of introducing topics has always interested me; the author of this piece I stumbled across on Commonplace, Sara L. Schwebel, makes the additional point that depending on when a piece of historical fiction was written, unpacking the book (or screenplay, etc.) itself can also be a historical exercise:

Amos Fortune, Free Man - New Uses for a Children's Classic

[I also think it's interesting that I rather liked this piece, although it's not all that original or mind-blowing, and one on the study/memory of the War of 1812 in Canada in the same issue, and neither appear to have any comments - are all the historians on summer vacation???]

Also, I should probably read Amos Fortune, since I never have. And I should probably re-read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, since it's great. More to the point, both Harvard copies are checked out right now, and I really don't want to call a copy back since I a) am trying not to bring any new books into the apt right now and b) don't want to be a jerk, but I would like to read Schwebel's book, Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms (2011).

Wednesday's Four!

In no particular order...

The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine, Andrea Stuart (Macmillan, 2003)
I actually really rather enjoyed this, so I kind of wish I had written about it sooner (I think I read this a LONG time ago - late April, if my archived g-chats with my brother are correct). But I was in the midst of the Great April-May 2012 Bender (what - I was just supporting my friends!) so I suppose the fact I read it at all is pretty good. Stuart's a good writer, and I felt like I learned a lot, although I would have appreciated more context - Josephine turned out to be an interesting subject, but as a woman in a world where women's roles and rights were rapidly changing, as a creole who came to the very center of the center and then was pushed back out again, as the consort (and then discard) of one of the world's most powerful and polarizing figures, I would have loved to have heard more about what was going on around Josephine and how she, and her life, fit into that environment and were shaped by it / reflected it. I was also fairly pleased that Napoleon, not surprisingly, comes off as something of an insecure, egotistical douche, since that's always kind of how I pictured him...
[NB: I think this was published in the U.S. as Josephine: The Rose of Martinique]

*****

Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire, Flora Fraser (Knopf, 2009)
God no. To everything. I read this after Rose of Martinique, figuring I'd ease into Napoleon himself by approaching indirectly, via the women in his life, first, but this one ended my brief affair with the extended Bonaparte clan. I figured this would be something fun, I mean, the woman DID model for the Borghese Venus (which is still a gorgeous statue - seeing it in person years ago was cool), but d*mn, the woman was a whiny tramp. In all fairness, she seems to have had some really bad luck with her male companions, so maybe shopping around, while not the best idea, was understandable, but she's really not an appealing character at all, at least in Ms. Fraser's treatment, and if you come off like a childish, spoiled b*tch in your own biography, that's not good.

It also didn't help that this was a really terrible biography, totally sensationalistic and really, really speculative. I mean, I'm inclined to believe that Pauline did NOT sleep with her brother Napoleon, but I think if an author is going to bring up the subject of possible incest in a biography, she should be d*mn well prepared to take a stand, one way or the other, and back it up, not basically suggest it might well have been an issue, but that it wasn't a big one.

Referring to a possibly "more credible" rumor of incest (more credible than some others, that is), Fraser writes "The truth is, it seems almost inevitable, given the strong sex drive for which Pauline and Napoleon were both renowned, given, too, their mutual affection, their clannish affinity, that they should have experimented sexually together. Perhaps neither of them considered such sexual congress, if it took place, of great importance. Growing up in Corsica, they had been surrounded by examples of intermarriage among relations, even of technically incestuous unions such as those between uncles and nieces prohibited by the church. Marrying within the immediate community thus remained the norm on the island well into the nineteenth century."

WHAT THE WHAT???

I seriously almost thew the book across the room when I read that. So...liking sex and loving your sibling makes it "almost inevitable" that you'll end up having sex with your sibling? WHAT? And, I can't believe I'm even saying this, but there's incest and then there's incest. Uncle/niece, gross, certainly to our modern sensibilities, but not unheard of and not even close to the same as brother/sister. To say that because in Corsica people frequently married people they were related to, it wouldn't have been weird for Pauline and Napoleon to fool around, is like when people say it's less-bad if someone from the South fights dogs. Times a million. Yes, the norms you are exposed to growing up do shape what you consider "normal" or acceptable. But there are limits. In most places in the world, at most times in history (I think, I haven't exactly researched this), sex between siblings has been frowned upon. Seriously frowned upon. Fraser is stretching here, to put it kindly. Less kindly, and to quote one of the best lines from season-whatever of Pretty Little Liars, "b*tch crazy." (Seriously, the actor who plays Spencer - Troian Bellisario? - delivered that PERFECTLY).

Anyways, I really don't remember much else about the book after that point...

*****

The Lost Army of Cambyses, Paul Sussman (Thomas Dunne Books [St. Martin's Press], 2002)
A thriller, I guess you could call it? Opens with the death of a Greek mercenary in a sandstorm in ancient Egypt, then switches to a modern-day race to track down antiquities thieves and terrorists who are going to use the proceeds of a spectacular archaeological find to fund terrorism. And people fall in love. Or something like that. Predictable, the big reveal wasn't, but somewhat entertaining.  I think I had grabbed this forever ago because I liked the title, then never read it, then read it and was confused about why I had picked it up...

*****

India Black, Carol K. Carr (Berkeley Prime Crime, 2011)
Awful. I feel like I read something good about this, and requested it, and then it came and when I picked it up from the library I almost returned it because of the cheesy cover and the cheesier tagline: "A Madam of Espionage mystery." Yup. That's the series: "A Madam of Espionage." It wasn't even that terrible, I guess, it's just one of a million. Smart woman in Victorian England does her own thing (in this case, madam-ing and crime solving) despite pressure from men and The Man, there's a young, diamond-in-the-rough rapscallion to help out and be helped out, and a mildly brooding, very attractive man who eventually realizes that her independence and wits are even better than her looks. Blah.

Tuesday's Three

I was thinking last night that I'd make a point of bringing back 3 books a day, as I start to empty my apartment, but I'm not even sure that would take care of all of the previously-read library books I have scattered around... However, the three I brought in this morning are:

A Lesson in Secrets, Jacqueline Winspear (Harper, 2011) - this is another Maisie Dobbs mystery. Don't remember what it's about, except she finally has a nice man (I think, and I even think I know which one, although I don't want to say here), but it really is getting to the point where even if they're decently written, with well-rounded and appealing characters, if you've read one, you've kind of read them all...

The Abyssinian Proof, Jenny White (W.W. Norton, 2008) - sequel to The Sultan's Seal, so another Kamil Pasha mystery. Which is funny, because I totally just picked three books that were roughly the same size, I didn't bother to check and see what they were, or if there was a theme. Well, I did check to see what they were just to make sure there was nothing really awesome that would deserve more time. Anyhow, more Istanbul shenanigans in the 1880s. Well-written, and Kamil is a really strong main character, and a good anchor for the series, but damn was this one predictable. Like, I totally forgot what it was about (honestly, the title itself didn't even ring a bell, I just knew Jenny White does the Kamil Pasha series), then I opened it just now, read the first lines, and thought "oh right - THIS book" and remembered that I had anticipated everything that happened. But I enjoyed being along for the ride, as I recall.

The Twelfth Enchantment, David Liss (Random House, 2011) - so, all I can think about right now is how weird the word "twelfth" looks. But, we press on: I had to skim the first page to remember what this book is about, which is a young girl in early industrial England who has to...do magic to save the world? basically? And I also then immediately remembered that when I started reading it I was kind of upset because the book was not at all what I expected. I had gotten it thinking it would be one of his "economics/business + mystery in the past" books (like the Conspiracy of Paper series or The Whiskey Rebels), which I've either read one of or wanted to read (now that I'm looking it up, I think I read a book by another author along those lines, and that's why I wanted to move to Liss), and then I find freaking  evil fairies and stuff. NOT PLEASED. I don't even know that the book was so bad, it's just a) not really my thing, and b) not at all what I was anticipating/looking for.

Cleaning house

The library needs three books back AND I need to get them out of my apartment so there's less stuff to drag to the new one in 3.5 weeks (and let the countdown begin!). So:

Equal of the Sun, Anita Amirrezvani (Scribner, 2012) - Good

The Orphanmaster, Jean Zimmerman (Viking, 2012) - Okay

The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker (Random House, 2012) - Fantastic

I've got to run some errands and get some lunch; hopefully more later, otherwise at least these are now listed...

Maybe?

 I vaguely remember reading a review of Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead when it came out (in the Times?) and thinking "maybe" - it's about a wedding on a Maine island, both things I find interesting - and then I think never doing anything about it, probably because I was thinking unless I am really excited about something, I need to stop growing my list of books to read. However, I just read a New York Times op-ed ["The Wedding Effect" - What is it about friends getting hitched that leaves us so unhinged?] of hers that I don't think is incredibly original or insightful (or, honestly, fairly original or insightful - or at all) but was well-written, more like an essay than an op-ed, so now I kind of want to read the book. Both copies at Harvard have wait-lists, though, and I don't want to request to be added to the list.  I might already on it, for one thing, and I am too lazy to log into my account and look. Also because I really need to chill on ordering books for a bit: I've got a stack to be read at home (not to mention several stacks to "review") and I'm moving in a month, so probably the fewer books I have to drag around the better...  Still, at some point I think I'd like to give Ms. Shipstead's work a shot.

Fforde!

So, something made me think about Shades of Grey, and how I am so annoyed that the next one doesn't seem to be in the pipeline yet, so I went to the Jasper Fforde website to check if there was any news, and there's a new Thursday Next out! Whoop! This one is called The Woman Who Died A Lot which I think is typically, Fforde-ianly funny. It's out in the UK already, but not available in the US until October, so I've requested the library order the English edition - fingers crossed.

AND apparently he will be reading in Boston somewhere on October 4 - needless to say, the date is going in my calendar now.

Not-Meh

Returned Pure by Andrew Miller yesterday; I forget when I read it, but I liked it. I had read a review somewhere, I think, and ordered it from the library, and read it quite quickly, and with a good deal of enjoyment, when I got it. It's about a young engineer who gets as his first real job the unenviable task of digging up a centuries-old graveyard in the middle of pre-revolutionary Paris that is overflowing with bodies (and emitting noxious air). While some of the events were fairly predictable, overall the plot was interesting and imaginative and Miller did a good job limning day-to-day life in the city, in working-class & middle-class neighborhoods and Versailles, especially the dirt, grime, and smells of Enlightenment era cities. It also has a great cover (see the picture in the Telegraph article on Pure winning the Costa prize)

Meh

Brought The Pleasures of Men (Kate Williams) to the beach on Friday (birthday beach day!) but never got around to reading it - too busy chatting with T and zoning out in the sun with some Collie Buddz on, lol. And it's a pretty heavy book for a paperback, so I wish I hadn't been lugging it around.

Especially since when I finally started reading it on Saturday it was pretty bad. The plot (serial killer in early Victorian London) was predictable but confusing at the same time, if that makes any sense, and mostly - sweet baby Jesus, the editing was TERRIBLE. Apparently it's a Penguin branch - they should be ASHAMED of themselves. Just awful typos everywhere. I wouldn't turn in a term paper that bad, so for it to be a published book??

I had been saving it for the beach because I thought, as soon as I saw the cover (I had requested it from the library based on some review somewhere) that it was going to be an easy, trashy read, and, well, it was that...

Read:

Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale (UK printing)

Very easy-to-read non-fiction piece about a notorious divorce case (one of the earliest after a civil divorce was made accessible to the general public in England in 1858), in which a woman's diary, containing either her feverish fantasies or the (semi-)details of an actual affair were the cornerstone of the case.

Nice look at both the people and events (leading up to, during, and after the trial) and also at the wider context. I think in part this was necessary to make up for a limited field of action and evidence, but extended sections on other cases, in particular, do not feel out of place or like interruptions and they add to the overall impact of the book. I also appreciated, and I think non-specialist audiences would, too, that there are no footnotes, and simply un-numbered endnotes at the back.

It's not a great work of scholarship, but it's fun and easy.

I'd like to check out her other books at some point - The Queen of Whale Cay and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (fiction and nonfiction, respectively, I think?).

Obviously my apartment is not getting any cleaner

Since I haven't been returning tons of books to the library. But one more today - baby steps. The daily catch for July 3 is Arcadia Falls, by Carol Goodman. It's...well, it's a Carol Goodman. That is to say, the writing's totally fine, maybe better than fine, but it feels totally familiar, and like all of her other books (set in a prep school, in remote-ish upstate New York, women - past and present - at the forefront, story that spans generations, deep-dark-emotionally-loaded secrets, etc.). But I enjoyed it. It would be a good rainy fall day read, curled up with tea or cider or something. And I will say for Goodman, her books always make me want to go out and learn more about the artists/time periods she invokes in the novels. And trees and the natural setting always play a prominent role, and while it sounds weird to say she has a knack for writing about trees, she does. However, D*MN was the big reveal obvious. Unless we, the audience, were meant to see it all along and be completely frustrated with the characters for missing the obvious - even when they were privy to all the same information we were?

I could probably say more, but basically it's a good read. Crazy busy with work, though, so not a lot of time to write, yet I need to get SOMETHING down "on paper," because when I need to run around and do errands at lunch (might have found a new apartment for the fall!) and I don't want to have to deal with taking the book out through security if I can just return if before I leave the library...

2 today!

Brought in two, although I swear I listed to one side as I was walking. The heavier, and worse offender, was Mr. Christopher Jones, and his Full Dark House, which I actually rather enjoyed. It's a mystery that is set mainly during the Blitz, but opens in contemporary London as an aging detective reflects on his first case with his long-time partner, when he joins a department devoted to solving "unusual" crimes - that is, anything ranging from seemingly paranormal to aggravatingly unsolvable to politically inconvenient for other branches. The book is clever, and while the more "colorful" detective of the pair is a bit too familiar (he's odd, socially awkward, open to thinking out of the box, so to speak, and making brilliant leaps of deduction no ordinary mortals can follow - ring a bell? Several?), overall the characters were appealing and believable. I feel like this is a set up for a series (or maybe an installment in a series) but I don't know. But I would definitely consider reading another book by the author. I think, in fact, I picked up the book because I heard about one Jones recently released, and it wasn't in the library or something, so I just picked the earliest one they did have by him and figured I'd give it a try. Plus, I liked the title.

The other book was Games to Play After Dark, Sarah Gardner Borden. MEH. Boy and girl meet, they get married, they get bored, they get into rough (ish?) sex, they have kids, they get bored again, they get violent without the sex. Honestly, I think the writing itself was pretty good, but the story really never captivated me. Not all that much sex, considering what I just wrote (and the back blurb "...the games they play after dark are far from routine"), but of course, one of them did pop up when I was on the bus to work. The bus that is never crowded, but that day was, and I had people squeezed on either side of me and I just thought, "nope, shut the book, this is awkward." And then I kind of forgot about it. I think it took me months to read the book, because I kept putting it down and then being like "oh, right, that thing. Must finish that." But when I was actually reading it, the tone and pacing were really nice, and SGB has an eye for detail and a talent for great descriptions. Very sensual, actually, which at least makes sense with what I think she was going for here.

So depressing...

Looking at the ginormous stacks of books on my floor, forget on my desk (and coffee table, and bed-side table...) this morning. I didn't have the heart to write about them all, much less lug them all in - for whatever reason, I seem to have been on a fat, hardcover kick recently - so I figured maybe one at a time? So I don't forever curve my spine? And the lucky winner was S. J. Parris' Sacrilege. I picked it because it wasn't SUPER heavy (I actually made lunch this morning, which is great, but it was already weighing down my bag) and because I wasn't a huge fan so I don't have much to say. It's like the others in the Giordano Bruno mystery series - fine, but nothing special, more or less forgettable.

Seriously, the library is killing me

They keep asking for books back that I am stockpiling for when my apartment becomes a nuclear bunker, lol...

Among those they called back this week: Kathy Reichs, Flash and Bone - don't even really remember what it's about (other than the obvious, forensic pathologist solves a crime, although I know this was one of the ones set in the South, vs. Canada...I think), and I had to dig it out of the pile on my desk (yep, the pile magically grew again). And, Jesus - I JUST got the title reference. I think I had been thinking it was like, flash-bangs, those stun-grenade thingies...but it's clearly like "flesh & bones." Sh*t, I feel stupid now.

They also called back The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty, which I KNEW was going to happen, since it's been all over the place and super publicized, so I figured some one was going to be requesting it sooner or later. So it's good that when I got it I read it right away.

Lauren Groff!

Ugh. So, I finally got Arcadia, and sped through it, and loved it, and didn't write about it because I wanted to take my time and really think about what I was going to say, and now the library wants it back. So...yeah, Arcadia, by Lauren Groff - amazing.

Printing books...

I've been so intrigued by these machines ever since the Harvard Bookstore got one (http://www.harvard.com/clubs_services/books_on_demand/). Obviously it's cool authors can print their own works, but I love that you can create bound copies of out-of-copyright stuff - there are so many awesome old books out there!

The Antidote to e-Books

Self-publishing has been made easier since the Espresso Book Machine by On Demand Books made its debut in 2006.

 

New York Times

More good books

Just quickly read Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay, and The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka.
Both were very good, although in different ways; more later, hopefully, but for now I want to just get the titles down before I forget (since the library made me give them back, so I power-read them over the long weekend).

Forced catch-up

A while ago I read Richard Mason's History of a Pleasure-Seeker (2011). Don't remember much about it now, but the library is calling it back, so I had to get something down...I think it wasn't as good as the pretty cover had caused me to hope? Decent evocation of a time and place (Amsterdam, 1907), but too self-consciously concerned with sex, is my vague recollection.

Yay, a good book finally!

Just finished Hari Kunzru's Gods Without Men (2012), and really, really enjoyed it. It took me a while to read it, but only because I was (am) also reading a couple other books at the same and have been (am) generally busy. But it was good; unique, strong and memorable characters, nice writing.
Basically the intersection of several lives, over hundreds of years -(skipping back and forth) with a spot in the desert. More later, hopefully, but now I need to return the book before the library comes after me...

And on a related note:

Stumbling Across a Rarity, Even for the Rare Book Room

Marie Malchodi, who works as a “book conservation technician” at Brown University, recently came across a piece of paper signed by “P. Revere Sculp” — and knew it might be a big find.

New York Times, 5.3.2012

Kind of interesting:

Treasures hiding in plain sight
A collaborative Widener Library program rescues vulnerable books

I especially liked this because a) I love finding random stuff in books; b) I love stumbing across random books; and c) one time my brother found a book in Widener which, apparently, had had the first page illuminated by the author. Awesome!

The downstairs (used and remainders) section of the Harvard Bookstore, across the street from Widnener, also has a collection of the random ephemera they've discovered in the pages of used books they've purchased for re-sale, which I find endlessly entertaining...

So THAT'S what YA fiction is...kind of...

So, basically, it's just like porn...in that you know it when you see it? Except...you don't?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/04/what-does-young-adult-mean/51316/

Lists! Libraries!

Gorgeous!!!

I want to go read in all of these...except maybe the one in Germany. It looks very cold and hard. Shocker.

Flavorwire - the 25 most beautiful public libraries
http://flavorwire.com/280318/the-25-most-beautiful-public-libraries-in-the-world?all=1

Lists!

"Great Books About Young Women" - Flavorwire
http://flavorwire.com/281518/10-great-books-about-young-women?all=1

Review this at some point - good ones? some to try?

read a while ago:

Cold Vengeance, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Latest Pendergast book.

Funny, at least if you're me, and given my last DP/LC:P post:

One one page someone says "Special Agent Pendergrast" and Special Agent P. interrupts, "Pendergast." Then a few moments later (in the story; same page of the book) the guy says "I suggest you call the police, Mr. Prendergast," prompting SPA to reply "Pendergast." Basically, it's confusing.

I don't really understand how this is meant to be a good idea.

The government standing up for poor, down-trodden (e-)book buys and readers against the collusion of major publishing houses and Apple? Good. Did it really happen? Quite possibly, so still good. Giving Amazon even more control over the e-book market? Shutting down one monopoly to make way for another one? Um...

New York Times / Business Day

Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals

By DAVID STREITFELD

Published: April 11, 2012

The government’s decision to pursue major publishers on antitrust charges has put Amazon, the nation’s largest bookseller, in a powerful position to decide how much an e-book will cost.

Well, this is gonna be a time suck:

https://www.smalldemons.com/

One for the hope chest...

So, "the hope chest" is the list I have on here of awesome children's books I want to make sure I have for my children and grandchildren (and nieces and nephews and "godchildren"). And one that I don't think is on there yet, but absolutely must be, is Gentleman Bear by William Pène du Bois.

Last night I was talking to M(2) about old Olympics, and track and field - that is to say, he was talking about track and field at past Olympics, and I waited semi-patiently for him to wrap up what he was saying and then said "I had a book when I was a kid about a teddy bear that went to the Olympics and Hitler shook his hand and he was NOT HAPPY." And then was off and running on the fantasticness of this sweet, whimsical book about an upper class English boy (or, as I pointed out, the only kind of person where you have the money and history to tolerate whimsical weirdness) who is never separated from his teddy bear, who is always dressed in matching outfits. They go off to boarding school, and university, the Berlin Olympics, and fly in the R.A.F. in World War II. They get married (not to each other, obviously), and raise a family. And it's so cute! And the pictures suit it perfectly.

I was dismayed to see, when I pulled up the GoodReads entry on my blackberry at the bar last night, that it's apparently no longer in print, and crappy old copies are being sold for next to nothing. Gentleman Bear is such a great book, it should be in higher demand - although I suppose I can see how it has virtually no relevance to virtually any child today. But relevance is not always the point. In this case, it's just a nice, funny book with good pictures.

Honestly, I am pretty sure that the book stayed on my bookcase at least through grad school (hey - it's skinny, it doesn't take up much room, and it was on a bottom shelf - with all the old National Geographics I couldn't bear to throw away), which means it's in one of the more recently packed boxes in my dad's house, just waiting to be put back on the shelves once I get around to repainting the walls. So I probably don't even really need to put it on the Hope Chest list, but then again - out of sight is out of mind, and I don't want to forget this one.

Call-back reminder:

Stupid library wants V. S. Ramachandran's The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human back. I could read it in the next couple of days, but I think it's going to be one of those books where even if I don't love the book itself, it's going to generate a big list of questions to look into and other books to read, so it's probably not the best one to speed-read.
So, I need to call it back at some point (I think it got recalled because it's a Harvard book club read or something, so if I look for it after the end of the month we should be good.

Interesting/funny:

Love beyond words



Romance of reader and book captures author Anne Fadiman’s imagination
 
Harvard Gazette - April 2, 2012
 
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/04/love-beyond-words/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04.03.12%2520%281%29&utm_content#.T38wCc2f874.email

Groff

I am seriously dying here - I requested that the library purchase Lauren Groff's latest, Arcadia, forever ago, and it still hasn't come yet, and reading really positive reviews of the book aren't helping!

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/review/arcadia-by-lauren-groff.html

check this over at some point

because I am a sucker for book-slideshows
http://dailycandy.com/all-cities/roundup/flash.jsp?vwink=DC:Email:EDIT:BOS:20120405:38:709401:46&refcd=email:709401:38#/101-books-we-cant-live-without/a-confederacy-of-dunces

More house-keeping

As noted in an earlier post, a while ago I read The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman, about a cholera outbreak in industrial England in the early 1800s - death, disease, body snatching,  mass hysteria...and lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! It was okay. Imaginative plot and characters, and Holman has a skill for setting a really evocative scene, with lots of sights, smells (mostly bad), and sounds. Some of the characters were a little over the top, though (especially Pink), and I was never quite sure how I felt about the narrator's role and voice, which was certainly unusual, but maybe a little gimmicky?
I got the book off of a shelf at home, so one of my parents must have read it at some point, but I was wondering, as I read, if I had already read the book. That is too much "read" and "ready" for once sentence, but oh well. I think it's probably NOT a good thing if you're not sure if you've already read a book (again - d*mn it), but, still, over all, I liked it. Didn't love it or anything, but enjoyed it. And I felt like, if nothing else, Holman clearly put a lot of effort into researching the time period. That's not to say that it was accurate - I really don't know much about that time/place/setting, and wasn't going to go look things up, but just the wealth of believable detail in the book made it clear that she tried (even if it wasn't totally right, but who knows). The back of the paperback edition I read includes a "conversation" with the author David Liss (a book of whose I quite liked in the past, and I've been meaning to read more of his stuff) and she mentions some of the books she read, like Death, Dissection, and the Destitute which sounds fascinating, and not like it was just for show.

Another one that was kind of familiar, and I also should have written about a while ago, was The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld. THAT one, which I read on the way home from San Diego, was familiar because I had read the preceding book, The Interpretation of Murder. Both are mysteries featuring, among other, original characters, Sigmund Freud. As I recall, I didn't particularly like the first book; in fact, I think I actually disliked it, or at least was disappointed in it. To be fair, I think it might have been one of the books I read while I was recovering from surgery, and being in pain and housebound did not put me in a very good mood, so I tend to not remember any of those books very fondly. But I vaguely remember thinking the characters were simultaneously flat and irritating, and the mystery not all that mysterious.
I still had some issues with the characters in this second book, and sweet Jesus was the plot predictable, but I still was okay with letting the story unfold, minus a little frustration with the slowness of the unfolding. Huh, this sounds pretty negative, but it really was fine. I wouldn't recommend it, necessarily, but if someone said "hey, I was thinking about reading this, what do you think?" I certainly wouldn't dissuade him or her, and would say there were some good things about it. Bored of talking about it now though.

House-cleaning

And once again, the pile is overwhelming - and over-toppling.

Read The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry a while ago, as I mentioned slightly closer to being at the time. What I apparently didn't say was that over all I really liked it. I don't know if the author did a good job of capturing the experiences and outlook of the main character, who I THOUGHT, until I just checked right now, had autism, but the publisher's website describes her as "painfully shy and sheltered." Now that I think about it, though, one of the issues in the book was whether or not she is. And, as I recall, ultimately the sort-of-resolution was that it didn't necessarily matter. Of course, the experiences and outlook of the character are also heavily influenced by her ability to summon ghosts by cooking...so, that's a thing. But the food & cooking parts were great - McHenry describes the whole experience of cooking and eating - the former particularly - so well, it's amazing. She hits all the senses: taste and smell, obviously, but the others too. Just in one meal, we have the crunch of garlic being smashed with the flat of a knife and the quiet snick of a knife hitting a cutting board through an onion, the grainy feel left after tearing canned tomatoes apart by hand, and glistening ribbons of batter. And now I need to go make a snack...

I also read at basically the same time Tania James' Atlas of Unknowns, which was fantastic. Intriguing and appealing characters, unique but relatable /believable plot, and really good writing. I had mixed feelings about how the time and tense was a little...loose...but it was an interesting approach even if I didn't always love it. I loved almost every bit of the book as a whole though. The description of a Christmas tree topper that is the "ready-made star that most resembles a flamboyant meteor" was, in context, funny and sweet (143). And one passage I especially liked was "All of this, even the dream, Alice relates while tearing off pieces of idli without a hint of discomfort. Linno feels smothered with someone else's secrets, an unpleasant experience, much in the same way that a stranger's body odor always smells far more repulsive than one's own. In Linno's home, and in the home of every other person she knows, families are stabilized by the preservation of secrets, the family honor maintained" (118).
James LOVES a good comparison - metaphors and similes abound. A feeling is described as "buzzing around her insides like a fly that would not escape a room, even after one opened all the windows and doors, as if it preferred frenzy over freedom" (200) and when a character "arrives home to find the apartment empty, the day suddenly seems not quite right, like a painting askew" (223). Basically, this is a really good story about two sisters in India, who are separated by life, and choices, and have to try to find one another again.

Men of Letters

Engaging, if puffy, piece in Smithsonian about Casanova and his autobiography:

Who Was Casanova?

The personal memoir of history's most famous lover reveals a misunderstood intellectual who befriended the likes of Ben Franklin

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/Who-Was-Casanova.html#ixzz1qElAbhjr

I really ought to read this at some point - I feel like it's one of those Western classics that I am aware of, but don't really know that much about... But I'd need to find a good translation. Is there a definitive English edition?

Reading Recommendation

I just emailed ten friends (well, eight friends, two brothers) the following:

I don't normally recommend books unasked (at least, I don't think I do), but I feel compelled to in this case, since I just finished a book that I thought was really, really good: Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars.
http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Thing-Sonia-Faleiro/dp/0857861697

I had some issues with the way the book handled non-English words and phrases - some were "translated," others weren't, and I couldn't always figure out from context what the characters were saying, which was a problem. But I also appreciated the way they were used to set the scene, so it might have been the right call on the author's & editors' parts. Maybe less of an issue for my Desi friends?
Overall it's an impressive book, though; incredibly funny, despite being about a prostitute - although just what she is, and isn't, is part of the story - in Bombay, and, obviously, also incredibly sad. "Leela," the main character, is just an amazing figure, though, the kind of subject I would think journalists spend their lives looking for (and the NY Times agrees - see their review). Not that this is strictly journalism, if that kind of distinction still holds in this day and age, but the book is based on the research the author did into the women who worked in Bombay's "dance bars" (kind of like clothes-on stripping, but generally stemming from sexual exploitation and poverty, and leading to more). And the relationship between the author and Leela is one of the best parts of the book.

So...anyways, of course no pressure to read it, but if anyone's looking for a book that is as easy to read as a novel, but is nonfiction, and totally engrossing, I vote for this one :)

The book really was fantastic. I want to write more, but the library called the book back, and I feel like it's so good it deserves a "review" written with book in hand, for checking stuff. So I think I will need to call it back myself.

Lauren Groff!

Her second novel, Arcadia, is releasing tomorrow - have requested the library get it, but I don't know if I'll be able to wait...anyhow, yay!

Sorting reality from ‘truthiness’ | Harvard Gazette

Sorting reality from ‘truthiness’ | Harvard Gazette

To follow up on something I think I was talking about somewhat recently...maybe the D'Agata thing?

Biblio-Mysteries, Lost Books and Forgotten Letters

So, I have been looking for a book for a long time - specifically, that is, the second or third in the series, after I read and enjoyed the first two.

• I knew the protagonist was a female graduate student (History or English, I think) or young-ish professor, at Harvard (definitely the northeast).
• I knew she found some letters or documents (or something like that), and those led to the other story, which was set in the past (seventeenth or eighteenth century).
• There was a guy - maybe Italian? More likely English, but maybe she met him in Italy? Also a scholar. Older? From University of Cambridge, or Oxford.
• She went to England (Cambridge or Oxford) to do further research.
• The cover of the second book (I think; it might have been the first) was sort of a pastel-y watercolor, possibly of a river near some academic looking buildings.
• The name might have something to do with a "Rossetti Key"?

Problem is, that's a lot, but also not a lot to go on.

And I looked for a long time - on and off, mostly off, in my defense - and I couldn't find it. But I think I just did!

By Googling "harvard oxford key sequel mystery historian" I found a link to the New York Public Library's page of "Biblio-Mysteries, Lost Books and Forgotten Letters."

First of all, that is an AWESOME page name, and is going to be the new title of this post (rather than the "success at long last???" that I put already). I love all of those things! Nerdy historians who need some escape-time & are turned on by archives, rejoice...  I kind of want to take some time and peruse the list - but, for now, will settle for "storing" the list (access to it, anyways) here.

Secondly, just skimming down the list, I see that the second entry is for The Devlin Diary.

1. Light colors, and there is a picture of a KEY on the cover!
2. Author is a woman, Christi Phillips - women frequently write books with female leads (and men rarely do), so that's a good sign!
3. The annotation says it's about a "new female fellow at Cambridge college [not sure if that means at U of C, or if it's a fake name for Harvard, although I'm thinking both will figure]" who finds a seventeenth century diary and there is "murder, mystery and intrigue in both the present and the past" - all stuff I thought.
4. Annotation also notes (heh) that it's the sequel to...The Rossetti Letter! Four points for the win!

I need to check if this is the series I am thinking of, but it must be. Then I will check to see if there have been any new developments.

Embarrassingly for me, though, the author's name is suddenly seeming very familiar...like, I think I may have even typed it in as a tag on this blog. Which means that either I could have in theory looked up the damn thing on the blog (which was the whole point of starting it, so I would be able to keep track of my for-fun reading) OR that I have documented this very same quest on the blog (which means just in the couple of years), which is even worse...

I am scared to post this and then check the "Card Catalogue" for Ms. Phillips, but it must be done.

In any case, good to have tracked down the series, and maybe there will be some awesome new books on this NYPL list.

PS - have been in LOVE with the NYPL website recently. They have an amazing wealthy of information (graphics-heavy, in a good way - their digital gallery is insane), well beyond their catalogue. You can really use the site for research, not just as a tool for research, if that makes sense. That is to say, you can learn stuff (and see tons of contemporary documents and art, which is what makes my heart flutter) from the site, not just use it to identify & locate other resources you then need to access. And it looks gorgeous too.

Seriously puts the Boston Public Library's site to shame. Which is a shame. I don't like to concede that NYC can be better than Boston, but they are whipping us, in this case. Just the homepages alone are barely comparable (and we lose the comparison).

PPS - YEP. Totally already had the author and books in here. In June of 2010 I made a specific point of mentioning, and tagging, her in a post I also tagged "books I want to read" so that I would be able to track her down in the future. In my (admittedly weak) defense, the list of "books I want to read" does keep getting longer, so it's not like I ever actually searched that (or remembered it was a tag).

So, this is kind of interesting...

New York Times / Books



Electronic Mini-Books That Allow Writers to Stretch Their Legs


By DWIGHT GARNER


Published: March 6, 2012


Kindle Singles are works of long-form journalism that seek out that sweet spot between magazine articles and hardcover books.
 
 
I thought I could make that look nicer...anyway, I wasn't aware of these "singles" (which makes me think of slices of American cheese, but whatever), in part, I am sure, because I am desperately trying to stick to "real," flesh and blood (or paper and ink) books.
 
But I like this idea a lot. Essays, in general, are just a great idea. And these remind me of the broadsides of yore - quick, cheap, accessible to the masses but also potentially brilliant and thought-provoking.
 
Nice.

A "Tourney of Books"?!

Well, I am calling it a tourney, anyways, but not like a "Tournament of Books" needs to get any cooler.
http://www.themorningnews.org/article/here-comes-the-rooster
How did I not know this was a thing? And, if I was going to come to it late, couldn't I have come at least a little earlier, so I could read everything on the shortlist before the thing kicks off on Wednesday (March 7)??

Of the sixteen books

Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Teju Cole, Open City

Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

Alan Hollinghurst, Stranger’s Child

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife

Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table

Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

Donald Ray Pollock, Devil All the Time

Karen Russell, Swamplandia

Kate Zambreno, Green Girl*

I've only ready one (Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers) although most of them are on my to-read list (although that's not saying much; they're pretty representative of the books that were on everyone's to-read list in 2011, not to mention the Times' reviews), and some I've actually taken possession of.

This week is pretty busy for me, too, so I won't have a lot of time to read (although it's practically all I did just this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, whoops)...maybe I can adjust the game so part of it is anticipating the top 4, and seeing if I can get those read before they advance to the final slots in the bracket?

I just need to finish The Night Circus first, which I began last night, at long last, on my brother's recommendation. Huh. We were meant to swap that book for my copy of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but I just realized I didn't give it to him. Oh, well. The valiant men & women of the U.S. postal service shall have that honor at some point. Maybe when I mail my friend's shirt back to him in New Jersey...that would be good to remember to do, too...

*the titles were cut & pasted from the Tournament announcement (see link above), and link to, I think, Powell's Books. I don't know how to get rid of the links easily, and since I have no problem with Powell's (quite the opposite) see no reason to waste time trying to, but if it should matter down the road...not mine.

I generally don't write about books before I've read them, but I can't get my hands on The Lifespan of a Fact yet, as excited as I am to read it (I've requested that the library order it, so now I need to wait). But I've been hearing about it for a while, and am eagerly anticipating getting to watch the drama - essayist vs. fact-checker - unfold, and in the mean time, the New York Times has an interesting take (the article itself is interesting, vs. the viewpoint, in particular) on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/the-fact-checker-versus-the-fabulist.html

The Times also did a review and a hilarious (intentionally?) adapted exerpt from the book.

Basically, the book, credited to John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, traces the history of one of D'Agata's essays, after Fingal, on the publisher's side, calls into question some facts. And D'Agata, being who he is, takes umbrage not so much with Fingal's questioning of the accuracy of the facts, but with the latter's concern that the facts be accurate.

"Accuracy" in nonfiction is something I have struggled with for a few years now. More or less up until I took a writing class, Advanced Narrative Nonfiction, I was working under the assumption that nonfiction was "true" and fiction was made-up. Since most of the nonfiction I read was history, and I am a historian by training (or so they tell me) I was used to a pretty rigorous dependence on verifiable facts. Certainly, a lot of speculation was normal, and acceptable, but there was a line, and if you couldn't be damn sure something happened the way you were saying it did, you had to at least be clear when you were moving into the murkier waters of partial evidence and supposition. People weren't always, of course, but that is where peer reviewers and cranky grad students jumped in to rake your argument over the coals.

I think I interrupted the class several times at the beginning of the semester to say things like "but...how can the author be repeating whole conversations she overheard as a child? She can't possibly remember each word. This is at best an approximation of what she thinks was said, based on her memory of the event."

Yes, I was a super annoying and boring pedant. But it bothered me that we were saying this was non-fiction, and yet there were clearly "fictional" - that is to say, wholly or partially based in imagination - aspects.

The professor very patiently led us through a discussion of the...shall we say "grey zone" in modern (and earlier, but whatever) essay writing, in which the emphasis is placed on the overall, sort of metaphysical "truth" of the whole, rather than the quantifiable & confirmable accuracy of the individual elements.

Eventually I (semi-grudgingly) conceded (sort of) the point. My "eureka!" moment came when I realized that, humor aside, the Colberian "truthiness," which delighted me when it first came out, could be applied. It was a little like when I finally figured our the distinction between "gender" and "sex" (in so far as historiography, that is). More to the point, though - much like pornography, some things are accurate, but others are "real," in ways, without being strictly, by-the-book, real, and you just need to let it slide, and see the work as a whole, and in its place in the grander scheme of things.

I was actually quite proud of myself. I am not exactly prone to accepting new and different viewpoints, so I felt very open-minded and intellectually advanced. That acceptance, though, created in part by our discussion which featured D'Agata and his philosophies prominently, was frequently challenged by my irritation with my idiot classmates (not all of them, but a solid percentage).

It turns out I can roll with a lot more blurring of the lines between nonfiction/fiction and real/not-real, even leaving aside the fact I had supposedly learned those were not necessarily corresponding categories, when in the hands of an accomplished writer like D'Agata. So I have never quite decided how I feel about the whole thing, although I am decidedly clear on the fact that better writers can get away with more.

Generally, though, I tend to think that if something can be verified, it should be, and facts should be used carefully. This may be my history background again; I am really sensitive to how easily facts can be manipulated, and even something as seemingly solid as figures can be used to argue differing, even opposing, points.

"Facts," particularly when presented as "the truth" or as being "real," can be very, very dangerous. So it makes me nervous when they are handled carelessly...carelessly isn't the right word, but I can't think of a better one at the moment...without due caution?

In any case - it's an intriguing question, and one that I enjoy following down its twisty logic roads. Hence, this super-long and probably unnecessary post about a book I haven't even read yet. But it's a good excuse to get the links on here so I won't forget about them, because I want to go back and read the reviews/comments again after I read the book.

And just for fun:

Truthiness is a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

For the full, awesome Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

Ooops

I forgot; at some point recently I read The Flight of Gemma Hardy, by Margot Livesey. It was fine. A re-telling, more or less, of Jane Eyre, although probably "homage" would be a nicer way to put it.

I ALSO forgot - I had flagged a couple of lines I particularly liked, and just noticed now when I was getting ready to return the book (Lamont wants it back, darn them).

"In the last year Louise, as visitors often remarked, had blossomed. She carried her new breasts around like a pair of deities seeking rightful homage. Privately I called them Lares and Penates, after the Roman household gods" (8).

I just love that that middle sentence. It's succinct, funny, erudite. Generally speaking, now that I think about it more, the book was really rather well-written. It's origins in Bronte are clear: it's about an unloved orphan sent by her cruel aunt to a miserable boarding school, who eventually becomes the governess (more or less) to the ward of semi-brooding older man, flees him after a wedding-morning revelation, is taken up by a kindly family and then spurns the proposal of the brother... Clearly nothing to give away, there.

But it was a good story in its own right, although there's no way you can read it and not have Jane Eyre before your eyes with every page. The characters are better than the plot, but Livesey updates and changes Bronte's well. Probably my biggest concern with the book, such as it was, was the story's rather timeless nature - and I am not sure that was a good thing. I don't mean timeless in that the story and its inhabitants are accessible to readers of any generation or era. Rather, I never knew quite when the events of the story were taking place.

There were not all that many references that could really tie it down to a specific period, so when there were mentions of more identifiable technology, fashion, or trends, I was always taken aback. Part of this was certainly due to the Eyre influence; I think my brain was always stuck in Jane's time period, and not Gemma's. When there was some reference to a the modern (late fifties / early sixties) setting, I was always caught off guard. And it didn't help that the events, particularly the horrid treatment of orphaned children at the boarding school, seem too Dickensian (or Bronte-ian) to have taken place at the same time my mother, for example, was going to school. And then Gemma is coming of age in the sixties, when so much was going on, and her whole world is contained in a few small villages, a few families. Was semi-rural Scotland really so far out of step with the rest of the world? I can't think so, so it must just be how Livesey wrote the book.

It might also be Gemma, though. She's a better character in the beginning, when she is a sharp, observant, quick-witted and funny child. As a young woman, she seems terribly slow at times, and flees her Mr. Rochester sadly, but without much passion. Sometimes it seemed like her spirit was crushed at school, unlike Jane's, so much of whose appeal is her angry defiance of the life there, and the life the school intended for her.

Ultimately, if you're fond of Jane Eyre (as I am, very much), this is a respectful and respectable updating of that book - but it doesn't present any compelling reason why you would want to read an updating, other than as a pleasant pastime. Livesey seems like a strong writer, though, and I would be interested in how her prose expands in a story of her own creation.

More Austen, & etc.

As I was sitting down to write this post, I was thinking it had been a very themed weekend - specifically, Georgian/Regency, with Intrigue! And Ratafia!(whatever the hell that is - I keep meaning to look it up - I feel like it's some kind of gross Orangina-type drink, for ladies?) And Muslin! And Rakes!

And then I saw that that was kind of my last post, too...

So - some time this past week I started the latest Stephanie Barron (or, at least, the latest in the series I like), Jane and the Canterbury Tale; Being a Jane Austen Mystery. I assume that the subtitle is not really part of the title, but I like to make it nice and period-appropriate. And, totally unplanned, I moved on this weekend to another early nineteenth century caper, this one with spying rather than murder, but still lots of muslin, Lauren Willig's latest Pink Carnation episode, The Garden Intrigue.

As to the first; I think I started it Monday or Tuesday (I remember climbing into bed a little tipsy and very tired, and since I seem to be living my life backwards these days, that would place us at the beginning of the week) but didn't finish it until this morning (Sunday), since I never read for that long. Mostly because I was tired, but also because it just wasn't the kind of book where I couldn't put it down, and was making the time to read it.

I fell in love with this series years and years ago; probably before the first one had been out in paperback for long, and I'm not even sure if the first one came out in hardcover, since back then they (the paperbacks) were mass market and much less slickly turned out. There was a character I was very fond of who died, sometime when I was in grad school, and after that I just haven't felt as much for the remaining characters or the books themselves. So that might be some of it.

But the bigger problem is that they're starting to just feel dull, like we're going through all the same events, with the same people, and the same "reveals," just altered in minor ways. Barron also seems to be struggling a bit, or at least her editors are. There were some small, but noticeable mistakes and I had some issues with the tone.

The thing that I used to really appreciate about the books was Barron's ability to mimic Austen's language - vocabulary, pacing, little, loving nods to lines from the latter's novels - without it feeling forced or gratuitous. Now it kind of does. Like, some period spellings - fine.  But make them count. Every time she used the word "romantickal" (to be fair, I think it was only twice), I felt like I was being hit over the head with "hey! It's ye olden days!" We get it. But, for what it's worth, I think Barron still does a better job than the plethora of other authors trying to ape Jane's style (AHEM, P.D. James, I'm not letting you off the hook for that travesty so easily). When has a character say "It will not fadge, and you know it" (44), I knew basically what he was saying (it won't work, more or less), but the contemporary language grounded the character. And I could tell from context that a "succession-house" (48) must be a greenhouse, but it sounded old and English.  I had no idea what the etymology of the phrase "grass widow" was, but I spent some pleasant minutes trying to figure it out.



Finished up Jane this afternoon, and then immediately started Garden Intrigue. Not because of the chronological similarities, but because it had just come last week in the mail (I ordered it from B&N the day it came out, using a coupon & a Valentine's Day gift card, so it was free, sweet!) and I had made myself wait to read it until the week was over and I had turned in some reports I really had to focus on. So I started it this afternoon - and finished it tonight. So, am I about to say that it's not as good as the earlier books in the series, and that I am getting disenchanted? Yes. Was I also enchanted enough to read the whole thing in the course of the afternoon? Also yes.

Honestly, I think the marathon reading was more about the fact I had kind of an awful week, and a lot of stuff going on in my life that I wanted to avoid, so escaping into a book - light enough I didn't have to really focus, not so fluffy I could still brood while I read - was a good option for a Sunday. Doing the work I brought home probably would have been a better idea, but it's not like it's anything with a "due date," and in any case, that's neither here nor there.

It's not that I didn't enjoy Garden Intrigue, because I did. It was funny in places, romantic (kind of) in others, and it suggested that the cranberry muffins at Broadway Market are good, so I will have to check those out (although I am annoyed with the place at the moment). But again, it's getting oooooold.  Couple whose early verbal sparring is an obvious prelude to them falling in love, after some misunderstandings, and then a scene where they haltingly admit their love? Check. Interspersed romantic and personal entanglements of a modern-day history Ph.D.? Check. Some issues with a threat to British national security and/or an attempt against the French (the former bad, the latter good)? Check. But suspense, or excitement? Not so much.

I want to be fair. Willig is, I think, great with pacing. She knows just how to build and hold a chapter, and when to cut it off; she spaces out the modern sections well, tying the action in twenty-first century England to what was going on in Napoleonic France (in this book) and also cutting off the reader when something big(ish) is about to happen in the main narrative, heightening what suspense there is. But in this book, there just wasn't that much suspense.

Obviously, in any book like this, you know basically what is going to happen because a) Napoleon never does take over the world, so you know the right side - that's the British, by the by, as much as my brother might not like it - win, and b) it's a romance novel, whatever other pretensions it might have, so there will be a happy ending. Now Willig might not concur with my thoughts on romance novels, and I am probably being overly judge-y, but this book, even more than the others in the series, just seemed to be so consumed with the romantic aspects of the plot that the spy part got lost. Or maybe it's just that there wasn't much spy part to begin with?

While the protagonist, Emma, was an appealing character, I prefer the books in the series where the female main characters actually know, at least to an extent, what they're involved with, and not just in the concluding chapters of the book. It gives them more to do. I don't know...I can't put my finger on it, this one just seemed extra formulaic, and when nothing is a surprise, or even a little unexpected, it takes away from the journey.

Like Jane and the Canterbury Tale, this one had some editing issues, too - at least, I think so. It was stupid stuff, like using the same name (of a poet) in adjacent paragraphs (and they were dialogue-paragraphs, so they were practically adjacent lines), and forgetting the accent over the e in the name the second time around (310). Or missing a word here and there, or using the wrong word (off by a couple letters). "If he loved and lovely hopelessly" (283) had me puzzled for a bit, until I decided that it should have been "if he loved and loved hopelessly" - unless it's a quote I don't know? There's nothing in Google about it, other than a GoogleBooks citation of Garden Intrigue.

The worst is when a character is described as wearing a waistcoat when throughout the whole d*** book they've made a big deal out of the fact that he never does (350). I mean, even just a few pages earlier. I actually kept re-reading the page, trying to figure out if I had missed something...like him putting on a waistcoat. I'd rather think that I missed something, because if it IS a mistake, than it's so egregious, it makes me feel differently about the book. Because if the author, and editors, people who should really care about the book, didn't even read the final draft closely enough to catch something like that, when why should they expect the readers to care?

 Is that mean? I mean, I'm waiting for the first draft of my boss' book to come back from the publishers for us to edit soon, and I know how hard it was just getting the ms off to them. I know that we've been going back and forth on the cover illustration (forget the overall design), because of everything from if the colors are appealing enough to if the image gave the wrong impression (that was my objection - the publishers for some reason decided to use an old engraving showing brutal, brutish Indians slaughtering poor, innocent whites. Because obviously that is both totally historically accurate and representative AND is the point of the book. Sure. I felt bad being like "HELL no" to my boss, genius that he is, and a big-wig at a big-deal press, but someone had to) but still. READ YOUR OWN BOOK. I'm not saying it's Willig's fault, but someone on her team should have caught something like that. Again, IF it's a mistake, and I do truly hope that it's not, and it's just me missing something.

Hmph. I dunno. I seem to just be b*tching about these, but when I was reading them, while I was disappointed, I also passed some pleasant time, if that makes any sense. And I'll definitely keep going with the two series (how do you pluralize "series" anyways?). If the authors return to their original form, fantastic, because there was a time when I really loved them. And even if they stay where they are, I will keep reading, because I've grown fond of the characters.

But I think I need a palate-cleanser of some contemporary fiction and some non-fiction right now!