THE Award Winner...and stuff

Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question just about when I was finishing it - and I think it was the right call, at least based on the four (four and a couple chapters of a fifth, out of six) short-listed books I read.  Of course, I just loved Room, and I don't know that I had as visceral a reaction to The Finkler Question, but over all I think the latter was a better book (and C and Parrot and Olivier were both great, but not in the same class, in my not-all-that-humble-opinion; and this jury of one is still out on The Long Song).  Jacobson deftly combined humor (both subtle and very, very broad) and melancholy, and "threw in" - deliberately, with nuance and gravitas - politics and the continuing, if often overlooked these days, prejudice against Jews.  It's possible I was more attuned to some of the deeper, darker, icier currents because while I was in D.C. the week/end previous I had had a couple talks with E. about present day prejudices, and violence, against Jews around the world and here in the U.S., but I think Jacobson's writing would have had the same impact regardless.  And it's a credit to his writing that you can think so hard about something so serious and a page later - or even later in the page - be snorting over a character's incomprehensible, but hilarious, obliviousness.  The book is also quite British, but certainly lots of the situations are universal.  All in all, well done, judging panel!
Interesting talk with Jacobson in the New York Times following the win; a much better review than I could give, in the same journal.

Housekeeping: my new plan is to only read "scary" books between now (well, last Friday) and Halloween.  So I finished Phil Rickman's Lamp of the Wicked over the weekend (or was it last week?  I was sick most of last week, thank you plane-ride, so that helped, too): the usual.  I am fond of the characters, the plot is pretty predictable.  But when you're waiting for the CVS-brand Nyquil to kick in, that's a pretty solid combination.  And while it wasn't exactly "scary" it was all about things that go bump in the night, and so forth.
I'm making a sort of exception to the scary books marathon for Tana French's Faithful Place.  Faithful readers of this blog (which I'm pretty sure number zero, but I can't resist the faithful/faithful) will know that I just adore French's books, so when I picked it up from the circulation desk on Friday I would have had a hard time not starting it, in any case, and in this case I have ten days to read it, so I figure it's got dead bodies (okay, one so far, but there might be more), and rats, so that is scary.  Kinda. 
I've dropped P.D. James' The Black Tower: it was hardly gripping me Sunday (although, to be fair, I was drunk/sick and on a plane), but then I finished C, and then read The Finkler Question, and by then it had been almost a week and I had already forgotten all the character's names, so I figure I can just start from scratch some time in the future.  In any case, sure as hell not reading James instead of French!

More award winners and stuff

Sick today, so a little mentall foggy on what I've read recently...
Read another of the Booker books, C by Tom McCarthy; I really liked it, but hard to cartegorize for sure,
or even really to discuss.  I got a little lost with the radio stuff early on - maybe I just wasn't bright enough to understand it, but there was a decent section of book (maybe the second fifth?) that was prettty boggy going.  I got back into it once the scene shifted to the Bavaria, and enjoyed it from there on.  The C theme was a little over-worked, but okay.  Again, the early chapters were a little annoyingly verbose, but by the second half I was in love with the way McCarthy was writing, particularly the descriptions.






I read the latest Stephanie Barron mystery featuring Jane Austen, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, while I was on the way to and in D.C. for the Fall Meeting.  Of course, I enjoyed it - Barron has a great character in Jane Austen, Lady-Detective, and I remain impressed by how believeable the books are, but I was not as in love with this installment as I have been with others.  Barron seemed to be straining a bit to maintain the historical "voice" - I mean, seriously, how many times in one book can you use the word "goosecap"??  I get it, contemporary flavor.  But let it go, too...  I don't know.  I still liked it, definitely, but there was this nagging, tiny voice in the back of my head telling me that things could have been better, at least, even if they weren't bad.  Having Jane go head-to-head with her fellow author, Byron, was super fun, though, and it was interesting having this book be set after the anonymous author of Pride and Prejudice is getting famous.  Sad, though, that the Gentleman Rogue was a significant, albeit dead, presence in this story, and I miss him so much!!!

Currently plowing my way through The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson: another one of the Booker contestants, which I have to finish in 24 hours so I can get it back, because someone else requested it.
I started The Lamp of the Wicked, Phil Rickman, longer ago than I can remember, and started The Black Tower, P.D. James, when I was in D.C., but I was too drunk (that includes on the plane home) to really focus on it...which is funny, because it was one of the ones I picked up for less than a song at the Harvard Bookstore one day when I was too drunk/hungover to deal with life...

Parrot and Olivier in America

The latest in my perusal of this year's Booker nominees, this novel by the prolific author Peter Carey left me a little disappointed.  Based more than loosely on Tocqueville's adventures in America, the book is told, in alternating chapters, in the voices of a young-ish French nobleman packed off to safety in America following the July Revolution and his older, English servant - who has also been sent along to spy on him.  It's possible this book just suffered by comparison, since I had just finished the phenomenal Room when I started Parrot and Olivier in America, but for whatever reason, the beginning was sloooooow going, particularly the chapters recounting Olivier's youth and his time in Paris prior to departing on a trumped-up tour of American penal institutions. 

The chapters told from Parrot's point of view were much more engaging, right from the beginning.  I'm sure part of this is because the former's voice was really rather annoying - indirect, inane, and self-absorbed.  This was clearly deliberate on Carey's part, and did a good job of establishing Olivier as a character, but I didn't like him, and I didn't find him funny or interesting enough to outweigh disliking his character.  Parrot has a more straightforward and broadly comic voice that I dealt with better, and the Dickensian adventures that shape his cynical adult personality are fun to watch unfold.

Olivier becomes funnier and more likeable towards the end (not coincidentally when his world starts cracking up a little), and downright useful in the closing passages, as Carey uses him to make the points we've been heading towards the whole way through.  The book requires quite a lot of willing suspension of disbelief, but it works (reminded me of Murder on the Orient Express - where can all these people come together but America?!), and I really enjoyed Carey's descriptive writing.

So, overall definitely positive, I guess (although it really took me 3/4 of the book to get there), but no Room, if we're ranking the nominees.

The Girl Who Was So Not Disappointed

Oh.  My.  God.  Just finished Room by Emma Donoghue this second, and it was so f***ing amazing.  Touching and terrible, and sweet and sad, and funny, all at the same time.  Everything seemed just perfectly spot-on, although I don't really know how people would think if they were locked in a room by a vicious monster for years, so I could be wrong, of course.  But the emotions and ways of coping and communicating seem realistic.  I knew what the story was about before I started reading the book, so I wonder if coming into it blind would have changed the experience, but if anything, I think it would only have been even more amazing to figure out with the little boy, Jack, that there is a whole other world outside the room he has spent his whole life in.  This was the first of this year's Booker Prize contestants I've read, and I have to say, while I will be grabbing two more on my way home tonight, I can't imagine that they will be better - or, at least, that they will affect me in the same way and stay with me as long.  So amazing.

The Girl Who Was Disappointed

So, finished the third Stieg Larsson mystery the other day, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and I have to say - I just don't get it.  The books are fine, but the world-wide frenzy for them?  Really?  And this one was probably the weakest - there wasn't even an actual mystery, really, it's just part two (the wrap-up) part, of the mysteries from The Girl Who Played With Fire.  Interesting, but not gripping.  Played is the best, in my opinion, but I really think the trilogy is actually a duo: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and then a two-volume sequel, which for some reason was published with two titles given to the two parts.  But I would not consider Kicked to have any credibility as a stand-alone, and maybe it's not supposed to be, but for something as hyped-up as this series, it should be.

But "Steig" makes me think of William Steig, author of such classics as Doctor De Soto and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, so that's good...

Obviously, I've read all three now, so I don't hate them.  I rather enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo when I first read it (was it years ago, now?) and the same for Played, but it's always been a casual kind of thing.  Certainly I waited until I could get my hands on a library copy to read Kicked - I will, and do, spend a hell of a lot of money on books, but not on this one.  Not even if the mass market paperback had come out right away, and that's saying a lot.

On the other hand, just started Room, by Emma Donoghue, this morning on the bus, and am so impressed.  I guess I "could" put it down, in so far as I had to, when my boss walked into the office, but I didn't want to - I think I actually felt a physical ache as it left my hands.  I can absolutely see why it was shortlisted for the Booker prize.

A Pig in Sh*t

So, I am going to be happily wallowing soon - saw Noni this weekend and she gave me a brand-new, gorgeous looking copy of The Long Song, by Andrea Levy, which I have been meaning to read for a while.  And with that in mind, when I was reading a little piece about this year's Man Booker short-list in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/sep/07/man-booker-prize-shortlist-2010), I started running through Hollis looking for what else is out there.  Managed to reserve the on-order copies of C (Tom McCarthy), The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobsen), and Parrot and Olivier in America (Peter Carey), which means I will have in my hot little hands 4 of the 6 nominees.  Room (Emma Donoghue) and In A Strange Room (Damon Galgut) were both checked out already, and I didn't think I should recall them...although one is due in 2 days anyhow, so maybe I should, before someone else get it...  That's probably enough to have on the shelf, thought, especially since - beyond the normal lack of space for my "to read" collection - I already today picked up Conspirata, the sequel to Imperium, and requested from deposit The Red Velvet Turnshoe (I don't even know what that is, but I like the name a lot!), the sequel to Hangman Blind.  Speaking of those two, I read both over the weekend.
Started Hangman Blind, by Cassandra Clark (can that really be her real name?  good for her if it is) after the Rickman book (hmm, should consider having some of those on hand for sick days).  I liked it, I guess.  A bit predictable, especially with the love interests, and some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing on the same for the next books (I was reading it and thinking, okay, it's like she's setting us up for fictional r&d ("revelations and developments" - yes, just coined that phrase...I think...) for another book, and then sure enough I was reading the quotes on the cover later, and one of them revealed that Hangman Blind was intended as the commencement of a series featuring the book's main character, Sister Hildegard.  Hildegard, a recent widow & nun in 1382 England is a decent character, not too prone to anachronistic independence or feminism.  And what she has of both (and I've read enough of these types of novels to know that you can't escape them in a heroine) is fairly legitimately explained by her being the widow of a rich man - thus, she has some exposure to the world, and learning, and also more freedom than as a married woman.  It's not perfect, by any means, but it works - enough so, clearly, that I'm going to read the sequel - and Clark does a nice job showing the unsettled nature of a time and place where Saxons struggle still against Norman overlords, even if the Conqueror is long since buried, and two popes vie for supremacy as Wat Tyler's followers look for a new direction, and a young king and his supporters and enemies try to rule England.
Imperium, by Robert Harris, was the next book, and it wasn't what I was expecting - in a good way.  Much less the toga-clad, murder-mystery pot-boiler I was expecting, and more a fun, super accessible tale of Cicero's rise to prominence.  I had put Imperium on the "to read" list because it's the predecessor to Conspirata which got a Select 70 mention in a Harvard Bookstore flyer this winter (I think this winter?) - and that, I thought, was a murder mystery that happened to be set in Cicero's Rome.  But this, purportedly the memoirs of Cicero's personal secretary/slave, Tiro, talks about how Cicero trained as an orator, prominent cases and speeches, and takes us from his initial entrance into Roman political life to his election as Consul in 64 BCE.  It really was quite fun - all the gossip and scandal and deal-mongering of today's elections and politics, but with togas :)  The issue of imperium in the Roman Republic could have been drawn out more, but that would have been a different book...