Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Writers who read and readers who write

On my commute home, I listened to Francine Prose talk about her book Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them on KQED's radio show Forum. (What decade do you think host Michael Krasny's photo is from?)

I was a big fan of her latest novel, A Changed Man, so was curious to hear what she had to say about the craft of writing. And listening to a writer who loves books (see also Jane Smiley) talk about books is lovely. So it made up for the fact that my bus was late and then stalled, stretching the commute out to the full hour.

Prose has a list of 100+ "Books to Read Immediately" at the back of her book, so you know I'll be checking that out.

Also moving back up my list: Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers, a book that has languished because I never feel quite "ready" for it.

Book Awards, So Cal style (and other updates)

A reunion, a car accident, and a cold later....

Erin is back with reading updates.

I re-read Jane Austen's Persuasion last week (for the book club). I think Anne Elliott is a mysterious character: not as vivacious as Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse, but not as much of a mouse as Fanny Price. She remains, yet, a bit of a cipher in relation to the strong personalities around her. But Austen remains as witty, and comfortable, and biting, and evocative as ever.

Another book that's been on my list won at the 2006 Southern California Booksellers Association awards: Literacy and Longing in L.A., by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack. It's supposed to be readerly chick lit, and I'm looking forward to it as a light escape and a reminder that other people in this city are also obsessed with books.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Yay!!!

I'm on my way to my college reunion, but first:

Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize in Literature

The NY Times article lede:
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose uncommon lyrical gifts and uncompromising politics have brought him acclaim worldwide and prosecution at home, won the Nobel literature prize Thursday for his works dealing with the symbols of clashing cultures.

And the Swedish Academy:
in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city [Pamuk] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.


More thoughts coming soon...

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Post-nuclear dystopias

Right in time for North Korea to go nuclear, I finished reading Tatyana Tolstaya's The Slynx, a tale of a future Moscow after the Blast. While some have survived (and gained virtual immortality) to remember the good old days, most know only this world: primitive and strange. Everyone has a Consequence from the radiation, ranging from extra limbs to feathers (and more).

I don't want to say too much about it, because it's going to be a future selection in our Russian literature book club. But it's a fascinating satire of Soviet Russia, as well as a deeply disturbing portrait of the Russians' historical tendency toward cults of personality.

On another note, books play a huge role in the novel, as the main character becomes obsessed with reading:
I only wanted books - nothing more - only books, only words, it was never anything but words - give them to me, I don't have any!
It's terrifying to imagine - what if there was nothing left to read?! Luckily, that's unlikely to ever be a problem for me! :)

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Trouble in Education

It has been a busy time at the Library. Catching up on some reading, and checking out some books for an upcoming book club. (Anyone interested in a 6 novel "history of Russian literature" group?) And also lots of work.

But on a guilty pleasure trip to the library on Saturday (I wanted a romance novel - it shall not be reviewed here, as I've already revealed too much about an occasional weakness), I finally broke down and checked out my first audio book.

I went with Jonathan Kozol's The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, which had been hovering at the edges of my book list. Kozol has been writing for some time about how public schooling is failing American children; this is a pretty damning indictment of our self-congratulation of Brown v. Board of Ed while letting the schools reossify into middle-class white and lower-class of color. And lest you think this is "separate but equal," curricula and even recess are entirely different matters. And how disgusting is the administrators' euphemism "diverse" for schools that are anything but, over 90% African-American. That's not diversity, it's just not whiteness.

This is a touchy subject for me, as I've wondered what I would do if I were raising my own future children in Los Angeles. I don't think most of the schools are good enough for my children; yet I believe very strongly that more middle-class families have to keep their children in struggling school systems, and work to lift them up. On a more pressing timeline, the Munchkins (aged 7 and 4) are currently attending/will attend a public elementary school, but will they have to go private or charter by junior high?

Also troubling is the relentless emphasis on teaching to the test that Kozol finds in these schools. I have never ever liked standardized testing, although in retrospect it was pretty cool to spend school time on an activity I knew I'd do well on. But precisely because I was the queen of the multiple choice exam, I never believed that it could say all that much about how smart you were. Isn't real learning and intelligence about more than that? And hearing how much time is spent on testing instead of science, history, music, PE, or the silly activities that make school fun made me so mad that I fumed down the street.

Which reminds me... I was listening to the book while walking down the street. I loaded the cds onto iTunes, and from iTunes to my iPod, and was good to go. It's definitely strange to listen to a book, but I think as it goes, nonfiction is the way to break into it. It's all written in one voice - the author's - anyway, and so it feels sort of like a lecture. It a nice way to commute (and also works for grocery shopping).