I'm re-reading again

Reading a book on the computer is a strange experience still to me. Especially when it's a book set in the early nineteenth century. Anyway, yay Jane Austen. Yay Persuasion.

Sometimes I re-read books

Mating Rituals of the North American WASP - Lauren Lipton

This book lodged itself so firmly in my head, I had to buy it used, and to spend stolen moments here and there reading it again, falling a little bit in love. Thanks Lauren Lipton :)

Your first is always special - L.A. Times

We all know that, right? Turns out that the Times is playing coy, about reading no less.

We're passionate about books -- and about encouraging reading. So is First Book, a nonprofit organization founded 15 years ago with the mission of getting new books into the hands of needy children.

Krasinski has good taste in books

Well played, dear newspaper. Except I haven't really seen the evidence of this book passion and reading encouragement in print (um, combining the book review with the Sunday opinion section anyone?). Of course, there is always the Festival of Books, and that makes up for a lot of faults.

But I digress. The point is First Book's survey: What book got you hooked?

More than 100,000 people responded to First Book's poll, www2.firstbook.org/ whatbook/top50.php. The vox pop's top five are:
1. Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene
2. "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss
3. "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott
5. "The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss

"Many of us remember the one book that we wanted to read over and over again -- the book that really stirred our imaginations and left us wanting just one more chapter before bedtime," First Book President Kyle Zimmer told Publishers Weekly. "The fact that there are millions of children in our own country that will grow up without these kinds of memories because they have no access to books is devastating. We are delighted that so many people shared their stories in order to help us shine the spotlight on this critical issue."

Other discoveries: Joyce Carol Oates responded with "Through the Looking Glass," John Krasinski of "The Office" chose Roald Dahl. I think I responded to the survey online a few months back, and entered the Little Golden Books "Monster at the End of this Book," starring Grover. But really, when I think back to my childhood, I couldn't choose just one. I loved Beverly Cleary and her Ramona Quimby so much. And E.L. Konigsburg's A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver helped make me a historian.

Who was your first literary love?

Re-discoveries, Obasan

In twelfth grade, I took the AP exam in English Language. It included a reading passage about a young girl getting on a train with her grandmother, and the accompanying preparations and observations. What made it spectacular was that it was not a voluntary trip - they were Japanese-Canadian, and being relocated to the interior.

This wasn't my first encounter with the internment of North Americans of Japanese descent during WWII; I had read Farewell to Manzanar in middle school. Perhaps more importantly, I was "in love" with Paul Kariya, whose father had been born in a Canadian internment camp.

The passage was gorgeous, and the topic was one that interested me, so I made a note of the novel - Obasan, by Joy Kogawa. That summer, during a drive to Vancouver, I read the book. And while I have yet to meet Paul, I did two projects on the Japanese internment camps while in college.

But I digress. The thing to know about Kogawa is that she writes lyrical, evocative prose. Opening at random, I find the following:

The handwriting in blue-black ink is firm and regular in the first few pages, but is a rapid scrawl later on. I feel like a burglar as I read, breaking into a private house only to discover it's my childhood house filled with corners and rooms I've never seen.

Or another:

I stand beside her and over the redness of my body she scrubs vigorously, like an eraser over a dirty page. The dead skin collects in little rolls and falls off into the water. She exclaims at the rolls.

And it builds to a painful, yet still poetic, crescendo. Lovely, just lovely.

Re-discoveries, Russian style (part 2)

One of my favorite things about Leonid Tsypkin's Summer in Baden-Baden is saying Baden-Baden out loud. And that really proves what a big dork I am b/c there is so much to like about this novel.

I first learned about it sometime in the fall of 2001, when Susan Sontag wrote about it in the New Yorker. It was a lost novel, written in the 1970s Soviet Union in secret. Sontag gushed, and provided the introduction for the English translation. (Kudos to the translators, Roger and Angela Keys, who must have had their hands full, but more on that later.) I haven't read much Sontag, so couldn't know whether our tastes aligned, but this was one of the best book recommendations I've ever gotten. (That same fall, the New Yorker also turned me on to Orhan Pamuk and My Name is Red - there must have been some sort of perfect storm of literary taste-making.)

Tsypkin - more or less - is one main character of the novel; he's on a train to Leningrad, reading the diary of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's wife Anna. At the same time, Fyodor and Anna are traveling to Baden-Baden, Germany, to take the waters. Also, Dostoyevsky falls prey to a gambling addiction, a humiliating run-in with Ivan Turgenev, and some epileptic fits. It becomes painfully clear how difficult - and yet still rewarding - it must have been to be Anna, amanuensis and caretaker. Reading the final pages of the book (in the sunshine out behind my Berkeley apartment - memorable for whatever reason), tears came to my eyes. I was in love with this book.

Like Dostoyevsky, Tsypkin shows a great eye for detail, demonstrating the Russian realism that was warped into Soviet socialist realism. And as is much easier to do in Russian than English (but done, thanks to the Keys's), he employs run-on sentences and paragraphs, building clauses upon one another for a rich layered effect. Plus Tsypkin - most likely typical for any thinking Soviet citizen of his era - is keenly aware of the juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the sublime.

To sum up, Summer in Baden-Baden is extraordinary.

Re-discoveries: Murakami

I love Haruki Murakami. My first encounter with him was probably in a New Yorker short story, but I first discovered him the summer after graduating from college, reading Norwegian Wood. It was haunting and sad and lovely. Most of his short stories are as well. And then there is the utterly bizarre The Wind-up Bird Chronicles. This novel is fantastical and nonsensical - like a dream that seems normal while you're in it, and then you wake up and think "what?!" Like Tom Robbins. (Another re-discovery that should be on my list: Jitterbug Perfume.)

I have heard (but have no immediate source) that Murakami is somewhat derided in Japan for his embrace of Western pop culture and literary style. Having no deep knowledge of the Japanese version of either of these, I can't tell. But I do know that his commentary of the isolation and search for human connections in modern life rings true to me.

Re-discoveries, mad romantic

The English Patient has pulled off the accomplishment of being among my all-time favorites in both novel and movie form. (The film's soundtrack, for one, is stunning.) Michael Ondaatje is amazing - when I read the novel at age 17, I had never come across anything quite like it.

While the film has two main narratives (present and past), each goes in roughly chronological order. The novel goes into the past of more characters, and completely mixes up the chronology in favor of an unveiling, piece by piece, of the characters and their tales. And the descriptions - they are lyrical and haunting. Ondaatje has also published collections of poetry, and it shows in his prose.

God, I love this book. It's been so long since I've read it, I can't give specific details. But reading it is like stepping into a whole other world, and putting yourself into Ondaatje's very sure hands.

Re-discoveries, Russian style

The random choice for this week turned out to be Resurrection, by David Remnick. It's the follow-up to his Pulitzer-Prize winning Lenin's Tomb, from his reporting from the final days of the Soviet Union. These books are stunning - and Remnick became my hero, a status that only grew when he took over at the New Yorker.

These are both long books, especially the latter, but are well worth the read. Remnick is an amazing observer, and weaves the incredible tale of Glasnost into a coherent narrative. In Resurrection, the story is the nascent Russian democracy, and the Yeltsin's struggle for reelection. It's less than ten years old, but already you can see how far the Russian republic has slipped from its post-Soviet aspirations. There was a period where the enormous wealth and corruption didn't necessarily have to lead to an autocratic president.

As a trained Russian historian, these two books are obviously a little form of nirvana (I took Lenin's Tomb with me to Italy) but anyone interested in current events and politics - or even just excellent reporting - will get a lot out of Remnick's work.