Revisiting 2008

Running a program and being back in school don't exactly lend themselves to lots of reading and writing and thinking about reading and writing. Well, thinking some. I was constantly sad that I didn't have more time to read. Or didn't make more time to read. Probably both.

Anyway, I wanted to revisit a couple of the goals I had mentioned for the year. Last year I set the goal of finishing all of my 2007 New Yorkers before the end of the year. (And succeeded with 2 days to spare.) This year, I am still working on the November 17 issue. So I will finish this year 5 issues behind. (Also, it is dangerous to read coverage of Election Night, even now, while at the gym, b/c when you get all weepy and choked up, you then start worrying that people are thinking you are going to pass out b/c the elliptical machine is clearly just too much for you.)

I also joined the Russian Reading Challenge and made it through all 4 (plus one) of those books. In that post, I also claimed I would read another 5 books that I already owned. It appears that I read 7 (there were a couple more, but they were books I purchased this year, so don't count). In total, I read something more than 38 books. (There are some that don't get posts because they are texts for class or I am embarrassed about them. Plus I did a fair amount of re-reading of older books this year too. But anyway...)

Goals for next year? Honestly, I don't know what to expect. 2009 promises to bring a LOT of changes, and I don't know what that's going to mean for me and reading. I guess that I should commit to reading another 10 books that I already own. This would probably be easier if I selected them and listed them here, but that's just not going to happen. Not tonight.

Happy New Year to all! May 2009 bring a lot of happy change for us all.

Anne's secret diary? Kinda boring

Since this has seemed to be a kind of Elizabethan year (not providing links to past entries), I figured I would bring it to a close with the novel my mom lent me: The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, by Robin Maxwell. I knew it wasn't likely to be "good" but I figured it could probably be pretty fun. And it's kind of a kick to compare all the pop culture portrayals of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Plus, this offered the bonus of juxtaposing young Elizabeth settling into her reign while learning her mother's fate through her long-hidden diary.

Um, no. It wasn't bad per se, and the idea that it was Anne's fate that led Elizabeth to spurn marriage where she would have to submit to a man is a nice conceit, but it didn't really have any kick. Perhaps I'm just spoiled now and want something sexier and more colorful. Or perhaps I'm really ready to return to more serious fare. Either way, I'd say it's probably time to move on.

Light & serious reading = Egypt & Afghanistan

I've been trying to trade off between lighter fare and actual literary fiction. So this week I started out with an Elizabeth Peters mystery - Serpent on the Crown - and then moved on to The Kite Runner, the rather well-known book by Khaled Hosseini. I know there was a movie at the end of 2007, but I don't remember the source of the hype before. Was it a big book club selection?

Anyway, I knew what to expect with the Peters, although really I miss having Ramses as a more interesting character. I'm not sure she knows what to do with him as a full-fledged adult. Somehow I managed to not know much about The Kite Runner, except vaguely about one of the climactic scenes. And I think that Hosseini is a doctor, like Chekhov. (Yep.) But this novel seriously wore me down. Every time you think, okay, enough tragedy, something else goes wrong. Yet I think that Hosseini managed to avoid melodrama, which is impressive. The book is famous enough that I don't really feel like I'll have anything to add to the conversation, esp not today, when I am worn out from hiking in Griffith Park and very ready to go to bed. Perhaps next time I read a book, I'll manage to blog about it when I'm more awake...

New books are just more fun?

See? Just the other day I wrote about how I have a hard time reading the books I actually own. And today I come across a Booklist blog on the same topic. Based on this WSJ article and its comments, Keir Graff muses on the to-read pile.

And yet I still buy and hoard books. I’ve joked–joked–that I’ll have to quit my job as a book reviewer in order to read books. But given that I won’t, I imagine I’ll spend my first months of retirement doing math, dividing the number of pages per day I can read into the number of years I think I have left–and weeding my thousands of books to read accordingly.

Jesus, I hadn't even thought about doing that math. I need to get on this.

But it's mildly reassuring to remember that I'm not alone, b/c we all have more books to read than we ever will read. And we all let books sit for far too long. I think I might be unusual in that I am more likely to use the "But I will like it so much I just want to save it for a little longer" excuse. But in the end, it is still an excuse. And one that gives me time for re-reading Emma and watching deliciously bad teen shows.

Oops (which is also something a Soviet artist who gave up his dreams might say)

I am realizing that I'm not a very good blogger. I forget to post. I prattle on about the wrong things. But then, since I pretty much always intended this as a reading journal, perhaps it doesn't matter that much.

I am also not very good about reading books in a timely manner. Some books, yes. But others will languish unread for years. And strangely enough, this is not because I don't want to read them. (Well, sometimes maybe.) Rather, it is that I am looking so forward to them that I want to prolong the anticipation. I used to do the same thing with my favorite Halloween candy, which backfired when my parents ended up eating all my Twix. And there would often been Cadbury cream eggs in the refrigerator into the fall.

(Hmm, I was just struck with the thought that this delayed gratification streak is one of the things that is really good about getting so many of my books from the library. First, I get the delay while I'm waiting to get to the top of the list. But then! there are deadlines. I have to pick up the book by a certain date, and then I have to get it back to the library, read, just a few weeks later. It's very good for me.)

Anyway, I digress. One of those languishing books, a gift from almost 3 years back, was The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin. (By the way, should I be spending mental energy wondering why Grushin, who grew up in Moscow & Prague before moving to the US, is Grushin instead of Grushina?) In Dream Life, we meet a self-satisfied art magazine editor in his late 50s, who appears to be on top of the world with a cushy job, all the perks of being high up in the Soviet apparatus, and a lovely family. But it's the mid-1980s, and there is a new Party Secretary, and a bunch else is about to begin to change. And more importantly, a quarter century earlier, Sukhanov, a talented artist, put aside his ideologically impure art in favor of security. Now, the decision is coming back to haunt him, literally.

As the past descends on Sukhanov, his grasp on reality and time grows shaky, as he slips into flashbacks. Grushin emphasizes these transitions by seamlessly switching from a third-person present to a third person past to a first-person past. And the flashbacks become longer, and deeper. Not only does the technique enable to reader to see how and why Sukhanov abandoned what he most loved, it also illustrates the way that he is sinking further and further into this dream life. And perhaps has inherited his father's insanity. The end comes in a dizzying whirl.

This reader's reaction to Sukhanov was complicated. His self-satisfied smugness at the opening is irritating, and I couldn't help being happy that he was going to be taken down a peg or two. And yet, especially as his vulnerability comes through, I pitied him, and wanted him to be okay. To somehow take the action that would save his (artistic) soul while remaining safe from the wild currents of history and madness. And the vagaries of bureaucratic displeasure. What can I say? I have an over-protective nature.

Grushin was a teen in Moscow in the mid1980s. I hope that her fiction will continue to engage this confusing and heady era, shedding light on how Russians of all stripes faced the promise and peril of the times.

AWWWW! I have one of those too.

Cats and books go well together. But you knew that already.

Also, I've been re-reading books in between writing papers. Like comfort food, in tough times I turn to Emma and Helen Fielding.