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From My Name is Will:
He probably would get laid at the Faire. He'd been to a Renaissance Faire once before, near L.A., a few month ago - May, was it? - and he'd gotten lucky, way lucky. Jesus, he'd fantasized about it dozens of times since. There was this game, Drench-a-Wench, that involved sling-shotting a wet sponge at an array of wanton maids sitting on a little bleacher of hay bales. If you hit one, you got a kiss. He'd wondered how long that game could possibly last with a new STD being discovered every day. Just for fun, he'd played. [He hits and kisses some blonde, and that was fine and then notices an exotic brunette checking him out, and she says...] "Truly, I am shocked, sir. Paying for thy kisses when thou couldst surely get them free."
Lovely. Just lovely. Anyone wondering how I came to exist, there's your answer right there.
It took awhile to get there, but I finally got my library copy of The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, and read it in 3 sittings on Sunday. (The complete version, by the way is Persepolis 1 & 2 - or 1-4 in the French. So it takes you from her childhood in Iran through schooling in Vienna and back to Iran for college and young adulthood.)Without wanting to look for proof of this, I am sure that others have written more eloquently that I will about the ability of the graphic novel to address trauma and tragedy. (See also: Maus, by Art Spiegelman) Because in some ways it is really seeing the innocence in Marji's big dark eyes that hits home... but without feeling so overwhelming that the reader just turns away. (I was discussing this recently in terms of the way we deal with war veterans, and how our guilt in some ways makes us unwilling to hear and understand them.)I'm not sure what all to say about the book. I am glad I got the complete version and got through everything at once. But I think that reading about the younger Satrapi separately from her teenage and older self would have been good. Clearly, the Islamic Revolution and its impact is a central theme throughout - but in many other ways the child and the teen have very different stories. All very eventful though. To say the least.This is one of those times where I wish I felt more willing to write an insightful review. But I am not there. Maybe because there was an earthquake - and it's still earthquake weather - or maybe just because so much has already been said about Persepolis, the book and when it came out as a film as well. And I have yet to see the film. But I will.(Oh, and I've written about memoirs of life in Islamic Iran before (and here). Just wanted to mention.)
PS - I loved the artwork. I was particularly fond of the depiction of all the little girls in their veils, and God, and more disturbingly the ghosts of the all the lives lost.
Simon loves my books, or rather loves lounging in front of them. He also likes walking on newspapers.Also, this is what happens when you have people bring over books to swap...
(Also, I would like to point out that Simon's book pile includes Catch-22, William T. Vollman, Bros. Karamazov, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. It also has some cheesy historical mysteries too. Plus! My Name is Will!)
Maybe I'm biased, because I seem to have a soft spot for Turkey, or at least for its Nobel laureates. So this story on Treehugger both attracted my attention and raised a little bit of pique. It turns out that the Turkish government has provided free textbooks for schoolchildren. (Yay, obviously.) Except that they give them away, at a cost of $800 million and lots and lots of trees, and then they mostly get thrown out at the end of the year. And so they produce all new ones and the cycle continues."So [and here comes the snark] they’ve come up with an ingenious remedy that some folks have been practicing for centuries, book lending." Students will now return the books at the end of the school year, which is what I did through my years of public education. Not only is this good environmentally and economically, but it can offer Turkish children the opportunity to engage in such fun activities as seeing who had your textbook in years past, and writing in fake "funny" names to entertain future generations of textbook users.
That is me. I kind of like this about myself - I think it's endearing. (If you don't think so, please don't burst my bubble by telling me as much.)Anyway, I've been reading more sporadically than usual (and catching up on Stanford magazine, actually) but after several nights in a row where something kept me from the final 40 pages of The Painted Veil (by W. Somerset Maugham), I am through it.This is the July book club selection, and is a particularly exciting choice because there will also be pizza and movie during the meeting. (Hooray!) I don't like to blog about books before the meeting, b/c then I am over all my "interesting" thoughts. But then I don't like to blog after, b/c by then I'm ready to move on. (This is clearly a dilemma. If you have solutions, let me know. Perhaps I could live-blog the meeting? Because that clearly wouldn't be annoying.)I really liked this book. I could just start and end there; it was thought-provoking and human and obnoxious and unsatisfying and thus terribly satisfying. I was often distracted thinking about the film adaptation and wondering what they would change and whom they cast, etc. And I also found myself drawing analogies to Gone with the Wind, which I think was first published a decade later than this.Instead of getting into all of those things, I'll just leave you with this early passage:He did not speak because he had nothing to say. But if nobody spoke unless he had something to say, Kitty reflected, with a smile, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
So I read a novella last week when I decided to take the bus to work. This book was on my dresser, and I honestly don't remember how it came into my possession. Based on the handwritten notes inside, it belonged to one of two friends (was it you, Jen?) and was from some course or another.What was this mystery book? Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons. It is a coming-of-age tale of sorts. Really more just a girl's look back at how she survived a seriously f-ed up situation. And fortunately for her - and even more so for us as readers - we know that she survived. And has created/found a safe space for herself.I found Ellen's voice fascinating. But I couldn't get into this book. I just wanted to escape. And to take Ellen with me. Too much of a downer for July. But I think it probably makes for excellent young adult fiction (for girls, at least).
I don't remember how I heard about Maynard & Jennica, by Rudolph Delson. Doesn't really matter - it ended up on my list so I requested it from the library. It's billed as a love story, with a lot of minor characters. In this it is perhaps like Beginner's Greek. But this is missing a lot of the sweet. You're not rooting against these lovers, but I'm not convinced that you like them very much.I'm having trouble knowing what to say about the book, and perhaps that's because it is a very talky novel. It's a little like a written documentary - a series of (mostly) monologues by a variety of different characters, explaining what's happening from their point of view. And the characters include family, childhood friends, a kid on the subway, and a rap artist. Somehow this all makes sense. And they all have plenty to say, mainly about an ambitious California girl seeking an "illustrious" life in NYC, and a completely pretentious filmmaker who dresses like he's someone's grandpa. These are Jennica (aka Jenny) & Maynard (aka Arnie, aka Manny, aka Gogi). And these monologues are introduced like this: "Maynard Gogarty, in paradise, tells us something he isn't certain of." The uncertain thing, by the way, is whether Jennica knows he can be a jerk. Jennica follows up by being uncertain about whether or not he plans to propose.Anyway, etc. etc. For just under 300 pages. Also there is September 11, and a really fantastic indictment of the way non-New Yorkers appropriated the city's grief. (I'm not entirely sure I agree, seeing as how I was not exactly innocent of the charge and seeing as how the attacks were on a nation, not just a city, but nonetheless...) And some very funny moments. Which is all to say... what? I liked it; I did. Maybe despite myself.
A thematic, dual review... First up is book club selection Candide, which was fun to revisit for the first time since high school. Voltaire is funny and also complicated. I felt like I wasn't deep enough when I was reading it, if that makes sense. But it's an impressively modern-feeling satire, skewering our beliefs in progress, our obsession with money and being right, and of course our hypocrisy about most everything. The translation I chose was a recent one, from 2005, by Burton Raffel. Comparing mine with other club readers' editions today, I'm pretty fond of Raffel's, with one exception. He notes in an introduction that "il faut cultiver notre jardin" has been mistranslated for ages now. Since garden/jardin meant something closer to "fields," he ends the book with "we need to work our fields." Are you kidding me? Sometimes you've just got to go with the famous line. Which isn't to say that it's not useful to know that Candide isn't just talking about pruning roses but actually tending to crops and plants intended for use. But dude, "we need to work our fields"? Yuck.(PS - To make it clear for readers who have forgotten or never experienced the novella, it fits into my theme because Candide's rather ridiculous travels and travails all stem from his love for Cunegonde and desire to be with her.)Next up is yet another of my Eastern European ex-pat books, this one a memoir by journalist Jennifer Beth Cohen. The title, Lying Together, provides a delicious double-meaning that frames her Cohen's affair with the one who got away, a fellow college student and Russophile that at the start of the action is working in St. Petersberg and has leads Cohen needs for a story. Within weeks they are engaged and she is on a plane. And that's where the fun begins. I can't believe how much happens in what I believe is apparently just 11 months. Maybe there was an extra year there that I missed. Dunno. Anyway, Cohen does a fantastic job of recreating the seduction of a good scoop, and the heady first days of love, and the heady crazy capitalism of 1990s Russia. But when Jennifer & Kevin start to fall apart, things get hazy and the book loses focus. Which is fine, b/c by then it's almost over and for a book that you can read in just about one sitting (despite the heat! oh the heat in Los Angeles this weekend!) you can forgiven a weak ending when it's got a strong beginning. Plus it mimics their deterioration.(PS for this one - do you ever mark pages and notes on bookmarks when you are reading and then come back to them and wonder why exactly you felt this passage was worth noting?)
It really is the best word I can think of - bewitched. I wasn't even sure I liked James Collins' novel while I was reading it, but I just could not put it down. He manipulated my emotions perfectly, so that I was utterly invested in the outcome of the novel.Peter and Holly fall in love as seatmates on a cross-country flight, but Peter loses her number, killing the romance before it has a chance to flower. Until fate brings them back together, except now she's with his best friend. Cheesy, I know. Except it works. One thing that particularly pleased me as Collins laid out the scenario was that he skipped the re-encounter. We jump from a heart-stricken Peter looking desperately for the lost number, to him three years after Holly has returned to his life. The meeting happens in flashbacks. A lot of important moments in the novel happen in flashbacks. And we spend a lot of time in various characters' heads, seeing how they see themselves and the starcrossed couple. Holly though? We don't really meet her until page 280, by which point I'm ravenous for her to become more than a cipher onto which others attach their own aspirations.The rarefied air in which the characters move can be a little annoying - um, why am I not that rich and clever? - but forgivable in the same while Jane Austen & Edith Wharton's settings are forgivable. And like Austen, Collins loves skewering self-interest and hypocrisy. But also like her, he is gentle about it. No one tends to fall very hard or very far.In fact, therein lies a central theme of the story: "[...] here she was setting off to grab all the love and happiness she could get. He hoped she would succeed. Whenever good people who were weak and timid showed strength and got things that bad, arrogant people always had handed to them, Peter was moved." Indeed.
Book 3 of the Russian Reading Challenge: Boris Akunin's The Winter Queen, the first in a series of mysteries set in the final decades of the 19th century. Akunin started publishing in Russia about 10 years ago, and gained massive popularity in a hurry, and TWQ first appeared in English in 2003. (At least a half dozen other Akunin titles are also available in translation.)The book's protagonist is Erast Fandorin, a very young clerk in the Moscow police department. He is eager and curious, traits that lead him to investigate a simple suicide that proves to be anything but. The mystery has a variety of twists and discoveries, and while it's not particularly challenging, it is awfully fun. (I'd like to hear what others think of the ending though.)A couple other aspects of the novel that I found noteworthy: The suicide is a case of "American roulette," better known to most of us as Russian, and it prompted this observation by a rakish count: "It's stupid but exciting. A shame the Americans thought of it before we did." This led me to wonder about the origins of the term, and mini-research (Wikipedia, of course - and in Russian) suggests that Akunin is alone on the American origin thing, although there doesn't seem to be much evidence attaching it to Russia either. But it was still funny to me. (Also, a similar game of chance with gunplay is mentioned in Lermontov's A Hero of our Time - per Wiki the only instance of R.R. in Russian literature - but it's hard to call it quite the same thing, upon rereading the story.)Aspects of the characters reminded me a great deal of Dostoevsky, particularly The Idiot, although also Bros. K. Fandorin has a shade of Myshkin-esque innocence to him, and he is also drawn to two distinct types of beauties. One is pure and fair, and of good family; the other is dark, corrupted, but utterly beguiling. And the latter has a train of roguish followers. Maybe I'm making too much of it though.All in all though, an excellent challenge selection.crossposted at RRC
My first week as a grad student, Prof. K assigned both Herodotus and Thucydides for us to read and come back to discuss the next week. (Um, right. So I made it about 1/3 to 1/2 through each. Isn't 600 pages for one class as a baby grad student enough???) And then school got crazy - and then I left - and I've never finished reading them. I want to though! And after reading Daniel Mendelsohn's recent New Yorker article on Herodotus I might even find the wherewithal to do so. First off, most awesome depiction of H ever: he was "like having an embarrassing parent along on a family vacation. All you wanted to do was put some distance between yourself and him, loaded down as he was with his guidebooks, the old Brownie camera, the gimcrack souvenirs—and, of course, that flowered polyester shirt." (Mendelsohn and co. originally preferred Thucydides. I, on the other hand, hate all that on vacations but LOVE it in my histories.)Anyway, the article is awesome; it makes me want to go back to the books soon soon soon, and even compares H's style to that of "War & Peace" and the events covered to America's current escapades in the Middle East. So look for some ancient history coming to this blog sometime this summer...
I can't help myself. Recently I compiled a list of ideas for my book club's upcoming meeting. Included on the list was Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic, a book I never really expected to read but somehow ended up owning. The rest of the members totally did not go for it (they chose Candide instead) but I actually think that we could have had a very interesting discussion from Kinsella.On Saturday afternoon I was feeling tired and grumpy and wanted a quick pick-me-up of a read. So I grabbed COAS and got started. I finished it sometime around 8:30 that evening before getting ready to go to a party (I had to stop for the Stanley Cup finals, else I might have finished earlier) and I must say that it absolutely filled my need. Kinsella took a lot from Bridget Jones' Diary, and I'm pretty sure I had mapped out the plot within about 5 pages, but sometimes that's okay. Becky's disconnect between her lack of money and inability to stop spending is adorable - and unfortunately all too relevant to me these days, although clearly I should aim higher. More biting though, is Kinsella's attention to the way the financial industry helps her along in this self-delusion, offering her new lines of credit even as they are sending her collection letters. That I enjoyed.Anyway, for all my ridiculous vocabulary and big important books, I still am a sucker for chick lit. And I'm a sucker for all the same reasons other "chicks" are: it is light and funny; we recognize our own foibles in the person of the protagonist; despite those foibles, life and love always work out in the end; and said protagonist is always just that much more interesting and sophisticated than we are. We can aspire to be her, because she made it there even though she is neurotic, or a spendthrift, or has wacky parents, or can't hold down a job.Are these books good for our psyche, or just empty calories? Probably the latter, but sometimes you need the empty calories. Because what is life if you always make the wise decision?
Good newsI am thrilled to inform you that we have successfully restored $1.5
million in funding to our City’s public libraries. We will now be
able to buy new books to fill library shelves and keep regional library
branches opened on Sundays.
As Vice-Chair of the Los Angeles Budget and Finance Committee I was
honored to fight for one of our City’s most valued resources, our
libraries. But we could not have achieved this victory without the
impressive outpouring of community support to restore funds. I received
hundreds of emails, phone calls and letters expressing concern about the
proposed funding cuts. I thank you for your commitment to keeping our
treasured libraries open and available to all our residents. I look
forward to hearing from you again soon.
Sincerely,
Councilwoman Wendy Greuel
Second Council District
Mary Poppins wrote about this too in today's Times.
Elizabeth Gilbert's tale of her year exploring the above verbs in Italy, India, and Indonesia has been a book club favorite and enjoying a loooooooong run on the best-seller list. I am a self-styled iconoclast. If everyone else loves it, I am emphatically not interested. Until I am.So I put it on my library hold list, and waited and waited. And then finally read it. Including reading almost the entire Italy section in one sitting after work and before a meeting. I was set to find it shallow, or silly, or obnoxiously wise. And it was those things, but it was also witty and ridiculous and honest and real. So thumbs up to Gilbert, who starts off extremely strong, and then even as it wanes in the second half, has established enough likability for the reader to see her through.Enough. Some passages that made me smile:David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me eve under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. [...] His wishdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of "Where are you going? What happened to us?
(Dating tip: Men LOVE this.)
I have to admit, I looked around when I read this, guilty, because there was a moment where I recognized this scenario a little too much. This next one though....So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria da Michele, and these pies we have just ordered - one for each of us - are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she's having a metaphysical crisis about it, she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?"
I read that and wondered, how did Gilbert ever make it past Italy? But I guess I'm glad she did.
Despite the fact that I do not volunteer for the Literacy Network of Greater LA (yet), I managed to get an invite to the Network's volunteer appreciation brunch this past week at the Hollywood Bowl. So my friend and I traipsed over to the Bowl Museum patio, which is gorgeous, and chatted with the staff (who is AMAZING) and ate yummy food. And most importantly, heard about and from people who are giving of themselves to help fellow Angelenos become literate. Hooray for them! My grandmother was a literacy tutor once upon a time (and we just commemorated what would have been her 83rd birthday earlier this week) so it was a nice way for me to honor her memory and also realize what an awesome gift she gave to others during her life. Yay Grandma.I was really curious about the keynote speaker, a Dr. Danny Brassell from Cal State Dominguez Hills who is an associate professor of teacher education. He spoke about "creating readers for life," which most of you know is something is something I care a lot about. And at the same time barely "get" b/c I became a "reader for life" so young, and so without intention - there's this part of me that can't understand not loving reading. So I was worried when I heard 45 minutes, but those were 45 very short minutes. Brassell was a fantastic pick for a Saturday morning brunch: energetic and funny and irreverent and goofy. He treated us like we were about 8, and that was fantastic. And in the end, his main message was simple. You have to meet readers-to-be where they are at. It's not about you, it's about them. Plus, it's easier to remember things when they have a jingle or a dance. But you already knew that, right?Here's his website. Where he recommends what clearly my parents did to create me. My mission is to increase interest in reading by providing cool, short book recommendations for all ages. From interest comes devotion. As teachers, parents or whatever state we find ourselves in, we often cannot find time to read for fun, and I think it is important that our children see us reading for pleasure.
Exactly. You rock. Reading rocks. I need to do more of it.
