Have I been reading lately?

I think I have.

In fact, I remember finishing Fontanka 16, another entry on my age-old books to read list. It's a history - pretty readable for an academic work - about the secret police in tsarist Russia. There are lots of biographies and sideplots to keep the thing moving. But I think I expected it to provide more insight into the Cheka, NKVD, OGPU, KGB (etc) than it did.

Right now I am trying to read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, another long-time curiosity. It seemed especially relevant to read about the decline in civic participation since my job is all about improving civic education. But it is sloooow. It just started to pick up a little bit though. Fun fact: there is a high correlation of religious participation and civic participation. If you are active in a church, synagogue, mosque, etc., you are more likely to volunteer and join committees, vote, and what not. Even if you take out the church-specific involvement, you're still more likely to be civically engaged. I had had my suspicions about this growing up, when I envied my religiously active friends the community and social capital they were developing. However, and this is the part I find fascinating, it doesn't hold true for evangelical congregations. Members of these groups are likely to be highly active within their religious community, but there isn't crossover into other outlets of civic participation.

Anyway, I think I need to take a break from non-fiction sometime soon and switch to some fun books. (On the other hand, current fiction reading, book club selection Dangling Man by Saul Bellow, is no more engaging than the above selections.)

Periodicals

Newspapers and magazines get in the way of reading books. I spent my weekend primarily reading. But only managed about 20 pages of an actual book. The rest was the LA Times and the New Yorker. I'm not really complaining, but have noticed that this trend is going to get seriously in the way of regular blogging. (Work is also a problem, since there's 30 hours of non-reading time too, but that's unavoidable.)

The Winter Zoo (and more on The Bean Trees)

The Winter Zoo, by John Beckman: do not bother reading this book. Back in the day (i.e. second half 2002) there was a minor spate of books on Eastern Europe right after the fall of communism. The best of these books were Everything is Illuminated, Prague, and The Russian Debutante's Handbook. In some or another review of this trend, Beckman's book came up, and it was the one I never managed to get around to. And I kind of wish I hadn't.

There's a pretty serious amount of deviant sex in the book: cousinly love, statutory rape, pornographic photography, lots of girl-on-girl action, and a free for all orgy. And it seems at first like the sex belongs - that there's a reason for it. But there's not, most of it is just for titillation, as far as I can tell.

I feel mean being this negative, so I'll stop here. The other books I mention are all great and I highly recommend them. But stop before you get to Poland and The Winter Zoo.

[UPDATE: Rahul makes a good point in his comment below. My problem with the sex is not that it was "deviant", or that it crossed lines, but that Beckman seemed to just be looking for ways to try to shock the reader. It didn't work, it just got old. Also, hi Rahul!!! It's nice - and a little scary - to think that someone is actually reading this...]

As for The Bean Trees, we finished just in time for tonight's book club. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I liked the rendering of the toddler's baby talk? If the aforementioned novel had too much sex, maybe this one had too much sexless romance? The book is nice, and sweet, but didn't really provoke much of a reaction from me.

The Bean Trees

We've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees before our book club meeting next week. Like the great big nerds we are, Michael and I have decided to read our club books together - aloud. And since I can do a pretty ridiculous Southern accent on accident (and also b/c this book is so a chick book) I have been doing the reading.

Anyway, I want to save most of my witty thoughts for the meeting, but I'll offer this: even though Barbara Kingsolver was huge on BART a few years ago (Poisonwood Bible mostly), I never really considered reading her. I'm not overwhelmed, but not disappointed either. It's genial, you might say.

Favorite character: Turtle, the toddler
Biggest disappointment: I think I'm wrong on the lesbian prediction I had around page 35. I could still be right though... but I doubt it.

more Moooooo

There's something comfortingly witty about the kind of satire that announces deus ex machina by titling a chapter "Deus ex Machina" - and then proceeds to provide it in spades. Moo is an enjoyable book; my only quarrel is that with the huge cast of characters, Smiley can't possibly provide enough attention to each one, and sometimes I'd rather know more about the ones that she glides over. But really, when your biggest complaint is that you want to know more, that's pretty good.

Does writing matter?

After reading Midnight's Children, I couldn't talk normally for a week, as Salman Rushdie's style had utterly supplanted my own. In this article, he explains why that's important.

And because the LA Times is stingy about how long it leaves links up, here's an excerpt:

One may read and like or admire or respect a book and yet remain entirely unchanged by its contents, but love gets under one's guard and shakes things up, for such is its sneaky nature. When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. We love relatively few books in our lives, and those books become parts of the way we see our lives; we read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds become mixed up with ours — they become ours.

LAT Festival of Books, and Jane Smiley's Moo

Michael and I spent the weekend at the LA Times Festival of Books - gathering free stuff, checking out books we want but are too cheap to buy, sharing info on where to get the good free stuff with friends, and also going to several panels. We had underestimated the popularity of swarming Ticketmaster for the (free) tickets to panels, so by the time we made it there last Monday, many of our top choices were sold out. We still did pretty well, with 4 panels.

Three were political: Interrogation or Torture: Human Rights After 9/11, Brave New World: Monopoly, Media, & the Right to Know, and Are We Making the World Safe for Democracy? Each had one token conservative, and perhaps one moderate. Facing an audience that was overwhelmingly liberal, this may have been a good percentage, but it was also kind of sad. Facing a hostile crowd, conservatives were faced with the option of insulting the audience by saying they were unpatriotic and "reviled" the troops (Max Boot), announcing that the LA Times was a far-left newspaper that many people in California were rejecting (Hugh Hewitt), or reading your piece as unpassionately as possible and hoping the crowd didn't really notice you (Charles Kesler).

Next year, however, I want to see and hear more about actually writing a book. Our fourth panel was Jane Smiley in conversation with some historian named Zachary Karabell (who was kind of this odd combination of Josh and Toby from The West Wing with a little of The Actor's Studio guy thrown in. here's a picture on a page that suggests he's also a big-shot econ guy). This was great, a very entertaining hour that combined politics and fiction writing and reading.

In honor of our Jane Smiley panel, I began reading Moo on Saturday morning. I gave myself twenty-four hours to get a feel for the author before I saw her speak. Now that the panel's over, I could put the book down, but I'm enjoying it. She is apparently quite catholic in her tastes, so perhaps it's too bad that the only novel of hers that we own is one that satirizes university life, as so many have done before. But what I like about Moo so far is that she's cast her net wide, and takes us into the minds of a wide array of professors, administrators, students, and even a very fat hog.

Claire Marvel (cont.)

Well, I finished the book. In an attempt to not be a spoiler, I will just say that I wasn't dissatisfied with the ending, so that was reassuring. It's a pretty book, and made me pensive for at least a day. There's a blurb on the back from Frank McCourt that, paraphrased, says that you'll be tempted to read this book in one sitting - but you shouldn't, b/c you should give the characters the chance to worm their way into you. I am horrible at taking such advice no matter how much I want to, but the characters got to me nonetheless.

Claire Marvel (part 1)

Today's book is Claire Marvel, by John Burnham Schwartz. It came out sometime in 2002 or 2003. Now that I am not tied into reading history book after history book, I revisited a list of "books to read" that I had started before moving to DC and am, courtesy of the LA Public Library, slowly working my way through it. I don't remember what review I must have read that prompted its inclusion on the list. (Some days I am more exclusive than others about what I might want to read.)

This is one of those books, written by a man, that serve for certain female readers like me as a reassurance that men fall in love as hard, and manage to mess it up through their own uncertainties just as women do. In short, it's a love story with a man as protagonist. And with our narrator Julian a grad student, this book is in some ways strikingly like this novel. (Use this link if the other one doesn't work.)

I feel for this couple; they've touched me. And yet, on page 178 of 316 or so, I am wary. Books that trick me into caring about the characters' plight run the risk of having a dissatisfying ending. Too often the author promises me that I should care about his or her creations, but then allows the ending to trickle away into something lesser. Leaving me feel betrayed. (High on this list is Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy.) You could just say I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and that's probably most of it, but there's more at stake when you deny characters the ending they deserve.

Welcome to my (book) world

At least four years after blogging stopped being cool and started being ubiquitous, I have finally joined the party. For years I've attempted to keep various lists of the books I'm reading, so that

1. I can admire myself for all the reading I've done and all the impressive books on the list
2. I can remember what I've read lately when someone - oftentimes Michael's mom, a librarian - asks if we're read anything good
3. I can quickly recall what books might be good for recommendations to other people
   

Today, walking in Larchmont, I decided it would be easier to do this online, and write capsule reviews to capture my thoughts, which would be easy to share with friends scattered across the globe that might be interested but who never get this news in my e-mails, sort of the Washingtonienne line of reasoning - but without the sex with politcos.

A bit about me: I'm 25, live in LA just south of Hollywood in a ritzy neighborhood that I can't afford on my non-profit salary, and have recently fled a PhD program in DC for the glorious weather of my hometown. (Michael would probably stop here to remind readers that I'm from lame suburban Thousand Oaks, not Los Angeles, but that's beside the point.)

Also, I've been going through a pink phase lately, which is the explanation for the template.

Overtime, I hope to figure out how to add links that will offer favorite books by theme, but that's asking too much for now.