Spirited away

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday, 2011)

I am going to admit that I held off on reading this book because I was jealous that someone named Erin wrote such a well-received novel. Stealing my thunder and all. But thank goodness I got over this absurdity. Because this book is magical. MAGICAL.

Most of the week I was reading The Night Circus, I spent non-reading time really wishing I were reading. It was transporting. Short chapters (and intros and such) whisk through between characters, times, and places. Which is a little like the circus itself. The circus, which appears as if by magic, runs only at night and only in black & white, and is the venue for increasingly inspired flights of magical imagination.

It is also the venue for a competition of sorts. Two men facing off; their proxies young, well-trained, and mostly ignorant of the rules governing their battle. And can two practitioners of such powerful magic grow to know their opponent so well without falling in love?

The novel is stunning. I reached the climactic scene one sofa over from my boyfriend, who was engrossed in someone on the television. (Fringe maybe?) And when I started silently weeping just because I was too overcome by the emotion of the whole thing, I had to hide it, because how do you explain that you're crying because it's just all too lovely?

Vaguely disagreeable olde England

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (Laurel Edition, 1944, 1945)

It's kind of fun to read old paperbacks. This one cost 75 cents when it was printed in 1965 (I think) and it is falling apart something pretty impressive. I think I'll be its final reader.

That sentiment is probably not true for the novel itself. (Obviously.) I am not crazy about Waugh, and it was a bit of a slog at the beginning. Lots of chummy gay college boys or something. Someone told me to not bother with the read and go straight to the movie, and I was sorely tempted. But I was glad to have stuck it through. Because after a spell it gets easier, and then suddenly, it gets much much easier. And without offering spoilers, I'm perhaps a little troubled by why I might find certain plots more agreeable than others.

That said, I still didn't have much affection or sympathy for any of the characters. It's been a week since I finished reading, and I had forgotten the narrator's name. He seems ... so distant, I suppose.

But! Onto the film adaptations!

The absurd marriage makes a lot more sense in books set in the 1800s

His at Night - Sherry Thomas (Bantam Books, 2010)

Ravishing the Heiress - Sherry Thomas (Berkley Sensation, 2012)

And returning to historical romance, which is a far more hilarious genre than I had really given it credit for being. A few months back, I read my first novel by Thomas, which launched the trilogy that RTH picks up. And for a variety of reasons involving book requests, I also ended up with His at Night.

And Thomas doesn't disappoint in the earlier novel, with my favorite "marriage under false pretenses" scenario. Elissande sees unexpected company as her chance to get herself and her aunt out of an abusive home, and swindles a poor, hapless duke into getting caught with her in a compromising position. Of course, he is neither poor nor hapless (just pretending to be) and he sees her trap (which, of course, doesn't stop him falling into it) and hates them both for it.

So again! Everyone's pretending to be something they're not, and lust and romance ensue. Plus there's a scandalous plot involving (more!) secret identities and scandals. Yippie. But again, high on the ZOMG SO CUTE scale.

I was less satisfied by the second read. It's a more ambitious plot - "marriage under forced pretenses" so to speak. Millie is an heiress, Fitz an accidental duke who has to marry well to save his family's land and whatnot. But he has a childhood sweetheart that he really really does not want to let go of. So the book bounces back and forth between the present, eight years after their wedding, and the past, concerning the early days and years of their marriage. It's a lovely testament to the possible success of arranged marriage, as what makes their relationship sparkle is the friendship and respect that have grown over time. But at the same time, you miss the wicked banter and push-and-pull of the romances where both parties are simultaneously attracted and repulsed by one another. But that's coming in the third installment of the trilogy, so huzzah for that.

All's fair in love, war, and politics

Queen Margot - Alexandre Dumas (Hyperion, 1994)

In high school, my friends and I watched the film adaptation of this novel a whole bunch of times. the people in it were all too beautiful. It was ... well, memorable. So while I found the book at some book sale, I bought it. And it languished on my shelf. Until a couple weeks ago.

"Queen Margot"is Marguerite de Valois, daughter of one French king, sister of two more, and wife (pre-annulment) of a fourth, Henri de Navarre. But the novel, thick as it may be, covers only two years in her eventful life. It begins with her marriage to Henri, intended to settle unrest between Catholics and Protestants, and ends when Henri flees back to Navarre, to stay safe until he can one day assume the throne. In between: the St. Bartholomew Massacre, several assassination attempts (most engineered by the queen mother, Catherine de Medicis), and a couple pretty fantastic love affairs.

The most memorable part of the film (well, to 16-year-old Erin at least) was the love between Marguerite and a lesser noble, La Mole. (There is also an unintentional murder that was pretty amazing.) But in the book, this relationship is almost surpassed by a strange and enduring friendship that extends unto death. And also much more about the machinations of Queen Catherine. In the book, it becomes a point of humor. She started to remind me of Wile E. Coyote, devising ever more certain plots to take out Henri de Navarre, and having each go awry.

I had far too much fun reading this, as I'm sure did the 19th-century audience that first encountered it in serial form. First of all: history! I mean, I'm not sure entirely where Dumas' imagination takes over, but still... And then romance and intrigue and beautiful costumes and and and. Does it come as any surprise that I have the DVD waiting for me to watch this evening?

Struggling with the concept of "never forget"

Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007)

Let me start with the frivolous. I somehow found myself, in conversation with a friend, comparing this book to The Da Vinci Code. And then feeling terrible. What I meant is that both novels employ the use of short chapters to create a propulsive effect. You're driven to continue reading.

And secondly, I was drawn to the use of font (typeface? I never know when to use which term). The narrative cuts back and forth between a little girl in 1942 - and her efforts to save her brother when all the Jews in Paris were rounded up before being sent to death camps - and a middle-aged American expat reporter in 2002, whose investigation into the events of July 1942 unearths secrets that remained hidden for six decades. Um... where was I before I got caught up in that rambling sentence? Oh, right, the font. Each of these narrative lines employs a different font, which somehow both emphasizes the difference between them and adds internal coherence within each plotline. If that makes sense. (Also, can you do this on an e-reader? I'm guessing yes, but would like confirmation.)

This novel deals with some pretty horrific stuff. (Obviously.) But there's a lot of room for beauty without it being some sort of paean to the triumph of the human spirit. People act out of love, fear, hate, decency, confusion, and pride. Not everyone gets a happy ending. (Again, obviously.) But there's catharsis, and above it all rises American Julia's insistence that the truth should - must - out.

I feel sorta babbly. Like all the above were comments I would make in a book club discussion, rather than forming some sort of coherent reaction to the novel. This book, by the way, has Book Club written all over it. Which reminds me that I want to join a book club. All of which brings me back to the "babbly" point, and leads to the question of whether this is the sort of book that one must talk around, rather than through.

What lies ahead for Mother Earth

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning - James Lovelock (Basic Books, 2009)

Sounds like a cheery topic, no? But books that make their way onto my shelves must eventually be read, and now was this book's time. Lovelock is a major scientist and the man behind Gaia theory, which postulates that the Earth and everything on it together comprise a single, self-regulating, complex system. This is the kind of idea that strikes me as completely intuitive, yet another area in which the ideas I was taught in my childhood turn out not to be as pervasive and widely-held as I realized. Apparently over the years Lovelock has taken a lock of shit for the theory, and in some ways this book is one giant - slightly, but just barely, premature - "I told you so." The idea is that human, through man-made climate change and other activities, have stressed Gaia's self-regulating ability to the max. And in order to survive, Gaia is going to react in ways that won't be so good for us.

But "green" living isn't enough, per Lovelock. And trying to revert to some earlier time, to live with a smaller footprint? Insufficient. This book made waves when it was released because of his full-throated endorsement of nuclear power as both the safest and most effective form of energy. I'm not wholly persuaded, but I also admit that I have no idea what should be done. I often feel that we're very much the dance band on the Titanic, and I'm not actually sure that there are better options that being precisely that.

But before I go too far afield, back to Lovelock, who discusses both potential last ditch efforts to moderate global warming and strategies that will allow mankind to adapt to a future hot state. But what I took away is his exhortation that we not try to be something that we are not:

Even if we had time, and we do not, to change out genes to make us act with love and live lightly on the Earth, it would not work. We are what we are because natural selection has made us the toughest predator the world has ever seen. ... It is as absurd to expect us to change ourselves as it would be to expect crocodiles or sharks to become through some great act of will, vegetarian. We cannot alter our natures, and as we shall see the bred-in tribalism and nationalism that we pretend to deplore is the amplifier that makes us powerful. All that we can do is to try to temper our strength with decency.

Is this true? I'm not sure. Nor do I know that this will chance what I do in any significant way. But is it food for thought? Certainly.

My boyfriend plays video games, I read romance novels

Crazy For You - Jennifer Crusie (St. Martin's, 1999)

Hot Stuff - Carly Phillips (HQN, 2004)

Phillips is sexier, Crusie is funnier. Both stories (sort of) revolve around a dog. Everyone's kinda adorable. Battlefield 3 is getting old. :P

Want to read more of these, but will probably turn my attention back to some heavier fare for a little while. At the very least, I don't want to fun through everything by these authors. Not right away.

We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (Harper Perennial, 2003)

Do you believe me that I picked out this book to read next before Aurora happened? The idea of reading a novel about the aftermath (ish) of a mass shooting seemed a little much to handle, but I pushed on. And was in the thick of it when the Oak Creek shooting occurred. All of which could send me off on a diatribe about violence and weapons and cavalier disregard for the sanctity of human life and and and.

But no. This novel has too much to say on its own. The Post-Birthday World is one of my favorite novels - although no one I've foisted it on has enjoyed it as much as I did - but this one is the award-winner. And it was time to tackle something difficult.

It's November 2000, about 18 months after Eva's son changed their worlds forever by murdering a handful of classmates and two school staff members, about a week before Columbine. And Eva shares her story in epistolary fashion, in a series of letters to her estranged husband. The result is three narratives that unfold over about six months, with the final letter in April 2001. The first is world events; remember that election? and how it dominated everything? The second takes us back in time, as Eva details the couple's decision to have a baby, and the child's early years. The third is also current, about her ongoing relationship with Kevin, her visits to him in the juvenile prison upstate, as she strives to come to terms - to the extent such a phrase even makes sense - with his horrific acts, and her part in them.

Never has anything made me so scared about the prospect of having a child. From even before his birth, Eva was uneasy about Kevin. And Kevin made everyone uneasy except her husband, who desperation to adore his own son is so touchingly naive as seen through Eva's eyes. Whether or not Kevin was really a sociopath from Day One, how terrifying to consider not loving your own child.

And then some sort of trigger switched inside me. Eva does this complicated dance, of assuming all the responsibility for Kevin and his actions, and simultaneously abjuring it in favor of an argument that sort of runs, "I tried to warn you about him." It made me uncomfortable, which I can only assume was Shriver's intent. As are the growing signs that maybe Eva really is to blame, that maybe Kevin has always, desperately, sought his mother's love and affection. That maybe his malicious attacks on people's passions were both a way of destroying what he didn't have and couldn't abide in others. And even more so, a cry for his mom to notice and love him.

I feel terribly inarticulate trying to get at what I mean. Besides, did I really just place the responsibility for all these murders on this poor woman's shoulders? Plenty of people have awful parents who they fear don't really love them, and the vast majority of these people do not become killers at age 15. It's pretty much bullshit to absolve Kevin of any responsibility. And yet, I fear he just wanted to impress her. Although impress isn't quite the right word.

Before I fall too deeply down a rabbit hole, let me just say what I probably should have said in summary from the very start: this novel disquieted me in ways that few novels have. I will be thinking about Kevin for a long time to come.

How we learn to be ourselves

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2001)


The Second Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2003)


Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2005)


Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2007)


Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares (Random House, 2011)


I've been moving! Which meant that I was very excited when a friend had a book swap and I was able to bring over all the books I had been saving up. It also meant that despite my best efforts, when I saw 3  of the Sisterhood novels, I picked them up. Years ago, a friend recommended them (or the movie?) and I had vaguely planned to read them. So in the midst of packing, I started reading the first one. Because really, what is better than YA as an escape from stress?

And then the second, and the third. And then I started looking online to see if there were more. All told, I think I read the five in about 4 weeks? Everyone already know the story, right? Four friends, and a pair of jeans that magically fits them all, and not just fits, but makes them look extra hot. The Pants become the way they "stay together" when summer takes them to different places. The Pants bear witness to their struggles to cope with change, and growing up, and love and loss. The first summer, the girls are a summer away from their 16th birthdays, by the third they are about to leave for college. The fourth finds them after their freshman years, and the last novel comes a decade later.

Reading them in the span of a month rather than over ten years, as they were written, it really jumps out at you how much the girls have to learn the same lessons over and over and over. How to be brave, how to be open to change and to forgive those who change around you, how to see past surfaces and accept the love that's offered, how to be vulnerable. And then to return to them, as young women about to turn 30, with years more of experience, the lessons are still there to be learned.

And that tore me up. It was an unexpected sucker punch. Maybe because it threw into such stark relief that fact that the lessons I have learned over the years need to be learned again and again and again. You don't just reach an epiphany and get to happily ever after. Or even to the next level, like some sort of video game. Or perhaps, to play with the video game analogy some more, you do, but you just repeat the same level again and again, in slightly different guise. You have to reach that epiphany, defeat the same boss, time and again. And that's a tough realization.

But no one reads the same book. We bring so much of ourselves - our past and especially our present - to what we read. I'm curious to know how others found Lena, Carmen, Tibby, and Bridget.

Falling in love under false pretenses, subcategory two

Beguiling the Beauty - Sherry Thomas (Berkley Sensation, 2012)


Second only to "pretending to be married" in my list of amusing romance scenarios that do. not. happen. is "pretending to be someone else." You could make an argument for those both falling under some broader category of "falling in love under false pretenses," but in one you're fooling outside observers and in the other, you're fooling the love interest.

And that's what happens here, when Venetia, 27 and twice widowed, finds herself hurt by public comments made by Lord Somethingorother and decides to make him fall in love with her, and then burst his bubble. (I'm not quite sure how this proves that she's not a Black Widow who uses her beauty to entrap men, but whatevs.) This plot, unbeknownst to her, has the added extra punch that he's been lusting after her from afar for years, since she was a young bride. Aww. So they seduce each other - did I mention she's wearing a veil, so he can't tell it's her? - and manage to fall in love.

Except they're both deceiving each other? How will it ever work out? :)

I'm snarking, which is unfair, because this was really rather charming. And humorous. They were likable characters, and up until the speedy denouement, I was totally down with them. I am pretty sure I made me "ZOMG SO CUTE" face after every chapter. Plus, it's always an added bonus when the heroine is into a "man's" subject like archeology. And Thomas cleverly laid the groundwork for the rest of the trilogy, which will settle the love lives of her younger (twins) sister & brother. In fact, she did such a thorough job that I really thought those were the B and C storylines and was confused that they were left unresolved. Which, of course, means I will have to read them...

Trying to mix great literature and sunshine

Swann's Way - Marcel Proust (trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff) (Dover Publications, 1913, 1922, 2002)


So, I finally started on In Search of Lost Time. Or, since it's the Moncrieff translation, maybe I should call it Remembrance of Things Past. This has been hovering around as a thing I should do for years now. But it was a slog. I started on or around Memorial Day, and finished sometime last week.

Why I had problems with the book: for starters, I kept getting sleepy. This was a fun vacation-y month, and the amount of mental power involved in parsing these long loooooooooong sentences was more than I could handle. (By the way, there should be a limit on the number of clauses allowed in a single sentence.) Also, I couldn't really get into the narrator. I kept pushing through, because eventually we were going to go back in time and find out about how Swann fell in love and ended up in this ill-advised (per the narrator's family) marriage. Except that wasn't really any better. Until it was. What does the reader find so reassuring about the idea that love was similar enough a century(ish) ago? Is it just that Proust does such a good job of showing how a lover can persist in reformulating a relationship in his head, again and again, to rationalize and justify staying in a position that grows ever more untenable? At any rate, it was sort of fascinating. And then we jump back to our narrator, as he falls for Swann's young daughter...

And it all made me think maybe I'd keep reading after all. Except I know that I'd just fall back into the part where I was grumping my way through the work. So what do I do? Stop after volume one?

On a quest

The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books, 2005)


First of all, I'm moving! While this is fantastic news, I find moving totally stressful, and am getting mixed messages about whether I'm normal in how completely nutty I get around moving. Which means that I simultaneously have no time whatsoever to read and want nothing more than to just curl up and lose myself in a story.

And Percy Jackson provides just the right kind of story. I remember thinking when the series first came out that is sounded like a way of cashing in on the success of Harry Potter, and truth be told it's difficult to avoid that feeling. But kids who are "different" at some sort of boarding school is a children's literature trope that long predates JK Rowling.

I'm getting off topic. Percy is just finishing sixth grade at the start of the novel, and trouble always seems to find him. Which is why he gets sent from school to school. Turns out this is because he is the son of a human woman and an god from Olympus. Oops. And not just any god.... So while a huge part of the story is about Percy's attempts to fit in and find his place in the world - difficult even in a camp filled with half-bloods like him - what drives the plot is his efforts to, well, save the world by taking on an almost impossible mission. And in so doing, clear his name and gain his father's recognition. Plenty going on, and pretty much all the kind of themes that resonate with kids Percy's age.

But readers of all ages can find enjoyment in Percy's story. I struggled a bit with the 12 y.o. male narrator and a writing style that I found too much that of a 12 y.o. male. So my problem, not the book's. But once I accepted Percy's voice for what it was, I had a great time in his world. I'll be looking for the rest of the series. (And Riordan's series involving the Egyptian gods, I believe!)

Lad lit

Love & Other Recreational Sports - John Dearie (Plume, 2003)


Without bothering to do my background research, my understanding is that there's a lovely genre of British fiction that is the male equivalent to chick lit, and it's called lad lit. This includes stuff by writers like Nick Hornby.

I think that's what Dearie is doing here. Except I don't know that the genre really exists in America. It certainly doesn't look like that's how it was marketed.

Check out this cover. Does this look like it's being marketed toward men??? (Sorry for the mirror image problem.) Or are women the primary readers of lad lit?

These questions aside... well, actually I'm not sure I am able to place them aside, because they so strongly shaped my reading experience.

I'm battling through Proust (losing) and brought this along as lighter fare for a weekend out in the desert. So I sprawled in 100 degree shaded heat, and read about Jack and his adventures in (or avoiding) the Manhattan dating scene.

Let's compare Jack to a chick lit heroine. He is male, he is successful in the corporate world, he doesn't seem to get too excited about things. Hmm, not doing so well. And yet he has also been burned by a former lover, dresses well and enjoys the finer things, and gets his best advice from his friends and family. Wash.

And here is where I look at the back of the book and see that it was indeed marketed to women, claiming to provide insights into the mind of the dating male. Is this what Dearie had in mind when writing? I'm skeptical.

But I don't want it

This Beautiful Life - Helen Schulman (HarperCollins, 2011)


Meet the Bergamots. First Liz(zie), a trained art historian who became increasingly mom-first, and now, in NYC, mom-only. Then Richard, whose career in academia seems on an unstoppable upward trajectory. And Jake, the teen son. Finally Coco, the spirited kindergartener. They are transitioning, with varying degrees of success, from life in upstate Ithaca to Manhattan.

And then there's a night with two parties. Liz takes Coco to a sleepover at the Plaza, where she (and the other moms) get totally wasted. Yay. And Jake goes to a party with his friends, gets sad when he sees the object of his affection with her boyfriend, gets drunk, and draws the advances of the young hostess. He allows her attention, until he suddenly doesn't. And handles it like most boys would, which is to say like a jerk.

And there you have it. A Saturday morning with two hungover Bergamots. Except then Jake's make-out partner creates an awfully graphic web video to prove that she's old enough for him. And then all hell breaks loose.

Listening to Slate folks discuss it (here), I was intrigued by their final conversation, a debate over why and how the single click of the "forward" button untethered everything. It's hard to say for sure whether all the fissures of Liz's dissatisfaction and Richard's growing impatience would have been evident had the plot been presented in any other way. The first page (plus) is a description of the video, and it looms over everything that follows, leaving the reader waiting in some amount of anxiety. As a result, I saw how while nothing was broken, neither was it particularly strong. But that's just me.

I grew less enchanted with the book as it went on. The characters just kept so firmly to their established patterns, wearing out some weird groove that made me more and more frustrated. And then, suddenly, Schulman wraps up. She flashes forward several years, so we know what shakes down from the crisis. And ends with a coda chapter, the teen ingenue all grown up, or more grown up. But it's weird, because we've never really met her before. And now, we're not quite sure who she is, or what to think about what she unleashed when she hit record on her webcam.

Glittering Despair

Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion (Pocket Books, 1970, 1978)


Things I learned from this novel: the late 1960s and early 1970s kinda sucked. I mean, we glamorize them now, with all the free love and flowers and Woodstock and consciousness-altering drugs and activism and stuff. But there was also a lot of using drugs and sex to mask all sorts of pain, and hiding things away, and being corrupt in Hollywood.

I think I am too far outside the time to really understand this novel, because it seemed like Maria had a shitty childhood, made it to NYC where things were shady, fell for the director who cast her in a film where she was gangbanged, and then he made it big and she really didn't, mainly because her husband insisted on institutionalizing their daughter, and then there were affairs and affairs and affairs and eventually someone gets killed. Or dies of his own hand. Or something.

I can't say that Didion's prose isn't evocative, because it was bitterly painful to read, to go into Maria's desperation. So she accomplished what I believe was her vision. It's a successful book. But 40 years later... I find myself lost.