journeying....janeajones

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journeying....janeajones

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1janeajones
Editado: Dez 4, 2010, 2:03 pm

don't know where I'll be going in 2010 -- but undoubtedly there will be some adventures along the way....

2010 Have Reads (touchstones below with comments):

1. Sun City by Tove Jansson
2. Let the Right One In by John Avjide Lindqvist
3. Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook
4. The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, his Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren
5. Merab's Beauty by Torgny Lindgren
6. Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
7. The Lighthouse, the Cat and the Sea by Leigh W. Rutledge
8. Rereads for my World Lit class:
"The Queen of Spades" by Pushkin
"Notes from the Underground" by Dostoevsky
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Tolstoy
9. Catfish and Mandala by Andrew Pham
10. Before the Throne by Naguib Mahfouz
11. Symphony in White by Adriana Lisboa
12. Erzulie's Skirt by Ana-Maurine Lara
13. Sonata Mulaticca by Rita Dove
14. La Perdida by Jessica Abel
15. Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
16. The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist
17. The Sybil by Par Lagerkvist by Par Lagerkvist
18. Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar
19. Heresy by S.J. Parr
20. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
21. The Wedding by Dorothy West
22. Rereads of short, short stories for my Intro to Lit class: "The Elephant in the Village of the Blind," "A Conversation with my Father" by Grace Paley, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid, "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" by Yasunari Kawabata, "The Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams, and "She Unnames Them" by Ursula Le Guin.
23. The Journals of Susanna Moodie by Margaret Atwood
24. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
25. Alice's Adventures Underground by Lewis Carroll
26. The Line by Olga Grushin
27. The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant
28. Hotel Malabar by Brendan Galvin
29. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
30. The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble
31. My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather
32. Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson
33. In Parenthesis by David Jones
34. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
35. Frost in May by Antonia White
36. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
37. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
38. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
39. The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstoy
40. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
41. Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen
42. A Dog with No Tail by Hamdi Abu Golayyel
43. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
44. The Blue Manuscript Sabiha Al Khemir
45. The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
46. A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
47. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West
48. The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof
49. Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
50. The Children by Edith Wharton
51. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
52. Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xialong
53. Summer by Edith Wharton
54. The Tree of Red Stars by Tessa Bridal
55. The Cleft by Doris Lessing
56. The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy
57. Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein
58. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot
59. Elizabeth's Women by Tracy Borman
60. I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates
61. Just Kids by Patti Smith
62. The Mental World of Stuart Women by Sara Heller Mendelson
63. After Claude by Iris Owens

2janeajones
Jan 1, 2010, 11:52 am

Well, I'm in the midst of a number of adventures -- hopefully I shall finish one soon: Sun City by Tove Jansson, Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook and Clarel by Herman Melville -- I have a feeling this one will take some time. As soon as I've completed the first two, I plan on spending some time in Sweden (hint, hint).

3rainpebble
Jan 1, 2010, 4:51 pm

Well, well, look who I have found. Nice to see you Jane.
I have moved over from the 50 book gig. Just wanted more challenging reads and more reading, less chatter. I am hoping this will be a perfect fit.
Happy New Year. I have you starred and wish you good reads in 2010.
hugs,
belva

4janeajones
Jan 1, 2010, 4:52 pm

Look forward to sharing the adventure, Belva -- Happy New Year!

5theaelizabet
Jan 1, 2010, 8:39 pm

You were brave enough to tackle Clarel? Good for you! Look forward to following you this year.

6janeajones
Editado: Set 4, 2010, 10:19 am


1. Sun City by Tove Jansson

Although I hesitate to disagree with the eminent Madeline L'Engle, who in a blurb on the back of the book jacket, declares that Sun City is "an indictment of the American way of old age .... a painful book," that is not what I took away from my reading.

Certainly Sun City is a rather curious book in which little happens in the lives of the elderly denizens of the Berkeley Arms, a boarding house in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the 1970s. Miss Ruthermer-Berkeley, the owner, feels she has a mission: "For her, all that mattered was this: Our guests live here and have a right to expect protection. Outside of St. Petersburg, there are all sorts of evil madness running wild, and we can't help that. But I have a built a house over the kind of madness that is innocent, and it will be allowed to persist in peace for as long as I live."

The residents are eccentric and distanced from family by death or choice: Mrs. Rubinstein, profanely awaiting the monthly letter from her son; mousy Miss Peabody who had bought sunshine with her winnings from the state lottery; the ancient sisters Pihalga; Mrs. Morris, recently arrived from Lincoln, Nebraska; Mrs. Higgins with 14 grandchildren; and Mr. Thompson, the deaf woman-hater. The household is completed with Miss Frey, who keeps the accounts and arranges social activities; Johanssen, the Swedish handyman; Linda, a young Mexican woman, who cleans; and her boyfriend, Bounty Joe, breathlessly awaiting the second coming of Jesus. They wander around St. Petersburg visiting tourist sites, dropping in on cafeterias and bars, and attending the annual Spring Ball in great splendour. The climax of the novel takes place on an excursion to Silver Springs when events that seem to portend disaster turn out to be life-altering in small, but significant ways.

While these old people may seem to be measuring out their lives in coffee spoons, they, in truth, are negotiating telling human relationships. I found Sun City to be a gentle, rather humorous, investigation into a stage of life that is often ridiculed, pitied, or derided. It certainly was not a painful book as Jansson grants all of her characters their own individual dignity.

7dchaikin
Jan 5, 2010, 1:30 pm

Just stepping in to say Hi... and now I'm having nostalgic memories of Silver Springs - which we visited quite a bit way back when I was a bit smaller.

8laytonwoman3rd
Jan 5, 2010, 6:20 pm

Sun City sounds like a good read, Jane. (BTW, your touchstone in the last post goes to a novel by David Levien called City of the Sun. It's right where you mention the book up above, though.

9janeajones
Jan 5, 2010, 7:12 pm

Thanks, laytonwoman -- I think I've changed the touchstones at least a dozen times -- but they keep switching back.

10janeajones
Editado: Set 4, 2010, 10:20 am



2. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Oskar and Eli are next-apartment neighbors in the faceless Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg. Oskar is a 12 year-old overweight, comic book addict who has become the target of class bullies. He dreams of murderous revenge upon his tormentors. Eli is a 12 year-old vampire (really hundreds of years old, but she still remains emotionally 12) who has recently moved into the apartment complex with her "father." During the dark winter nights from October 21, 1981, until Friday, November 13, 1981, Blackeberg is beset by a series of horrific murders. Curiously, however, Let the Right One In is less a gothic novel of terror than an examination of adolescents trying to survive dysfunctional, broken families and a group of middle-aged alcoholics just trying to survive. Although the novel has graphic violence, it's not scary -- the violence is oddly matter-of-fact. It's a rather haunting (and easy) read, certainly a bleak picture of Swedish urban life in the late 20th century.

11arubabookwoman
Jan 20, 2010, 2:03 pm

Do you think the vampire aspect of this book was necessary? It sounds interesting, but I have an extreme bias against vampire books, and I'm wondering why the author chose to use vampires in this novel.

12avaland
Jan 20, 2010, 3:41 pm

>10 janeajones:,11 Good question. I'd like to hear the answer for it (I also have an extreme bias against vampire lit with a few notable exceptions). How horrible is that? Emotionally stuck at 12 for hundreds of years?! Now that's a horror novel! :-)

13janeajones
Jan 20, 2010, 4:29 pm

I'm sure it's the vampire aspect that made it a bestseller and sold it to the movies -- I gave the DVD to my daughter (who loves vampires), but when I get a chance to watch it, I'll let you know. I think I like vampire movies (especially those with Catherine Deneuve) better than vampire books. I read this one for the Globally Reading monthly Swedish read, and because I'd never encountered a Swedish vampire before. Interestingly, there is an exchange in the book when Eli meets an older vampire and asks her if there are many vampires in the world, and she replies that there are very few -- most end up committing suicide.

14avaland
Jan 20, 2010, 4:41 pm

I would recommend Octavia Butler's Fledgling for an original take on the vampire (themes of family, race...etc). It's one of my few exceptions:-)

15Cariola
Jan 20, 2010, 5:10 pm

I've not read the book but have seen the film of Let the Right One In (and in fact scheduled it for our campus film series last Halloween week. Not sure I could imagine it without the vampire aspect; that would be an entirely different book/movie, one more sentimental, less campy, more conventional, and less surprising. The film really captures the bleakness of the Swedish winter, which adds to the bleakness of the main characters' lives. It's really beautiful, despite the murders.

16janeajones
Jan 20, 2010, 7:10 pm

14> I haven't read that Butler -- I'll keep an eye out for it.

15> ooh, now I'm going to have purloin the DVD from my daughter. It sounds like the film may be better than the book, which I certainly wouldn't call beautiful.

17janeajones
Jan 20, 2010, 8:08 pm

arggh -- I've just lost my review on Vermeer's Hat -- must try again.

18janeajones
Editado: Jan 20, 2010, 8:36 pm



3. Vermeer's Hat by Timothy Brook

Who knew that Vermeer had revealed the wide world of seafaring global trade and incipient imperialism that led to the modern world in his paintings of domestic life in 17th-century Delft? In Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Global World, Timothy Brook reveals how the small changes in daily life, brought about by what he calls the "second encounters," were harbingers of momentous change.

Brook, who holds the Shaw Chair in Chinese Studies at Oxford University, brings his wide erudition to illuminating the 17th Century. But Vermeer's Hat is a book not only for scholars, but for curious intelligent readers, whom the author woos with fascinating stories and journeys around the world. The 15th and 16th Centuries were the Age of Exploration in which Europeans discovered the New World and had their first meaningful encounters with the civilizations of the Orient. In the 17th Century, those encounters led to global trade, dreams of empire, new ways of thought, and disruptions of populations.

Using a half-dozen of Vermeer's paintings as touchstones, Brook illustrates how the wider world made its way into daily European life. In OFFICER AND LAUGHING GIRL, the enormous hat worn by the Cavalier is made of felt from the beaver skins that the French sent back from their trade with the Hurons in Canada. YOUNG WOMAN READING A LETTER evokes the masses of young men who shipped with the Dutch East Indies Company to make their fortunes by sending back such goods as the Oriental rug draping the table and the Chinese porcelain dish spilling fruit. WOMAN HOLDING A BALANCE is weighing a piece of silver gleaned from the rivers of silver that flowed from the silver mines in Potosi, Peru, not only back to Europe, but through Acapulco and Manila to China.

Vermeer's Hat is a fascinating, highly readable history of a period in which the world changed.

19Cariola
Editado: Jan 20, 2010, 9:06 pm

18> That's one I've been looking at for awhile. Sounds like a good companion to Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches, which focuses on how the rising Dutch middle class in the 17th century wanted paintings to include fine and exotic objects that reflected their new wealth. (Well, and much more; it's a social and economic history built around art.)

16> Visually beautiful and bleak, and in the way it creates an atmosphere, not necessarily in terms of the story.

20fuzzy_patters
Jan 21, 2010, 9:42 am

For more on Vermeer check out this website http://www.essentialvermeer.com/vermeer_painting_part_one.html.

21janeajones
Jan 21, 2010, 10:44 am

19> I'll have to take a look at the Schama though it sounds much more Eurocentric than Brook's study.

20> Thanks, fuzzy_patters -- that's a gorgeous site!

22janeajones
Jan 24, 2010, 1:26 pm



4. The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, his Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren

I found this novel a delight: a magical realism tour through the underside of early 19th century Northern Europe (unfortunately it doesn't go to Sweden, despite the author's nationality). It reminded at times of Candide and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.

The protagonist, Hercule Barfuss is a deaf and dumb, armless, gnome-like savant who does indeed read minds and has preternaturally talented feet and toes. He was born in a brothel on the same night as the perfect Henriette, who becomes his soul-mate, his other half. When they are separated, he spends most of the book trying to find her. There are horrific scenes of suffering at the hands of heartless authorities and of vengeance taken by Hercule. But the book moves swiftly and is, at times, hilarious.

My only caveat was the last chapter. The book is framed by a letters from Hercule's great grandson in Martha's Vineyard to one of his European relatives. The introduction is OK as it leads the reader into Hercule's tale, but the last chapter is a rather flat summing up of his later life in America and a disquisition on the development of deaf education. It's unnecessary and anti-climactic -- way too much denoument. So, my recommendation is to read the book and skip the last chapter, unless you like neatly wrapped-up packages or want to learn more about the history of sign language.

23tomcatMurr
Editado: Jan 28, 2010, 5:14 am

I've had Vermer's Hat on my Amazon wishlist since it came out. It sounds excellent from your review, Jane. Such a a brilliant idea to look at the history of trade and everyday life through art.

I have read Schama's Embarrassment of Riches. It is very dense and packed with information, but not entirely readable, I'm afraid. It does, however, have some killer illustrations which make the book worth reading.

24janeajones
Jan 28, 2010, 9:15 pm

Murr -- I highly recommend Vermeer's Hat -- it's readable, enlightening, and even entertaining.

25janeajones
Editado: Set 4, 2010, 10:22 am



5. Merab's Beauty by Torgny Lindgren

I finally finished the last couple of stories in Torgny Lindgren's Merab's Beauty last night. Each of the stories is a small gem of a portrait -- a cross-section of a Northern Swedish agricultural community mostly in the first third of the 20th c. The volume is soaked with piety, guilt, hard-work, and passion -- touched by TB and the world wars -- but hardly at all by technology or the outside world. The tone is more lyrical than grim, but I could have used a bit more sunshine by the time I finished. And, while I appreciate the iridescence of a good story, I'm not really fond of reading a whole collection at once, no doubt why it took me a month to finish this slim volume.

26avaland
Fev 1, 2010, 7:25 am

>22 janeajones: Jane, I was just looking at this book on my shelf and wondering whether I would ever get around to reading it and whether it would be worth the effort. It's good to know you liked it and that it reminded you of the Carter....

27urania1
Fev 2, 2010, 11:18 am

Jane,

I have been longing to purchase The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, his Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren, but alas the wicked but seductive Baron von Kindle does not have it in his library (that bad man). I checked at my library. No better luck. We now have an electronic book checkout through READS, but all it carries in the fiction department are romances, murder mysteries (most by men), and general crap. So much for that. I suppose I can get it on interlibrary loan. I think it's time for me to deaccession some books to make room for the pile gathering around my reading chair.

28janeajones
Fev 13, 2010, 9:45 pm



6. Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk (touchstones not working)

This one will be reviewed in Belletrista. Suffice it to say that I was as captivated by this one as I was with House of Day, House of Night, last year's favorite book. 5*

29janeajones
Fev 13, 2010, 9:51 pm

26 and 27> Lois and Mary -- I do recommend Vallgren's book -- it's quite wonderful and so far, has staying power. However, I don't know how to deaccession books -- only to squirrel them away. I never thought of myself as obsessive, but when it comes to books.....

30janeajones
Editado: Fev 14, 2010, 11:16 am


7. The Lighthouse, the Cat and the Sea by Leigh W. Rutledge

The memoir of Mrs. Moore, a 31 year old cat, who as a kitten survived a shipwreck to be rescued by Griffin, the Key West lighthouse-keeper's kindly son. This is the kind of book to plant in a cottage by the sea for a quick afternoon's read -- light, amusing, harmless.

31janeajones
Editado: Fev 21, 2010, 9:50 pm

8. Rereads for my World Lit class:

The Queen of Spades by Pushkin
Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy

obviously we're in Russia for a couple of weeks -- next up:
The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov.

32janeajones
Fev 27, 2010, 9:21 pm



9. Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham

5* -- a remarkable book -- more thoughts tomorrow when I have time to gather my thoughts.

33janeajones
Editado: Mar 6, 2010, 7:05 pm

An Pham arrived in America in 1977 at the age of ten. His father, who had worked for the Americans, had recently been released from a deadly prison, and the family hastened to escape from Vietnam before he could be arrested again.

Eighteen years later, after his older sister Chi committed suicide, An, now Andrew, headed on a bicycle into the Mexican desert, where he encountered a Vietnam veteran and realized that he needed to go back to Vietnam to understand where he had come from and what he had left behind. He decides to go by bicycle -- riding up the coast of California to the Pacific NW whence he flies to Japan, which he tours by bicycle, and finally to Vietnam.

As his journey progresses, his family history slowly unfolds -- in a skillfully constructed, novelistic approach. The book alternates between a fascinating travelogue of Vietnam's cities and countryside, and the difficulties of a proud immigrant family struggling to adjust to American life with its new freedoms, racism, and contrasts of poverty and prosperity. As Viet-kieu in his homeland, Pham faces a mixture of suspicion, affection, envy and very real danger. His descriptions are visceral and sensual: he is particularly cognizant of food, and the reader's reactions veer from mouth-watering to stomach-churning. His connection to Vietnam is anything but sentimental -- although he empathizes with its inhabitants, he has a love-hate relationship that is complicated by his knowledge that but for chance, their fate could have been his.

The slow unraveling of his family history is riveting -- from his parents' disapproved-of marriage to his sister's anguish in trying to come to terms with life in America and with her sexual identity. In many ways Catfish and Mandala is a quintessentially American immigrant tale, beautifully written, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful. Highly recommended, especially for anyone who is interested in the history and culture of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

34nobooksnolife
Fev 28, 2010, 6:50 pm

I've had my eye on this one and thanks to your lovely review, it's going on my wish list.

35kidzdoc
Fev 28, 2010, 11:32 pm

Catfish and Mandala has been on my wish list for a year or more, but your excellent review has encouraged me to purchase it in the near future.

36janeajones
Mar 6, 2010, 7:02 pm

Review of Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tocarczuk (#28 above) via Belletrista here: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue4/reviews_13.php

37dchaikin
Editado: Mar 6, 2010, 10:24 pm

Jane - echoing above, great review of Catfish and Mandala. I've had The Eaves of Heaven on my wishlist for awhile. I'll add this one there too - actually it looks like I should read this first.

I'm curious whether, in your opinion, one of the Tokarczuk books stands out over the other. They both sound fascinating.

38janeajones
Mar 7, 2010, 10:56 am

Dan -- I think both the Tokarczuk books are wonderful, but House of Day, House of Night is one of my all-time favorites -- maybe I just read it at the right time, when I could savor it slowly -- it's not a book to race through. I just got a copy of Eaves of Heaven in the mail -- found a reasonably priced used one on Amazon, but I probably won't get to it for awhile as I have a book I need to read for Belletrista and a couple of LT ERs I should do reviews on soon. Plus we're in the last half of the semester, and I have exams and soon more papers to grade -- definitely cuts into the reading time.

39rebeccanyc
Mar 7, 2010, 11:27 am

House of Day, House of Night has been on my TBR for a long time; I may have to move it up after those words of praise.

40kidzdoc
Mar 7, 2010, 2:31 pm

#39: Ditto. I bought it last year, and will move it up as well.

41dchaikin
Mar 8, 2010, 10:57 pm

#38 - I had sense that might be true about HoD,HoN. Your comments last year left a mark on my memory somehow. I hope I can check that one out sometime.

42janeajones
Editado: Mar 13, 2010, 7:33 pm


10. Before the Throne by Naguib Mahfouz

LTER
Although Before the Throne is classified by its publisher as a "Modern Arabic Novel," the book's subtitle (at least in its English translation) is "Dialogs with Egypt's Great from Menes to Anwar Sadat." According to the translator's Afterword, Mahfouz himself claimed the book was not fiction: "It is history."

The dialogs in the book take place in the Court of Osiris where important players in Egypt's history -- pharaohs, intellects, revolutionaries, bureaucrats and generals -- are called to account for their deeds within the context of Egyptian history. Those who lived during Pharonic times are judged by Osiris with advice from Isis to be granted status among the Immortals, or sent to Purgatory or Hell. Those who came later and professed Christianity or Islam were questioned, not only by the gods but also by the Immortals who preceded them. They are then sent on with the court's recommendation to their own personal judgements. None of the Greek Pharaohs, including Cleopatra, are represented, as Mahfouz considered them occupiers -- not Egyptian.

This is a curious piece of work -- the chapters have a repetitive structure and I found the language rather flat. Perhaps it has a different kind of rhythm and beauty in the original Arabic. For someone interested in an outline of the highlights of Egyptian history -- the book provides that, along with Mahfouz's judgements on the merits of the characters. But it is not novelistic -- there is no plot, no character development, little conflict, and no suspense. And although I have not read very much Mahfouz, I think anyone interested in his best work is advised to go to the novels -- those the author claimed as fiction.

43janeajones
Editado: Maio 6, 2010, 4:34 pm


11. Symphony in White by Adriana Lisboa

A tale of two sisters in Brazil -- review forthcoming in Belletrista.

Review here: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue5/reviews_4.php

44janeajones
Editado: Mar 31, 2010, 7:39 pm


12. Erzulie's Skirt by Ana-Maurine Lara

Erzulie's Skirt is a novel about two Afro-Dominican women, Miriam and Micaela, born in the countryside, steeped in the traditions of Haitian Vodoun and Dominican Vudu, trying to survive in an increasingly urbanized Dominican Republic.

Miriam is the daughter of Haitian immigrants, literally serfs on a sugar-cane plantation, oppressed by poverty, discrimination, and murderous raids. After her parents are killed in an accident, she leaves the plantation for the city of San Cristobal with her lover, by whom she is pregnant.

Micaela's parents are Dominican peasants who own a small farm. Her father is a Vudu priest and healer; her mother, once a Vudu priestess has been lured into the "church women" circle of evangelicos, after a difficult childbirth. When Micaela's younger brother accidentally drowns, her mother blames her and banishes her from the household. She too, ends up in San Cristobal.

Eventually the two women meet as they live in the same slum neighborhood. Micaela has managed to obtain a job as a servant in a wealthy household; Miriam can only find work hawking cheap goods and braiding tourists' hair on the beach. They barely survive a disastrous attempt to emigrate to America and return to the Dominican Republic. Finally, it is the spiritual connection to each other and to the African luases (gods) that allow the two women to survive.

This is Ana-Maurine Lara's first novel, and it has rough edges and unfinished pieces. However, I found it an illuminating journey into a world of grinding poverty that finds hope, and even sometimes joy, in a spiritual connection. It helps to have a bit of background into African-Caribbean religion to read this book, although the author provides a good afterword on Vodoun and Vudu and a glossary of Creole and Dominican terms (which I unfortunately did not discover until I got to the end of the book).

45janeajones
Editado: Abr 3, 2010, 10:19 pm


13. Sonata Mulattica: Poems by Rita Dove

In this narrative series of poems, Rita Dove chronicles the life of violinist George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860). The son of a self-styled African Prince and a Polish mother, Bridgetower was a child prodigy, taught by Haydn and taken on tour by his father at the age of nine. He created a sensation in Paris and London, and was eventually made the ward of the Prince Regent ("Prinny") when it became obvious that his womanizing father was neglecting him. As a young man, he returned to Saxony to visit his mother and made his way to Vienna, where he met Beethoven. The centerpiece of his story is the brief collaboration of Beethoven and Bridgetower in the first performance of Sonata No. 9. Beethoven was inspired by Bridgetower's playing to compose the Sonata, dedicated it to him, and they performed it together. But in a drunken spree after the concert, Bridgetower insulted a woman (in the poem a barmaid) Beethoven had idealized, and in a fit of rage, Beethoven tore up the dedication. He later dedicated the Sonata to Rodolphe Kreutzer -- who considered the piece unplayable and never performed it. Bridgetower returned to London, having missed his chance at immortality, served as the principal violinist in the Prince's orchestra, toured Europe, and died in London in relative obscurity.

If was at the Beginning. If
he had been older, if he hadn't been
dark, brown eyes ablaze
in that remarkable face;
if he had not been so gifted, so young
a genius with no time to grow up;
if he hadn't grown up, undistinguished,
to an obscure old age.

So begins Dove's collection of varied and evocative poems. Each has a lyrical musicality presenting a moment in time. Some of the poems evoke the familiar music of the time --

Little monkey, little cow
Can you hear me listening? Now
Ticking clock, piano plink --
Watch me hear you, feel me think.

Others describe the playing of the music --

This is what it is like

to be a flame; furious
but without weight, breeze
sharpening into wind, a bright gust
that will blind, flatten all of you --
yet tender,
somewhere inside
tender.

The reader is brought into the life of the courts of the Esterhazy in Vienna, the Hanovers in London; salons and taverns and theatres and streets. Sonata Mulattica is a tour de force.

46tomcatMurr
Abr 3, 2010, 11:42 pm

Intriguing. I"ll look out for this one.

47dchaikin
Abr 4, 2010, 12:44 am

Excellent review! How did you come across it (Sonata Mulattica)?

48kidzdoc
Abr 4, 2010, 7:19 am

Fabulous review, Jane! I haven't read any poetry by Rita Dove, so I'll look for this collection later this week.

49janeajones
Editado: Abr 4, 2010, 11:42 am

46, 48> Dove is a marvellous poet -- she was Poet Laureate from 1993-95 and won a Pulitzer in 1987. I also recently enjoyed her Mother Love: Poems which hints at the Demeter/Persephone story in contemporary guise.

47> Dan -- I don't really remember exactly how, but I'm always on the prowl for narrative poetry. It may have been mentioned in the NYTBR. It's been sitting on TBR for a few months awaiting my annual spring poetry-reading spree.

50janeajones
Editado: Abr 25, 2010, 10:05 am


14. La Perdida by Jessica Abel

This graphic novel is a coming-to-consciousness tale, a very slow coming-to-consciousness. Carla, recently having left college, decides to go to Mexico City to connect with the culture of the father who abandoned her. Initially she moves in with an ex-pat old boyfriend, but eventually finds a job teaching English and gets her own apartment. Trying to escape the ex-pat experience, she connects with Oscar, a young Mexican who wants to move to the US to become a DJ, and Memo, a self-styled Communist revolutionary, who seduces Carla's mind while mocking her Americanness. As a typical 20-something, Carla indulges in sex, alcohol, drugs, drama and fiestas -- believing that she is experiencing Mexico with real Mexicans. But on the edges of her life, another Mexico looms with drug cartels and goons and violence. This is a cautionary tale. While at first I found the story interesting, I became increasingly annoyed with Carla's refusal to see what was in front of her face. Like all graphic novels this one reads quickly and the drawings capture the hectic life of young adults -- if not much of Mexico. Finally, I was disappointed -- La Perdida just doesn't have the same punch of something like Persepolis -- maybe I'm just too old.

51janeajones
Editado: Abr 15, 2010, 7:16 am


15. Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers by Evgeny Petrov and Ilya Ilf, edited by Erika Wolf

In 1935, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, lauded Soviet satirists, landed in New York, rented a car, and set off on a road trip across America and back. Their trip westward took them through the Midwest, the deserts of the Southwest to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Returning eastward, they drove through Texas, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and up the eastern seaboard back to NYC. They chronicled their journey with written and photographic snapshots of the landscape and people of America, which were published in the Soviet magazine OGONEK -- somewhat comparable the US's LIFE.

This is a fascinating view of Depression-era America from the perspective of outsiders. The black-and-white photographs, which do not have the quality or preservation of similar era American photographs (they're more snapshots than art) are, nevertheless, wonderfully evocative. Here are a few quotes of the authors' observations:

"The roads are one of the most remarkable phenomena of American life. American life specifically, not just American technology."

"At the center of the commercial life of the town in the center of the business district, so to speak, is the drugstore. This is a completely different, purely American kind of commerce. Cigarettes, razors, kitchenware, haberdashery, alcohol, and books are all sold here."

"There are many attractive qualities in the character of the American people. They are excellent workers, jacks-of-all-trades....They are precise, but not so much as to be pedantic. They are neat and punctual, without being so fussy that other people would start to make fun of them for it . They know how to keep their word, and they trust other people's words. They are always ready to help.... But the most interesting childlike quality, curiosity, is almost absent among Americans. Americans just aren't curious. This is especially true of young people."

"All the tremendous accomplishments of American culture -- schools, universities, literature, theater, -- all are crestfallen before the film industry. You can graduate from twenty schools and universities and after a few years of regular cinema attendance turn into a total idiot."

Ah -- the more things change, the more they remain the same.

52dchaikin
Abr 7, 2010, 7:37 pm

oh, those excerpts are very entertaining, especially the last one - how true!

53kidzdoc
Abr 7, 2010, 9:41 pm

Great review, Jane! I also love that last quote. I'll look for this book tomorrow.

54janeajones
Editado: Abr 15, 2010, 7:17 am

16, and 17. Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf and The Sibyl





It strikes me that both of these books are about the divine that resides deep inside all of us -- but much closer to the surface in some. This divine is amoral -- it doesn't follow the rules of good or evil -- it's much more like the divine power in the Book of Job. Unknowable.

The Dwarf is an allegory set in Renaissance Italy. I don't think the Dwarf is actually even a character in the novel despite that he is the narrator. He's the impulse to power, to avenge, to destroy, that lurks in humanity. When it's unleashed, all hell breaks loose. At the end of the novel, he's chained to an underground cell, but he knows that he'll be freed at some point, because he is needed.

In The Sibyl, the Wandering Jew, cursed with eternal life because he refused to let Jesus, on his way to be crucified, rest his head against his wall, has come to Delphi to seek wisdom from the Oracle. As an alien, he is driven away from the temple, but he discovers an ancient sybil high in the hills who recounts her tale of divine possession to him. She does not understand the divine possession that had taken hold of her, but she has borne the son of the god -- a mute idiot. Her life has been spent ostracized from the common life of humanity, except for a brief passionate love.

One interesting grace note that the novels share is that enigmatic smile -- the one that the painter Bernardo (Da Vinci) gives to his portrait of the Princess in The Dwarf and that an ancient statue of the god bears in The Sibyl:

"Suddenly he knew of what that perpetual smile reminded him. It was the image of a god which he had seen yesterday, down in the temple at Delphi: an ancient image standing somewhat apart as if to make room for newer, finer images. It had the same smile, enigmatic and remote, at once meaningless and inscrutable. A smile neither good nor evil, yet for that very reason frightening."

The characters in Lagerkvist's novels seem to be god-struck -- at once inspired and scapegoats for the common run of humanity (I couldn't help but to think of Ursula LeGuin's story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas").

Lagerkvist's other two famous novels, Barrabas about the thief who is freed by Pontius Pilate in exchange for Jesus, and The Death of Ahasuerus, who is the wandering Jew, undoubtedly deal with a similar theme.

55dchaikin
Abr 15, 2010, 8:29 am

Jane, you just sparked my interest in Pär Lagerkvist.

56janemarieprice
Abr 15, 2010, 10:24 am

Me too.

57janeajones
Abr 15, 2010, 10:33 am

He's well worth the interest -- and the books are very short and easy to read, if dense with suggestion.

58janeajones
Abr 25, 2010, 10:14 am


18. Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar
Pure escape -- a graphic novel about Ferdinand, the vampire, who only bites his victims with one tooth so as not to harm them, and his wild variety of creature friends. Their tortured love lives reminded me of those of my 20-something daughter and her friends. I did find the teeny-tiny print a bit taxing to read at times -- especially in dim light.

59janeajones
Editado: Abr 25, 2010, 11:03 am


19. Heresy by S.J. Parris (Stephanie Merritt) LTER ARC

Parris's biggest mistake in this novel is to use Giordano Bruno as the first person narrator. What is a rather run-of-the-mill historic murder mystery, set at Oxford University in 1583, suffers from its clunky portrayal of the brilliant Italian philosopher and renowned heretic. There are some interesting plot devices -- the murder victims are set up to be copies of martyred saints as portrayed in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Jesuit mission to overthrow Queen Elizabeth provides a political backdrop. However, character development ranges from the stereotyped to the embarrassing. The Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford, are somewhat pale reflections of the dons at Hogwarts. There is the requisite beautiful, inquisitive and rebellious daughter of Rector Underhill, stifled by her father's expectations. Sir Philip Sidney, the poet and friend to Bruno, comes off as a stiff. And then, there's poor Bruno himself, who succumbs to self-pity:

"I realised with a prickle of discomfort why he bothered me: it was not so much that I resented the hearty backslapping bonhomie of English upper class gentlemen, for I could tolerate it well enough in Sidney on his own. It was the way Sidney fell so easily into this strutting group of young men, where I could not, and the fear that he might in some ways prefer their company to mine. Once again, I felt that peculiar stab of loneliness that only an exile truly knows: the sense that I did not belong, and never would again." -- yuck.

60RidgewayGirl
Abr 25, 2010, 11:17 am

Thanks for the review. It's almost more useful to know what to avoid than to add another book to my wishlist.

61janeajones
Editado: Maio 7, 2010, 10:53 pm


20. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (touchstones not available)

This is the tale of the rise and decline of a popular novelist, Angelica Deverell. Born into the Edwardian lower middle class, raised by her shopkeeper mother and lady's maid aunt, Angel leaves school when she faces humiliation for lying about her background. Scorning an offer to join the household staff of her aunt's employer, she determines to write a novel -- and write one she does -- a lurid, risque romance that eventually finds a publisher and an adoring audience. Angel is not a particularly attractive protagonist, but she is rather fascinating, and her life is set against the inanity and decay of the English class system during the first half of the 20th c. Taylor creates a memorable cast of characters and a great escape read -- exactly what I needed as I was immersed in grading final exams.

62janeajones
Editado: Maio 9, 2010, 3:30 pm


21. The Wedding by Dorothy West

Dorothy West was one the last surviving of members of the Harlem Renaissance during which she published the magazines, Challenge and New Challenge. The Wedding first published in 1995 is a fascinating and beautifully written look at the privileged, but tiny, African-American community on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s. Shelby Coles, the youngest daughter of Corinne and Clark Coles, a NYC physician, is about to marry Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician. As the wedding nears, the history of the family, descended from slaves and slave-owners, unfolds and a complication arises. Lute McNeil, a furniture craftsman, has rented one of the houses in the Oval neighborhood with his three motherless daughters, and he is determined to marry Shelby himself.

It's illuminating how weddings bring out deep-seated cultural values and mores. It makes me want to go back and reread Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding and Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding.

63janeajones
Editado: Maio 12, 2010, 8:50 pm

22. Rereads of short, short stories for my Intro to Lit class: "The Elephant in the Village of the Blind," "A Conversation with my Father" by Grace Paley, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid, "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" by Yasunari Kawabata, "The Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams, and "She Unnames Them" by Ursula Le Guin.

Brief, pointed insights into the varieties of the human condition. In the Le Guin story, Eve returns their names to the animals:

"None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go beside me for awhile in the day. They seemed far closer that when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to smell one another's smells, fell or rub or caress one another's scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another's blood or flesh, keep one another warm -- that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from food."

64dchaikin
Maio 12, 2010, 9:54 pm

#63 Jane - Any brief thoughts on the two stories by Grace Paley? I have a large short story collection of Paley's that I've been thinking of sampling. If those are in there, I'll check them out first.

65janeajones
Maio 12, 2010, 10:37 pm

Dan -- only "A Conversation with my Father" is by Grace Paley -- it's a lovely little meta-fiction -- the father urges the daughter to write a simple story -- he sees tragedy in her creation; she sees a slice of life that is not finished -- generation gap or conceptual gap?

66dchaikin
Maio 13, 2010, 10:04 am

"Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life"

That was a wonderful 6-page story. I've read two stories by Paley, both are just a conversation or someone talking and yet both are electric. I'm not ready to read the whole book (it's called Grace Paley : The Collected Stories but I'll pick out a few more to read.

67Cariola
Maio 13, 2010, 10:48 am

I love "Girl"--it was one of the favorites in the sections of Intro to Lit that I just taught. I was bummed out that the new edition of the anthology that I use cut one of my all-time favorites, "How to Talk to Your Mother" by Lorrie Moore, which was a great one to combine with "Girl" and "I Stand Here Ironing." At least they kept Raymon Carver's "Cathedral."

68janeajones
Maio 13, 2010, 12:49 pm

66> Dan -- I think reading a whole collection of stories by one author at all once is really difficult. You're wise to pick and choose. I love that quote, by the way.

67> I really like "Girl" too -- but the younger women in the class didn't. Maybe one has to have had a teenage daughter to appreciate the genuine affection in it.

69janeajones
Maio 14, 2010, 12:01 pm


23. The Journals of Susanna Moodie by Margaret Atwood

This early book of poetry (1970) by Margaret Atwood contains meditative vignettes from the life of Susanna Moodie, an early Canadian pioneer. It's less a narrative than a series of private meditations of Moodie's life in the wilderness and later in the town of Belleville where the family settled . It concludes with a series of poems from beyond the grave in which Moodie's voice seems to transform into the land/idea of Canada itself. The book is illustrated with a series of Atwood's collages which help to evoke the early Canadian landscape and settlers.

Dream 3: Night Bear Which Frightened Cattle

Horns crowding toward us
a stampede of bellowing, one
night the surface of my mind keeps
only as anecdote

We laughed, safe with lanterns
at the kitchen door

though beneath stories

where forgotten birds
tremble through memory, ripples across water
and a moon hovers in the lake
orange and prehistoric

I lean with my feet grown intangible
because I am not there

watching the bear I didn't see condense
itself among the trees, an outline
tenuous as an echo

but it is real, heavier
than real I know
even by daylight here
in this visible kitchen

it absorbs all terror

it moves toward the lighted cabin
below us on the slope
where my family gathers

a mute vibration passing
between my ears

70janeajones
Editado: Maio 20, 2010, 7:17 pm


24. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

I found ORANGES funny, moving, intriguing. I love myth and fairytales so that aspect of the book was delightful. I was surprised by the really genuine love and affection among the community of women, their eccentricities, and even their individuality. I had expected a tale of a childhood of oppression and stricture and instead found one of a rather quirky charm -- until the horror of "deviant" sexuality arose.

In addition to Winterson's interweaving of Biblical and fairytale motifs, I was particularly interested in her use of Arthurian motifs. In checking her bio on her website, she states that one of the six books in the house in which she grew up was Malory's Morte Darthur. Of course, it's Perceval and the Grail Quest that pops up in her book, but she twists it in an interesting way. She does realize that it is the Grail quest that caused the disintegration of Camelot, and she seems to parallel her own quest with that of Perceval's -- so her childhood community is a kind of Camelot.....

In the Deuteronomy chapter -- I found the last two pages contrasting history and story , the collector of curios and the curious fairly revealing, if a bit jumbled.

The book has all the joys and perils of not only a coming-of-age story, but a true Kunstlerroman -- the artist is emerging.

71dchaikin
Maio 20, 2010, 9:53 pm

Wonderful review, Jane.

72janeajones
Editado: Maio 22, 2010, 8:52 pm


25. Alice's Adventures Underground by Lewis Carroll

After we went to see Tim Burton's quite delightful version of Alice in Wonderland , I was drawn back to the original. This is a facsimile edition of the handwritten copy with 37 of his own illustrations that Lewis Carroll gave to Alice Liddell for Christmas in 1864. This is the gentlest version of Alice's adventures -- thoroughly suitable for young children. And it is interesting to see it written in Carroll's handwriting with his rather rough pictures.

73janeajones
Maio 22, 2010, 9:04 pm


26. The Line by Olga Grushin

This is the most excruciatingly beautiful book I've read this year. I can't recommend it highly enough. It took me weeks to read -- to absorb the humanity of it. I read it for Belletrista, so review will be forthcoming there.

74Cait86
Maio 23, 2010, 2:58 pm

Getting caught up on your thread, and adding The Wedding to my TBR - it sounds excellent. Your blurb on The Line is just not fair - we have to wait weeks for a review!

75janeajones
Maio 24, 2010, 5:43 pm

Sorry Cait -- you could read the book instead of waiting for the review ;-)

76janeajones
Editado: Maio 26, 2010, 5:31 pm


27. The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant, LTER, ARC

Drenched in hair-spray, Kristel Kolvenbach struck a match to light the Advent Wreath on December 20, 1998. In her haste, she dropped the match onto her lacquer-drenched mohair sweater and burst into flame. For the next year, ten-year old Pia Kolvenbach would be shunned and looked upon with suspicion in the small German town of Bad Munstereifel as the girl whose grandmother exploded. According to Frau Kessel, it was this event that harbinged the onset of The Evil. Abandoned by all her previous friends, Pia pals around with another unpopular child, Stefan Breuer, known as StinkStefan.

Shortly after the New Year, young girls, girls the age of Pia, began to disappear from the village, seemingly into thin air -- the first was Katharina Linden. Caught up in the town's fear and paranoia, Pia and Stefan find solace in scary folk tales about the town's history told by the ancient Herr Schilling, who treats the children as intelligent beings. Pia and Stefan begin to uncover clues about the town's old secrets and sleuth for the mystery of the girls' disappearance.

I found the mystery entertaining, suspenseful and a quick read, but it struck me as more as a young-adult book than a layered adult mystery. It is as much a rite-of-passage story as a thriller. The folklore is cleverly interwoven into the tale, and adds to a satisfying read.

77janeajones
Editado: Maio 29, 2010, 4:31 pm


28. Hotel Malabar by Brendan Galvin

The premise for this narrative poem is intriguing. In 1976, three government agents are on a mission to discover what J. Norton Parlin did during WWII in South America while he was a manager for a United Fruit banana plantation in the jungles of South America. Now in his late 70s, he had returned wealthy to his hometown on Cape Cod, married a local girl, sired two sons and built a hotel. The narrative shifts among five voices: the leader of the government team; the two young undercover operatives, one who is working for the hotel and one who is interviewing Parlin for a "children's book;" Parlin in his interviews; and Parlin's ancient Indian cuandero.

The poem is written in a easily flowing blank verse that I found a bit flat. While this is an easy read, nothing about it really grabbed me. After I had read about half of it yesterday, I had to go back to reread the whole thing today as I really didn't remember what I had read -- not a good sign of a gripping read. Or the onset of Alzheimers.

78janeajones
Editado: Maio 30, 2010, 9:45 pm


29. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

I was pretty skeptical about Sharp Teeth -- a colleague who is really into horror and Gothic lit and knew that I assigned long narrative poems to my Introduction to Poetry students recommended it: a novel about werewolf packs in Los Angeles written in blank verse. It's a cracking good read -- I couldn't put it down today.

Three separate packs of lycanthropes are vying for power in LA. One is made up of lawyers and professionals, led by Lark Tenant, infiltrating their way into the city's power structure. The Long Beach pack is a thug-like group led by Ray and his bitch Sasha, making cash by selling stolen cargo and taking out small meth cookers for a price. The final pack is a small group of surfers centered around Annie and Palo, bent on revenge for past wrongs. Mix in a Pasadena bridge tournament, a Mexican drug cartel, a dog-catcher in love, and an obsessed policeman -- and a highly entertaining, werewolfian mystery ensues.

The poetry is very loose -- I'm not sure how poetic it actually is, but it's very readable. And there are moments of suggestion:

So get this straight
it's not the full moon.
That's as ancient and ignorant as any myth.
The blood just quickens with a thought
a discipline develops
so that one can self-ignite
reshaping form, becoming something rather more canine
still conscious, a little hungrier.
It's a raw muscular power,
a rich sexual energy
and the food tastes a whole lot better.

79janeajones
Editado: Jun 9, 2010, 4:16 pm


30. The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble

I love reading Margaret Drabble. I have loved reading Margaret Drabble since the 1970s when I stumbled upon Waterfall and The Garrick Year. She is the paramount novelist of manners of my generation. Yes, I am a baby-boomer, a feminist, an American, an unfamous academic, a once-urban dweller -- and oh, I recognize and know her people: I've spent time in England, married an (American) graduate of an English drama school, and my best friends in NYC in the 1970s were English. And Margaret Drabble has grown old with me -- like Margaret Atwood and Judi Dench and Helen Mirren and Doris Lessing -- and even Meryl Streep. Can I say I am grateful for those women who acknowledge that growing old is a part of life? I wonder if Jane Austen would have written about growing old if she had lived beyond the age of 42?

In The Sea Lady, an eminent marine biologist, Humphrey Clark, and a famous performer turned feminist academic, Ailsa Kelman, are on their way to the relatively new University of Ornemouth in Finsterness in the north of England to receive honorary degrees. Their lives are entwined -- they spent a memorable summer together 50 years ago at the seaside in Finsterness and later connected for a brief period in London in the 1960s when they were in their twenties. But they haven't seen each other for over 30 years. The journey back to Finsterness is a journey back in time and remembrance. I savored every page.

80tomcatMurr
Jun 3, 2010, 11:51 am

I wonder if Jane Austen would have written about growing old if she had lived beyond the age of 42?

Yes! What would Jane have said?

81nobooksnolife
Jun 3, 2010, 11:22 pm

Thank you for introducing me to Margaret Drabble--sounds like an author I will enjoy.

82rebeccanyc
Jun 4, 2010, 7:07 am

Wow, I haven't thought about Margaret Drabble in years, but devoured all her books in the 70s and early 80s and even once gave one to my mother. Great to have a chance to catch up with her.

83dchaikin
Jun 4, 2010, 8:26 am

Jane - I've been quietly admiring your last several reviews. I don't really have anything useful to comment on, just wanted to mention it.

84janeajones
Jun 4, 2010, 8:40 am

81> I hope you do -- she offers a real insight into contemporary British life.

82> rebecca -- I had lost sight of her too until I stumbled upon The Witch of Exmoor (nothing occult there) a couple of years ago and was redazzled. I'm looking forward to reading more of the late books.

83> thanks, Dan -- we seem to be reading in different paths lately.

85urania1
Jun 4, 2010, 9:43 am

Jane - Margaret Drabble - one of my favorite authors as well. She has written several excellent books over the past ten years or so. I have been captivated by each.

And >80 tomcatMurr: Murrushka,

I think Jane would have written about growing old. Her last book Persuasion is a rather bleak book. Although it has its playfully comedic moments, the book focuses more on the unpleasantness of Georgian gentry.

86janeajones
Editado: Jun 8, 2010, 5:24 pm

80, 85> Mary and Murr -- I certainly think Austen's vision of the world got less rosy in her later books, but I wonder if she would have been able to leave or veer far from the marriage plot. What WOULD she have had to say about two older sisters dependant upon their brother -- something other than Sense and Sensibility I would imagine.

87arubabookwoman
Jun 8, 2010, 1:35 pm

I enjoyed Margaret Drabble in the 1970's too. Would love to get her take on aging, (and catch up with her), so I'm going to hunt at least one of these books down. Which did you like better: The Sea Lady or The Witch of Exmoor?

88janeajones
Jun 8, 2010, 5:27 pm

aruba -- that's a tough question as I just read The Sea Lady, and it's been at least a couple of years since I read The Witch of Exmoor. I think The Sea Lady is a bit gentler than the other, and certainly very nostalgic about childhood -- but I found the bite of The Witch of Exmoor rather bracing. I suppose it depends upon your tastes.

89janeajones
Editado: Jun 9, 2010, 4:16 pm


31. My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather

In this brief novella, Cather uses a young narrator, Nellie Birdseye, to tell the story of the marriage of Myra and Oswald Henshawe. In Cather's understated, but rather brilliant, style their story unfolds in two parts -- one set in NYC where a teen-aged Nellie has been taken by her aunt to visit the glamorous Henshawes, and the other ten years later, in a "sprawling overgrown West-coast city" where Nellie has obtained a teaching position and happens to move into the same apartment-hotel where the Henshawes, now in much reduced circumstances, live. Nellie tells us what she knows and what she observes of the Henshawes, but it is up to the reader to fill in the lacunae of their lives and personalities.

I am no expert on Cather, and I haven't read many of her novels for decades, but this one, published in 1926, strikes me as a minor Modernist masterpiece. There's a good review/discussion of the novella on the LT main page.

90avaland
Jun 11, 2010, 7:46 am

Finally getting back around to your thread, Jane. Thanks for the review of the Rita Dove. I've enjoyed her work in the past and have seen this collection on the bookstore shelf but just have been reluctant to pick it up. Also the Susanna Moodie which I've had for a long time but haven't gotten around to reading.

I think I left you a note elsewhere about the Drabble (or I'm having a terrible case of deja vu). Plenty of good reading here!

91janeajones
Editado: Jun 19, 2010, 10:04 am


32. Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson

I had never encountered Tove Jansson before last year when I got an LTER copy of The True Deceiver -- one of last year's favorite books. I thought it was time to read one of famed children's books, and this one fit the season. It's a whimsical delight -- highly recommended.

92janeajones
Editado: Jun 19, 2010, 10:03 am


33. In Parenthesis by David Jones

This is the most difficult book I've read this year -- both stylistically and subject-wise. It's also a work of High Modern brilliance. More to come when I gather my thoughts into some coherent patterns.

OK here it is for what it's worth --

The NYBR reprint of David Jones' 1937 novel/epic has 3 introductions: one by W.S. Merwin for this 2003 edition, one by T.S. Eliot for the 1961 reprint, and one by the poet himself for the original edition. Eliot was partially responsible for its original publication by Faber and Faber. At the time and in his later introduction, he said of the book, "On reading the book in typescript I was deeply moved. I then regarded it, and I still regard it, as a work of genius."

David Jones was born in 1895 to a Welsh father and English mother.
During WWI he served as a member of the Welsh Fusiliers in a company that consisted of Londoners and Welshmen. The period covered in the book moves from December 1915 to July 1916 as his infantry company marched into the flooded trenches on the Western Front and then onto the Battle of the Somme and the attack on Mametz Wood.

In his introduction, David Jones says that the title to this book In Parenthesis alludes to the war -- a parenthetical time in the lives of amateur soldiers -- a kind of space between: "how glad we were to step outside its brackets at the end of '18 -- and also because our curious type of existence here is altogether in parenthesis."

The intensity of Jones' work is hard to describe -- it is both novel and poetic epic. It's the work of a Welsh bard modelled on Aneirin's Y Gododdin and a thoroughly Modern sensibility determined to bring the "nowness" of the battlefield imagery -- auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory -- to the reader. To a reader who has never experienced the battlefield, it is a dream/nightmare experience, but one that is seared into the memory. I would imagine to someone who has been there, it would create an even more visceral response.

Like the High Modern masters -- Yeats, Eliot, Pound -- Jones is highly allusive and brings to bear the weight of Western civilization. Anything that touches on the battlefield comes into play -- from the ancient Welsh epics and Old Testament tales to Malory and The Song of Roland and Shakespeare's Henry V . But he is also completely of his time with musical hall songs, folklore and, most especially, the Cockney rhyming slang that was the common parlance of all British NCOs.

The intensely heightened language ranges from descriptive prose to stream-of consciousness to dialogue to rhythmic open verse. The experience of reading In Parenthesis was so intense that I couldn't concentrate on more than 20 or so pages at a time. This is not a long work -- and Jones himself provided 20 some pages of notes to explain his allusions -- but it thoroughly plunges its readers into the concrete, specific experience of the soldiers at the time, their camaraderie, and the overall horror of war.

The rats in the trenches:

You can hear his carrying parties rustle out corruptions through the night-seeds -- contest the choicest morsels in his tiny conduits, bead-eyed feast on us; but a rule of his nature, at night-fest on the broken of us.
Those broad pinioned;
blue-burnished, or brinded-back;
whose proud eyes watched
the broken emblems
droop and drag dust,
suffer with us this metamorphosis.
These too have shed their fine feathers; these too have slimed their dark bright coats; these too have condescended to dig in.
The white-tailed eagle at the battle ebb,
where the sea wars against the river-
the speckled kite of Maldon
and the crow
have naturally selected to be un-winged;
to go on the belly, to
sap sap sap
with festered spines, arched under the moon, furrit with
whiskered snouts the secret parts of us.
When it's all quiet you can hear them:
scrut, scrut, scrut
when it's as quiet as this is,
It's so very still.
Your body fits the crevice of the bay in the most comfortable fashion imaginable.
It's cushy enough.

And now off to some escapist book....

93dchaikin
Jun 19, 2010, 12:17 am

Jane, I've requested Moominsummer Madness from our library from my daughter (and me). My library has six in the series, so, if this one works we can try some others out.

re In Parenthesis - fascinating review, but call me intimidated.

94janeajones
Jun 19, 2010, 10:05 am

Dan -- I'll be interested to hear how your daughter reacts to the Moomins.

In Parenthesis is not for the faint-hearted or faint-headed, but it's worth the struggle. I'm surprised how little known it is.

95tomcatMurr
Jun 23, 2010, 12:27 am

Fantastic review and excerpt of In Parenthesis. I used to own a copy, but it got lost along the way somehow. My mother says it is her favourite book.

I'm going to hunt it down.

96janeajones
Jun 23, 2010, 10:03 am

Murr -- hope you find it -- love to have your reactions to it.

97janeajones
Jun 23, 2010, 10:12 am


34. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea, daughter of an antiquarian bookseller and a minor biographer, receives a cryptic letter from the most renowned author of the day, Vida Winter. Winter has spent her life telling imaginary stories to journalists and writers about her life, but now she wants Margaret to write her authorized biography. Skeptical, Margaret, nevertheless, plunges into Winter's books and agrees to meet the author. What ensues is weeks of storytelling and the unravelling of old mysteries in an engagingly bookish atmosphere -- an enjoyable and absorbing read.

98dchaikin
Jun 23, 2010, 10:22 am

#97 - Good to know. I recently picked up a copy at a library sale. I heard praise when it first came out, then lots of criticism...

99janeajones
Editado: Jun 23, 2010, 10:40 am


35. Frost in May by Antonia White

Frost in May is a school-book about a young girl moving into adolescence in a repressive Catholic convent school. In an interview White said that this book, her first, was her own story. While White writes well, I found the heavy dose of Roman Catholicism, the focus on breaking the girls' wills, and the enclosed, repressive atmosphere a bit much. I may have to go back and re-read The Secret Garden, Heidi or Eight Cousins as an antidote.

100janeajones
Jun 23, 2010, 10:43 am

#98 -- Dan -- I found the ending a bit glib, but I enjoyed the journey.

101janeajones
Jul 1, 2010, 2:32 pm

Just got back from getting a new knee -- finished Pamuk's My Name Is Red and read Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries -- comment forthcoming when I'm a bit more lucid and awake.

102Cariola
Jul 1, 2010, 3:49 pm

Ouch! Hope you get a lot of rest and got some good drugs. Knee replacements are something I will eventually need but am not looking forward to. Take care.

103janeajones
Jul 6, 2010, 11:52 am

Ok, I'm determined to start to comment on the books I've read in the last week, though the reading /reviewing is somewhat tinged with percocet-laced dreams, and I can only sit at the computer for a limited period of time.


36. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

This is the first novel by Pamuk that I have read, and I shall certainly continue to his explore his works. My Name Is Red is set in the 16th -century Ottoman Empire amidst the politics and connivings of the Emperor's foremost miniature illustrators. The plot is a murder mystery -- at the beginning of the book, one of the miniaturists is murdered by another -- we know who is murdered, but obviously, not who murdered him. The motivations for the murder are wrapped up in the practices and beliefs about illustration in the Muslim world. I found the discussions about Islamic art fascinating and enlightening. Pamuk also explores both the influence of European Renaissance theories of perspective and artistic individuality and the changes brought about by the Mongol conquest and subsequent Chinese influence on traditional Islamic art. As the consequences of inter-cultural contacts is one of my semi-obsessive interests, Pamuk's novel was highly satisfying.

104dchaikin
Jul 6, 2010, 12:06 pm

Jane - I hope your recovery goes well and your back to normal soon.

My Name is Read is a favorite of mine. I read it several years ago, and it lingered for a long time. I had plans to read through several more books by Pamuk...but I'm not sure where I put those plans.

105kidzdoc
Jul 6, 2010, 2:49 pm

Nice review, Janet; I'll have to move this one further up on my TBR list.

106janeajones
Editado: Jul 8, 2010, 10:50 am


37. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

I don't really understand why Shields' The Stone Diaries won so many literary awards including the 1995 Pulitzer and The Governor's General Award. It's not a bad book, but I found it a rather flat and shallow journey through one woman's life and most of the 20th Century from Manitoba to Bloomington, Indiana to Ottawa to the Orkney Islands to Sarasota, Florida. While purporting to be a novel, the fictional aspect of the book is undercut by the inclusion of photographs of a number of the characters, an elaborate family tree, and a section that seems to use (rather desultorily) genealogical research to connect the present-day characters with some of their ancestors. The reader is thus led to assume that the protagonist, Daisy Goodwill Flett, was a real person, probably related in some way to the author. But if so, there is little authorial reflection on or connection to the family.

The novel is divided into ten chapters beginning with "Birth, 1905" and ending with "Death, 199-." The beginning, chronicling Daisy's conception and birth, is actually quite intriguing. Daisy's parents, Mercy Stone and Cuyler Goodwill, are elemental, almost Laurentian characters, who seemed to have saved each other from stunted existences. Cuyler is besotted with Mercy: "He knows that without the comfort of Mercy Stone's lavish body he would never have learned to feel the reality of the world or understand the particularities of sense and reflection that others have taken as their right." Cuyler Goodwill is, by far, the most interesting and well-developed character in the book. But Mercy dies in childbirth, and Daisy is taken to be raised by a neighbor, Clarentine Flett, for the first eleven years of her life.

The tantalizing richness of the first chapter is never fulfilled in the rest of the book. I have to admit, I did find the next-to-last chapter of the novel, "Illness and Decline, 1985," somewhat entertaining as I was reading it lying in Sarasota Memorial Hospital, recovering from knee surgery. Grandma Flett, as Daisy has come to be known, has moved to Sarasota and ends up in the same hospital for a double-bypass surgery after collapsing from a heart attack on her condominium balcony.

107Cariola
Jul 7, 2010, 4:09 pm

I've never quite understood the critical accalim for Shields. I tried reading both Unless and Larry's Party, and neither of them kept my interest or really connected with me in any way.

108dchaikin
Jul 7, 2010, 4:11 pm

Perhaps you were meant to read that book... ;)

109janeajones
Jul 7, 2010, 4:22 pm

Review of #26 The Line by Olga Grushin is now at Belletrista 6 : http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue6/reviews_6.php

110dchaikin
Jul 7, 2010, 5:15 pm

#109 - wonderful review Jane!

111janeajones
Jul 8, 2010, 10:49 am

107> The Stone Diaries was my first Shields, and I'm not planning on hunting down any others -- I don't get the acclaim either.

110> Thanks, Dan -- it's a good book.

112janeajones
Editado: Jul 8, 2010, 11:07 am


38. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

A perfectly delightful, whimsical coming-of-age novel set in a crumbling castle in 1930's Britain. The major strength of the novel is the portrait of the protagonist/narrator Cassandra Mortmain who views the world with a mixture of fairy-tale wonder and practical common sense. There are plenty of reviews on the book's main page for anyone who wants more info, so I'll leave off here.

113janeajones
Editado: Jul 10, 2010, 4:02 pm


39. The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya

I've been procrastinating for days trying to sort my thoughts out about this post-apocalyptic novel which I found brilliant and disturbing, but didn't really like. It called to mind both Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and Gogol's Dead Souls -- in ways that I can't explicitly express since it's been years since I read either.

I was drawn in by the beginning of the book which had a folk-tale-feel to it, and I rather sympathized with the protagonist, Benedikt, a transcriber of old books in the feudalistic society that has emerged 200 years after "the Blast." In many ways the feudalism mirrors that of both czarist and communist Russia although the class divisions are a bit more grotesque. The Golubchiks, commoners and peasants, work at jobs assigned to them; most exhibit Consequences -- physical mutations caused by radioactivity from the Blast. Their currency and the mainstay of their diet are mice. Oldeners are survivors of the Blast, who though not immortal, never grow old beyond the age they were at the time of the Blast; Murzas are the feudal lords who never walk anywhere, but drive around in sleighs pulled by Degenerators, humans who travel on all four limbs. Then there are the dreaded Sanitaurions whose vision can pierce the darkness and who seek and round up those who suffer from Illness.

The first half of the book is taken up with Benedikt's hard-scrabble existence, his friendships, and his work at which he is delighted by many of the stories and poems which he is transcribing. The illustrator of the workshop, Olenka, the pampered daughter of a Sanitaurion who is brought to work in a sleigh, is the subject of Benedikt's romantic dreams. Fortuitously, or so it seems, she is attracted to Benedikt and they are married.

Benedikt's Father-in-Law introduces him to the arcane thought of the government and to his extensive library of oldener books -- and degeneration ensues.

While I found the book humorous, literate and exuberant, The Slynx is finally deeply pessimistic and misanthropic.

114timjones
Editado: Jul 12, 2010, 11:03 pm

>113 janeajones:: The Slynx has been on my "must get around" to list of books I don't actually have yet for a while. Now I know it's reminiscent of both Riddley Walker and Dead Souls, I'm definitely going to read it!

(I approach Russian novels knowing that a moderate to extreme ration of doom and gloom is likely to be in store for me.)

115janeajones
Jul 13, 2010, 3:06 pm

114> The Slynx is certainly worth reading -- just not my particular cup of tea, I'm afraid. Enjoy!

116janeajones
Editado: Jul 13, 2010, 3:23 pm



40. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
In 1930s London, two recent art school graduates marry in haste and repent at leisure. Sophia, a commercial artist, supports her painter husband, Charles, until she becomes pregnant and loses her job. Financial difficulties and infidelities ensue. The moral of this tale is that if you want to live a bohemian life, use birth control.

117janeajones
Editado: Jul 13, 2010, 3:23 pm


41. Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen

Short Girls is an OK book and a somewhat entertaining read, but it's a pretty stereotypical children of immigrants story without any edge that gives it texture or depth -- definitely not Amy Tan or Junot Diaz. Van and Linny are two estranged sisters, daughters of Vietnamese immigrants, who are brought together in the course of the book by difficulties in their romantic relationships. Van, the older, achieving, lawyer sister is deserted by her husband Miles, a 4th-generation Chinese-American lawyer, who is far more sophisticated than she. Linny, the somewhat rebellious younger daughter, finds herself in an affair with a married man. When they go home for their father's citizenship celebration, they begin to confide in one another. We learn nothing about the parents' lives in Vietnam, very little about the Vietnamese community in the Midwest (both girls escape from it as fast as they can), and the characters seem more soap-opera-ish than compelling. Honestly, I was quite disappointed -- I was hoping for some insight into this community. For that, I would recommend Andrew Pham's Catfish and Mandala. This is a pretty run-of-the-mill story of American middle class 20-somethings.

118tomcatMurr
Jul 14, 2010, 6:11 am

Interesting reaction to The Slynx, Jane. I have not read it, but I have read Tolstaya's collection of stories:
On The Golden Porch

and her essays about Russian literature and life in the disintegrating Soviet Union in the 1990s:
Pushkin's Children

and I strongly recommend both of these books.

Tolstaya is pretty funny in both her stories and essays. She mingles incredulity with sarcasm. I'm surprised and interested to hear that Slynx is gloomy.

119janeajones
Jul 14, 2010, 7:36 pm

Murr -- There certainly are funny aspects to The Slynx, and some readers might find more funny than depressing -- maybe it's just not my kind of humor -- I'd love to know what you think of it when you get around to reading it. I think I might enjoy her essays more than her fiction.

120timjones
Jul 15, 2010, 7:11 am

>118 tomcatMurr:, tomcatMurr: I agree that there is humour in On The Golden Porch, but it is definitely a gloomy sort of humour...

121janeajones
Editado: Jul 15, 2010, 12:18 pm


42. A Dog with No Tail by Hamdi Abu Golayyel, trans. Robin Moger, LTER

A Dog with No Tail is subtitled "A Modern Arabic Novel," but as a novel it is essentially plotless, rather a series of vignettes from the life of an Egyptian/Bedouin aspiring writer from the Fayoum who supports himself as a construction day-laborer in Cairo. It is, however, a fascinating look into a side of contemporary Egyptian life that I've never encountered before. The narrator, Hamdi, weaves tales of his family, his construction crew, fellow laborers and residents of the buildings and neighborhoods in which he works into what the book's blurb calls an "anti-Arabian Nights.

Most of Hamdi's construction work consists of tearing down and restoring buildings. He is often hauling loads of loads of sand or cement up many flights of stairs. The acts of destruction and reconstruction suggest the daily life of ordinary citizens in Egypt as well as evoke the far distant echoes of ancient Egypt. Hamdi is a respectful Muslim, but seems rather bemused by the fanatic devoutness of "the Brothers." I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a low-key, undramatic, but multi-faceted insider's view of Egypt today.

122janeajones
Editado: Jul 28, 2010, 3:58 pm


43. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

I enjoyed this children's fantasy mostly set in the alternative Un Lun Dun, where all the discards from London end up and which is peopled with an array of creatures that reminded me of those in The Wizard of Oz. There's a strong environmental message which resonated particularly with me at this time as we've been experiencing the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Zanna and Deeba, best friends from a property estate in London are magically transported into Un Lun Dun, and Zanna is declared "the Shwazzy" -- the chosen one, chosen to save Un Lun Dun from the smog. But it is Deeba who becomes the heroine of the story.

Two things bothered me about this novel. First, I didn't get the function of the Zanna story. She fails to save Un Lun Dun, the two girls are returned home, Zanna remembers nothing, and essentially disappears from the story. It's Deeba, the unchosen one, whose adventures make up most of the novel. OK, the idea that she's unchosen and still succeeds may be intriguing, but the first sections of the book seem extraneous to the rest. Second, and this is the English teacher in me -- I don't know why Deeba sometimes lapses into subject/verb disagreement. I know children sometimes speak this way, but it made me shudder every time she said something like "She don't know anything."

Quibbles aside, I think most kids (of any age) who like fantasy ala Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz would thoroughly enjoy Un Lun Dun.

123janeajones
Jul 31, 2010, 9:49 am


44. The Blue Manuscript by Sabiha Al Khemir

I had just about finished writing my impressions of this book two days ago when my computer crashed. So... as I need to regather thoughts, more later....

124janeajones
Jul 31, 2010, 10:01 am


45. The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

I've enjoyed savoring Welty's novels slowly over the past few summers (since her output is pretty low, I've limited myself to one a summer). However, I found The Ponder Heart somewhat disappointing. Like all her stories, she captures small-town Mississippi life in the early-mid 20th century quite brilliantly, but this tale told by Edna Earle, proprietress of the town's hotel, about the misadventures of her feckless Uncle Daniel Ponder just didn't carry the impact or insight of Delta Wedding or Losing Battles. One of her lesser works, imo.

125janeajones
Editado: Jul 31, 2010, 10:59 am


46. A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

A quick read -- I finished it in an evening. I found A Severed Head a wickedly funny satire of marriage, romance, psychiatry and inflated egos. I'd love to see Hugh Grant play Martin Lynch-Gibbon in a filmed version.

126dchaikin
Jul 31, 2010, 8:34 pm

Hi Jane - You always have such interesting books on your thread. Somehow I missed this thread for a couple weeks, so I'm coming across your last 8 book posts at once. Lots of great reviews, and interesting comments. I'm intrigued by The Slynx and A Dog with no Tail. Also, thanks to your review of Un Lun Dun, I finally figured out the source of the weird title.

127janeajones
Ago 7, 2010, 12:29 pm


47. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

The 88-year old Lady Slane, after the death of her husband, decides to live the remainder of her life in the way she chooses, unbothered by children, grandchildren, great-children or social obligations. She befriends (or is befriended by) 3 eccentric gentlemen and carries on quietly with only her longtime French maid as caretaker/companion. What Lady Slane is most interested in are her memories of a life lived according to others' dictates despite the fact she once dreamed of becoming an artist. A gentle, rather wise book despite the class-unconsciousness of the Lady Slane who hardly sees her ancient maid as an individual.

128janeajones
Editado: Ago 12, 2010, 9:21 am


48. The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof

A marvellous new translation by Paul Norlen of the Nobel Prize winner's masterpiece of Swedish folklore told in a high romantic style. ***** recommended. More detailed review forthcoming in Belletrista.

129tomcatMurr
Ago 13, 2010, 12:07 am

great reading! I love Iris Murdoch, and know how easy it is to read her books in one setting, despite their length. She is soooo compelling!

Any thoughts comparing Vita Sackville West and Virginia Wolf? I have never read any VSW, and just wonder how she stands up compared with VW

130janeajones
Ago 18, 2010, 10:21 am

Murr -- I've only read the one book by VSW, but on that basis, I wouldn't put her in the same class as Woolf. Woolf is much more adventurous, experimental, and thought-provoking, imo.

131janeajones
Editado: Ago 18, 2010, 5:21 pm


49. Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

I enjoyed this very-California, mid-20th-century novel of manners, if there is such a thing. Cassandra, a doctoral student at Berkeley and an identical twin, opens the book on the way home to the family ranch Northern California for her sister Judith's wedding. Judith, a classical pianist, is about to marry a young doctor she met in New York in a small family wedding, unless Cassandra can convince her otherwise.

This is a tale of an eccentric family -- a philosophizing, early retired father who thrives on brandy; a conventional and sweet, if ineffectual, grandmother; a successful novelist and screenwriter mother, whose presence remains in the house although she has died, and the twin sisters with highly refined tastes and imaginations, as Cassandra insists:

"Take it on faith -- we're special.... Who else could have had our mother for a mother and our father for a father? Who else do you know that drives a Riley and owns a Boesendorfer, or even knows what they are. We didn't join Job's Daughters, or go steady with some clod, or live with the Alpha Kappa Thetas, because we never spoke that language or thought in those terms. How could we? We can start living where others imaginations fail."

In clumsier hands, this story could be excruciating, but Baker's touch is light, skillful and amusing. She's not writing about a dysfunctional family, but one rather defined by its quirks and possibilities, as is Cassandra herself.

132janeajones
Ago 22, 2010, 12:14 pm


50. The Children by Edith Wharton

Martin Boyne encounters the children, a disparate group of seven siblings, halfs, and steps, as they are being shepherded aboard the first-class deck of an ocean liner sailing from Algiers en route to Venice to meet their parents. Their shepherd is the eldest of the Wheater children, Judith, who at 15 has taken on the role of mothering the tribe with some help from Miss Scopes, an ineffectual governess, and a nurse, Susan, who cares for the infant, Chip. These are Jazz-age hotel/yacht children, shuffled from one destination to another, at the whim of their parents' states of marriage or divorce or their search for pleasure and diversion.

Although Boyne is on his way to Switzerland to meet with long-time friend and newly-widowed Rose Sellars, he determines to first accompany the children to Venice. Touched by their plight, and especially Judith's determination to keep the brood together, he thinks he may have some influence with their parents as he had gone to Harvard with the father and was acquainted with the mother.

Wharton draws the reader in with great sympathy for Boyne, Rose and the children accompanied by disdain for the reptilian lives led by most of the adults who should be responsible for them. But as usual with Wharton, idealism faces a fierce adversary in hard-headed reality.

The novel has moments of lyrical beauty, subtle psychological insights and is quite fascinating. By no means a tragedy, it does, however, leave the reader with a feeling of sadness and lost possibilities.

133urania1
Ago 22, 2010, 12:55 pm

So much of Wharton's writing deals with lost possibilities.

134Cariola
Ago 22, 2010, 3:47 pm

Nice review! That one has been on my shelf for awhile. I'll have to pull it down soon. (But of course, the new semester starts in a week, and I haven't finished my syllabi yet . . . )

135janeajones
Ago 25, 2010, 7:14 pm

133> you're so right.

134> Thanks -- I picked it up because of the Wharton read. Classes started Monday -- I'm exhausted -- have to come home and take a nap every day. I've got the syllabi finished, but the school's computer server is hiding half our web pages -- argggh.

136janeajones
Ago 25, 2010, 7:16 pm


51. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

I gave this book 4 stars for the first two-thirds of the book, mostly set in Mexico. Kingsolver evokes a rather magical landscape of Isla Pixol where Harrison Shepherd grew up and learned how to swim and escape underwater and how to cook in the kitchen of the estate on which his mother was the landowner's mistress.

After a brief, unfortunate stint back in the US going to school, Shepherd lands in Mexico City where he puts his bread-mixing talents to work for Diego Rivera mixing first plaster, and later bread. Kingsolver's picture of the Rivera/Kahlo household and menage is accurate and colorful. And I found her portrait of Trotsky in exile fascinating and believable (having once, long ago, written a YA bio of Kahlo, I've done a fair amount of research here).

However, after Shepherd returns to the US, settles in Chapel Hill, NC, and becomes a successful writer, the novel turns into an anti-McCarthy period screed. I am totally unsympathetic to anything associated with the HUAC and McCarthy, but Kingsolver's "newspaper" articles attacking Shepherd's previous associations seem more designed to inform an ignorant reader about the political climate in 1950s America, than to advance a good novel. There are some chilling resemblances with the red-baiting of the 1950s to the Islamophobia of today. I skimmed the last quarter of the book -- but I thoroughly enjoyed the first two-thirds.

137dchaikin
Ago 26, 2010, 9:53 am

136 - Interesting to read your take, and really nice to see your compliments on Kahlo and related parts. This is a book I really want to get to, whenever I start reading new stuff again.

138kidzdoc
Ago 27, 2010, 6:25 am

Nice review of The Lacuna, Jane. I had a difficult time getting into it at first, but enjoyed the last 3/4 of it. I agree with you about the comparison between McCarthyism and the current "mentality" of many American citizens and government officials; in retrospect, her approach was a bit heavy handed, but certainly effective.

139janeajones
Set 1, 2010, 8:37 pm


52. Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong

The idea of reading a mystery novel over 400 pages long is not inherently appealing. I find that mysteries are usually brain candy -- the best for me reveal something about the local ecology or politics (hence I really like the "Florida weird" mystery writers -- Carl Hiassen, Randy Wayne White, Tim Dorsey). When I travel to a new destination, it's fun to pick up the local mystery writer to catch a flavor of the place.

Now and then, a long mystery, like Eliot Patterson's Skull Mantra about contemporary Tibet, has drawn me into the cultural milieu and society -- eclipsing the murder that is being investigated.

Death of a Red Heroine is such a novel. While the discovery of a female corpse in a remote canal in Saigon is the catalyst for the tale, the book is much more a portrait of life in China in the early 1990s, shortly after Tianamen. The murdered woman was a "national role-model worker," and hence the investigation takes on political overtones, especially when it is discovered she has ties to a prominent HCC -- High Cadre Child -- a photographer whose father was one of the founders of the Chinese Republic.

Chief Detective Chen, head of Special Investigations, is in charge of the case. A poet, scholar of classical and contemporary literature, and a foodie connoisseur, he is an engaging protagonist.

But the aspect of the novel that I found most interesting was the incredibly detailed life of ordinary people crowded into the booming metropolis of Saigon. Aspects of life, like local voluntary "spy patrols" that I found quite chilling, are regarded as ordinary and actually, beneficial, to the maintenance of social order.

The mystery unfolds in a believable and interesting fashion, but it is the cultural portrait of this book that I found really intriguing.

140janeajones
Editado: Set 3, 2010, 7:22 pm


53. Summer by Edith Wharton

I brought Summer to bed with me (earlyish) last night and read until I finished it. Years ago, I thought it was a really atypical Wharton, chiefly because of the setting in rural New England and the protagonist who doesn't belong to wildly privileged class that Wharton emerged from. Those observations remain (though Ethan Frome falls into a similar category), but what struck me this time through were a couple of things -- the nature descriptions and a very typical Wharton-theme of the protagonist getting stuck in a dead-end situation from which there is no real escape.

Charity Royall is a much more sympathetic protagonist than many of Wharton's characters; she doesn't lust after material possessions -- just wider experience and love. Born on "The Mountain," she is brought down to the small town of North Dormer to be fostered, but not adopted, by lawyer Royall and his wife at the behest of a prisoner that Royall had sent to jail. She is a child of nature* at the end of her adolescence -- her first words in the novel are "I hate everything." When she encounters Lucius Harney, a young visiting architect, in the library where she works, her boredom and lassitude dissolve.

Summer must have been a startling novel in 1918. It's steeped in sensuality, much as Kate Chopin's The Awakening is, but this is an adolescent female rite of passage. The consequences of Charity's sexual awakening are predictable, but the conclusion of the novel is intriguingly ambiguous.

* "She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it."

141janeajones
Editado: Set 6, 2010, 4:58 pm


54. The Tree of Red Stars by Tessa Bridal.

Tessa Bridal's first novel, published in 1997 won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. It is at once a coming-of-age novel and a chronicle of the rise of military repression and the use of torture to terrorize dissidents in Uruguay during the 1960s and 1970s.

The first half of the novel is a somewhat idyllic account of the 1950s childhood of Magdalena Ortega in Montevideo. She and her best friend, Emilia are the hoydens of the neighborhood, allowed to roam freely and create harmless mischief. As they reach adolescence in the 1960s, romance, student riots and political consciousness intrude upon their dreams and ambitions.

The Tupamaru urban guerilla movement seeking economic reform and the overthrow of the government is brutally repressed by the Uruguayan police and military, aided and abetted by the CIA and the US Office of Public Safety who sent operatives to South America to train police forces. Central to this operation was an FBI Agent, Dan Mitrione, who spread the use of refined torture techniques to gather information and intimidate the opposition. He was kidnapped and assassinated by the Tupamaru in 1970 when the government refused to release prisoners in exchange for his return.

Bridal puts Magda in the center of the historical events as participant and narrator. This is an important read for anyone interested in the recent history of Uruguay, but there are graphic accounts (mercifully rather short) of torture. One of the messages that came through to me in this novel is how violence begets violence on all levels of the social and political spectrum.

142janeajones
Set 9, 2010, 6:02 pm

123> Review of The Blue Manuscript by Sabiha Khemir now at Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue7/reviews_14.php

143auntmarge64
Set 9, 2010, 9:15 pm

>142 janeajones: Glad to see your review of The Blue Manuscript. After seeing it mentioned on LT I bought it from Amazon (at the time it was $1.14 for the hardcover, and free shipping with Amazon Prime). Have to get it off the TBR stack.

144janeajones
Set 10, 2010, 12:31 pm

143> I think that's about what I paid for it too. I read her interview in the Smithsonian and was intrigued, so I went to Amazon -- voila!

145janeajones
Set 17, 2010, 7:54 pm


55. The Cleft by Doris Lessing

I love Doris Lessing, but The Cleft is a disappointing, and rather boring, piece of a speculative fiction. The premise is that a Roman Senator is compiling an account of human origins from the earliest of prehistoric times supposedly based on oral accounts of "Memories" later transcribed. The basic premise of humanity rising from the sea comes from Elaine Morgan's Descent of Woman published in the 1970s. There's no real story here unfortunately.

146dchaikin
Set 17, 2010, 11:51 pm

Even Uruguay tortured? Strange world we live in. Nice reviews of The Tree of Red Stars and The Blue Manuscript...and, I'll skip The Cleft.

147janeajones
Set 18, 2010, 9:22 am

146> Yeah -- even Uruguay -- and the evidence seems to be that it was aided and abetted by the US in the person of Mitrione: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Mitrione

148dchaikin
Set 18, 2010, 1:51 pm

I think it's possible that all 20th-century Latin American torture somehow connects to US influence, either through the School of the Americas or in some other form. The US record isn't pretty.

149janeajones
Set 18, 2010, 3:39 pm

Definitely a sad commentary on US foreign policy....

150urania1
Set 18, 2010, 8:20 pm

>148 dchaikin: I have a number of friends who work or have worked for social justice organizations in Latin America. Sadly it is not just military influence (School of the Americas or otherwise). A number of large US-based corporations (Dole, Cocoa Cola) employ paramilitary groups to keep workers from organizing. In Colombia, deciding to become a union organizer is deciding to die (soon).

jane - I didn't mean to highjack your thread. Thanks for the review of The Cleft. I won't rush out and buy it, although I was intrigued by a review in The Guardian (I think) in which the reviewer described The Cleft as a brilliant novel with neither plot nor characters.

151janeajones
Set 18, 2010, 9:28 pm

Mary -- Highjack all you like. Profit seems to rule all.

I wish The Cleft were brilliant -- I'm generally a great admirer of Lessing, but I found this one rather pedestrian and plodding I'm afraid.

152janeajones
Editado: Set 23, 2010, 1:21 pm


56. The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy, trans. by Sheila Fischman

An exquisite, Gothic fairytale with a narrator who has her own wondrous language (kudos here also belong to the translator):

"But I wasn't there to bless my neighbours, so once my tears had run dry I set out farther along the village road. I don't know where this audacity came from. I think I was sustained by my feeling of duty towards father. What reasons had I had before to address any neighbours when my late father was there, but now that he was no longer around to defend himself, someone was going to have to take on the job, as well as find him a pine suit, and that put the wind into every one of my sails. I noticed moreover that, having disobeyed papa by stepping outside the enclosure of the estate, once that boundary had been crossed I could pass through the others as easily as I passed, in summertime, in the little woods, through the spiderwebs set with silver droplets that stayed in my hair like morning stars, so there."

153janeajones
Editado: Out 2, 2010, 5:13 pm


57. Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein

This is the first edition, published in 1945, a Random House Wartime Book, which I purloined from my mother's library -- it has her maiden name inscribed on the flyleaf.

It's brilliant. I had read some Stein years ago, but I'm not sure I was experienced enough to really appreciate what she truly achieved. I recognized her innovation and her keen sense of observation, but what I appreciated in this book is her sheer humanity and poetry. It is a plain, understated poetry, a poetry that captures speech and common life in its mundanity and exceptionality.

I may elaborate more in a review, but the book covers the period from June 1943 until September 1944 when Stein and Toklas were living in Culoz, France under German occupation waiting for the Allies to invade and retake France. It's an intimate view of of how those in the French countryside managed to survive the last year of WWII and welcome the triumph of the maquis (the underground French soldiers) and the entry of the Americans.

And the young are strange. It is all strange. I was talking to the head of our local bank and his daughter is studying social science in Grenoble and they are naturally bankers are very quiet and conservative, and I said now that Grenoble is full of explosions and killings and reprisals I suppose you are keeping your daughter at home. Oh no he said, the young are not like that, they say, this is their war, that we do not understand, their professors can be shot as hostages, their comrades mixed up in aggressions, their windows blown out and all the rest, but after all it is their war let us alone it is our war, and said the father there is nothing to do but to let them alone, I guess it is their war.

154avaland
Out 3, 2010, 7:43 pm

Jane, I think I read three of the Xiaolong mysteries before I dropped the series. I certainly enjoyed the ones I read, but it was probably around the time I went back to school that I stopped.

And I loved your review of Summer, you describe it exactly as I remember the story (I have that same edition also).

155janeajones
Out 3, 2010, 8:51 pm

Lois -- I've picked up the next in the Xiaolong series -- A Loyal Character Dancer -- but I doubt I'll get to it before winter break as I'm buried in sophomore essays.

It was interesting going back to Summer -- I think I had a very different impression the first time I read it.

156janeajones
Out 16, 2010, 6:09 pm


58. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot

This is a rather anamolous novella by George Eliot as it deals with the supernatural and seems to be Eliot's foray into Gothic experimentation.

Latimer, the protagonist, is a rather neurasthenic young man who becomes obsessed with Bertha Grant, his robust brother's fiancee. After his brother dies in an accident, he marries Bertha although he has a premonitory vision of their miserable life together.

I found the narrator somewhat intriguing, but I don't think the other characters were at all well developed. Eliot built the suspense well, but I thought the payoff was pretty anti-climactic. Up until that point, I thought the book was very Poe-like, but Poe usually manages to "thrill" the reader in a more satisfying way. Her exploration was more philosophical than Gothic -- more interested in the horrors of a life lived outside of meaningful social contacts than creating terror or horror in her readers.

157janeajones
Editado: Out 17, 2010, 4:15 pm


59. Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen by Tracy Borman, LTER, ARC

I found Elizabeth's Women a truly fascinating study of the women who influenced Elizabeth Tudor's life and reign. Borman has chosen a new angle on Elizabeth's life, one which has more credence than might be supposed. Although such male councillors as Walsingham, Burghley and Cecil certainly shaped the political landscape of the Elizabethan court, it was among women that Elizabeth lived her most intimate life from her birth to her death.

In the period before her accession to the throne at the age of twenty-five, Elizabeth's households, guardians, tutors, and servants were chosen by the whims of the reigning monarch or regent -- in turn, Henry VIII, her father (and his various wives); Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector for Edward VI, who followed Katherine Parr's advice for Elizabeth; and her sister, Queen Mary.

On the whole, in her early life, Elizabeth was blessed with caring and intelligent guardians and teachers. Her first governess, Katherine (Kat) Champernowne, was herself the product of a humanist household in which it was as important to educate the daughters as well as the sons. Even after Kat married, she remained within Elizabeth's inner circle among her most trusted friends. As the brilliant and disciplined young Princess exceeded the education of her governess, Henry VIII's last queen, Katherine Parr, took charge of Elizabeth's education and made sure she had the best tutors available -- Roger Ascham and William Grindal.

The examples of her mother and stepmothers also taught Elizabeth hard lessons in the realities of court life. The executions of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard highlighted how easily folly could lead to tragedy. From Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr, Elizabeth learned pragmatism and the crucial importance of bowing to the reigning sovereign's will for survival.

The first half of Borman's book chronicling Elizabeth's life before her accession to the throne is by far the richest. She paints nuanced portraits of Anne Boleyn, Mary Tudor, Henry's wives, and the important women of Elizabeth's household, as well as of Elizabeth herself. The second half of the book has some interesting portraits of rivals to Elizabeth's throne, especially Mary Queen of Scots and Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox and her granddaughter, Arbella. However, it gets a bit lost in the sheer numbers of Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting -- many of whom have similar names. Elizabeth, herself, begins to be characterized as a harridan who often made her ladies' lives miserable. The ARC I read, unfortunately, lacked an index, so it was even harder to keep track of their identities. A Tudor family tree would have been a much appreciated visual aid.

These quibbles aside, I highly recommend Elizabeth's Women as an entree into or an addition to the life of England's Gloriana.

158tomcatMurr
Out 17, 2010, 9:59 pm

Sounds fantastic!

(on a totally mundane note, have you seen the TV series of ELizabeth, with Helen Mirren? highly, highly recommended. The writing is superb, and uses many of ELizabeth's own words from her letters and speeches)

re, The Lifted Veil, I saw it less as a Gothic fantasy and more of a study in interiority. It's the most Dostoevskyan of Eliot's novels, and one that impressed me very much. It's interesting that you saw the gothic elements more in it and your linking it to Poe is very illuminating.

159janeajones
Out 18, 2010, 3:01 pm

Murr -- actually, I think The Lifted Veil probably is more a study of interiority than a Gothic novel, but I went into it thinking it was going to be a Gothic novel, so I was alert to those elements. It never occurred to me to compare with Dostoevsky -- but so far my experience with D is The Underground Man and Crime and Punishment.

I've not seen the Mirren series -- sounds luscious -- I'll have to check to see if Netflix has it.

160janeajones
Out 28, 2010, 9:02 pm


60. I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates

I grew up in western NYS, probably not more than 100 miles away from JCO grew up, at about the same time. So first of all, the geography in this novella irks me. She sets the story in an imaginary Eden County (OK, I can buy creating a county -- Faulkner did it), through which a river called the Chautauqua River runs that ends with a drop over Tintern Falls -- this is where I get uncomfortable. I grew up on Chautauqua Lake in Chautauqua County; there is no Chautauqua River. There are no significant river falls in western NYS besides Niagara Falls. If she is creating an imaginary county -- why call it by a rather unique name associated with a real place?

Beyond that quibble -- I found the novel rather beautifully written, but bloodless. It's a tale of a passionate love affair between a "wild child," who has been married off to an older German Lutheran farmer, and an African-American itinerant water dowser. Unfortunately, no passion really comes through, and all the reader really contemplates are wasted lives. Didn't do it for me.

161dchaikin
Editado: Out 29, 2010, 9:54 am

"If she is creating an imaginary county -- why call it by a rather unique name associated with a real place?"

Part of me sees this both ways, but mostly I'm with you. If you are trying to create a sense of place using a real place...you should stay at least somewhat honest to that place. Fun review to read, by the way.

162auntmarge64
Out 29, 2010, 9:50 am

>153 janeajones: I'm going to have to get that Gertrude Stein and take a look. Would never have picked it off the shelf - thanks for the push!

163janeajones
Out 29, 2010, 8:51 pm

161> thanks, Dan.

162> I was really quite astounded by Stein. I'm looking forward to reading some more -- but not quite yet. She's a dish not to overindulge, I think.

164janeajones
Nov 10, 2010, 8:52 pm


61. Just Kids by Patti Smith

Patti Smith's memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe during the late 1960s and 1970s in NYC captures the flavor, fashion and passion of lower Manhattan from the Chelsea Hotel to CBGB and out to Coney Island. I remember; I was in the city during the last half of the 70s, though I didn't travel in Smith and Mapplethorpe's rarefied circles. Smith's memoir is the tale of two beautiful narcissists who lived for art and loved each other.

"There are many stories I could yet write about Robert, about us. But this is the story I have told. It is the one he wished me to tell and I have kept my promise. We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined."

165dchaikin
Nov 10, 2010, 9:11 pm

Jane, nice enticing comments of a book that, by title, I would find interesting, but not interesting enough to read. That's a beautiful excerpt.

166janeajones
Nov 10, 2010, 9:16 pm

Dan -- it's a fast read -- I lay down on the couch when I got home from school this afternoon and finished it in a few hours. It ranges from the lyrical to the sometimes slightly ridiculous, but it does capture the zeitgeist....

167janeajones
Editado: Nov 26, 2010, 9:46 pm


62. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies by Sara Heller Mendelson

Mendelson has chosen three 17th-century women's lives and writings to examine the scope of women's roles and influence within the Stuart society: Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle; Mary Rich, the Countess of Warwick, and the playwright, novelist and poet, Aphra Behn. The women, very different in their personalities, shared a passion for writing, and it is through their writings that Mendelson examines how each coped with and modified the Stuart "ideal" of womanhood which "represented the feminine virtues as an organic whole: modesty, chastity, obedience and silence were interrelated." Margaret Cavendish wanted to build "A Pyramid of Fame" and carve a new niche in the world of letters for herself by writing about the new study of "natural" science. It was the struggle between religion and society's demands, colored by the loss of her children and the illness of her husband, that brought Mary Rich to write her spiritual autobiography. Refusing to remarry after her husband's death, Aphra Behn needed to support herself and found the means within the theatrical and literary worlds of Restoration London. Each of the women is fascinating in her own right and together they present a nuanced picture of the emerging role of women in English literature.

168janeajones
Dez 4, 2010, 2:07 pm



63. After Claude by Iris Owens, LTER ARC

This is the first NYRB I have read that I disliked. And I disliked this one heartily. Perhaps I am not the right audience for it, but, honestly, I don't know who would be. Despite the back-cover blurbs from the NYTBR and Kenneth Tynan declaring that it exhibits "exhilarating talent and intelligence" and that it is "barbed, bitchy, and hilariously sour," I found it boring and rather ugly. The protagonist/narrator is a self-serving leech who excoriates and torments those who have helped her and ends up begging to be admitted to "The Institute," some sort of EST-y type cult. Ugh. Don't waste your time

169Cariola
Dez 4, 2010, 2:56 pm

Jane, I will be on the lookout for The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. I know a fair bit about Cavendish and a little about Behn (both of whom I include in my courses) but nothing at all about Rich.

From what I've read, apparently nobody really knows exactly who Mr. Behn was, or even if there was a Mr. Behn. There's some speculation that she returned from abroad and announced herself to be a widow in order to gain respectability and independence.

170rebeccanyc
Dez 4, 2010, 3:36 pm

I didn't dislike After Claude quite as much as you did, because I appreciated Owens' wit and the depiction of 1970s New York, but I did find Harriet completely unpleasant, albeit mentally disturbed, and the book claustrophobic.

171janeajones
Dez 6, 2010, 9:21 pm

169> Deb -- Mendelson speculates that Aphra's marriage to the unknown Behn was an arranged, unhappy marriage that ended with his early death and that it led to the theme of her play "The Forced Marriage." I don't think I've seen this theory elsewhere, but....

170> Rebecca -- for a depiction of 1970s NYC -- I'd recommend Patti Smith's Just Kids much more than After Claude. There's a deep underlying narcissism in both, but Smith's memoir is so much more human (and humane) than After Claude. But maybe I just disassociate from totally self-absorbed protagonist/narrators -- I feel much the same antipathy to Dostoevsky's narrator in Notes from the Underground

172rebeccanyc
Dez 7, 2010, 8:31 am

Well, I was here for most of the 70s so it's more sort of nodding my head than a desire to relive it all over again, but I do think I might read the Patti Smith at some point.

173janeajones
Dez 30, 2010, 12:39 pm

I have my toes in the waters of too many books to finish any of them, so here are 2010's best in order of reading:

Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook -- history
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Grushin
Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham -- fiction
Sonata Mulaticca by Rita Dove -- narrative poetic biography
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanetter Winterson -- fiction
The Line by Olga Grushin -- fiction
The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble -- fiction
In Parenthesis by David Jones -- WWI epic of the trenches
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk -- fiction
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith -- fiction
The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof -- fiction
The Children by Edith Wharton -- fiction
The Tree of Red Stars by Tessa Bridal -- fiction
Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein -- WWII memoir
Elizabeth's Women by Tracy Borman -- history

174janeajones
Jan 1, 2011, 10:48 am

I have moved over to Club Read 2011. See you there: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104884