So I find it interesting that Gulliver's Travels is very often read and taught to kids at a young age. Everyone I've asked if they had read it (this was not a large sample size given the current state of lockdown and the fact that I don't interact with more than a few people), responded either that they had read it "a very very long time ago" or they had read it "back in grade school or middle school." And I get the imaginative nature of the book to open up kids' minds to creating worlds of their own making, limited only by their own creativity. And that I certainly did appreciate about the book...lands of teeny people only about 6 inches high, lands of giants, lands where horses talk and are the supreme intelligent beings, lands that float above the ground as though a cloud. And all of these lands and people/beings described in tedious detail, written by an astute observer. It brought so much concrete realness to the imagined places, that I could certainly see how a child would be drawn into the magic of each unique place.
But really, the book is a big ol' satire. A satire about how comically awful we are as human beings. Sometimes this is reflected in the dynamic of the people Gulliver meets and how the things they do juxtaposed against the things he does as a native Englander all seem so bizarre. And this was very abundantly driven home in Gulliver's last voyage where the Houyhnhnms (the talking, wise horses) are so fully disgusted by the other inhabitants of the island, the Yahoos, who we learn are really just slightly more grotesque looking (and behaving humans). But as Gulliver recounts all that he can about the history of Europe and England to the Houyhnhnms and all of the miserable things that humans do there, from their social customs to their lying and corruption to their completely inadequate system of government (he really doesn't try to candy-coat it), even normal humans are pretty despicable and grotesque in their own right.
I tend to struggle with books that are a statement about the politics of a given country/place at the specific times they were written. Because (and maybe it's just the examples that I've read that fall into this category) I usually don't know squat about the political histories of these countries/times, maybe don't care all that much to learn tons about it, and also because it seems to be written about in laborious detail that makes it even more of a slog for me to get through. I don't want to sound blasé, because I know that the context to the time (and largely the politics) can be critical for many well-regarded texts (and many of the ones that are a bit older on my lists), but I'm just not that driven to want to know all of those minutiae. Particularly if it's written in a dry and unengaging, technical way, which I definitely felt it was in Gulliver's Travels. The politics of England in the early 1700s is just not that compelling to me. Meh, judge all you want, but not my cup of tea (pun intended).
So after knocking that one off the list and settling myself down to 216 more books to go, I'll be taking a slight break to read The Narcissism of Small Differences (and just learned that I had no idea how to actually spell "narcissism") by Michael Zadoorian. Michael is a local Detroit-area writer who happens to be friends with my bf (they've known each other for many years). After just adoring The Leisure Seeker, I cannot wait to dive into this one (and also have Beautiful Music on the bookshelf for future reading too). There is a fun connection that I've been told (by the author himself!) that is in the book but I'll save that snippet for the recap once I've actually read it. I suspect I'll motor right through this one, since I love Michael's writing so much, and because I have a 5-day holiday weekend up north staring me in the face - prime for relaxing and reading. Happy 4th!
Monday, June 29, 2020
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
"The Way Most People Browse, It's As If They've Stepped Into A Temple Or Church"
So I probably should have written my entry for Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore as soon as I finished reading it. Because it has been a couple weeks and now most of my more interesting thoughts about it have vanished out of my brain like a wisp in the wind. So for future reference: either make notes while reading or write this shit up ASAP.
This was a very fun little murder mystery, with some interesting cross-ties between characters (some of which I didn't see coming even though I should have) and some clever puzzles to follow and put together, leading the reader like bread crumbs. The story is about Lydia Smith, a bookstore clerk in Denver who one night is the discoverer of the body of one of the store's "Book Frogs" (the poor, young, regulars who spend excessive amounts of time there), Joey Molina, who has hung himself on the third floor. In Joey's pocket, is a photograph of Lydia as an 11-year old girl at her birthday party with 2 of her friends. What unfolds from there is a mystery that Joey has left behind for Lydia to unravel and along the way we learn about Lydia's very traumatic past and how it may be related to Joey, completely unbeknownst to Lydia. There were plenty of twists and turns and, as mentioned, connections between the characters that you don't necessarily see coming.
I thoroughly enjoyed the plot of the story, and the very vivid, descriptive nature of many elements of the book (the store, Denver, the many unique characters, and a horrific crime scene). But I had a hard time connecting with the main character. I can't explain why, but something about her just didn't feel authentic (and one particular plotline regarding her and her boyfriend made me particularly annoyed...the character's decisions bothered me and felt overblown and inconsistent with everything else we had read about their relationship). I often wonder sometimes if this comes from an author of one gender trying to write from the point of view of the opposite gender; some authors can do this magnificently where you don't bat an eye or question whether the author is a man or a woman and some authors are less successful.
All in all, a quick and enjoyable read. As I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for a good whodoneit and this one checked every box that I would have wanted.
Since finishing, I've moved on to Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. I honestly don't know much of anything about this book, having never seen any of the movie adaptations of it (other than the existence of the little people called Liliputians). I'm plugging away at it, keeping quarantine time occupied by trying to not hysterically break down into emotion-wracked sobs at the mess of a world we're living in. Maybe this is a good book to read now...voyaging off to lands not found on any map. Isn't that what we all wish we could do right now?
This was a very fun little murder mystery, with some interesting cross-ties between characters (some of which I didn't see coming even though I should have) and some clever puzzles to follow and put together, leading the reader like bread crumbs. The story is about Lydia Smith, a bookstore clerk in Denver who one night is the discoverer of the body of one of the store's "Book Frogs" (the poor, young, regulars who spend excessive amounts of time there), Joey Molina, who has hung himself on the third floor. In Joey's pocket, is a photograph of Lydia as an 11-year old girl at her birthday party with 2 of her friends. What unfolds from there is a mystery that Joey has left behind for Lydia to unravel and along the way we learn about Lydia's very traumatic past and how it may be related to Joey, completely unbeknownst to Lydia. There were plenty of twists and turns and, as mentioned, connections between the characters that you don't necessarily see coming.
I thoroughly enjoyed the plot of the story, and the very vivid, descriptive nature of many elements of the book (the store, Denver, the many unique characters, and a horrific crime scene). But I had a hard time connecting with the main character. I can't explain why, but something about her just didn't feel authentic (and one particular plotline regarding her and her boyfriend made me particularly annoyed...the character's decisions bothered me and felt overblown and inconsistent with everything else we had read about their relationship). I often wonder sometimes if this comes from an author of one gender trying to write from the point of view of the opposite gender; some authors can do this magnificently where you don't bat an eye or question whether the author is a man or a woman and some authors are less successful.
All in all, a quick and enjoyable read. As I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for a good whodoneit and this one checked every box that I would have wanted.
Since finishing, I've moved on to Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. I honestly don't know much of anything about this book, having never seen any of the movie adaptations of it (other than the existence of the little people called Liliputians). I'm plugging away at it, keeping quarantine time occupied by trying to not hysterically break down into emotion-wracked sobs at the mess of a world we're living in. Maybe this is a good book to read now...voyaging off to lands not found on any map. Isn't that what we all wish we could do right now?
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
"This Is The Time The Swooning Soul Hangs Pendant And Vertiginous Between The New Day And The Old, Nor Dares Confront The One Or Summon Back The Other"
I don't exactly know why it has taken me until I was 40 years old to read something by Dorothy Parker. I honestly didn't even know who she was until I saw the movie Can You Ever Forgive Me? with Melissa McCarthy, where she plays a struggling writer who takes to forging letters by authors and selling them to make ends meet; Dorothy Parker was one of her frequent subjects of imitation. Dorothy Parker is often described as one of the greatest wits of the 20th century (I mean, it says it right on the back of my book jacket) and one of the greatest short story writers in particular. So I don't know how she managed to evade my attention for so long.
And in diving into her short stories collection, it was clear to me that she absolutely had a distinct voice and style, unlike any other I had read before. The stories are largely set in the 1920s and 1930s and are told from the point of view of a society woman (there are some from the perspective of a man, but largely the same concept...high society urban men and women), and very often, there is some kind of miscommunication between the woman and a man, be it her husband, her boyfriend, the man she met at a high society party, or the man she is waiting around to call her. And the dialogue is often clever, funny, smart, and infuriating.
And it seemed clear to me, that Dorothy Parker did not think very highly of women at all (society women or really any woman). The women in her stories are constantly doing things that they don't want to do because it is polite and proper and expected of her. And Parker clearly has disdain for these women as the overall tone, while clever and witty, is one of mockery for women not rising above their situations and taking a stand against the status quo of gender dynamics. I think there was maybe one female character who was saucy and sharp-tongued enough to talk back to a man that she met at a party, in The Mantle of Whistler (and while most of Parker's stories were short, this story was even shorter, not giving any daylight to a strong female character). All of the rest of her women are "proper" women personified - simpering, desperate (like capital D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E) for their man's attention and affection (although often playing off that they don't care, but turning around and crying in hysterics), and feeling this obligation to be the perfect female mate. And in some stories (some of the longer stories in particular), the women were very self-aware. They were aware that they were being crazy and asked themselves "Why am I doing this for him?" but would go right back to being the pathetic creature of habit.
Again there were a few exceptions where some of the women were given more dimension (Big Blonde for example) and fell slightly outside of this mold. But for the most part, after a while, a lot of the stories kind of felt the same. Which explains why it has taken me months to get through what should have been an enjoyable quick read. And don't get me wrong, I did very much enjoy Parker's style of writing. It was easy to get sucked into her banter and the dynamics of the relationship back-and-forth and was very enjoyable for a time. But after a while, I didn't want to read about the same woman anymore...a woman that I kind of wanted to scream at. And I get it, it was like 100 years ago when the gender dynamics were completely different, and women did play these kind of games to get and marry men (even though it often made them miserable, another subject Parker displays with zero sentimentality). And maybe that was the entire point. To hold up a mirror to the society woman that Parker loathed and put her on blast in a sardonic manner to show exactly what was wrong with the whole situation to begin with (and kudos to Parker for wading into some taboo issues like abortion way back then).
Moving forward, Dorothy Parker will hold a special place in my heart, because I truly loved her sass and style of writing, but overall, I was glad to be done with my time with her society women.
Because I struggled so much with this book, rather than jumping into potentially another struggle bus book from my lists, I'm going to take a quick break for a random non-list book that I picked up on a whim off the table at the bookstore: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan. I need something that is going to capture my attention for a bit, mid lockdown. Reading is one of my greatest solaces and one that I need to absorb for joy during this time, so I really want to spend it absorbing things that make me happy and that I look forward to reading as opposed to forcing myself to get through something challenging (maybe I'll be ready for challenging in a bit, but not so much right now). I don't know much of anything about the book, so it will be an enjoyable surprise to read it with no expectations. Wish me luck!
And in diving into her short stories collection, it was clear to me that she absolutely had a distinct voice and style, unlike any other I had read before. The stories are largely set in the 1920s and 1930s and are told from the point of view of a society woman (there are some from the perspective of a man, but largely the same concept...high society urban men and women), and very often, there is some kind of miscommunication between the woman and a man, be it her husband, her boyfriend, the man she met at a high society party, or the man she is waiting around to call her. And the dialogue is often clever, funny, smart, and infuriating.
And it seemed clear to me, that Dorothy Parker did not think very highly of women at all (society women or really any woman). The women in her stories are constantly doing things that they don't want to do because it is polite and proper and expected of her. And Parker clearly has disdain for these women as the overall tone, while clever and witty, is one of mockery for women not rising above their situations and taking a stand against the status quo of gender dynamics. I think there was maybe one female character who was saucy and sharp-tongued enough to talk back to a man that she met at a party, in The Mantle of Whistler (and while most of Parker's stories were short, this story was even shorter, not giving any daylight to a strong female character). All of the rest of her women are "proper" women personified - simpering, desperate (like capital D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E) for their man's attention and affection (although often playing off that they don't care, but turning around and crying in hysterics), and feeling this obligation to be the perfect female mate. And in some stories (some of the longer stories in particular), the women were very self-aware. They were aware that they were being crazy and asked themselves "Why am I doing this for him?" but would go right back to being the pathetic creature of habit.
Again there were a few exceptions where some of the women were given more dimension (Big Blonde for example) and fell slightly outside of this mold. But for the most part, after a while, a lot of the stories kind of felt the same. Which explains why it has taken me months to get through what should have been an enjoyable quick read. And don't get me wrong, I did very much enjoy Parker's style of writing. It was easy to get sucked into her banter and the dynamics of the relationship back-and-forth and was very enjoyable for a time. But after a while, I didn't want to read about the same woman anymore...a woman that I kind of wanted to scream at. And I get it, it was like 100 years ago when the gender dynamics were completely different, and women did play these kind of games to get and marry men (even though it often made them miserable, another subject Parker displays with zero sentimentality). And maybe that was the entire point. To hold up a mirror to the society woman that Parker loathed and put her on blast in a sardonic manner to show exactly what was wrong with the whole situation to begin with (and kudos to Parker for wading into some taboo issues like abortion way back then).
Moving forward, Dorothy Parker will hold a special place in my heart, because I truly loved her sass and style of writing, but overall, I was glad to be done with my time with her society women.
Because I struggled so much with this book, rather than jumping into potentially another struggle bus book from my lists, I'm going to take a quick break for a random non-list book that I picked up on a whim off the table at the bookstore: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan. I need something that is going to capture my attention for a bit, mid lockdown. Reading is one of my greatest solaces and one that I need to absorb for joy during this time, so I really want to spend it absorbing things that make me happy and that I look forward to reading as opposed to forcing myself to get through something challenging (maybe I'll be ready for challenging in a bit, but not so much right now). I don't know much of anything about the book, so it will be an enjoyable surprise to read it with no expectations. Wish me luck!
Saturday, March 28, 2020
"Because Between 'Reality' On The One Hand, And The Point Where The Mind Strikes Reality, There's A Middle Zone, A Rainbow Edge Where Beauty Comes Into Being, Where Two Very Different Surfaces Mingle And Blur To Provide What Life Does Not: And This Is The Space Where All Art Exists, And All Magic"
Suffice it to say that Donna Tartt is quite a remarkable writer. I found the story of The Goldfinch so remarkable and was completely hooked from the very beginning but combined with her equisite descriptions and aside observations of life (filtered through a oftentimes dark and troubled narrator), I just could not put it down. As I noted a couple posts ago, there were many pages that I dog-eared because a particular passage would capture me and I would be so struck with the words and thoughts behind them. I believe I even read one of them outloud to the bf. That doesn't happen very often at all because he never really seems all that impressed with them in spite of how much I love them.
The Goldfinch tells the story of Theo Decker, who we meet as a young 13-year old, living in NYC with his mother, following their abandonment by his alcoholic father. After getting in trouble at school and having to go meet the principal with his mom, they make a stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on their way to kill time and because his mother is particularly keen to see a favorite painting of hers. During this sojurn, the museum is vicitim to a terrorist attack, with Theo being one of the few survivors near the center of the blast. He emerges, having connected briefly with a dying man in the museum who insists that he take a painting with him, The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, which Theo does, in his incoherent state of shock and delusion.
From here, Theo's life trails down a difficult path, initially being sympathetically taken in by the wealthy family of one of his friends from childhood. But his father returns to claim him (and the possibility of any money he can get his hands on through Theo) and Theo moves to Las Vegas where he befriends Boris, the son of a Russian business man who travels the world. Together, they head into a self-destructive path, fueled with drugs and alcohol, but at the same time, cement their friendship.
Further into his adulthood, Theo continues his darkness, but has established himself as a very sucessful antiques dealer, after connecting with the family of the dying man he met in the museum. All the while, he is tortured over the loss of his mother, the trauma he experienced in the museum, his unrequited love for another survivor of the bombing, and the fear of hiding The Goldfinch, which by now, the musuem curators and authorities are certain was stolen from the museum and not destroyed in the bombing. What unfolds is a sinister and dangerous situation for Theo, who is perhaps too troubled a soul to really be able to handle a sinister and dangerous situation.
AT 771 pages, this book was dense, but each different vignette of Theo's life (from his time as a young kid before, during, and after the bombing, to his wild and unsupervised time in Las Vegas staying with his father and meeting Boris, to his time as an adult where he is learning to navigate the life that has been thrust upon him) was told with so much riveting detail, that I couldn't possibly see it being any shorter. I actually loved the fact that it was so lush and long because it helped you GET Theo and everything about him and his circumstances and what drove him to the choices that he made.
And again, I was so remarkably captured by so many passages:
"You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else enitre, and that's not even to mention the people separated from us by time -- four hundred years before us, four hundred after we're gone --it'll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it'll never strike in any deep way at all but -- a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you."
"What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?"
"And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beutiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky -- so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime."
I mean c'mon, that last sentence? It's just freaking beautiful.
Donna Tartt just shot to the top of my list of authors that I want to read everything they wrote. And it's possible that I bought her other 2 novels for that very reason.
Side note about the movie of The Goldfinch: as I was reading the book, I was aware of the fact that the movie had already been made of the novel. And I found myself already angry about it. Because there is SO MUCH in the book that I was angry that they short-changed it by making it a 2.5 hour, single-sitting movie. It needed to be done as a miniseries, in the style of Big Little Lies. Devote the time, space, and development to explore all of the amazing facets of the novel. So when I watched the movie, while I was pleased that they kept as true to the book as possible and really included much more than I expected, it was all so rushed. It didn't develop anything nearly enough, and you didn't have the sympathy or understanding of Theo (or any of the other characters for that matter) the way you needed to. So while I would give the movie maybe a B-/C+, I don't think many people who didn't read the book would remotely appreciate it, which does a huge disservice to the book.
So yeah, go read this book, I promise you won't be disappointed!
Given that life has substantially changed in the last couple weeks to a world of pandemic quarantine where we'll be staying home indefinitely, I anticipate my reading will ramp up quite a bit here. And hopefully my commitment to writing here too. I mean, what the hell else do I have to do? I'm being given the gift of time, so in order to avoid a deadly infectious disease, I think I can commit to just huddling up and doing nothing but read. With that said, Dorothy Parker is an absolute delight. But I sometimes struggle with reading books of short stories...I feel as though I have to only read a couple at a time to then reflect and absorb the individual story. If I were to sit down and read it cover to cover, I would never appreciate each story, the tone of them (particularly with Dorothy Parker) would begin to feel monotonous, and I would probably forget most of what I read. So I'm trying to pace myself a little bit with Ms. Parker. But wow, what a wit. And boy will I have commentary about her portrayal of men and women in her stories.
So with that, back t0 staring at these 4 walls and finding the many constructive things to do. Happy quarantine Saturday.
The Goldfinch tells the story of Theo Decker, who we meet as a young 13-year old, living in NYC with his mother, following their abandonment by his alcoholic father. After getting in trouble at school and having to go meet the principal with his mom, they make a stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on their way to kill time and because his mother is particularly keen to see a favorite painting of hers. During this sojurn, the museum is vicitim to a terrorist attack, with Theo being one of the few survivors near the center of the blast. He emerges, having connected briefly with a dying man in the museum who insists that he take a painting with him, The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, which Theo does, in his incoherent state of shock and delusion.
From here, Theo's life trails down a difficult path, initially being sympathetically taken in by the wealthy family of one of his friends from childhood. But his father returns to claim him (and the possibility of any money he can get his hands on through Theo) and Theo moves to Las Vegas where he befriends Boris, the son of a Russian business man who travels the world. Together, they head into a self-destructive path, fueled with drugs and alcohol, but at the same time, cement their friendship.
Further into his adulthood, Theo continues his darkness, but has established himself as a very sucessful antiques dealer, after connecting with the family of the dying man he met in the museum. All the while, he is tortured over the loss of his mother, the trauma he experienced in the museum, his unrequited love for another survivor of the bombing, and the fear of hiding The Goldfinch, which by now, the musuem curators and authorities are certain was stolen from the museum and not destroyed in the bombing. What unfolds is a sinister and dangerous situation for Theo, who is perhaps too troubled a soul to really be able to handle a sinister and dangerous situation.
AT 771 pages, this book was dense, but each different vignette of Theo's life (from his time as a young kid before, during, and after the bombing, to his wild and unsupervised time in Las Vegas staying with his father and meeting Boris, to his time as an adult where he is learning to navigate the life that has been thrust upon him) was told with so much riveting detail, that I couldn't possibly see it being any shorter. I actually loved the fact that it was so lush and long because it helped you GET Theo and everything about him and his circumstances and what drove him to the choices that he made.
And again, I was so remarkably captured by so many passages:
"You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else enitre, and that's not even to mention the people separated from us by time -- four hundred years before us, four hundred after we're gone --it'll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it'll never strike in any deep way at all but -- a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you."
"What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?"
"And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beutiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky -- so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime."
I mean c'mon, that last sentence? It's just freaking beautiful.
Donna Tartt just shot to the top of my list of authors that I want to read everything they wrote. And it's possible that I bought her other 2 novels for that very reason.
Side note about the movie of The Goldfinch: as I was reading the book, I was aware of the fact that the movie had already been made of the novel. And I found myself already angry about it. Because there is SO MUCH in the book that I was angry that they short-changed it by making it a 2.5 hour, single-sitting movie. It needed to be done as a miniseries, in the style of Big Little Lies. Devote the time, space, and development to explore all of the amazing facets of the novel. So when I watched the movie, while I was pleased that they kept as true to the book as possible and really included much more than I expected, it was all so rushed. It didn't develop anything nearly enough, and you didn't have the sympathy or understanding of Theo (or any of the other characters for that matter) the way you needed to. So while I would give the movie maybe a B-/C+, I don't think many people who didn't read the book would remotely appreciate it, which does a huge disservice to the book.
So yeah, go read this book, I promise you won't be disappointed!
Given that life has substantially changed in the last couple weeks to a world of pandemic quarantine where we'll be staying home indefinitely, I anticipate my reading will ramp up quite a bit here. And hopefully my commitment to writing here too. I mean, what the hell else do I have to do? I'm being given the gift of time, so in order to avoid a deadly infectious disease, I think I can commit to just huddling up and doing nothing but read. With that said, Dorothy Parker is an absolute delight. But I sometimes struggle with reading books of short stories...I feel as though I have to only read a couple at a time to then reflect and absorb the individual story. If I were to sit down and read it cover to cover, I would never appreciate each story, the tone of them (particularly with Dorothy Parker) would begin to feel monotonous, and I would probably forget most of what I read. So I'm trying to pace myself a little bit with Ms. Parker. But wow, what a wit. And boy will I have commentary about her portrayal of men and women in her stories.
So with that, back t0 staring at these 4 walls and finding the many constructive things to do. Happy quarantine Saturday.
Monday, February 17, 2020
"If People Don't All Experience Emotional Satisfaction And Deprivation In The Same Way, What Claim Can There Be For Equality of Need?"
Man, I have been staring and re-reading the title of this post for about 5 full minutes trying to really wrap my head around it and trying to come up with a good answer. And while in my previous post I noted that I probably didn't give July's People a fair enough read, there was certainly parts of, like statements like that, that would catch me re-reading and thinking about. Or a passage, further along the same page discussing death as a relative place based on an individual's place in the economy, a "purchase", describing the wealthy white architect who could afford the private jet in which he crashed and then describing the elderly tribal grandmother who would work the land, bending lower and lower to the earth until she returned to it. It was certainly a novel about race that is teeming with tension when, just that quickly, roles are reversed.
The story is about the Smales family and their servant July. The Smales are a liberal, upper class, white family in Johannesburg (Bam, Maureen, Gina, Victor, and Royce) who are forced to flee the city during a (fictional) violent civil war overturning the system of apartheid (note: Nadine Gordimer wrote the book prior to the end of apartheid, therefore, this was her fictionalization/prediction of what she thought might happen) and are aided by their loyal black servant of 15 years, July. He helps smuggle them out of the city during the fighting and takes them to his village a couple hundred miles away. Once there, they are now the minority and have to live according to July's rules and the ways of the village in order to survive. During this time they confront the immediate loss of comfort, living in huts with dirt ground and bathing in the river, and the fact that many of the other villagers (mostly the women) don't necessarily want them there. And they are living in absolute fear, knowing that many friends and other upper class whites in Johannesburg were killed, so knowing that if they are discovered, they may very well face the same fate.
Amongst all of this is the incredibly complex changing relationship they now face with July, in particular, Maureen (as she is the main narrator). The change in power dynamic, and the levels of trust that both of them have to demonstrate, which is tested many times. In the city as the head of the household, Maureen was generally the one who provided the orders to July, and now, in his tribe, gender roles are far different, which Maureen must adjust to. And back in the city, July had a mistress which Maureen knew about, and now back in his tribe, July must trust Maureen to maintain that secret from his wife. They must also entrust the keys to their truck to July, which could potentially be their only lifeline to getting out of the village if something were to happen.
The racial dynamics during the time of apartheid in South Africa are so well explored in this book in such a simple way and again, there was so much tension. You wanted to believe that because these characters knew each other for so long they would trust each other and everything would work out, but there was absolutely no certainty in that. And while the book was relatively short, it was the kind of book where I felt like every word was so much more deliberate than I was probably giving it credence. Again, the fact that I read this in a half-assed, less-than-focused way probably didn't allow me to get as much out of it as I probably could have. But I still found it engaging, nonetheless.
So after July's People, as I said, I devoured The Goldfinch. With this President's Day off, maybe I will get around to writing that badboy up too.
Oh and yeah, I'm only a couple stories into Dorothy Parker, and she's already a heroine. There is going to be a LOT that I'm going to have to say about her.
The story is about the Smales family and their servant July. The Smales are a liberal, upper class, white family in Johannesburg (Bam, Maureen, Gina, Victor, and Royce) who are forced to flee the city during a (fictional) violent civil war overturning the system of apartheid (note: Nadine Gordimer wrote the book prior to the end of apartheid, therefore, this was her fictionalization/prediction of what she thought might happen) and are aided by their loyal black servant of 15 years, July. He helps smuggle them out of the city during the fighting and takes them to his village a couple hundred miles away. Once there, they are now the minority and have to live according to July's rules and the ways of the village in order to survive. During this time they confront the immediate loss of comfort, living in huts with dirt ground and bathing in the river, and the fact that many of the other villagers (mostly the women) don't necessarily want them there. And they are living in absolute fear, knowing that many friends and other upper class whites in Johannesburg were killed, so knowing that if they are discovered, they may very well face the same fate.
Amongst all of this is the incredibly complex changing relationship they now face with July, in particular, Maureen (as she is the main narrator). The change in power dynamic, and the levels of trust that both of them have to demonstrate, which is tested many times. In the city as the head of the household, Maureen was generally the one who provided the orders to July, and now, in his tribe, gender roles are far different, which Maureen must adjust to. And back in the city, July had a mistress which Maureen knew about, and now back in his tribe, July must trust Maureen to maintain that secret from his wife. They must also entrust the keys to their truck to July, which could potentially be their only lifeline to getting out of the village if something were to happen.
The racial dynamics during the time of apartheid in South Africa are so well explored in this book in such a simple way and again, there was so much tension. You wanted to believe that because these characters knew each other for so long they would trust each other and everything would work out, but there was absolutely no certainty in that. And while the book was relatively short, it was the kind of book where I felt like every word was so much more deliberate than I was probably giving it credence. Again, the fact that I read this in a half-assed, less-than-focused way probably didn't allow me to get as much out of it as I probably could have. But I still found it engaging, nonetheless.
So after July's People, as I said, I devoured The Goldfinch. With this President's Day off, maybe I will get around to writing that badboy up too.
Oh and yeah, I'm only a couple stories into Dorothy Parker, and she's already a heroine. There is going to be a LOT that I'm going to have to say about her.
Monday, February 10, 2020
"Today Is Only One Day In All The Days That Will Ever Be"
And so here we are in February. Of 2020. A full 7 months since my last post. My 40th birthday has come and gone. No big reflective post about the origins of this blog. Examining how far I've come. How far away from the original goal I fell. For those of you keeping track, which I know is no one, across the 4 lists there were 326 books. When I started the blog in July 2012, I had read 73, leaving 253, and as of my 40th birthday on September 14th, 2019, I had only added an additional whopping 36 books to that total, leaving 218 left to read (a clerical error added an additional book that I had originally excluded from the list, thinking I had read, but I had not).
So the goal of this blog that I started with such aplomb and happy ambition was not met. And the simple thing would be to just strikethrough that 40 and change it to 50! Yay! And maybe I will. I certainly won't stop reading all of these classics. Because these lists and these books are as much a part of how I make choices, not just of what to read but what I do in my everyday life and how I spend my free time, that I truly can't see myself living without them. So while I may not have met the lofty goal, the quest goes on because it has to.
And I'm sorry if this whole post sounds a little Bitter Betty. I feel like it should be so much more reflective of this whole endeavor that I've undertaken. But the last 7 months have just kicked me so hard in the teeth that there's a reason not just for the absence in posts but the lack of reading. And a lack in reading makes my heart hurt. And all of the other things going on that have affected the lack of reading make my heart hurt too. Mostly getting sucked into the void of 70-hour work weeks from about August onward to December. When I left my last job it was for largely the same reason and I swore I would never do this to myself again. Because it affects every part of my being and of my life. I become this opposite version of myself that I loathe. This version who bitches about work to anyone who will listen even though I know they're only pretending to feign interest and concern. But I can't stop myself from the verbal fountain of complaining because I am stuck in the drowning suction where the only thing that exists is the waking hours of work and the few hours of sleep in-between. And if I try to grasp for some sympathy from even a partially listening ear, I tend to go for it, even as I see the boredom reflected in their eyes as I prattle on about the failure of team members to provide input on time, gigantic changes in scope, blah blah blah.
And so that was where my life existed for almost 6 months. While July's People languished on my nightstand. And I know I read it. And I'll give a recap. But I didn't give it a fair read, because it was during such a low time for me, even when I was able to devote time to it, like on an airplane. My mind was elsewhere, and not in a good place.
So explain to me how, following July's People, I read The Goldfinch, an almost 800 page book in 2 1/2 months, while I was also still dealing with all of the 70-hour work drama bullshit. I guess the heaviness somehow matched exactly how I was feeling, and it was hard to put it down. There were so many phrases and passages that I dog-eared because I wanted to save. Suffice it to say, yeah, I absolutely adored it. I didn't want it to end. I've had it on my mind for DAYS since I've finished it. And I may actually read it over again. And I very very rarely do that, only because there are so many books that I want to read. But I just loved it so much in such a heartbreaking, lovely way.
And again, maybe the melancholy of the book just caught me at the right time. The grey loneliness of winter and the shit time at work all wrapped up in the painting and the excessive drug use and death. I don't know.
Anyway, I'll write a recap for that too. But up next, I'm finding it hard to make a choice of what to read next. I'm going to try Stories, by Dorothy Parker because she may be a good fit for how I'm feeling lately and to at least keep me on track with the reading lists. But we'll see Maybe I'll come around and have a more positive attitude about 2020. Until then, here's a snippet from The Goldfinch to leave you with.
"That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open."
Sunday, July 21, 2019
"She Prayed That God Would Look On Them And See The Beauty Of Their Existence And Leave Them Alone"
Many of the books that I've read recently, not just on my book lists, but also ones that I've read for my own personal interest, are ones that seem to span large periods of time, sometimes even lifetimes, as in the case of The Old Wives Tale. So I delighted in the characters in Bel Canto being all confined to one single location (the vice president's home of a South American country) over a relatively short period of time (~4 months) and the entire story (epilogue excluded - which I'll get to) takes place all within this location and time frame. I absolutely loved it. The familiarity you gain with the setting, with each room, with the layout of each room in relation to each other, with each object in each room, with each character, with each person's attire, how each person's attire changes, with the passing of time as portrayed and importantly connected to the change in weather. All of these things are critical to the story. And I just loved it. It felt claustrophobic but in the absolute best way I've ever read. And maybe it harkens back to my love of books/movies that are set in mansions (see December 1, 2013 post for further discussion on this point), but I was hooked from the very first sentence.
The book is about Roxane Coss, an American opera singer, who has agreed to perform at the birthday party for a wealthy Japanese business man at the home of a South American vice president. The Japanese business man, Katsumi Hosokawa, agreed to have the party in the South American country under the pretense that he was interested in opening a factory there, but in actuality, only agreed to come because somehow they were able to hire his favorite opera singers, Ms. Coss, to perform, opera being the single personal indulgence he allows himself to love. However, during the party, a group of terrorists takes the entire group of high-class party attendees hostage, initially intending to acquire the president as their hostage, but unfortunately, the president is not in attendance. So the terrorists have to figure out what to do from there.
What happens from there, is a 4-month captivity of ~40 hostages (a large majority are released initially) from around the globe, many of whom cannot speak the same language, except for Mr. Hosokawa's translator who bears the burden of translating for nearly everyone. And during this time, a whole world of things change in so many ways, driven in part by Roxane's singing, which somehow seems to affect not just Mr. Hosokawa, but his translator, the other hostages, and all of their captors.
I guess I don't need to say again how much I loved this book. However, when I was reading and got to the end of each chapter, I kept expecting it to end with some kind of cliff hanger. Some kind of action related to the hostage situation going on outside to leave me on pins and needles (like, I don't know, some kind of action from the government to end the stand-off or some kind of foreshadowing about what was to come). But it really wasn't like that. Which, after a while, really made me settle down and accept that the book wasn't intended to be about the action of the events of the terrorism take-over going on outside the house, but the events going on internally between the characters inside the house. And that it was ok that the action was more quiet, and subtle and about them, and their interactions, and their moments. So those were what I was meant to feel and be left with after I finished a chapter. Not this urgent need to move on from action to ACTION to ACTION!!!! But to just hold onto these words and exchanges because, as I knew and as the reader knows, this does not, will not last. And I did not want this book to end. So many of the reviews that I've read of the book have said nearly the same thing, so that must be a damn good thing when you don't want your reader to let go of your characters, probably because you know how things will end.
There was an epilogue that I most certainly could have done without. It actually made me kind of grumpy afterwards. But I'll not give anything away, and let you decide for yourself what you think about it.
I did have a chance to watch the movie version of Bel Canto this week as well. I'd say it was a pretty decent version of the book, but something felt just not as emotionally gripping as the book. I think the casting was pretty great (Julianne Moore wouldn't have been my first choice but I liked her much more than I was expecting t0), and there were some modifications from the book that I didn't much mind (epilogue was excluded so I didn't shed a tear to see that gone). But it felt like it could have been a little bit longer and slower to just develop some of the connections to some of the characters that you get so much in the book. I enjoyed it, but would heartily recommend the book first.
Oh and did you know that the book was inspired by actual events when hundreds were taken hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru in 1996 (opera singer excluded)?
So next up is back to the lists and on to July's People by Nadine Gordimer. I'm into the doldrums of summer and it's a short read so I'm hoping for this one to be a great, quick, engaging read!
Oh yeah, and 55 days until my 40th bday. Post about that and my lack of meeting the goal of this blog, Coming Soon! xoxo
The book is about Roxane Coss, an American opera singer, who has agreed to perform at the birthday party for a wealthy Japanese business man at the home of a South American vice president. The Japanese business man, Katsumi Hosokawa, agreed to have the party in the South American country under the pretense that he was interested in opening a factory there, but in actuality, only agreed to come because somehow they were able to hire his favorite opera singers, Ms. Coss, to perform, opera being the single personal indulgence he allows himself to love. However, during the party, a group of terrorists takes the entire group of high-class party attendees hostage, initially intending to acquire the president as their hostage, but unfortunately, the president is not in attendance. So the terrorists have to figure out what to do from there.
What happens from there, is a 4-month captivity of ~40 hostages (a large majority are released initially) from around the globe, many of whom cannot speak the same language, except for Mr. Hosokawa's translator who bears the burden of translating for nearly everyone. And during this time, a whole world of things change in so many ways, driven in part by Roxane's singing, which somehow seems to affect not just Mr. Hosokawa, but his translator, the other hostages, and all of their captors.
I guess I don't need to say again how much I loved this book. However, when I was reading and got to the end of each chapter, I kept expecting it to end with some kind of cliff hanger. Some kind of action related to the hostage situation going on outside to leave me on pins and needles (like, I don't know, some kind of action from the government to end the stand-off or some kind of foreshadowing about what was to come). But it really wasn't like that. Which, after a while, really made me settle down and accept that the book wasn't intended to be about the action of the events of the terrorism take-over going on outside the house, but the events going on internally between the characters inside the house. And that it was ok that the action was more quiet, and subtle and about them, and their interactions, and their moments. So those were what I was meant to feel and be left with after I finished a chapter. Not this urgent need to move on from action to ACTION to ACTION!!!! But to just hold onto these words and exchanges because, as I knew and as the reader knows, this does not, will not last. And I did not want this book to end. So many of the reviews that I've read of the book have said nearly the same thing, so that must be a damn good thing when you don't want your reader to let go of your characters, probably because you know how things will end.
There was an epilogue that I most certainly could have done without. It actually made me kind of grumpy afterwards. But I'll not give anything away, and let you decide for yourself what you think about it.
I did have a chance to watch the movie version of Bel Canto this week as well. I'd say it was a pretty decent version of the book, but something felt just not as emotionally gripping as the book. I think the casting was pretty great (Julianne Moore wouldn't have been my first choice but I liked her much more than I was expecting t0), and there were some modifications from the book that I didn't much mind (epilogue was excluded so I didn't shed a tear to see that gone). But it felt like it could have been a little bit longer and slower to just develop some of the connections to some of the characters that you get so much in the book. I enjoyed it, but would heartily recommend the book first.
Oh and did you know that the book was inspired by actual events when hundreds were taken hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru in 1996 (opera singer excluded)?
So next up is back to the lists and on to July's People by Nadine Gordimer. I'm into the doldrums of summer and it's a short read so I'm hoping for this one to be a great, quick, engaging read!
Oh yeah, and 55 days until my 40th bday. Post about that and my lack of meeting the goal of this blog, Coming Soon! xoxo
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