"And Each Time They Made Their Way And The World Had Dropped Them For A While To A Peaceful Hiding Place, It Would Again Seize Them With A Burning One Of Its Million Hands, And The Struggle Would Begin Again and Again And Go On And On And Never Finish."

Ok, so I ready Owls Do Cry all the way through. Beginning to end. And I was engaged. And it was a great book. But I felt like it was one that I didn't quite understand. One that would have benefitted from discussing with someone else while I was reading it or discussing during a literature class or something. Because the language and descriptions felt so veiled and complex. Like it was a secret way of communicating that I wasn't a part of (like poetry that I don't get). And I'm not referring to just the section of the book that was told from the perspective of Daphne who was institutionalized, presumably with schizophrenia or some other form of mental disorder. That section was particularly difficult for me, but I still fully understand the intent and the disjointedness of the state of mind related to the disjointedness of the writing. 

Owls Do Cry tells the story of the Withers family and their 4 children, Francie, Toby, Chicks, and Daphne who grew up poor in a small town in New Zealand in the 19402. The children spend their free time in the town dump where other peoples' discards are their treasures. There is so much heart to the coming-of-age parts of the early section of the novel, and how the kids navigate growing independence, needing to support their family, and their place in the community. In a freak accident at the dump, Francie tumbles into the garbage fire and loses her life. The second portion of the book takes place 20 years later as the remaining 3 children have tried to exist after this devastating experience as well as the difficulties of their upbringing. Daphne in particular is institutionalized for mental illness and again, while this section was difficult for me to understand all of the intended nuances, there were some wonderful nuggets of insight about the circumstances she found herself in. 

Would I say it's one of my favorite books I've ever read? Probably not. But I acknowledge and respect the way in which it was told. Each child's voice and perspective are all very individual and all have such different reactions and paths to the challenges they experienced when they were younger, it's hard not to read it and feel some kind of way.

Next up, I'm taking a pause in the lists to read Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I haven't read All the Light We Cannot See, but I'll probably have to add that to my (continually expanding) list. I got sucked into the 50% off hardcover sale at Barnes and Nobel just after Christmas and went a little crazy with some gift cards. Looking forward to this one. 

194 to go.   

"No One But Yourself Bothers To Make A Collection Of Disasters. For The Time Being You Are The Hero Or The Villain Of The Thing That Is Uppermost In The Minds Of Your Friends And Acquaintances."

When I was only a short way through Appointment in Samarra, I was quite puzzled about why this book hasn't risen to the level of literary hype as The Great Gatsby. It has many of the same elements and has a very similar feel to the book. And while I haven't read The Great Gatsby in a long time, I felt myself already gravitating to this book more. Steeped in the wealthy, young adults of the 1920s, fueled with odious amounts of bootlegged liquor, there was almost a dark, cynical side to the characters motives and actions. But it all felt like a less romanticized version of elites in the 1920s and had a more modern feel (especially with regards to the portrayal of the women...they were much more interested in sex and this was written about so frankly, it felt pretty surprising. And I wonder if it was a bit shocking for the time).

Appointment in Samarra tells the story of Julian English and his wife Caroline, who attend an elite social event at their club just before Christmas in the small town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. And in a somewhat irrational moment of annoyance and ennui, Julian throws a drink in the face of a fellow club-member, Harry Reid. From there, he spends the remainder of the book attempting to make amends to Harry, his wife, his family, and their friends, and when it is not well-received, Julian doubles-down on his bad behavior, bringing about his own self-destruction.

It has all of the elements of a lush novel detailing the lives of the wealthy socialites of this time period: descriptions of particular social norms around party hostessing and marrying well, SO much talk about new automobiles (I mean, part of this is because Julian owns a car dealership, but so much space devoted to every detail about cars), gangsters, liquor, etc. It grounded the setting of the book and made it very visual and distinct. And made Julian's actions, particularly in the end, feel much more reasonable - all of the social climbing, and money, and infidelity very much drove his (and all of the characters') behavior. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book, and even now thinking about it a bit later, it feels like the kind of book I would very much want to pick up and read again. 

Up next, Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame. I have zero idea what this book is about which makes it an interesting surprise! 

195 to go.    

"God Was Everywhere, Terrible, The Living God; And So High, The Song Said, You Couldn't Get Over Him; So Low You Couldn't Get Under Him; So Wide You Couldn't Get Around Him; But Must Come In At The Door."

We watched I Am Not Your Negro on Netflix not that long ago, which is a documentary/essay of sorts based on an unfinished book by James Baldwin about race relations. I enjoyed it very much and remember looking forward to reading Go Tell It on the Mountain, which is included on two of my reading lists, to see how Baldwin's visual words that I had seen spoken would translate to the written word. And within the first few pages it was evident that Baldwin had a remarkable way of communicating large concepts in a lovely, interesting, and dynamic way. 

Go Tell It on the Mountain is based on Baldwin's youth growing up in Harlem with his stepfather who was a preacher and abusive to his wife and children. The character in the novel, John Grimes, turns 14 years old and attends a evening prayer service at his stepfather's parish where he experiences salvation, traveling to the depths of his own sin to climb up the mountain, determined to live thenceforth for Jesus. A large majority of the book is spent recounting the histories of his stepfather, mother, and aunt and how their journeys led them to where and who they are and, pervasive throughout every moment, is their relationship with God and their faith. 

It was surprising to me how much of the book was about the virtues of God and religion. In fact, there isn't that much activity/action that occurs throughout the course of the novel. The vast majority of it details the sermons, the struggle, the salvation, the way life should be led in the path of God. And it wasn't in an ironic way. It didn't seem to be critical of it. But the character of John struggles so mightily with trying to live with faith but that is in conflict with his own intelligence and trying to fight against the pervasiveness of sin that is in every single fragment of the world. And John struggles with despising his stepfather for his physical abuse on the one hand, and trying to love God (and his stepfather) on the other hand. I guess I found it surprising that John eventually is "saved" and moves forward choosing to follow in the path of his stepfather and mother, and embrace Jesus, knowing that Baldwin was ultimately not a religious person. So it's interesting to me that Baldwin wrote the book later in life and didn't eschew religion, but had his character of John embrace it. That the book wasn't written through the lens of someone who no longer embraced the faith that the character so strongly ascribes to.

Next up is Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara. In reading the first couple chapters already, it already feels like it's going to feel a lot like The Great Gatsby but with a bit of a more sardonic feel. 

2021 ended up being quite a banner year for me for reading. I don't know what crawled up my ass and had me reading as much as I did, but I read more books this year than I can ever remember (a total of 20 books). I think part of it was joining Goodreads, which provides me with a great amount of satisfaction to see and track the accomplishment of finishing books. But mostly I just found a lot of joy this year from reading good stories. And not all of them were always great. But I read enough really great ones to make me want to continue to seek out things that move me. So on to 2022 where I'm sure I'll continue on this trend. Because I have a giant stack of "to read" books on my bookshelf and a lot of motivation to keep enjoying excellent stories. 

196 to go.   

"At This Moment He Can Think Only One Thing: How Was It Possible, He Wonders, To Have Been So Wrong."

When I first started Everything I Never Told You, I thought it was going to be a clever, but strikingly similar to other recent fiction I've read, whodoneit story about the death of a young high school girl, Lydia Lee. But I was VERY very pleasantly surprised that this novel ended up being pretty much nothing like that. 

Yes, Lydia Lee dies by drowning in the lake by her Middlewood, Ohio home, but the resulting story is not necessarily about who may have had a hand in her death, but instead is the unfolding story of the Lee family in the late 1960s through the mid 1970s: James, a Chinese American Harvard-educated professor working at a small college, his wife Marilyn, a brilliant and promising academic with big dreams who met James while attending Radcliffe, their oldest son Nath, their daughter Lydia, and youngest daughter Hannah. Marilyn had always expected to make something remarkable of her life, rejecting her mother's goals for her to marry a "nice Harvard man." After falling in love and marrying a Chinese American man as a white woman, and promptly having children, no longer pursuing her dreams of being a doctor, she somehow finds herself living the exact life that she had tried to avoid. When Marilyn deserts her family to go back to school, it tears a rift in the fabric of all of their lives and things are never the same. 

Marilyn discovers she is pregnant with Hannah and returns to her family, abandoning school. She chooses to shift all of her dreams to Lydia, to raise her to be the person that she wasn't able to be. On the flip side, after experiencing discrimination his entire life, all James wants for Lydia is to fit in, have friends, and be popular. Between both parents, Lydia is completely smothered. The other children are largely ignored. 

Where the novel really shines is in the exact meaning of the title: everything that is never said. All five characters have so so  many missed opportunities to express things to each other that would likely have averted Lydia's fate: James to Marilyn, Nath to Lydia, Lydia to Nath, Hannah to Lydia, Hannah to her parents, Nath to his parents. So many things held back. So many things observed but not spoken aloud. So many things suffered in silence. It was very brilliantly done. 

I found I enjoyed the book much more than I thought. The exact writing itself didn't necessarily blow me away (I'm still on a God of Small Things high where I'm measuring everything against the exquisite language there), but as a whole, the characters and story was intertwined so well that it caught up with me by the end. I'm glad that I had the chance to read it. As a side note, according to good old Wikipedia, Celeste Ng's favorite novel is The God of Small Things. Go figure. 

After this break from the lists, back I go with Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. I am officially off work until January 4th so I plan to spend the next week and a half doing nothing except relaxing and reading. 

"And the Air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside."

Normally I capitalize every word in the heading of the blog post, which is always a quote from the book I have finished. This was the first and probably only (we'll see) time that I made sure that the capitalization matched what was in the book. Because there were so many nuances in the author's choices in the format of the text that were deliberate and added so much to the meaning of the content.

And ya'll. The God of Small Things blew me away. 

It got me to thinking. As an occasional writer (ok, so technical writing is my full time job, but occasional fiction writer), all writers have access to all the same words. Sure, there are some who have slightly more advanced vocabularies than others. But for the most part, 99% of the words we all know are the same. So what Arundhati Roy was able to do with words, all the same words as I have access to, just blew my mind. And certainly made me think, "Oh yeah, no way I could ever in a million years write the way she does." I don't mind being brought down many pegs to be able to experience something this brilliant. 

And I don't throw around the word brilliant often. I think I tend to be pretty tepid with saying that every book was one of the most amazing things I've ever read. But this book honestly is. There is so much vivid imagery and creativity in what she presents about the environment, the characters, their actions, their inner thoughts. Like nothing I've ever read. And such a clever use of repetition throughout the book for key details about the characters, their physical attributes, things that happen to them, the world they exist in. I may be repetitive myself, but all I can keep saying is that it just blew me away. It was a book that I delighted in getting drawn into and one that I know would benefit from being read a second time.

As a just a quick summary of the story, it tells of two inseparable fraternal twins, Rahel and Estha, who live in Ayemenem, India and the fateful events that occur when their cousin, Sophie Mol, comes to visit from England in 1969. The children have their own lush world, part imagination, part very harsh reality. There are complex family dynamics and each character's history is explored. There is a backdrop of political issues (the burgeoning of communism in India, the persistence of the caste system) and an illicit love affair that leads to some of the horrific events that conclude the novel. Although, while these events "conclude" the novel, the storyline is split up throughout the book and heavy foreshadowing allows the reader to have a pretty clear idea of how things are going to end. But that doesn't make it any less shocking and terrible.

This book just rocketed up my list of favorites. I will probably say it again and again, but I've really never read anything quite as exquisite and lush with imagery. And written in a way that is new and interesting and compelling. And not done just for the sake of doing it. But because that is the story and who these characters are and the fiber of every moment of the book is made better by the way it is written. I wish I could provide a better explanation of what exactly it is that makes this novel so exemplary, but even with 99% of the same words, I cannot even remotely do it justice. 

So read it. READ IT. 

I'm taking a momentary pause from the lists to pick up Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. I'm on break for the holidays starting next week so I wanted to pick up something to usher me into my glorious free time that I felt I could read quickly. I also have some quality time in the waiting room of a hospital next week, ripe for reading. We'll move on back to the lists after that. I'm hoping to finish this one before the end of the year and squeeze in a year recap post, but we'll see how that goes. 

197 left to go.     

"The Search Is What Anyone Would Undertake If He Were Not Sunk In The Everydayness Of His Own Life"

The Moviegoer was certainly not what I was expecting. For starters, it's really not about an individual who goes to see movies at all. I mean, there is partly that. The main character, Binx Bolling, does enjoy going to movie houses all over to see films (the novel is set in the late 1950s), but as part of a larger personal exploration. I guess I was expecting it to be the center feature of the book and that more of the character's life would have revolved around his fixation with movies. But that really wasn't the case. 

The idea of a "moviegoer" was more about someone who saw things in life in a certain way, like Binx did. I found him to be a very interesting character but one who I had a hard time necessarily liking or rooting for. He felt like a bit of a cross between Holden Caulfield and Meursault from The Stranger. He was very disenchanted and apathetic about most things in life (with the exception of making money; that seemed to bring him some amount of satisfaction). He had a lust for women (particularly the ones who were assigned to him as a secretary), but then as soon as he got what he wanted from them, he would lose interest and a general malaise would come over him. But when faced with difficult, uncomfortable moments, he found himself needing to be with a woman (and not necessarily sexually, just needed that presence and that conquest), which I found to be an interesting aspect of the book. 

Binx is a stock broker in New Orleans who was injured during the Korean War. His father was killed when he was younger and he ended up being largely raised by his aunt, who is from a traditional southern, wealthy family. He has a close relationship with his cousin Kate (who he eventually marries...I guess first cousins wasn't a deal-breaker in the south in the 1950s), who is suicidal with a myriad of mental health issues. She states that Binx is the only one who can tell her what to do and she'll do it and keep her from the brink, which sounds like a great foundation for a healthy relationship. 

But Binx just doesn't ascribe to everyday life (what he calls "everydayness"). He seems detached from every relationship he has (from his mother and his step-siblings, to his aunt, to his new fling Sharon, and even to Kate) and views them through a vague, uninterested lens. However, he is on the "search" for meaning, for God, for something to give his life reason. And while he never seems to be able to find what he's looking for, he also doesn't even really seem to know what he's looking for. He struggles to relate to just about everyone and while he tries to find comfort in movies, he still seems to be isolated by his unwillingness to succumb to the everydayness and the contrived expectations of how people are supposed to behave (which is exemplified in the character of his aunt). 

And I don't want to make it sound like I disliked the book. I actually liked it quite a bit. It was the kind of book that I wish I had read in a literature class to be able to discuss some of the scenes with a group of other people. The novel definitely felt different and "new". While existentialism and questioning ones purpose isn't necessarily revolutionary content, the modern context (movies and his immediate environment) and the very keen observations of the world around gave the novel a very specific place and moment. So yeah, a book that surprised me a bit. 

Up next is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. 198 to go. Happy Thanksgiving!   

"He Was Building From Day To Day On The Possibility Of Disgust, But Each Day Brought Forth Meanwhile A New And More Engaging Bend Of The Road."

Well didn't The Ambassadors just take all the wind out of my sails? Here I was, engaged with reading all spring and summer, clocking book after book, more quickly than I have in years. And then this one just screeched me to a halt, taking nearly 2 months to finish. It didn't take much for me to understand why...I just could not have cared less about The Ambassadors. 

The novel tells the story of Strether, an older man sent on an errand by his fiancee, Mrs Newsome, to retrieve her son, Chad, from his galivanting in Paris to once and for all return to Wollett Massachusetts to run the family business. Simple enough right? Well once Strether arrives in Europe he becomes completely entranced with everything about it. About all of the magnificent people, their lovely gatherings, and of course, beautiful Paris. He also finds Chad so much more remarkable than he anticipated and truly admires the young lad. Chad has taken up acquaintance with a wonderful group of friends, in particular, Madame de Vionnet. She is an older, married woman with a beautiful charming daughter, and Strether all along thinks that Chad's relationship with Madame de Vionnet is not an amorous one. 

Throughout his time there, Strether becomes a different version of himself. He sees all of the wonderful things that he had missed out on during his youth by not exploring the world and seeking the kind of experiences that Chad is having. Sensing that Strether is not fulfilling his obligation of bringing Chad home, Mrs Newsome sends her daughter and her husband to finish the job. Her daughter is far more practical and determined and isn't even remotely impressed with Chad's life or with Paris. I won't disclose the ending, but suffice it to say that Stether may not have seen everything as it truly was and in the end believes that while he has changed so significantly, he doesn't deserve to benefit in any way from his time in Paris. 

My biggest issue with the book that I probably asked myself every time I picked it up was "Who the eff cares??" The book is almost 500 pages devoted to the hyper-over-analysis of every inner thought, motivation, impression, interpretation, every single minute everything that this one character experiences. I mean like, super duper overanalyzing every single thing. And who gives a rat's ass if the son comes home to work in the family business or not?? It's not like he was a fugitive or something. The topic was treated like it was the most important, significant thing in the world, and the whole time all I could thing was "Who cares?" I get that the novel was written in the early 1900s when it was of the most paramount importance that a son follow in his father's footsteps and carry on a successful business. But even then, who cares? The gravity of the situation as I saw it just didn't match up to how severe it was in the book to deserve the lengthiest prose ever to examine every ridiculous angle of everything. Similarly, the relationship between Chad and Madame de Vionnet ended up being such a big deal as to reputations and perceptions of society, and all the while, I was thinking, "So what? He's carrying on with a married woman. Does this really deserve such drama?" But apparently it did. I don't always feel that the time period of a book feels so grossly different than now such that it makes the book entirely irrelevant, but that was my main takeaway from this novel. 

One of my reasons for picking up this book (aside from the fact that I actually quite enjoyed Wings of the Dove) was that The Talented Mr Ripley was supposedly based on The Ambassadors. But it was really only the base premise of one man going to Europe to retrieve a son on behalf of the family that they had in common. The rest of the characters and certainly the plot line didn't fall in sync between the two. But I'm at least glad I got to see that. 

What I'm not glad about is that I still have 4 more books on my lists by Henry James. After the slog through this one, I'm not looking forward to the others (again, even though I have liked others of his). But hopefully I can right the ship of interest in reading again with The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. This one certainly intrigues me just based on the premise, so we'll see if the book itself matches up with expectations! 

I am officially under the 200 mark...199 to go!