Part one of my thread

What I've read so far (as of 12/3):
74. Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner
73. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
72. A Better Angel: Stories by Chris Adrian (reread)
71. Loveless Love by Luigi Pirandello
70. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
69. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer
68. Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
67. Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin
66. Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson
65. Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
64. Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
63. The Lost Slayer: Omnibus Edition by Christopher Golden
62. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
61. Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
60. Self-Help: Stories by Lorrie Moore
59. In Persuasion Nation: Stories by George Saunders
58. The Natural History of the Wild Cats by Andrew Kitchener
57. The Learners: The Book After the Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
56. after the quake: stories by Haruki Murakami
55. The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters by Chip Kidd
54. Look Back in Anger by John Osborne
53. Stoner by John Williams
52. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
51. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
50. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
49. The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
48. Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian
47. Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
46. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories by Raymond Carver
45. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
44. Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore
43. Good-bye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
42. No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July
41. The Slide by Kyle Beachy
40. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
39. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
38. Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf by Paul Fattaruso (reread)
37. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
36. Anagrams by Lorrie Moore
35. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
34. The Temptation of the West by Andre Malraux
33. Like Life: Stories by Lorrie Moore
32. The Confidential Clerk by T.S. Eliot
31. A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King
30. Mollie & Other War Pieces by A.J. Liebling
29. Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene
28. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
27. Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut
26. Topper by Thorne Smith
25. you are a little bit happier than i am by Tao Lin
24. The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood by Elspeth Huxley
23. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
22. And Where Were You, Adam? by Heinrich Boll
21. I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation by Michela Wrong
20. The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
19. Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf by Paul Fattaruso
18. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon
17. The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford
16. 1066 and All That by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman
15. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
14. Man's Fate by Andre Malraux
13. A Better Angel: Stories by Chris Adrian
12. Entertaining Eric: Letters from the Home Front, 1941-1944 by Maureen Wells
11. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories by George Saunders
10. How to Become Extinct by Will Cuppy
9. You Are a Dog by Terry Bain
8. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (reread)
7. Henrietta's War: News from the Home Front, 1939-1942 by Joyce Dennys
6. Epitaph of a Small Winner by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
5. God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.
4. Drawers and Booths by Ara 13
3. The Harold Nicolson Diaries: 1907-1963 by Harold Nicolson
2. The Magic Christian by Terry Southern
1. The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

Message edited by its author, Dec 3, 2009, 11:32pm.

The story "People Like Us Are the Only Ones Here" from Birds of America still haunts me even though I read it several years ago.

That's definitely the one that made the deepest impression on me too (although it's actually called "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk"). I thought it might be because it reminded me of Chris Adrian's stories, which often take place in pediatric hospitals, but it looks like it was just remarkable on its own.

Got you starred again, Erin!

Thanks!

I've read The Children's Hospital byChris Adrian, but not his short stories. Looks like I should give them a try, esp. since my daughter's starting her third year as a resident in pediatrics.

45) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon--This was my first Pynchon. Trying to describe the plot of Lot 49 is like trying to describe the plot of Foucault's Pendulum or Cryptonomicon--suffice to say that there's a big conspiracy and a lot of made-up history. I really liked Pynchon's style, which is entertaining and intelligent without being heavy, and he had some great characters. I particularly like Dr. Hilarius, the protagonist's LSD-prescribing, ex-Nazi, possibly insane Freudian psychiatrist, but he's around for all of two pages. I think my only problem with the book was it's length--it was actually too short, which is a qualification I've applied to maybe two books ever. Pynchon clearly had this complex, intricate plot in his head, and he's apparently not afraid of writing huge honking novels, so I wonder why this one was so short (150 pages). I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of Pynchon.

Message edited by its author, Jun 24, 2009, 11:34pm.

#8: I have never read any Pynchon either, Erin, so maybe I should start with that one since it is so short. Thanks for the recommendation!

I kind of wish I'd read one of his longer ones first, actually. I bought The Crying of Lot 49 a couple of days ago because the bookstore didn't have Gravity's Rainbow, but if I had bought GR I probably wouldn't have touched it for months (or years)....soooo I guess reading Lot 49 first was a good thing.

Message edited by its author, Jun 24, 2009, 11:51pm.

Sounds like it!

#9 ditto for me to, The Crying of Lot 49 definitely sounds intriguing.

#8 This is interesting. I read The Crying of Lot 49 a few years ago and have a memory of really loving it, but recently, I keep spying it on my shelf and realising that I have absolutely no memory of it, other than the fact that I enjoyed it, which is quite unusual for me. Maybe I should give it a re-read!

How was the Flame Trees of Thika? I watched the DVD of the miniseries and it was a fascinating work.

And The Crying of Lot 49 is the best way I've found to get into the writing style of Thomas Pynchon if you've tried before and backed out (which I have). You are left wanting more and so, I guess one of those tomes on my shelf is calling....

Message edited by its author, Jun 29, 2009, 12:40pm.

>14: The Flame Trees of Thika was amazing! I kind of want to see the miniseries, if it was even half as good. I just bought the sequel, The Mottled Lizard, and am really excited to read it.

Message edited by its author, Jun 29, 2009, 11:25pm.

6-month Status Update

*Books read in June: 6 (Ouch)

Books Read: 45
*Fiction: 39
*Non-Fiction: 5
*Poetry: 1

*Rereads: 2

*Male Authors: 29
*Female Authors: 16

Century of Origin
*19th: 3
*20th (pre-1950): 15
*20th (post-1950): 15
*21st: 12

Country of Origin
*USA: 20
*Britain/Ireland: 15
*France: 4
*Canada: 2
*Russia: 1
*Brazil: 1
*Germany: 1
*Japan: 1

Message edited by its author, Jun 30, 2009, 7:36pm.

46) What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories by Raymond Carver--This was also recommended by the friend who recommended No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July (see above). Carver is very spare and very depressing, at least at first. I must admit that I wasn't sure I liked his stories much in the beginning, but about halfway through (I think with the story "So Much Water So Close to Home") I warmed up to him, and by the end I loved the overall effect Carver achieved. A critical blurb from Tim O'Brien on the back of the book says it better than I can: "The collection as a whole, unlike most, begins to grow and resonate in a wonderful cumulative effect." I totally agree with that; even Lorrie Moore, whose stories I absolutely love, hasn't achieved that kind of cohesion with her collections. Carver is very subtle, so reading one or two stories by him won't do it--the whole collection needs to be read through, and I would guess it's best to do it quickly, like I did. It's the mood that's important, not the individual stories (which often don't even have plots, just character interactions), and Carver captures a sense of the emotionally seedy underbelly of America. It's honest and blunt and would be depressing if it weren't so good.

Message edited by its author, Jul 2, 2009, 1:09am.

Thumbed ya! Thanks for the review. I've never read any Carver and this sounds like a good beginning place. I have it on my look out for list.

I've got a collection of short stories by Carver around here somewhere. Must pull it back up the TBR stack.

BDB: Thanks! It was definitely a good place for me to start, and I definitely plan on reading more by Carver.

47) Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot--When I was in high school I really loved T.S. Eliot's poetry, but I never got around to reading this one. I can't say I got much out of it. It seemed a lot more rambling than his shorter poems. I wouldn't unrecommend it, but it's probably not a good place to start with his poetry.

Message edited by its author, Jul 3, 2009, 1:37pm.

48) Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian--Chris Adrian is possibly my favorite writer, but for some reason I was kind of reluctant to read this, his first novel. My hesitation may have been due to the Civil War-era setting, which is not a time period I am interested in. But Adrian is such an imaginative and unique writer that his story transcends its setting; the blurbs for the book puzzle me because they emphasize the setting and almost make it sound like a typical historical novel when it's anything but.

The plot brings together four main characters: Gob Hullman, the possibly fictional son of Victoria Hullman; Maci Trufant, a budding suffragist; Will Fie, a young doctor; and Walt Whitman. They are all united by their grief over loved ones lost during the war, and their grief brings them together in Gob's quest to create a machine that will abolish death and bring back not only their lost loved ones but every person who's ever died. Adrian always has some magical realism in his stories, so what seems at first to be typical 1860s America is revealed to have otherworldly and sometimes disturbing layers.

I really love Adrian's writing and the way he skews the world just enough to make you nearly believe that what he's saying could actually happen. Gob's Grief didn't quite take my breath away the way that The Children's Hospital and A Better Angel did, but it's still a great novel and highly recommended.

Message edited by its author, Jul 4, 2009, 5:18pm.

#22: On to the Planet it goes!

49) The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing--The Fifth Child is about a couple who marry in the '60s and are determined to have an ideal family life. They do, until the arrival of their fifth child, Ben, whose physical and emotional strangeness eventually tears the family apart.

This was the first Lessing novel I'd read, and I liked it. It's a fairly short novel, and at first it might seem like just a subtle horror story, which is what it seems to be marketed as, but it's really more about the emotional ties of all of the characters and how they're broken by circumstances and unfortunate decisions. Lessing never really tries to explain Ben's strangeness; I'm glad she didn't go for a Damien-like, demon child thing. I had some problems with the lack of psychological insight though--there were several instances where I just didn't understand why characters were doing and saying certain things, and one of those instances was the hinge that the entire story swung on. This may be why I didn't feel a real connection with the book; most of the tension that drew me quickly through the story was from wondering what was going to happen next with Ben, and if he hadn't been such a fascinating and monstrous character I probably would have lost interest in the story.

Message edited by its author, Jul 9, 2009, 6:59pm.

There is a sequel to The Fifth Child called Ben in the World, which follows Ben's life after he is on his own.

I liked both books, but Lessing is a very versatile writer (Nobel winner!), and most of her other works are a lot different than the Ben books. Read on!

Thanks for pointing the sequel out! I definitely wasn't expecting that to exist. The thing is, I'm not sure I want to read it--I really liked the way Lessing ended The Fifth Child, with Ben's future up in the air. Maybe someday, if I get curious...

I've also got The Golden Notebook on my shelf, so I will someday read that, at the very least.

I also liked The Fifth Child very much, although "liked" may be the wrong word, and, while I keep seeing the sequel on the shelf, it's just not calling to me to be read. I felt the story ended very well.

I read The Fifth Child last year and liked it a lot. I want to read more of Lessing's work but have so many other books on the tbr pile at present ...

I almost bought The Grass is Singing at the bookstore today, but went with The Old Curiosity Shop instead. I would have bought both, but I'm very poor this week.

The Grass is Singing is one of Lessing's earliest works, and it is one of my favorites (I like her works set in Africa). But you can never go wrong with Dickens.

To choose your next Lessing read though, I would recommend The Grass is Singing over The Golden Notebook. The Golden Notebook is very dense, some people find it a bit heavy-handed, and it can be difficult to get into.

>30: I will definitely take that into consideration. My copy of The Golden Notebook is pretty daunting.

50) Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey--This makes my trifecta of Great American Novels, along with East of Eden and Angle of Repose. You've got your westward movement, your spirit of independence and tragedy, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Society, Dysfunctional Family vs. Everyone Else, Dysfunctional Family vs. Itself. I'm not even going to go into the plot, because the magnificence of the novel has nothing to do with it. This is just one of those books that everyone needs to read. I had no idea Ken Kesey was such a brilliant writer. I'm feeling incoherent, but there you go.

Message edited by its author, Jul 15, 2009, 1:01am.

> 8, i've been dithering between The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow as one of my next reads. happily, i came across your post, which just solved the dilemma for me! thanks...

>32 I read it earlier this year and loved it. You are so right that everyone needs to read this book!

I read Sometimes a Great Notion years ago, and ever since felt it was a much better book than his more famous One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I recently bought another copy of it because I want to reread it.

It was made into a fairly decent movie with I think Henry Fonda and Paul Newman.

>35: I haven't read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest yet, and now I am kind of hesitant to. Not just because of what you said though; even while I was reading Sometimes a Great Notion, I was thinking that there was just no way his other novels could possibly be as good. It's the epitome of quality that an author only attains once in a career, if at all.

And normally I avoid movie adaptations of books I've read, but I might make an exception for this one, as long as it's set in Oregon. I'd like to live there one day, but for now I just gaze longingly at pictures. I actually went to see Twilight at the theater solely because I'd heard the scenery (it was set in Oregon or Washington) was beautiful. And I wanted a good laugh.

Message edited by its author, Jul 16, 2009, 6:58pm.

Even though I liked Sometimes a Great Notion more, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is also an excellent book. It's an entirely different sort of book--very, very funny, but bittersweet too. In tone, it's reminescent of Catch 22. I hope you'll read it one day.

The movie of Sometimes a Great Notion is set in Oregon, and I recently read on one of the threads that the Twilight series is set in Washington. I currently live in the Seattle area, and one of my favorite get-aways is the Oregon coast. Oregon and Washingon are amazingly beautiful states. :)

I have to second that opinion. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an excellent book. I haven't gotten around to the other, so I can't compare, but you should definitely pick it up sometime. The movie is also quite good, but I'd recommend reading first and then watching.

51) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris--I heard about this novel a few months ago but didn't feel the urge to read it until just recently, possibly because I've only had my first real, nine-to-five job for about a month now. The novel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, is about the work-lives of the employees at an advertising agency as they go through a series of lay-offs and personal crises. It gets compared to the TV show "The Office" and the movie "Office Space" a lot, but I don't think the book has much in common with either of them (although I'm a huge fan of "The Office"; "Office Space", not so much). It's also famous (or infamous, depending on who you talk to) for being almost entirely written in the second-person collective ("we" and "our"), which draws the reader into the group dynamics of the characters in a way that I don't think any other book has done for me.

I think Then We Came to the End is a great novel, definitely deserving of its critical acclaim, and I really enjoyed reading it. However, it seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of book, with a lot of people on LT hating it (or at least strongly disliking it), and mostly for reasons I don't understand. The major complaints seem to be that nothing very exciting happens for most of the book (of course nothing exciting happens, it's set in an advertising agency), the unique narrative perspective, or the fact that it's not as funny as the aforementioned TV shows. My only criticism is an incongruous middle section that gives you a different perspective on one of the characters; it seems misplaced at first, then is cleverly explained at the end, but I'm not sure if the cleverness was worth it. I'll have to keep thinking about it. But either way, I think it's definitely a book worth reading, and I don't understand why so many people don't like it.

ETA: This book has one of the most perfect final sentences I think I've ever read.

Message edited by its author, Jul 21, 2009, 1:34am.

#39 Just de-lurking to thank you for the review. I have never yet read a whole book in the 2nd person and am keen to do so (especially as the topic sounds fun!.)

I thought Then We Came to the End was okay - the "We" and "Our" did not drive me crazy like I've heard others mention. The only thing preventing me from loving the book was that I did not bond with any of the characters. I found some of them scary, some amusing, but none that really touched my heart. I came close to bonding with Lynn, but not quite.

However, I do have to confess that I have been thinking about this book a lot lately. I work in cubicle world and I'm watching the company go through layoffs - wondering if/when I will be laid off too. Working in an environment like that messes with the head, so I guess I can understand why some of those employees acted the way they did. :)

>41: I didn't really bond with any of the characters either, to be honest, although I identified a lot with Joe. But that lack of easily likable characters was actually something I really liked about the book, because it seemed very realistic to me. This probably reflects my own experience more than anything--I work in a lab rather than an office, so it's a much smaller group of people that I see every day, but already I've gotten really annoyed by some people and am indifferent towards most of the others, which was very similar to my reaction towards the characters in the book. I also liked Lynn but, like you, felt that Ferris sort of distanced her from both the other characters and the reader; but again, that seemed like another realistic condition of working in an office that size, so it felt right that I didn't know or understand her very well.

Now that I think about all this, it seems so weird that none of it kept me from enjoying the novel. Then We Came to the End was definitely a unique reading experience for me. It's interesting to think about it in the context of your situation too--that would put a whole new spin on things.

Message edited by its author, Jul 22, 2009, 12:19am.

>40: Thanks for reading! I think that was the first entire novel I'd read in second-person too, although I can vaguely remember reading some short stories written that way. I found it really easy to get into.

52) Chess Story by Stefan Zweig--This is one of those books that it seems everybody is reading lately. I don't have much to say about it, though. It was well-written and much more exciting than I was expecting, but I'm glad it wasn't longer. I have never liked games of strategy--I'm pretty much incapable of focusing on the game at hand--so I didn't really feel like I understood that aspect of the characters' psychology very well.

(Abandoned) The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell--I should start by saying that I love Durrell's The Dark Labyrinth and I enjoyed Esprit de Corps. So I was inclined to have a favorable opinion when I started reading The Black Book.

I should have read the blurbs on the book more carefully, or at least recalled what I know about Durrell. This was his first novel, written when he was 24. In his brother's book, My Family and Other Animals, Lawrence--who was 18 or 19 at the time being described, I think--comes across as a pompous, short-tempered jerk of an older brother. Having read the first half of this book, I don't think the description was an exaggeration.

And now that I've given up on it, I see I missed a dead giveaway right on the back cover: "This first novel is a glittering, exultant, outrageous act of self-indulgence, and the reader needs no dust-jacket exegesis to tell him that this is the work of a brilliant boy...The author is gloriously drunk with sex, sin, scorn, youth, and his own deflowering genius..." Who in their right mind would want to read something like that? (Except the Time book critic who wrote it, I guess, but then book critics aren't always in their right mind.) And even putting aside the red flags of "outrageous act of self-indulgence" and "gloriously drunk with...his own deflowering genius", The Black Book is by no means "glittering"--it's a dreary, confusing, sex-obsessed novel with characters ranging from pathetic to disgusting to terrible.

What's it about? I don't even know. It doesn't matter. Just don't read it.

Message edited by its author, Jul 26, 2009, 4:39pm.

OK, I won't.

Then I have accomplished something worthwhile today. :)

Definitely doesn't sound like my cup of tea. Thanks for the warning!

7-month Status Update

*Books read in July: 7

Total Books Read: 52
*Fiction: 45
*Non-Fiction: 5
*Poetry: 2

*Rereads: 2

*Male Authors: 35
*Female Authors: 17

Century of Origin
*19th: 3
*20th (pre-1950): 17
*20th (post-1950): 18
*21st: 14

Country of Origin
*USA: 25
*Britain/Ireland: 16
*France: 4
*Canada: 2
*Russia: 1
*Brazil: 1
*Germany: 1
*Japan: 1
*Austria: 1

Nice summary, Erin!

Thanks! I've pretty much given up on reading more non-fiction this year though. I am reading a couple of non-fiction books now (Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers and The Autobiography of Malcolm X), but I'm going through a phase where I keep starting new books and losing interest at about the hundredth page, so who knows when I'll finish any of them.

>30/31 hey Erin - lost you for a while. Just weighing in on The Golden Notebook, I'd concur on the "heavy-handed" thing (ho ho). I found it a real slog in the end - it felt like a 'necessary' book, but also one that captured an era that has thankfully passed. I'm glad I've read it, but I didn't especially enjoy the experience.

And I'm afraid I'm in the 'no' camp for Then We Came to the End. I just found the narration really gimmicky, and found it extremely difficult to get past that. My reading experience was almost the flipside of yours - when we got to Lynn's central section, I sat up, took notice, nodded to myself thinking, "OK, so maybe he can write after all." For me, what he did was destroy any notion that it was possible to have a valuable interior life if you did a soulless office job; yes, many of us feel like that constant drone of a narrative is an accurate representation of our life, but I didn't feel he did anything important or interesting with it.

Will be interested to see what his follow-up is like - Penguin in the UK have been mailing out proofs this week, judging by their publicists' Twitter feeds.

Message edited by its author, Aug 7, 2009, 5:55pm.

53) Stoner by John Williams--I really wanted to love this book, but I ended up with really mixed feelings. The plot is pretty simple: William Stoner is born to a farming family in Missouri in the late 1800s, grows up to be an English professor at the University of Missouri, progresses through his career and life, and dies. I wanted this to be a profound meditation on life and relationships, and in a way it is; it's just that the views expressed are ones I philosophically disagree with. Stoner is kind, stoic, and really, really passive, to the point where I ended up almost not caring what happened to him. Whenever Stoner's life starts to go in a direction he doesn't like, he does nothing to stop it, even if he feels a flicker of anger or frustration. He has moments of happiness, but they always seemed accepted, never earned. I did not empathize with Stoner, or with any of the characters in the book. The thing is, Williams is a very good writer, and there are a few passages about love that are just beautiful, but I don't like his worldview. Maybe it's because I'm young and naive, but I think that things worth having (like love, family, friendship, and meaning in life) are worth fighting for, or at least worth exerting effort over, if "fighting" is too violent a way to put it. Interestingly, a few of the characters in Stoner reminded me of my great-grandparents, based on what I have been told about them, so maybe the sort of weary acceptance of less-than-desirable situations is something characteristic of an earlier generation, which John Williams might have just been a representative of. So Stoner may not have been my cup of tea, but I'm glad I read it; it wasn't inspiring or exactly enjoyable, but it's given me a lot to think about.

>52: Oh jeez, the case against The Golden Notebook just keeps building; I definitely won't be reading it anytime soon.

I can definitely see how Ferris' narration would feel "gimmicky" to some people, but it just didn't for me. I wonder how much of it is due to prior conditioning; I can't specifically think of anything I'd read like it, but I didn't feel like Ferris' writing was something I had to get used to. It just felt right.

Message edited by its author, Aug 8, 2009, 4:20pm.

54) Look Back in Anger by John Osborne--This play was first performed in 1956 and was among the first of the Angry Young Men dramas, as well as an early work of British "kitchen sink" realism. It's about a dysfunctional young couple: the husband is sadistic and angry, the wife is weary and emotionally beaten. The play is really more valuable for its representation of the feeling among certain young people in post-war England: there are class issues and political frustrations at play that I didn't fully understand. In that way, the play is kind of dated, but that's okay when the human drama is good; unfortunately, I didn't feel like any of the characters acted like real people. I know there are lots of people in really dysfunctional relationships, but I don't think they act like these characters. So not a great play, but important in the history of theater, I guess.

Message edited by its author, Aug 9, 2009, 2:00pm.

55) The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters by Chip Kidd--I picked this up on a whim at Powell's because I liked the title (which doesn't really mean anything, by the way). It's got mixed reviews here on LT, but I don't really understand why. The Cheese Monkeys is about a freshman at an unnamed state university in the late 1950s: "Majoring in Art at the state university appealed to me because I have always hated Art, and I had a hunch if any school would treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one that was run by the government." He meets another art major, a funny but unbalanced girl named Himillsy, and maybe falls a little in love with her, but she's pretty crazy so you know that's never going to work out. The book pokes a lot of fun at the art world, and at the art worlds of provincial universities in particular. And then it turns into some twisted version of "The Dead Poets Society" when they take a class on Graphic Design taught by another possibly crazy person named Winter Sorbeck, who alternately tortures and teaches his students. The last twenty pages are the most perfect rendering that I have ever encountered of a terrible finals week experience, and I almost want to type the whole thing...okay, I'll type part of it:

The third day. You're under the rainbow and the spotlight of the Divine Tragic Absurd shines its black light everywhere and helps you grow like a mushroom. You sharpen a pencil and it's just the saddest thing since the Creation. You verge on weeping--in silent isolation--for five minutes. Then the point snaps against your work top and it puts you into fits of hysteria. Wipe your eyes and proceed. You foolishly take a break and emerge to street level. Mars. Make it to the Caf, to refuel, and you're seeing it for the first time because you realize everyone acts as if they have no idea you've been awake for over seventy-two hours, but they've known all along and can barely contain their horror and admiration. You are fortified and ashamed. You have three helpings of mashed potatoes (so easy to chew!) and a half a glass of Coke. You take an apple and a banana for later, leave them on your tray, and toss them into the garbage as you leave.
When you realize this, halfway back to the VA building, you find the nearest curb and sit. Eyes moist. Innocent fruit--they deserved better.
So alone.

By the end, everybody has gone insane from the art and the stress and natural inclination to madness. If you like books like that, then you will like The Cheese Monkeys (I did, a lot). My only criticism is that even though the book is set in the late 1950s, the dialogue and characters seem more modern. The only reason I can think for setting it in the 50s is that a couple of scenes involve registering for classes by getting in long lines and signing up on pieces of paper (ha! the absurdity); also, the students have to hitchhike for a class assignment at one point, which would be impossible now. Kidd probably should have set the book in the 1980s or early 1990s (did people hitchhike then? I'm so young.)

ETA: There's a sequel! The Learners: A Novel
EATA: And it was really bad!

Message edited by its author, Aug 17, 2009, 2:26am.

>56 - I love your review of The Cheese Monkeys. It's definitely going on my TBR list. I teach management at a state University (although I'm not sure that the government is any more qualified to teach management than art!), and I usually enjoy books about academia.

>57: Thanks--My writing style is usually influenced by whatever I've just read, and that review definitely definitely sounds a bit like Chip Kidd's writing voice, so he gets some credit. If you like books about academia, you should try Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury. It's one of my all-time favorite novels, and it's about an English professor in a provincial English university in the 1950s (the '50s must have been a pivotal decade for universities or something).

56) after the quake: stories by Haruki Murakami--I read my first Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, last year and found it about 20% enjoyable, 80% frustrating (I hated the dialogue, for one thing). So I was ready to swear off Murakami, but I thought I'd give him another shot--hence, after the quake, a collection of stories ostensibly about characters in the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, although most of the characters seem relatively unaffected by the tragedy. I liked Murakami's short stories a lot more than his novel, although not as much as the short stories of some other authors I've been reading recently. My favorites were "Honey Pie", for the emotional poignancy and sweetness, and "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", because Frog was just a cool guy. I want a Frog of my own, except not in the form of an enormous frog, because that would be pretty creepy. So I recommend after the quake to people who like Murakami, but also to people who don't like Murakami, and to people who have no opinion on Murakami. Which should just about cover everybody.

LOL. I like Murakami so I'll add that one to the list. Thanks.

>58 - Thanks, Erin! I'll add Eating People is Wrong to my TBR list too! And since the only Murakami that I have read is What I Talk about When I Talk about Running, I may try after the quake as well.

>61: Hey, porch_reader, you live in Iowa! I'm from Iowa! Not your part of the state though; I'm from Indianola, but I drive past West Branch several times a year on my way to and from Chicago.

Message edited by its author, Aug 16, 2009, 9:27pm.

>60: Well, you definitely fall into one of the categories.

57) The Learners: The Book After the Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd--The sequel to The Cheese Monkeys (book #55 above), and a whopping disappointment. Where to begin...well, Chip Kidd still has a good writing voice. And he starts out the novel with an interesting and realistic, if bizarrely named, cast of characters. But then he shuffles them all off to the side, or just outright kills them, for an ill-advised trip into the History of Psychology. I mean, why is a graphic artist-turned-author telling me about the Milgram experiment? Did he hear it mentioned on NPR, read the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_exp...), and suddenly decide to shoehorn it into his book about a New Haven advertising agency in the 1960s? What was he thinking? Kidd's whole analysis of the scientific ethics of the situation comes across as angsty whining, which leads me to my other big complaint about this book: Kidd cannot deal with Emotion (as opposed to "emotion") in his characters. It all sounds abrupt and melodramatic and annoying. I didn't notice this in The Cheese Monkeys, except right at the last page, but I just took that to be some sort of magical realist kind of conceit to round out the novel. Hmm. I'll give The Learners two and a half stars for what the novel started out as, but I'm taking away two for the sophomoric, pseudo-psychological drivel it turned out to be. You should stick to what you know, Mr. Kidd, and apparently you only know about graphic design (oh man, that was harsh; I'm sorry, but really, leave the big questions of psychology alone from now on; PS, I loved The Cheese Monkeys).

Ouch! Sorry that one was such a disappointment for you, Erin. Better luck with your next read.

>62 - Wow! Someone who knows where West Branch, Iowa is. That's amazing!

Sorry to hear that The Learners was so disappointing. I think I'll stick to The Cheese Monkeys.

Chip Kidd was and is a very famous and talented designer of book covers. If you google him you can probably see some of his covers. There's also a book out about his work.

I enjoyed The Cheese Monkeys ut I think I'll leave The Learners alone.

>67: Oh, I've already googled him furiously--I was trying to find an online compendium of his covers, but I think I'll just have to get Chip Kidd: Book One for that.

There's a really interesting web site at http://covers.fwis.com (sorry I don't know how to do links). Book cover designers submit covers of recent books they think have merit, and other book designers comment. It's very interesting and informative. I can't remember if any of Chip Kidd's covers are there, but I have seen his name.

wunderkind, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy The Learners more - I agree with you though, it's really not as good as The Cheese Monkeys, although I don't think I had as violent an anti-reaction as you did (I think I was just so excited about finding a sequel all these years after reading The Cheese Monkeys the first time). Incidently, I've a strong feeling that there's a certain amount of autobiographical content in both books.

Eating People is Wrong has been duly added to my wishlist (and Dandelion Wine bumped up the TBR pile)...

It's interesting, I read after the quake fairly recently too and I'll second the two stories you highlight as being the best in the book (I think I may have even said so in my post, I'll have to check)! I particularly liked Honey Pie as an end point as it was all getting incredibly depressing up to that point!

Message edited by its author, Aug 19, 2009, 1:06pm.

>69: Thanks for the link! Since reading about Chip Kidd, I've been much more conscious of cover art, so that should be interesting.

>70: I think part of my violent anti-reaction (I really like that phrase, by the way) was due to the fact that, as a psychology major, I heard the story of the Milgram experiment (along with those of the Stanford prison experiment and Phineas Gage) pretty much once a quarter, and every time the professor seemed to assume that nobody had ever heard of it. So then I graduate, thinking I'll never have to hear about it again, and up it pops. Oh well...

Oh, and I definitely agree about "Honey Pie" being the only happy story in the book. Even at the last page, I kept thinking that something terrible was going to happen--like the little girl would die or Worm would come back and destroy the world.

58) The Natural History of the Wild Cats by Andrew Kitchener--Nope, it's not a clever title for a novel, like A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian; it's just a book about the natural history of wild cats, both big and small. My favorite section was the first chapter, which details the ways in which felids have morphologically adapted to be really specialized hunters. Also, I had no idea that cheetahs were so bizarre.

Hey, that's my first non-fiction book since #30! Not doing too well on that front...

Message edited by its author, Aug 28, 2009, 9:20am.

59) In Persuasion Nation: Stories by George Saunders--This is the second volume of Saunders' fiction that I've read, after CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Saunders is a good writer, but not a great one, with a tendency to be incredibly unsubtle. He has some points to make about the state of America today, and sometimes he sacrifices the story for the moral. And he does this in such a way that, after a couple of bad stories, you feel like someone is screaming "IGNORANCE! COMMERCIALISM! VIOLENCE! SELF-ABSORPTION!" at you over and over and over. And those are the stories I disliked. But then Saunders drops his message and actually focuses on the story and the characters and the emotion, and then he's actually quite good. I would say that 5 of the 12 stories in In Persuasion Nation are definitely worth reading, but the rest range from mediocre to almost offensively blatant.

8-month Status Update

*Books read in August: 7

Total Books Read: 59
*Fiction: 51
*Non-Fiction: 6
*Poetry: 2

*Rereads: 2

*Male Authors: 42
*Female Authors: 17

Century of Origin
*19th: 3
*20th (pre-1950): 17
*20th (post-1950): 22
*21st: 17

Country of Origin
*USA: 29
*Britain/Ireland: 18
*France: 4
*Canada: 2
*Japan: 2
*Russia: 1
*Brazil: 1
*Germany: 1
*Austria: 1

Nice summary, Erin.

I like it, too.

Thanks!

Message edited by its author, Sep 4, 2009, 11:27pm.

60) Self-Help: Stories by Lorrie Moore--Well, I was going to say "And now I've read all of Lorrie Moore's published works", but apparently she has a new novel out, so I'll save that for later.

Self-Help: Stories is Moore's earliest collection and started out as her M.F.A. thesis project, with a few stories added before publication. Most of the stories are told in the second-person, which is clever given the title and probably worked really well as a creative writing thesis but gets a little old with repetition. I thought the stronger stories tended to be the ones that didn't follow that theme, as they reminded me much more of her later stories, not just in narrative perspective but also in the tone and wordplay she used. My favorite stories were "Go Like This", about a woman dying of breast cancer, which reminded me a bit of "People Like That Are the Only People Here" from Birds of America; and "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)", a reverse chronology of a woman's relationship with her mother.

61) Slapstick: Or, Lonesome No More! by Kurt Vonnegut--I'm starting to think that the creative basis for this novel was the phrase "Hi ho", which the narrator, Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain--King of Manhattan, landlord and tenant of the vacant Empire State Building, genius idiot, pediatrician, twin, and former tallest President of the United States--repeats quite often throughout his story. And novels probably shouldn't be based on short, almost meaningless phrases. The story sort of meanders along in that effortlessly entertaining way that Vonnegut has, but in the end there doesn't seem to be a point, or much of a plot either. The best thing in here, which could have made for a much better story, was the idea of the Chinese becoming so advanced as a civilization that they shrink down to the size of microorganisms and learn to dematerialize to Mars, cure breast cancer with gongs, and possibly manipulate gravity. That would have been an awesome novel right there, but it's just mentioned in the periphery of the main goings-on of the book. Which doesn't really have an ending, by the way. It just sort of stops.

I guess this is one to read if you already like Kurt Vonnegut and want to read all of his books, but if you haven't tried him yet then I would avoid Slapstick for now.

I found this literary meme somewhere on the internets:
Using only books you have read this year (2009), answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.

Describe yourself:

The Confidential Clerk (T.S. Eliot)

How do you feel:

The Slaves of Solitude (Patrick Hamilton)

Describe where you currently live:

In Persuasion Nation (George Saunders)

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:

To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)

Your favorite form of transportation:

Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf (Paul Fattaruso)

Your best friend is:

The Bookshop (Penelope Fitzgerald)

You and your friends are:

Anagrams (Lorrie Moore)

What’s the weather like:

The Temptation of the West (Andre Malraux) (a few months later and I could have used "Dirty Snow" by Georges Simenon)

You fear:

Man's Fate (Andre Malraux)

What is the best advice you have to give:

No One Belongs Here More Than You (Miranda July)

Thought for the day:

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (Lorrie Moore)

How I would like to die:

Epitaph of a Small Winner (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis)

My soul’s present condition:

The Heart of a Dog (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Those last two were tough.

Ooh I like that! Going to have to give it a go myself! ...but possibly not when I should be working...

Book #58 sounds right up my alley... I remember studying cheetahs years and years ago and becoming downright obsessed with them, because they're so strange... I've forgotten most of that information now, so it might be fun to try and recapture some of that wonder.

>82: I thought the coolest thing about them was the fact that cheetahs from each distinct regional population are almost genetically identical and are even more inbred than most species of inbred laboratory mice. That's so bizarre.

62) A Passage to India by E.M. Forster--I had previously read one of Forster's novels (A Room With a View), which I thought was elegantly written but not enough to blow my socks off, and two of his non-fiction books (Aspects of the Novel and Two Cheers for Democracy), which I also liked. So while I had respect for him as a writer, I wasn't expecting A Passage to India to be quite as amazing as I found it to be. I'd heard it compared unfavorably to The Raj Quartet, of which I have read the first two volumes, but I think that it is equally as good as The Jewel in the Crown. Speaking of which: I don't mean to cast aspersions on Paul Scott's creativity, but The Jewel in the Crown seems to have been heavily influenced, in terms of plot, by A Passage to India, which was written forty years earlier--both involve either the rape or attempted rape of a white English woman new to India and the subsequent (unjust) trial of an educated Indian man, along with all of the racial prejudices and debates about religion and empire that are exacerbated by such a situation. Like I said, I give both novels five stars, but Forster's novel perhaps has an edge over Scott's for me personally due to the inclusion of Cyril Fielding, who has now become one of my favorite literary characters.

Message edited by its author, Sep 13, 2009, 11:11pm.

That was my first Forster. I went on to Howards End which won a place on my favorite all-time list and put Mr. Forster on my favorite authors list.

Have you tried the 1980s movie for A Passage to India? It's not great but it was kinda fun to watch after reading the book.

Oh I love E. M. Forster - strangely though, I've never read either A Passage to India or Howards End and now I say that, I really don't know why - I own both. Right - up the pile it goes!!

>85: I wasn't going to, but your comment got me reading about it. I'm not big on period films from the '80s, and I thought it was a Merchant-Ivory film, but since David Lean directed it I guess I'll give it a go.

>86: I'm definitely reading Howards End next, since I've already got a copy. Then it's on to his lesser-known novels.

Message edited by its author, Sep 15, 2009, 7:57pm.

63) The Lost Slayer: Omnibus Edition by Christopher Golden--Okay, those of you reading this who are not fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, please change the channel now.

To those of you who are fans of Buffy: I could tell you how I thought this would be terrible and it was actually really entertaining, or I could tell you that the writing is in fact pretty decent, or I could tell you that I just spent seven straight hours reading it, but instead I will just say this--Giles gets turned into a vampire.

Message edited by its author, Sep 16, 2009, 3:16am.

No! Giles can't be a vampire! ;)

Oh, but he can. He can be the greatest vampire of all time.

well if he is a vampire, he would have to be the greatest, obviously... ;)

64) Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje--This is Ondaatje's attempt to come to terms with his strange and often tumultuous family history. Ondaatje was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and his grandparents were from rich and aristocratic families, descendants of Europeans who had colonized the island a couple of hundred years earlier. Ondaatje writes of his grandparents, his parents, and his childhood while weaving in incidents from his own homecoming after 25 years away. But the story eventually reveals itself to be focused mostly on Ondaatje's attempt to understand his father, a mostly gentle man who alternated between civility and utter drunkenness. Some of the stories are pretty hilarious--such as the several times his father drunkenly (often nakedly) hijacked trains and had to be picked up by family members at the next stop--but of course the reality of such a childhood is not glossed over; as one of Ondaatje's siblings remarked, "I showed what you had written to someone and they laughed and said what a wonderful childhood we must have had, and I said it was a nightmare." The book, by the way, is not an exhaustively researched family history, but more of a set of memories belonging to Ondaatje and others. Ondaatje conveys the hard-to-grasp nature of his own story by telling it un-chronologically; sometimes you think that the memory is his, but then you realize that it must be someone else's memory being told second-hand, but in such a way that you realize that Ondaatje has probably heard this story so many times that it's almost as though he were actually there (if that makes sense). Ondaatje says it best himself in the acknowledgments: "I must confess that the book is not a history but a portrait or 'gesture.' And if those listed above disapprove of the fictional air I apologize and can only say that in Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts."

Message edited by its author, Sep 19, 2009, 8:53pm.

#93: Running in the Family is already on my TBR, but if it wasn't, your comments would put it there! Sounds like a terrific read :)

#93: Sounds like a good book! I will look for it. Thanks for the recommendation, Erin.

9-month Status Update

*Books read in September: 5

Total Books Read: 64
*Fiction: 55
*Non-Fiction: 7
*Poetry: 2

*Rereads: 2

*Male Authors: 46
*Female Authors: 18

Century of Origin
*19th: 3
*20th (pre-1950): 18
*20th (post-1950): 25
*21st: 18

Country of Origin
*USA: 32
*Britain/Ireland: 19
*France: 4
*Canada: 3
*Japan: 2
*Russia: 1
*Brazil: 1
*Germany: 1
*Austria: 1

Message edited by its author, Oct 1, 2009, 8:04pm.

Nice summary, Erin.

Thanks!

65) Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje--I read this because I was intrigued by Ondaatje's description of Sri Lanka in Running in the Family, and Anil's Ghost is set during Sri Lanka's terrible three-way civil war, which I was only vaguely aware of until now. Anil is a forensic pathologist sent by an international human rights group to investigate the rampant murders in Sri Lanka. She is assigned by the government to work with Sarath, a mysteriously private archaeologist, and they try to trace the identity of the corpse of a murder victim. It isn't really a story so much as an examination of several characters, and Ondaatje traces the events--both war-related and otherwise--that made them who they are by the time the story begins. His writing is very beautiful and he evokes a nearly palpable mood that's nevertheless hard to describe. I need to read this over again as I didn't give it enough attention at the beginning. A worthwhile read, but not an easy one to fully understand, I think.

66) Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson--This was an unexpectedly great collection of stories. Johnson is a fantastic writer. It reminded me a bit of Raymond Carver's stories in that both take on the "seedy underbelly" of America, but whereas Carver's perspective is kind of detached, Johnson's is much more visceral. I can't wait to read this one again.

Message edited by its author, Oct 11, 2009, 2:00pm.

100, Denis Johnson is as good as anyone out there in capturing young American males that just don't fit into modern society comfortably. Adrift and at loose ends.

>101: I was so excited to pick out another book of his to read, but none of them are nearly as well-reviewed as Jesus' Son. I'm disappointed. Pre-disappointed.

67) Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin--I loved Lin's Bed: Stories, I liked his Eeeee Eee Eeee, and I said "Meh" at his poetry collection, you are a little bit happier than i am. But I was still excited for this novella to come out, which is why I bought it new. But it's very disappointing, which is why I want my money back.

Tao Lin's favorite subject is twenty-something malaise and existential angst (i.e., laziness and apathy), but he has a sense of humor so that makes it okay (see Eeeee Eee Eeee). And sometimes he combines the humor with insightful comments and a simple but effective writing style (see Bed: Stories). But sometimes he crawls up his own butt, decides to forget about style or characterization, and just basically publishes transcripts of conversations he has with the boring people in his boring life. Or at least that's what it felt like reading Shoplifting from American Apparel. I get what he was going for--conveying the sense of what it's like to be a lazy, apathetic young person in a world that doesn't really care what you do and doesn't even bother to punish you for being a waste of space--and I guess he was actually successful, but in doing so he just comes off as being a really lazy writer. And I wouldn't just assume he was being lazy except that his poetry and some parts of Eeeee Eee Eeee are the same--his lack of style is his style, but the lack is felt too strongly here. His characters are like robots: they make short declarations of empty phrases, tend to repeat words several times, and stare at each other a lot. And nothing happens. I understand why, but that doesn't make the book any less boring or disappointing.

The last two sentences are good though; it's like Lin thought of them first and then half-assedly wrote a book to lead up to them.

Message edited by its author, Oct 16, 2009, 8:50pm.

Uh oh...I just bought this on Thursday. I'll still read it next week as planned, but I'll keep your comments in mind.

>104: Eh, it takes less than an hour to read, so at least it won't take up too much time away from better books.

68) Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal--Alright, I guess.

Message edited by its author, Nov 6, 2009, 11:56pm.

Abandoned) Lost Horizon by James Hilton--I nearly made it to the hundred page mark on this one before giving up. After the mediocrity of Goodbye, Mr. Chips and now this, I just don't think that Hilton is a good writer, or at least his style is very dated. But worse than that in Lost Horizon is the casual sexism and racism and this obnoxious sense of false modesty (because you know that Hilton identifies with his protagonist, Conway) that makes you completely aware at all times that this book was written by a white, British man in the early 1930s. It's pissing me off, and I have better books to get to. I've still got Random Harvest on my shelf, but if that isn't freaking amazing then I'm done with Hilton.

Oh, but I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia--they fall in love with a girl who doesn't speak English but plays the harp prettily? What is this, The Little Mermaid? I was sick of that sexist crap when I was eight years old.

(Belated) 10-month Status Update

*Books read in October: 3

Total Books Read: 67
*Fiction: 58
*Non-Fiction: 7
*Poetry: 2

*Rereads: 2

*Male Authors: 49
*Female Authors: 18

Century of Origin
*19th: 3
*20th (pre-1950): 18
*20th (post-1950): 26
*21st: 20

Country of Origin
*USA: 34
*Britain/Ireland: 19
*France: 4
*Canada: 4
*Japan: 2
*Russia: 1
*Brazil: 1
*Germany: 1
*Austria: 1

Message edited by its author, Nov 7, 2009, 10:25pm.

#108: Nice summary, Erin.

69) The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer--A famous Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the '70s, in which Holmes is treated for his cocaine addiction by Sigmund Freud and then solves a case while in Vienna. It's not a fantastic book, but it's better than I was expecting it to be. There were a few things that annoyed me--the pointless footnotes, Meyer's insistence on bringing actual historical figures in for no apparent reason, the extreme sketchiness of the actual mystery plot (which only took up the last third of the story)--but the writing style was quite good and the high-speed train chase was predictable but fun. Actually, the whole book was predictable but fun.

70) Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris--Boooo. I remember thinking that Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day were hilarious, but Holidays on Ice sucked. It was unfunny, unsubtle, and un-nice. I think it's because usually Sedaris makes fun of himself, but here he was mostly making fun of other people.

#111: Does not sound like my cup of tea at all, Erin. I hope your next read is better for you.

>111 I read that one a couple years ago and had the same reaction as you - did not like it. It turned me off David Sedaris, and I won't read any more of his (and I had read Me Talk Pretty One Day too).

71) Loveless Love by Luigi Pirandello--Not great, considering he won the Nobel. The characters did not act like I think people have ever acted, but perhaps this is what turn-of-the-century Italians were really like. If so, I am glad that I was not alive in turn-of-the-century Italy, because the people were nuts. Also, the translation (by J.G. Nichols) seemed kind of labored. I think the only people who would like reading Loveless Love are people who have been in very emotionally unhealthy relationships and can relate to sentences like "So in the end he killed for ever the last rare smiles and tender cheerfulness which had lingered on her lips." I am not one of those people.

Message edited by its author, Nov 22, 2009, 1:13am.

#114: I was laughing out loud at your thoughts on that one! I think I will give it a pass, although I did enjoy Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

I hope your next read is better for you, Erin.

Ha! I'll avoid that one, too.

>115, 116: Glad I could amuse/warn you. I've still got a collection of Pirandello's plays, which I think includes Six Characters in Search of an Author, that I will definitely read some day. I haven't been having much luck with books lately: the last six have ranged from unreadable to terrible to just okay. Although to be fair to Loveless Love, I really should have been tipped off by the title that I wasn't going to enjoy it much.

Message edited by its author, Nov 23, 2009, 5:07pm.

72) A Better Angel: Stories by Chris Adrian--I read this earlier in the year and have been wanting to reread it ever since. Chris Adrian is one of my absolute favorite writers because of his way of combining the fantastic with the realistic, which he does in most of these stories. They're often about people dealing with familiar emotions, but with a little twist. For example, in "Changeling" a father deals with grief and guilt after his young son starts channeling the collective justice-seeking soul of the 9/11 victims.

Message edited by its author, Nov 29, 2009, 12:38am.

73) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion--Didion's memoir written after a terrible year wherein her husband of forty years died suddenly of a heart attack and her only daughter was hospitalized for months with various life-threatening conditions. Didion describes the processes of grieving and mourning (she distinguishes between the two) while recalling her marriage and family memories. It's very honest and must have been very difficult to write; I've never lost anybody that close to me, so it wasn't particularly difficult for me to read, but I can imagine that it could be an especially emotional, but also rewarding, read for someone who has experienced Didion's kind of bereavement.

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible.

Message edited by its author, Nov 29, 2009, 12:50am.

Erin
Hang in there, only two more books to go and you have reached the goal!

Your latest book is now added to my tbr pile. The author is right on target in her commen about the look of grief. When I lost my beloved grandmother to kidney cancer I was in a foggy daze for awhile. I remember going to the grocery store and noting that each aisle contained an item that I normally would obtain for her when we went shopping together each Saturday.

When I absentmindedly reached for peaches and cream instant oatmeal, I broke down in tears...I was a middle aged woman sobbing her heart out like a baby. A kind older woman stopped by and said "oh, dear you just lost someone very special haven't you!"

>120: One of the things Didion indirectly addresses is the way that society pressures us to keep grief private and frowns on public displays of grief--it's nice that someone was there to acknowledge your sadness without making you feel embarrassed about it.

I've been reading some reviews of the book here on LT, and I really don't get the ones that call the book self-indulgent or say that she should just "get over it." It just seems so callous.

Erin
I think you hit the nail right on the head with your comment re. people who think those who grieve should "get over it." It stops the healing process when people just don't understand.

In fact, I attended an excellent workshop sponsored by hospice. They asked the group to list things well intentioned people said that missed the mark. The facilitator wasn't trying to be pejorative to those who said these things, she was simply making the point that our American culture does not allow time for grief or is uncomfortable with this concept.

Re: our American culture does not allow time for grief--Didion also wrote of how those who are grieving are always aware of the "danger" of wallowing in self-pity, or at least of appearing to do so in the eyes of other people. So not only is society making people feel like they have to keep all of these feelings to themselves, it's also making them feel bad for not getting over things quickly; it all seems to make the grieving process even more difficult than it already is.

Right on target! Now, I really do need to read this book!

Erin - Thanks for your review of The Year of Magical Thinking. I started this book about a year ago, but it was too soon after I had experienced a loss. I thought that the book was wonderfully written, but just "too much" for me right then. I think I'll pick it up again next year.

>125: I can definitely imagine how it could be too much, too soon. The more I think about it, the more I'm glad I read it before I personally experience that kind of loss--this way I can recall Didion's wisdom when I most need it.

11-month Status Update

*Books read in November: 6

Total Books Read: 73
*Fiction: 63
*Non-Fiction: 8
*Poetry: 2

*Rereads: 3

*Male Authors: 54
*Female Authors: 19

Century of Origin
*19th: 3
*20th (pre-1950): 20
*20th (post-1950): 28
*21st: 22

Country of Origin
*USA: 38
*Britain/Ireland: 19
*France: 4
*Canada: 4
*Japan: 2
*Russia: 1
*Brazil: 1
*Germany: 1
*Austria: 1
*Italy: 1
*Czech Republic: 1

#121: I have to chime in on this. I read The Year of Magical Thinking last year and at no time did I feel that Didion was being self-indulgent. I think she used the book as therapy for herself, as a cathartic release of sorts - fitting since she is a writer.

>128: Definitely. I feel like the people who thought the book was self-indulgent either skimmed it or don't have any empathy. I just hope nobody accuses them of self-indulgence when they go through the inevitable grieving periods that we all have to confront.

Well said, Erin.

74) Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner--My second Faulkner after The Sound and the Fury, which was better. Intruder in the Dust is about a black man accused of murder in a small southern town in the 1940s, told from the perspective of a 16-year-old white boy who for complicated reasons feels the need to help him prove his innocence. If that sounds a bit like To Kill a Mockingbird it's because it really is, but I think Faulkner does the story in a more believable and interesting way in that his characters are much more morally gray. Chick, the semi-heroic boy, initially has a respect/hate relationship with the accused man, Lucas, that's based entirely on a history of each one refusing to be in debt to the other--Chick (and the rest of the town) resents that Lucas refuses to play the typical subservient role of a black man in the south. There's also an educated, genteel lawyer who at first seems to be a prototype for Atticus Finch until you find that he immediately assumes Lucas' guilt and, even when he joins in to help prove his innocence, blames Lucas for bringing the whole situation on himself by being too proud for a black man. So basically I really liked that the characters who were doing the right thing still showed evidence of their culture and upbringing, which is something I never really got when I read To Kill a Mockingbird--I mean, why was Atticus Finch such a great guy? Where did that come from?

There are also some views expressed in Intruder in the Dust on the relationship between the South and the rest of the country that are complicated and probably wrong, but they are mostly expressed by the obviously flawed character of the lawyer, so I don't know if they are Faulkner's beliefs or not. He said, among other things, that the North couldn't get rid of the racial prejudices of the South, and that only the South could end its own history of racial subjugation, which its black citizens would totally understand because it would mean more to them to have their historically former masters be the ones to set them free instead of complete strangers, and until that happens they would just be happy to wait and be poor and subservient, or some such bullshit. Even if that is Faulkner's opinion, he does a pretty decent job (for a white dude of his generation) of trying to explain the racial situation of the setting, but it is a fault of this book that the black characters are mostly defined against white characters rather than as characters in their own right, so any points he's making about race issues are maybe slightly hampered by the fact that there's only one black character in here who isn't completely a cypher or a stereotype.

ETA: In one of the other reviews on LT, there's a quote from one of Faulkner's letters on the theme of the novel: "the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the Govt. or anybody else owe and must pay a responsibility to the negro". So it looks like that really was Faulkner's opinion, the problem being that he seems to have thought that it was okay for the white people in the south to take their sweet time finding their collective conscience while black people in the south continued to be second-class citizens.

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2009, 12:02am.

Very interesting thoughts on Intruder in the Dust. I think I may have to make that my first Faulkner, even though I've got As I lay Dying lined up on my bookshelf...

Great review, Erin! I'm planning to read most or all of Faulkner's novels over the next couple of years, as I have all of the Library of America editions by him. I'll read Intruder in the Dust first.

>132, 133: I've heard that Intruder in the Dust is his most accessible book in terms of having an easily understood storyline (it's definitely easier to read than The Sound and the Fury, anyway), so it probably would be one of his best books to start with, as it still lets you get used to his pretty unique writing style. And it's not his greatest novel, so if you like it you have even better ones to look forward to!

I love Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, but strangely enough do not think I have ever read Intruder in the Dust. I will have to find a copy. Thanks for the review, Erin.

>135: I've got Absalom, Absalom!, A Light in August, and Mosquitos on my shelf. I think I'll probably hit A,A! next.

Message edited by its author, Dec 5, 2009, 3:22am.

I look forward to your review.

There's a new LT group, Le Salon du Faulkner, devoted to reading a discussing one Faulkner book every other month in 2010. First up in January is Light In August, followed by As I lay Dying in March. Check it out.

Message edited by its author, Yesterday, 12:50am.

Thanks for the info about Le Salon du Faulkner, Deborah! I hadn't planned to engage in any other group reads, but I will participate in this one.

Yes, thanks for passing that along!