**The May/June Down the Rabbit Hole Challenge

Many times a book or article will prompt you to want to learn more about something – the author, setting, etc. For this challenge, pick something you have read in the last six months that has had this effect on you, then follow the rabbit. Read something that informs your previous read.

Bonus Points: Follow the rabbit through more than one sympathetic read.

Things I'll choose from:

Crime and Punishment and The Master and Margarita based on The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Long Ships based on Two Viking Romances

The Great Deluge, The Moviegoer, and Breach of Faith based on Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? edited by David Rutledge

Mill, Cathedral, Castle, Pyramid, and City based on Rome Antics by David Macaulay

I'm already reading a book of essays about Jane Eyre and have the Norton Critical Edition of the novel the essays in which I'll likely read in May.

I also have coming The Norton Critical Edition of The Brothers Karamazov which I read last year. I could very well read the essays in that in May or June.

Now that we have this challenge I'll be keeping my eyes open for more.

Robert

Hmm, I'm thinking this may be a good time to follow up on The Lobotomist with My Lobotomy, since I already have it.

Great idea, Jane! I read Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell's account of his experiences as a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, this month, and I'll follow it with Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past by Gilles Tremlett.

I'm sure that I'll have other books to contribute to this challenge.

Fun! And, it fits in with a little reading project I was planning on doing anyway. In January, I reread Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights for the millionth time, as it is one of my favourite books. Now, despite loving one Bronte, I've never read Charlotte's Jane Eyre, and I'd like to compare the two. Plus, I have Wide Sargasso Sea to read as a follow-up, and Du Maurier's Rebecca, which is in the same Gothic vein.

It's pretty certain that I won't get through all of these by the end of June...

Fun idea! My official challenge will be to follow up Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own with Mrs. Dalloway, which I read half of years ago and am committed to reading before I read The Hours.

I hope to get to some of these, too:
Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa (memoir in graphic-novel format; following Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis)
Halflife by Meghan O’Rourke (poems; following her The Long Goodbye which I was surprised was written by a poet)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (linked short stories; following numerous recent collections)
Heat by Bill Buford (chef memoir; following Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood Bones and Butter)
Oh! A Mystery of Mono No Aware by Todd Shimoda (set in Japan; following Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor which disappointed me in how little it evoked Japan)
Columbine by Dave Cullen (following Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin)

Hmm, great idea. I've been reading so much about the Soviet era that it would be easy for me to keep following that rabbit. But I think I should do something more unexpected, in keeping with the spirit of the challenge. The things that come to mind are things I was already planning on doing at least sometime in the future.

Reading Citizens by Simon Schama based on reading Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety (admittedly more than 6 months ago as well as books about the Russian revolution. (This will probably have to wait for the summer, because it's quite a tome.

Reading more books by African authors, based on currently the reading the remarkable Life and a Half by Sony Labou Tansi,

Read more Saramago based on reading The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Read more Alejo Carpentier based on reading The Lost Steps

Read Backlands: The Canudos Campaign based on reading The War at the End of the World (also more than 6 months ago)

Lots to think about . . .

ETA PS #2 Love both The Long Ships and The Master and Margarita

#7 Heat is a fun book.

I am currently reading Queen Of Fashion (about Marie Antoinette) and plan to follow it up with The French Revolution: a very short introduction - does that count? I might come up with some more interesting possibilities in the course of the two months...

I finished Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre last night. It informed, but not well, my reading of Jane Eyre earlier this year.

Robert

Great idea! I wish I had time to participate!

I recently finished The Makioka Sisters by Junchiro Tanazaki (Japan, 1944-48) and it made me want to learn more about Japanese history and culture. I've ordered a book, so if it arrives in time and I read it in time, I'll join in.

I've just read the excellent Reading Like A Writer which includes short excerpts from many books which are now on my wishlist! I will read one of those for this challenge - perhaps something by Elizabeth Bowen or Mavis Gallant, or maybe Revolutionary Road which I think I actually have on my shelves somewhere.

so... I should follow up and author, a book, or a subject right? or am I supposed to follow up all 3?

I read The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed, a novel set in Kashmir, at the beginning of the month. I wanted to learn more about Kashmir, and bought Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland by Basharat Peer last week, which I started reading this afternoon.

Does this count if I planned ahead? I just started Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. This is a fictional account of the Watson story in the 10,000 island area of SW Florida, and follows up it's historical description in Everglades : River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas...but I planned to read both before the year started. River of Grass is a history of the Everglades and I read it following commentary on it within The Swamp by Michael Grunwald, which I read a couple years ago.

Oh, I hope you love it as much as I did, Dan.

14 - Totally up to you.

Earlier this week I finished (and reviewed) Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love and War in His Homeland by Basharat Peer, which I read after a novel set in Kashmir, The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (also reviewed).

Down the rabbit hole I've gone! I read My Lobotomy by Howard Dully, which was an interesting (if somewhat depressing) complement to Jack El-Hai's excellent biography The Lobotomist, which I read a few months ago. Review can be found on my thread, here.

Careful Bragan. Don't go too deep down that rabbit hole ie "Lobotomy for Dummies" or "DIY lobotomy" not such a good idea.

LOL! Yes, I think I'll stop here.

I'm going down the rabbit hole as well - I finished Jane Eyre, and am now in the middle of Wide Sargasso Sea. I'm very intrigued by how my opinion of Rochester is going to change over the course of the book.

In May, I got to two from my list in #7:

Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa, volume one of a Japanese boy's 10-volume memoir of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima written in graphic-novel format ... and I've already secured volume two (about the first day after the bomb) from inter-library loan.

Halflife by Meghan O’Rourke -- returned this to the library mostly unread. I didn't connect with these poems much as I didn't connect with her memoir of her mother's death, The Long Goodbye.

I flashed five books relevant to Jane Eyre at my book discussion group last night: Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre, the Norton Critical Edition, Jane Eyre, a casebook, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, and the Norton Critical Edition of Wide Sargasso Sea, all of which I have read except that I didn't read the text of the novel twice.

We selected Rebecca for our August discussion. I have read that recently, but to map its events to the events of Jane Eyre I think I'd have to read it again, and I am undecided about that.

Robert

Having loved Fires on the Plain I wanted to read more about Japan during WWII. I've already read a lot but I'm always interested in reading more. Since Fires talks about the Japanese occupation of the Philippines I decided to follow with Harp of Burma which takes place during the Japanese occupation of Burma. Although Fires is significantly better, Harp was still a good read and account of a similar theme. And, since I was on the mindset of war I read The Sea and Poison which talks about the mindset of a certain group of Japanese doctors who performed vivisections on American soldiers during the same war. All in all, a great selection of books looking into the Japanese mindset.

More thorough review can be found at my Japanese lit thread.

I read and enjoyed Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak earlier this year, as I wanted to learn more about the Middle Eastern countries that were involved in the Arab Spring. After reading it I downloaded Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes by Victoria Clark, which was also published in 2010. I started reading it this morning, due to the bombing attack on Friday that injured the country's long standing and embattled president, and led to his departure from the country yesterday to seek medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. This may lead to the end of his 33 year reign, according to the lead article in today's New York Times, and possibly set the stage for increased activity by members of al Qaeda and other jihadists, who control portions of the country.

Strangely enough, Darryl, I was just reading a review of the Yemen book in New York Review of Books from last year that was lying around at my family's Catskills house, where we are this weekend. Very timely.

I've gone down the rabbit hole with Andrey Platonov, reading his remarkable yet puzzling novel The Foundation Pit after enjoying Soul and Other Stories.

I ended up chasing the rabbit down the labyrinthine path that began with my favorite book, A Moveable Feast. I'm fascinated by Paris at that time (or any time, really) and by Hemingway (although I have no interest in the rest of his life outside his years in Paris). I've read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, a pleasant book championing Hemingway's first wife, Hadley. I liked this primarily for the way everything is set in a clear, chronological order. I'm halfway through Michael S. Reynolds's scrupulous biography, Hemingway: the Paris Years, and off on a tangent with A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Adventures Around the World put out by Lonely Planet. The best essay so far is Tim Cahill's The Rooster's Head in the Soup.

Related to the robbery of the American people by Wall Street financiers in 2008 I have read, starting in 2010:

Secrets of the Temple
13 Bankers
When Money Dies
Wolf Among Wolves
Too Big to Fail
A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold
Chasing Goldman Sachs
The Greatest Trade Ever
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
Aftershock

and finished last night:

The Big Short.

There's more to go, but probably none will be finished by the end of this challenge.

Robert

I read Alison Lurie's memoir, Familiar Spirits, about the American poet James Merrill and his partner David Jackson after reading the occult epic, The Changing Light at Sandover, which I read after read more about Yeats's occult dabblings.