Medellia12's 2008 50ish

Since I don't have a giant library (and have no pressing need for things to be in alphabetical order), I have been shelving my books basically in the order in which I read them, with unread books occupying top shelves. The upshot of this is that I can see that I have read 57 books this past year--far more than I thought! I don't know if I'd have the courage to make 50(ish) a goal for myself if I didn't know that I'd already done it! :)

Favorite reads of the year: Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Richard Russo's Straight Man, Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and Pinball, 1973, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System, Kobo Abe's Friends: a Play, and Peter Hoeg's The Quiet Girl.

I will probably read another book or two before the year ends. I'll probably be kind to myself and start my count early, then. Looking forward to cataloging my books and reading everyone's threads!

(Edit: Testing to see whether my touchstones will come back... Successful! Now to edit all subsequent posts.)

Okay, got to get started cataloging these things.

#1: The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. (No touchstone?) This was a quick and delightful read, good for the airport/plane on Christmas Eve. I love books about the reading experience and the power of books, so I was pleased to find out about this one. I especially enjoyed the scenes in which Her Majesty attempted to discuss literary fiction with people who hadn't picked up books in years. Boy, I've been there--it can be hard to find "book buddies." The pithy prose adds a lot to the dry, concise humor of the book. I laughed out loud every couple of pages.

#2: 1984 by George Orwell. I may be one of the few who didn't read this in high school. I've been out for eight years, so I'm well overdue on reading this one. I was glad that I did, though the last third of the book was hard for me to read (a bit squeamish when it comes to violence). I loved the more philosophical bits of the novel, particularly the discussion of hierarchies and the epistemological questions--how do we "know" what we know about the past? About existence?

#3: The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits. I found this one through LibraryThing's Suggestions feature, and I'm so glad that I did. I was pleased to find that the book was so multi-layered. It's a psychological thriller, a cat-and-mouse game where it's not always clear who is the cat and who is the mouse. It's an exploration of feminist issues, particularly of issues of "victimization" (a topic with which I'm quite uncomfortable), both real and mythical. It has a tinge of the coming-of-age tale, happening in an area which the author seems to have found particularly repressive for teen girls. It's also an interesting exploration of the idea of narrative. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

#4, #5: Dawn and Adulthood Rites from the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia E. Butler. I was going to read all three of these, but I found my interest waning during the second book. So I'm taking a break before reading the third book. I'll write more whenever I finish it.

Currently reading: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.

Oooh, how was Special Topics in Calamity Physics? I bought it because I've heard such great reviews, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. What about it did you love?

I loved it. From what I've seen, people tend to fall into I-love-it or I-hate-it camps, so beware... I enjoyed the creative language. Very unique prose. I enjoyed catching all the allusions that I could--there's something strangely satisfying about it. Like picking out old friends in a crowd. :) And I have to admit, I have a weakness for coming-of-age novels, and back in my teen years (not so far gone), I so wanted to be Blue. It's an off-beat book, and I do love weird.

Oh excellent. I'm a sucker for coming-of-age novels too, and I was an English major, so if they're literary illusions, I'll probably have a ball picking things out too. Thanks for the review!

I loved Special Topics in Calamity Physics, too! It seemed a bit melodramatic at first, but then you realize that's just because she is a teenager, and it becomes less distracting.

Finished The Third Policeman (Flann O'Brien) last night. First of all, a note to anyone who might read this: if you don't like spoilers, DO NOT read the introduction by Denis Donoghue (in the edition that's currently in print) before reading the novel. Gah! I just need to train myself to save introductions until after I finish.

I had been really excited about reading this book, as it looked like it was the sort of thing that I'd really love. Once I started reading it, I had some mixed feelings, but by the end, I was enjoying it very much. So maybe at first I was just dealing with a bit of letdown from all the built-up expectations. At any rate, I ended up loving it, and it'll definitely be one that will benefit from a re-read (I found it to be a difficult book).

The prose is wonderful--at turns subtly sinister or surreal or out-and-out beautiful. Meaning is often slippery; while everything has a sort of archetypal/symbolic feel, as in a dream, I'd be hard-pressed sometimes to name exactly what each character/object might represent. It seemed that everything had this elusive, shifting quality. To me, that just added to the nightmarish atmosphere of the story. The de Selby stuff I found annoying at first, but progressively funnier as it went along, and toward the end of the book, it had me in stitches. A recommended read to those who enjoy weird books with strange shenanigans.

#7: Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.

I have a deadline coming up on a composition--end of the month. In desperation, I had to disallow myself from reading for a couple of weeks while I played catch-up. It has been forever since I've been that long without reading something, and it was awful!

This was just the right book for the moment, though. My first Wodehouse read. I have been stressed out to the max, so the laughs this book provided have been more than welcome. The prose is just so spot-on. I found myself reading passage after passage out loud to my husband.

Such wonderful characters: Fink-Nottle and his newts, Aunt Dahlia with her dry wit and imposing manner, Uncle Thomas and his brooding over the fall of civilization (nothing ever changes, eh?), The Bassett with her syrupy-sweet observations of nature.

I'll definitely be reading more Wodehouse in the future. There are times when I need a novel like this. For the next few days, though, no reading for me... and then, I suspect, a reading binge of massive proportions.

#8: Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.

A great, quick read. Perfect for recharging my batteries after finishing a long-standing project.

I found this book on LT through other people's threads. The gist of it: on a small island off the coast of the US, a group of people have formed a sort of utopian society. They have deified Nevin Nollop, the author of the pangram (a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet) "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Language is a national art form, and it makes for some delightful, inventive prose.

When the letter "z" falls off of the statue of Nollop and his famous sentence, the Town Council determines that it is a sign from Nollop that the people of the island should no longer be allowed to speak or write words containing that letter. Harsh penalties are instituted. As the novel is comprised of letters to and from the characters, the author must abide by this restriction as well. Letter after letter continues to fall, and the island begins to fall into chaos as people are banished and the government tightens its rule.

A timely (and probably timeless) allegorical novel. The length is just right; had it been longer, it might have become tiresome. The characters weren't the most vivid I've ever read, but I really sympathized with them, and I actually teared up at a couple of points during the book. Highly recommended!

Edited to say: currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. And may it never end!

Medellia- I've only ever watched Jeeves, not read him. For the longest time, until my husband washed my phone that is, my ring-tone was the theme music from Jeeves and Wooster.

Ella Minnow Pea sounds amusing. It makes me think of that James Thurber novel about the letter "O".

I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in college and loved it. I just couldn't get interest in Cholera though. It's still hanging around the house somewhere unfinished.

#10: I've had a number of other people tell me that they liked One Hundred Years and not Cholera (though there are others who have liked Cholera). So I thought I'd start with the former, and if the latter interested me later, grand.

I was talking to a friend earlier about Ella Minnow Pea, and he told me about a Georges Perec novel, A Void, in which the author doesn't use the letter "e." The translator stays faithful to this--which must have been quite a feat. I'll have to check this one out later!

Bah, I lost track. Too busy reading too much political news online lately. Playing catch-up, then:

#9: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. I loved this book. I'm particularly fond of folktales and mythology, so the style of the storytelling struck home with me. The author does interesting things with the structure of time in the book as well.

#10: The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse. Not as good as "Right Ho, Jeeves," but still good fun.

#11: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I read this one and the next in the series because they were recommended by a friend (I get many of my sci-fi recommendations from him). What a disappointment this book was. I had seen rave reviews on this one for a long time, so I expected much more out of it. It wouldn't say I thought it was bad, just mediocre. Maybe it's one of those books that you ought to read first when you're younger. But...

#12: Speaker for the Dead, the sequel, I enjoyed much more. I'm glad my friend told me that he preferred this one, or I probably would never have given it a chance. I thought that the story was better (much less predictable), the philosophy more deeply explored, the characters more vivid and interesting, and the emotional impact much greater. (I don't think I was moved or even really intrigued by anything in Ender's Game. The impact of the climax was ruined for me because I had already guessed at what was going on.) At any rate, if I had to do it over again, I'd still read Ender's Game, since it provided the background for the second book, and since I enjoyed the second quite a bit.

#13: Saturday by Ian McEwan. Another recommendation from the same friend. I'm glad I finally got around to reading McEwan ("Saturday" and "Atonement" have been sitting in my collection for several months). The opening didn't suck me in at first, but by the end of the book, I couldn't interrupt my reading to eat or go to the other room to get my Blistex. (Result: chapped lips!)

I can really identify with the way McEwan portrays the modern world and the mind of one man. The back-and-forth debating of current issues, the ultimate state of uncertainty (until directly faced with violence). The value of this book to me was not the drawing of any moral conclusions, but the effect that this acutely insightful picture of life in our current Western world had, in causing me to ponder anew the issues that have been in my head for a few years now.

Currently reading: The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt. A longer project than most of what I've been reading lately.

I knew I forgot one:

#14: The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter. Baxter is one of my favorite authors, and I was excited to attend a reading on the 11th (book came out on the 12th). He's a good reader, and the excerpts he read were particularly enjoyable--if you live in Minneapolis, Iowa City, Winnetka, WI, Madison, or Milwaukee, there are readings coming up soon.
http://www.charlesbaxter.com/upcoming_readings/upcomingreadings_main.htm

The book as a whole was not as good as his best novels (The Feast of Love and Shadow Play, by my reckoning), but I still thought it impressive. It's a short read, and tightly drawn. The prose was wonderful--melodious, but with sinister undertones. (In that way, it reminded me of Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman"--one of Baxter's favorite books, according to an interview with MPR.)

The metaphysical twist at the end was a bit much for me, but it didn't ruin things. (I'm becoming much more forgiving of good books with endings that raise eyebrows or fizzle out.)

I'm stealing an idea from citygirl's thread and trying to rank my books as I go along. Some of these ranking decisions are tough, so it is probably more of a rough ordering than a clear-cut list. (And I reserve the right to change my mind a billion times. :)

Favorite Book Rankings:
Top 10
--------
In Search of Lost Time
The Famished Road
The Remains of the Day
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Wizard of the Crow
Cold Comfort Farm
Fifth Business
Sexing the Cherry
The Bloody Chamber
A Room With a View

11-20
---------
The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Sleepwalking Land
Songs of Enchantment
Nobody's Fool
Galatea 2.2
After the Quake
Towing Jehovah
Agnes Grey
An Artist of the Floating World
Jane Eyre

21-30
--------
The Uncommon Reader
The Third Policeman
Sense and Sensibility
The Soul Thief
1984
Saturday
Ella Minnow Pea
Half of a Yellow Sun
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Tenant of Wildfell Hall

editing as I go along

Hi, Medellia. I thought I'd come check out your thread, since you were kind enough to check out mine, and boy am I glad I did. You read interesting books. I've gotten several I want to check out. The Uses of Enchantment sounds very interesting.

Glad you've found something to interest you! I have found so many books on other people's threads (four of the books I've read this year were found that way). I've been enjoying your thread, too--I have it starred.

Medellia- Since the ending of Ender's Game is sort of the whole point, I can understand your disappointment when you guessed where Orson Scott Card was heading. I might object to you needing to read the novel while young, since I was..uh...32....when I encountered it. I liked it enough to immediately pick up Speaker for the Dead. In the long run, it's definitely the better of the two. Then I made a wrong turn with OSC, dragging myself through his series that's a retelling of Noah Memory of Earthetc. Good at first, but those stupid rats and bats at the end, yuck! Haven't picked up anything else by him since, even though we own most of the Wiggins Saga.

I'd like to thank you for reading Ella Minnow Pea. Finding it on your list encouraged me to seek it out. I wasn't disappointed.

I'm glad you liked Ella Minnow Pea! I found it on someone else's thread myself. It seems to be making the rounds--I just love LT on that account.

I can see myself reading some more OSC in the future. I did end up liking Speaker for the Dead quite a lot. I wonder if I'll end up liking Ender's Game more as the initial disappointment fades (I think I just had totally unrealistic expectations for the book, just because I'd seen such overwhelmingly positive opinions on the 'net).

#15: The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt. A book both exhilarating and maddening. I like overly cerebral novels, but even for me, it got to be a bit much sometimes. However, the author has a pretty good sense of pacing, by my reckoning; each time I began getting restless, she got on with the plot or onto another topic that drew me in.

The prose style and narrative structure were quite unique. The prose has a breathless, rushed feeling to it--you find yourself reading quickly, towed along by the current. The story itself is multi-faceted, tracing themes of knowledge, brilliance, languages and translation, and a certain coming-of-age search for self and lineage. I haven't ever read anything quite like it, really.

I felt frustrated at times by what seemed to me to be the author's show-offy tactics--but I suppose at times we all want to bean that whiz-kid at the front of the class. I didn't warm to the book emotionally right away, but by the end, I felt quite connected to Ludo, the child. The ending left me glad to have read the book--and in fact, glad to be alive and able to read things like this.

Currently reading: Life After God by Douglas Coupland and Boomsday by Christopher Buckley.

Ohhhh I loooooooved Boomsday. :') I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Finished #16, Boomsday, last night. At first I was fearful of what it held in store, when it opened up with a trite caricature of a heartless CEO. But as the book progressed, the humor become generally more inventive and less familiar. There were two references to Wodehouse's Bertie in the book, and I did come away feeling strangely like the book was modern Wodehouse transplanted into the political realm. (Probably an effect of the screwball comedic plot twists.)

Some parts were funnier than others, and some characters were more likeable or sympathetic than others. I actually really ended up liking (and sympathizing with) Gideon Payne, the pro-life Southern religious guy, something I didn't expect.

A memorable paragraph (on why this character would like to be president), and maybe a good litmus test for whether you'd like the novel: "Randy said, 'I was about to say, "To give something back," but it sounds so pathetic. What it really boils down to is, I'd like to be in charge for just five minutes. Balance the books. Get us out of debt. Be nice to our friends, tell our enemies to f--- off. Clean up the air and water. Throw corporate crooks in the clink. Put the dignity back in government. Fix things. What else . . . ? Can't have Arabs blowing up our buildings, certainly, but I now know that we don't need to be sending armies everywhere. Among other things, it's expensive. . . .' "

If you liked that (or the character's campaign slogan: "Jepperson--No Worse Than The Others"), this might be the book for you.

Nearing the end of Life After God. So many good books in the stack for afterward, too.

Not a bad pitch at all. In the last race for Texas governor Kinky Friedman's slogan was "Why not Kinky?"

Personally, I am behind Eskimo Joe (Stillwater, Ok's claim to fame) for Prez. His platform is "Firmly Uncommitted in Supporting Nothing He's Not Against." Liberty and Cheese Fries for All!

The author sounds a bit like Christopher Moore. I'm currently reading his novel A Dirty Job-the life and times of a Beta Male.

#22: My husband and I were born and raised in Texas. We had moved to Minneapolis by the time of the governor's race, but my husband supported Kinky from afar. I found him a review copy of Kinky's book here in Manhattan recently: "You Can Lead a Politician to Water, But You Can't Make Him Think."

Funny you mention Eskimo Joe's--a friend of mine got me a T-shirt from there a few years back (a rainbow tie-dye glow-in-the-dark T-shirt!).

My brother lived in Austin for a while and used to talk up Leslie Cochran for mayor (Leslie is a vagrant cross-dresser--with an impeccably tacky sense of style--who runs for mayor every single election--no trip to Austin is complete without seeing Leslie).

I'd say that we missed the colorful politics of Texas when we moved to Minneapolis, but you know, there's always Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey, and Al Franken. From what I can tell, New York has nothing on this...

#17: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. I only began reading sci-fi this past summer, so I'm still fairly new to the genre. I was pleased to find that Clarke is a somewhat more literate writer than some of the others I've read. His prose is certainly more competent. I know this isn't important to some people, but it's a real issue for me.

The philosophical issues in the novel were well-treated. I doubt that it's true that man's life becomes meaningless, creativity-free sloth in a utopia (so they watch several hours of TV a day, huh? -- sounds rather a lot like life in today's decidedly non-utopic world). And taking the ending at its most literal, I found it kind of a head-scratcher, given that it, well, throws out scientific reality. Despite my objections to these aspects of the book (and I'm not sure the second is an objection, just something I find...incongruous, maybe?), I still found the book fairly impressive.

#18: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I wanted to read this again immediately upon finishing it. Again and again. I cannot properly express how much I love this book. It's my favorite book of at least the last several months.

The tone of the book is perfectly suited to the character. Not a misstep to be found. It was surprisingly funny (in the sort of way that Jane Austen is funny--a subtle, comedy-of-manners aspect). As in Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro's command of pacing, and the slow revealing of the true nature of the situation, is superb. The mixture of comedy and pathos is also well-done, and by the end of the book, I had tears streaming down my face. I found virtually every character in the book to be sympathetic. I am so happy to have read this.

edited for wrong numbering

Oh goody! We have The Remains of the Day at home here, so shall look forward to it. My DH has read it, but not me and I'm catching up on literary fiction this year.

Just dropping in here to repay the compliment. I like lots of the books you've been reading. I used to read science fiction and fantasy before kids and I did like Orson Scott Card, but Speaker for the Dead is better from what I remember. Memory creaking here.

#19: Jane Eyre. Another of those classics that I can't believe I have gotten this far without reading. And for that matter, I managed not to run across many plot details along the way (I actively avoided them, since I knew I'd read it some day).

Somehow I'd gotten the idea that I could expect something along the lines of Jane Austen from this novel. I didn't realize that there were gothic aspects to the novel. Overall, it was far, far weirder than I expected. It's also a novel with (by the standards of today) plenty of flaws--I've seen contemporary novels eviscerated by critics for the same things that we see in Jane Eyre.

I enjoyed the story very much, though, and I developed quite an affection for the characters. Jane will be added to my list of literary heroes.

Right now I'm reading The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I have The Eyre Affair sitting around; I intended to read it right after I finished Jane Eyre, but I wasn't quite in the mood. So I look forward to reading that one, when the whim strikes me.

I forgot to add this to the list: The Angry Clam by Erik Quisling. I ran across a reference to this book on another LibraryThing thread, and got a copy from Bookmooch. I'm not going to have it count toward my number, because it's short.

But it's a stitch--a cute little ironic fable about a clam, searching for meaning in life. Click the touchstone--the description is a laugh in itself.

Okay, to begin your education in Terry Pratchett and Christopher Moore, I have chosen a passage from one of my favorite Pratchett novels Going Postal to quote to you. I believe this is the 36th novel in the Discworld series.
You don't have to read Pratchett novels in order. There are little series inside the series, such as the books about Death and his beloved horse Binky or the ones about the City Watch or the ones about the Lancre Witches, etc.
Let me make this perfectly clear that Discworld is a Flat Earth, carried across the cosmos on top of the backs of four gigantic elephants who in turn stand on top of the great sea turtle A'Tuin.

With apologies to Mr. Pratchett, I am trying to push his books here, so please don't smack me for typing in copyrighted material. The author has 35 million copies in print. I've met him; he's nice! Ahem...

Going Postal by Lynn and Terry Pratchett- exerpt from pages 175-177.

"By law and tradition, the great Library of Unseen University is open to the public, although they aren't allowed as far as the magical shelves. They don't realize this, however, since the rules of time and space are twisted inside the library, and so hundreds of miles of shelving can easily be concealed inside a space roughly the thickness of paint.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins."

Then skipping a bit, our hero, Moist Von Lipwig enters and is accosted by a wizard......

"Don't say a word, don't say a word, but you are looking for a book, yes?"

"Well, actually-" He seemed to be in the clutches of a wizard.

"-you are not sure what book!" said the wizard. "Exactly. It is the job of the librarian to find the right book for the right person. If you would just sit here, we can proceed. Thank you. Please excuse the straps. This will not take long. It is practically painless."

"Practically?"

Moist was pushed, firmly, into a large a complex swivel chair. His captor, or helper, or whatever he might turn out to be, gave him a reassuring smile. Other, shadowy figures, helped him strap Moist into the chair, which, while basically an old, horseshoe-shaped one with a leather seat, was surrounded by...stuff. Some of it was clearly magical, being of the stars-and-skulls variety, but what about the jar of pickles, the pair of tongs, and the live mouse in a cage made of-

Panic gripped Moist and, not at all coincidentally, so did a pair of padded paddles, which closed over his ears. Just before all sound was silenced, he heard: "You may experience a taste of eggs and the sensation of being slapped in the face with some sort of fish. This is perfectly-"

And then thlabber happened. It was a traditional magic term, although Moist didn't know this. There was a moment in which everything, even the things that couldn't be stretched, felt stretched. ANd then there was the moment when everything suddenly went back to not being stretched, known as the moment of thlabber.

When Moist opened his eyes again, the chair was facing the other way. There was no sign of the pickles, the tongs or the mouse, but in their place was a bucket of clockwork pastry lobsters and a boxed set of novelty glass eyes.

Moist gulped and muttered: "Haddock."

"Really? Most people say cod."

And THAT is why I love Terry Pratchett.

Thanks very much, hairballsrus. You've definitely convinced me. :)

#20: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I love love love this book. The story was interesting, the characters complex, and the structure fascinating. The author/narrator's commentary on the Victorian age and on our age (or the age of the late 1960s, anyhow) was brilliant. I dogeared/underlined every third or fourth page.

The protagonist is a paleontologist, and you get the feeling sometimes that the author is, too, reaching into the relics of the past and holding them up to our curious gazes. I knew from copious reviews that there are two different endings to the book, and I was pleased to find that they are as emotionally and psychologically complex as the rest of the book. No simple solutions.

A quote I particularly liked: "The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things--as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning flash."

Now reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.

#21: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. This is okay Austen. It was clear that it was her earliest novel. It was witty and often laugh-out-loud funny, but the plotting and pacing seemed a bit off in the last half of the book. The characters often felt more like caricatures (and I know this is a satirical novel, but I still want more complex characters). But I think the lessons in the novel would be particularly appropriate for teens--I found myself wishing I'd read it and taken it to heart several years ago, when I needed it most. (But that's what life experience is for, eh? Can't learn everything from our books. :)

Now reading On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.

Catching up:

#22: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. It is written by a talented author with a sure hand. That being said, this book irritated me in many ways. I've seen a lot of rave reviews for it, but I agree with one LT reviewer who wrote that this book is a waste of McEwan's (very real) talent.

#23: Animal Farm by George Orwell. I first read it in middle school, with a great teacher, and I loved it back then. Happily, I loved it just as much the second time around, a decade+ later.

#24: Flatland by Edwin Abbott. What a strange and adventurous novel, especially for its time. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the first half of the book, with its commentary on Victorian society, more than the second half, which dealt with the mathematical and scientific concepts of the novel. But I had already encountered a lot of the latter in some popular physics books that I'd read, so maybe it was just that it was already familiar to me.

#25: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. I love Abe and his dark sense of humor, but I think I wasn't quite in the mood for an existential novel this weekend. I found myself reading it and saying, "Yes, well-written, beautiful metaphors, clear themes, but JAY-sus, I GET IT, the existential condition of man." This'll be one to reread some day. This particular book of Abe's seems to me to be what you'd get if you threw Kafka and Sartre in a blender, BTW.

Currently reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, and really enjoying it.

Finally finished Douglas Coupland's Life After God, #26. A friend had recommended JPod to me, but it didn't really look like my thing, so I picked out this book instead. The stories were mixed, for me--some I really liked, some I found really boring. There were bits in the latter that I loved--like Doggles, the Dog Who Wore Goggles, or the fortune-teller with the sign "I PROMiSS I wonT TeLL YOu YOuR gOING TO DIE."

But there were also sentences like this: "And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one." This was actually a fairly pervasive theme in the book, which I found annoying for two reasons: 1) Maybe it's a generational thing, but I can tell you that when I was a teenager, we were all telling each other exactly this, constantly, and I believed it; 2) As I grow older and less dramatic, I realize that this is unlikely to be true in the life of the average person who lives in a relatively prosperous country.

So there were some good things and some bad things for me in these stories. My friend has recommended, and I own, Microserfs, so that I can see the characters do something besides wallowing in their drama and pain. In the meantime, Cold Comfort Farm will do nicely!

A side note: I wonder if I am the only person who has serious difficulty in finishing short story collections. I always finish a novel; it's extremely rare for me to give up on one. But short story collections are something different. In the past few years, I have finished four short story collections: Charles Baxter's Believers, Salinger's Nine Stories, Michel Faber's Vanilla Bright Like Eminem, and Life After God.

One the other hand, I have read one or more stories out of the following collections: The Portable Dorothy Parker, Baxter's A Relative Stranger, Calvino's Difficult Loves and Cosmicomics, the complete short stories of Saki, ditto Borges, Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Connie Willis' The Winds of Marble Arch, and Sheridan Le Fanu's In A Glass Darkly. I string these things out forever. Perhaps I should make it a goal to finish at least a couple of these this year...

Yes! I have trouble finishing short story collections. Probably because there isn't the commitment there that you have with a novel. Then again, I don't finish novels either..... :) I already know the novel I'm going to finish this "reading year" out with in September, because it's the one I failed to finish LAST September. Just seems appropriate and now that I've told you, you'll have to hold me to it.

I thought JPod was brilliant. I like Coupland's habit of self-referencing ironically. I haven't read any of his other works yet, though, so I can't do a comparison for you in regards to how JPod compares to Microserfs or Life After God.

School's keeping me busy these days--isn't it awful when real life gets in the way of reading time? :) So I'll play catch-up quickly.

#27: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. I cannot properly express how hilarious this book is. I'm not familiar with the genre of novels that this is parodying (Mary Webb is said to be the prime example of these English rural life novels), but I certainly caught the potshots at Hardy and D.H. Lawrence. Upbeat and eminently quotable--I've been running around for a couple of weeks telling folks that "there's nothing like a thorn twig for cletterin' dishes" and that "there'll be no butter in hell!!"

#28: Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers. Brilliant and difficult, like his other works. A beautiful meditation on consciousness. I found the prose style, the melodrama of it, to be a bit overblown at times, but forgivable. For my money, it's as good as The Echo Maker, but not as good as Plowing the Dark.

#29: Bellwether by Connie Willis. What a fun read! A great palate cleanser after reading Powers. When I read To Say Nothing of the Dog, I came away with a lot of factoids about Victorian literature and life. With this book, you come away knowing more about fads and sheep. There's a nice happy ending, which is the sort of thing I need these days.

Currently reading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, the first book of his Deptford Trilogy, and Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos.

Meant to tell you I watched the film version of The Feast of Love last week. Still not sure Charles Baxter is my cup of tea, but I appreciate you introducing him to me.

I hear that the movie wasn't great. The book may not be your cup of tea, either, but if you ever feel like giving Baxter a chance in book form, it may pay off better than the movie. :)

More books read:

#30: Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. An okay novel, nothing special, for the most part. He did have an interesting definition of the human soul, spoken by a man dying from brain cancer: "It's the part of you that knows when your brain isn't working right."

#31: The Straight and Narrow Path by Honor Tracy. I loved this little novel--it kept me giggling all the way through. Delightful satire and lovable characters. Makes me want to run off to Ireland, to soak up some local color. Recommended for when you want a funny, non-stressful read.

#32: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Short but marvelous. I read it when I was younger, and I can certainly appreciate it more this time around--the language, the psychological acuity, and the Victorian context. I was glad I got back around to this one.

#33: A Room With a View by E.M. Forster. I *loved* this book! It just made my heart sing. This was actually my first Forster novel, and I have no idea why I didn't get to him sooner. It was funny and moving, well-plotted, extremely well-characterized, and beautifully written. A great love story, with a happy ending--what's not to like?

#34: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie. I saw so many recommendations on LT, I knew I needed to read it. A sad but lovely account of the Biafran War and Nigeria in the 1960s. Good characterization, and an engrossing plot. I don't read nearly enough non-Western literature, so this was a good thing for me. While it's not a masterpiece, Adichie is a mere 30 years old (!), so I expect to see many good things from her yet.

Hooray! I'm now on my annual school's-out reading binge! Before I get back to real life and responsibilities, I am going to kick back and read, read, read.

#35: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. I admit it: I chose to read this book because Saturday's episode of Doctor Who had Agatha Christie as a character. :) I don't think this book was really my sort of thing. It was good enough, but not great. I suppose given Christie's reputation, I expected more somehow.

#36: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson. This was a really great book--I'll be reading lots more Winterson. Surreal, beautiful, full of myth and fairy tale. A story about time and matter and boundaries and the blurring thereof. The structure of the first large section of the book (the part set in the past) reminded me of the structure that the chapters tended to take in One Hundred Years of Solitude; by the end, it had cycled back to the events of the beginning, with a shift in perspective to another character. A magical little trick--I love it.

Next book: Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny. Abandoned halfway through. Horrible prose (sometimes I complain about SF writers who write very flat but adequate prose, like Octavia Butler--then I run across a writer like Zelazny, who tries to be poetic, and I realize I should have shut up and quit while I was ahead). Two-dimensional characters. Lots of silly fighting. And I'm crossing my fingers that I can go the rest of my life without reading a book in which women are referred to as "bitches" and "laymates." Criminy. This is all very disappointing, because I was excited about the prospect of a SF novel that incorporated Egyptian mythology.

#37: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Another great book. THIS is why I read SF.

#38: The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. I found this through another LT member's thread, and I'm glad I did. A YA novel about Earth in the year 2070, transformed by a "Peace Bomb" which thwarted nuclear war, and turned much of humanity into meta-humans with strange abilities. Great imagination, interesting characters, engaging story.

Side note: This is my second Nigerian novel of late (see Chimamanda Adichie in the post above), and I have Ben Okri's The Famished Road waiting for me as well. I am really digging the Nigerian literature--so full of myth, folklore, magic, and symbolism.

Ooo, The Shadow Speaker sounds really good. I may have to search that one out. You know, after I read the 140 or so books already on my tbr pile (mountain? collection?).

Glad you liked The Shadow Speaker, she apparently has a previous novel but if Amazon can be trusted it is mean for an even younger audience. I met Adichie at a booksellers trade show dinner back when her Purple Hibiscus was forthcoming here in the states. I was hot to get her book and Edward Jones's The Known World (I had dinner with him but Adichie was at another table, so I had to chase her down to shake her hand). I miss those days sometimes.

>40 sussabmax: sussabmax: It is good! I have a giant TBR pile, too, but I just can't resist sometimes. :)

>41 avaland: avaland: I had thought about getting her previous novel, even though it does seem to be for a younger audience. I have a niece who's approaching the right age for her first novel, so if I don't buy it myself, I may buy it for her. Sounds like you had some really great experiences meeting authors--I envy you! The only author I read that I've met is Charles Baxter, and he was a lovely man.

More books:
#39: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. I adore Ishiguro. This is my third of his novels, and they're just brilliant. This one strikes me as a sort of Japanese mirror version of The Remains of the Day. The protagonist is a Japanese man post-WWII whose allegiance to the imperialist movement during the war puts him at odds with the new Japan. As usual, the pacing is right on, the tone perfect, and the empathetic treatment of the characters quite poignant.

#40: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. This is a collection of fairy tales, most of them fairly well-known (Bluebeard, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood). Carter's brilliance lies not so much in tampering with the plots (in most of the tales, she does this very little, or not at all), but in making the subtexts of the original tales more explicit. As well, the prose is gorgeous and sensuous. So you end up with a book of particularly literary fairy tales--fantastic.

Now reading Towing Jehovah by James Morrow, and it's just brilliant. More later!

#32 > Medellia, regarding short story collections, I almost never try to read them straight through anymore. When I do, I find that the stories have a tendency to blur together by the time I'm through.

But I still like short stories! So the way I handle this is I generally have a stack of short story collections and other types of anthologies that I call my "between books." After I read a full-length novel or non-fiction work, I'll take maybe five or six of these "between books" and read one story or essay (or whatever) from each. Then I move on to my next full-length book. That way I'm reading five or six short stories in a row, not a whole collection's worth. And because they're all by different authors, they don't tend to blend together as much.

Anyway, it's a bit of a bizarre system, I guess, but I've found it works well for me. Plus it keeps my wife amused.

>43 rocketjk: rocketjk: It's often the same with me: if I read a whole collection together, they get jumbled in my head. I like your "between books" approach! I'm going to try it and see if I can't finish some of these. :)

I haven't been doing quite as much reading these past few days, since my husband has the 3-day weekend off and the weather is glorious. Here's the rundown:

#41: Towing Jehovah by James Morrow. This book is just wonderful. Great satire with a real plot, fleshed-out characters, and loads of symbolic meaning. It's Nietzschean philosophy at a literal level: God is dead, and his two-mile-long body is floating out in the ocean. An angel appears to a disgraced captain of an oil tanker and tells him he needs to tow the body to the Arctic for a proper burial. In the meantime, the Vatican wants him to get it there as quickly as possible so that they can cryogenically freeze the body and resuscitate it later. While the Vatican seems unconcerned with the philosophical ramifications of God's apparent death, the Jesuit Father Thomas Ockham muses aboard the ship, struggling for answers. Highly recommended.

#42: The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. Meh--not that much to say here. It's not amazing, but at least I know what's going on now. And clearly it has a certain staying power to it. I read it yesterday morning, and perhaps it was the power of suggestion, but I suddenly found myself doing laundry and cooking for my husband afterward. Beware! ;)

#43: The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver. The latest Lincoln Rhyme novel. These and the Lee Child Jack Reacher novels are my guilty pleasures (I have one of the latter waiting around the apartment as well).

Medellia12, have you read other novels by Morrow? I also liked his City of Truth, Only Begotten Daughter, and The Last Witchfinder (I have his latest here as well, buried in the TBR pile).

Towing Jehovah sounds fascinating. Yet another thing to add to my bloated library list.

>45 avaland: avaland: I haven't, but I will definitely be reading more by him. Thanks for the shortlist! It seems that you're becoming one of my top recommendation sources. :)

>46 xicanti: xicanti: Isn't LT just terrific for building up ridiculously huge reading lists? Love it.

Love it, hate it, it's hard to say, ;).

My list is long enough (!), but I think I need to add Towing Jehovah, too. And possibly all the other Morrow books. Plus, you remind me that I want to re-read The Boys from Brazil and something else by Levin that I can't remember right now. And, a friend has been reading the Deaver books for a while now, but I have been steadfastly ignoring them!

I let this go for too long again! Continuing the binge:

#44: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Another good one. I love her storytelling style--the way she'll break off the narrative to tell a fairy tale or story with some mythic quality, one that works into the overall narrative. On top of that, it's a sweet and funny story. I am officially a fan.

#45: Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. Why have I neglected Anne Bronte until now? I liked this story better than Wuthering Heights, actually, though not as much as Jane Eyre. Anne Bronte is surprisingly funny, and this satirical wit helps offset the parts that are difficult to read (I don't like children to begin with, and reading about hellions drives me up the wall a bit!). The love story is beautiful, and Agnes is a strong, interesting protagonist. And now I want a dog named Snap.

#46: The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing. Speaking of children who are hellions... I wasn't impressed by this book, actually, but as I've probably said around here before, domestic issues are not my thing. I actually was convinced that I was missing some kind of complex sociopolitical allegory, that I just didn't know enough of modern British history to get at it. But after doing further internet research, that seems to not be the case (in fact, Lessing specifically said that one should not read the book in this manner--if I'm to believe the artist's words, which I rarely do).

#47: Under the Skin by Michel Faber. The less said about the plot, the better. If you liked Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, I think you'd like this book. The range of ethical issues is wider, and the identity issues are there, too. It's much darker than the Ishiguro, though. Recommended.

#48: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. I was pretty disappointed with this one--it's no Handmaid's Tale. I didn't like the tone to begin with, which didn't set it up well for me. I felt it was emotionally distancing, which really detracts from the whole idea of the novel. And it was pretty facile. Scratching the surface of what it could have been.

#49: The Stone Gods by Winterson. Having declared myself a fan, I will allow that this one is something of a misstep. I think that Ms. Winterson should stay far away from science fiction--though maybe that's actually the problem, because the number of SF cliches she hit on in here was staggering. The prose was still lovely and poetic, though I thought the dialogue was sometimes awful. And I really wasn't particularly convinced by the love story between Spike and Billie.

I read the first two books of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy several days back. I'll come back and finish the third soon. I'm also reading bit by bit on Good Omens, my simultaneous introduction to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I enjoy it if I'm in the mood for it, and that, I've discovered, is the key. So I'm stringing it out.

After your recommendation on my thread I'm going to recommend Written on the body which is my favourite Winterson. I've not read The Stone Gods, so can't comment, but I liked The Penelopiad. It isn't The Handmaid's Tale and doesn't try to be - I take the distancing to be an element of the afterlife existence of Penelope. I love Atwood though, so maybe I'm a bit biased

>50 bencritchley:: Serendipity! Written on the Body arrived in the mail just today, from a fellow Bookmoocher. Looking forward to it even more now.

I'm not entirely sure about Atwood yet--I need to read more. The friend who turned me on to Winterson and Sarah Waters has recommended Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride, so one of those'll be next.

edited so as not to confuse # of books with message # to which I'm replying...

And while I'm here:

#50: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. My simultaneous introduction to both authors. Humor is a subjective thing. I'm not sure it was my cup of tea, though maybe I'm being altogether too serious about it. It might benefit from a reread. Not to say that I didn't find parts of it funny--my favorite parts were all to do with Agnes Nutter. I just found myself a bit disappointed.

Currently reading: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I've just hit the first big twist, and you could've knocked me over with a feather.

I have not yet gotten to Winterson, although she's waiting in the TBR pile. Too Many Books! Too Many Books! (sorry, just an anxiety moment).

Oh man, I loved Fingersmith so so so so much. You'll be even more shocked as the book goes on. There are so many twists and unexpected happenings, you'll be in knots yourself by the time it's over.

I just finished it a little while ago, and man, you aren't kidding! The friend who recommended it to me was an English major and has read a huge number of books in her day, so she didn't think anyone could pull the wool over her eyes anymore. But she reported being fooled again and again, and I was too.

Great story, everybody, lots of suspense, well-drawn characters, and tricky business. Love it!

#51: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

#49 Some nice reading there Medellia - I haven't read 'Oranges are not the only fruit' yet (beyond page one anyway) but everyone I know who has enjoyed it.

I was struck by:

" (in fact, Lessing specifically said that one should not read the book in this manner--if I'm to believe the artist's words, which I rarely do)."

The little I have heard about Lessing the more I get an idea that she is quite playful with many things she says -- so that they are not entirely meaningless but also seem not always totally sincere (I've met several people who wonder if she means it now when she says she isn't writing another novel for example). What I've read by her I have enjoyed, though I sometimes find it very dense. I find her view of humans enjoyable and what she's interested in (not sociologically though).

I'm beating around the bush though - its what you said about believing the artists words, I can see where it might make sense and maybe my thinking has just been changing for quite a while and in the past I'd have agreed, but I get a lot from the artists words about their work especially someone like Lessing. I'm not necessarily right or saying you're wrong I just noticed what you said and wanted to say that in some way, that I often trust artist's words, not necessarily totaly unconditionally, and that I get a lot from that, especially someone like Lessing who's view of people I find very sympathetic, I have an idea she is very comfortable with individuality which makes me listen to what she says.

#56: I rather like Lessing, from what I've read about her. Anyone who can blow off winning the Nobel Prize with something to the extent of, "Leave me alone, I'm grocery shopping," must be an interesting person.

My general distrust of artists' words comes from my experience as a composer, actually. I've read waaaay too many articles (/polemics) in which a composer talking about his or her own work wilfully obscures the truth of their work, even flat-out lies sometimes. (There are usually two categories of these: those who have a formal way of working, but don't want you getting at it, or just feel like making you go 'round in circles; and those who do not have a formal way of working, feel inadequate about this or fear the reprisal of those in the community who demand it, and so attempt to obscure this fact with fancy words and empty philosophy.)

At any rate, though, perhaps I overstated my case: what I really ought to have said was, "if I take the artist's words at face value, which I rarely do." Not to mention that if an author tells me I shouldn't read his/her book a certain way, or a composer tells me I shouldn't hear his/her piece a certain way, well, I'm perversely apt to want to read/hear it that way. A multiplist to the end, I'm afraid. ;)

Thanks for stopping by--gives me brain fodder for the day.

I see what you're saying - I don't know about the world of music at all in this sense. My first reaction is it might not be the same for a writer, but I guess I don't know that for sure either. I do write a bit, not tried to be published - but as someone taking some of those steps I don't find such a problem really.

No one telling me how to read or not read something is going to get anywhere either. I appreciate what you're saying about face value, again though I'm finding it all the more important to find people I do do take at that level -- if I am getting their wavelength in a way, knowing when they are or are not being sincere or more veiled or whatever becomes less of an issue and more of a pleasure. I hope that makes some sense, I'm not sure I have expressed it. Its something to do with accepting them - but not necessarily setting what they say in judgement over other things they say or write.

Glad the first post was of interest.

>58 tonikat:: It does make sense--thanks. And yes, it's not always safe to generalize from music to literature, and I have to be reminded of this sometimes.

Time for one somewhat scathing and one glowing review!

#52: The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson.
I was excited when I saw that this book, something of a "lost work" from the '60s, was going to be re-published. This experimental novel has an open form--the 27 different sections are printed in the form of little pamphlets, with the first and last being marked as such. The other 25 may be shuffled and read in any order. The plot: The protagonist (essentially B.S. Johnson), a sports writer, visits a town where his late friend Tony used to live. He flashes back to many different memories of the times he spent with his friend.

The good: The structure and style work very well. The stream-of-consciousness prose captures the randomness of his wandering mind, as does the non-linear structure of the different sections. What's always most interesting to me about open form music is also interesting to me here: the way that one's mind struggles to put events in a linear order. I don't know about other folks, but my brain does not do non-linear; it must construct a linear narrative.

The bad: Unfortunately, style and structure are not the only elements of a book. There's also the material. You know, what makes a book a book. And this material wavers between uninteresting and unlikeable. The biggest problem is that B.S. Johnson is the type of guy who renders even his closest friends in 2-D, as shadows that fall behind the looming figure of himself. The type of guy who evidently still nurses the wounds from when a girlfriend cheated on him many years ago, never explicitly stating it as such, just calling it over and over "the betrayal." Good grief. Beyond this, I can't reconcile the extremely conventional, boring narrative with the structural conceits. I think I have to side with the folks who contend that his structural tinkering is just a gimmick to hide the fact that his material is weak.

The major failing of the novel, for me: it's not about Tony. It's about B.S. Johnson. And if I was going to spend a day in someone else's head, it sure as heck wouldn't be Johnson's.

#53: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies.
Onward and upward, then. I had started this book several weeks ago, during the semester, then had to abandon it. At the time, I just didn't have the mental energy I needed to do this book justice.

So I picked it up again this week, and wow, what a wonderful book. Besides the well-drawn, strangely compelling characters and the lovely atmosphere, I loved the philosophy behind it. Maybe it's just because Davies seems to be putting into words the same sorts of things I subscribe to but can't put my finger on. Whatever the case, the idea of something being not "literally true" but "psychologically true" is something that makes a great deal of sense to me. I love symbols and archetypes, and this book has them in spades. Read it! I'll be going on to read the next two in the Deptford Trilogy (and then I have the Cornish Trilogy to contend with--hooray!).

Wow, we must have read Fifth Business about the same time.

>60 merry10:: That's funny--now every time I pick up a book, I'm going to wonder if, somewhere out there, someone else is reading it at the same time. Strange thought!

This week, it was one long novel and one complex novel--so they both took a while to read. But both were wonderful.

#54: Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt. I'm really surprised that more people on LibraryThing don't own this one! Maybe because it's out of print now (but available via Amazon Marketplace). It's a big religious/academic adventure. Very well researched, full of great tidbits of religious historical trivia (800 pages of it, really), well-plotted, often funny. Erudite in its own way, very well researched--as noted in other threads, this work of fiction actually has an index in the back! I sometimes have a short attention span when it comes to long novels, but this book held me all the way through.

It's not quite perfect--the prose is adequate, but nothing special, and there's a lot of resorting to stereotypes in the characterization. But the characters are well-drawn, within their boxes, and I did sympathize with them. And the whole book is just such a fun, rollicking adventure, that I recommend it heartily for when you really want to be entertained, and learn some things in the process.

#55: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter. I love this woman. I do. What a great mind. This surreal novel is dense, intense, serious brain food. It's obviously highly informed by critical theory and philosophy. It took a while to read because as I went along, I would space out every couple of pages, my mind veering off on a tangent inspired by what I was reading. Topics like bureaucracy, media & technology, semiotics, the nature of time and matter, globalization, phenomenology vs. rationalism, existentialism, societal structures, the imagination, and a whole host of other things. If you have a taste for the weird and like philosophical novels, don't miss this one.

#56: After the Quake by Haruki Murakami. I actually finished a book of short stories--unfortunately, it wasn't one of the many I already owned & needed to complete. :) I found these stories to be generally less enigmatic (and somewhat simpler) than the stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Might make a good intro to Murakami for a lot of people.

#57: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. Not really my thing, I think, but I finished it.

Geez woman, read, read, read. Go outside and get some sun! :) You always awe me with your reading choices.

>63 hairballsrus:: I read outside in the sun a lot. Does that count? :) (You're too kind.)

Just back from a brief vacation. Didn't get any reading done while I was there, but before I left, I finished The Famished Road by Ben Okri. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, especially if you are a fan of One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Famished Road was a big project for me--fairly long, packed with such beautiful imagery that I wanted to slow down and savor every bit, and difficult enough in its allegory that I spent some time reading about Nigerian history, society, and folklore in order to get everything out of it that I could. (And now I feel the need to read everything Okri has written--including the two "sequels" to this book.)

#58: The Famished Road by Ben Okri

Angela, Angela, Angela, we love Angela! Just joining you in praise of Angela!!! Gad, I need a good reread of an Angela Carter novel right now... (except there is so much in the TBR pile...*whines piteously*)

oh i'm glad i found somebody who liked The Famished Road! i first read it myself a long long time ago but the images are still vivid in my mind - it's certainly one of my all-time favorite fiction. i agree with u that it's a book best read slowly to allow for the rich imagery to unfold fully. it's the only book i have which i go back to again and again if only to enjoy its magical prose. i've read the "sequel", Songs of Enchantment but it did not captivate me like the Road.

>66 avaland: avaland: Having just discovered Carter's works recently, I'm enjoying the thrill of that first read through something you really love. I've been evangelizing for Carter among my book buddies (my "real life" ones, that is). BTW, I picked up a copy of Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood in Boston this weekend (Commonwealth Books on Boylston, what a great store), and I'm thinking Sleepwalking Land is going to be on my reading list this week. You continue to broaden my horizons. *grin*

>67 deebee1: deebee1: Isn't it wonderful? It's another one that I'm surprised there aren't more people reading and loving. I bought a copy of Songs of Enchantment, though I figured that it probably wouldn't be as good as The Famished Road. I like to read the complete works of my favorite authors, though, so I'm sure I'll be reading it at some point.

#59: I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. Pretty good YA novel. Zusak has a big ol' bleeding heart, and I was in the mood for that sort of thing. It's a didactic book, but I don't mind it--in fact, there are several people in my life who could really benefit from this book, I think. And it's nice to read something that reminds me that I should continue to work on being a better person who is kinder and more helpful to others.

Ack! I've fallen behind.

#60: Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto. Great magic realist work from Mozambique. Very dream-like. I like the permeation of one narrative into another. It's fairly short--about 200 pages--but not lacking in substance for it.

#61: The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his dead palm-wine tapster in the Dead's Town by Amos Tutuola. This is a strange, delightful piece of work. It reads a bit like a cross between a fairy tale (or collection thereof) and an underworld myth--put on your Jungian hat, and you'll be thrilled. Made me wish I could have the full traditional story-telling experience. It's written in Pidgin English, and I love listening to non-native speakers. Interesting flashes of the "modern," colonial world here and there, usually when referencing a technological device in analogies. And I'll never forget "The Skull as Complete Gentleman."

#62: Starbook by Ben Okri. Mixed feelings. This is magical realism minus the realism--which gets cloying pretty quickly. I think that on the macrolevel, it's way too long for Okri to be able to carry out his stylistic experiment. Which is not to say that it doesn't succeed on the microlevel--in fact, I probably bookmarked every few pages for some lovely quote or insightful thought. But there are plenty of meaningless sentences, and the deliberately simplistic philosophy behind this basically New Age novel, well, it doesn't do it for me. I can say that I have about a thousand things to say for and against this novel, so the fruitful thought that has resulted from my reading this book makes up for some of its deficiencies.

#63: A Wild Haruki Chase: Reading Murakami Around the World. A collection of essays put out by the Japan Foundation. I bought it largely for the essay by the always-brilliant Richard Powers, the fantastically titled "The Global Distributed Self-Mirroring Subterranean Neurological Soul-Sharing Picture Show." Most of the rest of the essays didn't do much for me, though, which is mainly because I'm more interested in issues of text and meaning than in why Murakami is so popular around the world. (A lot of the book seems obvious to me, the Murakami fan.) I did like Shozo Fujii's essay, "Lu Xun and Murakami: A Geneology of the Ah Q Image in East Asian Literature."

#64: Songs of Enchantment by Ben Okri. The second book in the Famished Road trilogy. I wasn't planning on going on to this right away, but I found myself compelled to do so. I love the characters and the world that he created in The Famished Road, and I found myself so pleased to go back to them--like old friends, you know. This book was more approachable than The Famished Road--shorter, structurally simpler, and in many places, more concrete. (Though the first third of the book was fairly abstract and slippery.) Thematically, it focuses more clearly on political strife. Though it wasn't quite as good as The Famished Road, I still enjoyed it immensely.

I picked up some books with critical analyses of Ben Okri's work, particularly the Famished Road trilogy, and these have been fairly enlightening. I have the third book of the trilogy, Infinite Riches and will probably start it soon--perhaps after reading Wole Soyinka's play, The Road (Three Crowns), from which Okri adapted his metaphor of "the road." (The title of The Famished Road was taken from an excerpt from a poem by Soyinka, "The right foot for joy, the left, dread / And the mother prayed, Child / May you never walk / When the road waits, famished.") At any rate, Ben Okri is rocking my world these days. I'm stressed out and sad these past couple of weeks, some things going on back home, so I'm in the mood for literary works that evoke a strong emotional response, with sadness and happiness both, and which hopefully don't leave me too depressed.

#65: Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana. A collection of eight linked stories, narrated in turn by three sisters (5 by Christine, 2 by Rosa, and one by Patti, if I'm recalling properly this morning :-p). This book was a delight. The stories got better and better as they went along. Most are set in Uganda (Entebbe or Kampala), with one set in Los Angeles, when Christine moves there. The pictures of family life, education, race relations, HIV/AIDS, the immigrant experience, and the experience of the immigrant moving back home, all added up to a wonderful, diverse collection. Because the main characters in the stories were the same, one of the aspects I liked most about the book is what wasn't said--that is, musing on the periods between Story A and Story B. Recommended.

What interesting comments! And made more interesting by the fact that i have read some of these books (amandameale just read Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe also). When i get back from Oz I will have to send you an Assia Djebar (I happen to have an extra copy of one of her novels here!)

It appears I've been off the radar for a month. Time flies. We had a death in the family about a month ago, and I haven't been reading as much since then. I've left a string of unfinished books in my wake, all of which I was actually enjoying and fully intend to go back to when I'm in the right mood. So here's the crop I've finished:

#66: Infinite Riches by Ben Okri. Third in the Famished Road series. Not as good as the other two, if only because the material was getting really repetitive. I might have been more into it if I hadn't read it so close on the heels of the other two.

#67: A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's great, like his other books, but I'm glad he didn't stick with the po-mo ending in his later books. I understand what he was getting at, but I think his other books achieve the exact same aim with a more solid ending.

#68: Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Lovely, and a better book than his most recent (Ghost), IMHO, though I admit it hasn't stayed in my memory very well.

#69: Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Loved it. A long novel, but my attention didn't waver. Magic realism, but with a light touch--much more toward the realism side. I really loved the characters, and I thought it was well-plotted. Brilliant satire, but somehow it didn't feel too dark. Highly recommended.

#70: Our Town by Thornton Wilder. My husband has been telling me to read this for quite some time, but I've resisted it (largely because of the knee-jerk negative reaction I had when he first brought it up, because he compared it to Cold Sassy Tree). I was pleased to find that it didn't really sentimentalize the small-town life described therein; it just used it within a larger philosophical framework. The third section was both stranger and more normal than my husband led me to expect.

#71: I Will Marry When I Want by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Enjoyable, though I'm sure that I missed a lot, not being able to hear the songs or see the dances. (Of course, if that was happening, it would probably be spoken/sung in Gikuyu, so... :)

For my bookkeeping purposes, the novels I will be returning to are: Woman of the Aeroplanes by Kojo Laing, Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris, So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, Dangerous Love by Ben Okri, Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida. Right now I'm reading Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo, and I think I can stick with this one. I love Russo's warmth and humor; he writes good literature, but it's comfort food, too.

#72: Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo. Loved it. I ran across a comment by a Russo reader recently: Some books, you remember reading and say "I remember that book." Other books, you say "I remember those people." (Russo) . . . definitely falls into the latter. I agree. Miss Beryl has joined the ranks of my literary heroes--I liked her even better than the protagonist, Sully.

#73: Other Lives by Andre Brink. Hot off the presses. I recently discovered Brink--I bought this book, and A Dry White Season, which I haven't read yet. Other Lives is one of those books that critics are apt to label as "bold" or "audacious." It's comprised of three novellas that are thematically linked, and, to a certain degree, linked by common characters. But the realities of the three novellas do not entirely coincide--here I imagine a sort of fractured, mirror-image structure. The main themes involve issues of race and identity in post-apartheid South Africa. The metaphysical weirdness of the book was generally well-done, particularly in the Kafkaesque second novella, though I think that part of the book would have been more successful had the protagonist's transformation engendered a more gradual change in awareness.

So there's the good stuff. Unfortunately, the whole book was marred for me by basic surface issues. Often bad prose, stilted dialogue. More than a few times I found myself wincing at a bad turn of phrase or a trite statement. Overall, I just couldn't help but feel disappointed that such an intelligently designed book didn't live up to its promise for me.

NB: Some readers might be disturbed by the rather violent sexual encounter in the second novella.

#74: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. This was great--better than Agnes Grey, which I also enjoyed. I found great satisfaction in reading a Victorian novel in which the female lead stands up to her loutish husband. A sort of "you go, girl" vindication of all those other classics in which I have to suspend my 21st-century sensibilities.

#75: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. This one took me longer to warm to than Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, but eventually I was hooked. I found it quite a bit funnier than her other novels that I've read--Mr. Palmer slays me. And I cannot get over the mental image of Mr. Robert Ferrars throwing architectural plans into the fire and instructing "dear Courtland" to "by all means build a cottage" instead.

And that, I fancy, will be the end of it.

So sorry to hear of your loss. Good to have you back here.

Great minds do think alike. I have Other Lives sitting right next to my laptop having received it from Amazon last week. Not sure when I'll get to it, perhaps before the next two hardcovers arrive in early October. I also have his Dry White Season and Wizard of the Crow in the endless TBR pile (I would catch up if they stopped printing new books).

I am, as always, in awe of your reading list. :)

>75 avaland:: Thanks. I figure you'll like Other Lives when you get to it, but I bet you'll love Wizard of the Crow. I'm curious: what are your two October hardcovers?

>76 hairballsrus:: You're no slouch yourself, you know. :) I've been enjoying your Vonnegut commentary of late. There will be more Vonnegut in my future, one of these days. Actually, every time I look over my reading list this year, I'm impressed myself. That's the LibraryThing influence.

I've been in the mood for a really big project lately, so I've started reading Proust. Swann's Way. The newest Penguin translation. So I'm gently rolling along there. I'll read the volumes sequentially, of course, but I'm not sure whether I'll want to take breaks between the volumes and read other things. At the moment I'm just enjoying the beginning of my journey.

Honestly, I was thinking over the last few weeks of finally reading Infinite Jest (as noted in post #1, I loved The Broom of the System last year). But now it seems a little too sad. I'll save it for later.

I'm sorry to hear of your loss too. I haven't been on here much to follow others' threads, so I'm sorry that thought is somewhat late.

I followed a link to watch DFW interviewed on Charlie Rose I think its called and it was an interesting interview. I've also read his piece about Roger Federer which I enjoyed. So although I know little of him and have read his work little I am intrigued and saddened because of interview and essay by whats happened and also because of how strongly so many other people I have read posts from or heard from seem to have been affected. I can understand leaving it longer though, I may not dive in for some time and the size of IJ has long put me off - but less so now from what I have learned better from those sources, just sorry I had not paid more attention previously (not that it matters).

I've also been stuck half way through Swann's Way since last November -- I love it but its hard work. I was thinking of restarting, honest, you may have pushed me over that edge - but 10 pages an hour is my speed with him I reckon!

Tony woke me from my long thread slumber via my profile. I've been meaning to post a little Proust ramble, but haven't had much time--school keeps me hopping. But I'm home with the sniffles today, so I'll try to mumble something vaguely coherent.

Tony, off-topic, every time I see Charlie Rose I cannot get this YouTube video out of my head: Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett. It's hilarious.

Speaking of modernists, on to the Proust ramble. I have finished Swann's Way and am about halfway through In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Proust does read sloooowly--ever more slowly, really, as I have less and less free time. But it has actually been quite pleasant to slow down and really savor the prose, the sensations. In fact, I find that when I speed up my reading, I just don't enjoy it. So Proust does me the happy favor of forcing me to do just what all those literary folks always tell us to do: slow down and carefully consider each word. Turn the sentences around in your head and see them from every angle.

So Proust is often hard work, but curiously, it doesn't quite feel that way most of the time. I expected to be blindsided, befuddled by complicated prose and a complex web of meaning that escapes me. I found instead that once you get into a rhythm, the prose flows, sings. Honeysilk: that's what this prose is. I still find myself rereading those giant, twisting sentences, but I don't resent it. And beyond that, I think I'm grasping Proust's major themes and ideas. It's far from incomprehensible.

Proust writes the most beautiful passages about music that I've ever read. There was a passage toward the end of Swann's Way in which the narrator discusses Swann's reaction to a phrase of music for which he has an almost transcendent love. It could be my very own mission statement as a composer. It's long, so I'll cut out some bits--suffice to say, it's even more powerful in its full form:

"He knew that even the memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the elements of the music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable scale of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard still almost entirely unknown on which, here and there only, separated by shadows thick and unexplored, a few of the millions of keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of serenity which compose it, each as different from the others as one universe from another universe, have been found by a few great artists who do us the service, by awakening in us something corresponding to the theme they have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety, is hidden unbeknownst to us within that great unpenetrated and disheartening darkness of our soul which we take for emptiness and nothingness . . . Even when he was not thinking of the little phrase, it existed latent in his mind in the same way as certain other notions without equivalents, like the notion of light, of sound, of perspective, of physical pleasure, which are the rich possessions that diversify and ornament the realms of our inner life. Perhaps we will lose them, perhaps they will fade away, if we return to nothingness. But as long as we are alive, we can no more eliminate our experience of them than we can our experience of some real object, than we can for example doubt the light of the lamp illuminating the metamorphosed objects in our room whence even the memory of the darkness has vanished . . . Maybe it is the nothingness that is real and our entire dream is nonexistent, but in that case we feel that these phrases of music, and these notions that exist in relation to our dream, must also be nothing. We will perish, but we will have for hostages these divine captives who will follow us and share our fate. And death in their company is less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable."

With all that in mind, I'm already crafting a "Proust and Music" course in my head. I bet I could find a way to pull it off. Read some Proust (that'll be the tricky part, of course, figuring out how much & what to read), put him in a modernist context, discuss some secondary texts, talk about modernist and postmodern composers who were influenced by his ideas of time and art, etc. I'd love to pitch my idea in a couple of years--Columbia has a program where grad students can pitch their own course proposal, then teach it in the summer if it's accepted.

Speaking of secondary texts, I have a few good ones that I'm dipping in and out of. I still kinda-sorta avoid plot summaries of the books I haven't read, but it has been said that there are no surprises in Proust, and this is fairly true. He tends to broadcast in advance, literally and figuratively. So I'm reading bits and pieces of Proust Among the Stars, really a very moving work of criticism, good close readings; Proust's Way by Roger Shattuck, a standard, and has some nice insights scattered throughout; little nibbles at How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton (it's like literary criticism in cookie form, light and fluffy, but delicious); and a couple of biographies-but-not-so-much, Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret (Proust's housekeeper/personal everything for the last decade of his life) and Marcel Proust by Mary Ann Caws, a tiny visual biography. I have to trick myself into, or force myself into, reading biographies; I have some weird personal bias against them that I can't really explain. I have Beckett's Proust as well, but will probably save it for later.

So, to wrap up today's episode, I am in love with Proust. I was surprised by how funny and how touching this novel is, and how it is really unlike anything I've ever read. To quote Roger Shattuck, "This dense network of perpetually reconstituted connections among impressions, feelings, meanings, and words constitutes one of the fundamental qualities of Proust's work." Yes. That.

Hi, Medellia12!
I am thinking about reading Proust next year, but I am intimidated and want to read some study aids as well. Thanks for all the suggestions that you made! You make it all sound so wonderful. One of my daughters read In Search of Lost Time this summer. Parts she loved, parts she didn't. So I wasn't sure if I should go ahead or wait. But so many people are reading it, I thought maybe next year I'll be ready.
--BJ

Hey, if you can read Anthony Powell (I'm drooling at your Folio Society edition!), Salman Rushdie, Gene Wolfe and Umberto Eco, I figure you can lick Proust, no problem. :) I'm sure sooner or later I'll run across some part of the book that I don't love, but I haven't hit it just yet! For me, the key seems to be not pressuring myself--no hurry, no worry.

Thanks for the encouragement! :) Yeah, my daughter liked book 1 and then the later books the best. I haven't actually read The Name of the Rose yet. It's in my TBR. My baby also read that one and really liked it. She had so much fun this past summer reading all of my Folio books before going back to college. She is a bad influence and always tells me to buy every Folio book that I am interested in. She should be more worried about those tuition checks! :) Anyway, thanks for the advice.
--BJ
By the way, now I can't get that song out of my head! I hadn't thought of it in years.

That Charlie Rose video made my whole day, Medellia! Thanks for the link, and for the review/meditation on Proust. I'm gearing up to start the series soon, and now I'm excited to get started.

Billiejean, sounds like you and your daughter are two peas in a pod. (And I'm still singing it, too!)

Jfetting, glad you enjoyed the video. My husband and I quote from it all the time. I think you'll love Proust--the quiet, introspective nature of his work actually reminds me a good deal of Kazuo Ishiguro.

Proust? I am ever impressed by your reading choices.

It is a bit la-dee-da, isn't it? :) I'm quite enthusiastic about Proust these days, but I'm a bit hesitant bringing him up in conversation with non-LT folks. I don't want to look like I'm trying to show off or something, you know? Plus most people I know don't really want to talk about books in general and Proust in particular. :-p That's why I love LT...

You'll have to give me a "primer" on him, because although I am a lapsted (sp?) English Major-...I never dipped my toe in.

OK, I left this hanging forever and ever. Time to close it up and start anew.

If I remember correctly:
#76: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
#77: The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
#78: How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

OK, new thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/54895

New and old book buddies are encouraged to drop by. Look forward to another year with you fantabulous readers!

edited to fix link

Would like to follow your new thread, but your link just gets me to the top of this one again. (Sad sigh with a hopeful smile too as I'm looking forward to eventually following you into 2009)

Silly me! Thanks so much for letting me know!