lycomayflower's 2008 books

1. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver ***1/2

My very first notebook of books I've read (begun in 1993, when I was a wee twelve-year-old sprout) tells me I've read this before, but I can't say I remember it. I didn't start writing down my impressions of books until several years into the keeping of that sort of notebook, and I'd give a lot now to know what I thought of this book then. I'm slowly "discovering" Kingsolver, though I've been reading her (apparently) for something like fifteen years. I've admired her nonfiction for awhile, and after nearly putting my life on hold last month to read Prodigal Summer, I thought I'd go back to some of her early fiction. I enjoyed this one a lot--was entirely swept up by the event and voice and feel of the narrative. I think Kingsolver tends to overwrite at the ends of chapters and before space breaks here, sort of pushing (appropriate) metaphors onto scenes that don't need them in order to resonate--something I didn't notice in Prodigal Summer. So either the new year has made me a snobby reader, or twenty years has improved the skills of an already fantastic writer. My money's on the latter.

If you hadn't swooped away with my copy of the book, I could check what you're talking about here...but this is quite forgivable in a first novel, no?

Yeah, forgivable I'd say, especially as it's so good otherwise.

Maybe I'll give the book back some day and you can look then. ;-)

2.) Blankets, Craig Thompson ****

A graphic novel which reminds me formally and (sometimes) thematically of Art Spiegelman. Very enjoyable and rather touching, though perhaps ended a bit abruptly.

C'mon....I way ahead of you!

Thsssbt. I'm reading Tom Jones. It doesn't exactly fly along, you know?

And while I'm here:

3.) Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko ***1/2

I imagine this book is better than I think it is. I have the notion that the characters and situation intrigued me, but I just couldn't keep my mind in it.

4.) About a Boy, Nick Hornby ****

I'm preparing for the first in series of three comprehensive field exams for my PhD in English, so that takes up most of my reading time. But I try to read something for pleasure before bed, and this was it for the last week or so. A good book--engaging, made me want to turn the pages.

>7 lycomayflower:: The film is good, too -- Hugh Grant & Toni Collette are in it.

Which comps? I've passed modern American novel and short short and renaissance non-dramatic -- "ALL" I have left is my specialist exam in Medieval with focus on Anglo-Saxon which I'm taking March 22nd. I wish you great writing skills and abundance access to knowledge stored in your brain!

lindsacl:

I've seen it. I liked it rather a lot--it's one of the reasons I picked up the book, actually.

medievalmama:

I'm slated to take one on The Novel in March. From Don Quixote to yesterday, GO! Compiling my notes is starting to feel like an exercise in concocting points of similarity among texts no one but an exam list writer would put next to one another. But I suppose that's really largely the issue at hand . . . .

I'll be taking my second in September--on modernism.

Thanks for the good wishes!

5.) Beloved, Toni Morrison ****1/2

There are books which inspire me to write, there are books which I wish I had written, and then there are books I can hardly imagine came from the pen of another human being living in this world. Beloved is one of the last sort. I've always heard good things about Morrison, but this is the first time I've read any of her work. I'm simply amazed by this book, from the plot, to the characters, to the way the narrative unfolds. One of the best I've read ever and certainly in the top three of books I've "had" to read so far in preparation for my exams.

I think I'll quit complaining about my list! They may be in other versions of English, but a lot of them are short. Good luck, good luck, and good luck again!!
PS --I liked Tom Jones a lot and Tristram Shandy even more; and to prove how weird I obviously am, Bleak House is my favorite Dickens. F

6.) The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway ***

When I have to track back through a paragraph or a dialogue exchange because I wasn't paying as much attention to the writing as it deserves, that's my fault. When I have to track back through a paragraph or a dialogue exchange because the writing fails to put enough information on the page, that's the writer's fault. And it's bloody irritating.

I understand that some find Hemingway masterful, and exciting, and other adjectives as well, but for me it just doesn't work. Jake and Brett and company utterly failed to hold my interest, and the prose left me cold. The dialogue reads as if it is a transcript of tape-recorded conversations, utterly devoid of the kind of authorial additions which make reading a novel different from eavesdropping at the local bar.

I've never liked Hemingway's short fiction, but always thought I ought to give the longer works a try. Now I have. And now I'm done.

Child o' mine.

7.) The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White ***

Read this with my college froshies this semester for a course on fantasy. I rather dislike it. White's talking-to-the-lads-during-tea-in-front- of-the-fire-after-the-interhouse- cricket-match tone drives me crazy.

Good luck! Morrison's other really wonderful work is Song of Solomon, which I feel stands up to the standard of Beloved. And I love Bleak House too I suppose I'll add...

8.) The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode ****

Good stuff. I'm always impressed by how well Kermode can get complicated ideas into words.

9.) The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner ****

As predicted by me mum, it does get better every time. Though I have to say, I have a hard time getting through Jason's section because I spend the all of it badly wanting to smack him. A testament to Faulkner's skill, I suppose.

Jason Compson. Bastid.

10.) The English Novel: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton ***

The kind of book which seems interesting enough as you're going but about which you can't remember much when you're done. Bad, that, as I read it for comps. This is why they invented the marginal note, I suppose, of which I made many.

11.) The History Boys: The Film, Alan Bennett *****

12.) The History Boys: A Play, Alan Bennett *****

I first saw the film version of The History Boys last June and I fell in love with it. With my own exam looming (only four days away, meep!), I felt like revisiting this material again. Both of these books have lovely "extras" in them--The History Boys: The Film contains an introduction by director (of both the play and the film) Nicholas Hytner, a brief filming diary from Alan Bennett, and both behind-the-scenes and still photos from the movie, as well as the shooting script (including several scenes which were edited out of the final released film). The History Boys: A Play includes, along with the original play itself, an introduction by Alan Bennett in which he recounts his own memories of A-levels, sitting entrance exams, and going to Oxford. The dialogue and the characters in The History Boys are simply delightful and the commentary on education and on the effect teaching has on teachers is, I think, both brilliant and understated. I welcomed the opportunity to read both the play and the shooting script and compare them to the preserved end-product in the film. It's fascinating to see what was changed from play to film and what bits ultimately got left out (or edited out) from the script and what bits from the play wound up back into the film despite not being in the shooting script. Ultimately, I think I like better both the film's slightly more sympathetic portrayal of Irwin, whose position as a teacher just barely older than his students I find very easy to empathize with (though the similarities, for the most part, end there), and the subtlety that comes with the film's (necessary?) removal of most of the asides to the audience (though I can imagine that on-stage and think it likely works well there).

13.) Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov ****

I first read Lolita as a sophomore in college, and when I picked it up this time (six years later), I realized that I remembered very little about it. My reading notebook tells me that I liked it okay but found the language play annoying. I liked it a bit better than okay this time around and was more appreciative of the language play, though it does begin to get a bit tiresome by about three fourths of the way in. Up to a certain point in the narrative, there's very little in the way of plot expectation and I was content to listen to Humbert Humbert play with language. In other words, what drove the narrative for me for most of the book was language, not plot. I wondered not "what's going to happen next?" but "what's he going to say next?" By that three-fourths point, plot events have occurred but not been explained and I grew more interested in hearing what had happened than in clever language. Of course, Humbert Humbert gets his most playful at exactly that point, sort of spinning out and delaying expectations. Frustrating. Intentionally so, perhaps, but all the same.

14.) The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien, ****

"'I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.'"

My dad first read me The Hobbit (and The Lord of the Rings) when I was young enough (about six?) to be really afraid of Smaug, and that may be why the chapters with Smaug are still by far my favorite in the book. I think that one of the reasons Smaug is so frightening (he still gives me goosebumps and I find myself sort of hitching around to look over my shoulder during "Inside Information" when Bilbo engages in a one-on-one with him, despite the unlikelihood that a dragon would sneak up on anyone) is that he's the only villain in the book who is not either really dumb (like the trolls) or driven only by some combination of their badness and their bellies (the spiders) or their badness and their hatred (the goblins). Smaug is a character in his own right--he's cunning and compelling. Something about him makes you want to know more even if you're also routing for Bard's Black Arrow to fly true and take out the greedy worm.

Since I was old enough to read them on my own, I've found LotR more engaging than The Hobbit, but there's a certain allure to the earlier story that goes beyond just my fond memories of having it read to me as a wee sprout. Aside from the Smaug chapters, my favorite bits are "Riddles in the Dark" (of course) and the part where Beorn shows up at the Battle of the Five Armies and starts knocking goblins about. (Pullman owes a debt to this scene, no? Little bit, kinda, maybe, totally?)

This is another one I'm reading with my freshmen.

"The Eagles! The Eagles!"

15.) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis ***

Another for the freshmen course I'm teaching. I've never been able to get into the Chronicles of Narnia in anything like the way I have stories about Middle Earth. I suppose I dislike this for some of the same reasons The Hobbit isn't my favorite of Tolkien's--the writing is too much geared toward children for me to get lost in it. I sometimes regret having not started on the Narnia books when I was younger (I think I was pushing teenage years by the time I picked one up) because I imagine I would have liked them better then (and now) if I had. I'm looking forward to seeing what my students think of this one, especially what they want to do with the retelling of Christian mythology.

While I'm here, I thought I'd outline just what I'm including in my list here (perhaps more for my own sense of clarification than anything else). This is a pretty poor representation of everything I read, but it was never meant to be an all-inclusive list. I often start my 101 composition students out at the beginning of the semester by asking them to list everything they read and to think about how much reading affects their lives. With the exception of one or two students who read novels or nonfiction for pleasure, they pretty much tell me they don't read. Which is not true, and that's the idea behind the exercise. They forget things like e-mail, text messages, pretty much anything they might read on-line (news sites, blogs, myspace and facebook posts), newspapers (a surprising number of them spend the few minutes between when they get to class and when we actually start safely entrenched behind the campus paper like some disinterested sitcom Dad at the breakfast table), magazines, and schoolwork reading (like textbooks and class notes). They think that if it isn't printed, bound, and published by some faceless entity in New York (or similiar), it doesn't count. When we're trying to assess how much time they spend reading, processing, and responding to and with words, all of those things do count. And that's just the point--what counts depends on why you're keeping track.

Since I've been keeping this list (though it's surely not the first time I've done such a thing), I've been thinking about such issues. What criteria does a text I've read have to meet to be included on my 50 Book List? I don't actually have a lot of trouble deciding whether I'm including something or not--I just know. That being said, lists!

What I Do Include:

--novels
--book-length non-fiction
--graphic novels (such as Maus: A Survivor's Tale)
--drama
--ya books (such as Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush?)
--books of poetry
--book-length collections of short stories
--book-length collections of literary criticism/scholarship
--book-length bound periodical volumes (such as Tolkien Studies)
--anything meeting one of the above definitions that I have read fully and in its entirety

What I Do Not Include:

--fiction published only on-line (such as fan fiction)
--essays published only on-line (such as an essay about the merits of knitting over crocheting)
--comics collections (such as Scientific Progress Goes Boink)
--fiction and nonfiction produced by my students or peers that I read for review (grading, feedback, litmag submission decisions)
--children's books (such as The Little Engine that Could)
--individual poems
--individual short stories
--individual pieces of literary criticism/scholarship
--individual issues of a periodical (such as The Gettysburg Review)
--anything I would normally include by definition that I have not read fully or in its entirety (such as books for comps I've mostly skimmed)

As I said, what counts depends on why you're keeping track. I'm keeping track mostly for myself, so I can remember what I was reading this spring next spring. So I only include those things that stand out to me as markers in my life, things that a year, two years, ten years form now, when I look back at the list, I will say, "Ah, yes. I remember reading that. That was during that cold snap we had where all the forsythia withered and I was having trouble with the brakes on my car." I do recall my life in that way, and, mostly, that's what my list is about. Though I suppose there's an element of tracking that reading which I think helps me become "well-read," that reading which provides for me a (somewhat) common base from which to start when I want to talk to others about reading and books. How to define that base is a whole other field post, so I'll just leave it there for now.

I really like your exercise -- I just picked up 2 half semester comp 2 classes and 2 half semester online classes -- BritLit I and World Lit I -- the price I paid for having all that extra time to study for comps the first 1/2 of the semester. They really DO think they don't read!
I entered my comps list because a couple of people asked me to do so, but I didn't add them to the numbers.
Nice post -- great self-defining.
When are your comps? My final, specialist exam is in 2 days -- Holy Saturday.

medievalmama

--I just took my first about two weeks ago. Second should be in September. Good luck with yours.

16.) The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield ***1/2

Enjoyable and engaging, though I was left feeling a bit let down by the revelation in the end. It was a bit "oh. okay" when the build-up promised something more. Unlike Jane Eyre, which is so often referenced in The Thirteenth Tale, the secret seems to have little effect on what is left of the novel. Despite that, a good read.

Hi lycomayflower--I read The Thirteenth Tale over a year ago, so I kind of forgot the revelation in the end. What happened?

17.) Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods, Michael Wex ****

Interesting and well-put-together. I did find myself wanting to know more about culture (if not necessarily less about language), but I can't fairly call that a fault of the book.

framboise: I answered you in a comment on your profile because I'm trying to keep spoilers out of my thread.

18.) 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff ****

Just sort of absolutely delightful. An hour's read, or so, in which I laughed out loud two or three times. A neat little glimpse into lives which prompts me to fill in details about the characters we get only in snippets from their letters.

19.) The Princess Bride, William Goldman ****1/2

Another from the course I'm teaching. I remember reading this back in high school and being almost--almost--convinced that Goldman was actually abridging a book by a guy named Morgenstern from Florin. I described the book as "the friendliest postmodern novel ever" to my TA and it's quite possibly the only book I've read that employs things like erasure and disruption of reader expectation that I love. (Normally that sort of thing just makes me cranky.) Perhaps because I saw the movie (about a thousand times) long before I ever read the book and therefore know "what happens next," I never get frustrated with Goldman when he stops the action just before a climax to wax about something else for eighteen or so pages.

I've also noticed, having just read Born to Kvetch, how very Jewish it is both in mind-set and semantics. Even as a middle-schooler who had nightmares about R.O.U.S.es and The Machine after seeing the movie, I knew that Miracle Max was about as culturally Jewish as you could get, but I had forgotten since my last reading that Goldman-as-abridger/character tells us that his editor, Hiram, thought that the "Miracle Max section was too Jewish in sound, too contemporary." About which "Goldman" says "if Max and Valerie sound Jewish, why shouldn't they? You think a guy named Simon Morgenstern was Irish Catholic?" "Hiram" maybe was sleeping through the rest of novel, yes? When Inigo thinks he's failed at avenging his father's death, he hears his father speaking to him: "'I don't want your 'sorry'! My name is Domingo Montoya and I died for that sword and you can keep your 'sorry.' If you were going to to fail, why didn't you die years ago and let me rest in peace?'" Earlier dialogue from Domingo goes like this: "Why? My fat friend asks why? He sits there on his world-class ass and has the nerve to as me why? Yeste. Come to me sometime with a challenge." The whole thing is about as Irish Catholic as Morgenstern. That Goldman draws attention to it adds a whole other layer (and a lot more winking) to a book already busting with both.

I love that you love this kind of thing. I'll meet you on the No. 5 bus---maybe we'll see Motzaaart!

Hehe. Indeed. Since we know him so very good.

20.) The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson ***

Comps reading, round two. Go! I enjoy Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but I always find myself wishing Stevenson had been inclined to flesh the story out more. I feel incredible sympathy for Jekyll/Hyde, and I want to see them/him as a character who I can get to know rather than a sort of stand-in for an idea.

21.) The Beast in the Jungle, Henry James ***

Henry James is one of the few writers of fiction I've encountered who I simply do not follow. I just don't get his meaning most of the time. It's an entirely different sort of situation than, say, the way I don't get Hemingway. I understand Hemingway's sentences, I just don't see why I should bother reading them. I often find that I don't understand James's sentences, which I suspect may be a shame, because what I've read about The Beast in the Jungle indicates to me that I might like the story very much. I find this inability to read him very peculiar (I am a third year English PhD student, after all), and someday if I have the inclination, I'm going to try to figure out why.

I have to ask, do you like James Joyce? I've been teaching for a few years after receiving an MA (I'm starting PhD work this fall), so I'm constantly in contact with English grad. students, majors, etc., and it seems like about ninety percent of them understand and enjoy Joyce, but not James, or else are the exact opposite. For me, I have a very difficult time making myself read Joyce, but "Beast in the Jungle" is one of my favorite stories, and I love James overall (though I admit I feel like I need to reread Turn of the Screw before I can really get a grip on it. Anyhow, I was just curious....

>14 lycomayflower: (I'm late to the party!). I laughed when I read your post about Hemingway. I just finished Joyce Carol Oates's latest collection in which she tweaks five of our iconic American authors, including Hemingway. In fact, I thought she so perfectly (well, maybe not perfectly) imitated Hemingway's writing style that I was soon snoozing off. I could just not get through it. Hemingway's thoughts while he's killing himself and so on. . . (what a wicked sense of humor she has...)

And she tweaks James also (re message#21). Borrows from his writing style and gives him passion (and a bit of obsession) late in life as a volunteer at a war-time hospital. 'The Master' in there with a the flies, blood and bodily fluids. Again, Oates has a wicked sense of humor. . .

>my oldest daughter (28) read the Princess Bride in 7th grade and has been quoting it and the movie ever since. No chance of bad dreams from most middle-schoolers. . . (it's really tame compared to the other stuff many middle-schoolers watch:-)

Glad i finally made time to venture into some more threads! Thanks for letting me visit.

22.) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling ****

The last of the books I'm reading with my students this semester. I've read it before, of course, (I think this is the fourth time). It's my least favorite of the seven (with five a very close second--in fact, they may very well flip-flop in my esteem each time I read them). This one I like mostly as a prologue to what I consider the really good stuff--though there are moments in Stone that I just love (Dumbledore awarding those last 10 points to Neville at the end-of-year feast? Awesome sauce.) Five I actually dislike at times (Umbridge repeatedly makes me literally want to throw the book), but five is also where the whole Voldemort story really starts to take off for me, where the stakes rise to a level which solidifies the movement of the series beyond (quite good) children's literature. When I first read Stone (about two years after it came out--I was nineteen), I dismissed it as a good book for people half my age but nothing I was interested in. I wised up in the years between then and the summer after my first year as an MA student. I tore through the first five books that summer and then pouted off-and-on for a year until six was released. That was a great summer. It was the rebirth of my joy in getting absolutely lost in a book.

23.) Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth ***

Um, yes. Not sure what to do with this really. It was engaging enough that I read through it essentially in one go, but the characters leave me pretty cold, and while the situation was interesting enough, I find myself sort of impatient with the whole thing. I constantly was yelling, "Well, what did you think would happen," and my belief that the two principals' inability (or refusal) to understand themselves and each other is sort of the point doesn't make me any less impatient with it.

RE: Message #37 You should hop over to Nickelini's thread and follow the discussion of Jekyll & Hyde there. Read the rest of her thread while you're at it.

RE: Message 39

I do like Joyce . . . sometimes. Some of the stories in Dubliners are my favorites ever. The last page or so of "The Dead" is probably in my top five favorite literary passages. I've never been brave enough to try Finnegan's Wake (beyond the few pages the members of a grad class on Yeats and Joyce read together at a local pub). I don't get Ulysses in the sense that I think Joyce's stylistic and other choices get in the way of story (I suspect Joyce and I would disagree petulantly on this point), but I don't have the trouble understanding him that I do James.

RE: Message 40

I'm glad you enjoyed my thread, avaland!

24.) At Swim, Two Boys, Jamie O'Neill *****

Finally, finally, I had time to finish this lovely, lovely book. We don't have an equivalent word to "virtuoso" for someone with superior skill with language, do we? Because that's what At Swim, Two Boys is: a virtuoso literary performance. O'Neill seems to understand and experience language on a higher level than the rest of us. He sees how sentences and words fit together, and he tweaks them into combinations startlingly both unexpected and inevitable. O'Neill's prose is all about sound, and his book is all about story. And that's what's so remarkable about At Swim, Two Boys--it is at once a pitch perfect exercise in masterful language art and an engaging story populated with the sorts of characters who I am certain I will find myself thinking about at odd moments for years. Language never trumps story and story never trumps language; they are finely intertwined, with each word, each sentence, each character, each event displaying the same care in their crafting. The comparison to Joyce feels inescapable, but O'Neill's prose resists being described as language play and there's nothing clever about the book. I felt when I was reading it that O'Neill had a story to tell and he told it in the way he knew how. And that way is beautiful. I never got the feeling, as I so often do with Joyce, that he was sniggering quietly to himself because he expected me not to get the joke--or even that there was a joke to begin with.

So, I should read this book? *grin*

You! In the sneakers! Outta the pool!

25.) Who Put that Hair in my Toothbrush?, Jerry Spinelli

This was one of my all-time favorites in middle school. It was one of the few books I read over and over again that I didn't own, and I must have taken it out of the library about a million times. I've looked for it every time I went to our used bookstore for the last few years, and this past week there it was for 75 cents. I zipped through it and it's just as good as I remember. I just wish I had an older copy with the cover like the one from the library--yellow with Megin kneeling on her bed with Greg yelling at her and Toddie stuck in the middle nibbling on a doughnut. I loved book covers as a kid and often flipped back to look at the cover after each chapter. And I loved that one--but I always thought the depiction of Megin's room was way too clean.

26.) The Kings and Queens of England: A Tourist Guide, Jane Murray ***1/2

This book was always around when I was growing up, and for a long time it was the book I went to if I needed to know who came after whom. It went with me to college and my roommate often squirrelled off with it (until I found her her own copy for a birthday). But I'd never actually read it before. Until now. It's fun (Murray has a dry wit) and reasonably informative, though I do find the "backwards" organization (she starts with Elizabeth II and works back to Edward the Confessor) maddening despite agreeing (to a point) with Murray's reasoning for doing it that way. About halfway through I gave up and started reading from the back. Consequently, Edward V seems sort of ultimate to me, being the king I gave up just prior to and then eventually ended up at.

27.) An Assembly Such as This, Pamela Aidan ***1/2

I've explained on my Profile how I go about rating books I've read, and An Assembly Such as This is probably the best example of a three and one half I've read recently. I liked it a lot, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and years from now I'll probably remember the gist and maybe even some scenes and maybe even with some fondness, but it doesn't rise to the level of something I would read again.

Reviewers of the book who had reservations about it noted that Darcy seems perhaps too preoccupied with Elizabeth (particularly when she is not around), that descriptions of characters' feelings tend to melodrama, and that the prose is often purple. All true. But Aidan does a good enough job telling the story, recreating Austen's characters, and providing motivation for Darcy that I mostly didn't mind. I did have some trouble getting into the book, but when, after 25 pages or so, I flipped to the back of the book and discovered that Aidan originally wrote the story as fan fiction self-published on-line, I had a much easier time with it. I suppose I subconsciously switched into fanfic reading mode.

I've seen some people who have commented that the book reads like fan fiction use that fact as a kind of explanation for the quality of the prose or as a description of the quality one ought to expect of the book. That's sort of a ridiculous thing to say--perhaps like saying that one should expect a meal to be "like restaurant food." Quite a wide range of quality can be comprehended in the idea of "fan fiction"; some of it is wretched while some of it rises, on the levels of plot, characterization, and prose, well above the quality of many professionally published and printed works of fiction. Aidan's novel is like fan fiction in that it does what much fan fiction does--it explores areas that the original text does not. When I read fan fiction, I do so primarily to get what was left out of the original--whether it be a relationship the original hinted at but never explored, or a continuation of a story, or "correcting" a plot point (such as a death) some audience members disliked, or an exploration of a what-if scenario. While I will not read very badly written fan fiction, I occasionally read fan fiction of a lower quality of prose if the retelling aspect is sufficiently interesting and well done. The story itself is more often the point, and I'm more inclined to put up with some infelicities in prose and style to get at the story. When I say that I had an easier time with An Assembly Such as This once I started looking at it as fan fiction, I mean just that I found it enjoyable once I put what is good about it (the retelling of Pride and Prejudice from a new point of view) above what's not so great (the prose). This is something I'm unaccustomed to doing with published novels but let myself do with fan fiction on occasion.

We haven't seen you over at the gathering place thread - love it if you would come introduce yourself!!

28.) Duty and Desire, Pamela Aidan ***3/4

Okay, I'm probably pushing this fraction of stars things a little far. But I did enjoy this sequel a bit more than An Assembly Such As This. I'm not sure whether the prose actually got better or if I just noticed infelicities less often, but the things that bothered me about the first one were less bothersome this time. Though I will say that I could do with about a third fewer adjectives altogether and at least half as many attached to dialogue tags. Aidan follows Darcy through the biggish bit of P&P where he is absent, and at first I was a little unsure about a retelling of sorts that would stray so far from the original. But despite some minor problems I have with Aidan's interpretation of Darcy's character (I enjoy seeing his motivations and feelings on the page and for the most part I buy it, but sometimes he's just a little too wooby to believe), I liked her foray into a sort of creepy, gothic storyline while Darcy tried to escape his feelings about Elizabeth with a visit to some old college friends.

29.) These Three Remain, Pamela Aidan **** ish

Quite enjoyable, though what is wrong with the first two books of the trilogy is wrong here too. What makes this volume stand out from among the three, I think, is the way it provides reasons for and illustrates Darcy's change in character (where in P&P one might argue that he doesn't so much change as Elizabeth just comes to understand him), the dramatization of some of Darcy's actions that we only hear snippets about in P&P (such as his dealing with Wickham and Lydia), the inclusion of specific historical and political markers for the story (such as the assassination of the British prime minister in May of 1812), and Aidan's characterization of both characters only glimpsed in P&P (such as Anne de Bourgh and especially Georgiana Darcy) and those she has invented for the story (particularly Dy Brougham).

30.) Cathleen, ni Houlihan, William Butler Yeats ***

One act play where a personification of Ireland entices a young man away from his family and imminent wedding in order to support her in the 1798 Rebellion. A perfect opportunity to satirize either the Irish people more concerned with their personal lives than the fate of their country or to mourn the drive to abandon family and love for the sake of patriotism, the play seems to do neither. Though I suppose in a performance a director and players could tilt it either way.

31.) The Critic as Artist, Oscar Wilde ***

I may be the only person who in reading The Critic as Artist feels sorry for Ernest. He never really gets a chance to defend his point of view. I've also realized that about half of the dialogue from Todd Haynes's film Velvet Goldmine comes from this piece. I knew that film was greatly indebted to Wilde in a lot of ways, but I hadn't known the extent to which they actually lifted his words before.

32.) Riders to the Sea, John Millington Synge ***

One-act play depicting the tragedy of Irish life by the sea. Fairly moving.

33.) The Plough and the Stars, Sean O'Casey ***

Four-act play about the Easter Uprising. Perhaps I'm spoiled by At Swim, Two Boys, which treats pretty much exactly the same subject matter in a manner more appealing to me, but this did what I expected it to and no more. Certainly interesting as an example of Irish drama of the time (circa 1926) but that's all.

34.) Cane, Jean Toomer ***

Like Ceremony, this is surely better than I think it is. I just couldn't keep my head in it. Probably it suffered from being read in bits along with so many other texts.

35.) Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot ***

The knights' speeches to the audience at the end of part two puts me in mind of a Monty Python skit; I have yet to decide if that interpretation makes me ridiculous, clever, or impudent.

I think it takes 3 plays to equal 1 book.
I'm just saying.
And of course, you ARE ridiculous, clever and impudent, regardless of your reaction to Eliot.

I think if 84 Charing Cross Road counts as a book (which, apparently, we both think it does), then plays do too. Thhsssbbbtttt.

36.) Prince Caspian, C. S. Lewis ***

After seeing the new movie last week, I wanted to see how it differed from its source material. The book doesn't improve my overall impression of The Chronicles of Narnia much.

37.) Passing, Nella Larsen ***

Story of an African American woman (Clare) "passing" for white in 1920s New York. Told from the point of view of one of the woman's childhood friends (Irene), who "passes" only, as she says, in matters of "convenience" in restaurants, at the theatre, et cetera, the book is mostly about Irene's fears and insecurities which arise (partly) because of Clare's deception. Good, though I think it ends abruptly without adequately exploring the consequences and implications of the situation.

38.) Death in Venice, Thomas Mann ****

Good. Far more engaging than I expected.

39.) Waiting for Lefty, Clifford Odets ***

One act play in several episodes illustrating the conditions which lead working- class men to striking and considerations of communism. Not bad, though I think the effect intended is dependent almost entirely on seeing it staged.

I enjoyed your review and it has inspired me to read this book--I bought it several years ago after reading Song of Solomon, also by Toni Morrison-- which I loved and highly recommend if you haven't read it. It sort of reminds me of "magical realism" that is in so much hispanic fiction.

40.) The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West ***

I like West's writing, and I think I get what she's doing here. But somehow it just didn't quite work for me.

41.) Atonement, Ian McEwan *****

This and At Swim Two Boys are tied for best book I've read so far this year, though Atonement may edge out ASTB by a tiny margin because it was a more personal read for me. The prose, the plotting, the characters in Atonement all contribute to its five-star status in my mind, but, as much as anything else, the way I identified with the young Briony of the first section will always mark it out as one of my favorites. Young Briony is far smarter than she is mature--a state which is not, really, her fault but which leads her to actions for which she is nevertheless responsible. She reminded me very much of myself as a child in the years after I was no longer young enough to be excused for saying and doing things with real adult consequences but before I had enough awareness of both myself and the adult world to know when to keep my mouth shut (and when not to). A line from Alan Bennett's The History Boys comes to mind: "The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."

42.) Machinal, Sophie Treadwell ***

Nine-episode play dealing with machination and women, particularly as they are seen and trapped by society (and men). Okay.

43.) Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West **1/2

I'm just not getting it.

Interesting--you and your namesake read Rebecca West at about the same time. She liked it better.

lindsac'ls review

44.) Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl ****

Engaging, fun, sometimes spooky, and for me a very fast read even at 514 pages. This is one of those books you can't say much about for fear of spoiling it. Recommended.

>68 laytonwoman3rd:: yup, but it's that diversity that makes the world go 'round!

45.) Upstairs Downstairs, John Hawkesworth ***

46.) Upstairs Downstairs II: In My Lady's Chamber ***

I picked these up at a used bookstore mostly for the novelty of them. I enjoyed watching Upstairs Downstairs in reruns on our local PBS affiliate as a teenager and am now rewatching the series on DVD. I didn't know novelizations of the series had been produced. The books are just passably written and I find it very peculiar what has been left out (particularly in the second book, which seems to miss out several rather important developments in the second season and to gloss over everything much more quickly then the first). In any case, curiosities to own and two afternoons' worth of fair amusement.

47.) Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen **

This is one of those plays I've always heard about but knew nothing about. I wanted to like it. I did not. The characters left me cold, and I read the thing in constant anticipation of what awful thing some poor wretch was going to do to some other poor wretch. Someday I hope someone can explain the merits of the play to me, because, somehow, I still want to like it.

48.) Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov ***

With the exception of Shakespeare and plays I have already seen, I only read plays for school. I do not like to experience them on the page when their intended place is on the stage. I believe they nearly always suffer from being read rather than performed, and I suspect that my lukewarm response to most of the plays I've read this summer in preparation for comps speaks to that belief.

So, you didn't care for Uncle Vanya, either? Or am I leaping to a conclusion?

I liked it better than Hedda Gabler, but I didn't like it very much.

49.) Playboy of the Western World, John Millington Synge ***

50.) Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello ***1/2

Some really nifty stuff going on in this three-act play, but the effect of the tension between the characters' reality and the dramatic conventions used to perform a reality is almost completely lost on the page.

51.) A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams ****

Good stuff.

Since I've hit my "goal," (which wasn't really a goal at all), I thought I'd take a moment to see what kind of reading I've done so far this year.

Out of the 51 books listed above:

33 were novels, of which
12 were for comps
5 were for the classes I taught
16 were simply for my own enjoyment, and
11 were rereads of which
3 were for comps and
5 were for teaching;

5 were nonfiction, of which
3 were for comps
2 were simply for my own enjoyment, and
0 were rereads;

13 were plays, of which
11 were for comps
2 were simply for my own enjoyment, and
1 was a reread, of which
1 was for comps.

Altogether now:

Novels: 33
Nonfic: 5
Plays: 13

Comps: 26
Teaching: 5
Self: 20

Rereads: 12
First-time: 39

Do you keep track of this in columns??

RE #80: That wouldn't be a veiled reference to my genetics, would it? The ones what didn't come from you? ;-)

Veiled? No, I don't think it was veiled at all. *Hug*

Ye've drapped orf me firs' page, y'ave. POoooost.

52.) The Verge, Susan Glaspell ***

Another play for comps, she said sadly, trying, though not very successfully, to keep the sigh out of her voice.

53.) The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder ****

Saw this play performed in college and was completely baffled by it. Like Sabina in act one, "I see what this . . . play means now" that I have read it. I'm not sure if it makes more sense because I've read it, or because I'm older, or because I've now been exposed to it twice. In any case, a strange little play, but it works.

Good luck on your Modernism comps coming up this month, Lyco. I didn't get far with mine before my Ph.D. ground to a halt because of my lads but I can still remember vividly how much work it all was. Break a leg!

88: Thanks, tiffin! Two weeks of studying to go, then three days of furious exam-writing. And then start all over again for exam three!

54.) Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill ****1/2

Loved it. This is a play that's always sort of hovered on the edge of my knowledge of literature. I was aware of it and of the fact that it was meant to rank up there with the best, but I didn't have the foggiest notion what it was about. Definitely goes on the "to be seen performed" list.

55.) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce ****

This comp exam marks the third time I was supposed to read this book and the first time I have. (Shhhh.) I enjoyed it quite a bit. Better even than Dubliners (as a whole, anyway) and much better than Ulysses, which makes me cranky.

56.) Modernism, Peter Childs ****1/2

My "review" reading for my modern literature comp exam. A nice overview and a great way to settle down and remind myself that I know what I am talking about before the exam.

You go, modern girl.

57.) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling ****

A reread. Still my least favorite of the HP books, but better than I remembered it being. I especially like the second-to-last chapter, the obligatory chapter where Dumbledore explains just what the heck's been going on for the last 800 pages. It's quite touching.

I like it it is the best I think of all the harry potter books!!

I love harry potter and the deathly hallows I got it when I came out i was the 1first costumer in the shop

bye bye

58.) Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver ****

I read at least the beginning of Pigs in Heaven around the time I first read The Bean Trees (about fifteen years ago). I remember very distinctly one line near the beginning of the book and am reasonably sure I remember where I was when I read it. But I'm not sure I finished it as I had no recollection of the middle and end. I am always struck by how good Kingsolver is when I start one of her books. I don't know why I forget this in between. In all of Kingsolver's books that I have read she does a great job depicting women and women's community (something I am often impatient with but which rings absolutely true for me in her books), and in Pigs in Heaven the juggling of multiple character points of view and of multiple ways of seeing the world--and the way the reader is made to empathize with all of them--is particularly well done.

59.) Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Gregory Maguire ****

I really enjoy retellings when they are done well, and Wicked is done well. Maguire creates a story that is entirely his own while still weaving in the original material in ways that are interesting and believable. Well-written too. Though there are a few points where I thought the pace was a bit too slow (mostly in section two), this is a very enjoyable read that will stick with me. Whenever I catch myself in the shower puzzling over the book I've been reading, I know the book was good.

60.) She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Jennifer Finney Boylan ****

I like creative nonfiction and I enjoy the essay as a form, but I'm often impatient with book-length memoirs--perhaps because real lives are not stories and getting them into the guise of narrative often comes off as artifice rather than artful. She's Not There works partly because the part of her life Boylan relates is story-like in the sense that it has a story arc with a natural beginning, middle, and end (or, at least, stopping point). But that's really a minor consideration with this book I think; what makes it so compelling is Boylan's skillful prose, her apparent honesty on the page, and her ability to evoke in the reader an awareness of one's own deeply (and, perhaps unconsciously) held notions and prejudices about gender and identity. Recommended.

61.) The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman ****

I'd tried to read this two or three times before now and never got through it. This time I'm reading it with my students, so I sort of had to. Pullman's take on sin, evil, and innocence and experience draws me in, but I see now why I've had so much trouble getting through the book in the past--I don't much care about the characters. The world Pullman has created is fascinating, as are his concepts, but Lyra, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel and so on never feel like real people in the way that the characters in my favorite books do. That such horrible things happen in this book (and I must say that Pullman is rather good at evoking horribleness) leaves me with a sour taste that is in no way counterbalanced by the sort of delight or joy I expect from fantasy, even when it's dark. I'm probably intrigued enough to carry on with Book II, but, given my overall reaction, I sort of resent that fact.

Funny--I enjoyed that book, but just never have been moved to pick up the next one. (I really only posted this to bump your thread back up to the top of my page!)

Um hmmmm....and where are YOU with No. 62?? I wanna know what you're gonna say.

102: *I* was working all day. ;-)

You SAID you were going to finish it. I hearn you.

62.) The Welsh Girl, Peter Ho Davies ***

I know LW3 has just reviewed this (I recommended it to her when I was halfway through and then she went and finished before I did!), but I've not yet read what she's said about it.

The Welsh Girl ought to be better than it is. The concept is interesting (the story follows a German in a POW camp in a Welsh town and a girl living in the town) and Peter Ho Davies writes well. But there's nothing terribly compelling about the book. I enjoyed it okay as I was reading but found it very easy not to come back to. Nothing ever surprised me in the unfolding of the plot, and that might not always be a criticism--but in the absence of wanting to know the answer to "and then?", I should care deeply for the characters or be enthralled by the language. I was not. As for the structure of the narrative, the switching between Esther's and Karsten's points of view worked well, but the prologue-interlude-epilogue bits too obviously provided an opportunity for a third, more removed character to observe the story and serve as a mouth piece for the novel's ideas. Not a bad read and I will likely read more of Ho Davies's work (though that may be based more an a reading a heard him give a few weeks ago in which I was absolutely captivated by the (as yet unpublished) short story he read), but ultimately somewhat disappointing.

63.) A Man without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut ***1/2

A short collection of short essays mostly about art, recent politics, and the state we've got ourselves into. Occasionally inspiring and often depressing. The book was published in 2005, and reading it on 5 November 2008, I couldn't help but feel like I was reading something from a different era. That may prove to be magical thinking, but there it is.

64.) Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne ****

There's an episode of As Time Goes By in which Lionel comes home from the library with a stack of books which he says he thinks he's read but actually hasn't. Winnie-the-Pooh is one of them, and that episode always makes me think that Winnie-the-Pooh would be on my list of Actually Haven'ts too. So I got myself a copy a few months ago and finally got round to reading it. Someone surely read these stories to me at one time and many of these adventures were included in various television and movie features--I certainly knew all the stories included here. It was fun to read through the book with an adult awareness that puts the silliness in a different perspective--nonsense that makes perfect sense if viewed from the right angle. There's a certain modernist sensibility to the way Milne portrays a child's view of the world which is very intriguing.

Winnie the Pooh was one of my favorites as a child and is one of my favorites as an adult. I have discovered that the "in-between-time" age doesn't appreciate it as much and most children aren't getting exposed to it any more. What a shame! I really enjoyed -- and concur with -- your remarks about the book.

Hubby and I also enjoy As Time Goes By. Unfortunately we have to rent it because our PBS station doesn't carry it.

>64 lycomayflower:. We've been having a classic "blustery day" here. I should have been reading the Pooh myself.

65.) The Many Hands, Dale Smith ***

This Doctor Who book was ultimately somewhat disappointing as it fails (though it does try) to capture the personality of the show and the Doctor as portrayed by David Tennant. The story was passable, the writing fair (point of view, point of view, who's got the point of view?).

66.) On Moral Fiction, John Gardner ****

A reread and always fascinating.

67.) The Awakening, Kate Chopin ***

Disappointing. I have no sympathy for Edna, mostly because I don't like her or the way she reacts to her "awakening." I suppose an argument could be made for the oppressiveness of Edna's time not allowing her space to become the woman she is trying to become, but I can't help but think that she didn't try very hard to carve out that space. I feel the injustice of making such a proclamation from 2008 and I suspect that I may be missing the point, but I can't help but think of books like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre where women living in societies not disposed toward women's liberation or independence in any way manage to discover who they are; maintain their own, individual senses of self; and find happiness in the time they were born into. Ultimately, The Awakening seems to be about how oppressive times destroy a woman--which does not make for a particularly affirming or enjoyable read.

68.) A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

An annual read of which I never grow tired.

69.) William Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson ****

Very successful at what it sets out to do, which is to lay out succinctly what we do know about Shakespeare and to point out some of the conjecture that will likely never be more than that (and why). Mostly this is all information I'd already absorbed over the years (except, oddly enough, some of the information about the plays themselves), but it's great to have it in a small book with index and bibliography. Also, as per usual with Bryson, an enjoyable, witty read.

70.) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson ***1/2

Enjoyable, but I didn't like this as much as other Winterson I've read.

That's it for 2008. Not a bad reading year. I'll be over at the 75 Book Challenge for 09: My Thread for 2009.

can you help me out? Im doing a paper comparing A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler.. no clue where to start!