fannyprice's 2009 999 Challenge

For my 2008 888 Challenge, I over-planned and underachived. For 2009, I am giving myself a break and making it easier and more flexible. If I really do no overlaps (no guarantee on that), this will be 81 books, which is pretty much my maximum for a year. Between work, life, and my natural resistance to authority (even my own!), that’s going to be pretty tough. Even though I will probably not complete this challenge, I just can't resist tempting fate.




Just a note to myself - the ticker refers to the number of "slots" filled out of 81, rather than total number of books read, since there are up to 9 overlaps, if the rules from last year hold.

Categories I am thinking about:

#1 – Speculative Fiction of All Sorts

Changed this again on 01/11/2009

#2 – Too Long on TBR List (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Trying to force myself to read some of Mt. TBR. I think I would want to limit this to the mountain of books that I actually own already but have not read. My "unread" tag count is somewhat embarrassing.

#3 – New (To Me) Authors (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Expanding my reading & also giving myself some needed flexibility.

Some authors I want to read: Ian McEwan, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Cormac McCarthy, Wilkie Collins

#4 – Cold Places (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Travel)

Books set in or about the polar regions, Scandinavia, or other frozen-ass places. I can’t help it, I love the cold.

#5 – Art, Graphic Design, Architecture & Illustration

I collect these books out of love and appreciation for their appearance, but rarely actually sit down and read/view them cover to cover. This year that’s going to change. This will also be a somewhat "easy" category.

#6 – Short-Form Literature (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

I'm a huge fan of an artful essay or an intriguing short story that leaves me wanting more. Some things just don't work as a full-length story.

#7 – Books I’m Not Expecting (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

This is a silly way of saying books that come from the LT Early Reviewers program, books for my book club, books recommended by others, etc.

#8 – Books of Jewish Interest (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

I'm really excited about this category, which I believe a few others in the challenge are also doing. I have a mountain of Israeli fiction that I really should get back into.

#9 - Science, Natural History, Medicine, Etc.

#1 – Speculative Fiction of All Sorts

1) Peeps - Scott Westerfeld (fantasy, vampires) - 01/11/2009
2) A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray (fantasy, magic) - 02/06/2009
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#2 – Too Long on TBR List (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Trying to force myself to read some of Mt. TBR. I think I would want to limit this to the mountain of books that I actually own already but have not read. My "unread" tag count is somewhat embarrassing. This is the most defined category so far, but its all up for grabs in the end.

1) In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 - Mary Beth Norton (NF) (recommended by avaland)
2) The Road – Cormac McCarthy (F)
3) City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa – Adam LeBor (NF)
4) The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins (F)
5) Villette - Charlotte Bronte (F)
6) The House of Mathilde – Hasan Daoud (F)
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#3 – New (To Me) Authors (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Expanding my reading & also giving myself some needed flexibility.

1) The Planets - Dava Sobel (NF) - 01/10/2009
2) A Certain Slant of Light - Laura Whitcomb - 01/24/2009
3) A Spell of Winter: A Novel - Helen Dunmore - 02/01/2009
4) The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West - 02/14/2009
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#4 – Cold Places (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Travel)

Books set in or about the polar regions, Scandinavia, or other frozen-ass places. I can’t help it, I love the cold.

1) Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet - Mark Lynas (NF - climate change) - 01/03/2009
2) The White Darkness - Geraldine McCaughrean (F - Antarctica) - 02/09/2009
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#5 – Art, Graphic Design, Architecture & Illustration

I collect these books out of love and appreciation for their appearance, but rarely actually sit down and read/view them cover to cover. This year that’s going to change. This will also be a somewhat "easy" category.

1) Mosques - Razia Gover - 01/24/2009
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#6 – Short-Form Literature (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

I'm a huge fan of an artful essay or an intriguing short story that leaves me wanting more. Some things just don't work as a full-length story.

1) The Nimrod Flipout - Etgar Keret (short fiction) - 02/01/2009
2) Rashomon and Other Stories - Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (short fiction)
3) For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories - Nathan Englander (short fiction)
4) Blow-Up and Other Stories – Julio Cortazar (short fiction)
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#7 – Books I’m Not Expecting (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

This is a silly way of saying books that come from the LT Early Reviewers program, books for my book club, books recommended by others, etc.

1) The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British - Sarah Lyall (NF) - 01/12/2009
2) Black Hole - Charles Burns (graphic novel) - 01/31/2009
3) Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde (F) - 03/01/2009
4) The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory (F) - 03/05/2009
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#8 – Books of Jewish Interest (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

I'm really excited about this category, which I believe a few others in the challenge are also doing. I have a mountain of Israeli fiction that I really should get back into.

1) City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa – Adam LeBor (NF) (overlap)
2) The Rabbi's Cat - Joann Sfar (F-graphic novel) - 01/31/2009
3) Golem - David Wisniewski (children's book)
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#9 - Science, Natural History, Medicine

Finally came up with the last category I want to do. Yay - this is broad, since every science book I read tends to make me want to read about another field of inquiry.

1) Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet - Mark Lynas (NF - climate change) - 01/03/2009 (overlap #1)
2) The Planets - Dava Sobel (NF - creative astronomy) - 01/10/2009 (overlap #2)
3) Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson (NF - astronomy) - 01/10/2009
4) The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1890-1980 - Elaine Showalter (NF - medicine) - 02/01/2009
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I look forward to following your 999 posts. :)

I'm pretty sure I'm doing Jewish interest as well, especially since I have a number of yet-to-be-read novels on the subject. Cold places is certainly a unique category! Is the upper Midwest cold enough?

P. S. Re: your note about vampires, I'd just seen your 75 post about the Cast novels. I have the first in the series checked out from the library, but I think I'll wait a little longer so I can count it for 2009. I figured I'll probably read 9+ vampire books in 2009 anyway (a sometimes guilty pleasure), so I might as well make it one of my 999 easy categories.

I can't wait to see what you put in your "Cold Places" category! I too have a peculiar affinity for all things "frozen-ass."

I, too, can't wait for your selections for "Cold Places." My Mom loves books based on cold regions. I have one in my tbr pile now called Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell, which she loved. Icebound, by Dr. Jerri Nielson, which is the true story of the doc in Antarctica that diagnosed and treated her own breast cancer, was also fascinating. I'd highly recommend that if you haven't read it already.

I've recently read Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness which is scifi but set on an icy planet, don't want to give the plot away but you definitely experience the cold in this book. I will be following your thread, I have a similar pile of unread Israeli fiction and am also guilty of collecting and not reading those illustration, design books as well. Good luck with your challenge.

I'm another who is fascinated by your cold places category. I read Ice Trap and liked it, too. I've also discovered the series by Arnaldur Indridason starting with Jar City - they take place in Iceland. If you like classics, have you read Kristin Lavransdattar? It is set in medieval Norway. I haven't finished it yet, but loved what I read so far.

Wow, thanks all for the suggestions on cold places. This is great! I will definitely check all of these out.

Another cold suggestion... I'll be reading Adm. Byrd's Alone. The few passages I've peeked at are amazing. He really had a wonderful grasp of language.

Yet another cold suggestion: Ice Museum: to Shetland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland, and Svalbaard in Search of the Lost Land of Thule by Joanna Kavenna . It's on my 999 Challenge actually. At 304 pages, it is totally do-able (no CHUNKSTER!)

I like your category #5 - I have a lot of those books around the house. I should make that a category - maybe next year.

I read For Relief of Unbearable Urges last year and enjoyed it.

A couple of other cold books come to mind - Margaret Mahy's The riddle of the frozen Phantom is an Antarctic adventure story for children I also liked Matthew Reilly's nonstop action adventure Ice Station.

If you like Jodi Picoult at all, the second half of The Tenth Circle takes place mostly in Alaska.

Hehe! The coldest (category #4) book I can think of was Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. This is about the author's ascent on Mount Everest. My husband said he was getting short of breath just from reading the book! :)

You might also like to read a book by the same author called Into the Wild which is about a young man who disappeared in the wilds of Alaska.

An older book, but one that was recently re-issued that is also worth reading is Alive by Piers Paul Read which is the true story of the survival of a team of soccer players after the plane in which they were traveling crashed onto a snow-covered and frozen mountaintop.

Brr! Think I'll go grab some hot chocolate and read a beach book. :)

You might be interested in Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, by Nando Parrado (2007). He was one of the survivors of the Andes plane crash described in Read's book, Alive.

For some cold fiction, check out The Solitude of Thomas Cave, by Georgina Harding (2007).

I heartily second the recommendation of Into Thin Air. It's quickly moving, interesting, sad, and cold, cold, COLD!

Another one is In the Ghost Country (mostly) by Peter Hillary, son of Edmund. It's all about this trip that Peter takes to duplicate (or maybe surpass; it's been a while, and my memory isn't exact) his dad's trip to the South Pole. Absolutely mind-boggling.

Isn't it interesting that the "cold places" category is getting so many recs?

For kids books, I highly recommend Sideways Stories from Wayside School and Holes, both by Lousi Sachar. They're completely different and both are excellent.

I'm looking forward to your progress here.

I have to get my frozen-ass suggestions in! An obvious one is The Shipping News. Less obvious is a book called The Long Walk about some escapees from a Russian labor camp who attempted to cross Siberia to freedom. Excellent read!

Cold Places #1 & Science, Natural History, Medicine #1 (first overlap used)

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet - Mark Lynas



A book on global warming seems like kind of a goofy first read for my "Cold Places" category, but the more I struggled through this book, the more I realized how appropriate it was for this category in the sense that it focuses on the disappearance of cold places due to global climate change. I learned a ton of information about the poles and polar-region ecosystems throughout history, so this was a great choice, even though it was inadvertent. The book also helped me to decide that I'd like to try a category focusing on science, nature, medicine, etc., so it gets the honor of being in that category as well, using the first overlap.

My Review

Mark Lynas aggregates a lot of studies on climate change - both forward-looking modeling and past-looking geological examination - to postulate about what the world would look like at each stage of overall warming - from 1 to 6 degrees. Although this was a tough book to get through - it reminded me of Jared Diamond's Collapse in that it often seemed repetitive - I am really glad I made the effort to complete it. The book was strongest when it stuck to the science & weakest when Lynas attempted to project the social-political consequences of a shrinking, heating, starving world. Despite the chapter on solutions, I was left feeling profoundly pessimistic at the end. Books of this sort, that deal with global issues that are tough to understand & require immense coordinated action by multiple actors at all levels - governments, corporations, individuals, international organizations - tend to reinforce my feeling of utter insignificance & impotence before a problem of such a massive scale.

Already I have changed my categories - I realized that I am just not going to read 27 picture books this year, no matter what, so I killed the children's book category & replaced it with YA Books & Graphic Novels. Still a fairly easy category, but a bit more realistic.

Also changed the undetermined category to Science, Natural History, Medicine - this should be broad enough to encompass my constantly-expanding range of interests.

Ooh! "YA Books & Graphic Novels"

Great category and one which I also explored over the past two years with great success.

A couple of crossover graphic novels you might like to explore are:

The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar - my favorite graphic novel by the French author and a graphic novel which has a sequel now, I understand!

A Contract with God - by Will Eisner - the first graphic novel of Jewish content that I ever read and one which demonstrated the talents of the innovative late graphic novelist Will Eisner. There are other graphic novels of Jewish content by this author, but I think this is the best one.

By the way, I was glad to see Palestine in your collection. That was an amazing book, albeit a difficult one for me to read.

Hey Madeline - Thanks for the suggestions. I checked the synopsis on Amazon - The Rabbi's Cat looks like a must-read! There appears to be a sequel - are you familiar with that at all?

I feel exhausted right now, what with the situation in Gaza. Every type of media I encounter seems to be sparking parallels - I was watching a Japanese anime - Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex (the second season) & a huge portion of the plot deals with refugees in a giant urban camp who are being bombarded & how the state deals with refugee terrorism.

Every type of media I encounter seems to be sparking parallels

Yeah. I know. I'm now reading When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka - about a Japanese family heading for a internment camp in the U.S. during World War II. More refugees.. *sigh*

I haven't seen the sequel to The Rabbi's Cat yet, but I'm adding it to my wish list.

It is very hard watching the situation unfold in Gaza. :(

I could swear I'd suggested Pynchon's Against the Day for the frozen-ass selections, but I must have never hit post.

To really get the theme down, how about Under the Glacier by Laxness? And, they're all those Russian lit - you can have "Lara's theme" playing on the ipod and read a little Pushkin and just feel the snow drifting up to the second story.

I read both The Rabbi's Cat and it's sequel together a few months ago. The first is better, but the second one did have some good moments. I went to a great exhibition in Amsterdam's Jewish Museum last year - Jewish comic book superheroes and saw original artwork for most of the great comic books (including Maus, Fantastic Four, Rabbi's Cat etc etc) that have come out since WW2. I got my copy of The Rabbi's Cat there and my daughter (11yrs) started collecting The Spirit. I also have Jetlag by Etgar Keret which I picked up when I was in Israel.

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What is Jetlag? Are those short stories by Etgar Keret illustrated by a comic book artist? Has it been released in the United States (er, in English - as you are in New Zealand and bought it in Europe!)? Did you like it? Who is "Actus" (listed as the author)? Is that the artist or publisher?

Jetlag is basically a graphic novel of five stories by keret, illustrated by 5 israeli illustrators such as Ruth Modan. Actus is the publisher. Some of the stories I'd definitely read before such as Margolis, about the moneybox pig. It's available on Amazon so I presume you can buy it in the US - it's in English. I liked it but I wouldn't call it outstanding - the illustration styles were all quite different.Have you read Gaza Blues - his joint publication with Samir El-Youssef? If you want to experience more of Keret I'd suggest looking out for his movies - Jellyfish (director alongside his wife, Shira Geffen) and Total Love (script).

>34 SqueakyChu: & 35 I have Jetlag too and got it from Amazon, so yes, definitely available in the US. Mine is the only review of it on LT, so you can see what I thought - I'm agreeing with avatiakh - OK, but not great.

Has either of you read Gaza Blues? I've ordered it and am waiting for it to arrive.

SqueakyChu - thanks for the recommendation of Palestine. I managed to find it at Borders and, with quite a bit of coupon-finagling, managed to get the hardback Special Edition for $10!

Oh, no! Another book just went on my wishlist. :) (Gaza Blues)

I read Gaza Blues a couple of years ago - it is a collaboration between Keret & a Palestinian writer. From memory the Palestinian wrote one long story set in a camp and was interesting. Keret just dazzled once again with his unique style in a series of short stories. I do notice that each of his collections seems to have a few overlaps, but I do enjoy rereading his work anyway.

Thanks avatiakh! Can't wait for it to arrive!

Science, Nature & Medicine #2 & New Authors #1 (second overlap used)

The Planets - Dava Sobel



Fantastic - fun, creative, informative science writing. A series of essays on the standard 9 planets plus Earth's moon, riffing on different associations the author has with each. I particularly loved the Mars essay, which was written as an autobiography & a history of Mars from the perspective of a Martian rock discovered in Antarctica, and the Jupiter essay, which draws heavily on astrology, but in a cheeky - not cheesy - way to tell the life story of Galileo and the Jupiter probe named for him - going so far as to cast the probe's star chart, using its launch date & time as its birthday. Not straightforward non-fiction science writing at all, but something highly lyrical, poetic, fun and informative. I wish I had read the illustrated version though, as other reviewers seem to have commented on fantastic pictures & my book had none. I may try to buy the illustrated version, since this copy was a library book.

My Review

So far I am really enjoying my science/nature/medicine category & am really glad I added it. I also included this as an overlap with the new authors category, since I really enjoyed Dava Sobel's writing style(s) and her ability to make science accessible to non-science geniuses who wish they were (i.e., me), and I will be looking forward to reading more books she has written.

I'm using my overlaps kind of early so far, but I think that I need the illusion of having made progress early on. :)

You may already have read this, but The Golden Compass is both a YA & primarily set in the "North." It's also an outstanding read & the beginning of the Philip Pullman His Dark Materials Trilogy.

I'm new here, so I don't really understand how all of the threads work, but, "Hi."

Science, Nature & Medicine #3

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries - Neil deGrasse Tyson



A huge collection of essays on various topics of astronomy, cosmology, physics, etc., many of which I confess I did not understand entirely, despite being authored for the average reader. Still, I enjoyed this book very much.

Speculative Fiction #1

Peeps - Scott Westerfeld



Yet another new take on vampires - this time its very "scientific." Vampirism is caused by a parasite that is spread much like an STD, which may just be a convenient excuse to insert lots of teenage sexual tension into the book, but was somewhat interesting. Westerfeld's books are weird for me - a lot of the time I think they could be so much better executed than they are - plot pacing, character development, general writing style, etc. - but in certain respects I find them very intriguing and I almost always want to read more of them. So I will probably look into the sequel to this, although from what I can tell, it seems really stupid and deals with an entirely different group of characters. Thank god for the public library, so I at least am not spending money on my ridiculous vampire fascination.

Its probably time to read some quality literature at this point. (Blushes....)

I agree with what you said about Westerfeld's execution and his mystique too. You're not alone! I liked Peeps but I did not care for its sequel The Last Days. I almost enjoyed Uglies but didn't get Specials at all and never read Extras or Pretties. But I want to read more Westerfeld. Why is that?

I'm glad to hear you liked The Planets. I have an unread copy sitting on my shelf, and math/science category in my 999, so it may make an appearance in my reading list soon.

I also agree about Westerfeld. I've only read Uglies, Pretties, and Specials (a trilogy, which might explain why reading Specials before Pretties didn't make any sense), and I had mixed feelings about them. I really enjoyed Uglies despite its flaws, and I ended up enjoying Pretties despite not particularly liking the beginning, but I disliked Specials so much that I haven't read any more Westerfeld since. The concept was so good, though, and I do plan to read more eventually.... I bought a copy of Peeps before I read Specials, so I should at least get around to that one eventually.

I've read most of Westerfeld's books. Extras is quite good it doesn't have the same characters as Uglies etc and deals with issues of popularity and celebrity etc. I really liked his Midnighters trilogy.

Books I'm Not Expecting #1

The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British - Sarah Lyall



I requested this book from the library so long ago that I had forgotten about it; it ended up being a pleasant surprise. The author is an American who married a British man and relocates to England; her book reflects an American's culture shock at various British peculiarities and is arranged in chapters loosely focused on a number of subjects: sex, food, class, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, weather, the British penchant for putting oneself down, terrible customer service, cricket, etc. Actual Brits could probably find much to quibble with, just as an American could object to any number of a series of stereotypes a foreigner might note about us, but the book is quite humorous.

Lyall arrived in England in the 1990s, which she identifies as a time when many English institutions and cultural norms were undergoing changes. The House of Commons was "welcoming" increasing numbers of women, the House of Lords was under attack by reformers who questioned its purpose in the modern era, economic growth was bringing new attitudes about consumption and money, and even the rules of cricket were changing in order to attract younger, hipper fans. Since I'm not familiar with British social history in the 20th century, I'm not really in a position to judge whether Lyall's history is accurate here - one could probably argue that she's overstating the extent of these changes. I did wonder at her characterization of pre-1990s London as basically a provincial town. But I think the focus on changing culture helped the book to be more than just a series of eternal stereotypes about the nature of the British. All in all, a fun read, not serious, but that's ok.

The Flops of 2009 #1

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale - Holly Black



My first failed read of the year & one I was rather surprised to hate, given my new-ish obsession with young adult urban-fantasy type books. I had thought this might be a nice fit in the Speculative Fiction category, but if I don't finish it, I don't count it.... And I have no intention of finishing this one. This book was teh suck!

I felt like I was wading through the diary of some extremely pretentious teenager who had watched too many fantasy movies. Nothing that happened ever really seemed interesting or significant to me & many of the scenes just seemed so cliche - here is the part where the mystical main character falls for an ostensibly bad guy; here is the part where the main character is attacked by the bad guys and feels a million hands scratching at her or dragging her down or whatever; here is where an angry, bitchy teenager tells off the marginal authority figures in the book. Blah blah blah.

I expected to at least enjoy this on the guilty pleasure level but it was almost unreadable. I was shocked at how much I disliked it. After giving it a really good try, I only managed to get about halfway through it, at which point it was so much worse than it had been when I started it - I gave up. I hate giving up - I will generally plow through things because I hate leaving them unread, especially if they are short and easy like this book, but this just felt like such a colossal waste of time I couldn't make myself read any more. I think my vitriol toward this book is so strong because I really did expect to like it and was looking forward to geeking out with another young adult fantasy series for a while; now I feel disappointed that I can't. I'm not planning on finishing it & not planning on continuing with the series.

Find out more about this book that every reviewer other than me loved

Wow, that bad, eh? I'd thought about reading that series once I'm through with other YA fantasy, but now I doubt I'll try it. Oh, and I hate to be a vampire enabler, but I really enjoyed The Society of S (first in a series of two so far) - although it's a bit unusual among current vampire books in that there's not much romance or sexual tension.

>49 suzecate:, chanale, it might just be me. All the other reviewers on LT really seem to have enjoyed it. Perhaps I'm just burnt out on this genre. Not that I'm backing off one iota of what I said about Tithe. :)

I liked your review of The Anglo Files - on the pile it goes. I travel to the UK fairly often, and it will be good to know how I am unknowingly being culturally insensitive!

That cold places category sounds interesting.

One "cold" book I enjoyed was Gretel Ehrlich's book, The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold.

I've never gotten around to (but will, someday, hopefully) Ehrlich's This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland.

Another one I've never gotten around to is Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams.

For your category #4, cold places, just spotted this book on someone else's thread: The Ice Soldier: A Novel by Paul Watkins. Keeping it in mind for myself at some point, too.

>52 lindapanzo:, Thanks for the suggestions. I just started getting recommended Gretel Erlich after adding a whole bunch of Antarctica-related photo books to my wishlist, so I am definitely planning to check out both of those books.

>53 ReneeMarie:, I have not heard of The Ice Soldier, but based on the opening line of the only review on LT which reads: "COMBINE the literary genius of Evelyn Waugh, the story-telling skills of Alistair MacLean, the experience of Sir Edmund Hillary, and the verve and tenacity of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and the result would be something like The Ice Soldier," I think I have to have it. Thanks for calling this to my attention!

Edited for punctuation error

Art, Graphic Design, Architecture & Illustration #1

Mosques - Razia Grover



What follows is probably an overly bitchy review - I have been a crabby reviewer lately, savaging things that I find even moderately disappointing when I had expected to like them. I think its because I have gone through a totally dull & disappointing reading period for the last few months and am really struggling to find anything that grabs me, sucks me in and wows me. But here goes. My first entry in this category for the 999 Challenge.

Razia Grover's book on mosques is primarily an art/architecture book that showcases prominent mosques (and one not-a-mosque....) from the main regions ruled by Muslim empires. The main sections cover early mosques in the Arabian Peninsula & Damascus, Spain, North Africa, Mesopotamia, and India. Each chapter places the mosques in question in their historical and cultural context & discusses their prominent and distinctive architectural features.

What I Liked

(1) Each building was placed in its historical context with a discussion of the imperium that constructed it & the local cultural influences on its design. Overall the book demonstrates the evolution of the mosque form & the myriad of local variations around its central elements.

(2) Generally nice-looking, although some of the photos could have been better (see what I didn't like) and the paper was somewhat less than the highest quality. I bought this book for significantly less than its $80+ list price, but it seems that a book that is selling for such a price should be on better paper.

(3) Generally gorgeous buildings, especially the choices in the modern mosques section. Also I liked that this section was even present because it reflected a choice to show that the form was still evolving & further demonstrated regional variations in mosque architecture.

What I Disliked

Sadly, I found a fair amount to complain about. This book was nowhere near as attractive as I had hoped, which I guess is my biggest overall complaint. I also had a lot of little nits to pick - they seem really petty, but some of them are actually fairly significant errors/omissions/drawbacks.

(1) A nit: The Dome of the Rock is not actually a mosque & although the author says this in the separate section on the Dome of the Rock (contained in the Jerusalem section), the building is still identified as a mosque in the introductory map showing the locations of important mosques in the world. This is probably not actually important to most people, but its such a common popular misconception that I would hope the author would try to correct it. Its like she felt the building was too beautiful and significant to leave out, even though it has a different purpose than all the other buildings in the book. Either that or she figured she had to have Jerusalem in the book & the al-Aqsa mosque - despite being the third-most religiously significant mosque after those in Mecca & Medina - could not hold its own.

(2) A second nit: The opening map contains a box on significant Muslim empires throughout history but the empires are listed alphabetically which doesn't really make sense. Listing them chronologically by the particular regions they ruled over seems like it would have been more informative & would have mirrored the overall layout of the book.

(3) The sections are too short, which leads the author to sometimes mention structures that are not pictured in the book, which I found frustrating. Iraq is shorted space and Central Asia is almost completely passed over. This may simply be because many buildings that might have been featured have been destroyed over time & the author lacked significant information on them, but I thought it was an unfortunate oversight.

(4) Some of the photo choices were questionable. This was particularly glaring to me in the section on Turkey, which is the only place I have actually been able to see any of the buildings featured in this book. There are postcards that have better exterior shots of the Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia), which looks pretty unfortunate in this book & the interior shot she used is dark and doesn't show any of the incredible decoration.

(5) Finally, there is a very pretty two-page feature on Islamic decoration that contains somewhat of an inaccuracy that leads to an unexplained apparent contradiction: directly opposite a statement that Islamic tenets frowned upon figural representation is a photo of tilework containing a very figural painted representation of a man. The prohibition on figures really only applies to representational art for the purpose of worship - which is considered a form of idolatry. Forbidding or claiming that Islam forbids all depictions of human form is a misinterpretation or an over-zealous application of sayings contained in the hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad). There has been representational Islamic art - even of Muhammad - throughout Islamic history. Different sects of Muslims - particularly the Shi'a - have been much more open to depiction of human figures in art than have others. Obviously the author can't address this whole controversy in a single page, but she could have caveat-ed her statement more carefully or avoided the whole issue by not putting tilework depicting a human figure immediately opposite a statement that seems to suggest that such tilework should not even exist. Worst of all, there are no captions on the page or text elsewhere in the book that identifies what this tilework even is, where it is from, when it is from, or who the figure in question might be! I know this seems absolutely silly & it probably is, but inaccurate statements like this drive me nuts. If I didn't know anything about Islamic history or Islamic art, I would be completely confused by that page.

New To Me #2

A Certain Slant of Light - Laura Whitcomb



A rather magical love story about two ghosts - Helen and James - who find themselves inhabiting the bodies of contemporary teenagers from totally different sides of the tracks, as it were. James becomes Billy, a misfit druggie from a fantastically broken home who overdoses, allowing James' spirit to enter his body. Helen becomes Jenny, a nearly invisible damaged girl who's basically been brainwashed out of existence by her born-again Christian parents. This book was like three distinct books & I felt very differently about each of them. Much that was new & fantastic in the early portions of the book disappears in later parts of the book, where it becomes a more mundane star-crossed teen love story with a great deal of obvious family secrets & drama thrown into the mix.

All in all, I am of two minds about this book. Part of me just wants to go with the great, dreamy feeling the first part of the book gave me; the other part wants to criticize this book for some its trite and obvious ploys. That probably means it gets a three. Maybe three and a half. Still, I would recommend it to anyone who wants a good "hot water bottle book." (I stole that term from another LT user, cannot remember who, or I would give credit because its quite apt!) If she writes another book - I believe this is her first - I would not be opposed to giving it a shot.

Full Review - has more plot spoilers, but I try not to give anything too major away.

56> I read that one a couple months ago and had mixed feelings about it, too - I ended up giving it 3 stars, but it was a quick read and worth reading once, I thought.

Despite the so-so (not particularly "bitchy") review, and the mistakes (which strike me as the kind of mistakes someone who cares more about the architecture than the culture and history would make) the Mosques book still looks interesting. Just for the raw material.

>58 A_musing:, Yeah, perhaps you're right. Perhaps I focused too much on the culture and history, but since these feed so heavily into Islamic art & architecture, they really bugged me.

I read A Certain Slant of Light a few years ago, right after reading Elsewhere, another story told from "the beyond." I enjoyed both, although, I think Elsewhere is a better story.

Thanks for your note. It's so interesting to see other people's categories and choices. It looks like we may have a few of the same titles. I read "The Nimrod Flipout" last year. A few stories I loved, a few didn't quite do it for me, but overall I enjoyed it enough to be looking forward to reading another.

I started reading another John McWhorter years ago - "Word on the Street" I think, but I thought it was awful! "Power of Babel" is already looking much better.

Good luck on your 999!

Books of Jewish Interest #1

The Rabbi's Cat - Joann Sfar



FINALLY - something I can unequivocally say I loved. This graphic novel is set in colonial Algeria & Paris and tells the story of an Algerian rabbi coming to terms with religious and cultural change - oh and his talking cat. :) At first, the book drew me in with its story of a devilish cat who devours a parrot and learns to talk; he immediately demands to know if he's Jewish, wants a bar mitzvah and begs to be taught Kabbalah. If the book had been nothing more than a cute story about a cat, I still would have loved it. But it ended up being so much more - sprinkled throughout the text are little trinkets of wisdom on Jewish tradition, colonialism, cultural alienation & interaction, Jewish-Muslim coexistence & cultural syncretism, differences between Sephardic & Ashkenazi Jews in North Africa and in Europe - all done without being at all pretentious, in my opinion.

Near the end of the story, the rabbi and his cat travel from Algeria to France and the book masterfully uses color to contrast how the rabbi perceives his home (bright, warm, dirty, alive, familiar) and the land of his temporary & self-imposed exile (dark, cold, rainy, foreign, somewhat menacing). Using both written and visual cues to demonstrate how alienated the rabbi felt during his first trip to Paris really enhanced the presentation of the story. Thanks to all who recommended this book to me - its my first great read of the year!

Oh, the fun of reading The Rabbi's Cat!! I think I'll get that book for my best friend's birthday. I don't think she's seen that book yet, and I'm sure she'll love it - just as you did.

It is for books such as this, that I really believe people who pooh-pooh graphic novels just have to give them a chance. I think that, in the world of graphic novels today, there are topics that could appeal to just about anyone.

>63 SqueakyChu: - Seriously. I want to go read it again right now. How silly is THAT?

Not only is this a great graphic novel, I feel like its a story that was really enhanced by its presentation. I would not have wanted to read a straightforward book in which a Sephardic rabbi encounters Europe, is put off by it, and finally comes to accept differences & be a bit less close-minded about things. That would have struck me as a really played-out dull story. But the combination of the text, the visuals, and the fun-unexpected elements of the story (like the talking cat who studies the Torah and debates religion with an uptight rabbi) made it work.

But the combination of the text, the visuals, and the fun-unexpected elements of the story (like the talking cat who studies the Torah and debates religion with an uptight rabbi) made it work.

Interesting how visuals can help a story. In the graphic novel Maus II, I was especially interested in Art Spiegelman's diagrams of the buildings in Aushwitz, how they were set up, and the process of moving the Jews from the entrance of the building which housed the "showers" to the ovens. It's not something I would have sought out in a book or TV documentary. In Spiegelman's graphic novel, he gives people a chance to back away from the story of horror at times. That gives readers a chance to regain the composure to go back to that time and place and explore it just a little more in short spans of time.

But the combination of the text, the visuals, and the fun-unexpected elements of the story (like the talking cat who studies the Torah and debates religion with an uptight rabbi) made it work

Humor is a great way to get others interested in what may otherwise seem to be a dull topic. I am interested in cats, Arab culture, and Jewish tradition, so The Rabbi's Cat was a perfect read for me. Think of others who may not be interested in any of the three topics I mentioned. The humor of this book might just be enough to make that very person start reading it.

I once had an Organic Chemistry professor who, through the use of humor, made this subject fascinating and fun, thereby inducing me to work as hard as I could for him and ending with my earning an A in his course. Humor works!

New To Me #3

A Spell of Winter: A Novel - Helen Dunmore



Thoughts to come. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that I felt uneasy the whole time I was reading it.

ETA (02/06/2009): Just getting to review/post on this very engrossing read that I finished last weekend.

I read this modern Gothic tale about a horribly dysfunctional family in World War I-era (and probably pre-war) England on the recommendation of a number of people on LT and was not disappointed. Although the book contains a lot of rather standard tropes, it still manages to be incredibly engrossing: a brother and sister abandoned by their parents to live with a distant, haunted grandfather in a crumbling estate; a family of foreign "outsiders" (the grandfather is of non-Anglo origins, his wife was Irish, I think); an overly close brother-sister relationship; unhappy marriages; the cold & dreariness of England contrasted with the light, warmth, and vitality of the Mediterranean; a mother who flees her family to escape the weight of history and family dysfunction; a mysterious father languishing in a sanatorium; and the breath-of-fresh-air newcomer who facilitates the heroine's escape from it all. The themes reminded me very much of Wuthering Heights or of another modern Gothic (that also draws strongly on Bronte's novel), The Thirteenth Tale.

The book's structure was really interesting to me - chapters seemed to jump between the present and various different times in the life of the main character, Cathy, without ever making it precisely clear that the time had shifted. This technique really underscored the sense of the past haunting the present & of the past being perhaps more real and vital to the characters than the present. I loved Dunmore's dreamy, dreary, rather understated writing style; I will seek out her other books just to see if these elements are constant for her.

I read this book with a constant feeling of queasiness in my stomach - which could have been caused by the massive amounts of coffee I consume, but I prefer to think of it as an oddly emotional response to a book in which the reader is forced to watch characters actively reject options that would improve their lives and choose instead the most destructive courses of action - courses of action that will only cause them pain, loneliness, and even madness. Highly recommend.

My Review

Short Form Literature #1

The Nimrod Flipout - Etgar Keret



Unfortunately it ended up taking me so long to read this book that I no longer have a specific sense of which stories I particularly enjoyed, but overall the collection was really quirky and odd & I will be looking to read more of Keret's work in the future.

ETA (02/09/2009): I think it was the typical short story collection experience in that some of the stories grabbed me more than others; however, I don't think its accurate to call Keret's stories themselves "typical," as almost all of them were very strange. Some of them had a David Lynchian quality to them - full of slightly odd, somewhat sinister happenings - and of course those were my favorites. A lot of them focused on young men listlessly sailing through life in Israel.

Review

Science, Nature & Medicine #4

The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1890-1980 - Elaine Showalter



Great book, very interesting. A perfect example of popular scholarship in that it presents debates rather than closing them off & I ended up with 15 new additions to my TBR list from the novels Showalter references alone! I'll be posting more thoughts later, just wanted to get a placeholder in for this one before I forget.

#69 Looking forward to your comments, this book is one I would pick up and leaf through if I saw it on a shelf someplace.

69> I'm not 100% positive it's her, especially since she seems to be keeping a low profile, but judging from the contents of her library I think LTer eshowalter1 might just be the author of your read.

Dangit, thing's like that Rabbi's Cat post start kindling an interest in Graphic Novels. I don't have time for more interests!

I remember the Female Malady as a very hip, cutting edge pop history book 20 years ago, in the relative adolescence of women's studies programs. I wonder if there's some more recent work on the subject and how it's survived?

>72 A_musing:, re The Female Malady, Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignansesi is a recent work that seems to cover a lot of the same territory. I'm planning to read it as well this year & hope it will provide some interesting points for comparison.

Right now I'm really struggling to maintain interest in The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean for my cold places category. This was recommended by so many people & I figured I would have no trouble getting into it, but there's just something about it that doesn't grab me.

I love the conceit that the main character has failed polar explorer Lawrence Oates as an "imaginary" friend (he's so real to her that its hard to call him imaginary) - its such a clever way to add some polar exploration history without resorting to entire passages of historical exposition. And I love the descriptive passages about the polar landscape - the Antarctic, rather than any of the actual characters - really is the star of the show. But I think that's where the problem lies - none of the characters are really striking me as that interesting right now. All of the main characters - Sym, an awkward teenage girl with a hearing problem; her larger-than life uncle Victor; and the Nordic father-son team who become their primary companions on the trip - have some mystery behind them but right now those mysteries seem a little obvious (won't say more for spoilers). I continue reading just to see where its going, but its kind of a long, hard slog at this point. I hope I will start to enjoy it more.

Finally posted thoughts on Helen Dunmore's A Spell of Winter in message 67, for anyone who's following me.

Slightly more detailed thoughts on Etgar Keret's The Nimrod Flipout: Stories in 68.

Well, one month (give or take a few days) into this challenge, how am I doing?

Speculative Fiction of All Sorts - 1/9
Too Long on TBR List - 0/9
New (To Me) Authors - 3/9
Cold Places - 1/9
Art, Graphic Design, Architecture & Illustration - 1/9
Short-Form Literature - 1/9
Books I’m Not Expecting - 2/9
Books of Jewish Interest - 1/9
Science, Natural History, Medicine, Etc. - 4/9

Clearly I am doing the worst with my Too Long on TBR List category - sometimes I wonder if there is a reason these books are too long on my TBR, but that makes no sense because I want to read them.... Best so far is Science, Natural History, Medicine, Etc. The others are somewhat unimpressive - I guess I'm trying not to fit every book I read into these categories, even though a lot could go into the New (To Me) Authors or Books I’m Not Expecting categories.

ETA: Oh, FWIW, I've used two overlaps at this point, I think.

Books I’m Not Expecting #2

Black Hole - Charles Burns



I don't really know what to say about this one. It was interesting, with both the good and bad connotations of the word implied. Burns uses disease & mutation as a metaphor for teen angst, alienation, and growing pains. Although the book post-dates the AIDS crisis, it is set in the 1970s & so aptly evokes the time that one forgets that its not a foreshadowing of the 1980s reactions to HIV-AIDS.

What FP Bought On Her Sick Day

Oooh, excitement. I couldn't help myself... I've got a birthday coming up and I had to treat myself to the following:

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky (Modern Library) - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West
The Night Watch (Watch, Book 1) - Sergei Lukyanenko
Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories (Norton Critical Edition)
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky I already own my mother's old two-volume copy of this (each volume originally sold for $1.95 and bearing her maiden name written inside), but the print is so tiny, I wanted a new one for reading
Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

I'm going to try to participate in some of the group reads going on for Dostoyevsky & Woolf. I am really excited about the Katherine Mansfield anthology - I have wanted to read her ever since reading Anne Fadiman's anthologies in which she is referenced. Return of the Soldier has come up so much lately on various threads, it was just time, plus I feel a real WW1 thing coming over me.

Happy (early) Birthday!

I am really enjoying The Brothers Karamazov right now. Looking forward to reading your review of The Night Watch.

Cold Places #2

The White Darkness - Geraldine McCaughrean



This book, recommended by many, was a slog for me, despite its being a young adult novel & therefore presumably an "easy" read. I was of two minds about it, probably because it often seemed like two different books with two different narrators. I liked and disliked elements of the ending - oddly, I found the unbelievable supernatural-type events more believable than the unbelievable mundane-type events. Perhaps this was because I could chalk them to to "unreliable narrator"-type things. The other unbelievable events were just too convenient.

The main character is a nerdy, almost autistic-seeming British 14-year-old girl named Symone (Sym for short) with a tragic family history, a bizarre pseudo-uncle, and a serious obsession with the Antarctic and the doomed men who attempted to explore it. In particular, Lawrence Oates, who is perhaps most famous for his last words, uttered as he crawled out of his tent to die, telling his comrades: "I am just going outside and may be some time." I believe Anne Fadiman wrote of him in an essay in Ex Libris on her obsession with polar explorers. For Sym, Oates is more real and more of a presence in her life than any living, breathing person. This creates an interesting sort of side story, in which Sym and Oates recall snippets of his life & of the polar expedition that led to his death. This portion of the book, along with the amazing & vivid descriptions of the Antarctic landscape, were engrossing and highly readable.

The second portion of the book, which consists of the actual plot of the book - in which Sym's crazy uncle spirits her off to Antarctica to fulfill some bizarre fantasy of his & the ensuing tale of their expedition - was considerably less engaging & seemed like it was narrated by a different person, even though Sym is the narrator throughout. There were secrets & twists throughout and a fair amount of adventure, but the thing that frustrated me most was Sym as a character. Although she ostensibly worships her uncle & thinks he's an inspired genius, I just couldn't understand how she was so blind to his totally inappropriate behavior. Very early on, it seems obvious to the reader that he is a rather sinister individual & based on what she discovers, Sym should at least be somewhat anxious even before they reach the Ice. But she is all too content to let things slide in a way that really did not strike me as believable. Perhaps this is attributable to her being young, shy, socially awkward, etc. but she's not supposed to be an idiot. It seemed to me like wilfull mis-perception being forced on her by the author to further the plot.

Further thoughts and many a spoiler follow in my full review.

Despite my ambivalence about this book, it was a great choice for the Cold Places category - very evocative & I loved the historical details. Also, the author has a list of references in the back that have undoubtedly added to my TBR list for this category.

Speculative Fiction #2

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing - Libba Bray



Right now, I'm only counting the first book in this trilogy for this challenge, but since I read them all at once & I don't bother to separate out thoughts between the different books, I have them all listed under one entry here.

I've been sick this weekend and these books were great light reading (especially since I read them on the Kindle - Amazon's e-reader - which meant I didn't have to struggle to hold the last book, which I think comes in at something like 800 pages!). They made me feel cozy & I thought in some ways they were actually fairly smart YA books. Bray does some fairly clever things with characterization and language at various points that reveal some hidden things about her characters' true natures rather than just flat out saying things in simplistic ways, like a lot of YA novels sometimes do.

The series reminded me of a combination of The Chronicles of Narnia & Harry Potter, but with a much more female-centered cast and message. (More on that later).

Moderate Spoilers Follow

The basic premise of the series is that 16-year-old Gemma Doyle, who has lived with her family in colonial India, relocates to England after her mother's death under mysterious circumstances and is promptly shipped off to attend boarding school where she encounters the usual crowd of boarding novel characters: Felicity, the rich alpha-female; Pippa, her best friend and loyal follower; a crowd of lesser snotty bitches who serve as Felicity's hench-women; Anne, the mousy orphaned scholarship student who's picked on and scorned by all the other girls; Brigid, the superstitious housekeeper; and a small cast of teachers, including a cold headmistress and standard 'one teacher who really understands me.' Eventually most of these characters are revealed to be more complicated and interesting than they first seem & Felicity, Pippa, and Anne end up becoming Gemma's dearest friends. The girls discover that the school has a number of generally terrible secrets & that Gemma has magical powers that allow them access to "the realms", a world of magical creatures that is both beautiful and horrible. Throughout the course of the story, about a million secrets - most of which are pretty easy to see coming - about the girls, the school, and two linked but eventually competing secret societies are revealed. The girls eventually find themselves in a battle to save both the realms and the human world.

As previously mentioned, the series reminded me a lot of the Chronicles of Narnia. The real world and the realms are distinct places & Gemma must use her special powers to cross between the two; there is a time disparity between the two, enabling the girls to spend hours in the realms while only disappearing momentarily from their world; the realms has its own history that marches on even when Gemma is absent, so the girls often return to find that things have changed dramatically while they were away. The magic & the boarding school setting echoed Harry Potter, but in a much more earthy & realistic way. Magic is powerful but also limited - each time Gemma enters the realms, she and her friends are infused with magic that they can take back with them to the real world, but the magic slowly dissipates in the real world. Spence, Gemma's school, is the standard Victorian finishing school - not a feminist Hogwarts - so the girls spend most of their time learning just enough to enable them to be proper ladies & good wives. There are no potions classes or anything.

I felt that this series was marked by a tension between "enlightened" and "unenlightened' views that made it very intriguing and often difficult to like all the characters at all times but was an honest reflection of the attitudes of its main characters' backgrounds and environment. I think this tension reflects the author's attempt to show a society in flux - new ideas of women's rights, socialism, capitalism, labor rights, anti-colonialism emerging in a society still very much dominated by past patterns of privilege.

Gemma, Felicity, and Pippa are all members of the privileged class (although each is "tainted" by a secret that threatens her privilege) in a privileged colonizing society, yet each is struggling with aspirations and desires that conflict with the narrowly circumscribed lives for which they are training. So while the girls eventually come to consider Anne (who shares none of their privilege, except the Englishness) one of their dearest friends, they can also treat her with a startling insensitivity that reveals the persistence of their class biases. They know they are being groomed for a path that will separate them from her; once outside school, a lady cannot be friends with a governess. They are patronizing and condescending to Brigid, even though they realize that Anne will one day serve just as Brigid does. Although each wants to transcend the strictures of a society that wants to marry them off young, they are scornful of their teachers who remain unmarried into their mid-20s. In many ways, Gemma, Felicity, and Pippa use the freedom of their privilege to rebel against the demands of their privilege, without understanding that it is only because they are rich & white that they can behave as they do. By contrast, Anne - who has a much smaller distance to fall before she finds herself disgraced and alone - has much less freedom to screw up or rebel.

Another area where this tension comes into play is the whole colonizer-colonized dynamic that is present between Gemma and an Indian boy-man named Kartik, who follows her from India & becomes her protector. Gemma treats Kartik imperiously and carelessly - she uses him as a confidant & tells him secrets that she fears would make her family hate her; she falls in and out of infatuation with him and then gets angry when he shows friendship towards a servant girl; she demands his full and immediate attention when she needs him for favors and dismisses him angrily when its time to play the part of an English society girl. At one point in the second book, he accuses her of being so casual and free with him because he's Indian & she responds "I don't even think of you as Indian," which is intended to be a compliment. To the author's credit, Gemma is quick to realize that this is not received as such & there is some quick self-examination. There is also a fair amount of exoticizing the "Oriental" male and his sexuality & I'm still not sure how to feel about how the author eventually dealt with that.... But perhaps I am over-analyzing the series.

The one thing that I really didn't like was how the proto-feminism at times became didactic, with characters lecturing other characters about choice & freedom. This really came to the fore-front in the third book, which was overly long at something like 800+ pages. I thought the author generally did a good job making her characters reflective of their upbringing while still showing how they chafed at it, but it broke down during these portions because I just didn't buy it. Fortunately, this was not an overwhelming thing throughout the series.

One strange synergy with The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter - which I finished last weekend - occurred to me while reading this book. Gemma's brother is a doctor working at Bethlem Hospital, aka Bedlam Asylum and through this plot device, she pays a number of visits to the place & attends a public ball there where the patients are made to perform to demonstrate how Victorian psychiatry has helped them.

Possible Ending Spoilers (But I try to be vague)

I'm not sure how to feel about where each of the main characters ended up - some character's fates seemed like a result of the author's recognition that she could not - given the social constraints of the time & place she had created - realistically allow certain characters to get what they wanted and what the reader might have hoped they would get. And although this kind of aggravated me in some cases - like I said, the reader doesn't necessarily get what she romantically hopes for with this series - I had a grudging respect for the author's refusal to cop out, abandon the rules of the world she'd created, and tie everything up in a neat little bow. Unlike certain YA authors who shall remain nameless.

Okay, so I am slowly starting to put together random thoughts about The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture 1830-1980 by Elaine Showalter. Perhaps one day these will coalesce into something approaching a coherent review.

Thought #1: On "the traffic between cultural images and psychiatric ideologies"
One of the most striking things about this book was Showalter's illustration of the relationship between medicine & art. Doctors diagnosed & labelled certain types of madwomen according to types they found in literature - the most obvious being Shakespeare's Ophelia, who came to represent a Romantic fantasy of the young, beautiful, lovestruck, suicidal madwoman. Showalter also identifies the "Crazy Jane" - a poor servant girl abandoned by her lover - who originated with Gothic novelist Matthew Lewis and "Lucy" - a crazed, violent figure who originated in Sir Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor. In all cases, the source of the woman's madness is located in her thwarted love for some man, but that's another issue.

Doctors turned to artists & later to photographers to create representations of their female patients in the images of these types of madwomen - regardless of what these women actually looked like - as part of their clinical practice. These images were, in turn, used to study the flavors of madness and diagnose new cases. These images is that they are all very stylized - doctors and photographers dressed, decorated, posed, and accessorized patients in certain ways, sometimes with the compliance of the patients themselves, other times without. These images became representative of the medical "truth" about madness even though they were themselves a fiction.

These medical texts then fed back into cultural representations of madness, lending them the weight of "science". Jane Eyre's Bertha Mason Rochester is a classic "Lucy", representing the danger of women's sexuality & madness caused by lost love. John Conolly - a Victorian doctor who radically overhauled the treatment of madness - was in turn influenced by Bronte's portrait of Bertha when he argued that home care and restraining of patients had led to a bad end for both the madwoman and the household in which she was confined. And so on and so on.

Reading tonight

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, who is probably soon to be added to my favorite authors list - I am loving the incredibly descriptive & intricate prose in this novel - right now I am having to read some sentences twice in order to decipher their proper subject. I don't think I've read another author who writes like this.

Also started The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008. The first essay was on hybrid animals like the liger - a lion-tiger cross. Some of this happens naturally, other times its forced. Particularly odd in this essay was the story of a Soviet scientist obsessed with crossing the genetic material of a human being with that of a chimpanzee. He actually was able to fertilize chimp eggs with human sperm and was thisclose to impregnating a female human with chimp sperm - someone actually volunteered - but the project went south for rather mundane reasons that I can't remember. I think I am really going to enjoy dipping into this volume.

New To Me #4

The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West



I don't really know what to say about this book that won't sound really trite. In the absence of a list of adjectives that would certainly sound silly, I make the following preliminary statements: it earned a rare five-star rating from me, ended up being tagged "favorite", Rebecca West was added to my favorite authors, her other books have been added to my wishlist, along with collections of her letters and biographies. I want to read it again right now; I never want to read anything ever again because everything else will seem like trash by comparison; I want to immediately read everything I own because the book reminded me how much I love to read.

Read this book when you know you won't be disturbed by anyone. The book is not long, but the writing style is complex & many of the sentences bear re-reading in order to even fully grasp their most basic meaning. West tends to put the ultimate subject of the sentence at the end of a lengthy descriptive phrase. Also, reading the book - for me at least - was truly like being pulled away from myself & my surroundings. I was quite disgruntled when I was interrupted during my reading. I almost certainly owe my poor boyfriend an apology for some rudeness.

Oh, and it affected my subconscious so deeply I had a nightmare that was almost certainly influenced by the book. Possibly more thoughts later. At a minimum, I will be posting some of my favorite passages from the book.

This sounds wonderful. I had heard of that "Gray Falcon" or whatever it was before...this one is immediately going on my wishlist today.

"I want to read it again right now; I never want to read anything ever again because everything else will seem like trash by comparison; I want to immediately read everything I own because the book reminded me how much I love to read."

That is about the best recommendation for a book I've ever read!

86>That is about the best recommendation for a book I've ever read!


I agree. I've been trying to be conscientious about what I request via interlibrary loan, but I didn't even pause before calling the library to start the process for this one.

And all around the world, libraries and online bookstores are wondering why there's a spike in demand for this Rebecca West title. :-)

Yes, I added it to my wishlist, too, based on that review!

Fannyprice - I caught up with you on Euydice's thread and thought I would come over to see your thoughts upon The Return of The Soldier - one of my best books last year! One of my cateogries for 999 is Women and War - hence my interest.

Edited to add another cold places suggestion, set in Canada The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney.

Books I'm Not Expecting #3

Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde



I didn't think I would get back into this series, despite having really enjoyed The Eyre Affair - I tried a couple of times to read this book and just wasn't feeling it. But this time, I liked it quite a bit. More book-jumping fun with our literary detective, Thursday Next, who saves the world from turning into pink goo in this one. I love the references to literary characters, the idea that book worlds are just as real as our world & go on about their separate business when the chapter is over, and the bizarre time-travelling events. At the end of this book, I was a little terrified because it seemed like Thursday might "move sideways" - ie, into a parallel universe - that was exactly like our own & part of the fun of these books are the twists that Fforde puts into our world, so I think that would have been a horrible move. Fortunately it did not happen - I won't spoil what DOES happen, though.

On the Kindle! Got to play with the annotating features, which I am hoping will make me better at collecting my thoughts for reviews and keeping track of quotes and passages I liked. Now I just need to figure out how to transfer those notes onto the computer.

I have just wasted two hours of my life reading Tithe. It was without a doubt the worst YA fiction book I have ever read. I just wished I'd read your post earlier. I couldn't even follow the plot! And the worst thing.... I think there is a sequel.

>92 socialpages:, Sadly, I think there are two.....

>92 socialpages:&93 Ironside is the sequel, but Black has also written another YA faerie, Valiant, which is about drug addiction and living on the streets of NYC, dedicated to her sister who died from an overdose. I read Tithe a few years back and at the time thought it was ok - it was the first urban YA faerie tale I had read, I haven't read the sequel, but thought Valiant was good. Have you read War for the Oaks by Emma Bull.

I haven't read War for the Oaks but will look out for it. I'm assuming it's YA fiction.

I think it's for adults but appeal to older teens.

Books I'm Not Expecting #4

The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory



Eh....I read this over the course of a couple nights when I was feeling too tired for anything serious. I have never read anything from the "historical fiction" genre before, so I didn't really know what to expect (I also have not seen the movie because I almost never get around to seeing movies when they are current). I had thought that this book would be kind of a balanced combination of history and fiction - the events described would be real, but the author would be creative about filling in the gaps & feelings & motivations of the characters. Unfortunately, knowing nothing about England under Henry VIII, I was completely lost as to what was history and what was fiction & I felt uncomfortable drawing conclusions about social and moral norms of the period based only on this book.

What I "learned" about people during this time in history from this book was pretty horrifying - so generally unpleasant that I found it hard to believe. For anyone unfamiliar with the plot of the book, the basic story is that Mary Boleyn - the sister of the more famous Anne - becomes Henry VIII's mistress while he is still married to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, who is unable to give him the son he so desperately needs. Mary's family is portrayed as a bunch of scheming upstarts completely devoid of morals & ready to sacrifice their daughter to gain power. Early in the book, Mary's uncle, who is the family power-broker who seems to manipulate everyone, crudely says: "If the king has her, and she conceives his bastard, then we have much to play for." During the course of her affair with Henry, Mary - who is already married to another man - has two children by him, and her family gains in wealth, power, and titles. Eventually, Mary loses her taste for the King and he for her & Mary's evil, calculating, back-stabbing sister Anne becomes his favorite & his queen. In the process, Anne is blamed for destroying the sanctity of marriage, the existing social order, the peace of England, the Church, the King, her family & England's foreign alliances. And probably a bit more, as if that weren't enough.

So, knowing nothing about the actual history of this period, I turned - of course - to Wikipedia, where I read entries on the six wives of Henry VIII, the King, and Philippa Gregory and her books, focusing in particular on the section on historical inaccuracies/fictional inventions in this book. Which kind of just cemented my generalized hatred of this book - which I realize is too strong a word, but I've kind of turned into a fan of Anne Boleyn after reading this book, oddly enough (more on that later). Basically, most of the book seems to be an invention that ignores pretty solidly established historical data about events, social norms, the Boleyn/Howard family's social standing, Mary's seedy moral character before becoming the King's mistress & Anne's influence on the King himself.

Mary is presented as a naive young girl completely manipulated by morally bankrupt family, ignoring historical evidence that she had a number of sexual dalliances while growing up in European courts. Also, I think the author makes her considerably younger than she really was. It seems like she becomes the King's mistress at the age of 14 or so, which is about 5 years too early. Over the course of the book develops annoying anachronistic feminist tendencies and outrage over things that are supposedly completely normal within the context of the period. For example, Anne adopting Mary's son is interpreted as yet another example of Anne's perfidy & jealousy of her sister, when it seems that it was perfectly common at the time for a wealthy relative to take a family member as a ward. Despite becoming the King's mistress & repeatedly betraying the Queen in various ways, she still sees herself as a victim in solidarity with Katherine, which results in one of the best smackdowns in the book, when Mary tries to blame her betrayal on destiny. "'I want to beg your pardon,' I said. 'It is my destiny to belong to a family whose interests run counter to yours. If I had been your lady in waiting at another time you would never have had to doubt me.'" and the Queen replies: "'If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal.'"

Anne is basically Satan in this book. She is cold, calculating, manipulative. In the end, she is blamed for overthrowing the existing social order & placing all wives in the position of insecurity. She is also blamed for Henry's unsavory behavior - "...Anne has taught the king to be a tyrant and now he is run mad and they cannot prevent his tyranny."- which I thought was particularly funny, given that the book opens with a public execution of one of the King's closest friends, suggesting he is already capricious and unchallenged. While I definitely think it was interesting to show how Henry's annulment of his marriage to Katherine & his subsequent marriage to Anne established a precedent for his behavior with all his future wives, it seems ridiculous to spend the whole book lamenting the powerless position of women in the Tudor period & then to suggest that one powerless, if shrewd, woman, managed to utterly turn the King of England from a righteous man to a lecherous, heretical autocrat.

So, in the end, I was left with a serious desire to read an actual history book about this period and a feeling that despite the author's attempt to position Mary Boleyn as a proto-feminist heroine, it was Anne Boleyn who I actually admired, at least as she is portrayed in this book. Mary just floats along, doing whatever she is told, feeling completely victimized by her family & by society. Anne shapes her destiny and appears to have a head on her shoulders (god, I stepped right into that one, didn't I?). There is something wrong with me, right?

One thing I did enjoy about this book was its description of courtly life & the utter dependence of the courtiers on the King, although I guess I have no idea if that is actually historically accurate either.

Is anyone able to recommend a reputable history of this period? Right now I have samples of David Starkey's Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII and Eric Ives' The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn on my Kindle. I think Tudor history may be my newest obsession - I am so 5 years ago (sigh).....

Fantastic review! I really enjoyed reading it. The Weaker Vessel by Antonia Fraser is an excellent and readable book about the role of women during the 17th century. I find that I enjoy social history much more than history in the more traditional sense and I couldn't put this one down.

What an excellent, perceptive, and telling review of this work. I'm really impressed. It is very annoying to get this false history, even in a novel. There's plenty of bad actors to make a novel from, without further excoriating poor Anne, who surely paid dearly for whatever sins she may have committed.

As to recs: Anything by Allison Weir, who writes both fiction and nonfiction about this period. She's a true expert who doesn't grossly distort the facts to make a story. Gee, the facts are bizarre enough!

I want to add my compliments for your review. I agree with most of what you've said, except that I have enjoyed the 3 Philippa Gregory books that I've read. I'm far from an expert, but know enough about the Tudors that I recognized a number of inaccuracies while reading, and I don't at all agree with most of her characterizations, yet I thought she told a good story and put an interesting spin on the players and events.

It always puzzles me why writers (and movie-makers) change established facts, thinking they're improving on the story. It seems to me that, as bohemina said, "the facts are bizarre enough!" with plenty of room for speculation. What's most fascinating is that it really did happen!

I second the recommendations to Antonia Fraser and Allison Weir for more accurate information. (I haven't read the 2 books you mentioned.)

Fantastic review. I haven't read Philippa Gregory's novel but I did see the movie which turned me off reading the book.

Further on the question of historical novels vs the facts, I found that Ridgeway Girl's 999 thread contained an interesting review of a book called Novel History (sorry touchstones not working) where individual novels are discussed firstly by an historian and then the author gets a chance at a rebuttal. Here's the link : http://www.librarything.com/topic/48061#1109953

i've read and watched 'the other boleyn girl', and let me tell you, the movie is NOTHING like the book! The book is amazing; i would recommend it to anyone.
and, fannyprice, i'm with you with the new tudor obsession, along with others on napoleon and the plantaganets (did i spell that right?). I missed the tudor-craze, along with the austen-craze! darn...i'm always the slowpoke. :-)
sharon kay penman is another historical novelist who sticks mostly to the facts...i only counted two inaccuracies in her latest novel 'devil's brood'. (by the way, it's about henry the second and eleanor of aquitaine's last years of marriage...pretty much 'the lion in winter' in book form, except better!)

I probably won't be updating this thread any longer - I am continually thinking of pulling out of the 999 Challenge. I am so bad about these challenge things. Part of my problem is that I am a dilettante in many respects. There are certain topics or types of writing that I have a deep & long-abiding interest in; and I will always want to read those books. This year I tried to craft categories that encompassed those books, thinking that would make it easier. But then I realized that just because I am committed in the long-term to reading books about Jewish things or frozen-a** places doesn't mean that my tendency to get obsessed with a new topic every time I read something that touches on something else won't override those interests & I won't find myself careening off on some bizarre Tudor England jaunt or something. In short, I am finding it very hard to actually read the kinds of books I've "committed" myself to reading because I find a new interest nearly every day & then need to know everything I can about it....until something else sparks a compulsion. I'm starting to seriously wonder if I have ADHD or something.

Plus, I am honestly finding it tedious to update more than one thread. All I do is copy the posts over to another venue....In that time I could read at least 5 more pages of whatever book I'm currently working on! :)

Best of luck to all who are continuing in this challenge - its a very fun place to find new books & I'll probably continue lurking and commenting on threads, but I can continue to be found over here, at ClubRead 2009:

Follow All My 2009 Reading at Club Read 2009

I'll miss following your reading here! I'll try to look over at your Club Read thread occasionally, but I don't think I can handle watching yet another very active group (plus, I have to say that that one doesn't really appeal--looking at some of the discussions there, about Shakespeare and (I think) YA, I got the impression that people there tended to be more judgemental than in some other groups).

Okay. I "x"ed you off here and will be following you on your thread of choice. :)

I'm on both, and will continue to follow your reviews over there. And that's the beauty of all the various forums--we can find the ones that suit us. Have fun reading off topic.

>104 _Zoe_:, Zoe, the people there DO have some very strong opinions, but I've never found myself come under fire for my reading choices & I read a lot of "crappy" YA vampire books. :) I'll keep stalking you, FWIW. :)