labwriter: 2010, thread the third

Well into the first week of June, month five. I'm on a better pace than I thought I would be when I started this year. I would have predicted no more than about 50 books read for the year. I think LT has pushed me to pick up the pace. I've also become more intentional about what I'm reading, although I wouldn't say that I've had my best year, meaning most favorite or most meaningful books--far from it. However, I've read more books off the shelf that I thought I would get done, and I've also read more for a writing project that I'm working on--so that's good.

My first thread for 2010 is here

My second thread for 2010 is here

Books Read So Far

1) Alice Hamilton, a Life in Letters. Ed. by Barbara Sicherman. 5-star
2) William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. Robert D. Richardson. 5-star
3) House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. Paul Fisher. 3.5-star
4) Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. John Heilemann. 1/2-Star
5) 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. Jim Dwyer. 4-star
6) Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Charles J. Shields. 3-star
7) Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy. Stephen Black. 3-star
8) Prince of Fire. Daniel Silva. 3.5-star
9) The Ruins. Scott Smith. 2-star

February

10) George S. Kaufman His Life, His Theater. Malcolm Goldstein. 4-star
11) Rebecca West: A Life. Victoria Glendinning. 3.5-star
12) H.G. Wells: A Biography. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie. 3-star
13) The Clock Winder. Anne Tyler. 3.5-star
14) First Family. David Baldacci. (Abandoned--lousy book)
15) The Bookseller of Kabul. Asne Seierstad. 3-star
15a) The Moonflower Vine. Jetta Carleton (group read) 4-star

March

16) A Child of the Century. Ben Hecht. 3-star
17) Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Karl Rove. 3.5-star
18) Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir. Margaret Forster. 4-star
19) Rebecca West: A Life. Carl Rollyson. (Abandoned)
20) Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster. Jon Krakauer. 4-star
21) Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child. Noel Riley Fitch. (Continued reading this one into April--finished April 17.) 4-star
22) Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. William Styron. 3.5-star
23) Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Christopher McDougall. 4-star

April

24) The Education of Henry Adams. Henry Adams. (group read) 5-star
25) Empire A Novel. Gore Vidal. 3.5-star
26) In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family. John Sedgwick. 2.5-star
27) Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life. Terry Brooks. 4-star
28) The Blooding. Joseph Wambaugh. 3.5-star
29) Hawk. Brian Neary. 4-star
30) Act of Treason. Vince Flynn. 3.5-star

May

31) Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs. Wallace Stegner. 3-star (group read)
32) Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. 5-star
33) Innocent by Scott Turow. 3.5-star
34) Clover: The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America's Gilded Age by Otto Friedrich. 4-star
35) Adventurous Alliance: The Story of the Agassiz Family of Boston by Louise Hall Tharp. 2-star
36) The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. 3.5 stars
37) Life Work by Donald Hall. 5 stars

June

38) Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. 2.5-star
39) The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, ed. by Myerson, Shealy, and Stern. 5-star
40) Without, by Donald Hall. 5-star
41) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. 5-star
42) The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott ed by Myerson, Shealy, and Stern. 4-star
(These Alcott books were started in May.)
43) The Bookshop: A Novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. 3.5-star
44) Plainsong by Kent Haruf. 4-star
45) The Manchurian President by Aaron Klein. 4-star
46) Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. 5-star
47) Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster.
48) In the Woods by Tana French. 4-star
49) The Likeness by Tana French. 3.5-star
50) Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster. 4-star
51) How to Write a Damn Good Novel, by James N. Frey. 4-star
52) Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 5-star
53) Eventide by Kent Haruf. 3.5-star

July
54) John Jay Chapman and His Letters ed by M.A. DeWolfe Howe. 5-star

My numbered list doesn't match with my ticker because of abandoned books.

As I said on another thread, most of my posts are notes or musings about what I read, largely written for myself, but if someone else gets something from them then I am pleased. Alternately, I guess I should add that if someone is offended by them--then sue me. I've more or less made this my reading journal, such as it is.

Holy cow! A plethora of new threads in the past few days. Congrats on Thread No. 3, Becky. You're a star!

Btw, my Moonflower Vine is actually "vining." Still not picture worthy, though.

Hi Donna. Nice to hear from you. These doggone new threads are a pain. Oh well.

Currently reading:

The Manchurian President by Aaron Klein.

The Book Shop: A Novel by Penelope Fitzgerald.

Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons by Gary Wiviott.

The Bookshop is a good one! Enjoy.

Hi Sybil. I picked up The Bookshop this morning because I'm looking for another short read. I'm so distracted and upset by the Klein book (not that there's all that much new in it if you've been paying attention), that I just want something short and "nice" as a complement.

I will be interested in seeing what you think of the Fitzgerald book, Becky.

For any of you who smoke food or want to learn how or have a spouse who does same, this book by Wiviott is outstanding, with this caveat: if someone can't follow directions or doesn't like to follow directions, then this is not their book. We followed exactly what he said to do in the book, for Lesson #1, smoked chicken using Mojo Criollo marinade (it's Cuban, sort of an orange bitter taste with lots of garlic, pepper, cumin, & oregano). My DH is the son of a butcher, who (the father, not the son) naturally did a lot of smoking. This was our first time for this, so we followed the directions slavishly. Almost to the point of being silly about it. The result: the best smoked chicken I've ever had, anywhere--and DH said the same. Whoo-hoo. I was going to smoke another batch today, but it looks like rain. The last time it decided to pour while we were smoking; fortunately, we anticipated the storm because of the black clouds and got the smoker into the garage before we started. Even with the garage door open, I almost croaked from the smoke. And I'm someone who likes campfires. Oh well. So I'm going to wait for a sunny day.

I'm loving The Bookshop: A Novel by P. Fitzgerald. It's just what I needed.

I wish I had remembered this next book when we were doing the Wallace Stegner group read. I was rearranging my bookshelves this morning and found this book by Kent Haruf: Plainsong. This novel is set in a fictional town on the High Plains of Colorado, east of Denver. My grandmother lived ten years of married life on those high plains, dying at the age of 30 while pregnant with her eighth child. It was a hard life. I believe the time of the novel is contemporary, but I don't know for sure because I haven't read it. It's unbelievable to me that this book has sat on my shelf since it was published in 1999. It seems like a book that I need to read--soon.

Just thought I'd stop by to say Plainsong is a wonderful read, as is its follow-up, Eventide.

Also, I loved The Bookshop...very different. Enjoy!

Glad to find you here, Ms. Thread #3! (Congratulations!) (I miss you when we aren't reading in a group, but I must say that doing my own thing is quite nice.) I bought The Bookshop, and now you are encouraging me to read it. Thank you! I'll look forward to your more formal thoughts.
I can't imagine living my grandmothers' lives - either of them. They make me feel very effete.

>9 Copperskye:. Good to hear about Plainsong. I'll be sure to check out Eventide. The only thing I've read of Haruf's is The Tie That Binds which I enjoyed very much.

>10 LizzieD:. Yeah, I miss you at the group reads, too. Yet I know what you mean--they're a lot of work and take away from other reading. The group is a nice change, and I wish I had time for more, but I enjoy doing my own thing too, Peggy.

I loved Plainsong when I read it last year, but never did get to Eventide. Maybe sometime this year?

I've been on a roll with cookbooks ever since I read the Julia Child biography. This one is so cool: Cooking Through the Seasons by the people at Cooking Light. They give you ideas for recipes of produce, etc. that's fresh and in season. Rhubarb! I just bought a whole bunch and put it into freezer bags. The season for rhubarb is short, but not if you use your freezer. Whoo-hoo. Anyway, you might want to check it out.

I think I once saw a rhubarb - a sort of wizened speciman in a local Lowes Foods. I've never tasted it but Hey Bob-a-ree-Bob Rhubarb Pie!

Peggy, you were seriously deprived as a child. When I was a kid, one of the women in the neighborhood grew it in her backyard. We bad kids would steal stalks of it and eat it, dipping it into sugar the way some people dip celery into salt. I'm sure she knew we did it, but she never said anything. When my grandfather died, one of the things we did was dig up and divide his 20-year-old rhubarb plants. I had some growing in my yard for years. Every time I moved, I would dig it up and take it with me and plant it in the new place.

#13: I still remember my grandmother's rhubarb pie. I loved the stuff.

I will look for the cookbook. Thanks for the mention, Becky.

I sat up until 3:30 a.m. reading Plainsong. I love this book. It's set in a small (very small--probably one stop light) town in eastern Colorado. I know those towns--the feel of them, the smell of them, the endless horizon and sky, the stripped-down plain-ness of them. The mother ends up moving to Denver and living with her sister on Logan Street. My first place by myself after college was on Logan Street. She lives near downtown because she works at the Civic Center. I did too. So "place" in this novel is another very vivid character for me. Haruf does an amazing job with four generations of characters. The little boys are spot-on, as is the old woman. I like the structure of the book, where each chapter emphasizes one of the characters--not exactly told from the character's point of view, but at least with a shifting narrative. I'm trying to figure out why the dialogue is presented without quotes--what does that do for the writing? I'm not sure. One effect it has is to strip down the look of the words on the page--to make it plain. I also feel that it has sort of a distancing effect, but I haven't quite worked that out yet. I've already ordered Eventide.

#17: I loved Plainsong too. I have not yet read Eventide so I am looking forward to your thoughts on that one.

We like to make rhubarb goo, just cut it up and put it in a saucepan with a little bit of water..... when it is cooked, sweeten to taste (I use a little strawberry jam also but I think some folks throw in strawberries right with the rhubarb) and then eat with, uh, cream of some sort, heavy or light or whipped or ice cream or however. Who needs pie?

Hmmm. At the very least you need rhubarb. We don't get it. *sigh*

I was looking for an old recipe I used to make, Banana-Rhubarb Crisp, and finally found it in a wonderful (old) cookbook some of you might recall: Jane Brody's Good Food Book. I think it was published in 1985, so that's how I'm defining "old" here. The subtitle might scare away some people (Living the High-Carbohydrate Way), but unless you're a serious low carb/no carb person, it shouldn't. This cookbook is filled with wonderful bean, rice, grain, vegetable recipes. I recently also rediscovered a nearby store that has any sort of strange (strange to me, since I'm a pretty straight-forward cook, but I'm trying to change that) thing you might need in any recipe. Anywho, just thought I'd add that to the rhubarb discussion.

Sib, your rhubarb goo sounds good.

Peggy, there's a root (I think it's a root--maybe it's a green) that comes up in the spring in your area. When we would go to Tennessee in the spring, I remember the grocery store in the area had signs saying that this stuff would be available soon. I know that's not much to go on, but do you have any idea what it might be? Oh--ramps. I'm pretty sure that's it. Do you know what I mean? Can you do a rant on ramps? Ha.

I just remembered that sign--it was priceless. Written in fat black marker on a large piece of brown cardboard: "Ramps is up!" Love it.

Are they garlic 'greens' ?

Peg -- Next year I am going to send you a box of rhubarb, Next day delivery. I promise. Remind me!

#21: I love Jane Brody's cookbooks! I have 3 of them.

>22 sibylline:. Sib, I don't know about the "greens" part--whether the greens are eaten or not, although I imagine they might be, since why waste a good green? But yes, you've got the garlic part exactly right, according to my Southern Appalachian cookbook. It's described alternately as "a wild mountain leek." Someone else calls them "Tennessee Truffles." Heh. They come up in April, so I'm 'way behind time here. My book says the best time to go digging is the first week in May. "The smell is most charitably described as horrible."

"Cooking With LT"--if it's not a group, then it should be. Back to my Saturday chores.

#24: Becky, you might be interested in this group, that Cheli (cyderry) started: http://www.librarything.com/groups/theanythingculinaryb

Thanks, Stasia! You're a great resource.

>21 labwriter: Coincidentally, I read this while waiting for my Blueberry Cobbler to come out of the oven. The recipe is from the very same, well loved Good Food Book.

#26: You are quite welcome!

>27 Copperskye:. Wow, Joanne. That's quite a coincidence. I love that recipe, by the way; I was just thinking of making some soon.

More rhubarb. This is hilarious serendipity, so fun. I was just over at a cookbookers group (ach, what happened to my manifesto on less time spent on LT?--oh well). Anyway, there was an ENTIRE THREAD devoted to rhubarb, along with a recommendation for the following: Rhubarbaria, a book of rhubarb recipes. I probably won't get it, since I'm fine with the recipes I have and don't especially feel the need for more. But it's nice to know there are other people crazy about rhubarb. (Other people crazy?--heh.)

OK, that's it today for food. Waiting for the Saturday Smoker to begin, so I'm going to sneak in some reading while my DH watches his fly fishing show.

Ed. for fat-finger typing.

Finished Kent Haruf's Plainsong. Can't imagine why it sat on my shelf for so long. I gave it four stars and I ordered the next one, Eventide. I'm on a roll with some good fiction lately. Not sure yet what the next one is going to be.

I started Year of Wonders for my fiction book last night (Geraldine Brooks's first novel). It's another one that's been sitting on my shelf since it was published--2001 it looks like. I was teaching writing at the city university in 2001, so it's not too surprising that I have a lot of books from that time that are still on the shelf. I had absolutely zero time for reading when I was teaching--also zero time for my own writing, which is why I quit. I loved that job and would happily do it again if I didn't have this "thing" about writing. Hour for hour, I'm positive it was the lowest-paying job I ever had, but the English department left me alone and let me do my own thing in the classroom, and I loved my students ("Don't smile until Thanksgiving" was the advice that one fellow teacher gave me--heh). Many, many of my students told me they'd never gotten comments on their essays before, so they had no idea why they got whatever grade they received for the essay. Well, they knew why in my class, even if a lot of the time they didn't like it. Although I like to think they left my class having learned something and also with a sense of accomplishment.

Anywho, there I go again--blah, blah. Let's see--Geraldine's book. Well, it's first-person narrator, which can be either really good or terrible. This is OK. I guess she's doing it because of the retrospective look at the plague year. I blasted through almost 60 pages last night even though I was tired, so I would say that I'm liking it quite a bit so far.

I have Laura Bush's new memoir on my shelf: Laura Bush: Spoken from the Heart. What a class act she was as First Lady. I sure miss her. I'd like to get to this one soon. DH is going out of town on business this week, so that just might happen. Heh.

Becky, I was going to write about ramps, but your teaching experience is so familiar to me. Right! I was the only teacher that kids had who had ever, ever, ever written comments on their papers. It threw them at first; they thought I was super-critical, but most of them soon got over it. I remember a kid coming in with a rubric attached to his paper with "content - 95, organization - 92, mechanics - 89," and not another mark. "How am I supposed to know what this means," he asked. I couldn't tell him.
Ramps don't grow down here in the coastal plain, but I've seen them in the mountains. Whew-eeee! They smell really bad!!
My favorite sign for our farmers' market was "Orks." I'll be mean and not translate in case anybody is interested in figuring that one out on his own. (Sorry to take you back to food. Lucy, I'll hold you to that rhubarb promise. Thank you!)
ETA: I gave Brooks permission not to be perfect in Year of Wonders and then was able to enjoy it very much. Hope you do.

Peggy, what an excellent point about Year of Wonders--that you gave her permission not to be perfect. I was going to say something about some pretty glaring anachronisms, but then I decided not to since there's much else to like.

I guess ramps are a mountain thing. I've never tried cooking with them, but I sure have some interesting recipes using them.

Teaching, Peggy--such a love/hate thing. I used to set a timer for 45 minutes for each paper. The timer would go off and I would turn it off and keep right on grading. If I had 20 essays that got turned in on Friday and I wanted to get them back by Monday, then that meant somehow finding between 20 and 30 or more hours on the weekend just to grade papers. That was one class. Then to find the time to prepare for class, since I was always, always either teaching a new class or "tinkering" with an old one--well, it was a total time sink. The only solution seemed to be to spend less time on the papers, but I could never make myself do it. I loved the job but could just never figure out the time management. I taught for about five years, and I'll always be grateful for the experience.

I have to say that as long as I felt that I was really teaching somebody something, I didn't mind the 50+ hour work week. (High school is something else. I probably spent about 10 minutes per paper, but then, I had 90+ students so that I had to stagger assignments.) In my last years, though, kids didn't bother to do assignments so paper-marking time went way down. I could never not do it either; sort of figured it was my job.
One more thing about food, and I'll quit. My daddy and his brothers referred to onions as "ingern roots," which I see is an archaism from Appalachia. I'm not sure how it made its way down here.

That is so interesting -- what reference site or book did you use to find it as Appalachian usage? I would guess that it's from anglicizing the french word - perhaps in an older english version the g was still being pronounced when the first wave of settlers came.. - I love this stuff!

I have a book called Smoky Mountain Voices by Farwell & Nicholas that lists onions as "ingons"--"mark of old settlers." That's all it says. It's from a word list compiled by a woman working for Horace Kephart.

I did a little searching on the Internet and found this from The Cambridge History of the English Language: English in North America, which notes "ingern" as being Scottish. My Campbells were from Scotland, settled in that area before the Revolutionary War. I think a lot of people who settled in the area that's now northeast Tennessee were from there.

Just waving 'Hello' as I wander through the threads. Interesting discussion about the teaching profession and the origins of 'onions.'

Hi Stasia. Hope you had a good shift. I worked nights for 20 years. I'm a nightowl at heart.

So I picked up another memoir, this one by Donald Hall: Unpacking the Boxes, published in 2008. What a brilliant title for a memoir. This guy is really a wonderful writer. I knew he was the U.S. poet laureate (2006-2007); what I didn't know was that he was 78 years old the year he was made p.l.

I'm reading his memoir out of order and read first the two last chapters, about life without his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, and the one about what it's like to be 80. I'm trying to take care of my 85-year-old mother, and I found his chapter about "The Planet of Antiquity" to be fracturingly funny, e.g. his description of getting up out of a chair, or about being arrested for DWO (Driving While Old). What struck me particularly was his admission about how extraordinarily "needy" he has become at that age, and then he described going home from rehab after a stroke to help from his housekeeper and his secretary/assistant who lived 70 yards down the road and his "girlfriend" and his son and daughter and Meals on Wheels and physical therapy and the visiting nurse and his "dozens" of local friends who dropped by. My dear-o mother has me, having alienated just about everyone else in her life. Meals on Wheels? Not where we live--well, she's on a two-year waiting list, but I was told not to expect anything. No wonder it feels overwhelming at times.

#39: I got Hall's Life Work from the library the other day (finally!) so I really hope I like it as much as you did, Becky.

I hope you like it too, Stasia.

This memoir I'm reading now, Unpacking the Boxes, has a problem--or at least I think it's a problem. He says that when he wrote about his marriage, his wife's illness, and her death, he made it the middle of this memoir; but then his publisher wanted that middle part to be published by itself, and so it became another book, The Best Day the Worst Day. Hall writes, "They were right--but this book suffers from a hole in the middle." And about that Hall is right. Although looking at the other book, maybe it's best he put it into a separate volume, since his writing about her illness seems almost obsessive in level of detail, and I'm really not sure I want to read all that.

#41: Well, my local library has The Best Day the Worst Day, but not Unpacking the Boxes, so I probably will not be reading either one of those. I do not think I want to read all the obsessive details about his wife's illness either.

The other book I picked up, so that I'm not just reading fiction all the time, was inspired by "sibyx's" review: E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel. Keeping in mind that the book was published in about 1927, I'm reading the introduction and was struck by Forster's comments about higher education: "If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider." Then sort of coincidentally, I found this article at the washingtonexaminer.com: "Glenn Reynolds: Higher education's bubble is about to burst." You can find it here.

Reynolds writes about the increasing costs of college education: "College has gotten a lot more expensive. A recent Money magazine report notes: 'After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982 . . . . Normal supply and demand can't begin to explain cost increases of this magnitude.'" No kidding. College costs are becoming nothing short of obscene, and people are beginning to wake up, but not very fast. He gives the example of a young woman graduating from New York University with a degree in Religious and Women's Studies--and with $100,000 in student loan debt. Her current job? Photographer's assistant, earning an hourly wage. Her debt payments are about $700 per month. Do the math. And, as Reynolds points out, unlike people these days are doing with their bad mortgages on an underwater house, this woman can't simply walk away from her student loans.

Anywho, that's what's floating through my mind this morning. Back to work.

I just finished my fiction book, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, the novel about the 1666 English village visited by the plague. I supposed I should say that my remarks mildly fit the "spoiler" category--although not really. But if you want to read the book and you don't want to know anything about the ending, then don't read on. Although all I really say is that I liked it and thought it was appropriate.

I loved this book. Her use of first-person narrator was excellent. Some authors use first-person and then get themselves into trouble trying to figure out how to tell the story. I'm thinking of book Jane Smiley wrote that was like that--she twisted herself into knots getting her first-person narrator into situations that allowed her to know what was going on to the point that it was ridiculous. Now I'll have to find Smiley's book. Anyway, Brooks figures all of that out in fine fashion that never feels forced. There are some seriously goofy reviews of this book on LT (and I probably also read some like them on Amazon) that had me worried about a weak ending. Seriously? The ending seemed like a perfectly logical outcome for Anna, the main character. She didn't die (although that's pretty tough if you're writing in the first-person--heh) and she didn't MARRY HIM, reader.

I gave this novel five stars, something I rarely do for a novel unless I know the author's work well. One of the reasons I did so was because I was prepared to be disappointed in the ending and wasn't. Ha.

See 44.

Ah yes, the Jane Smiley book: The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton. I abandoned this book halfway or more through, just because I couldn't continue to suspend my disbelief that Smiley's 20-year-old narrator could have been in all the situations Smiley needed to put her into in order to have her tell the story. I found the book tedious, a reaction that I think I remember having to more than one of Smiley's books.

OK, as I look at the cover of this book, I'm reminded that I abandoned the book not "just because" of the absurdities of the narrator, but also because the book was a colossal bore. Smiley makes the mistake of thinking her readers will be fascinated to learn EVERY DETAIL of her research. Snore.

#44: I loved the book too, Becky. Glad to see you enjoyed it.

I started Hall's Life Work today. I will keep you posted.

I hope you find it worthwhile, Stasia.

OK, John Irving, with fear and loathing I'm going to give your latest novel a try, Last Night in Twisted River. Irivin is on the one hand one of my favorite writers--The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany; on the other hand, his last two books have been lousy. I didn't bother to finish The Fourth Hand and I didn't bother to even start Until I Find You. And Son of the Circus? Forget it. I've been reassured by some of the reviews of the new novel that Irving is finally finished with his three-novel fixation about strange sex in foreign lands. I hope so. What a phase that was!

Well, here's hoping. I'm gonna give it a try.

Reference 44, 45, 48.

One last musing, and then back to work. I love Iriving for his characters and for his plots. When he's good, he's so good. He's a writer, dammit, and he's willing to take risks with what he does, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. The World According to Garp was his fourth novel, for heaven's sake, but for that he was an "instant" success. What I find so disturbing (although maybe it's a good sign, who knows?) is that he's never won a Pulitzer, while a "writer" like my pendantic friend Jane Smiley has (for A Thousand Acres, are you kidding?). Oh well, prizes don't prove much, obviously. But jeeze.

Another reason to love Irving: he says that Tom Wolfe's writing makes him "gag."

Edited for subject/verb agreement issue.

You've been busy! *Lidie Newton* was a disaster. The other unreadable Smiley was The Greenlanders but all the rest have been highly entertaining. I prefer her 'funny' mode to the serious, though.

Irving is also uneven. I slogged stubbornly through the tattoo one.... why I can't say. I'm not entirely sorry as I do think I have a better understanding of the allure of tattoos and that world.

I've always enjoyed Tom Wolfe. A Man in Full about a big Atlanta developer was a great read.

Now Sybil, you wouldn't be baiting me, would you? "all" of Smiley "highly entertaining"? I wouldn't have thought you would be quite so easily amused. Huh. I have The Greenlanders and everything else she's written taking up space on my shelf. Don't know why.

Irving's "the tattoo one" --that would be Until I Find You. Why in the world would you bother to slog through that one? I guess I ought to try it some day, since even Irving at his worst can always be counted on to have some good writing. Although the childhood sexual abuse in the novel, while it may have done something for him to write, would do nothing for me to read. And the whole transsexual thing? Nah. Irving said he rewrote the whole novel after he turned the ms into his publisher, changing the first-person narrator into third because the first-person was "too confessional." From one reviewer: "as this behemoth chugs along"--heh.

And Tom Wolfe? I'll just have to lean on that old standby phrase, "Not for me," which is code for you-know-what.

I have only read one of Smiley's books, Moo, and I cannot say that I was terribly impressed.

I don't remember why I was on such a Smiley binge--certainly not because I liked them or thought she wrote exceptionally well. It had something to do with school--but the details are a bit fuzzy now.

I've changed my mind about my next novel. In the Woods by Tana French just came in the mail. Based on the positive comments and reactions to the book and its sequel, I'm going to read this.

Oh jeeze, book snobs make me tired. Of course there is no love lost between me and the NYT. Here's a blurb from the NYT Book Review on the back of the jacket: "Even smart people who should know better will be able to lose themselves in these dark woods." Oh, lah-dee-dah. Thank you, Marilyn Stasio. Yes, I know, she's a big-time crime fiction reviewer for that paper. However, if I were French, I don't think I would want a "Stasio-at-any-cost" blurb on the back of my book.

Anyway, I'm betting I'll enjoy the book, and I thank all of you here at LT who have been reading it and The Likeness for bringing it to my attention.

Happy reading.

I do not know exactly what a book snob is, but I hope I never turn into one!

I'm not. Really. My own taste, or whatever you want to call it, is a complete mystery to me which I think I've admitted before. It doesn't have any sort of logic at all. I like learning about things I would never otherwise know a thing about and I think I trusted that Irving had done his homework. So even if the book was sort of tedious, oh who knows, it doesn't make any sense!

I was nursing when I read Moo.... and I sometimes laughed so hard it interfered. The horse one was extremely right on as regards horse racing which I know a little about.

Well, of course you know I was referring to the Stasio quotation on my copy of In the Woods when I made the crack about book snobs. I wasn't calling anyone here that. Oh, I feel terrible if you think I was.

My mouth! I'm so sorry if you thought I was referring to you. Of course I don't think you're a book snob, Sib. I think you're a very smart cookie. I was just trying to make a joke. Which obviously I shouldn't do. If you could see my face or hear my voice, you would know. So sorry.

What a hilarious book to be reading while nursing your baby! That's a funny story.

Well, since it's O.K. for Lucy to like Smiley*, I'll join in to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Horse Heaven one most, Moo second, and Good Faith last. I've bought others on the strength of those three. And I've broken down and started In the Woods too because I need a mystery just now. I'll go ahead and add it to my bloated "currently reading" list.
(*That's supposed to be a joke too.)

Oh I am so relieved -- I was afraid I had lost my marbles -- I should have been more clear! The "I'm not. Really." was referring wayyyyyy back to #151 and whether I was teasing you about liking Smiley....... so I was admitting that I like her work - just not all of it. I do admire the way she tries different stuff. So be tranquil!

#151? Oh gee. Well, as you see, I have a memory like a sieve. Oof, that makes me feel better.

Seriously, I always thought that Smiley's trying different stuff was so deliberate--almost as if she was checking off a list of different styles as she wrote each book. Was it? I don't know. Have you ever heard her voice? I can't figure out where she got the affected faux Valley Girl accent if she grew up in Webster Groves, MO. It's simply precious, especially on a woman who is 61 years old. Now you're getting me fixated on this woman whose writing drives me batty. Oh dear.

Oh hi Jane, it's you. Smiley.



The woman's website indicates, naturally, "The Much Anticipated New Novel." Private Life. I also found an article that calls her the "true heir" of George Eliot and Middlemarch, saying she "earned" that distinction 19 years ago with A Thousand Acres. Somebody please stop me!

P.S. The knock on her new book is that it suffers from the same sort of tediousness as some of her others, plus the characters are so inaccessible that it's hard to care about any of them. While I make up my own mind about the books I'm reading or going to read, I also enjoy reading a few reviews prior to picking up a book, just to have some idea of what others have to say. Knowing Smiley's writing as well as I do (having read everything except the Greenland book {I tried it and couldn't get past about page 3}, and of course abandoning the Kansas Lidie Newton book), reading that this new one is tedious is enough to keep me away from it. Life is too short. Why do I seem to be obsessing about this woman and her writing?

Jane Smiley. The End.

I'm enjoying In the Woods by Tana French. She's a very talented writer. I'm only about 60 pages into it. I keep remembering another book I read back in March of this year by Joseph Wambaugh, The Blooding (published in 1989). His was a true crime story set in the English village of Narborough in Leicester. It has the same sort of atmosphere and feel for me that French's book has. The murders that Wambaugh writes about took place in 1983 and 1986 and were the first murders to be solved in England through DNA testing. Although the DNA testing was key to the murders, Wambaugh's focus was the story of the victims, their families, and the policemen who were involved. The story of the detective work in Wambaugh's book is particularly strong.

So far I like the pairing of the Cassie and Rob characters.

Sorry to bring up Jane Smiley when you thought you were done with her. I guess that means you won't be reading Private Life if the Missouri Readers Group chooses that book? Awwww, come on. This might be the Smiley book you end up loving!

Enjoy In the Woods. French is a terrific writer. So good in fact that I could overlook the flaws in the plot. I heard that she's releasing a new book in July.

Ha--nope, afraid I'll have to skip that Missouri Read.

I'm dipping into the brand new Shirley Jackson collection of novels and stories from Library of America--Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories. The book was edited by Joyce Carol Oates, which seems appropriate.

I'm reading the stories just as they appear in the book, and I'm only on the fourth or fifth one--not very far yet into the book. In general, I don't care for short stories. I don't even like short novels as a general rule. So that's my bias. The stories I've read so far in this collection seem more to me like writing exercises than like stories that could or should or ought to have been published. Several times I've come to the end and thought, "Huh? Did I miss something? Like I said, I'm not a particularly sophisticated short story reader, so take the criticism with a grain of salt. Maybe on some level the stories are "brilliant"--who knows?

Becky, our hearts beat as one on the subject of short stories. Are the stories in chronological order? Maybe you're justly rejecting juvenalia (is that spelled right?)..... I'm also a fan of SJ. I really stopped by to tell you that you might want to check out a new post on my old thread from a woman writing her appreciation for your defense of horror and for listing some examples. You should look if you appreciate being appreciated! (I appreciate you too.)

Thanks for the tip about the post on your old thread, Peggy. And thanks for your kind words.

Looking a little closer at the Jackson book, I see that in the back there's a chronology that also includes all the stories. So I could check them out to see when they were written that way. You make a good point--maybe they are in chronological order.

I'm about 150 pages into In the Woods which is about a third of the way through. I find myself wishing she would pick up the pace a little bit. That said, I think her writing is remarkable for a first novel. Especially for someone who evidently just woke up one morning and decided to write. I do find the Rob first-person character a bit too touchy-feely at times. Maybe French knows men like this, but I don't. It may be a generational thing, who knows. I wish I'd marked the passage where I said to myself, "Oh come on, this guy is a detective for heaven's sake."

Someone asked her what authors she admires. The ones who push the boundaries of the genre, she said. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane.

Added from another thread. This is what I was moodling about yesterday. I put it here just to keep track of what I was thinking while reading French's book.

I was reading an interview with French about her novel, because I enjoy stories about writers and how they write, how they get their ideas, how their books come about, etc.

She was 35 years old in 2008 when In the Woods was published. She says in the interview, and also I've read in biographical pieces about he,r that her background is theater. No mention of writing. So what did she do, just sit down one day and decide to write a novel? Evidently. The interviewer asks basically the same question I did: "I was strongly impressed by the manner in which you 'channeled' Rob Ryan's psyche during In the Woods. Did you have any difficulty with creating and describing a male character on such a deeply personal level." Now of course male writers write first person female characters and female writers write male characters--this is done frequently enough. I guess my point was, this is her first novel, plus she doesn't seem to have much of a writing background behind her. So how did she do this?

Her answer for the interviewer was that to write in Rob Ryan's voice wasn't a conscious choice--he just "showed up." She also says "there are no such entities as 'men' or 'women'; there are individuals . . ." to which I say, "Bunk." However, another comment she made did make some sense to me--or the interviewer made it for her in the introduction to the interview: that French's acting background was helpful to her in helping her create the voices of her characters. That makes sense. The other, not so much.

One other thing I'll say about authors and interviews. Writers make things up--that's what they do for a living. I remember reading an interview with Stephen King one time (oh, him again) where he said he took four days off a year: Christmas, his birthday, the Fourth of July, and I can't remember the other one. All the other days of the year, he writes. Later I read where he said that wasn't true--that he made it up to have something to say to the guy interviewing him. So I guess I take these writer interviews with a grain of salt. French describes her process, and it's interesting and of course may be exactly the way she does it, but I'm not sure I buy it 100%. Whatever--it makes an interesting story.

Many writers describe the experience of having a character 'show up' and take over. Forster writes about that a little, about how you might start out 'making up' a character, but once you begin writing, they generally take over and you, the writer, end up going along for the ride, so to speak. Being inhabited by something 'other' out of and beyond myself is the experience I live for when I write, an awe-inspiring sense of being taken up and led to understanding about what it might be like to be someone else or to live somewhere else (or some time else)..... I am sure there are writers who don't approach writing that way at all, but many do.

If I could be guaranteed that experience, I'd take up writing in a serious second. I'm afraid my creations would just loll on the sofa and say, "Hand me the remote." I do cherish moments of having played the piano better than I know that I can play. I suspect the two are somehow akin.

>69 sibylline:. My "Bunk" snarky comment in #68 was in reference to her idea that there are no such entities as "men" or "women," which is just a silly idea. Although maybe she inhabits a world where androgyny is increasingly the norm. I guess that's possible, and maybe EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD is living in such an androgynous milieu these days, but frankly, that's not my experience.

>70 LizzieD:. haha--"Hand me the remote."

I was just over at LizzieD's thread (we're having a conversation about In the Woods over there because she's reading it too). Here's something that came to mind as I was writing there, and I want to expound on it here.

About the male character just "showing up" and taking over. I have no doubt that it happens. But speaking for myself, I know that as a writer I make choices--conscious choices--all the time. The choice about who will tell the story is big, very big. If I were going to spend two or three years writing a novel, then I would need a very good reason to write from the first-person male point of view. I think French probably had a reason for what she did. I also think she gave a very "writerly" answer to the question that may be part of the truth but that probably isn't the whole truth. Can I prove it? Heck no.

One of the things that French is doing in this novel that I really like is to give off omnious little rumblings from this narrator here and there. They mainly (or maybe always, I don't know) come at the ends of paragraphs that have a break after--where the reader ought to be paying attention. I wish I had marked them all. But what it's doing for me is to start me wondering, are we in the hands of an unreliable narrator? Now that would be interesting. Uh-oh. I can picture this narrator writing from a padded cell somewhere. Did you ever read Poe's story, "Ligeia"? And of course "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Here's what I mean, although this example isn't as vaguely creepy as some of the others: "But perhaps the real reason I find it difficult to talk about those weeks is that--in spite of all that, and of the fact that I know this to be a self-indulgence I cannot afford--I miss them still." (Finds it "difficult" to talk about those weeks--to whom?)

Or this one, not so subtle: "Like some monstrously deformed child who should never have lived beyond infancy, or a conjoined twin whose other half died under the knife, I had--simply by surviving--becoming a freak of nature."

And this earlier one: "There was a time when I believed, with the police and the media and my stunned parents, that I was the redeemed one, the boy bourne safely home on the ebb of whatever freak tide carried Peter and Jamie away. Not any more. In ways too dark and crucial to be called metaphorical, I never left that wood."

I would say at this point (I'm still at pg 150) that that's probably not what she's doing. But I like the rumblings, just the same. --Boo!

French is also doing the foreshadowing thing, which is starting to be just a little bit annoying, mainly because it's pretty broad, but also because I don't know her writing and therefore can't completely trust her. When John Irving does it, for example, I know it's for a good reason and he'll come through with something. French may come through as well--or it may just be a tease.

Example: Rob Ryan is interviewing the dead girl's sister Rosalind: "her voice had tightened and I didn't want to push her, not yet. I wonder now, of course, whether I should have; but I can't see that, in the long run, it would have made any difference to anything at all."

Becky, now that I think about it (having just posted over on my own thread about this), I'm guessing that if I were to try to write "male," I'd end up writing "human" and it would pretty much be my own voice coming through. (I'm supporting your thought, wherever it is, that what may be coming through is all French.)
Not very far into the book at all, I was caught up short at one of your spots, where he speaks of Cassie in the past tense as though she were now dead. (I shook my head and kept going, and I'm not sure that I've run across the next one yet.) I guess that can't be right since she is the narrator of the next book. What will be interesting is to read how the Cassie voice differs in essentials from the Rob voice. Did you notice, Lucy?

Cassie is different from Rob. And Rob does give off unreliable vibes, and I can't quite recall how it played out...... if I say what I do recall that might be a spoiler...... anyhow Rob does have reason for speaking of C. in the past tense, that will reveal itself.

I'm really caught up in this book, In the Woods. DH is out of town and I was up early and got some good work done on other things, so I'm "being bad" this afternoon and reading my eyes blind.

Here's a little vignette that for me sets French's writing apart from the run-of-the-mill supermarket detective story. Cassie and the Rob character are interviewing a little old lady about her memory of the children lost in the woods. Cassie has more emotional intelligence than Rob, so she's the one who "handles" these sorts of people, and she is being very careful with the old lady. Says Rob, our narrator, "Mrs. Fitzgerald was like a sly old woman from a fairy tale, peering out of some dilapidated cottage in the woods, mischievous and watchful; you couldn't help half-believing she would give you the answer to your riddle, even though it might be in a form too cryptic to unravel." Wonderful.

Oh, I tried so hard to finish In the Woods last night, not because I want it to end, but because I want to see how French wraps this thing up. I still have over 80 pages to go and lots to do today, so I might not get back to it until tonight. No spoilers here, Peggy, in case you wander over to my thread. I'll keep my thoughts about the plot details to myself.

I visit your thread at least once a day, Becky, so I appreciate your tact. Activity in real life - visits with relatives, both mine and his - is keeping me away from the printed page; away from the Kindle too; and away from LT until now. Horrors!

I've barely read anything in three days...... but my eyes are appreciating the rest.

Hope your eyes feel better, Sib.

Finished In the Woods by Tana French. I gave it a solid four stars. I might have given it five if I hadn't been so often annoyed by the narrator. He was 'way too much of a touchy-feely sort to be believable as a detective on a murder squad, IMHO. Also, I thought French was dancing pretty close to the edge of creating an unlikable narrator, which is dangerous even in the hands of a pro. I won't say specifically what set me off about the Rob narrator, since Peggy is still reading this book. All things considered, it was a really enjoyable read.

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately. I think I'll switch to biography. I'm going to try Margaret Forster's biog, Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller.

Edited to add content about the unlikable narrator.

I set some goals for my reading for the second four months of the year (May-August). I thought I might see how I'm doing so far. I'm probably pretty far off.

Letters/Correspondence/Journals
Goal: 2
What I've read so far: 2

Biography
Goal: 8
So far: 3

Memoir
Goal: 6
So far: 2

Current Events/History
Goal: 2
So far: 1

Non-fiction
Goal: 1 or 2
So far: 0

Fiction
Goal: 8 (minimum)
So far: 7

Literary or Classic Fiction
Goal: 1 or 2 (depending on length)
So far: 1

Writing How-To
Goal: 2
So far: 1

Group Read
Goal: 2
So far: 1

That's better than I would have thought--closer to the goals that I set for myself than I would have thought. I'm still not sure I'm completely happy with those goals, but they're OK for now. I'm pretty fiction heavy so far. I should read more biography and especially more memoir. I wonder if I shouldn't adjust the goal to read more Letters/Correspondence/Journals, because I have so many on my shelves.

Looking at your list makes me think that my next book should be a biography/memoir, I've read nothing, really in that area for months and months..... Hmmmm, you are giving me the idea to go and look at my list so far and try and see what I have been up to...... My reading has felt incredibly random this year, ok, but sometimes I'm very directed if I am 'on' to something.

Anyhow bravo!

As I'm working on my writing project, I'm creating a list of things to read next. I often do that, the list gets lost, and my intentions go down the rabbit hole. Maybe if I put them here I'll remember.

Finish the biog by Forster of Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller.

Read Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism, and New Deal Politics by Susan Ware.

Read Sisters: Love and Rivalry Inside the Family and Beyond by Fishel.

Read The Odd Woman: A Novel by Gail Godwin which got terrible reader-reviews on Amazon, but I don't care because I'm interested in her treatment in the book of the sister relationship.

Four books in 2.5 weeks--the end of June? Just depends.

Scratch Godwin's book and read Six of One by Rita Mae Brown. Highly recommended by at least a couple of reviewers.

This is so rare as to be unheard of, as you know, but Gail Godwin is one of the few writers I find unbearable. UNBEARABLE. Gah.

I'm back -- why don't you consult this list: sisters
then maybe you don't have to read Godwin.

Thanks for the link, Sib, I will do that.

hahahaha--in the dim recesses of my memory, I remember a Godwin book that literally made me gag. Now which one was it? Sib will undoubtedly say--it could have been one of many! Seriously. I need to look on my shelf for that book. I know if I saw the cover I would have a VISCERAL reaction. You see, this is what I do. I think I must have undiagnosed ADD. Although I call it "creative" right-brain-ness. When I used to do research for papers for my lit degree, I would do this kind of thing--end up somewhere looking for some factoid and have no idea how I got there. And yet that's how I found some of my best stuff, so I tend not to always shut down this sort of thing.

I thought maybe it was Godwin's Evensong, but that wasn't it. That was the story with the female Episcopal priest. Maybe it was the subject that turned you off, Sibyl, or was it her writing? Sorry. . . um. . . I think I remember liking that one.

It turns out that I may have been thinking of Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World. It was probably one of the most unrelentingly sad books I've ever read. When I was finished (back then I never didn't finish a book--today I wouldn't finish this one), I was angry that I had spent so much time mucking around in this woman's dark, harrowing world.

Maybe Godwin's Violet Clay was the one that makes me think--"ugh, not for me" when I think of Godwin.

>87 sibylline:. OK, I'll try Rita Mae Brown, Six of One.

Her books feel like the contents of whatever rubbish she has on hand. Literally. I don't know how she gets away with it. You will note that I have not even entered any of her books on LT and I won't.

Not until they put in negative numbers.

I'd be curious to know which books of Godwin's have sent you so completely over the edge. And I agree, negative star-ratings would be very useful.

So of course, what just came in the mail--a copy of The Likeness. I'm doomed--I can't possibly walk away from this book, especially with DH still out of town. And I was "being so good."

One was A Southern Family. I found it ..... just..... nothing much. I remember thinking, we must be in a bad way if reviewers of respectable magazines and newspapers are giving her the thumb's up. You could wile away an afternoon at the beach reading her stuff, I suppose. But -- beyond that I recollect sensing something odd about the spirit of her work -- I can't recall and I'm not going back to check either. I feel I read something else too, but looking at the list of her books I couldn't see anything.

Thumbs up as in rave reviews and huge excitement.

>95 sibylline:. Oh well, Sib, there's so much crap out there, and reviews mean nothing so much of the time. They're so political and so much logrolling. Really. Same way with awards.

So I'm reading The Likeness tonight, since it's just me and the dogs. One thing I find amazing about French is the way she's bucking the tide of the multiple storyline--and doing it so well. It's so common these days in detective/mystery/thriller genre to have the author jumping like a scalded cat from one storyline to another--the reader just gets settled in and--bam--off down another rat hole. Not so with French, and I find it refreshing.

And yes, I love her Cassie narrator. She did the right thing not to come back with another novel narrated from the Rob guy perspective.

Now I know an author never to try - Gail Godwin. Thanks for the heads up, ladies!

Stasia, you won't miss one thing if you never read a word of Godwin.

Good to know!

BTW - I finished Life Work the other day and loved it. Thanks again for the recommendation of that one, Becky.

I'm so glad to hear you liked it, Stasia.

>95 sibylline:. Hey Sib, here's the latest review on LT for Godwin's A Southern Family. I didn't even have to look for a bad review--there it was:

"Not since Emperor of Ocean Park have I loathed a book more. It took about two years to read and I honestly can't remember if I really did finish it".

This person gives it a half-star rating. That's what I do when I really loathe a book. But they ought to give us the wherewithal for negative stars. What's the opposite of a star--how about a brick? This one sounds like it would be about a 3-brick rating.

Becky

I'm way behind on the threads and caught up with yours today. I've missed alot....Thanks for listing your books at the top of the new thread.

I've added Clover: The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America's Gilded Age by Otto Friedrich. And Stasia also recommended Life Work and thus I'm adding this one as well.

Happy Sunday!

Hi Linda. Nice to see you here. I really enjoyed both of the books you mention. Life Work is a small book--so worthwhile. And Clover is someone I would love to have as a friend. Good stuff.

Becky
Last evening I watched the A&E series America's Castles. I've been to Newport, Rhode Island a number of times and I'm fascinated by the guilded age. I'm currently listening to the audio book of The Age of Innocence and Edith Wharton paints such a great picture of the snobbish, rule obsessed, snitty life style.

I hope my library has a copy of the Otto Friedrich book.

Linda, you remind me that I need to read more of Wharton. I haven't read much, and The Age of Innocence would be a good one. It's one of those books that has been on my shelf for probably over 20 years.

Have you read the Shari Benstock biog of Wharton: No Gifts from Chance? It was published in 1994, and although I wasn't keeping track of my reading at the time, I'm sure that I read it when it came out. I liked it better than the one by Lewis, published in 1975.

B -- Thanks for sending me the link to the pan -- it warmed my heart!

#101 (brick ratings): I love that idea! Although I hope that there aren't too many books that would warrant brick (negative star) ratings!

Karen O.

Let's all lobby LT for brick ratings--ha. Or how about brickbats?

I like it!

My fiction book is still Tana French's The Likeness, her second detective/murder/mystery sort of novel. She said she finished her first one, In the Woods, in two years. That one was published in 2007, the second one in 2008. I'm willing to bet that her description of "two years" is just something of a metaphor, plus I'm thinking she had the second one pretty much ready to go. I don't think she wrote the second one in a year or so. Of course I might be wrong; maybe she's just very fast or spends 18 hours a day on her writing. One of the reasons I'm skeptical about the timeline is because she "writes long." That's one of my criticisms of her work. I was sure the second novel would be shorter than the first (editor's influence), but instead it was longer. I find myself reading scenes in The Likeness where I say to her, come on, pick it up a little. Like a lot of writers, I think sometimes she's in love with her own prose. That's what editors are for. I also write long, as my posts here illustrate most of the time, but when I edit my own work, which I don't do here, I tighten it up. Five or ten percent, Tana, that's all I'm asking for.

Her third book is coming out the middle of July--Faithful Place. It's available for pre-order on amazon. Publishers Weekly has a blurb about the book on amazon--"shows the Irish author getting better with each book." Of course PW is in the business of selling books. This one highlights the Frank Mackey character from The Likeness. I thought he was quite unlikeable, although at least he didn't weep and tear up every other scene like the Rob narrator did in her first book, so there's hope.

French has a wicked sense of humor, used to particular effect in her dialogue (although other readers have been annoyed by this "cutesy-poo banter," and I can understand that pov, especially between the Cassey and Rob characters of the first book. Certainly that sort of thing can be overdone--watch it, Tana). I also think she has absolutely nailed the "group think thing" of the 30-something age group crowd. Personally, group living would be my idea of hell, but whatever floats your boat--and I think French somewhere in #2 even quotes Sartre on that. However, French seems to be more admiring than critical of the group. Probably because that's her generation.

P.S. The third one is 400+ pages also. Oh well.

P.P.S. The other thing I wanted to say about The Likeness that I really like French for is that, while she continues on with characters from her first book, the second book is a real stand-alone: you don't need to have read Woods to enjoy Likeness.

I am soooo looking forward to Faithful Place. I found the character of Frank prickly and mysterious, but I'm certain that after reading 400+ pages of character analysis, I'll get to know and maybe even like him. At least he seems to be a better detective than both Rob and Cassie who gullibly let their emotions override their common sense. Makes for interesting reading, but in real life, I hope they would get the boot!

After reading 800+ pages of French in a week, I think I need a break from her. I do that with other writers I like a lot--tear into multiple volumes of their work and then get tired of them. I'll be looking to see what people have to say about French #3.

Although *Likeness* and *Woods* were/are stand-alones, the pause of six months between reading them meant that I was occasionally confused when she was referring to her past. If I hadn't read *Woods* I suspect that I wouldn't have worried about not knowing what those things were, references to disastrous boyfriend etc. I would have just accepted it stuff in her past that might or might not matter.

I finally finished The Likeness--and that's how it felt when I was finished with it--finally. I thought I would never get through the last 50 pages or so. I don't know why I had that reaction to it. It's probably just me or just my mood or whatever. I'm thinking it's not necessarily fair to an author to read two longish books by the same author back-to-back. I probably should have taken a break and read something else before reading the second book. I think I got tired of the characters, a lot the same way that the five living in the house together got tired of each other. Too much exposure. Too much time spent together. Ah well, she's a big talent. I gave the book 3.5 stars because it needed cutting, IMO. I have French Fatigue.

So I'm leaving fiction alone for awhile and returning to biography--the Margaret Forster biog of Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller. I'm not too far into this one yet, only 50 pages or so, but I get the impression that Forster doesn't like her subject too much. Du Maurier was only about 19 or so when she started writing short stories. She had a hard time with the concept of "butt + chair = work," and she was doing well to write for an hour a day. So far Forster has used that phrase, "an hour a day," about five times in the chapter, to the point where the reader begins to wonder, Is she mocking her? We'll see.

It's something of a conversation among biographers whether or not it's necessary for a biographer to like his or her subject. My thought is, why would you want to spend so much time with someone you dislike? On the other hand, I can see how it would be possible for a "dislike" to form as the project progresses during the research, so that when the writing stage is reached, that dislike leaks into the analysis. I don't ask for hagiography from a biographer--in fact, just the opposite; however, when there's a real antipathy from the writer for her subject, then I think it's a problem. We'll see where Forster is going with this one.

I'm halfway through the du Maurier biog by Forster now, and it's abundantly clear that Forster has no use for her subject. I would so love to ask Forster why she got involved in this project--and why she saw it through to completion. It can't be all that much fun to write about someone you actively dislike. At first I was going to abandon the book, somewhere around page 100; then I found myself getting interested in this woman, so I guess I'll see it through to the end.

I have a little to say about biographers falling out of love with their subjects -- Diane Johnson either wrote about or talked about in a class how common it is to go through a period of loathing whoever it is you have chosen to write about..... generally you get through it, but not always. She's written several very good bios -- one of Dashiel (sp?) Hammett and another about... I think Mary Shelley? Can't think right now.

I would make the distinction between falling in and out (and hopefully in again) of love with your project, a phase in the writing process, vs. taking an active dislike for your subject. What Margaret Forster is doing with du Maurier is more than a writing phase. Although around the middle of the book, where du Maurier hits forty-something, Forster seems to get over it a bit and writes with more poise about du Maurier. Isn't there also some sort of "transference" that is supposed to happen between a biographer and her subject? I don't know whether Forster had children, but she seems to particularly dislike du Maurier when her three children are young. "Daphne" was one of those people who never should have been a mother, yet she had three children, and she had absolutely nothing to give them. No one would want this woman for a mother.

Contempt--maybe that's the attitude I'm searching for. There was something about Daphne du Maurier that had Forster pretty twisted up, and I think if a biographer writes about her subject with contempt, then that's trouble. But I do think she gets over that at some point. I don't like du Maurier, but I don't have to like her to like the biography of her--does that make sense? And I think that's something the biographer controls.

Edited to insert the author touchstone.

That all makes sense to me -- Johnson has two books of essays out and I feel that in one of them is an essay about just this -- She ended up loathing Hammett is what I remember. Asked to write it because she wrote mysteries, lived in California, and had been known to complete projects she started.....she found him quite awful and I think, describes the process of dealing with that and making sure it didn't poison the work. She also wrote a bio of George Meredith's wife that I haven't read....I suspect that might have been a dissertation? In some box somewhere I have at least one of the books of essays..... I'm not sure you should run out and buy the whole thing just for one essay. So I will make an effort when I am muddling around in the storage unit to check it out. I want to rearrange my books so I can at least find them. Who cares about actually unpacking all that other stuff!!!

Oh, I'd love to read that essay--or at least hear more about it. I don't blame her for loathing Hammett. I ran into him when I was reading about Lillian Hellman. Oof. Poor Johnson. I love those sorts of backstories--stories about books and how they got themselves written. The story of the book: biographies are particularly interesting.

Well, I've been "rearranging" the shelves since January, ever since I found LT. It's wonderful to have it done (although I'm not done yet), but it's such a time-consuming job. Although unpacking book boxes can be so much fun--"Oh hooray, I forgot about that one!" And you're right, the other stuff (shoes? who needs 'em) is secondary. Get your kitchen set up and then get to your books. Whenever I move, I always feel like if my kitchen is workable, then the rest of it will happen all in good time.

Holy Cow! Slovenia just scored in the Slovenia vs. U.S.A. game. I'm watching that because I figured I ought to watch at least one World Cup game. "Mihelich" (actually Mihelic) is Slovenian. That's where Don's grandparents came from.

I've been reading my du Maurier biography in front of the TV with the sound off, "watching" a couple of World Cup games. I know nothing about soccer--I'm a baseball, football kind of person. I'll watch Wimbledon Tennis--sometimes. I used to try to catch golf when Tiger Woods was playing, but I don't care so much about him anymore. Today he was whining about the greens at the Open. Really? Shut up.

Anyway, Forster's du Maurier biog has definitely picked up in the second half of the book. Du Maurier is a complicated, intense, self-involved sort of person. Maybe it took 40 or 50 years of her life for those traits to become interesting rather than simply immature and annoying.

More re: Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller by Margaret Forster.

Forster is one of my favorite writers, which is largely why I chose to read this biog. I don't care all that much about Daphne Du Maurier, but I thought it would be a good biography because it was written by Forster.

Which explains my disappointment about the first part of the book. Honestly, I don't know what the problem was (and I've guessed at it in other posts--e.g. #120), but Forster got over it. The second half of the biography is fascinating--this woman, a writer into her 40s and beyond, figuring out how to juggle her time and social commitments and still be the writer she wanted to be. Forster's treatment of this shows the sympathetic understanding that I expected her to have for these issues.

I'm also interested to see how du Maurier navigated her later years, from about 60 to her death. She had spent most of her adult life up to that point finding ways to find the solitude she needed/wanted to write. Then her best friend died, her husband died, she turned 60, her children were busy with their own lives, and she was turned out of the estate she had rented for 20-some years. All of a sudden she had more solitude than she could almost stand. She was also terrified that her creative life had dried up as well--could she still find ideas for her writing? Now things get interesting, and surprisingly, considering what a selfish, wimpish person she'd been all her life, she starts to come across as somewhat heroic. And all of a sudden I find myself riveted to this biography. "She was adamant she would never move {as her children constantly encouraged her to do}, never go to live with her children and never have anyone live with her. Fending for herself was something she was quite determined to do, though she admitted when Esther {her housekeeper} was away she found 'swabbing floors, emptying dustbins and cooking' exhausting."

It's hard to find the time I'd like on the weekends to read, but I'll give finishing this book today (tomorrow?) my best shot.

I wonder why more people here at 75 don't write more about what they're reading while they're reading it, instead of waiting until they're finished with the book--and then giving some sort of a synopsis? I don't care about a precis of the book. I'm far more interested in what people think about what they're reading as they read it. The stock, expected answer: "I'm too busy reading while I'm reading to write about my reading" isn't very satisfying.

I posted a fabulous photo of Daphne on the author page--and then had my hand slapped by LT for doing so because of "permissions." Bleh. Too bad. She was young and cocky and had a cigarette dangling out of the side of her mouth--wonderful! She would have LOVED it. I'm obviously not someone who is "good" about rules.

Now when I try to find that pic again at Google, it seems to have disappeared. That sort of thing fuels my natural paranoia.

SHOUTING DOWN A WELL

>125 labwriter: I've wondered that too, Becky, since talking while reading is what makes good group reads thrive. I've followed your journey with DdM with interest. Thanks!

>125 labwriter: You've got a great point about writing about what you're reading. I'd be the first to say that I don't do that except on very rare occasions and I don't really know why. But you've prompted me and since I'm reading a book that I'm totally immersed in and absolutely loving, I think this will be a great time to start so when I finish here I'm going straight to my thread to write about what I'm reading.

This biography sounds fascinating and since I read Rebecca for the first time a few months ago (I know, I'm the last person on earth to read it) I'm going to put it on my wishlist and look for it, along with some of her other books. I loved Rebecca.

Too bad about the picture.

>128 brenzi:. Hi Bonnie, thanks for posting. I'll look for your thread!

>127 LizzieD:. Peggy! (waves Hello!)

Read and think at the same time? What a concept! Okay, I'm off to my thread to give you a look at what I'm reading now.

>125 labwriter:: I just commented on Donna's thread, since I saw her posting about this first, but I've been thinking the same thing--especially since I started reading your thread. I don't like to know very much about a book I'm going to read (I won't even read the "reviews" on the back of a book), so I don't usually read much of a person's synopsis anyway, but I would like to "hear" their thinking/feelings about that book. I decided that the only way I was going to be able to clearly describe the emotional impact of a book would be talk about it while I'm reading; but if a book is really good, I usually won't stop until I'm finished reading it. Found myself folding down the corners of a library book today. Shhhh! Don't tell Donna! She won't even do that to her own books. ;-)

#125: I know why I do not do it - because I am reading multiple books all the time and because I already am up to 16 threads this year and if I did it, would likely have 100.

>131 bonniebooks:. My solution to the folding down corners is to use sticky notes. I'm always appalled when I go to buy a new pack of them how expensive they are. I use a lot of those little things.

I finished the Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller. She lived into her 80s, and had a difficult time with herself when she could no longer write, since writing was just about everything for her. She didn't seem to have the natural inner resources that most people have. Hobbies weren't of much importance to her, and her family (children, grandchildren) amused her, but she didn't spend too much time with them. She was basically healthy up until the end and also had her wits about her; however, she was very paranoid about her money running out, and she was also very isolated in her home in Cornwall but refused to live anywhere else. She was determined to remain in her own home until the end, which she was able to do because she had the money to hire the live-in help she needed to stay there.

Forster did a wonderful job with the book once she got du Maurier past about the age of 40, which was the last half of the book or so. As her subject aged, she seemed to have a much more sympathetic understanding of her. I would have expected her to write a good life of du Maurier; if anyone can understand the issues of a woman writer's life, surely it would be Forster.

One of my favorite memoirs for dealing with daughters and mothers and the issues of aging is Mary Gordon's Circling My Mother. Maybe "favorite" is the wrong word, since to read about her mother's old age and end in a nursing home is very difficult. I thought Gordon was incredibly brave to write about her the way she did. "I write about her because I am a writer and it is the only way that I can mourn her. Perhaps, for a writer, there is no such thing as simple mourning. What we have we use."

Forster evidently took care of her mother-in-law for some time during her last years. She wrote a novel using the themes of family and the ways they care for their old people: Have the Men Had Enough. I think that will be my next Forster.

I'm trying to decide on my next book. The two are so different, you would think I could decide on one based on what I'm in the mood to read. I think I'll start them both and maybe just read both of them together. I've decided to drop the Shirley Jackson book for awhile, the new collected volume of her work, Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories put out by the Library of America. Maybe I'll go back to it this winter. I don't consider it "abandoned," since I plan to go back to it--just set aside for awhile.

The first one is a collection of letters by John Jay Chapman, a largely forgotten writer. His years: 1863-1933. So he was about a generation younger than my friend from a group read this spring, Henry Adams. I've heard Chapman's correspondence described as "humorous and indiscreet," and the editor, M.A. DeWolfe Howe, says that Chapman did his "imagined biographer" a good turn when he wrote: "I confess that I had rather stand out for posterity in a hideous silhouette, as having been wrong on every question of my time, than be erased into a cypher by my biographer." DeWolfe Howe has done an excellent job of editing the correspondence (published in 1937); while this book isn't a biography as such, there's plenty here to put Chapman's life and letters into context. The book: John Jay Chapman and His Letters.

The second book I'd like to read was published in 2007: Infidel, a memoir by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This is a memoir by the woman who was in the headlines after the street murder of Dutchman Theo Van Gogh. He was found with a 5-page letter stabbed onto his chest with a knife. The letter was addressed to Hirsi Ali, and basically said, "You're next."

OK--so what does it mean when touchstone comes up in red? Infidel won't load into touchstone, and Hirisi Ali's name is in red.

Anyway, those are my next two reads.

My touchstones come up red all the time -- I don't really get them at all so I don't worry about it..... figure I'm doing brackets wrong or whatever.

Your last few posts on DuMaurier were stunning and hit home
-- it is clear to me I will be reading Forster intensively once I am resettled.

Well done! encouraging LTers to write more about what they are reading as they read, not limiting selves to summing up. Not every book deserves that attention but some do, particularly non-fiction, and I've experienced here how it brings a thread to life and makes the reading experience more vivid in the moment.

Hi Sib! Don fell back to sleep and he has to help with the chickens for the smoker, so here I am still.

Oh--it looks like maybe I spelled her name wrong: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Well, that still didn't work--it's still red. Oh well. I didn't get past the Prologue and Introduction last night, but the book looks like a stunner.

But I did get the touchstone to work for Infidel.

I found a book of Chapman's collected works: Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader.

I don't usually do this, but I want to post a review of the book by someone at Amazon:

"If John Jay Chapman is remembered at all these days, it is as an eccentric who once thrust his left hand into a coal fire in penance for mistakenly beating up a friend. This is as if Vincent Van Gogh were to be remembered only for cutting off one of his ears.Chapman was, in fact a brilliant and passionate writer in many genres, an unrelenting foe of social injustice,and a penetrating critic of American philstinism and materialism.The last anthology of Chapmans writings appeared in the late nineteen fifties , and was edited by Jacques Barzun, who has supplied a fine ,judicious introduction to the present collection.A welcome feature of the present volume is a selection of Chapmans unpublished letters--some of the finest everwritten. One of them includes one of the most brilliant and succinct analyses of Lincolns life and character that I have ever read. One can only hope that a Chapman revival will take place, and that someone will eventually get around to doiing similar anthologies for Sydney Smith or Albert Jay Nock."

My parents had loads of Chapman around on their shelves, so someone must have been reading him..... but I never have. Obviously will have to remedy this.

Do I feel a little group read coming on....... if you find something shortish, I'm in.

Something shortish in a group read? Sibyl, you haven't been reading all the threads here, have you. After saying, whoa, I need a break from group reads, what have I done?--signed up for Proust. Hahahaha. Actually, I've only committed to do a group read of Vol. I, so we'll see how it goes.

Really, your parents had Chapman on the shelves? Interesting. I think this guy is going to prove to be a very interesting character. Seriously, who deliberately burns off their own hand?

Oh jeeze, Sib, Chapman is hilarious, and I'm on page four. I have to post this rather long quotation--it's priceless. He may be the anti-Henry Adams--or perhaps his generation's version of HA. I think you're going to need to find a copy of this thing.

This is in the "Prelude." M.A. DeWolfe Howe has only just begun.

"Another abundant source {of unfamiliar quotation} exists in the form of an unpublished manuscript, 'Retrospections.' For several years before Chapman's death his latest publishers, through Mr. Ferris Greenslet {he was at Houghton Mifflin}, were asking him to produce an autobiography which might prove comparable with 'The Education of Henry Adams.' When I urged him to consider this suggestion seriously, he wrote to me: 'Perhaps I am to wind up with wheezing an accordion of memories. O Lord! By great good luck I cannot remember anything. I now realize why this gift was bestowed on me. They say that dying men remember everything, and certainly aging and decaying men begin to do the same--and publishers feed on them and flatter and stroke them. Get thee behind me, Satan! I'd rather die in a pot-house.'"

That is priceless! And, boy, do we ever get it!

My guess would be that my father's father would have owned the Chapmans -- so they are probably still in my Dad's bookshelves in my stepmother's house in D.C. She's told us to take any books we want, so maybe I will write to her.....

>141 sibylline:, I was thinking the same thing, and very glad to have read HA's book.

I love him already! I just downloaded "On Emerson and Other Essays" to my Kindle for free. It probably doesn't have an active table of contents, but that's fine with me.

Good catch, Peggy. I'll check it out.

#144: I will look forward to the review of "On Emerson and Other Essays", Peggy.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a memoir and also a geographical journey. Born in 1969, Hirsi Ali and her family moved from Mogadishu to Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia to Kenya, all by the time she had turned ten years old.

She writes, "I had lived through three different poltical systems, all of them failures. The police state in Mogadishu rationed people into hunger and bombed them into obedience. Islamic law in Saudi Arabia treated half its citizens like animals, with no rights or recourse, disposing of women without regard. And the old Somali rule of the clan, which saved you when you needed refuge, so easily broke down into suspicion, conspiracy, and revenge. In the years to come, clan warfare would sharpen and splinter and finally tear the whole of Somalia to pieces in one of the most destructive civil wars in Africa."

She had seen a lot by the age of 10. So far I've read about 60 pages with about 300 more to go. Her discussion of the way the clan works is fascinating.

Reading is universal. When Ayaan Hirsi Ali was about ten years old, her family moved to Kenya where she went to a school that taught her English.

"Once I had learned to read English, I discovered the school library. If we were good, we were allowed to take books home. I remember the Best Loved Tales of the Brothers Grimm and a collection of Hans Christian Andersen. Most seductive of all were the ragged paperbacks the other girls passed each other. Haweya {her younger sister} and I devoured those books in corners, shared them with each other, hid them behind schoolbooks, read them in a single night. We began with the Nancy Drew adventures, stories of pluck and independence. There was Enid Blyton, the Secret Seven, the Famous Five: tales of freedom, adventure, of equality between girls and boys, trust, and friendship. These were not like my grandmother's stark tales of the clan, with their messages of danger and suspicion. These stories were fun, they seemed real, and they spoke to me as the old legends never had."

Imagine it's the early 1980s and you're a young girl from a Somali tribe living in Nairobi, Kenya--meaning you're a Muslim living as a refugee in a predominantly Christian country. Since your father is a progressive thinker, you're allowed to go to the Muslim Girls' school where you're taught literature by a Luo woman. Here's what you're reading:

"We read 1984, Huckleberry Finn, The Thirty-Nine Steps; later we read English translations of Russian novels, with their strange patronymics and snowy vistas. We imagined the British moors in Wuthering Heights and the fight for racial equality in South Africa in Cry, the Beloved Country. An entire world of Western ideas began to take shape."

This memoir by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is simply an amazing book. I'm 100 pages into it now. At this point in the book, she's a teenager living in Nairobi with her mother, sister, and brother. Since her father has left the family, they have no man of the house to take them anywhere, even just to the market every day, which makes life difficult. Her mother is full of rage and depression over being abandoned by her husband in a town far from her clan--rage that she takes out on Ayaan by beating her regularly.

I am going to have to bump Infidel up in the BlackHole!

oh, ouch. I don't think I can read about a mother taking her rage out on her daughter...
"hits" too close to home for me. My mother was not a nice person in any way!

>151 Whisper1:. Beatings for women are a daily way of life in Hirsi Ali's culture and community. The men beat the wives, and it would seem that the women then turn around and take it out on their children. Whether people want to read about it or know about it, this sort of abuse is a fact of life--today--for millions of women.

Needing a little relief from the intense read of Infidel, I turned to some fiction, Eventide, which is Kent Haruf's sequel to Plainsong, a book I read earlier this year. He brings back the characters of the first book a couple of years later, still set in the fictional eastern Colorado town of Holt. This quiet book is balm to the soul.

"This quiet book is balm to the soul." ..what a lovely, lovely statement. My local librarian raves about the Haruf books. They are on the list of must read -- hopefully this summer.

Becky, your thoughts and quotes on Infidel have made it a must-have book for me. Thanks for sharing. Btw, I'm also a fan of the Haruf books.

Yes, Linda, I think you would like Haruf's books. I've known quite a few farmer/rancher types like the two McPheron brothers in these two books--strong, quiet men who with no fanfare go about doing the work that needs to be done. I think Haruf is one of these as well. It's such a contrast to the other book, Infidel, it's a wonder that the two contrasting types of men actually live on the same planet.

And those two brothers aren't just good men--they're a total hoot!

Today I'm reading a very short and sweet book, How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey. Frey has quite a bit of useful information packed into this small book.

The end chapter is titled, "The Zen of Novel Writing." I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read this: "Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady. Should the word get out about you, your friend {I would add, if you still have any} will snicker. Your neighbors will whisper about you. {What does she do all day?) Your mother-in-law will take you aside and lecture you on the responsibilities of adulthood."

Then Frey suggests several strategies for avoiding the stigma attached to proclaiming yourself a would-be novelist:

1. "Tell people you are a writer, but don't admit you're writing a novel." I've use that one myself all the time, referring to a "writing project." Most people don't ask beyond that. "It's OK to be a nonfiction writer because it's assumed that nonfiction writers are hard-nosed people who take life seriously. Besides, it is popularly believed that anyone who can spell can write a nonfiction book."

2. "Enroll in an English Literature degree program somewhere . . . . As long as it looks as if you're working for a degree no one will ask you what you're doing locked in your study all day and half the night." Ha, I've done this one, too. "If they ask why you're banging away so hard at your typewriter, tell them you're writing a thesis."

3. "Go underground. Tell no one. Write in longhand and hide your manuscript in a bottom drawer. Heh.

4. Finally, Frey suggests the "John Wayne Solution: grit your teeth, rock back on your heels, stick your thumbs in your belt, and just say it--I'm writing a novel, and if you so much as smirk I'll punch your lights out, pilgrim.

It took me a long time to answer, when someone asked me what I do, to say, "I'm a writer." If people ask beyond that, it's usually something like, "Oh, what do you write." Saying, "I'm working on a fiction project" normally ends the conversation. I think that's because most people don't know people who make their living by writing, so that answer is just plain outside their comfort level. The End.

Moving along with Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I wondered how it was she got to the Netherlands. It turns out she married a man who lived in Canada, a marriage arranged by her father to a man she didn't know, which was completely typical in her culture. So she was actually traveling to Canada to join her husband and decided that she couldn't go through with it. She knew a woman from her clan who was a refugee in the Netherlands, so that's where she went, without telling her family. She was able to live in a sort of refugee camp while she applied for asylum, and once her asylum was accepted, she received housing and money for living expenses--all gratis from the government. To her credit, she decided to work and also go to school because she wanted to be someone who contributed to society, not just someone who was taken care of. That was her whole point in seeking asylum away from her family and country in the first place. Her actions cause her to be disowned and cursed by her father and expelled from her clan. Where did she find the courage for such action at such a young age?

Admittedly the book drags in places. You have to be able to tolerate lots of similar-sounding names and rather confusing clan and family connections, but to me the payoff of seeing that world of Somalia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, etc. through the eyes of a woman who lived it is well worth a little work. It's also fascinating to read about the socialism in the Netherlands. What was it Margaret Thatcher said about socialism----the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money to spend.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Once I was halfway through this book, I couldn't put it down. One of the most compelling aspects of Hirsi Ali's story was of her time in the Netherlands. People in the U.S. who want to understand the issues of radical Islam would do well to read up on what has been happening in the Netherlands over the past decade. If you don't know the story of Theo van Gogh's film, Submission, Part I and his subsequent murder, then you need to get up to speed--really. One of my biggest frustrations when talking to people about these issues is that don't know anything--they are happily, sublimely uninformed. Stripping it down to its simplest form, Hirsi Ali's message throughout this book is just that: people need to wake up.

Here is a short article that lays out the basics of the events of Theo van Gogh's murder: Education by Murder.

Ayan Hirsi Ali is currently a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Her recent articles and speeches are linked to the website.

Seriously, this is not a left or a right issue; this is a human issue.

Five stars. I wish I could make it 10. I will not soon forget this book.

P.S. Theo van Gogh looks like a complete mess in that photo. Evidently, that was just the way he was, all the time. Hirsi Ali has a paragraph that reveals something of his personality:

"We did discuss the danger of making a film with this message {that was Submission}. Having already spoken out about Islam, I knew how dangerous it was. I warned Theo; I wanted him to keep his name off the project. But Theo called himself the village idiot. He said, "Nobody shoots the village idiot." He believed that I was the one who would be attacked, and nobody would bother with him." He may have been justified in believing that, but he was wrong.

At the end, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes about the difficulty of cultures making the transition to the modern world. "It was difficult for my grandmother, and for all my relatives from the miye. It was difficult for me too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason--from the world of excision {female genital mutilation} and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally because of its values.

"The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life."

Becky

What powerful comments regarding your recent read. I'm adding Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali to my summer list.

I already had Infidel in the BlackHole, but I am bumping it up. Thanks for the nudge, Becky!

>162 Whisper1:, 163. Thanks for you comments. I hope you find the book worthwhile.

Eventide by Kent Haruf. This is Haruf's sequel to Plainsong. He brings back some of the characters from the first book and also adds new ones.

Maybe it was my mood, but I found this book to be somewhat depressing. Haruf has a husband and wife who take up a good bit of time in this book. I understand that they're important to his story, but they're pathetic, unlikeable characters. In fact, there are very few strong, likeable characters in the book. He brings back the McPherson brothers, the farmers, but their place in the book is pretty depressing as well. The children in the book, and there are several, all seem to be pretty much the same child, dealing with issues that are all part of a theme. It's hard to distinguish any of them most of the time.

Haruf has created another strong woman in this book, to his credit. Male authors aren't always the best at doing that, but it's one of Haruf's strong points. The book was good, but I think he would have been better served to put the two books together, editing out some of it. IMO, that would have made for one exceptionally powerful book.

3.5 stars, which is still a pretty good book. I think I gave Plainsong 4 stars.

I read Plainsong and loved it, but have never made it to Eventide. It looks like I can put that book off for a while longer.

So with my other books finished, I'm continuing on with the correspondence of John Jay Chapman (see posts 134, 137, 139, 140, 144). I'm about a third of the way through this book. His first wife was Minna Timmons, described as the "beautiful and fiery" oldest child of wealthy Bostonian George Henry Timmons. I'd love to know more about her. Minna has just died (1897) of what sounds like a pulmonary embolism after her third pregnancy. She had been on bedrest for weeks after the delivery, "waiting for the clot to dissolve," as Chapman wrote to someone. He was sitting at her bedside, and she suddenly sat up and literally fell over dead. What a terrible shock that must have been. She sounds like a brilliant woman, and his letters show him conferring with her about his essays on Emerson. Maybe he would have been more visible in his published works if she had lived. He married one of his first wife's best friends about a year later.

I definitely need to read his collection of Emerson "and other" essays that Peggy found could be uploaded for free on the Kindle. I think I'll also get the one book that I've found that relates to him: Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader. The back of the book describes him as "the essayist, critic, reformer, social commentator, memorialist, and incomparable letter-writer." I would love to see someone write a group biography, something along the lines of "John Jay Chapman and His Circle." One of his most lively correspondents was Sarah Wyman Whitman ("Mrs. Henry Whitman") a Boston artist who created stained glass windows and designed books for Houghton Mifflin. Unfortunately, in the volume of her letters that's on my shelf, none of her letters to Chapman are included. It would also be nice to see a more modern and inclusive edition of his correspondence, with updated notes. His papers are at the Houghton Library, Harvard.

This is Chapman's second wife, Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Chapman), painted by John Singer Sargent in 1893, which would have been about seven years before she married Chapman. She was the great-granddaughter of John Jacob Astor.



a website description of the painting

I started a new novel last night: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. Normally I would say that I don't care much for fantasy, but I had it on good authority that Martin is a good writer who "does" character very well. I was 70 pages into it after just picking it up to "take a look," so I guess I would say that so far I'm liking it pretty well. Strong characters will sell a book to a reader every time.

#167: I refuse to start that series until Martin finishes it!

That's probably an excellent strategy, Stasia. I wonder if he ever will. Anybody heard?

So--I had to go check it out. Here's an "update" from Martin, dated 1 Jan 2008, here.

Here's a blog titled "Finish the Book, George." Ha.

And this is evidently George's latest discussion of the book he has yet to finish on something he calls "Not A Blog."

It sounds to me like he's pretty seriously angered a loyal fan base, a strange strategy for someone who presumably wants to sell books.

Amy checked into it when I mentioned the same thing on her thread and she said that there is no firm date set for the latest book in the series at this time.

From Wikipedia: "Despite initial hopes of A Dance with Dragons being published quickly after A Feast for Crows, the writing and revision process for this fifth novel proved more difficult than anticipated. On January 1, 2008, Martin published an update on his website saying he hoped to have the book published in the autumn of 2008. As of February 2010, the author has published no further updates on his website. Although major retailers had quoted release dates for A Dance with Dragons of September 29, 2009 in the US and the following month in the UK, Martin stated that these release dates were incorrect, and that he would announce the release of A Dance with Dragons when he has finished the manuscript. "

Thanks for checking that out, Stasia. This blogger at "Finish the Book, George" is a seriously (well, maybe half-seriously) angry guy. He posted this picture of George R. R. Martin at a book signing:


with the caption: "Diane Arbus, eat your heart out." Ouch.

Huh. I can't get the pic to show up here. But it's a photo of GRRM, taken from the side, sitting at a desk at a book signing. It's not a pretty sight (the guy looks like a total slob, but I guess in some circles he might be called "eccentric"). Something tells me no one is going to be seeing that new book anytime soon. Just guessing.

#171: Something tells me no one is going to be seeing that new book anytime soon.

That is pretty much how I see it and frankly, I do not want to start what is to be a proposed 7 book series until it is done.

Once again, Stasia, you demonstrate your sagacity. I was seriously vexed with *Crows* - what a dumb, dumb idea! I'll read the next one when it comes out, but life's too short to hope for it. And now I'm thinking that the first ones weren't really all that exceptional. (How's that for passive aggression?)

ETA: Patrick Rothfuss is the one I'm angry at.....Is he kin to GRRM?

>173 LizzieD:. Peggy, I'm not really up on these issues in the fantasy fiction genre, so I can only guess at what you meant by A Feast for Crows and the "dumb idea." Do you mean splitting the narrative into two books--and then never (so far) publishing the second part, which I guess would be A Dance With Dragons?? I'm pretty sure that had I read *Crows* I would have felt ripped off by Martin never bringing out the second half. The whole thing sounds like a mess.

Having been exposed to his first novel only, and just the first 70 pages of it at that, I would say that this guy can write! Just my opinion, of course.

And why are you angry at Rothfuss and how does that relate to Martin?

Enlighten me too Peg? I don't know about Rothfuss. I assume too the dumb idea was just giving us updates on half of the characters...... Feast For Crows had a hasty desperate air to it -- one of the Potter books is a bit like that -- and after it she refused to be bullied by the publishers any more. I'm willing to wait if he is taking the time he needs to get it all right, and perhaps even get the whole thing mapped out to the end so that he can move more quickly once he gets going again. I don't know what happened, but I assume some kind of block or sidetrack or loss of confidence (seems unlikely) but he does seem good and stymied. People are amazingly obliging when they know the deal - it's not knowing that makes everyone crazy.

I'm loving this Chapman book of his correspondence: John Jay Chapman and His Letters. The editor, M.A. DeWolfe Howe has sectioned the letter collection into groups of years and then included quite a bit of biographical information with each group. I think one of the reasons he isn't better remembered and/or known today is because he didn't stick to just one type of writing. He wrote essays, plays, novels, etc. His varied output reminds me in some ways of Rebecca West, about whom the same thing was said--that since she's difficult to place in any one category, she isn't remembered for any one particular kind of writing, and so she has tended to get lost with time.

His dates again, 1862-1933. One of the surprising things to me about the collection is the large number of letters written to women friends in his circle. It reminds me of the group of people surrounding Henry and Clover Adams. These were highly literate and in many cases well-educated women, and Chapman obviously enjoyed the back-and-forth exchange of ideas with them.

(I didn't mean to be cryptic - or is that confused? GRRM wrote 3 really good fantasies in the *Song of Ice and Fire* series, Becky, with really interesting characters as you have noted. Then with the 4th book, he decided to write half of the characters to the end and not deal with the other half at all. The 5th book will, I suppose, take the other half of the characters to their end. OH. I see you did get it.)
If you and Lucy haven't read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, you really should try it or at least star it on a wishlist somewhere. It's the best new fantasy I've read in years, BUT the sequel has been delayed again and again. Right now Amazon is showing it as appearing in March of next year. I'll believe it when I see it.
Chapman sounds fascinating. I haven't touched him in my Kindle yet --- just too much else going on.

I've put the Rothfuss on my wishlist...... I didn't think the 4th book took those characters to the end? Did it? Oh Lord, it's been a bit too long since I read them, I guess.

But maybe I'll wait until next March. It isn't as if I am hurting for things to read!

I have the Rothfuss book in the BlackHole, but had been warned by Tad about the delay in publishing the second book, so I have not actively tracked down the first one.

Oh, seriously??!??! I'm reading the Rothfuss book right now but I had no idea that the sequel had been delayed... *grumblegrumble* ...well, phooey.

Hey, Becky. I miss you and thought it was time to say so. Hope you're reading a lot!

Thanks, Peggy. I am having extended family "issues," you know, the sort of thing where you say, "Someday I'll look back on all of this and laugh." Thanks for being so kind.

I hope your family "issues" are resolved soon, Becky!

Thanks, Stasia. I really appreciate your kind words.

The good thing is that the books will wait for you!

And so will we. Take care of yourself!

Thanks for the good wishes. They are so much appreciated.

I'm getting a little reading done--fiction mainly. Oh dear, I'm doomed. I'm loving this George R. R. Martin book, A Game of Thrones. I'm doomed because I'm going to end up like everyone else, hating Martin for not finishing this series. He's done an excellent job with the point of view characters, which I think do a lot to keep his large canvas manageable. It's amazing how fast this book reads. It's quite engrossing.

Yep. Yep. Yep. and a sardonic grin......Enjoy while you can!

No! You are not tempting me to start that series. Un uh.

I don't blame you one bit, Stasia. If I had any sense, I wouldn't have started it either. It doesn't take a genius to see that Martin might be a bit less than serious about completing this work. He lives in New Mexico, I think. He just finished a book signing and he's doing a 6-week writing workshop in San Diego, where he's listed as "instructor." In September he's scheduled to go to Australia; in October, Ireland; in November, Minnesota. This sounds to me like the schedule of a writer running away from his work.

#190: It makes me wonder with Martin's wanderlust if he really is giving any consideration whatsoever to his readers. It is a shame really.

>179 alcottacre:: Re the Rothfuss sequel. There's a new target date of March 2011. However, this is conditional upon him finishing the current draft of the book by September of this year which he says he thinks he can do.

Given previous slips of his guesstimates, I'm going with no earlier than March 2011.

>192 TadAD:: How incredibly frustrating... I don't understand how an author -- debut author, in particular -- can get away with missing his deadline multiple times. From what I've heard, that's typically committing career suicide. Maybe the book was just so successful that the publisher doesn't want to risk losing money by just cutting him loose...

>192 TadAD:, 193. Maybe, in a sort of perverse way, this missing deadlines is a good trend. Whose deadline was it--the publisher's? Too many authors I've known and loved have published a fabulous debut novel, a great second novel, and then at some point along the way they get absolutely destroyed by the publishing grinder that "insists" on a new book every year. They suffer, their writing suffers, and what's the point? Then when the book does come out, their agent or publisher or whomever schedules them for a 122-city book tour. Writers aren't robots, and I kind of like seeing them push back against what has become publishing insanity.

One of these writers I'm thinking of, particularly, is Daniel Silva and his Gabriel Allon novels. I love his stuff. But he's cranking one out every single year, and I think his writing has suffered. His plots have become repetitive, and I don't think he's developing his characters the way he might. He cranks these books out like some sort of machine. The Kill Artist is the first in the Gabriel Allon series, published in 2004. The tenth one, The Rembrandt Affair, will be out July 20--so that gives you some idea of the pace that Silva has set himself. He's nuts. A wealthy man, but nuts. He was a wealthy man five novels ago, if that was his point in all of this.

I never heard of John Jay Chapman and therefore your descriptions of his life and works are fascinating to me.

What a wonderful thread you have here!

>194 labwriter: - Good point, Becky! But it has been at least a couple of years since Rothfuss's first book, so I have to wonder what's going on. He's here on LT, but I don't have nerve enough to ask him, and I certainly don't want to distract him from his work!

>193 dk_phoenix: & ff: While the deadlines might have started out as the publisher, Rothfuss' blog makes clear that he has just had problems writing. I think that the first book was so successful that the publisher is unwilling to give up on him. I suspect that future advances might be affected, though. :-)

197. Well, what is it they say? You have your whole life to write your first book and six months to write your second. Heh.

>197 TadAD:: Oh, silly me, I should have checked to see if he had a blog. I'll head over there and get updated. I have no doubt future advances will be affected in this case... but despite that, I hope the second book does well when it comes out as I really enjoyed the first one.

Back to John Jay Chapman (ref. #176). I just found a Google book of his essays: Memories and Milestones. It doesn't show up on touchstone. It was originally published in 1915.

Among other interesting essays, the book contains one titled "Mrs. Whitman." She is one of my favorites of the Boston of that period, Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904). One reason to care about Whitman, especially for people here at LT, is that she was an artist who designed book covers. She made beautiful books, I think mainly for Houghton-Mifflin, although she may have worked for other publishers. Anyone who has studied the History of the Book knows Sarah Wyman Whitman. Unfortunately, not all that much has been written about her, so it was a treasure and a pleasure to come upon this essay.

I just found another interesting woman in the Chapman book. She is described by the editor as Chapman's "boyhood and manhood friend." Her name is Florence Lockwood (later married to LaFarge), 1864-1944.

I checked her out on the internet and found that the Rhode Island Historical Society Library has her diary, from 1901-1938. This diary makes their list of "Ten Least Utilized Quality Diaries."

Anyone live in or near Rhode Island? I would love to have a look at this one. The library says that since the publication of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, there has been "increased recognition" of the value of these diaries as history. Ulrich's book is wonderful--I would give it 5-star if I haven't already--I can't remember right now if I posted it to my LT library. Having been a Labor & Delivery nurse for more than 20 years, I found the book particularly interesting, although even without that background, I think I would have loved it anyway.

Addendum. Yes, looking at the link, I did post the Ulrich book to LT and gave it 5 stars.

That sounds like a treasure -- not out in facsimile or anything? Tsk tsk

We could probably most of us use a "Grandmama" like this one!

This is from a letter written by John Jay Chapman. He's writing to a woman who will within the year become his second wife (his first wife had died shortly after the birth of their third child):

Dated 1897. Chapman was 35 years old. He had written an essay about Walt Whitman.

"I gave Grandmama the Walt Whitman to read. She said she had never seen so many different kinds of words in her life. That the reason people wouldn't publish my writings was they didn't like my arrogant tone. That I seemed to be one who took the tone of having read everything and knew everything from the beginning of the world and for whom everyone had been waiting from the beginning of time. That I never said "by your leave" or "don't you think so" or "it seems to me"--but just laid down the law. That I was an egotist as bad as Walt Whitman. That I must "bow down my spirit within." She also said that I needed some one by me every instant to tell me how to behave. That she wouldn't give me two cents for my opinion on any subject."

Chapman's last line: "If that's not a wonderful woman. . . . "

That made my day!

Thank you again, Becky, for talking up Infidel on your thread. I probably wouldn't have read it if it hadn't been for your comments. Powerful stuff. I finished it last night and I'm still mulling it over before I write about it on my thread.

I have some strange little aliens on my Moonflower Vine. Could these be buds with antennae?

Hi Donna. I keep looking for buds on my vine--so far, not a thing!

I have a moonflower vine on a hanging pot , I got the other day -- I have to go look at it and see if it has anything on it.

incredible photos, incredible links, incredible books. I visit your thread and feel like I'm at the spa.

>207 sibylline:. Seriously, Sib, you have a moonflower vine? Cool.

>208 Whisper1:. Linda, you are to kind. Thank you so much.

Uh. . . too

The local greenhouse is run by a friend (who is also the Town Clerk) and when I got there we decided to make my hanging pot together and she said, 'How about a Moonflower vine' -- so it's in there with all the other stuff -- the draping kind of geranium and... sorry brain-dead... -- there's a lot, we went a little nuts, but it is beginning to look more together already. But there is nothing at all on my vine but leaves so far.....

I've been reading up on some of the GardenWeb forums about non-blooming moonflowers. So far I see absolutely no sign of any buds. Evidently these babies don't bloom well if well-cared for--in other words, they don't like rich soil. I have a suspicion I might have amazing foliage and no blooms, although some of the posts on GardenWeb said that these things will bloom as late as September. The leaves on my vine are huge--many of them quite a bit larger than my hand. The vine itself is now in the process of covering the top of the gazebo. It's starting to look like a "crazed" plant--but no blooms. I got sort of a late start with the seeds, so I suppose there's hope.

P.S. Sib, I do have some concern about a moonflower vine being planted in "a pot." Ref. today's profile pic. Heh. I have a feeling I may have created a monster. Instead of hoping this thing will bloom (and therefore recreate itself all over my back yard next year--read "weeds"), maybe I should just be hoping it continues to show no sign of flowers. Imagine what another month or two of heat and humidity will do for this thing. "The Plant that Ate the World."

Update on my George R. R. Martin A Game of Thrones reading. Well, I continue to like the characters in this book. I'm now somewhere south of 400 pages, which is only the halfway point. I'm starting to get a bit restless. I think this is mainly me, not so much the book. It seems that gone are the days when it felt like the best thing in the world to dive into my newest 1,000-page read. I don't seem to have the patience for these very long reads anymore. However, I plan to keep going. My big problem is that I keep glancing at my newest John Irving: Last Night in Twisted River. I'd like to get to that one; sometime before winter would be nice.

I know what you mean about very long books --- it's a fad, I think, and possibly an odd one given how busy people are, so it must have some metaphorical meaning (i'll chew on it a bit and see what I come up with). Short stories were in vogue in for decades and now are not popular at all..... maybe..... oh..... maybe it is because our lives are so disjointed and frantic that spending time with a long book actually provides a feeling of continuity. Whereas, a hundred years ago, a nice short story could perk things up? 1000 plus years a go a long long story was a great excuse to quit everything and socialize for a few days while some windy tale got recited.... One of the facts in the Shakespeare bio I read recently (Bill Bryson) that sticks with me is that as much as a third of the population of London went to see a play pretty often -- and it was very expensive but they paid for it anyway -- in that case, it was escape and glamor, something to lift you out of the squalor. Just rambling on here.....

Final ramble -- the brevity is one of the joys of the Jackson, along with how insanely funny it is, while also managing to have chilly moments and gorgeous insights and descriptions -- my goodness this woman can capture the subtleties of the way people interact. I can't remember, have you read it. For heaven's sake finish up the Martin and slip it in before the Irving... it's so great. Take a few notes on the Martin so you remember what happened in it for when you (inevitably) get curious about what comes next...... One lesson I've learned with fantasy is that if you aren't planning to read them all pretty close together, they are alarmingly easily to forget (tells you something about the genre as a whole, eh?).....

Interesting meditation about long books, Lucy! A friend once asked me whether my reading was subsidized by the pulp paper industry....... I have always been and still am attracted by length - in hopes that there is depth too. Looking at my current list I have the following in progress: 1353 pp. (well, that's War and Peace), 733 pp., 414 pp., and some shorter between 2 & 3 hundred plus pp. I'm not interested in investing even 30 pp. in a short story that will be finished at that point.
Then there's the thought that short stories weren't really around much before 100 years ago, and at the same time other people were writing and reading doorstops. I'd like to say something about the effects of aging, but nothing comes to mind....one of the effects of aging!
And about reading fantasy with a long time between books in a series, I figure that what I don't remember about book 1 is not going to diminish the experience of book 2 or 3 too terribly much, so that tells you something else about the genre as a whole.

>214 LizzieD:. Peggy, I used to be exactly like you--attracted to hugely long reads. I keep telling DH that I don't have the patience I used to have, so maybe it's true. But I'm with you about short stories. I have been aware in the past, especially when I was in school, that I "should" like them, but they always seem to leave me cold. Certain authors I can tolerate--like Annie Proulx--but not many. And if anyone says, "Oh, this is a typical New Yorker story"--well, then I run away like my hair was on fire.

>213 sibylline:. I like your idea, Sib, that the shorter stuff isn't as popular because the the already-too-frantickyness of our lives. Although it almost seems intuitively backwards, considering that there seems to be more ADD all the time (or whatever the acronym is for it these days), not to mention the trend for years for immediate gratification. Maybe those things are changing? Dunno.

I'm thinking that the reason for the long books could be to make buyers think they are getting value for money. Why spend £7.99 for a short book when you can have a much longer one for only £8.99, etc. As for short stories, I don't read them often, but when I do, I find only a couple of good ones in a book, with the rest apparently added as padding - again, "value for money"?

>213 sibylline:. OK, so I have to read Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House--no, I haven't read it yet. I have it sitting here AT MY ELBOW, the one with the young SJ's photo on the cover. How in the world am I going to make myself finish 400 pages of the Martin before I start SJ's book? You're killing me. I do promise to read it before I pick up Irving's book.

Another book you must find (I'm sure I got my copy at amazon.used) is the novel she was writing when she died, published by her husband--Come Along With Me. OK, so I haven't read that one yet, either, but she had gotten pretty far with it--reworked the first three sections, with the last three sections in first draft. The book also includes a couple of essays: "The Biography of a Story," a must read writing-about-writing essay about "The Lottery; and also "Notes for a Young Writer," an essay about writing that she wrote to her daughter Sally.

>216 JanetinLondon:. I think you're right about the short story books, Janet. A writer might have a couple of really good short stories, so the publisher is willing to put out a volume that includes the one good one, padded with anything else the writer has done. I simply have no patience for the short stories with endings that make you go, "Huh?" Maybe some consider them sophisticated and literary, but they're not my cup of tea. Example: Joyce Carol Oates--oh please, don't get me started.

Believe me, I am going to read everything thing SJ wrote.

I am thinking the value for money idea is right on the money. But how stupid is that!

I read the HHH in a day and a half. You could even take a wee break from the Martin. I sez you can. I don't want you on my conscience!

I'm back again to say that you know who can really write short stories? Those Russians -- turgenev::Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov... Turgenev especially. I love those stories. I've read a lot a lot a lot of short stories in my time and there are some very good ones, whole books that you can't put down. If you can let go of the idea of following characters and a plot, you can follow themes and imagery ..... in a collection I mean. One of my reading highs a while was reading The Collected Stories of John Cheever. Breathtaking. Bracing. Wonderful.

Tell me why I am still up?

Edited to add a crucial pronoun -- who

#219: I love Chekhov's short stories! I read a collection of them last year and they were just terrific.

>219 sibylline:. John Cheever intrigues me. From all accounts, he was a flaming narcissist. His son, Benjamin Cheever, edited his correspondence, which is sitting on my shelf. I haven't read many of the letters, but just thumbing through the book, it's easy to see that he wrote great letters. I will check out his short stories. I also have a bunch of Chekhov on my shelf, which I've promised myself I will get to one day, like Proust, which is finally happening, so maybe the Chekhov will as well. Because I agree with you, Sib, the Russians wrote good short stories. Sigh. Not enough hours in the day.

Speaking of not enough hours in the day, "and then there's the Chapman." Oh, I love this man, and it is simply a CRIME that he's not better known.

Yesterday in the mail I received Unbought Spirit, a collection of his writing edited by Richard Stone, published in 1998. Of course I had to "thumb through" that book as well, and I ended up doing a lot more than just thumbing. He writes about politics and the state of education and learning and his grandmama and Greek as a pleasure. Plus, the writing is sublime. As Stone says in his introduction, Chapman was "deliberately and emphatically antispecialist" in his writing and his thought, which is probably the main reason he isn't remembered today. Stone continues, "This anthology is born of the conviction that Chapman is one of our contempories. . . . He is a tonic to cynicism and an antidote to a society gone flaccid and complacent."

So I'm off to continue reading his correspondence. I'm about halfway through, and the older he gets, the more interesting I find him.

I think Cheever was fairly typical for men of his generation and type --- boys were generally brought up to take themselves seriously, as in, what they were doing was the most important thing. Children, wives, etc. all subordinate the work of the 'great man' -- Shirley's husband Stan certainly had that attitude. I'm not sure Cheever was any worse, really, than most of those fellows, although I have not read a bio -- I have read Susan's memoir, not Benjamin's. Home Before Dark -- it reminded me powerfully of life around the house before my father lit out.

Well, I don't know Cheever well enough to argue the issue. He was born in 1912--I suppose I'd buy it if you speak of a "type" rather than a whole generation, across the board. I haven't read the Susan Cheever book. I put the new Cheever: A Life biog by Blake Bailey on my Kindle, read some of it, put it aside for "later," and then promptly forgot that it was there. It's 800 pages long. Oh my. I think it's supposed to be a pretty good biog. I would think it would be difficult to take a life like his and make a compelling, readable biography out of it, but evidently Bailey managed it pretty well--one amazon citizen reviewer describes it as tight, funny, insightful, beautifully researched, compassionate, merciless, etc.--"one of the finest literary biographies of the postwar era." Hmm. I may have to read it one of these days; it gets very strong reviews over there.

I've read Benjamin Cheever's novel, Plagiarist--a very snarky, cynical, nasty sort of thing that became tiresome after a few pages. When I read that it was an autobiographical novel, I thought to myself, Oh Lord, I hope not--for Ben Cheever's sake. The son's writing has never sold successfully, I don't think.

Ed for speling.

Right you are: type. I know nothing of B. Cheever. Most likely I never will. Successful successors, like Martin Amis, to name the only one I can think of, are rarer than ivory-billed woodpeckers.

Another John Jay Chapman sighting. I've been reading John Jay Chapman and His Letters at a sort of ridiculously slow pace because I have about three other large books going at the same time. I'm about three-quarters of the way through now, and I thought it was about time to post another quotation from one of his letters.

This one comes from 1914--no, sorry, this is actually a part of his diary. He kept a diary for awhile, but it didn't last long. I think probably his correspondence with people was all the diary he really needed. He was sailing from England back home to New York when he wrote this. I think it's interesting that evidently complaints about the rapid news cycle and the speed of the modern world aren't just complaints of people in our own 21st century.

"The modern world is increasing the speed of reactions. Telegraphy and newspapers make things occur in a few days which one hundred years ago took ten years. It required twelve years for Napolean's unimaginative conduct to evoke the forces that overthrew him. But it has taken only twenty days for the Americans to understand the Germans. . . . Since the destruction of Louvaine--a week ago--the American press is urging the introduction of rifle practice in our public schools. The press is right too. If Germany should win American must arm. All this illustrates the extraordinary celerity of modern social reactions. It may be that in order to be melted into modern Europe America must go through with this experience. My ideas of disarmament, etc., maybe be like reaching for the moon."

I just finished the Chapman, and according to my list here, this is the FIRST book I've finished in July. Good grief. That's what I get for reading three enormous books at the same time.

I'll quote the editor of the correspondence, Mark A. DeWolfe Howe, since he says how I feel about this man, John Jay Chapman, better than I could:

"Who can tell how far the unseen influences of a single life extend? . . . Who knows what lives are touched by such unremitting courage, such scorn of pettiness, such versatility and vigor of mind and spirit as the life of Chapman manifested. These things are as far beyond measuring as the influences of the stars."

I found and bought a 1959 biog of Chapman, John Jay Chapman: An American Mind by Richard B. Hovey. But as Hovey says, his book is not the biography of the man, but rather the biography of his writing, or of his mind, if you will. I'm looking forward to reading this one, but I need to leave Chapman for a little bit; I'll look forward to coming back to this one.

From Hovey's Preface: "That he has been so much ignored {this was 1959} by his countryman might be considered--as it has been by one of his friendly critics--'a devastating commentary on the state of American culture.'" Chapman is no longer "ignored"--he's forgotten. I hope someday some academic will decide to make their career on him--write the biography and publish a modern book of his correspondence that he deserves.

John Jay Chapman and His Letters, 5-stars

I'm going to jump right into my next non-fiction read instead of waiting until I'm finished with the novel I'm reading. I'm something of a "retired" Willa Cather scholar (although that word sounds pretentious--I was part of a wonderful group of {mostly} academics who study Willa Cather--that sounds more accurate). One of my favorite people in Cather's circle of people is Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 1879-1958. I love this woman. She was a Vermont Yankee to her core, but she was also an educated woman (PhD in French in 1904 from Columbia University--and not that Vermonters can't be "educated"--that's not what I'm saying; it was somewhat unusual for a woman to have earned a PhD in 1904), was also an education reformer (she was an early adopter of the Montessori schools for the U.S.), a best-selling author and prolific writer on all sorts of topics, and she was also served as an original board member of the Book-of-the-Month Club from 1926-1952, in which capacity she read herself practically blind. From all accounts, she was probably also one of the nicest women alive.

Unfortunately, Dorothy hasn't had a biography written about her that's worthy of her. The two that have been written are poor examples of the genre. However, one of my friends in the world of Cather studies has edited her correspondence, and he did a bang-up job of it: Keeping Fires Night and Day: Selected Letters of Dorothy Canfield Fisher by Mark Madigan. I think that's one of the most brilliant titles for a book of correspondence I've come across, and of course it comes from one of Dorothy's letters. It's one of those "inevitable" titles that the book's editor had the sense to use.

Unfortunately again, DCF never wrote a memoir. However, she wrote a book about Vermont that contains quite a bit of autobiography: Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life. This book has been waiting for me on my shelf for years. Why it's taken me so long to get to it is just one of those "stupid" things in life. Anywho, that's the non-fiction read I'm taking up now.

P.S. Most people don't know DCF's fiction that she wrote for adults, but many have read the award-winning book she wrote for children, Understood Betsy--one of my all-time favorites, first read when I was in about third grade, I think.

P.P.S. One of the reasons I'm reading this now is as a nod to Lucy, my friend at LT, who has recently taken the plunge and moved to Vermont as a year-round resident.

Here is Dorothy getting off the plane, which, in later years, was how she traveled from Vermont to New York for the monthly BOMC meetings. Note the cigarette--she was of a generation of women (men too) who smoked like chimneys.

Moving back to Vermont, darlin' -- I know what I am getting myself into...... a different pair of shoes for every two or three weeks as the weather changes from ice to snow to mud and so forth.

Love the photo!

I absolutely so stand corrected, Sib. And we all definitely want to follow your Vermont Shoe Saga here on LT--we're counting on it!

Absolutely!
Meanwhile, Becky, thank you for forcing me to clear up a confusion that I didn't know existed in my mind. Dorothy Canfield Fisher is not the same person as Dorothy Canfield.... Never having read either, I didn't know that, but I have the latter's The Brimming Cup on Mt. Bookpile.

Well, yes she is. I was confused by the Kansas/Vermont thing - thought the children's writer was born in Vermont from the link that you supplied. (I would have edited my last post, but I clicked on "post" before I even thought.....) So, never mind.

Hi Peggy. You're right--Dorothy Canfield and Dorothy Canfield Fisher are one and the same. And Dorothy Canfield did live in the midwest for a time. In fact, she was born in Lawrence, Kansas. Her father, James Canfield, was an educator, at the time of her birth a professor at the U of Kansas. The family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska when he became chancellor at the U of Nebraska. That's where the Willa Cather connection started--friends of Cather knew friends of the Fishers. He was also president of Ohio State after his job at Nebraska. That's why DCF enrolled at Ohio State. Later her father became the librarian at Columbia University in New York.

Dorothy didn't move to Vermont until she married John Fisher. I'm pretty sure her grandmother gave or willed them the Vermont farmhouse and property. I'm just guessing, but I'd bet she spent most of her summers at her grandmother's place.

More than anyone wanted to know about Dorothy--haha.

#233: Did Dorothy Canfield write mysteries or have I gotten her completely confused with someone else?

No, Stasia, you must be thinking of someone else. I find her adult fiction unreadable, but that's just me.

Here are some of her titles:

The Brimming Cup 1921
Her Son's Wife 1926
Seasoned Timber1939

Much of her long fiction was serialized in the women's magazines. She was a very smart woman about the business side of her writing. She put herself into the hands of an agent named Paul Revere Reynolds, and he sold her serialized novels for fantastic sums--I think she got around $40,000 for Seasoned Timber, just for the serialized version alone.

You can read my review of Seasoned Timber by clicking the link.

Now that I've trashed Dorothy's adult novels, I feel like I should add this:

The Brimming Cup, was the second best-selling novel of 1921, second to Sinclair Lewis's Main Street.

>233 labwriter:. Yes, in the Vermont "biography," Dorothy writes: "Sitting cross-legged one rainy day on the floor of the attic of my great-grandmother's house, where I spent a good deal of my time in my childhood, I pulled a shabby old book out at random from a dusty pile." Lucky Dorothy, to have such immediate, tangible access to her own family history.

Stasia, could you be thinking about mystery writer Dorothy Salisbury Davis? I read a couple long enough ago to have forgotten them entirely.
Thanks for the biographical sketch - not more than I wanted to know! Exactly enough, in fact!

#237: Oh, I agree with you. Dorothy was lucky!

#238: No, I do not think that is her either, Peggy. I just have a vague memory of a 'Dorothy' who wrote a mystery series with a lead character named 'Ellie' something. I am off to do some investigating.

OK, I found out who I was confusing with Dorothy Canfield - it is Dorothy Cannell. Sorry everyone!

The nice thing about writing on LT while sitting in a library is that you can run over to the shelves and sometimes just PICK UP the book that is mentioned. They have Seasoned Timber here -- it looks a little more intimidating than The Brimming Cup which I remember liking a great deal (and nothing else about it, sadly - unless that is the one with the stone cliff somebody either thinks of or actually does throw his or herself off of) -- I read BC in the Virago series where it fits in and measured up as a certain kind of book. Not your cup of tea at all, I'm guessing, though I think Cather is now a Virago author as well.....

They also have some Margaret Atwood's here, which is only of interest because I took a quiz on somebody's thread about who I write like and apparently I write like Margaret Atwood who I have barely if ever read. So. And I had a whole plan to finish Music and Silence, indulge in the last Carol Berg Restoration in that series and then Louise Penny #2 -- but Atwood and Canfield may interrupt these pleasant plans, I am so easily distracted....

And so on I drift on my raft down the river of print ....

OOOh! I want to take that quiz!!!
I love, respect, and admire Atwood in varying degrees depending on what I'm reading at the time. She's always worthwhile. I had forgotten Dorothy Cannell of The Thin Woman and that funny, cozy mystery series. I'm delighted to know that *BC* is good since I have spent my hard-earned $ for it!
(Hi, Becky!)
~following the Sib down the threads.....

>241 sibylline:. Sib, what to do, what to do? Never read any of Margaret Atwood? Sigh.



Seriously, you've never read The Handmaid's Tale? I also love Alias Grace. I don't like everything she writes, not by a long shot. But I do love those two.

One of my favorite books of memoir/writing essays is her book, Writing with Intent. Give that one a try--dip in anywhere. In it is a wonderful essay about Anne of Green Gables that starts out this way: "Anne of Green Gables is one of those books you almost feel guilty liking, because so many other people seem to like it as well. If it's that popular, you feel, it can't possibly be good, or good for you." It's a great essay, and if you can hold yourself back from (re)reading Anne after reading it, then you're a better man than I am.

(Hey, Peggy!)

They have both of the Atwoods at this library. Argh. You evil temptress.

I devoured Anne as a child....... loved loved loved them. I haven't made the pilgrimage but I may someday -- my daughter, btw, found them pokey. Sad.

Oh dear, that would be a great sadness for me, to have a daughter who found such books as Anne "pokey," which perhaps many/most girls today do, but I wouldn't know, because, not to worry--no daughters, and if I'm not able to get my niece to come visit me, she may never, ever read a book. Inconceivable.

We are doing our FIRST GREAT SMOKE today, an all-day smoke that will result in, I'm pretty sure, the best pulled pork I've ever eaten--evah. It's insufferably hot and humid today, so DH and I run out every hour or so to check the smoker, and then run right back in again, as if it were 30 degrees below zero.

Believe it--I am within semi-striking-distance of finishing the George R.R. Martin, Book The First. Only about 200 pages to go. I'm not going to start the next one because I've promised myself I will read about 7 other books.

I'm being summoned. . . later!

I would think The Handmaid's Tale would be right in your wheelhouse.

I do so agree with your Atwood choices, Becky, always adding that Cat's Eye, Lady Oracle, and The Robber Bride are worthy and more than worthy to be reread. Thanks a lot....., but as you say, *AG* and *H'sT*.....

Oooh, I'm glad to hear your opinion about other Atwoods, Peggy. I'll give them a look.

You are all so cruel! I have a bad feeling that The Handmaid's Tale is going to walk outta here with me.

They are shutting me down, folks, closing time at the liberry.

Until the sky is 'red with the rays of Dawn', my friends.

I never read my first Atwood until last year, Oryx and Crake, and I loved it. I still have not made it to The Handmaid's Tale yet, but I imagine I will one of these centuries.

Time for a new thread. You'll find me here, labwriter: four of four for 2010

I've never read any Atwood either...! *ducks and runs*