Reading Interrupted

New Books! New Books!  Well, I did have a reading plan...until new books arrived on my doorstep. I did finish reading the short list for the Indie Lit Awards, (and will posting the rest of my reviews soon,) but I have a couple of ARCs to read, and I want to read The Road and finish The Troll Garden.

The first interruption was True Grit.  It had been delayed in coming to me, so I wasn't expecting it to ring my doorbell--I was doing the happy-happy-new-book-dance.  So of course it went to the top of the pile.

Second were the books I needed for my Back to the Classics Challenge.  I'm not very good at finishing challenges to begin with (the deadlines are too forgiving) let alone if I don't yet own the books.  So I bought Watership Down, Lolita, and Gone With the Wind.  Well, it seems that a few other books slipped in with the order (Flipped, The Lover's Dictionary).  Oops.  I couldn't help myself.

By the way, I had no idea that Gone With the Wind was such a hefty tome.  The picture actually makes it look reasonable.  It isn't.  All of a sudden I feel like I have a lot of reading to do.

I have updated my Challenge page, which includes the Back to the Classic Challenge from Sarah Reads Too Much, the Nonfiction Challenge from Past as Prologue (which you should all join me on) as well as all of my self-imposed goals and resolutions.

Oh, and I have more books on the way! (Oh no!) Although I'm fine with some of these going straight to my shelf for now (I want to read all the Pulitzer at some point, they seem to be my pace, so I'm happy to have them on my shelf).  I won Dianne's giveaway (at Ordinary Reader) and went shopping at Better World Books.  I was able to find a good number of Pulitzers on sale (and one book on my goal list)...still can't believe I won the giveaway!  Here's what should be arriving, isn't it an amazing group of books?




AND (as if that weren't enough already) I discovered the perfect solution to one of my problems.  One of my goals is to read more newly published books, (inspired by the Indie Lit Awards--I want to be able to nominate a good book next year!) but I don't really have the time or inclination to always be searching for the best choices.  I want the more independent, literary type of novels to just sort of be chosen for me and make their way to my doorstep automatically.  Then I discovered Powell's Books Indiespensable program.  Although it is a little steep ($40 every 6-8 weeks) it looked irresistible and I had to give it a try.  It sounds divine: a collector's edition of a newly published, literary, independent type book, along with other goodies and surprises?  Heaven.  Well, hopefully.  My first installment should be arriving before the month's end, containing Hannah Pittard's debut novel: The Fates Will Find Their Way.

Yes, new books! new books!  Now I must get reading!  I have actually already finished True Grit and The Lover's Dictionary (both were great), and I am going to aim to have these others finished by the end of the month:
  - Flipped
  - The Road
  - Both ARCs
  - Some more stories from The Troll Garden

Great House by Nicole Krauss

Title: Great House
Author: Nicole Krauss
Pages: 289
Published: 2010 W.W. Norton & Co.
Read For: Indie Lit Awards
My Rating: 3.5 stars

I see Great House most often described as a story surrounding a gargantuan desk. Yet while the desk is a unifying object, the one that ends up tying the book together in fact, I can't help but think that in the end, the desk itself was unimportant.  But if it isn't really about the desk, what is it about?  Maybe this, from page 278-279:

What is a Jew without Jerusalem? How can you be a Jew without a nation? How can you make a sacrifice to God if you don't know where to find him? [...] Turn Jerusalem into an idea.  Turn the Temple into a book, a book as vast and holy and intricate as the city itself. Bend a people around the shape of what they lost, and let everything mirror its absent form.

[...] Two thousand years have passed, my father used to tell me, and now every Jewish soul is built around the house that burned in that fire, so vast that we can, each one of us, only recall the tiniest fragment: a pattern on the wall, a knot in the wood of a door, a memory of how light fell across the floor.  But if every Jewish memory were put together, every last holy fragment joined up again as one, the House would be built again, said Weisz, or rather a memory of the House so perfect that it would be, in essence, the original itself.  Perhaps that is what they mean when they speak of the Messiah: a perfect assemblage of the infinite parts of the Jewish memory.  In the next world, we will all dwell together in the memory of our memories.

Since the story is not told in a traditional narrative structure, it seems to meander quite a bit.  It is told in 8 sections, telling and intertwining 4 separate stories.  Structurally, it is somewhere between a novel told in stories (but not really, since I don't think any of the 8 sections could actually stand on their own as an individual short story) and a multi-narrator novel (but again, not really, since each narrator is telling their own story, not simply different perspectives of the same story).

Each section was told in 1st person, which when combined with the switching perspectives and lack of traditional dialogue, made it difficult to get to know the characters.  In fact, just about the time I'd start to warm up to one character, the section ended and I had to start over with someone else.  In the end, I didn't really like any of the characters.  I found them to be stubborn and rather hard to relate to.  Just like the desk, however, I don't think that the characters themselves were as important as the themes running through the book.  What it comes down to is that each character isn't so important, they are all just pieces of the puzzle.

While I don't feel that this book was completely successful in what it aimed to do, it did arouse my curiosity in Nicole Krauss as an author.  She does have a way with words, and she definitely makes you think--two good qualities to have as a novelist.  And surprisingly, all the loose ends do come together at the end.  It is worth checking out if you are in the mood for a story with a unique structure and some good writing.

What's Going On?

What I'm Reading
I've read 4 books this year so far...still need to review Great House and C, which I read for the Indie Lit Awards.  I'm hoping to finish Major Pettigrew's Last Stand today, leaving me with only Safe From the Sea to finish in the next couple of days (my review of Room is here).  Up after that: a couple of ARCs, and The Road, and finishing up Willa Cather's The Troll Garden.

Undivided Attention
I've never really been a One Book At A Time type of person.  A typical week may see me simultaneously reading quite a handful of different books.  1 aloud to my kiddos for school, 1 aloud to my girls at night, 1 book of poetry or short stories, 1 classic, 1 nonfiction, 1 adult fiction.  Even times like now, with the Indie Lit Awards' shortlist for literary fiction taking precedence in my reading--when I feel like I am reading responsibly, in some sort of predefined order, (something that has my lit-life-sensors all out of whack,)--I still can't prevent reading other books simultaneously.  Children must be read to, classics must be chipped away at.  I must admit, I like the feeling of plowing through a book and then moving onto the next one in the stack, they seem to get read quicker that way!  I may have to employ this new reading tactic even after January's compulsory reading is done.  (Is this what is known as reading deliberately?)

Reading in Small Bits vs. Reading in Long Stretches
Just after Christmas, Ordinary Reader mentioned Daily Lit (she's reading War and Peace this way) which will email you small installments from the book of your choice to help you tackle something you might not otherwise pick up.  Her enthusiasm, combined with the fact that I didn't even come close to finishing my Fall Into Reading Challenge (5 out of 14), spurred me to look into it.

I'm not really sold on the idea of reading large books in little tiny tidbits because I feel that some of the continuity is lost.  But when it boils down to a choice between not finishing a book or finishing it little by little, the second option doesn't look so bad.  Especially if you've got great email checking skills. :)

So I'm currently receiving installments of Our Mutual Friend (Dickens), since I'd stalled out about a quarter of the way through and wasn't willing to either devote myself to it completely or abandon it completely.  I'm also receiving installments of Daniel Deronda (Eliot), since I figured that I wouldn't get it read otherwise...and I want to, especially since it is listed on my Back to the Classics Challenge.

My discovery is that Dickens, by virtue of being read at the same time as Eliot, is quite a bit funnier and livelier than I'd been giving him credit for.  My hope is that at some point these books will grab me and demand to be finished immediately.  My consolation is that even if they don't, I'll still be getting them read.

New Books
I posted pictures of the books I gave to my kiddos for Christmas, but what about the books I got?  I didn't get a whole lot, so I bought some for myself to make up for it.  Sounds sensible, right? These are the ones that were surprises:


And these are the ones that I bought for myself , mostly because it is a gorgeous collection.  Titles from left to right are: The Wind in the Willows, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Peter Pan.

Book Tracking (Good Reads vs. LibraryThing)
I started using LibraryThing quite a while back in order to catalog my books.  It is really great for that--there is a lot of flexibility in sorting and organization.  The big drawback in my opinion, is that it doesn't currently have well developed integration with Facebook or mobile usage.  It would come in handy nearly every month at book club, (to be able to easily access our books from my phone,) and LibraryThing doesn't have that together at this point.  So, I've begun using Good Reads for some of those purposes.  Are you on Good Reads? Find me there (Melody Spano).  Until then, Happy Weekend!

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Pages: 304
Published: 1992 Everyman's Library (orig.1817)
My Rating: 5 stars

You could totally read Persuasion just for the love story and come out happy and sighing, content as cat.  All the quality ingredients are here: the lost first love, the pining, the modesty and humility, the confrontations, the complications, the righteous anger.  But the love story isn't the only reason I love Persuasion.  In fact, it has been many years since I've swooned over a love story at all--if there aren't other layers, simple love stories tend to exasperate me.

So what is it about Persuasion that I love?  For one thing, the writing is splendid.  Jane Austen really shines here.  There are none of the tedious stretches that I found in both Emma and Mansfield Park.  Every sentence counts, and the story is always progressing.  The wit and insight found in her other books is refined in Persuasion, and while you may not have as many outright laughs as in Pride and Prejudice or Northanger Abbey, there is plenty of irony and subtle humor to keep you smiling.

Mainly, though, I can identify with the characters: their circumstances, feelings, and failings.  I can feel the tension and loneliness Anne Eliot felt day in and day out from being misunderstood and undervalued by her family and friends.  I can understand the difficulty of having to continually put your own needs aside to care for others (what mom can't identify with that?) and the isolation inherent with being an introspective, observant person.  More than in any other of Austen's novels, the characters in Persuasion seem like real people.

I love how Austen lets you feel the environments of different households: the Eliots are cold and critical, the Musgrove home is jolly and free, the Crofts are warm and inviting.  I love the tension that builds between Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth because they cannot determine, with any reliability or assurance, what it is that the other is thinking or feeling.  And best of all, the ending isn't quite as abrupt as it is in her other novels.

Persuasion is filled with layers, and gets better upon rereading.  Pick it up for the love story if you like, or for the social observations, for the bits of history about the Royal Navy, for the writing or the wit, or simply to say that you've read Jane Austen.  I doubt you'll be disappointed--this is no trifling titillating tidbit.  I've read this one a few times now, and it always makes me feel so satisfied, so empathetic, so understood.

(If you've never seen a film adaptation, I highly recommend this one with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds.)

Room by Emma Donoghue

Title: Room
Author: Emma Donoghue
Pages: 336
Published:  2010 Little, Brown & Co.
Read For: Independent Literary Awards
Rating: 3.5 stars

This is my first book read for the Indie Lit Awards.  I read it before the others simply because it was the only one of the 5 finalists that my local bookstore had in stock at the time.  I've just finished reading Great House by Nicole Krauss, and am starting C by Tom McCarthy.  It has been so much fun so far, reading the 5 books that book bloggers considered the best of 2010.

"Room" is what 5 year old Jack calls the 11' x 11' space that he and his mother are kept in.  It is the only "real" he has ever known; his mother has taught him that everything on TV is pretend, and seeing as she is the only person that he is ever in contact with, (apart from Old Nick, their captor,) he has no reason to think otherwise.  He doesn't mind, though.  He loves their routines, loves his mother, and has a difficult time understanding why his mother does not feel the same.

The two worries I had going into the book were both unjustified.  First, I was worried that the story, being told from Jack's point of view, would have an unstable narrative voice--one of my peeves, I must admit.  I was sure I was going to find inconsistencies in his age and how much he understood, but I really didn't.  He definitely had his own way of talking, areas of brilliancy and areas of simplicity, but every time I caught myself wondering how accurate it was, I had only to think of the speech patterns of my 6 year old daughter and I had to admit that I could probably imagine encountering a little person like Jack.

Second, I was worried that the details of Jack's mother and their captivity were going to represent the recent Jaycee Dugard case.  I lived for years in South Lake Tahoe, where Jaycee was stolen from, and didn't much like the idea that her trauma had been fictionalized.  Fortunately, this fear was unfounded as well.  The characters in the book were different, the circumstances were different, and once I got into the story I hardly thought about it anymore.

This is a book that one reads for the plot, for the storyline.  It is one of those books that kept me turning pages to see what would happen.  I was rooting for Jack and his momma to make an escape, I felt a touch of the claustrophobia and helplessness tied to their situation.  And although I didn't feel like I got to know any of the characters as well as I would have liked to, I did enjoy reading Jack's thoughts and feelings.  I've always wished I could read my kiddos thoughts and feelings more exactly!  It is very possible that we got to know Jack as well as he knew himself--I'm willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt and admit that having Jack be more observant and self-realized may have been less accurate.

It was also one of those books that--upon finishing it--disappeared from my mind rather quickly.  It didn't hover over me afterwards, asking me to contemplate, to consider.  It didn't haunt me like it could have, especially considering the subject.  There weren't any passages that were written so amazingly that I wanted to stop and savor them, there weren't any deeper themes sufficiently addressed as to cause deeper thought.  While I'm willing to concede that the self-awareness displayed by Jack may have been accurate, I cannot help but think that it would have been possible for the writing to cause you to think more, without sacrificing the narrative voice.

I think what it boils down to for me, as far as my taste in literary fiction, is that I expect literary fiction to make me ponder some complex themes that stick with me and pester me (or leave me in wonderment) for some time.  Room didn't quite do this.  It was an entertaining book with an interesting perspective, but it left me more eager to read the other Award Finalists rather than more Emma Donoghue.  That is not to say that you shouldn't pick it up, I think there is a reason it has appealed to so many people.  If you are up for a unique story, give it shot.