For the Record: June 2013

Not only am I quite late in posting about June, but I didn't finish many books in June either.  I decided to start reading Les Miserables, and with that decision came the realization that I'm not going to come close to my 2013 goal of 100 books.  I'm okay with that - especially if it's a matter of quality vs. quantity.  Les Mis is wonderful so far.  Also in progress (and not quite as wonderful) is The Grapes of Wrath. July will see more completed books simply because it has taken me a while to get through some of them!

Also in June was a big family vacation that I'll be posting pictures of soon!

4 Books Read in June: (44 year-to-date)

1 for Book Club:
  - Wild, Cheryl Strayed (2) [Rather pointless, as I don't think she went "from lost to found"...she seemed to stay pretty lost throughout.  see my review on GoodReads]

1 Classic:
  - Eugene Onegin and Other Poems, Alexander Pushkin (3) [Reading this was work - no joke - and I was quite proud of myself for finishing it.  I much prefer prose to poetry.]

2  from my Wishlist:
  - Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki (3.5) [More emotionally detached than I was expecting, but still interesting and relevant, both historically and (for me) geographically.]
  - The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness (4) [Not my preferred genre or topic, but still an engrossing read that sucked me in.]

        


3 Current Reads:
  - Les Miserables, Victor Hugo.  Wonderful.  And LONG.  What else can I say?
  - The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck.  almost done almost done almost done
  - Flapper: The Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, Joshua Zeitz.  This has been a fun addition to the nonfiction about the '20s and '30s I've read recently

      

On My Nightstand:
I still haven't gotten around to all the books from my last glut at the book store, so I'm still hoping to get to all those, with the addition of a couple of books on loan from my book club friends.  How many do you think I'll be able to get through in the next couple weeks?

  - The Sufferings of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
  - The Dog Stars, Peter Heller.
  - The Great Crash 1929, John Galbraith.
  - Hard Times, Studs Terkel.
  - Mary Coin, Marisa Silver.
  - Coraline, Neil Gaiman
  - Kiss Kiss, Roald Dahl

            

Bookish Birthday Gifts and Bon Voyage

I'm heading out today for a two week vacation with my family - we get to see Paris and Barcelona for the first time, and then taking a cruise ship down the coast of Italy. I'm super excited to show my kiddos the coliseum and other historic goodies, and am hoping it'll be a good opportunity to dive into Les Miserables. 

In other news, it's my birthday! My friend made me the best bookish mug...I just had to share. Inspired by Austen's Persuasion, this will be sure to bring smiles to my morning. Find her on Esty (Brookish.Etsy.com) and she'll make you a custom mug of your own!

Happy summer to all, I'll see you in a few. :)

The Worst Hard Time and The Dust Bowl

"All those short lives..."

-- my 8 year old's reaction to The Dust Bowl by Ken Burns

I've been on a big early-1900s kick lately, from Prohibition and the Great War to the Dust Bowl, the Jazz Age and the Great Depression.  It's been great fun so far - I'm learning so many things! I'm reading The Grapes of Wrath for the first time (no idea how that happened) and always keeping my eyes out for more must-read literature from the years around the 1920s.

One of the most accesible sources I've come across is the PBS documentary, The Dust Bowl.  Ken Burns did a wonderful job giving an intriguing and picturesque overview of the catastrophe.  It left me shocked and amazed, and hungry for more information...some of those pictures and videos are simply unbelievable.

The film wasn't enough for me, so I then read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.  This book is about the people who stayed behind, the people who "hunkered down out of loyalty or stubbornness, who believed in tomorrow because it was all they had in the bank."  I have two sets of grandparents that lived through the Dust Bowl and came to reside in Northern California and Oregon, so the struggles described were rather personal for me.

"Nothing that you see or hear or read will be likely to exaggerate the physical discomfort or material losses due to these storms.  Less emphasis is usually given to the mental effect, the confusion of mind resulting from the overthrow of all our plans for improvement or normal farm work, and the difficulty of making other plans, even in a tentative way."

-Caroline Henderson, 1935

One thing that surprised me (for some reason) was the pervasive prejudice.  The book didn't dwell on it, but it's always surprising to me to learn how deep-rooted and equal-opportunity this prejudice is.  Was there ever a time when America was actually the embracing, welcoming, free country that I like to imagine it was?  The 1930s were full of spite for many different groups of people:

• Black Americans (of course...signs in/near Oklahoma read "Black Men Don't Let the Sun Go Down on You Here") 
• Native Americans (no surprise...the bison were exterminated "as a way to ensure that no Indian would ever wander the Texas Panhandle") 
• Volga Germans (others tried to "pass an ordinance prohibiting the language from being spoken in the city limits") 
• Jews (people said they were "to blame for the bad times - that they did not belong in this country") 
• Italians ("the 'low grade races' of southern Europe" were a "threat to civilization")
• Mexicans ("cities were shipping Hispanics out of the country") 
• the People Who Stayed ("They are simply, by God's inscrutable will, inferior men" -H.L. Mencken)
• the People Who Left ("Okies and Dogs Not Allowed Inside")

Surprisingly, I don't think the Irish or any Asian countries were mentioned...but then again, this was only one book.

I was impressed by how well The Worst Hard Time was organized.  Continuity and clarity are vital in nonfiction, and Egan does it well.  Not only that, but the people were easy to remember and follow, and the facts were interesting and well-presented.  It's hard to ask for more out of non-fiction!

There are too many interesting things to start talking about all of them (such as the dangers of wind-generated static electricity and dust pneumonia) so I'll just say that if you have a passing interest in the Dust Bowl, both Ken Burns and Timothy Egan have done a great job with such a dry topic. Next up for me (other than Grapes of Wrath) is Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb - excellent reading so far!

For the Record: May 2013

I read 11 books again in May!!  How crazy is that??  So much fun after months and months of little reading.  I was thrilled to look back at April's update and see that I'd actually made it through everything I had marked as "Currently Reading" and "On My Nightstand".  I don't think that's happened in quite some time.

While my reading has increased, my involvement in book blogging has decreased.  This is a little sad, because I miss the friends I've made, and a little happy, as I've had more freedom to do other things. Like...read.  Sometimes (sad, but true) blogging books makes it harder to enjoy the books themselves.

I've definitely been on an early-20th-century kick lately.  Funny, because it seems others are too...so many new books taking place in WWI & WWII eras.  I don't how long that will continue, or what era/topic will follow in its stead, but for now I am enjoying reading about Prohibition and the Great Depression like I never have before.

Summer reading!! It's time, isn't it?  In theme with this year's reading, I don't have any great plans for accomplishment.  I'm going to have to put some thought into it soon, since I'm going on a cruise later this month.  The last cruise I went on, I read War and Peace.  This cruise I'll have my kiddos along, so my reading time won't be as extended, but it would be fabulous to get through another chunkster.  Maybe Les Miserables.  Hmmm...I'll have to think on that.

11 Books Read in May: (40 year-to-date)

2 Read Aloud to my kiddo:
  - The Wheel on the School, Meindert Dejong (4.5) [Super sweet and funny, my 8yo and I loved it.]
  - Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren (4) [Good & humorous, though I'm glad it was quick!]

3 Classics:
  - My Mortal Enemy, Willa Cather (4.5) [Another step on my journey through Willa Cather's published works. Review here.]
  - Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (4) [So much fun! It was supposed to be a read-along but I simply had to finish it quickly.]
  - The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis (4) [Reading Lewis is the perfect solution for my continuous need for deep thought - I should do this more often!]

2 from my shelf:
  - Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, Emma Straub (2.5) [ARC from last fall - not terrible reading material, but none of it made me care about anything...so, in the end, below average.]
  - Queen of the Big Time, Adriana Trigiani (4) [been on my shelf for AGES, but I'm so glad I finally read it.  Really a beautiful picture of dreams, marriage, and the things that matter in life.]

4 from my Wishlist:
  - Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler (3.5) [So so so sad.  Really makes me look at F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the Jazz Age in a more serious light.]
  - An Unfinished Score, Elise Blackwell (3) [Read because of my past success with Unbridled Books and my love of music...this was Orchestra Overkill, and the plot was a little muddled.  Oh well.]
  - The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier (4) [The reading felt pretty light, but the characters were well drawn, and the angst truly felt.  I enjoyed it tons.]
  - The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan (5) [Absolutely brilliant, page-turning nonfiction. I basically underlined the whole book.]

                    


5 Current Reads:
  - Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston.  Good history, all the more interesting in that it takes place in my home state, and is seldom spoken of.  Awkward-sauce.  Not as engaging as it could be. (update: this was a quick read, so I'm already done with it.  Somewhat emotionally detached, but otherwise interesting.)
  - The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck.  Can you believe I've never read this before?  How did that happen??
  - Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin.  All I can say is that I enjoyed his prose (Tales of Belkin) more than his poetry, but I. Will. Survive.
  - The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness.  I looovvved A Monster Calls, and went after this one based on Andi's reaction.  (update: I've actually already finished it since drafting this post - must go out and find the others in the trilogy!)
  - Wild, Cheryl Strayed.  A book club book that I didn't quite finish in time for our meeting, but will push through anyhow.

          

On My Nightstand:
I had a wonderful trip to the bookstore and came back with so many things that I'm so excited to read.  I could use a read-a-thon weekend!

  - The Sufferings of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.  Maybe I was secretly hoping that this one would get picked for the Classics Club Spin List?  I couldn't pass it up at the book store, and opted for a newer translation after comparing the two.
  - The Dog Stars, Peter Heller.  This has been on my radar since Crowe loved it, so it naturally jumped into my hands when I saw it.
  - The Great Crash 1929, John Galbraith.  Written in the '50s, which makes it all the more intriguing. I'm hoping to get a good overview of the '29 crash, as well as some historical perspective on finances.
  - Hard Times, Studs Terkel.  Impulse buy, since I was in the section of the store looking for more Great Depression non-fiction.  I was completely unaware of Studs Terkel, but turns out he's quite a guy.  His face looks familiar, so why did his name not sound familiar?  Maybe at some point in my life I'll finally feel up to speed with the times.
  - Mary Coin, Marisa Silver.  Another impulse buy based on the legendary photograph by Dorothea Lange that graces the cover.  (I should have searched out Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb instead, because I'm a little worried that the quality of current fiction won't hold up to Steinbeck - which I'm currently reading - but whatever.  We'll give it a go.)

        

My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather

It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?

At just over 100 pages, this is a slim volume and a quick read, but the contents are real and comparatively heavy for all that.  In some ways this is a brutally honest look at how a single decision—such as marriage—can affect the rest of your hopes and dreams, but it is just as equally an agonizing realization of one's true character.

There's a hidden authorial pain and anguish laced throughout this book and hidden in the character of Myra. Having read through Cather's works chronologically to this point, I sense an underlying conflict and despair that is somewhat obfuscated by the plot in this love/fate/hate story. It is short and succinct like Alexander's Bridge, and it is about a strong woman who forges her own trail like A Lost Lady, but even though it reads simply and holds you at a distance from its characters, this book goes deeper into an internal conflict.

In structure, Cather uses a narrator that is more an observer than anything else, rather like My Antonia.  She also divides the story into chunks of time, (rather than telling the story in one continuous flow,) as she has in many of her other books. The writing style is more crisp, almost harsh at times, reflecting the personality of the main character.  There are all kinds of interesting contrasts happening, and that lovely sense at the end that the author hasn't clued you in to one of life's great answers, but rather one of life's great questions.  That could be irritating, depending on your tastes and mood, or it could be refreshing.  If you aren't in a mood to contemplate life, this story will likely seem impersonal and perhaps even somewhat shallow.  But rest assured there is much more waiting for you to mull over if you are up to it.  This is one that will stick with me for a while.

Classics Club: The First Year in Review (and a new Spin List!)

When I compiled my list last year, I made efforts to keep the number small and attainable.  It has grown since then, so I've been curious to see where I stand.

Here's What I've Read:

1. My Antonia
2. Watership Down
3. The Warden
4. The  Painted Veil
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
6. Frankenstein
7. Youth and the Bright Medusa
8. On the Road
9. How Green Was My Valley
10. One of Ours
11. The End of the Affair
12. Lady Windermere's Fan
13. A Lost Lady
14. Fellowship of the Ring
15. Persuasion
16. Pygmalion
17. River of Earth
18. The Beautiful and Damned
19. Crime and Punishment
20. The Professor's House
21. My Mortal Enemy
22. The Great Divorce

Doesn't look too shabby to me, especially because I'm currently working on 3 others (Grapes of Wrath, Hound of the Baskervilles, Eugene Onegin) and because they haven't all been a cakewalk (On the Road, Fellowship of the Ring, Crime and Punishment).  I think that it has definitely been beneficial to have them listed in one spot.  And it is certainly fun to be able to cross them off!

In other news, the Classics Club is doing another Spin List selection, and since the first one worked out so well for me (with The Beautiful and Damned) I thought I'd give it another go.  [update: looks like it's #6!]

5 Books I'm Afraid Of (because it weighs more than my cat, because it was written before my country began, because it's probably WAY too melodramatic, etc. etc.)

  1. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

  2. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  3. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy

  4. Native Son, Richard Wright

  5. Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe

5 Books I Think I'll Like (but never got around to & am now ambivalent towards)

  6. Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope

  7. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte

  8. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

  9. Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell

 10. Cakes and Ale, W.Somerset Maugham

5 Novella Pairings (I need to get those novellas read!)

 11. Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Marley & Stempenyu by Sholem Aleichem

 12. The Duel by Anton Chekov and The Duel by Alexander Kuprin

 13. The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl by Italo Svevo and The Touchstone by Edith Wharton

 14. The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling and May Day by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 15. Le Fanfarlo by Charles Baudelaire and Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

5 Modern[ish] Picks (because most of my classics hail from the 19th century)

 16. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather

 17. Things Fall apart, Chinua Achebe

 18. The Bell, Iris Murdoch

 19. Easter Parade, Richard Yates

 20. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

The Eternal TO READ Stack

I came across this photo today - taken in January 2009.  That's right, over 4 years ago.  The remarkable thing about this photo is not how huge that stack of books is, but rather the fact that I still haven't gotten around to six of those books.  SIX of them, after FOUR YEARS, even though they were on my Read Right Now pile.

Daniel Deronda? I know I started it.

Jubilee Trail? I don't even know when I bought this book.

A Little Princess?  Still haven't re-read it.

Man of the Family? Keep thinking I'll get around to it.

Ruth? Definitely started it...last year?

The Lost Continent? I've read other Bill Bryson books, does that count?

Looking at old stacks of books is always fun, but it can be a bit of a downer too.  Here I was feeling all proud of myself for getting some of those "eternal shelf" books read, and I find I have so much more to do.  Other than that, though, it is fun to look at those covers and remember what you thought about them.  From top to bottom, excluding [obviously] the ones I still haven't read: fabulous, fun, good, biased, okay, dumb, beautiful, very good, a bit boring, even boring-er, and very interesting.

I still want to read those 6 books.  If I didn't, it would definitely be time to let them go.  Too many good books to waste time on ones I'm not interested in.  But if I'm still interested, then they are more than welcome to a spot on my shelf, even if it is the eternal To Read shelf.  Maybe someday they'll make it off.

How I Finished Reading Crime and Punishment

Well, I managed to finish it.  

That really is the only lasting impression that I've kept regarding Crime and Punishment.  Kind of sad, considering that the book is actually quite well written & Dostoevsky obviously is familiar with mental anguish.  And considering that I adored War & Peace (the other Russian doorstop that it's super cool to brag about having read.)  Actually I love many 19th century Russian authors...Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev...but Dostoevsky?  Not so much.

What is it, then?  I'll tell you this: I have the same experience when I read Dickens.  Eerily similar experiences, actually.  I think it might have something to do with hope.

Tolstoy, for all his disillusionment with social structures and relationships, seeks purpose and meaning.  Pushkin, though his tales often revolve around a disaster, gives you the sense of noble pride - that all the drama is the essence of life!  Turgenev can seem rather disillusioned and fatalistic, but under it all is the feeling that there is a worthwhile purpose somewhere...if he could just find it.

But Dostoevsky?  No.  Face it, baby, life stinks.  Filth, poverty, wretchedness and debase behavior of all sorts, and then you die.  There might be the occasional angelic spectre, but that's not reality! Nobody can really live like that...because for every innocent being there are dozens of miserable ones greedy enough to steal their joy, and the sooner you come to terms with that, the better off you'll be.

So, maybe it has something to do with hope.  Or maybe it's because I'm not a fan of psychological dramas.  In any case, I had a difficult time getting through this one.  I had the suggested translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky (their translation of Anna Karenina was quite enjoyable) but had the hardest time staying focused.

When I reached the 2/3 point of the book and stalled out, I knew I was in trouble.  I gave up reading Dickens' Our Mutual Friend at the 2/3 point, as well as Irving's Owen Meany.  I have built a miniature track record for not finishing books that I've mostly finished.  I needed to come up with a solution, and quick - before my inaction became a default action.

I went to Audible, figuring that if someone was reading aloud AND I was reading along, it would be much more difficult to let myself get distracted.  After one false start (when I accidentally bought this version instead of the one I actually wanted) I was successful.  It worked.  And let me tell you, the story and the writing were actually pretty interesting after all, when translated by Constance Garnett and read aloud to me.  But what work it took to get me there!

Sigh.  And now, having read both The Eternal Husband and Crime and Punishment, I think I may safely say that it will be quite some time before I feel the need to read more Dostoevsky.  It doesn't bode well for Dickens either.  My apologies to all the fans.

The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy

I've seen Van Booy's name around the interwebs...it's an interesting name; it lodges in one's brain.  Every time one of his books popped to the forefront, however, I pushed it away: dismissing it as one in a crowd of inordinately popular pieces of fluff.

Boy was I wrong.

Little did I know when I opened my Indiespensable box and saw the unassuming galley lying there that I was about to be exposed to utter exquisiteness.  The writing, the characters, the story—all were wonderful.  From the first words I was hooked.

I've read books before that create a novel from a mix of seemingly unrelated short stories, but none done as beautifully, delicately, and organically as this.  Each sentence urged me to read the next, as if there were a shimmer of wonder cloaking each thought.

Plus, the title is fabulous.  It really serves as a basis for the over-arching theme of the book.  So many times we read (or hear) stories from different times and different places, and we look at them as isolated, confined experiences, but this book challenges the reader to look beyond, to wonder, to strive to be a part of a bigger story - one in which we are all connected whether we realize it or not.

This title is set to be released in June, and it is worth keeping in mind until then.  I'm going to need to buy a copy to loan out, a copy to keep as back-up, etc. etc.   I'm also going to need to read everything else he's every written.  In fact, I chose a collection of his short stories for my book club to read (The Secret Lives of People in Love) and while it wasn't quite as marvelous as The Illusion of Separateness, I still had that conflicting want-to-read-it-all-right-now/don't-want-it-to-ever-end thing happening.  Have you read anything of his?  What do you think?

For the Record: April 2013

For the first time in months I feel like I actually got through some books, and it felt GOOD.  I have to credit some of that amazingness to Audible, and the fact that there was a higher dose of current fiction (which, let's face it, is typically quicker and lighter reading material) than usual.

In the non-book-arena, I'm getting really good at making design decisions (a big deal for someone who takes forever to make decisions!)  Our house rebuild is trucking along, and I've spent so much time critically thinking abou the design that I'm pretty certain my brain-usage-percentage has increased.  Although my exhaustion level has also increased...but I'm going to go ahead and pretend that is unrelated.  I'm ready to be done with construction and design and just live in my house already, but we've got another year ahead of us I fear.  And that's why I prefer to talk about books!

11 Books Read in April: (29 year-to-date)

2 Classics:
  - The Professor's House, Willa Cather (4) [Another step through my Willa Cather Challenge, and again she didn't let me down.  Review here.]
  - Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (3) [I did it!  I finished it!  I'll be talking about how I finished it soon.]

2 for obligations (book club/ARC):
  - The Secret Lives of People in Love, Simon Van Booy (4.5) [I have a post about Van Booy in the works, but basically: if you haven't read him, do.]
  - Hikikomori and the Rental Sister, Jeff Backhaus (3) [Interesting, but didn't feel completely genuine.]

2 from my shelf:  [Review for both books here.]
  - Ireland, Frank Delaney (3) [Somewhat disappointing and boring, but still about Ireland!]
  - Annie Dunne, Sebastian Barry (3.5) [beautiful writing, as to be expected, but its introspective pace wasn't a great fit for this time in my life...took me moonnnths.]

5 others:
  - Benediction, Kent Haruf (4.5) [Purchased from my new local book shop...quick to read and just about perfect. Review here.]
  - Emily's Runaway Imagination, Beverly Cleary (3.5) [Read aloud to my 8yo, Cleary is always fantastic. Though this wasn't her best, the autobiographical element made it better.]
  - The Chaperone, Laura Moriarty (3.5) [Love the era, but would have much happier with this book if it had not told an entire life story & only focused on the "chaperone" period.]
  - Follow the River, James Alexander Thom (3) [Very enjoyable audio book, and pretty solid historical fiction, though it did lack appropriate character development.]
  - The Heretic's Daughter, Kathleen Kent (4) [Historical fiction worth reading.  About the Salem Witch Trials, but from a different perspective that really allows a whole picture to develop.]

                    


2 Current Reads:
  - Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler.  The writing is so "lite" that I'm having a bit of a struggle paying attention, but am enjoying reading about the 20s and the Fitzgeralds.
  - The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle.  Read-along at Unputdownables starts now!

    

On My Nightstand:
I'm hoping that this weekend will turn into a read-a-thon weekend, though weekends are never long enough in general. Here's what is on my radar: