What I've read over the last few months

Here's a list of the books I've read recently:

The Leftovers, by Tom Perrotta--I really enjoyed Perrotta's writing, and the idea was really original. I liked that he doesn't present easy answers to the dilemma he poses, just lets his characters experience the aftermath of his crazy set-up: that there has been a "rapture", and some of us have been left behind...

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman--I liked this better than I thought I would. It's the story of several women who experience the siege of Masada, in the first century CE. I was impressed with Hoffman's evocation of the historical period, and loved her depictions of the practices of women at this time.

Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck--I had read this years ago, and did not remember how good it was. Steinbeck was an amazing creator of characters, and portrays with humor and empathy the wonderfully flawed human beings who live on Cannery Row.

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka--Haunting and poetic, this book was a surprise to me. Otsuka somehow makes the plural voice work, and though the reader doesn't get to know the characters individually, it somehow comes together as a sad, intimate portrait of the Japanese picture brides who came to California in the 1920s.

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons--I had seen and enjoyed this movie years ago, so I wanted to read the book. A comic nod to Victorian novels, the adventures of Flora Poste as she sets about to better the lives of her shockingly backward distant cousins are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides--A book group read the group was mixed on. Some beautifully written passages, some complaints about the plot. I liked the ending because it was a nod to Jane Austen, but no fairy tale.

The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson--Another arresting premise, about two kids who grew up in a family of performance artists, where they had to participate in their parents' sometimes disturbing stunts. I liked reading it as a giant metaphor for dysfunctional families, and I liked where the plot took me.

Blue Nights, by Joan Didion--Joan Didion's follow-up to her memoir of the year after her husband's sudden death, The Year of Magical Thinking, this raw memoir is about the death of her daughter, which she had to endure only two years later. I had to get over the idea that this would be a profoundly depressing read, but Didion's language overcomes the grimness of the subject matter, and her meditations on aging, motherhood, life and death are poetic.

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach--Not really about baseball, thank goodness. More about college life, love and friendship. Another book group pick, which everyone liked.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky--(inspired by my 15-year-old son, who read it all in one day) A modern classic of troubled teendom and outsiderhood. This reminds me how much I hated being a teenager. That said, I'm glad my son read it and related to it.

Hello again, and the 100 Best First Lines of Novels

So I quit blogging for the last six months or so, not for any terrible reason, but out of inertia. I guess I needed a break, and seem to have lost the urgency previously driving me to write about books. I've certainly still been reading books, and thinking about books--just not writing about them. But I miss my blogging friends, which are really the best thing to come out of blogging, for me, so I thought I would check back in and see everyone.

My wonderful book group just finished The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, which we all enjoyed--much to the surprise of those who thought the novel was actually going to be about baseball. Unfortunately, at our meeting we did not pick a book to read next. If we don't pick right away, it tends to stymie us, and we send several hundred emails back and forth debating the potential pros and cons of many options. I think we have finally settled on Swamplandia, by Karen Russell. I hope so, as it's looking like an interesting novel.

I ran across this article about the 100 Best First Lines of Novels. There is nothing better than a clever or memorable first line in a novel, and this collection was fun to look through.

Number 2 on the list is probably my favorite: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813).

Five and six are favorites as well:

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. - Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

There are many other first lines I love on the list, as well as a bunch I didn't remember, or had never even heard of. Tell me some of your favorite first lines! Do you know any by heart?

Next Up In Group

My book group is reading Frederick Reiken's novel Day for Night for our next meeting. I hadn't heard of the book before the group picked it, but reviews call Reiken's prose "elegant"--always a plus--and mentions that the novel is like a group of linked stories. Our last book, Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, was also a group of linked stories, each featuring a different character. Thinking about it, I realize I like this construction. Olive Kitteridge was also linked stories, and I liked it very much. And Joan Silber's Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories was (obviously, from the subtitle) constructed that way, and I enjoyed that, too.

Reviews of Day For Night also mention the underwater imagery employed by the writer. Makes sense, looking at the cover. One of the great things about belonging to a book group is the exposure to books you might not have found otherwise. This wasn't on my radar, but reading about it, I'm happy I've been pushed to pick it up.

What is your book group reading now? Did your book group ever find a gem you might not have found otherwise?

Post Valentine's Day Reading Update

We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day much around here. I gave my husband a funny card, and he brought me a beautiful bunch of tulips. I gave the kids chocolate, and forced them to share.

I finished the anti-Valentine book on Valentine's day. I bought The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by Brian Moore, because I was looking through the recent releases of NYRB classics and the description was intriguing--and the NYRB Classics catalogue is a great resource for interesting books. This is a novel about a spinster in 1950 Belfast, and her sad and steady decline, and while I enjoyed the writing, the book was a little depressing for the traditional day of love. So I ate some chocolate.

I also recently finished Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, for my book group, which meets next week. This is the first of Egan's work that I've read, though I've been meaning to read The Keep forever. I really enjoyed her writing. This book is a linked group of short stories that make up a novel, centered around two characters, record producer Benny Salazar, and his assistant Sasha. The book skips around in time and place, among loosely-linked characters, and the writer deftly switches up styles and voices. The big theme here is growing up, getting old, facing mortality--as time is the goon mentioned in the title. I wish I liked the characters better, or rather, was more able to immerse myself in their lives, but I found the book to be an enjoyable read. I'm looking forward to discussing this one with my book group. And eating more chocolate.

Did you read anything special for Valentine's Day? Did you eat any chocolate?

Sunday Salon--Halloween season

We are pumpkin-y and leafy around here, and the kids insisted that we decorate for Halloween early. We get so many trick-or-treaters, it's insane. We live one street away from a street where everyone decorates the heck out of their houses at Halloween, and trick-or-treaters come from all over. We only get the spillover from that street, and I have to buy 1200 pieces of candy. Isn't that crazy?

But we actually love it. The kids enjoy giving out candy more than they care about trick-or-treating themselves.

My husband and I are getting ready for our trip to Paris, sans children. I cannot wait! I pulled out my copy of A Moveable Feast, to re-read Hemingway's memories of his time in Paris in the 1920s. Apparently he lived there on 5$ a day...ha! Wouldn't that be nice? I often forget how good a writer Hemingway actually was...this book is reminding me of that.

When I threw it out there that I'm looking for something to read while I'm in Paris, a commenter recommended Mavis Gallant stories. I've been meaning to read Gallant for years. So of course I bought a copy of her Paris Stories (published by one of my favorites, New York Review of Books Classics), so I'll have that to bring along.

And I'm still making my own slow way through Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, though I'm almost finished now. I swing wildly between identifying with the characters and being disgusted with them. I can't wait to hear what my fellow book-groupers think next week.

What are you reading on this lovely fall weekend? And do you have any good recommendations for things to do, eat, read in Paris? I'm loving everyone's advice!

Lazy blogger

I've been such a lazy blogger lately, it's pathetic. But at least I haven't been a lazy reader. I've been working my way through Jonathan Franzen's Freedom: A Novel for my book group, which meets in early November. I'm hooked. It's as I remember from The Corrections: A Novel--the man can write.

I ran across an interview with Emma Donoghue, whose novel Room: A Novel s nominated for the Booker Prize. I generally avoid books in which children are in serious peril, but this book sounds fascinating. It's written from the point of view of a five-year-old, which must have been pretty tough to pull off. It's been getting good reviews, so onto my list it goes.

The real reason I've been distracted from blogging is that I'm planning a trip to Paris. My husband and I are going on a sort of second honeymoon to the city of light, a place I've yearned to explore.

I've been obsessed with figuring out where to eat and what to do and where to walk. Of course, we're going in early November, so there is the distinct possibility of rain and rather colder temperatures than I'm used to here in L.A., so I may not be able to do all the things I'd like to do while I'm there. But I'm going to cram a lot in, I promise!

Of course I'm going to make a pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Co., but I'm not sure about other bookish things. I'm going to try to take a chocolate tour of Paris, though. And there's always the question of how many books to bring, and which ones!

So all you fab folks out there who have been to Paris, please leave me some recommendations! What should I see, do, eat, read?

Sunday Salon--Book Group Reading

At our last meeting, my book group discussed Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. I was planning to write a review, but after my group's discussion of the book, I must admit my thoughts grew muddled. I really enjoyed the book for several reasons. I liked Smith's voice, and I liked the way she was able to tell the story of her youth without judging herself in hindsight. I also liked the window she made for me into the New York art scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Smith lived at the Chelsea Hotel and frequented Max's Kansas City, and she got to know William Burroughs, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Allen Ginsberg, among others. It was a colorful time, to say the least, and I enjoyed the anecdotes about the city and the scene at this time.

But I also came away with more questions than answers after reading this. It's clear that there was much that Smith didn't want to say. The book is a labor of love, a eulogy and love letter to her lover and best friend, Robert Mapplethorpe. At the beginning of the story, Smith is a naive girl who comes to the city to live a life about art. Some of my book group found her naivete surprising, if not suspect, but maybe it was this naivete, mixed with a certain kind of fearlessness, that allowed Smith to become an artist after all. Mapplethorpe seemed even more devoted than Smith to the idea of art for art's sake, and Smith makes it clear that they both truly believed in each other as artists, even when neither was entirely sure what direction their art might take. Again, Smith chronicles their development as artists, and people, without judging with the benefit of hindsight, and she has a lyrical, impressionistic storytelling style, so there isn't a lot of self-reflection here.

Maybe because as a society we are used to post-Freudian, post-Oprah gut-spilling self-reflection to the point of narcissism, this book seems unusual to me. It feels like, perhaps because she is being respectful of her dead friend's secrets, Smith doesn't tell the whole story about Mapplethorpe and her relationship with him. She does, however, treat him and her younger self with an admirable empathy. I go back and forth, both wanting to know more about how Smith felt (for example, upon learning her lover and trusted friend was homosexual, and having their relationship necessarily change because of it), and recognizing that maybe there are no words for much of what was going on, and because it was a different time (and only nascently feminist) place, and because Smith and Mapplethorpe were making up their own rules as they went along.

Smith has an appealing sense of humor and self-deprecation. One of the best anecdotes in the book is about how Allen Ginsberg once hit on Smith, thinking she was a particularly good-looking boy. I would recommend the book for anyone interested in the New York art scene of the late 60s and early 70s--plus the photos alone are worth the price of the book. My book group discussion about the book was pretty wide-ranging--we touched on misogyny in the art world, feminism, the spectrum of sexuality, poetry and rock and roll, the allure of Paris, obsessiveness about Baudelaire--so even though there was disagreement about the book, it sparked some interesting talk.

We agreed to read a novel next time, and we picked Chang-rae Lee's new book, The Surrendered. One of my good friends really loved Lee's A Gesture Life, so I got hold of a copy of that, too, and I hope to read both before our next meeting.

Lee is one of those novelists that has popped up out of nowhere for me. I'd love to hear what you all think of Lee, if you've read him...

Book Group Madness!

After a summer's hiatus, and a September's worth of back-to-school events, my book group finally got back together to discuss the passle o' books we've read over the last couple of months. Mocha chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin pie bars, Guatemalan chocolate chip bread, baba ghanoush, stilton with apricots, pinot noir--all big hits. The books were less consistent.

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. This was probably the most successful book with the group overall. Most everyone really liked it, though some had trouble connecting with the present-day main character. I particularly enjoyed how Brooks brought history to life with involving characters and vivid historical details.

Lush Life, by Richard Price. Most everyone enjoyed this novel for its atmosphere. Set among the world of cops and crooks in Manhattan's Lower East Side, it's a novel to be enjoyed for its ear for dialect and attention to detail rather than its plot.

Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk. A horror fairy tale, with a lyrical Irish lilt. I didn't finish this one, but the others in my book group found it to be either page-turning mind candy or really yucky, because of the gory subject matter.

Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks. Okay, I admit it, I did not read this book. I meant to, but I kept forgetting to get a copy. I really enjoyed Sebastian Faulks's book Birdsong, many years back, but the idea of this book, a sort of psychological thriller/whodunit with a remorseless main character, didn't grab me. It didn't grab many of my fellow book-groupers, either. I would say it generally got a thumbs down.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. For me, this was a page turner. Almost everyone in the group loved this book. The main character was really appealing to most, and the subject matter really engaging. There was only one dissenting voice--one reader who didn't think the book covered any new territory. I liked it because the writer created some real tension for me--I was actually afraid of what might happen to the main characters.

As usual, great discussion, good friends, good food, lots of wine, and many laughs made for a successful book group evening.

I love my book group

My book group has been meeting for five and a half years. I know this because we conceived of the idea of the group at the bris of the youngest son of one of the members, and he's now five and a half years old. If you know what a bris is, you'll be amazed, like I was, that the woman had the presence of mind to know she wanted to join a book group that day. I've only gotten through every bris I've ever attended by drinking plenty of sweet ceremonial red wine.

At our last meeting, one of the members brought a list she's been keeping of the books we've read so far. It made for a half a meeting full of reminiscing, and I must admit it was such fun to go back over the list of books. It's amazing how much more fondly I remember some of the books now, as opposed to when I read them, when I might have been a tad more critical...

Here's the list. I think it's a darn good one. I'm sort of proud of us for getting through so many books. If you've read any of the books, let me know what you think. If you have suggestions for good book group reads, I'd like to hear those too!

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer
Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
On Beauty, by Zadie Smith
13 Steps Down, by Ruth Rendell
Heat, by Bill Buford
The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver
Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Gathering, by Anne Enright
Anagrams, by Lorrie Moore
The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Dirt Music, by Tim Winton
Theft, by Peter Carey
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss
A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
Silk, by Alessandro Baricco
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
The Starter Wife, by Gigi Levangie Grazer
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
The Believers, by Zoe Heller
Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
Niagara, by Richard Watson
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida
The Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich
Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Foreskin’s Lament, by Shalom Auslander
Platform, by Michel Houellebecq
Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan
Slouching Toward Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
Everyman, by Philip Roth
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Dias

Oh, and the books we're reading over the summer are:
Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk
Lush Life, by Richard Price,
The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks

I have started Darling Jim, and it's a page-turner...

Booking Through Thursday--Symbolic? Or Not?

Today's Booking Through Thursday question was suggested by Barbara H:

My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

I love the question that Barbara's husband brings up--whether or not authors meant all that symbolism the English teachers made us hunt down and analyze when we learned about literature. I remember my high school English teacher making me look for water images in A Passage to India, and thinking at the time that Forster couldn't possibly have purposely written in every symbol. Now, knowing more about the writing process, I think some writers put symbols in their work subconsciously, and others work very hard to put in symbolism.

But that said, I actually enjoy close reading, and analyzing symbolism, and whether or not it's intentional doesn't necessarily make it less meaningful.

I think much of modern fiction has plenty of symbolism. I just finished Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which has lots of overt symbolism in the sections of the book that relate the science fiction story that is being told by one character to his lover, where he's obviously inserting symbolism about their relationship into the story. It's a great book if you're looking for symbolism, but it's also a great story if you just want to read it and don't want to work that hard!

I guess I don't look for symbolism per se when I'm reading, but I do look for layers of meaning, and I do appreciate aspects of stories that invite analysis. In my book group last night, for example, we discussed Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. We talked a little bit about how one of the characters, the elegant and sympathetic Japanese man Kakuro Ozu, who moves into the apartment building where the other two main characters live, is not so much a real person, but a means for the two main characters to get together. He's a catalyst, almost a plot device, rather than a real person--he is the mechanism that allows the other two characters to see each other. It was a great discussion! Plus, there was wine!

A New Year of reading

I'm off to a limping start this year, trying to get through my book club's selection for this month, Edward Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel. It's not that I don't like the writing--I do--but I just can't get into the subject matter. It's about a family and the dogs they breed, and I can feel an unhappy ending brewing, and I just can't bring myself to face it. Not that I mind unhappy endings, but there's a tension building around a malevolent character that I'm not sure I can live with for the next hundred or so pages.

If I don't finish the book, I have to put five bucks into the pot, for an eventual evening out with the book groupers. Not a bad price to pay, considering the pleasure it will bring me later, and it will assuage my guilt about not finishing!

My poor new Kindle is not getting much use yet, as I have so many physical books on the pile, I can't bring myself to buy any virtual ones. I've downloaded a few classics, and have started reading George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, something that's been on my list of "to-reads" forever.

I'm enjoying the Kindle experience so far, and I'm sold on how wonderful it will be to travel with. My only criticism at the moment is that without the physical cues of bookmarks and page numbers, I have no idea how far into the book I am, and how far I have to go. It's a very strange experience for me, to have no bearings in the book. I can't keep track of what chapter I'm in--that would require using too much of my beleaguered memory. It's odd--and I feel I must be missing something here--there must be some other way of figuring out where you are. Do any of you Kindle users out there have any comments or advice on how to mark reading progress?

As I mentioned in my last post, my New Year's resolution is to try to get through more of my to-read pile before I buy any more books. I feel like that could be a reading challenge in itself: The Off The Shelf challenge, or something like that. In designing that challenge for myself, I'm going to set no time limits or book quotas, but just see how long I can read without going outside my own shelves...

Travel plans

This weekend my family is doing what everyone in their right mind has been avoiding lately, considering the price of gas--getting in the car and driving to our vacation destination. We're going to Yosemite to celebrate my dad's birthday.

Yosemite has been one of my favorite places since I was a child. I remember stopping at a store on the way to Yosemite when I was a kid, and buying two books from a bargain table--Silas Marner, by George Eliot, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--both of which I devoured on that trip. I remember loving Silas Marner, but I don't remember much about The Hound of the Baskervilles. Maybe I'll read it again some day.

In Silas Marner, I remember reading about Silas trying to punish baby Eppie by putting her in the coal hole, and having the punishment backfire on him when she took to going into the coal-hole for fun. When Silas finds her in the coal-hole, dirty with coal dust, she smiles and says, "Eppie in de toal-hole!" I remember finding that bit very funny, and sharing it with my family, and having Eppie's phrase stick with us and become a family joke. Now, with a three-year-old who loves nothing more than making a mess, I relate to the anecdote even more.

For this trip I'm not relying on finding a bargain book table; I'm bringing Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, which I've been saving for the trip, but which I need to finish before my book group meets next week. I loved The Namesake and The Interpreter of Maladies, so I'm really looking forward to this book. Can't wait to discuss it with my book group.

Do you ever associate books with the places you read them?

And anyone who has read Unaccustomed Earth, what do you think?