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!

Sunday Salon--the reading I didn't do

I wish I could have participated in Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon this year, because really, what could be better than nonstop reading and lots of good snacks? I had the snacks anyway, but my kids would revolt if I left them to fend for themselves while I read all weekend. Sounds like heaven, however...and another lovely way to remember Dewey.

I was able to read some this weekend, anyway. I finished Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin: A Novel. It was a great book. I love a book that compels you forward at the end, and you race ahead, faster and faster, just to find out what happened to the characters you've become attached to. I had that experience with this book, and recently with Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, too.

I also started Zoe Heller's The Believers: A Novel. So far, I'm engaged. I like Heller's style. I did not read What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel, but I did enjoy the film. I have to finish The Believers, or at least get far enough in to be able to talk semi-intelligently about it, before my Thursday book group meeting.

I am looking forward to next weekend's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. It's always an amazing event, with panels and panels of so many authors I'd like to hear that I can't possibly fit them all in. It's a festival of crowds, too--not my favorite thing, but (unlike so many other crowded events) completely worth it. And there's a big bonus for me this year--meeting fellow bloggers! That's right, a group of ten book bloggers are going to meet at the festival (thanks Lisa for your organizing fabulousness), and we're hoping to have a meal together, as well as attend some panels. I can't wait!

What have you managed to read this weekend?

Weekly Geeks--What's Cooking?

I just had to participate in this week's Weekly Geeks, because the assignment is let's talk cookbooks!

I have a fairly large cookbook collection. I've been inspired by two people in this. First of all, my late mother-in-law, who not only had a huge collection of cookbooks, but who would actually read them. She might take one up to bed and read it there, just like it was a novel. And she made notes in the margins, about things she might like to try, or things she'd tried and modified. I love to run across these notes, "needs more sugar!", when I'm reading her old cookbooks.

I'm also inspired by a very good friend who is the author of several really great cookbooks. Her Dinner Parties: Simple Recipes for Easy Entertaining is one of my go-to cookbooks when I'm planning a party. Knowing her over the years, I've become familiar with the process of writing a cookbook, from coming up with a concept, menu planning, recipe writing and best of all, recipe testing. I've helped her test recipes many times, and it's always a yummy experience. Also, my family and I have been the beneficiaries of her recipe-testing jags, when she might bring over, say, a summer fruit tart, and say, "here, what do you think?" I think I'm in heaven!

One of the best things about cookbooks is reading them. I love a well-written cookbook. For funny cookbooks, I go to the Beat This! Cookbook series by Ann Hodgman, who used to write for Spy Magazine. She is absolutely hilarious. She also wrote a cookbook entitled One Bite Won't Kill You--so you see what I mean. It's next on my list to buy.

I also read cookbooks because they are beautiful. One such beautiful cookbook I received as a gift is Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table. Lucques is a local restaurant that is just wonderful--I've eaten celebratory meals there for years. Goin is a famous local chef, with several great restaurants in Los Angeles.

I also love Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, which are very readable (and her website is great). She's also quite watchable on TV. And my favorite book on baking, which contains my favorite easy chocolate frosting recipe, is The Baker's Dozen Cookbook: Become a Better Baker with 135 Foolproof Recipes and Tried-and-True Techniques.

And, last but not least, as a cook I've turned to the internet for recipes quite a bit lately. There are some great cooking blogs I check regularly. These are wonderful because they usually post great pictures of the food (which is another hallmark of a good cookbook). My favorites are, of course, Books and Cooks (which combines two of my passions), and also Smitten Kitchen, Joy the Baker, and the Paris-based Chocolate and Zucchini--all of whom have lovely writing styles.

Check these sites out, they're great!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery--a review

I think I was as charmed as legions of European readers were when I read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, for my book group. It's been a while since I've read anything French (the last thing being Platform by Michel Houellebecq--quite different!) or anything translated, and I found the writer's voice fresh and vibrant--so I'm assuming this is a very good translation.

I had heard very mixed things about this book before I started it. One person told me it was the best book she had read all year, and another told me that she put it down after thirty pages because it was "pretentious". I'm glad I kept reading beyond the first thirty pages, because though I was a little slow getting into it, I ultimately loved this book.

This story is narrated by two people who live in the same ritzy apartment building in Paris, Renee Michel, the dumpy, lumpy, frumpy 54-year-old concierge of the building, and Paloma Josse, the precocious 12-year-old daughter of a diplomat and a socialite who live there. Madame Michel is a very intelligent autodidact, lover of art, books, music and movies, who hides behind a mask of stupidity--what she says is the typical concierge persona--and doesn't want any of the upper class residents of her building guessing that she has a secret intellectual life. Paloma is a very intelligent girl who plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday unless she finds something in the world, some truth or beauty, that makes life worth living.

Both Renee Michel and Paloma keep diaries, where they record their musings on the nature of beauty, the importance of art, the meaning of life, as well as wonderfully French observations on the foibles of the upper middle class Parisians they live among.

Renee Michel is a great character, a person hiding behind the facade of what people expect her to be. At first I got frustrated by her hiding and posturing. It seemed that she was obsessed with the class difference between herself and those she served as concierge, and I started to wonder if class was a bigger issue in France today than I imagined. But without giving any spoilers, I'll say that later in the story the reasons for Renee's seeming obsession with class became clearer and much more understandable.

And as I read on, I started to enjoy Renee's character more. She is an extraordinary mind inside an ordinary person--she's a character we can all relate to, because don't we all feel just a little bit misunderstood, and wouldn't we all like to say we are more than what meets the eye? And she has a lovely Cinderella moment, when she is finally seen, finally understood, by the two kindred spirits who live in the apartment building where she lives, Paloma and the elegant and mysterious new tenant, Kakuro Ozu. I completely bought the character of Paloma, too. At first I was worried that I wouldn't believe her--I was thinking how hard it must be as a writer to make the voice of an unbelievably smart pre-teen sound believable. But Barbery pulls it off, and as I read I stopped thinking about whether it was working, and got completely engrossed in the book.

And as the book became more about the relationships between these three characters, I liked it even more. The message of the book reminded me of E.M. Forster's quote in Howard's End: "Only connect! ...and human love will be seen at its height." Because it's ultimately all about human relationships, isn't it? By the end, The Elegance of the Hedgehog was both a book of ideas and a book I could relate to on an emotional level. I understand that the author is a professor of philosophy. This shows in the elegance with which she discusses ideas. But she is also a writer who gives us a lovely story peopled with interesting characters, and manages to tug at our heartstrings, too.

Here are a few passages I enjoyed:

From page 53. Renee Michel, on reading without guidance:

"I have read so many books...And yet, like most autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of nowhere, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading--and then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates, and no matter how often I reread the same lines, they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading, and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been attentively reading the menu. Apparently this combination of ability and blindness is a symptom exclusive to the autodidact. Deprived of the steady guiding hand that any good education provides, the autodidact possesses nonetheless the gift of freedom and conciseness of thought, where official discourse would put up barriers and prohibit adventure."

From page 123. Okay, another reason I really like this book is that Renee Michel loves Tolstoy, especially Anna Karenina, and so do I. Renee describes a passage in Anna Karenina when Levin is scything grain, and goes into that kind of pleasurable trance that repetitive actions can put us into, and then she compares it to writing in her journal:

"What other reason might I have for writing this--ridiculous journal of an aging concierge--if the writing did not have something of the art of scything about it? The lines gradually become their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me."

From page 145. Paloma, after meeting Kakuro Ozu for the first time:

"So here is my profound thought for the day: this is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond. That may seem trivial but I think it is profound all the same. We never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy."

I can't wait to discuss all this with my book group next week!

A recipe

I went on an impromptu blogging break because of Spring Break, or maybe it was spring fever. We took a quick trip to Las Vegas, which always puts me into sensory overload. Then we hosted a Passover seder at our house, which is always a lot of work beforehand, but is so much fun during!

I managed to get some reading done anyway. I finished my book group book, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, while we were in Vegas. Completely incongruous! It's a book of ideas that made me think philosophically, and by the end of the book I was in tears, and I experienced all of this while sitting by the pool at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

I came to the Jewish holiday of Passover late in my life, but I've more than made up for it by embracing the ritual of the seder with gusto. I love to bake and eat sweets, and for a baker, the dietary restrictions of Passover represent a significant challenge--one I love to take on. I make flourless chocolate cakes, a chocolate-hazelnut torte, sponge cake, trifle, and several other crazy things this time of year. But the thing that everyone always loves most is my matzo buttercrunch, a candy made with caramel, chocolate, nuts and matzo, the unleavened "bread" of Passover, ubiquitous in our supermarkets this time of year.

So I thought I'd pass along the recipe, just in case anyone out there wants to try it. It's easy, and worth it, I promise.

Matzo Buttercrunch

4 to 6 unsalted matzos
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (or margarine)
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup coarsely chopped semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, or chocolate chips
Toasted slivered almonds

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a jellyroll pan, or a cookie sheet that has sides, with aluminum foil, and then with a sheet of parchment paper.

Line the pan with matzos as evenly as possible, cutting them into pieces to fill in any gaps.

Heat the butter and brown sugar in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil for 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the mixture from the stove and pour it over the matzos.

Put the pan in the oven and bake for about 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and sprinkle the chocolate over the matzos. Let stand for a few minutes, then smear the top with a spatula to spread the chocolate over the top of the matzos. Garnish the buttercrunch with the slivered almonds.

Freeze until firm, about an hour.

Break the buttercrunch into pieces to serve.

Don't eat all at once!

Update: Was checking in with all the blogs I check, and saw that one of my favorite foodies, Smitten Kitchen, had this same recipe posted! If you want to see better pictures, click here.

This pile snuck up on me

In an attempt to put myself on a stricter budget, and to force myself to read through some of the ridiculously large pile of books next to my bed, I made a resolution not to buy any new books this year. Okay, I knew that wasn't going to last. But I did want to see how long I could make it without getting out my wallet to buy books.

I'm actually proud of myself for the restraint I've shown so far this year. And I am making inroads into the crazy book pile. But I guess I'm a bit of a book magnet--I've still been acquiring books, even without buying many. I keep getting books as gifts, and ARCs. And I did make an exception to my "no buying" rule for book group books, of which there have been a few.

So here's the pile I've accumulated, despite my best intentions:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. This one is for my book group's next meeting. I've heard this described as both "the best book I've read all year" and "pretentious". Hmm...

The Believers, by Zoe Heller. Also for my book group. Also given mixed reviews.

Five Quarters of the Orange, by Joanne Harris. Given to me as a very, very belated birthday present, along with

Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris. In which I am warned to watch out for something shocking. Again, hmm...

A Mercy, by Toni Morrison. Borrowed by my mother from her good friend, and left here accidentally on a visit. Sorry, Mom! I'll send it back to you when I'm done.

Any thoughts on these?

Kick-off of National Poetry Month

It's officially National Poetry Month and I'm observing it by visiting 30 Poets/30 Days, a celebration of children's poetry, where there will be a previously unpublished poem on the site daily, by some of the greats of children's poetry.

Today's offering is by one of my all-time favorite poets, children's or otherwise, Jack Prelutsky, and it made me giggle. Enjoy Poetry Month!