Dracula by Bram Stoker

Yes, I picked up Dracula as a Halloween re-read and yes it’s almost Christmas. What can I say? As embarrassing as it is to admit, time gets away from me. That’s one of the many hazards of being Distractible by nature.

 

It’s never too late, however, to say that I still love Dracula. This is a real vampire story: no sparkles, no love affairs, just a self-serving, powerful, manipulative, undead monster with terrible abilities and a bloody agenda. While Dracula is far more emotional in nature than most English novels I’ve read, those emotions are limited to reasonable terror, horror, despair and genuine affection among the protagonists.

Dracula is an adventure story told in the form of journal entries, correspondences and recordings by most of the main characters. The tension steadily builds in the day-to-day accounts which are supplemented with a few newspaper reports, and the overall effect is a special kind of believability, even when things become supernaturally weird. Knowledge is power for our heroes and they use a rational, scientific approach to the discovery and attempted destruction of the vampire count.

The style of story-telling is fun to read and Stoker has done it with some skill, since each story-teller has his or her own voice. There are many cumbersome passages, however, as Stoker relays some accounts, including a long quotation in a newspaper report, in the supposed dialect of the speaker. I find phonetic spellings of local vernacular difficult to get through, and in many places I wish he would just have written everything out in Oxford English and let me use my own imagination as to what it sounded like. In many cases I had to rely on the good notes that came with my digital edition of the novel in order to understand what a quoted character was saying. I suppose the dialect adds color and realism to the story, but I, unfortunately, just find it hard to read.

I don’t really buy into all of the symbolism of suppressed sexuality that’s been read into Dracula by scholars who just don’t want to enjoy a good suspense story. I suppose that’s been the source of so much of the modern take on the vampire in current literature. I really don’t buy into that, either, but there is one scene toward the end of the novel in which Van Helsing contemplates the role of physical and supernatural beauty in the power of the vampire. He has come across the coffins of the vampire women in Dracula’s circle, servants of the count, but immensely powerful in their own right. The commentary is laced with dialect, since English is not Van Helsing’s first language, but it is nonetheless a moving passage.

 

She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton Undead have hypnotize him; and he remain on, and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss – and man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold; one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Un-dead!...

 

No matter how you feel about vampires, then and now, this is a good, well-written suspense story for anyone who wants an old-fashioned thrill in their reading entertainment.

A Year of Books I've Read Before

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

The Enchantress of Florence was my first exposure to the work of Salman Rushdie. I quickly became an awed fan, getting drawn into the world of the novel, and enjoying every minute of it. I also had that feeling of being in the presence of genius, much like I did when reading Umberto Eco. Along with that is the feeling that I’m probably not well-read and learned enough to really latch onto all of depth and allusion (also, much like reading Eco), but that going along for the ride and enjoying the story for its own sake is okay, too.

 

This novel is dreamy and magical, stuffed with images and stories woven through time. It takes place in India during the time of the Mughals, and that setting is created beautifully. The stories go back and forth from there, however, as a mysterious man from the West tells the elaborate stories of his own origin and his connection to Emperor Akbar.

This is a historical novel starring people who actually existed (there’s a bibliography at the end of the novel, demonstrating, once again, the 90% perspiration aspect of genius), but also a brilliant work of creativity. I love the language which is snappy or dreamy as required. I love the scope, which goes beyond East meets West to pretty much include the entire world. I love the ideas and the dilemmas. I even love the idea of Akbar’s imaginary queen.

I enjoyed this book the first time I read it, and I enjoyed it even more this time. I’m a great fan of stories and a story about stories is near perfection to me, especially when it has been put forward with such brilliance and skill. If I didn’t have so many other books to re-read, I would happily return to page one and read The Enchantress of Florence again immediately.

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Postscript to The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

This little book is the response written by the author following the success of The Name of the Rose (one of my favorite books ever.) In it he describes his inspiration, influence and process, leaving me dumbfounded and even more worshipful of Umberto Eco than I was before.

While I’m in awe of Eco’s smarts and abilities, Postscript to The Name of the Rose gives me a lot of insight into the 90% perspiration part of proverbial genius. Eco gives us lots of details about how he went about researching the time, place and people in The Name of the Rose. It’s a bit overwhelming to think of putting that much work into anything, but it really gives one a new idea about how something so great is created. This kind of stuff just doesn’t pop fully formed out of a savant’s head.

Eco also discusses the value of entertainment in literature and doesn’t seem to mind if some of us plebes just enjoy his work without really understanding all of the allusions or postmodern irony or any of that stuff that makes The Name of the Rose an important “text” rather than just a historical detective novel (which I appreciate). That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m going to just sit back and read Eco’s novels, blissfully ignorant, but entertained. Since he’s kind enough to let us in on his process and some of his especially learned levels of understanding of history, literature and symbolism, I’m hoping to become a more worthy reader each time I read The Name of the Rose and Postscript to The Name of the Rose.

And I will be reading them again….someday.

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards

I wanted to re-read Ender’s Game before the new film was released, which is always a dangerous idea, since films made of good, well-known books often disappoint. But I was a bit nervous about reading this again for another reason: I wasn’t particularly thrilled about Ender’s Game when I read it many years ago.

 

Oh, sure, I recognized this as a very high-quality novel and exemplary science fiction. About halfway through the book this time around, however, I realized what at least part of my problem was: I don’t quite believe in Ender Wiggin. Once I got past that and let the title character be who the novel insists he is, then I could enjoy the story more and ponder some of the more thought-provoking themes. I still had mixed emotions by the end, but I definitely have come to  appreciate the brilliance of this novel.

The future of the world seems to rest on a little boy, but fate is not what brought him to such a point of no return. Yes, Ender is gifted in such a way as to be the last, best hope for humanity, but he has been at least somewhat designed, constructed, and pressured to this task. There are a bunch of other gifted kids who excel under his leadership, forming an elite army exploited by the powers of earth to defend against alien attacks. I suppose these kids were bred to be stronger, faster and smarter than the generation that’s in charge, and that’s why there have to be kids and not adults saving the world. I don’t know. It’s still hard for me to buy.

That being said, however, this is one of those few books that is so well written it doesn’t really feel like you’re reading at all. It’s hard to describe its style, because it’s exactly the way it needs to be. The words, the phrasing, the descriptions are all exactly right to tell this story. The action is well-plotted. The emotional content is subdued, but, again, that’s the way it needs to be to fit into this story.

I wish the future world Card constructed for Ender to save was a little more colorful. He did seem to predict the nature of the internet well, with Peter and Valentine Wiggin creating their own form of world domination through what we would now think of a the “blogosphere.” Perhaps it is just the small slice of the world that we are allowed to see, that Ender is given the liberty to see, that is so black and white. That, again, would be just right for telling this story: this sad, frustrating, intense, concise, complete, solid, well-written, terrific story.

 

Coming soon: Postscript to The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

The universe needs a man like Dirk Gently to remind it that everything is connected. At least that’s the underlying theme to this highly entertaining novel. It was fun to read it a second time because I probably didn’t really “get it” the first time. I also didn’t remember many of the details or even the main plot line of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Although I did remember the impossibly positioned sofa.

 

At the center of this story is Richard, a regular guy who finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery while trying to make up for absent-minded mistakes with his girlfriend. Richard is at least as confused as we readers are, at least at first, and we take this mad journey through the mystery with him. Absurdity after absurdity plagues poor Richard and in the style of wry British humor, he seems to be the only one who finds it all very alarming, even the horse that shows up in a professor’s bathroom.

This novel is almost pure entertainment. It’s a story of murders and ghosts, music and computer programs, possession and post-hypnotic suggestion, quantum mechanics and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, time travelers and electric monks. Dirk Gently, who would be known as Svlad Cjelli but for a need to distance himself from his past, has his finger on the pulse of the universe, sensing its interconnectedness. Of course, the bill for his expenses might include charges for a trip to Bermuda to solve the mystery of a lost cat in Cambridge, but that’s the price you can expect to pay for such all-encompassing expertise.

Dirk’s theories of interconnectedness are tested harshly in the solution to the mysteries of this story, but he applies himself to that solution by means both improbable and at least slightly unethical. Almost everyone is full of surprises (except, perhaps, for our steady, straight-man Richard), but also possess the dignity to be at least a little surprised that one might find those surprises surprising. Whatever seems ludicrously improbable must have some connection to the known universe and is therefore possible in this really funny story. Whether the whole world can be (or even needs to be) saved is something you’ll have to learn for yourself. That is, if you haven’t already read this book.

 

Coming soon: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

 

October Reading Ambitions

My October re-reading hopes and dreams involve a follow-up to a novel I recently read, one of my favorite novels of all time and a Halloween treat:


Postscript to The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a short and fascinating work about the novel by the author

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, a delightfully weird read

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, something I've been looking forward to re-reading all year

Dracula by Bram Stoker, to put me in a spooky mood for Halloween



A Year of Books I've Read Before

The Uplift War by David Brin

Sequel to Startide Rising

I couldn’t remember much about this novel before I re-read it. I had remembered a fair amount about Startide Rising, but The Uplift War just didn’t stick with me. I remembered the Uplifted chimpanzees and some of the aliens, but really very little about the story.

 

I don’t know what took me so long to read this book. It first showed up on my reading list for July! Somehow, it just wasn’t as engaging as Startide Rising, but I’ll be darned if I can put my finger on exactly why. Perhaps I should just chalk it up as a victim to my distractibility.

Anyway, while this is a follow-up to Startide Rising and the conflicts are a consequence of the events of that novel, we are introduced to a new group of characters with a different set of problems. They know little of the fate of the crew of Streaker and little about why they caused such a problem with the rest of the citizens of the known universe in the first place. The magnitude of those new protagonists’ challenges, however, is as big as can be expected from a well-crafted science fiction setting.

Humanity continues to be full of surprises as do the earth species they continue to genetically modify with a goal of reaching a high level of intelligence. It’s the resilience of this so-called “wolfling” race that makes the earth continue to matter in such a big universe. And why humans and earth should matter is something important that we explore by writing and reading science fiction. Brin’s optimistic view of our place in an infinity of space and time and the complexity of the themes of evolution (aided or otherwise), civilization and society, and planetary stewardship make The Uplift War thought provoking as well as highly entertaining.

There is just one area in which I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. As humans are improving themselves in this future universe, they are developing psychic powers, one of the very few speculative items in the book not extrapolated from any documented science. I wonder why authors do this, since is seems to me like adding a fantasy component to an otherwise “hard-science fiction” novel. Perhaps like spaceships and faster-than-light travel and otherworldly neighbors it’s just something we wish we had but do not, something that would make future humans bigger and better than we are today. Personally, I’d settle for world peace as a human achievement over psychic powers, but I suppose that wouldn’t make for a very interesting science fiction story.

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Wednesday Word

Sometimes a word I choose for (the occasional) Wednesday Word is one that shows up often in a book. Other times it’s a word that represents the essence of the book or some part of it. This week, I just picked a word that was unfamiliar to me, but still sounded kind of cool. Actually, the word in the form I found it in The Uplift War by David Brin wasn’t in my Webster’s New World Dictionary, so I give you the word that was as close as I could get.

 

The word in the novel: cinerescent

 

Close enough: cinereous (si nir’ ē əs) adj. 1. of or like ashes  2. the color of ashes; ash-gray

  

Do you ever feel like authors are just showing off?

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel

I read this book just over a year and a half ago, so I wasn’t exactly digging up an old memory or trying to remember why I felt the way I did about it. I was re-reading it out of pure indulgence. I knew I loved this book and I knew why. And I knew I wanted to read it again.

Actually, I found myself at my local library, looking for something to read at a nearby park where I was planning to lounge, and trying not to succumb to the overwhelming Distraction of shelves upon shelves of books. I could check out The Library at Night again and read it again and it would fit into my reading plans just fine. Plus, it was particularly fun to read about libraries, some of them completely mad, while I was also reading The Name of the Rose.

I still adore the style, the quality and the premise of this book. It’s part history, part social and psychological commentary, part memoir, and it’s all about the places people have kept and read their books. Each person or group who collected volumes together in one place, whether to make them easily accessible to more readers or to protect and preserve them, must have first found books and writing valuable. The chronicle and celebration of that philosophy is skillfully done by Manguel in these relatively few pages that house so much information.

The Library at Night was published in 2006 when the internet had found a firm foothold but e-books and e-readers were just coming along. Manguel expresses some contempt for the internet and seems skeptical that digital archives would be an effective tool in preserving the written word. I admit to being among the many who didn’t think I could make the move to reading a screen rather than curling up with a paper book, but I also must admit that the quality of my experience with my e-reader has me coming around. This year, I read The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King and Cooked (Michael Pollan) on my e-reader before writing about them here. Other than requiring a bit of time to get used to using the digital bookmark and highlighting functions of my reader, I cannot say I really wished I could have been reading paper copies of these books instead.

E-reading may end up spelling the end of large, charming (and dusty and disorganized) shelves of books defining libraries. (Although, I suppose “collections” of antique books will always be of value.) Many things will definitely be lost if that is true, many things described in The Library at Night, but, as Manguel puts it in the chapter “The Library as Space,” “In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.” I, who have moved my library back and forth across the country a few times, would argue that mass is an issue as well. My e-reader, along with its protective case that also functions as an easel, is approximately 9 ¾ inches (24.5 centimeters) by 6 ¾ in (17.25 cm) by 7/8 in (2.25 cm) and has a mass of about 1 ¾ pounds (810 g). With our e-book collections, we have the potential to take our libraries with us wherever we go.

 

 

Coming soon: The Uplift War by David Brin (finally!)

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Translated from the Italian by William Weaver

The Name of the Rose is one of the most amazing (if not the most amazing) novels I’ve ever read. Having recently finished re-reading it, I have to say that my amazement has not waned in the least. This is a brilliantly intense book with so much detail, so much depth, and so much meaning, much of which, I must admit, is probably totally lost on me.

 

The story at the center of The Name of the Rose is ostensibly a murder mystery, but there’s so much going on in and around that story that it would be foolish to focus on that aspect of the novel alone. A 14^th century Benedictine abbey may seem like a limiting setting, small in area and potential and full of stodgy monks stewing in their own juices. The wealthy monastery that houses this entire novel, however, becomes so much more. It becomes the stew pot for the raging tumult in Europe during that time, which was rife with popes, bishops, heretics, inquisitors, and emperors and Eco has left none of them out of this complex story.

This novel is stuffed with and driven by a handful of colorful, fanatic, decent, and indecent characters, but in the center of them all is a most extraordinary, if inanimate, character: the Library. Yes, I feel like the dangerous labyrinth of jealously guarded books is a character in this story. It dominates the spirit of the abbey, seemingly torn between keeping itself hidden and indecipherable and bursting free of its deceptive and puzzling walls to share its knowledge with the learned world. It is the monastery’s point of pride, but also the source of its vices and, perhaps, its ultimate downfall.

Of course, Umberto Eco is a rare genius. I can’t even begin to describe the many layers of history, social commentary, cynicism, compassion, faith, doubt, fact, fiction, goodness, evil and terror that come alive in The Name of the Rose. I freely admit that I don’t even understand them all, but that doesn’t keep me from being both thoroughly entertained and provoked to deep thought.  It’s dangerous for me to read Eco. Not only is my perception of the world shifted at least a little bit each time I do, but I’m also tempted to do nothing but read and re-read…and read some more.

 

 

Coming soon: The Library at Night (again) by Alberto Manguel

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Quoting The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel could go on forever. One would have to re-type the entire volume to share all the good bits. Here's a short quote from that book, however, for my current mood:

       Every reader is either a pausing wanderer or a traveler returned.



Coming soon: thoughts on re-reading The Library at Night and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco



A Year of Books I've Read Before

September Reading

Okay, so I’m not so good at finishing the books I assign myself each month. In fact, sometimes I’m not so good at starting those books. And so this month’s reading list is going to, as usual, have several hold-overs from last month.

Here’s what I hope to read in the month of September:

The Uplift War by David Brin. This is the third month that has included this novel on my reading list. I’m really having trouble getting through it. I’m hopeful that I’ll have some good reasons why that it so to discuss when I finally finish it…hopefully in September.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel, a book I read for the first time during A Year (Plus) of Books I Should Have Read By Now

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Here are some interesting thoughts by Adso, the narrator of The Name of The Rose, about the great labyrinthine library at the center of the novel:


Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.



A Year of Books I've Read Before

Wednesday Word

Here’s a word that has come up enough times in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco that I decided to get a precise definition:

 

narthex (när’ theks) n. 1. in early Christian churches, a porch or portico at the west end for penitents and others not admitted to the church itself.  2. any church vestibule leading to the nave

 

Apparently the shape of these entrances resembled the hollow stem of fennel, because the word comes from the Greek word narthēx, which is a giant fennel.

 

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

 

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

 

Daughter of Fortune is the story of Eliza Sommers, a Chilean orphan girl of the nineteenth century who was taken in by an English family living in Chile. Her passions take her far beyond that home, however, and weave her in and among the lives of other extraordinary characters, over land and sea, through desire and pain, fueled by infatuation, stubbornness and an iron constitution. She eventually ends up in California during the gold rush, and, as in the words of her companion Tao Chi’en, “It seems that like everyone else in California we found something different from what we were looking for.”

 

Eliza’s character is not the only one we come to know in so much detail. There are many who affect her and are affected by her in turn who have strong personalities and interesting histories of their own. The back stories of these characters are rich in detail and bring to life practically the whole world as it was then. Europe, England, China, and North and South America formed these people, and, each in its own way, drove them to California. It hardly feels like it could have been possible for so much well-researched setting to fit into 400 pages.

I remembered some of the story laid out in this novel even though it’s been many years (more than 10) since I read it before. There are so many fascinating details and this is such a well-told story, however, that I think if I’d remembered every bit of it, I’d still love to read it again and again. Eliza and the other characters lead wholly interesting lives and, though those lives occasionally take grand turns resulting from extraordinary bad luck, misguided decisions and foolish pride, there is a logic to the progression of the stories that makes them believable to a captive reader.

This is just one of several novels by Isabel Allende that I’ve really enjoyed. (I also like Island Beneath the Sea, Ines of My Soul, and Zorro.) Like the others, it is a grand adventure story and depends on a heroine (or hero) who can pass on her details to those of us hoping to virtually escape our sofas and armchairs by reading about them. Allende’s novels are big, self-aware stories that recognize their own importance, peopled with admirable (if not always agreeable) characters who can live up to the creation of these stories. Like Eliza in Daughter of Fortune they seem to have experienced “the clear sensation of beginning a new story in which she was both protagonist and narrator.”

I love a big story. And Daughter of Fortune is a big, lovable story.

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

August Reading

Well, it's deep into August already, but the good news is that I'm somewhat deep into my August reading list. (Okay, so I'm deep into The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco anyway.)

I've selected three novels for this month's reading and I'm also hoping to finish The Uplift War, which is requiring more effort than Startide Rising did.

Here is my re-reading list for the month of August:

   The Uplift War by David Brin, held over from July
   The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, which I'm enjoying even more than the first time I read it
   Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
   Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, in hopes of re-reading it before the film is released




A Year of Books I've Read Before

The Quest for Arthur's Britain edited by Geoffrey Ashe

The Quest for Arthur’s Britain gives us not only an overview of the development of Arthurian legend but a description of the search through history for documentary and archeological evidence of a real king Arthur. There are chapters telling us why we would bother even digging anything up to search for buried facts and there are chapters on those digs. Since I like reading history, folklore and about archeology, I really enjoyed this book.

I first attempted to read The Quest for Arthur’s Britain when I was still living in the town in which I grew up and frequenting the small but really rather nice library there.  I can’t remember whether I was in high school or in college, because I can’t quite remember when my fascination with Arthurian legend developed. I do remember that the physical volume on the library shelf was compelling to me. It was a bit beaten up with a re-taped binding and pages separating in packets. It seemed as though many, many interested readers had perused this book and I wanted to be one of them.

I was even more distractible then than I am now, so I didn’t actually read The Quest for Arthur’s Britain all the way through until several years later when I acquired my own, much newer copy (which is also a new edition.) I appreciated it more this time around for the simple reason that I appreciate the minute victories in archeology more now than I once did. The descriptions of the investigations conducted to find some trace of King Arthur mostly involve some small detail suggesting that someone lived in an area associated with Arthur at the around the same time that Arthur supposedly did.

 

So, this book doesn’t have the sweeping scope or the treasure-hunting adventure of C.W. Ceram’s Gods, Graves, and Scholars. What it does have, however, is a whole-hearted attempt to justify “the chief myth of the island of Britain.” Everybody (everybody!) has heard of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. While the charismatic military leader of Dark Age Britain who appears to have some roots in fact is a far cry from the Arthur of popular legend and literature, the evolution of the gigantic folk hero and the characters and stories that surround him is fascinating.

 

Coming soon: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Translated into English by Merloyd Lawrence

There’s a simple modern term that aptly describes Emma Bovary, the title character of this novel: drama queen. Whether it’s her fanatically religious sentiment in the convent or passionate (if disappointed) expectations in her marriage to Charles, Emma doesn’t hold back.

I read Madame Bovary many (many) years ago for a World Novels class in college. One of my classmates declared it “the most boringest book” he’d ever read. Even back then I didn’t see it that way. Sure, there’s not much action and adventure in this novel, but I was caught up in the language, the very luxurious style in which this simple story was told. Those wonderful words were what I was looking forward to in this re-read, and I was not disappointed.

Emma’s rich and dramatic inner life is up to Flaubert’s skill with language, but her husband, Charles, strongly contrasts with his relative dullness. Of course he worships his young, beautiful wife and provides well for her, “But wasn’t it the role of a man to know everything, to excel in a variety of skills, to initiate a woman into the heights of passion, the refinements of life, into all the mysteries? Not this one. He taught her nothing, knew nothing, desired nothing.”

And the languid Charles is not the only ironic juxtaposition in this story. Emma’s fantasy expectations and boldly dramatic actions are constantly contrasting with the simply dull or even harsh realities of the actual world. When she attends the equivalent of a county fair with her soon-to-be new lover, she devotes herself to her sweet desires, caught up in her madness for passion while the rest of the town loudly carries on with their more down-to-earth business. “Manure!” shouts the master of ceremonies as he doles out awards for practical accomplishments, while Emma coyly flirts with a man more exciting than her unsatisfactory husband. It’s hard to not find her a bit silly.

The young Madame Bovary is doomed to debilitating disappointment and most of the novel is an account of her dramatic throes of personal passion and her search for even more passion. I couldn’t help imagining her throwing herself around, hot and bothered, barely controlling herself in her need for a more satisfactory reality. I won’t spoil the story by telling you whether she finds any relief in for her aching desires. I will say that I mostly enjoy the ironies, the flow of Flaubert’s beautiful language (although I read it in English…if only I could read French!!), and roll my eyes and shake my head at Emma Bovary’s misguided fantasies. As I read, I feel like Flaubert is rolling his eyes and shaking his head, too.

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is the story of two nineteenth century English magicians. Strange and Norrell are not illusionists or stage performers. They actually practice magic, casting spells, bending nature to their will, and consorting with the occasional faery.

This is a wonderful novel, and I loved it the first time I read it. It was one of those books that I knew I wanted to read again before I even came near the last page. The writing is engaging and brisk. The characters are all interesting even in their flaws. And the setting is marvelous. The setting is marvelous because it’s simply nineteenth century England and a bit of Europe… with plenty of magic. The structure of what seems to be the real historical world is so complete that it’s easy for the enthusiastic reader (ie, me) to suspend her disbelief in this alternate version of events.

The revival of English magic at the hands of Strange and Norrell (first Norrell, who is the elder, and then Strange), is embraced by the nation. Norrell is favored in Parliament and Strange aids Wellington oversees. They get themselves into all sorts of interesting jams through their own arrogance, curiosity, and general extraordinariness. Other characters with whom they interact at various levels are also wound up in strange magic and spend the novel in their own connected trials and tribulations. Really, however, for all these interconnected adventures, the story is largely about the rise and fall of Norrell and Strange themselves and their relationship with each other.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is really a delightful work of fantasy fiction. It is structured as a long string of episodes, but each aids in the building of the characters and is supported by the rich history of English magic (often in the form of footnotes, some of which tell entire strange tales.) All of Clarke’s creative additions to the historical setting seem natural and not as if they have been forced in with a sledge hammer. And those creative additions are wonderfully fantastic, mysterious, spooky, and above all, fun to read.

This novel is as great as I remembered it. The parts that I hadn’t remembered very well (like about the last quarter of the book!) were just as wonderful and before I finished reading this rather long novel the second time, I just knew that someday I wanted to read it again!

So many books, so little time…and so many distractions!!

 

 

Coming soon: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

From Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke:

    "Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange.
     Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."




A Year of Books I've Read Before

July Reading Adventures

I wish I could be escaping reality by reading for hours at a time at the beach, but such was not meant to be. At least not this year. Here are the books I hope to re-read for exciting repeat adventures in July:

 

The Quest for Arthur’s Britain edited by Geoffrey Ashe, where archeological evidence meats the legend of king Arthur

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, the first novel I read by Allende, which made me a big fan

The Uplift War by David Brin, the sequel to Startide Rising

 

Hope you’re having great summer reading adventures of your own!

 

 

Coming soon: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke  



A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Here are a few lines from my first major Distraction of the year: Cooked by Michael Pollan. These are great thoughts on why anyone would ever bother to cook for herself:

To brew beer, to make cheese, to bake a loaf of bread, to braise a pork shoulder, is to be forcibly reminded that all these things are not just products, in fact are not even really “things.” Most of what presents itself to us in the marketplace as a product is in truth a web of relationships, between people, yes, but also between ourselves and all the other species on which we depend.

A Year of Books I've Read Before

Distraction: Cooked by Michael Pollan

A Natural History of Transformation

I’m actually a little surprised that I made it halfway through this year before completely succumbing to a Distraction: a book I haven’t read before but I nonetheless must read. Cooked, the newest book by one of my favorite authors, also happens to be about one of my favorite subjects: food and cooking. Once I had access to this book, I didn’t stand a chance of sticking solely with all those Books I’ve Read Before.

Cooked is Michael Pollan’s chronicle of learning to cook from scratch in terms of four elements: fire, water, air, earth. In the realm of fire, he explores whole hog pit barbecue. For water, he learns to braise. Air is the element leavening the sourdough bread he learned to make and earth is the natural home of the microbes he borrowed to ferment vegetables, milk and grains. This, to me, was a surprising way to organize a book on cooking and it proved to be very interesting.

Of course, Pollan isn’t just going to give us a recipe diary. The book is filled with accounts of his time with experts on each subject (I particularly like the cheese-making, microbiologist nun) and more of his characteristic quality journalism along with tactful but frank opinions. Plenty of facts and techniques, successful and less successful ventures are all chronicled in detail.

Through this giant set of cooking lessons, Pollan doesn’t just emphasize the importance of good recipes, quality ingredients, and healthy eating.  The real answers to questions about why anyone should want to cook when just about anything one needs is commercially (and usually affordably) available are complex and have as much or more to do with connections between people. And using the four traditional elements to transform products of the environment into nourishment for human communities has been the key to the idea of “cooking” for all of history.

 

You might also like: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

 

Startide Rising by David Brin

Startide Rising is the first book in David Brin’s brilliant Uplift science fiction series. It begins with the crash landing of Streaker, a dolphin-piloted, human-supervised ship, the crew of which has recently stumbled upon a discovery of galactic importance. They’re in a tight spot as some of the more fanatic races of the galaxy are after them, and the hostility of their new environment isn’t helping any.

I’m really intrigued by the “Uplift” concept in Brin’s future universe. Species with potential are genetically modified over centuries by a patron race to achieve sentience. Humans seem to be an amazing exception, “wolflings” who pulled themselves into sentience by their own bootstraps. Of course most of the Galactics, mired in millions if not billions of years of tradition as they are, aren’t particularly happy with Earth’s humanity.

By the beginning of Startide Rising, humans have done a bit of uplifting of their own, increasing the intelligence of chimpanzees and dolphins and making a few modifications to themselves as well. Now, Streaker is in a whole world (or perhaps a whole galaxy) of trouble. The reader gets pulled into the uplifted dolphin mind and into this grand science fiction adventure story. There are plenty of human characters as well and one particularly brilliant and arrogant chimpanzee. Not only are these characters trapped in a live-or-die adventure with large science fiction problems and solutions, but they also must deal with the more common personality dynamics of a marooned crew on a ship and the friction caused by big, dangerous secrets, conflicting agendas, and betrayal.

This is a great story with such a well-established science fiction setting in which I can settle quite comfortably. The suspension of disbelief is not the least bit difficult and I’ve continued to find myself a most willing believer in the Uplift universe. And humanity’s unique position as a “wolfling” race allows us to remain significant in the midst of a vast, complex, and ancient civilization in a mind-blowingly vast universe.

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

 

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a memoir of eating locally for one year, largely from the author’s own property. Lots of folks have taken on personal projects like that, but few of them are an acclaimed novelist and can therefore provide the promise of a well-written, engaging story just by having her name on the cover.

The first time I read this I was excited, but a little sad. I was living in an apartment in a large complex and could only “garden” in pots on my little patio. Much of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is about working Kingsolver’s small farm and, while I was inspired to look for more locally-raised foods in my own neighborhood as well as join a community supported agriculture program and plant a few more things on that patio, I couldn’t do what the author and her family had done. I turned the last pages of the book feeling inspired, but also wondering if the author was looking down on me for not being able to afford enough land to raise chickens, turkeys and winter squash.

I still like this book, but now the ideas don’t seem so new to me. I still can’t raise chickens and turkeys, but I do have a backyard now, a significant portion of which I’ve dug up to create a vegetable garden. The biggest lessons in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are not really about raising your own poultry (or owning enough property to do so), even if some of the most interesting and amusing stories are. No, the more important points are about learning what is growing around you, understanding the seasonality of foods, and understanding where the food you choose to buy actually comes from.

Inspiration to grow your own food and eat what has been grown or produced nearby and Barbara Kingsolver’s great story-telling merge wonderfully to make this a very good book, interesting as well as entertaining.

You might also like: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Coming next: Startide Rising by David Brin

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings

I’m always a little sad when I finish The Lord of the Rings. Mostly because a great story, one that immersed me in an otherworldly place and time, is over. I’ve always had a difficult time, however, really embracing the chapter entitled “The Scouring of the Shire,” which comes near the end of The Return of the King and in other readings my little bit of sadness comes from the disappointment I feel in that chapter.

 

This time, of course, I knew what was coming and braced for it. Since there were so many things I enjoyed even more than I ever had before in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, (and in The Hobbit) I even thought I might come around to like “The Scouring if the Shire.” Sorry. Not yet.

The rest of the novel is a wonderful as the rest of the trilogy. I had forgotten at least as many details from this book as the others and the refreshing of my memory was exciting and enjoyable. I’m a little more mature (okay, quite a bit more) than the last time I read it, so the deeply felt losses and sacrifices were more compelling. A happy ending to such a brutal, hopeless story must be hard won and I no longer shy away from themes at that level, especially in such a great story.

I just can’t quite get a grip on how the Shire could have gone to the dogs so quickly and easily while our hobbit heroes were away. I appreciate that the work that must be done to clean up the corruption, social and physical, in the Shire demonstrates the changes and growth Merry, Pippin and Sam experienced while off adventuring, but it’s hard for me to believe that “Sharkey” could have reached such a Snidely Whiplash-like level of ridiculous pettiness. Oh well. There are a lot of pages in this trilogy and in The Return of the King itself that are more than enjoyable enough to make up for my confusion over one chapter.

And so the end of an age of Middle Earth and of a beautiful fantasy series has come. It’s a bittersweet ending of mixed triumph and loss. I read the last page, as always, with a sigh.

Of course, I could always read it all again.

 

 

Coming soon: some thoughts on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

May Reading List

Since I actually finished all the books on my April reading list, there are no hold-overs in my Distractible Reading for the month of May. (This is really quite a victory for me.) This leaves room for a long fantasy novel, the beginning of a science fiction series, and a classic.

Here are the three books I plan to re-read in May:


Startide Rising from the Uplift series by David Brin

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, a book I looked forward to re-reading before I even finished it the first time.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated into English (I can't read French).



Coming soon: some thoughts on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.


A Year of Books I've Read Before

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

If it hadn’t been such a blow to my reading ego to admit defeat by Jane Austen, I might have put Mansfield Park down and never picked it up again. I remembered this novel being disappointing-the story and characters, not necessarily the setting, construction, or writing – but this time it was almost unbearable.

 

You see, I like Jane Austen’s novels. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma are some of my favorite books. I’ve been looking forward to re-reading them in this Year of Books I’ve Read Before, but I decided to give Mansfield Park a go first, largely because I wanted to figure out why my memories of it are less favorable. Now I know.

Fanny Price is a tough heroine for me to follow. She’s meek and prudish and seems to be almost totally against amusement and those who partake in it. I guess we’re supposed to see the shallowness of the privileged elite and their constant strive for entertainment (that is, most of the rest of the young characters in the novel and their pursuits) as foolish and impractical while Fanny’s goodness is to be admired and ultimately rewarded. Okay, fine. I just wish she had some of Elizabeth Bennet’s wit and pluck, or Elinor Dashwood’s pragmatism. Or even had learned a valuable lesson in the course of the story and grew and changed for the better, like Emma Woodhouse. Nope. Fanny is the same puritanical stick in the mud from beginning to end. The only change she seems to make is from a frail and not particularly attractive child to a pretty woman.

Mansfield Park is long, and I think Austen could have made her points without quite so many pages. The extended period in which the young people at Mansfield plan and rehearse the play Lover’s Vows took me almost as long to read as it could have taken place in real time. In retrospect, I should have skipped it, already knowing what would happen at the end of it all. The more scandalous and exciting parts of the story seem to breeze by in comparison, and I found those more enjoyable.

Of course this novel is written with the unique use of language characteristic of Austen, which I really do like to read. I mostly read her books for that language, sometimes marveling at its brilliance. It’s hard to really get enthralled by a book’s words alone, however, and I wish I’d been less bored and irritated by so many parts of this story, or that I could have felt compelled to cheer on Fanny Price as I have Austen’s other heroines.

 

Coming soon: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Wednesday Words

Let me put this right out there: I think it’s cheating to make up words in order to have the rhyme and meter of poetry work. Take, for instance, the poem “Jabberwocky” in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. There are enough nonsense syllables in this poem to force one to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast!

Sure, Humpty Dumpty does do some translating for Alice (“ ‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon – the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”), but still: Lewis Carroll made these words up to make the poem into poetry. Cheating.

Oh, but what poetry this is. This cheat gets a free pass because “Jabberwocky” is pure magic! It’s melodic and flowing, fun to read and recite, and still tells an adventure story. And while the words are made up, they adequately evoke picture, sound and emotion, even without explanation. In fact, I liked reading this without translation and explanation. It’s more fun to imagine what it all means for myself.

And by the way, isn’t snicker-snack just the best onomatopoeia ever?!

 

There’s a list of these made-up words at this Wikipedia page for the poem “Jabberwocky.”

 

Coming soon: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

…and Through the Looking Glass (which I do not think I’ve read before.)

 

The first and last time I read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland I was ten years old. I struggled to finish it then, probably because I really didn’t “get it.” (And I was at least as distractible then as I am now.) I had hoped for fantastical whimsy (I was already well in love with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but only seemed to be getting confused. I have vague memories of Alice changing sizes every few minutes, lots of impatient, grumpy and screaming characters, and odd creatures like the Cheshire Cat, Mock Turtle, and the hookah-smoking caterpillar, whose very existences seemed to be some kind of joke in on which I was not. In short, I was more confused than Alice.

This time around, I hoped to find the charm and whimsy I had missed many (many) years ago. Sadly, I did not. The story mostly seemed like a particularly odd dream (which it is), shifting pictures and little progress with no real plot or moral. It reminded me of some of the goofy stories and nonsense sentences I would make up on the fly for my younger cousins and my nieces when they were in a particularly giggly mood.

Happily, I find foolishness and silly nonsense perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment. (I’m an unapologetic fan of The Three Stooges.) While I do like to have a little more warmth, cheer and free-spiritedness with my stark raving madness, I enjoy he fun and engaging language (“Curiouser and curiouser!”) and love some of the scenes, characters, and quotable lines (“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”) Those little adventures, weird folks, and odd quotes really can be enjoyed individually on their own merits, since there is little connecting them together throughout the story. And that’s mostly the value I found in this re-reading.

Alice’s adventures do keep moving along, however, tea party to croquet match, chess-board pawn to chess-board queen. I kept the pages turning if for no other reason than to see what silly nonsense was going to happen next. I was even more aware that I was often missing out on some joke that would probably be hilarious to me if I was a contemporary of the author, and I found some of the disconnectedness and grumpiness frustrating, but the classic scenes and characters, the ones everybody seems to know, are really so much fun that I enjoyed visiting them in their homes down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass.

What would life be like if we didn’t know the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, or the grinning Cheshire Cat? Don’t we all have days when we’re called upon to believe impossible things, before breakfast and beyond? Or felt like “here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”? And isn’t being able to quote at least a few lines form “Jabberwocky” one of the most fun things in the world? Callooh! Callay!

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I suppose it’s pretty corny to say so, but I have to admit that The Omnivore’s Dilemma actually did change my life. Not in a lightening flash all-or-nothing way, but I learned to understand my food better and over the years I’ve made many gradual changes in the way I shop for groceries, cook, and eat.

 

Of course, many people are familiar with this book because of its description and questioning the wisdom of the modern industrial food system, especially the commodity corn and concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO aka feedlot) components. These are addressed in eye-opening detail, but they are only a part of the overall story. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is about four meals that Pollan consumed and analyzed: an “industrial” meal, fast food eaten in a car as so many Americans regularly do; an organic, but still somewhat more mainstream meal; a “pastoral” meal raised in an almost painstakingly sustainable manner; and a “foraged” meal that Pollan hunted and harvested himself.

I had so much to learn the first time I read this book, but I figured it would be a just review and re-affirmation this time around. It turns out that there were plenty of interesting details I had forgotten, and though this was a re-read, I found myself being informed all over again. I really appreciated and enjoyed, once again, Pollan’s engaging journalistic style. I was also struck by the honesty with which he offers us his more personal connections in the story. Whether he’s sharing his disgust with composting chicken blood and entrails, ethical questions about eating meat, adrenaline rush over shooting a wild pig, or, again, disgust over dressing that dead pig, Pollan lets us know what he really thinks with a frankness that helps make everything else in the book particularly trustworthy.

 

I had the chance to hear Michael Pollan speak in 2009, and I must say that his lecture was as solid, honest, and interesting as his books (I also really like In Defense of Food and The Botany of Desire). (I also got to meet him briefly after the talk, and he was very nice.) Each time I get the chance to delve into some of his work again, I get a renewed desire and energy to participate in and promote a more sustainable food system. Is it even possible to feed 7 billion people in a way that does not destroy the earth on which we all live? Maybe not. I don’t know. But I feel a lot better, as a biologically omnivorous creature, knowing more about where my food comes from and how it was raised.

And I still really love this book!

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

I loved this passage from The Two Towers, a conversation between Sam and Frodo regarding the idea of great stories and their place in the one we are reading. I find it universally applicable to the idea of all great stories and their characters.

  

 “I don’t like anything here at all,” said Frodo, “step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”

            “Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them.  I used to think that they were the things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?”
            “I wonder,” said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending, or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to know.”



A Year of Books I've Read Before

April: Catching Up

Well, my current work schedule may be good for the pocket-book, but it’s not so good for reading books. Oh well! So April will have to be a catch-up month during which I finish the books I didn’t get through in March (and in the case of Mansfield Park, February). I also put two more books on my reading list, proving that, when it comes to my reading plans, I’m ever the optimist.

 

Here’s what I hope to read in April:

Held over from March:

 

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, which I actually started in February and am having a really tough time getting through

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, with which I’m nearly finished and still loving

Alice’ Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, which is even sillier than I remember

 

And starting this month:

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before