New Century Reading

Anna Karenina

I just finished reading this with an online group. It's been decades since I last read it, right after graduating college. Then I loved it for the despair-filled romance between Anna and Vronsky. As I started reading it again, I worried; would Older Me still like this book? My tastes have changed, along with the amount of life experience I have, since I was in my 20s.

Well, good news for me--there's a reason this is a beloved classic. I was as captivated this time as the first time. But--captivated for entirely different reasons. While Anna and Vronsky were my obsession on first reading, this time I wasn't quite as interested. Not that I was bored, but this time I looked at their romance through the view of the times in which they lived. There was no way this was going to end well, not with the way women in particular were treated. And Vronsky may have loved her, but there were warning signs a modern woman could see a mile off saying there were going to be problems.

FYI, if for some reason you don't know the ending of this book, might want to stop reading. I usually try to avoid spoilers, but given that this was published in the late 1800s, I feel less restricted about that.

Anyway. What I had forgotten over the years--probably because I was so focused on Anna and Vronsky--was the parallel story of Levin and Kitty. Their story became the most interesting one for me, not least of which because it was so fraught with peril on its way to becoming a good marriage. Tolstoy did a masterful job of detailing and comparing the two relationships, tied by the fact that Kitty initially hoped to marry Vronsky, which humiliated Levin. He never lets Levin off easy or ties everything up in a neat bow, but by the end, Kitty and Levin have, through hard work, made their way towards a good marriage. They've also had a child (after a terrifying labor) and Tolstoy gets parenting, he really does; Levin finds, when he meets his new son, that it's not love he feels as much as fear, because now there's so much to lose. I think a whole lot of parents can identify with that. Levin's political ideals, the way he strives to run his farm both for profit but also in newer, kinder ways of dealing with peasants (whether the peasants want that or not) make him interesting and flawed and often sympathetic.

Which is not to say Anna and Vronsky don't have their moments. She's stuck in a boring marriage, and here comes Prince Charming. She gives up everything to be with him, but the sacrifice is more onerous than she fully understood. Especially in her day and time--society shunned her except for a very few brave souls, while her lover was still accepted in polite company. Her husband refused to divorce her, which meant she could not marry, and what's more, the child she has with Vronsky is considered her husband's, not hers. It's untenable. And as she begins taking opium to help her sleep, you can't help but know this won't end well.

Tolstoy is at his most masterful in the final scenes of Anna's life, which are borderline delirious. She's frazzled, losing her sanity, unable to determine whether she should stay or go. The death scene, when she throws herself under a train--well, if you either haven't read it, or read it lately, read it. Incredibly powerful and devastating.

From what little I know about Tolstoy, he sounds like he was a somewhat misogynistic, pompous, overly idealistic old goat who advocated abstinence but impregnated his wife 13 times, several of those against her will. And yet, look at his writing! Not just the scenes described above, but scenes like one where Anna receives a visitor at Vronsky's country estate, where she and Vronsky are hiding out basically. At first the poor visitor is awed by the opulence of the home, but over the course of a day or two, she realizes that Anna is in a terrible stasis and that she would not trade her life, much poorer and less glitzier, for Anna's.

It raises again the question of how much do you ignore the writer and just pay attention to the writing? I guess you can tell which side I'm on.

As for this edition, I'm no expert in translations, but this read clearly and smoothly for me. As for the cover, phhhpt. Dreadful.

 

A Collapse of Horses

In A Collapse of Horses, Brain Evenson is writing from a place of nightmares. Not, for the most part, the kind of nightmares where giant ogres with pointed teeth the size of the stones at Stonehenge loom over you while you scream in terror. No, this is even worse: The kind of nightmare where on the surface, everything seems fine, but you know it's not, but you can't figure out why, the sky is blue, and yet the shade of blue is wrong, and you think someone is following you, but when you look, no one's there, and yet something shimmers in your peripheral vision, and you are terrified without being entirely certain why, and suddenly you can't move, and you know that's very, very bad.

Which is to say, I pretty much loved this collection of stories. If I hadn't lost control of my library queue, this would have been a perfect October book. However, it is a perfect fit for the R.I.P. (Readers Imbibing Peril) Challenge, which started Sept. 1, so hey! One down for the goal already!

I gotta say, author Evenson's photo at the back of the book makes him look like a very congenial chap, but lord almighty, does he have a perverse imagination. In one story, a couple expecting their first child buys a teddy bear that's equipped with a recording of their yet-to-be-born baby's heart beating. The baby is stillborn--but the bear comes to life. In another story, men working on an unnamed planet find themselves increasingly covered in some kind of dust that they can't keep away, and when bad things begin to happen, it's not entirely clear who or what is responsible. A man driving to Utah from California to attend the estate settlement of his estranged father finds unfathomable things happen once he gets past Reno.

If there's a fairly common thread throughout these stories, it's the terror of the unknown. In many cases, the author simply drops us into a situation with no backstory and few present details, which allows us as reader to flail as helplessly as many of the characters do. Some stories are hallucinatory, others are white-knuckle chillers.

So, if you're making a list of creepy tales for October, this would be a great addition. Note: Publisher Coffeehouse Press printed this original earlier this year, along with reissues of some of Evenson's earlier books. If you click here, you can see some rather brilliant book design--four of the books, including this one, fit together like a puzzle, and ultimate the covers feature a rather terrifying creature. Kudos, Coffeehouse.

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril

Given that I spend every October reading creepy, ghoulish books, it's a wonder I've never signed up for the RIP (Readers Imbibing Peril) Challenge. I actually have a bookshelf devoted to October contenders, and I have several items on my library queue too. While the RIP started Sept. 1, I won't start until later in the month, since I usually devote my whole October to it. There are several levels to choose from in this challenge (including watching movies or playing video games), but I will choose Peril the First: Read at least four books that are in the mystery, suspense, thriller, Gothic, horror, or dark fantasy categories. I know for sure I'll read Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, which I've read before and loved, because it's a book club selection. But hmmm....read all new books otherwise? A mix of new and old favorites? So many choices, so little time.....

TBR Triple Dog Dare

It's back!

The Triple Dog Dare TBR Reading Challenge! James is hosting again, he says for the last time (sniff), and in honor of the lovely Dakota, who you see in the photo above. I haven't always succeeded in the TBR-only reading from January through March, but I've always made some progress in getting a few things off the shelves, so I'm in. Because it's a loose kind of challenge, I'm going to say I'll allow exceptions for book club and the Tournament of Books. Who's with me?

Ulysses

Well. I did it. I read every single word in Ulysses. Every. Single. Word. There are many words in Ulysses. Some of them are long. Some of them are short. Some are made up. Some are weird hybrids.

Some of them, strung together in sentences and paragraphs, have meaning that swooshed right over my head, so far above that it didn't even ruffle my hair.

What is this book about? What's the meaning?

I dunno.

Would I read it again to try and glean more insight?

Oh, HELL, no.

And the last chapter thoroughly annoyed me. It has no punctuation. Now, that doesn't mean Joyce wrote a 40-page sentence, which, while likely tedious, would have been an accomplishment. No. He just wrote a chapter with lots of sentences and no punctuation.

But I'm glad I read it once. I wish the edition I read (the Gabler edition, pictured above) had not spent so much of its preface, introduction, and afterword discussing the difficulties in coming up with a correct edition, given how Joyce edited almost continuously. Yes, that's interesting, but for a book as difficult as this one, could we have more discussion of the book itself?

And there were things I liked. Sentences I more than admired--I loved them and wished I had written them. Things that were funny, like Joyce's funny asides about a bad cup of coffee: "Over his untasteable apology for a cup of coffee" and "Stephen…shoved aside his mug of coffee, or whatever you like to call it."

Beautiful passages:

"Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned."

"Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves."

"The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend."

I could go on. There are many such passages. And equally many fairly gross scenes--lots of bodily fluids in this book. And a surprisingly frank look at one woman's sexuality.

So. Done. Now excuse me, I have a Stephen King book waiting for me at the library.

Ulysses

Of all the books on my "geez I oughta read this someday", this one's been on the list the longest, and caused me the most trepidation. Well, it's now or never time. Girl Detective is doing a read-along starting 2/9. Join us, if you dare, by following along on her blog, or chat with us on Twitter using the hashtag #TCUlysses, the TC being Twin Cities, MN, but you don't have to live here to join in. (Although you may want to join us for the ending celebration at the Anchor Fish & Chips, if you can.)

Here's the schedule:

/9/15 Start Ulysses which has 18 parts of various lengths

2/16/15 discuss and tweet sections 1, 2= 32 pp
2/23/15 discuss and tweet sections 3, 4=29 pp
3/2/15 discuss and tweet sections 5, 6=40 pp
3/9/15 discuss and tweet section 7=29pp
3/16/15 discuss and tweet section 8=28pp
3/23/15 discuss and tweet section 9=30pp
3/30/15 section 10=31 pp
4/6/15 section 11=31pp
4/13/15 section 12=45pp
4/20/15 section 13=31pp
4/27/15 section 14=37pp

5/4-5/18/15 read, then discuss and tweet section 15 (150 pages in my ed.)

5/25/15 discuss and tweet section 16=44pp

6/1-6/8/15 read then discuss and tweet section 17 (65 pp in my edition)

6/15/15 discuss and tweet section 18=37pp

6/16/15 Bloomsday!

Group meetup and celebration to follow at the Anchor Fish & Chips in NE Minneapolis.

Moby Dick

Hey, Amy, what did you do on your summer vacation? Oh, I'm so glad you asked! I participated in the Summer of Moby Dick challenge! Our fearless leader, Beth, led a small but determined group through this daunting classic. We also chatted on Twitter using: #TCMoby (the "TC" stands for Twin Cities, where most of us are located, but no one had to live here to participate).

What's my take? Well, as an English major who has long felt guilty about not reading this, I'm relieved to finally cross it off my literary bucket list. I'm thankful to the blogging world, and Twitter, and IRL book clubs that are allowing me to slowly and steadily get through some of the shocking gaps in my literary education. There are books I've read over the past few years that, not only did I love, I do want to read again, like Middlemarch and War and Peace and Bleak House. There are books that I'm glad to have read, and maybe wouldn't read again, but would seek out other novels by the same author, like The Brothers Karamazov.

And then there's Moby Dick, which falls in the category of so happy I read it, will never read it again, and I'm on the fence about whether or not I would seek out other Melville books, like Typee or Omoo.

Here's the thing about Moby Dick. It had so much more humor than I expected, especially in the beginning. And it has long--looooooooong--parts of whale/whaling arcana. What I did not expect was, with a 500-page book titled Moby Dick, that we wouldn't actually *get* to the damned whale until the final 50 pages. That mightily tried my patience.

But this is where a good edition with a thoughtful introduction comes in handy. Here are some valuable insights:

"The epic...aspires towards achieving a 'totality of objects', as opposed to drama which aims for a 'totality of actions'. Melville's imagination...was 'profoundly undramatic', but there is an extraordinary feeling of totality--of immensity, range, inclusiveness--in Moby Dick."

Further analysis of the role of world events, of literature, of religions and myth, all made me appreciate the book more than I did while actually reading it.

What did I appreciate while reading it? Here are just a few samples of the writing that I loved:

"'Yes,' said I, 'we have just signed the articles.'
"'Anything down there about your souls?'
"'About what?'
"'Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any,' he said quickly. 'No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,--good luck to 'em, and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.'"

"Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shapes of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?"

"Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's?"

So--worth the read; not an easy task, but I'm glad I persevered.

 

How to Build a Girl: the end

And now we've reached the end of How to Build a Girl. First I want to thank Emily and HarperCollins for including me on this event. It's always fun to read a book with other like-minded readers and compare notes.

Caitlin Moran is an interesting writer. She's created such an interesting character in Johanna, someone with real heart and intelligence, but (mostly) with the naivete that causes problems in the teen years. She's been on many adventures in this book, and now Moran swoops in and wraps up lots of loose ends, not always believably or satisfyingly. The relationship Johanna has with John Kite is too good to be true. I don't for a second believe that Johanna's father wouldn't have hounded her about that demo tape. Is she really blind to the fact that Krissi is gay, or is she being sarcastic? The pace is crazy-fast. I would have liked fewer tied-up endings and more time with Johanna in her present.

Again with the overly insightful:

"So what do you do when you build yourself--only to realize you built yourself with the wrong things?

"You rip it up and start again. That is the work of your teenage years--to build up and tear down and build up again, over and over, endlessly, like speeded-up film of cities during boom times and wars. To be fearless, and endless, in your reinventions--to keep twisting on nineteen, going bust, and dealing in again, and again. Invent, invent, invent."

Pretty calm, sage words from a narrator who is supposedly 17 years old and just suffered a humiliating sexual adventure and responded by cutting herself. Nope, not buying the present tense here.

This is Moran's first book, and she's got some definite strengths. She can create interesting characters that I care about, flawed as they are. She can tell a great story. But she needs to really think about the story she wants to tell overall. Is it better to tell it from Johanna's 17-year-old viewpoint, or from Johanna's adult viewpoint looking back? Doing both just did not work for me. There are pros and cons to either, but that's part of being a writer--having to make the tough choices. When the past-tense sections showed up, it felt like an authorial intrusion, not a plot device.

That said, I never felt like giving up on this book, and would likely read the next novel Moran writes. The promise is definitely there.

How to Build a Girl read-along

And we're back to the How to Build a Girl read-along, offered by Emily and HarperCollins.

You know how when someone starts a sentence by saying, "Now, I'm not a [insert objectionable thing here], but..." they probably are at least somewhat that objectionable thing? This section made me find myself wanting to say, "Now I'm not a prude, but..." I enjoy a good sex scene as much as the next person, if they're well written, but I found myself twitching a bit during the scenes in this section.

Part of it may be due to my being the parent of teenagers. I'm not clueless enough to think teens don't have sex. But when a teen sets out to become a Lady Sex Adventurer, doesn't mention using protection, and has described herself as being rather overweight, I start worrying about 1. Diseases 2. Pregnancy 3. Abuse. Yes, the scene with the guy with the big dick was funny. Sort of. But more detailed than I needed, and frankly, gratuitous. As if she was trying to be a teen version of Samantha from Sex and the City. I couldn't find it as entertaining as Moran seemed to want it to be. All I could think about was the damage (beyond physical) Johanna was doing to herself. It's one thing to be sexually confident and OK with who you are, but I don't see that in Johanna. I see a girl desperately trying to fit in somewhere and using sex to do it.

And then, more of the changing of past/present tenses that seems to indicate flashback. I really have grown tired of this strategy. It feels sloppy, and it makes me feel, when she's in present tense, like she's lying to me. Well, she is--this is fiction, right? But I'm supposed to believe that the present tense moments are actualy happening, when they're interspersed with older/wise Johanna commenting from the future?

The tirade she goes on about cynicism near the end of this section does not feel like something Johanna the teenager would come up with. Then there's this paragraph:

"But it's okay--I've got plenty of time to be nice...later on. Plenty of time. When you're seventeen, the days are like years. You've got a billion lifetimes to live and die and live again before you're twenty. That's the one positive thing about being so young. You've got plenty of time left to make things right."

Who's saying that--present or future Johanna? I don't see this as something the teenaged Johanna would come up with. What teen ever thinks of themselves as young, and what teen realizes how skewed their view of time is?

I really, really wish Moran had picked one or the other--present or past tense--then worked within that for the whole book.

How to Build a Girl read-along

I've got to give Caitlin Moran props. I'm now so deeply invested in Johanna as a character that even as she continues to do things that are Bridget Jones-level cringeworthy, I'm still on her side. She's just a teenaged girl, teetering on the brink of becoming something, if she can hold herself together.

When we left Johanna (or, as she wants to be called, Dolly Wilde), she'd just talked her way into a dream job for a music magazine. Now they're sending her on a dream assignment to Ireland, to interview musician and hard-partier John Kite. She's never been out of Britain; she's never been on a plane. The flight is a form of intoxication to her:

"I feel like I've just flown 600 miles per hour head-on into the most beautiful metaphor of my life: If you fly high enough, you get above the clouds, it's never-ending summer."

Floating on that triumphant high, she meets John Kite, and it's a delirious experience. He calls her Duchess, talks to her like no one's ever talked to her before, treats her like she's the most important person in the world. She returns to Britain and writes her article about him. We're not given the text of the article, but when the music magazine suddenly stops sending her assignments, it's not hard to figure out that she likely went a tad bit overboard with hyperbolic praise. She may have devoted herself to learning about music, but she's still a 16-year-old girl who's never had this kind of attention from a male before.

The timing of the magazine backing off couldn't be worse: the event Johanna's been fearing finally happens, and the family is being investigated by the welfare organization that keeps them afloat.

Almost as bad, her brother Krissi, with whom she shares a room, lets on that he knows that she's not, um, scratching herself night after night. But that turns into a good thing: Krissi talks his parents into letting him move into the unused dining room, and Johanna suddenly has a writing space all her own.

The music magazine finally agrees to give her another chance, she meets John Kite again and realizes the awful truth that he treats a lot of people the way he treats her, and she understands that it's not puff pieces that will make her writing career, but witheringly angry putdowns instead.

And thus endeth this week's section.

Mostly I really liked it. I feel very maternal about Johanna at this point--she's dealing with a whole load of personal issues, enough that they would overwhelm anyone, and she's only 16. She could so easily go completely bad, or become an addict, or some other traumatic path. But she's also got some smarts and some goals, and I really hope she doesn't.

That said, Moran did another change of tense in this section that really annoyed me. We have Johanna in the present tense, thrilled with her first airplane experience, and the very next scene, which comes after the flight, is a past-tense flashback. This is sloppy and lazy and seems to have been done only to give Moran the ability to use Johanna's voice from a more knowledgeable future time: "This was, clearly, where business would be conducted--but this was also the theater of the human heart, where all things happened and all things would be revealed, given the fullness of time." That's not something a 16-year-old would say. I can't help but think that if Moran was an unknown writer, an editor somewhere would have slapped her wrist and said, "Choose one or the other, but you can't have both. It doesn't work."

But it's not a deal-breaker, at least not so far. My thanks to Emily and to HarperCollins for including me on this fun read-along.