New Century Reading

Private Demons

After reading Shirley Jackson's novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle last fall, I wanted to learn more about Jackson herself. Hence, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer.

As far as I can tell, this is the only book covering Jackson's life, originally published in 1988. While interesting, and at times enlightening (not surprisingly, Jackson had a strong interest in magic and the occult; unknown to me was the difficult relationship she had with her mother, and the nearly stereotypical marriage she had to Stanley Hyman, who adored her, but just slightly more than most females within his gaze). Difficult childhood, dysfunctional marriage--this is nothing new in the literary world. 

(Although one has to rear back with astonishment when reading a particularly venomous letter Jackson's mother wrote to her late in Jackson's life, after seeing her daughter's photo in Time magazine: "Why oh why do you allow the magazines to print such awful pictures of you?...I would sue them for libel. Your children love you for your achievements but they also want you to be worth looking at too. If you don't care what you look like or care about your appearance why don't you do something about it for your children's sake and your husband's. I do not know if the book review is good or not--and I have been so sad all morning about what you have allowed yourself to look like.")

Still, there are things in the book that bothered me. I would have loved more in-depth analyses of Jackson's writing; some of the bigger pieces are covered, like The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House. Still, given Jackson's history, more attention would have been merited. 

Even more troubling is that Oppenheimer had access to Jackson's children and several of her childhood and adult friends for interviews. That's great, but she often reports their quotes as established facts. Certainly someone looking back many years at a now-dead friend who has become famous may have some very hazy memories, or interpretations of those memories, and they should be taken with a large grain of salt, but Oppenheimer seems to trust them completely. 

While acknowledging the Jackson's and Hyman's household was chaotic and far from the norm of the 1950s, Oppenheimer surprisingly doesn't make much of an effort to show how Jackson's parenting affected the four offspring. They were all adults when interviewed; surely that would have been an interesting topic for this bio.

I guess what it comes down to is: if you're curious about Jackson's life, this isn't a bad read. I just don't think it's up to a rigorous set of biographic standards.

 

Freedom

I feel like I must be one of the last people on earth to read this book. When it first came out, I got a copy from the library, but instead of individual words, all I could see in the text was: HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE. So I sent it back to the library unread, figuring I'd wait for the fuss to die down and try again later. I liked his earlier book, The Corrections, so it seemed like it was worth a later effort.

In a nice bit of timing, Books and Bars chose it for the December book. Indeed, enough time had passed that I could see actual words while reading. Do I need to synopsize? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most anyone reading this blog has heard of or actually read (or tried to read) Freedom. 

So let's cut to the chase: I'm in the camp of those who liked the book. I really liked it. I might even have said that I loved it, if it wasn't for the ending, which to me didn't fit the story or the characters. But until that point, Franzen had me firmly in his camp.

Books and Bars has multiple locations in the Twin Cities now. The first discussion was held in Chanhassen, where I attend. A congenial but talkative crowd of about 25 people, most in their 40s and older, had varying opinions about the book (one woman, when asked if she felt more sympathetic to Patty or Walter, said: "I wanted to shoot them both"). Some loved it, some didn't, some thought the book was too long and too detailed, others thought it was just right. Interestingly, when the same book was discussed at the Minneapolis location a week later, a crowd heavy on 20-somethings apparently panned it quite soundly. They didn't like these characters, didn't believe in them, didn't want to read about them. 

So--is Freedom a generationally polarizing book? In Chanhassen, even the people who didn't like the book or Patty and Walter felt that Franzen had done a very good job showing us *why* Patty and Walter became the people they were, and that was believable. Maybe, even, he created some empathy for them, even if the readers didn't like them (except for the woman who wanted to shoot them). The moderator asked if we knew people like Patty and/or Walter in real life, and nearly every hand went up.

Is it because those of us who are in the 40+ age categories have lived longer and gotten past idealizing people? I don't mean that in a condescending way; I was pretty optimistic about people in my 20s. I don't think I'm any smarter, just, you know, that I'm older and have better insurance. (Points if you got that reference.)

Can I just add that one of the younger attendees in Minneapolis reportedly said that addiction is annoying?

For me, I really liked most of this book because I think Franzen did an excellent job of showing where both Patty and Walter came from and why they are who they are. These are people that, frankly, I wouldn't want to hang around with in real life, but seeing their histories raises some forgiveness in me for the sometimes shitty things they do and say. And he's excellent at showing the way people repeat their own histories, even if they've condemned them. Which is just one of the examples of how the concept of "freedom" is questioned. Or, as Patty and Walter's son says at one point: "'Isn't that what freedom is for? The right to think whatever you want? I mean, I admit, it's a pain in the ass sometimes.'"

Franzen's got a great way of cutting to the bone:

"He strongly disliked the person he'd just demonstrated afresh that he unfortunately was. And this, of course, was the simplest definition of depression that he knew: strongly disliking yourself."

"He'd always understood his strict sobriety in terms of opposition to them--first, of wanting to be as unlike his dad and brother as possible, and then later of wanting to be as unfailingly kind to Patty as she, drunk, could be unkind to him. It was one of the ways that he and Patty had learned to get along: he always sober, she sometimes drunk, neither of them ever suggesting that the other change."

What about you? Did you read Freedom? What did you think?

That End-of-the-Year Post

It's time. What did I read in 2011?

Stats:

Books read: 68
Fiction: 49
Nonfiction: 18
Poetry: 1
Male authors: 31
Female authors: 35
Re-reads: 7

Favorite reads, in no particular order (links are to my reviews):

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi
In the Woods by Tana French
Nox by Anne Carson
The Empty Family by Colm Toibin
Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
Birds in Our Backyard by Adele Portman
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Favorite re-reads:

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Books I wished I hadn't bothered to finish and could get those hours of my life back:

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

So...how was your 2011 reading life? 

Wow.

I did it.

I started on New Year's Day, and following Jillian's proposal of a chapter a day (it has 365 chapters), I finished this morning. 

So I can say this:

SUCK IT TOLSTOY, I READ YOUR DAMN BOOK.

Beyond that:

I'm so glad I read it. It's much more accessible than I expected it to be. Although some of the war parts were a slog for me, overall I was caught up in the story and deeply interested in the characters. Tolstoy has some very tart words for warmongers and historians (he really dislikes the latter), and it was fun to occasionally imagine putting him up against, say, Dubya in a discussion about the Iraq war. 

I'm also very glad that the epilogue was an epilogue and not a prologue, or I might never have gotten to the actual story. Tolstoy, dude, I get it--you think historians are a bunch of flimflam artists. Way to pound that idea deeply into the ground in that there epilogue.

I'm not sure why he felt the need to go into such pedantic detail in the end, when he covered the same ground so beautifully towards the end of the novel itself:

"A bee sitting on a flower stung a child. And teh child is afraid of bees and says that a bee's purpose consists in stinging people. A poet admires a bee sucking from the cup of a flower and says that a bee's purpose consists in sucking up the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, noting how a bee gathers flower pollen and brings it to the hive, says that a bee's purpose consists in gathering honey. Another beekeeper, who has studied the life of a hive more closely, says that a bee collects pollen in order to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that its purpose consists in reproducing its kind. A botanist notes that, as a bee lands with pollen on the pistil of a dioecious flower, it fertilizes it, and in that the botanist sees the bee's purpose. Another, observing the migration of plants, sees that the bee contributes to that migration, and this new observer may say it is in this that the bee's purpose consists. But the final purpose of the bee is exhausted neither by the one, nor the other, nor the third purpose that human reason is able to discover. The higher human reason rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious for it is the inaccessibility of the final purpose.

"All that is accessible to man is the observation of the correspondence between the life of a bee and other phenomena of life. It is the same for the purposes of historical figures and peoples."

So, yes, I'm glad I read it; I ended up overall loving it, in spite of a few slow spots; I could definitely see a re-read in a few years; and I'd definitely recommend it to others.

Now what on earth should I tackle in 2012?

Don't forget

The Our Mutual Friend read-along is coming soon, very soon! We're going to tackle the Dickens classic six chapters at a time. I'll post here each week; feel free to post on your own blog, if you have one, or you can also choose to simply comment here and join in the discussion. Chapters 1-6 will be discussed on Friday, January 13 (yikes!). Why six chapters a week? Because Dickens originally published many of his novels (including this one) in serial form at three chapters a week. Because OMF is quite long, we're going to speed it up a tiny bit. Join us!

Christmas goodies

Yes! I got me some reading goodies this weekend!

This one really tickles me. My 16-year-old son picked it out himself. As soon as I finish the library book I'm reading that has a waiting list and no renewals allowed, I'll read this. And of course I will love it.

Both teen sons were in wonderment that their mother not only received, but actually wanted a book about zombies for Christmas.

I've heard so many good things about this novel. And I love the cover. 

From my bro and SIL, who know how much I love to cook and to hang out on Twitter.

As someone who likes to travel in the off-season, I'm anxious to read McAlpine's take on it.

But that's not all. Shortly before Christmas, I had tea with a friend who managed to find a way to increase my general Jane Eyre geekiness.

Jane Eyre pencils!!!

A cheeky little button. And....

Jane Eyre, illustrated by Paula Rego! I'd never seen or heard of this edition. It's not the entire book, but sections selected for specific illustrations. And oh, what glorious illustrations they are:

This accompanies a short section where Jane talks about reading Bewick's History of British Birds. This book is really a thing of beauty.

And one last book-related item:

Truer words were never spoken.

Yes, I was spoiled rotten. And you? 

The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt falls into a category of books I should call "Thank goodness for book bloggers convincing me to try a book I never would have tried that I ended up absolutely loving." In general, I'm not a fan of Westerns. But DeWitt has written such a fun, dark, character-driven tale that it completely sucked me in.

Eli and Charlie Sisters are brothers and paid assassins for a man known only as the Commodore. Eli is the narrator of the story. He tells about how they're sent off to find Hermann Kermit Warm (how great is that name??). They don't know why, and it's not their job to care, only to find and kill him. Charlie takes great pride in his assassin skills, but Eli is more reticent; they're paid well for their work, and are famous for it, and Eli doesn't really know how to do anything else. Still, at times he finds himself uncomfortable with their task.

As they set out to find the wily Hermann Kermit Warm (I really love that name), they have a number of adventures, some funny, some sad, some violent, until they finally catch up with the man himself. I won't say what happens then, but I will say it may not be what you'd expect (it certainly wasn't what I expected), but DeWitt has done such a masterful job of building up to that scene that it's completely believable. It's not just plot, either--the characters, especially Eli, evolve along the way.

I haven't read the book True Grit, but I loved the Coen brothers' movie, and this book reminded me of their vision. Eli is a wonderful narrator, with a highly stylized form of speech that's odd at first, but you quickly adapt to it, and it becomes him. He describes an encounter with a boy who's alone, and who must remain alone as Eli and Charlie can't bring him along on their assignment:

"He stood there weeping and watching us go, while behind him Lucky Paul [a horse] entered and collapsed the prospector's tent, and I thought, Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for."

Another time, he finds a bird in the road:

"A rooster stood before me in the road, looking for a fight; I tipped my hat to him and he scooted away over the puddles, all brawn and feathers and brainlessness."

For an assassin, Eli is pretty darned endearing. After meeting what he thinks is the woman of his dreams, he realizes he's overweight and tries to put himself on a diet, eating mostly vegetables. This is not something a man should do in a restaurant during the Gold Rush. He also learns for the first time about the benefits of dental hygiene, and in some very funny bits that carry throughout the book, he tries to improve his own teeth and that of others around him.

Sometimes I dislike historical novels because they end up packed with mind-deadening detail. I get it--the author did a lot of research, and that's good, but how much of it do I have to read too? DeWitt, however, gets it--he seems to know his stuff, but he doesn't have to show off. And when he does use details, such as the parts about dental hygiene, he's also gradually introducing details about the characters themselves, not just preening about his knowledge of 19th-century tooth-brushing practices. 

It's an odd book; I guess this is my month for odd books. When they're as good as this one? More, please.

Persephone Exchange

Last year I participated in the Persephone Secret Santa Exchange, and it was so much fun that I signed up again this year. And just like last year, it proved to be this lovely bit of civility--so charming to get these lovely books in the mail from a previously unknown source.

Blogless Chris from Egypt--Egypt!!!--sent me Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple. I've heard so many wonderful things about Whipple's work, and I can't wait to explore it for myself. And yes, the bookmark represents the beautiful end papers. 

But that wasn't all. Chris from Egypt happened to travel to Israel, where she found this to send too:

Isn't it beautiful? A hand-carved creche, meticulously polished. I love it!

Thank you, Chris from Egypt, and thank you, Verity and Claire, for organizing the Secret Santa Exchange again!

And of course, thank you to Persephone Books for being at the root of all this holiday jollity! 

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

I thought I'd seen the most unreliable narrator ever when I read Wish Her Safe at Home, but it turns out I was wrong. 

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky. Although I didn't blog about it--heck, I'm still trying to figure out if I understood it--I recently read Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita for book club. Bronsky's wild ride of a novel actually makes a good follow-up. It opens in the former USSR in 1978. Narrator Rosalinda Achmetowna is a supremely confident woman whose brisk disappointment in her daughter Sulfia is announced right off the bat: "But Sulfia wasn't very gifted. In fact, to be honest, I'd say she was rather stupid...This daughter I did have was deformed and bore no resemblance to her mother...She was already seventeen years old, too, so there was little chance she would get any smarter."

Mother of the year, Rosa is not. But when Sulfia becomes pregnant (and it's implied it's through supernatural means), Rosa takes charge and is hugely enamored with granddaughter Aminat. Convinced that Sulfia is a worthless mother, Rosa insists on being in control and will not allow Sulfia to succeed in any way, even when Sulfia does eventually find a man to marry her (a Jew! The horrors!). 

While Rosa looks out for Aminat and,tangentially, Sulfia, she always has an eye out for herself. As the USSR crumbles, Rosa leaps on an opportunity to pair Sulfia with a German tourist who, sleazily, is more interested in the preteen Aminat. No matter--he can, and will (whether he wants to or not), get the three females out of the USSR and into western Europe. And the adventures only continue from there.

Rosa is an amazing character, and I don't necessarily mean that in an admiring way. She's driven, egotistical, manipulative, and incapable of seeing how her words and actions affect those around her. I don't want to give spoilers, but the book gradually illustrates a stunning reversal in Rosa, one she isn't able to perceive herself, but through her side of the story, the reader sees it. The book is at turns hilarious and terrifying--I mean, who would deliberately involve a pedophile in your life? But Rosa has no problem with that, because he's a means to her desired end.

In a passage that ties together the title of the book (the German tourist is researching Tartar recipes), Rosa makes a Tartar dish called tutyrgan tavyk:

"I rinsed a chicken in cold water, took out the needle I'd brought, and sewed the body cavity shut. At the neck, I carefully separated the skin from the meat and blew into the gap. Anyplace air came whistling through, I stitched the hole closed. I beat eggs and cream with a little salt and pepper and poured that mixture between the skin and meat. Then I tied off the skin at neck of the chicken, wrapped the whole thing in a cloth, and placed it in boiling salted water."

It's an old recipe Rosa remembers, but the way she describes cooking it is simply Rosa: that chicken never has a chance under her over-assured hands. 

Right through to the end, Bronsky keeps the story humming along. I have no idea of the significance of the names in Russian, but you have to love that Rosa is, well, Rosa, but her daughter is named Sulfia--what an awful name, compared to Rosa. Rosa's self-centeredness is appalling, but it makes for an un-put-downable book. The narrative is quite an accomplishment, and now I want to check out Bronsky's earlier book, Broken Glass Park. 

This and that

Been a while! Fear not, it's not that I haven't been reading; I have, quite a lot, actually. Most of it has been covered over the past week on my other blog (click here for lots of great gift ideas). 

Now I'm just getting ready for that end-of-year what-did-I-read-that-I-liked reverie and thinking ahead to next year. What do I want to read? And hey--what challenges shall I sign up for, knowing that most of them will go unfinished? And yes, I'm sure someone out there is saying, Gosh, Amy, didn't you just sign up for the Wolf Hall read-along, and aren't you already way behind?

Yes, sadly, that is true; I was a bit optimistic about finishing all those other books on the other blog, reading book club books, and reading Wolf Hall. I still want to read Wolf Hall, and it may become part of the following challenge:

I did the Dare last year and actually stuck with it, so I'm more optimistic than usual this year. Besides, it dovetails nicely with another goal I've had this year that I want to carry into next year: reading longer books. I did fairly well this year; my overall books-read count is way down from 2010, and that's OK, because I'm making a little dent in the longer books I haven't gotten to (including, woo hoo, War and Peace, which I'm right on track to finish on 12/31!!). So I was happy when I discovered this challenge:

The Tea and Books Reading Challenge. I'm more of a coffee drinker than a tea drinker, but no matter. I've selected the Berry Tea Devotee level, which means I will read 4 books that are each 700 pages or longer in 2012. Why does that work so well? Because I've already said I'm going to do this:

The Our Mutual Friend read-along, hosted right on this blog, starting in January, and that's over 700 pages, and already in my TBR stacks. In addition, I have Hermione Lee's bio of Virginia Woolf that's gathered dust for a shockingly long time, as well as Juliet Barker's updated Bronte bio (which was published in the UK in 2010, but is coming out in hardcover in 2012--wonder if it's a bigger edition?), both well past 700 pages (and the latter may require a magnifying glass in addition to my bifocals). For the fourth choice, another book that's languished for a long time, and there's a read-along for that too: Dove Grey Reader's Middlemarch read-along. Technically, that one has already started, but it's going through most of 2012, so I'll wait until January to start.

The final thing I'm tentatively signing up for, and this is kind of a "drop in and out as you wish" challenge, is the Shakespeare-a-Month read-along over at Breadcrumb Reads.

I've wanted to reread Shakespeare for some time now, and hope to check in at least a few times over there. Specifically, I'd like to reread MacBeth and King Lear, and hopefully a new-to-me play, maybe Antony and Cleopatra or Pericles.

So, those are my pretty, shiny, baubly goals for 2012. I know I'll never achieve all of them. But no matter--if I do even a few of them, it will be a rich reading year.

What are your reading plans/hopes for 2012?