New Century Reading

Boy howdy.

It's Tuesday, where are you?

I'm in 18th-century Jamaica, following the story of a young woman born to a teenage slave, who died and left the baby with the unmotherly Circe...

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (on the shortlist for the 2010 Tournament of Books)

Clover, Bee, and Reverie

Ah--at last. A poetry challenge. I'm especially looking forward to this one--I do read poetry, just about every day, but not in a particularly organized manner. Mostly it's a case of "oh look I got my daily poem from Writer's Almanac or in the New Yorker". I own poetry books, but have left them languishing for far too long. So! I'm in, in, in for the Clover, Bee, and Reverie challenge.

There are four levels of participation:

Couplet: Read 2 books of poetry
Limerick: Read 5 books of poetry, and finish at least one badge
Octave: Read 8 books of poetry, and finish at least two badges
Sonnet: Read 14 books of poetry, and finish two badges, and one expert badge

What is a badge? A badge just means you need to read two books of poetry that are connected in some way: same time period, some subject matter, same form, same author, etc. An expert badge means four books, same constraints.

Finally - the Free Verse Option. We know that some people want to read lots of poems from lots of different authors. Because of this, we've set up an equivalency: 20 individual poems = one book of poetry. So, if you WANTED to, for instance, for the couplet level, you could just read 40 individual poems, instead of two books of poems.

I am going to go all wild and crazy and sign up for the Octave level. The badges will be challenging, and I'll have to put some thought into that. But in the meantime, I have books by Jude Nutter, Heyden Carruth, and Jeannine Hall Gailey all waiting for attention. I want to read some older poets too--maybe revisit Dickinson? Or the Bronte sisters, since I'm a Bronte fan. And of course, my closet fascination with Sylvia Plath will probably have to be revisited.

Won't you join me?

Mrs. Dalloway

So, Virginia Woolf. She kind of intimidates me. OK--she totally intimidates me. I think of myself as reasonably intelligent, not as smart as some, not as dumb as others, but I have a terrible fear of reading Woolf and, you know, not getting it. This in spite of the fact that I have read some Woolf, and while I found it difficult, I also found it enormously rewarding.

I want to say that I love Mrs. Dalloway, and I do, but then I feel compelled to spout forth some highly erudite thoughts as to why I love it. Once compelled, I'm struck with images of Mrs. Woolf roaring in vexation from the great beyond at my insolence and lack of capability. Sort of how I imagine Kurt Cobain to react when I listen to his music. Or how they'd both react to being put in one paragraph together, which one probably shouldn't do, but there you go--that's how I roll.

"Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself."

This is heady stuff, and it's beautiful, and not in an empty way devoid of meaning. Although not much happens (with one notable exception), this novel contains an entire world full of flawed, yet sympathetic people, people who have views and opinions on those around them which are so often wrong, and yet so often well-intentioned and based on years of contact. Some of them are unbearably sad--Septimus, obviously, and the rigid Miss Kilman (seriously? I wish Woolf had written a book just about her). But they all have their reasons for sadness, private or not, and they all have a certain amount of self-awareness and self-deception operating at the same time.

One thing I noticed was the frequent use of "thread" or "string", which made perfect sense, given how these people are all connected, some very tenuously, and yet their lives touch and affect each other, sometimes to an extent they don't realize or understand.

The edition I chose to read was in The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, edited by Francine Prose. Now having read the novel, I can go back and read the essays about the novel included in the reader--and I so look forward to doing just that.

It's Tuesday, where are you?

Hosted by Raidergirl

Currently, I'm in Indiana, following a headstrong young man as he has a falling-out with his father that will last a lifetime.

Abraham Lincoln by James McPherson. Sort of the Cliff Notes of Lincoln bios, clocking in at a mere 70 pages. All in preparation to read this.

Little Bee

Well, this certainly got 2010 off to a ripping start for me. I saw this on lots of "best of" lists late last year, and when it showed up on the long list for the 2010 Tournament of Books, it seemed more than logical to add it to the library queue. It conveniently showed up just in time for New Year's weekend, and has become my first completed book for the National Just Read More Novels Month challenge.

But how to describe it? Clearly, given that I'm not the speediest reader, finishing the book in four days shows that I was pretty deeply engaged (a long holiday weekend also helped). But the plot itself is so spoiler-ific that I hardly know what to say. The back of the book says this:

"We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story, and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you will want to tell everyone about it. Please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how it unfolds."

Although that summary reeks of hyperbole, it is, for the most part, right. About all I can say without a spoiler is that it's about an orphaned illegal refugee in England, trying to find her way after escaping terror in Nigeria. The beach scene is rough indeed--although I've since read some reviews that have understandable criticism of that part of the book--but there are many other scenes which, while not as graphic, are equally painful.

And yet, there's also humor. Some readers apparently don't like the British people who become involuntarily entwined in Little Bee's life, but I thought they were sympathetically drawn. Let's face it--most of us have no clue what Little Bee's life would be like, and we wouldn't necessarily respond any better.

It's a little frustrating, not being able to tell more. But it's a good book. Go read it, quick, before the Tournament of Books announces its short list.

It's Tuesday, where are you?

Sponsored by Raidergirl

I'm in London, preparing for a party. Sounds simple, but not in the least.

Mrs. Dalloway, by (of course) Virginia Woolf.

Challenges galore

Mostly to just regroup and organize myself, here are the challenges I've committed to this year.

Just what it says--read more novels. Specifically, read more novels in January. I can't think of a better time to do just that. For sure I'll read Little Bee by Chris Cleave, since I started that on 1/1 and am almost done; Mrs. Dalloway for another challenge; and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. Hopefully more than that, but that's what I'll commit to for the moment. Challenge link here.

All About the Brontes. This runs now through June. I will make every attempt to read:

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Juliet Barker's (massive) biography

the collected letters

And, maybe, watch one version of the movies of each of the above novels.

The Bronte bio would qualify across to another challenge:

The Chunkster 2010 Challenge, which runs 2/1/1-1/31/11. My plan for that, besides the Bronte bio, includes:

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

If completed, that certifies me as a winner of the Do These Books Make My Butt Look Big? category.

Then there's this:

The Really Old Classics Challenge, which already started and goes through February. My hope is to finish reading The Canterbury Tales, as well as the Maitland book listed above. 

So far, that's it. However, I've heard murmurs about a potential poetry challenge, which I'd gladly take up, and I and another friend will be starting our own challenge, probably next month.

Best of 2009

I'm a little late to the party, but oh well. Here are my favorites from 2009, in no particular order:

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout
Angus by Charles Siebert
I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Life List by Olivia Gentile
Sonata Mulattica by Rita Dove
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose
This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

That right there is a very satisfying list. It was a good year for reading.

Kristin Lavransdatter

Well, I did it. 1100 pages, three volumes, the latest and thought-to-be-best translation. I finished book 3, Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross.

And I've been struggling with how I feel about this book on a second reading, the first having been more than 25 years ago.

There were things I loved. Undset had a way with description that made the Norwegian countryside so vivid, and I'm usually someone who can't visualize things from words, so that's saying a lot. I also think she did an amazing job of incorporating her historical research into the text. I often veer away from historical fiction, because I've read one too many books where the author wants to use Every. Little. Bit. Of. History. they learned about, necessary to the story or not. But Undset seemed to use only what was necessary to set the scene and keep the story moving forward, and never with a "Hey, look at all the cool research I did!" mentality.

That said, the political intrigue lost me in various places. Yet the outcome--Erlend's loss of status--was clear enough, and painful for the daughter of Lavrans.

The first half or more of The Cross seemed to me to be same old, same old. Kristin agonizing over various sins. Kristin moping. Kristin fighting with Erlend. Then the whole thing with Erlend hightailing it into the hills, and their eventual reconciliation followed by yet another standoff, was highly annoying.

It wasn't until--sort of a spoiler alert here--Erlend's death that the book started turning around for me. Kristin's life as a widow, her disappointments in her sons, the pain of Gaute following the same path she and Erlend had taken, all seemed much more vivid and understandable. The scenes where the sons talk plainly about their life growing up with such difficult parents are painful. Kristin's final decision to leave Jorundgaard and take up life in a convent was completely believable, and even then life isn't as easy or graceful as she'd hoped.

Yet she's learned a bit about life and perseverance:

"Now, whenever she took the old path home past the site of the smithy--and by now it was almost overgrown, with tufts of yellow bedstraw, bluebells, and sweet peas spilling over the borders of the lush meadow--it seemed almost as if she were looking at a picture of her own life: the weather-beaten, soot-covered old hearth that would never again be lit by a fire. The ground was strewn with bits of coal, but thin, short, gleaming tendrils of grass were springing up all over the abandoned site. And in the cracks of the old hearth blossomed fireweed, which sows its seeds everywhere, with its exquisite, long red tassels."

I remember reading this trilogy when I was in college and loving it passionately. It's interesting--and more than a bit sad--to realize that somewhere along the way, something changed. It may be due in part to the translation--according to the introduction in the Tiina Nunnally edition, the version I read years ago had been embellished with all kinds of Victorian language and convoluted sentence structure. That would have appealed to me at that point, no doubt. And I can certainly see that Nunnally's translation is cleaner and beautiful, and likely much closer to the original. I wonder if I would have liked it as much back then?

Not to be maudlin, but the re-read also brings up another one of those imponderables: In college, I read this along with one of my best friends. She was at a slightly different stage in life, having married out of high school, suffered a bad marriage and miserable divorce, and entered college later. Even though we came to it with different backgrounds and an age difference of a few years, we both loved it.

But she died right after college, 25 years ago. So while re-reading it, I had an increasing sense of "What would Lesa think? Would she still like it too?" And of course, I can't answer that. So the re-read was a disappointment from the sense of not liking it as much as I had before, and sad from being reminded of a good friend who died far too young and isn't here to help me re-evaluate the book--or to enjoy any book.

Even with all that, though, I'm glad I did re-read it. Thanks to Emily for hosting this read-along. It certainly was thought-provoking.