bibliophiliac

a single green light, minute and far away

2012-02-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

Every time I read The Great Gatsby I am struck by the astonishing beauty of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel.
There is nothing else quite like it in American letters. The effortless beauty of Fitzgerald's prose, the densely interwoven patterns of imagery and symbolism. Whatever else Gatsby may be: an elegy, a meditation on the corruption of the American dream, a melacholic dream of an unrecapturable past, Gatsby is a wonder of perfect craft.

Here are a few passages that take the top off my brain...

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away...it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams.... (2)

He smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. (48)

A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. (55)

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and more and the soft rich heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavendar and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. (92)

That is the last moment in the novel when I can feel any human sympathy for Daisy. I suppose the shirts are just part of Gatsby's offering to the idol he has created in Daisy.

Here's a longish passage, but one that just vibrates with a mythic marriage of prose and idea:

...One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been stuck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower, and the incarnation was complete.

The Great Gatsby closes with Nick Carraway sprawled out on the beach behind Gatsby's deserted mansion. The last few paragraphs of the novel just make a reader do something drastic, like have the sentences tattooed on her body:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning---

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This is my "Reread a classic of your choice" read for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2012 at Sarah Reads Too Much....

The Late, Great, Etta James

2012-01-28T07:37:00.000-08:00

Etta James 1938-2012

The first time I heard the voice of Etta James was approximately two lifetimes ago. I had a studio in a warehouse building in Charlestown, Massachusetts, not far from Bunker Hill. I would go there in the evening and on the weekend and just immerse myself in painting-get totally lost. I always had the radio on, and in my trance-like state I usually didn't hear it. But one day I was arrested by the pain, the passion, the fierceness, of a very distinctive voice. Over the years I became something of a fanatic. As a single mom, I spent lots of hours in my vehicle, shuttling my daughters and taking long road trips between South Carolina and Maryland. We used to stack up the Etta James CDs and sing along with every song, capturing every inflection as Etta sang about heartbreak, sugar on the floor, and hearing the church bells ringing (of course, all she could do was cry). There was so much more to Etta James than that single song made famous by a car commercial and later by a movie and an inauguration ball. Today is her funeral, and I pay respects to a gutsy, brave, gorgeous woman who had been the primary voice in the soundtrack of my life.

Top TenTuesday: My Dream of Another Book

2012-01-09T19:28:00.000-08:00

Top Ten Authors I Wish Would Write Another Book
I love lists, I love Top Ten Tuesday, and I love The Broke and the Bookish for hosting the very best weekly meme ever.

Here is my list of authors I wish would write another book, in no particular order.

1. Edward P. Jones. Best known for his award-winning novel The Known World, Jones has published two superb story collections: Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar's Children. I would love another story collection to look forward to.
2. Robin Black's gorgeous story collection If I Loved You I Would Tell You This left me feeling sad-because it is her only book so far....
3. Jo Scott-Coe is a brilliant, observant, courageous former teacher who dared to write honestly about her experiences, and about the politics and gender issues of teaching. Her only book is Teacher at Point Blank: Confronting Sexuality, Violence, and Secrets in a Suburban School. Please, Ma'm, may I have some more?
4. Simon Van Booy. I fell in love with The Secret Lives of People in Love. I haven't read every title by this writer, but I'd like to know that he will keep spinning his beautiful stories.
5. Joan Leegant. As soon as I finished her novel Wherever You Go I was wishing Joan Leegant had another novel. While I'm waiting, I'll console myself with her short story collection An Hour in Paradise.
6. David Rhodes. Rock Island Line and Driftless are two of my favorite contemporary novels, and I really do wish Rhodes would write another.
7. Keri Hulme is the author of The Bone People, a stunning and disturbing book. I wish she would write another novel.
8. Elizabeth Strout just doesn't write fast enough. Every book she writes is so superb. I especially loved Olive Kitteridge and Abide with Me.
9. John Steinbeck. I know, he wrote a lot of books. But still, I have this residual fear that I will run out of Steinbeck books in my lifetime. I guess I will just have to start rereading if that happens.
10. Cormac McCarthy isn't exactly unproductive. And I haven't even read all of his books. In fact, I've read only two. But after reading Blood Meridian I'm feeling almost idolatrous about this book. Blood Meridian is one of the most nearly perfect books I have ever read, so I wish Cormac McCarthy would write it again-only somehow have it be another book. Oh, you know what I mean!

What author do you wish would write another book?

Review: The Western Lit Survival Kit

2012-01-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Sandra Newman
Gotham Books
paperback, 280 pages
a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

The Western Lit Survival Kit really is irreverent. It is also sneakily erudite, and sometimes funny.

Humor is a funny thing, though. Humor might be the most difficult tone for a writer to pull off, and for this reader, the humor in this guide to the classics didn't always work. I guess I'll just get my reservations out of the way in one paragraph: the author is sometimes appealingly snarky, and sometimes just snarky. Sandra Newman dismisses whole chunks of literature as boring, vastly oversimplifies the category of the Victorian novel.... and she leaves out Trollope entirely. And there's no index! I love indices, and any even semi-scholarly guide should probably had an index. To her credit, Newman acknowledges that Middlemarch is a very important novel, she gives Shakespeare his own chapter, and her book is both accessible and scholarly (in a sneaky, snarky way).

I'm trying to decide who the ideal reader of The Western Lit Survival Kit is. Someone not really well-read or educated in the liberal arts, but someone who could be tempted to be well-read...someday?

On the one hand, the humor, the tone, and the rating scale (books are rated on a scale of 1-10 in the areas of "importance," "accessibility," and "fun") hint that reading classic literature is daunting but sometimes entertaining. For a reader who unabashedly loves many of the books in the guide, some of Newman's dismisals were irritating, and the humor seemed to be aimed at some other reader. That sounds a bit harsh, but I think the humorous cultural references might make this guide dated in five years.

On the other hand, The Western Lit Survival Kit truly is smart. Newman puts Kipling in his place perfectly, while acknowledging the appeal of "If." She sums up Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn quite nicely. She has the guts to just say that Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived, and she says it with blunt humor. She's right to say that The Great Gatsby is "a profiterole of a novel, gorgeous to look at and filled with delicious whipped cream." And she nearly makes me repent of having taught The Scarlet Letter, which she goes ahead and tells the reader to avoid (reader, don't listen to her).

The Western Lit Survival Kit has brief sections scattered throughout the guide filled with biographies, historical tidbits, and explanations of stuff you didn't know you didn't know. These tidbits were my favorite part of the guide--cool stuff I didn't know. Overall, The Western Lit Survival Kit is smart and useful, but I wouldn't recommend it as a reader's only guide to classic literature. This is a book you might want to have on your shelf, right next to the more serious (boring?) guides, when you want to dip into unfamiliar waters without getting drenched in seriousness and awe.

To see what other reviewers thought of The Western Lit Survival Kit, check out TLC Book Tours. For more about Sandra Newman, go to http://www.sandranewman.org/

The Last Book of the Year

2011-12-31T16:21:00.001-08:00

In December of 2009 I began this blog in earnest, and one of my bookish New Year's Resolutions was to read more Trollope. How appropriate, then, that my last book of 2011 was The Duke's Children, by Anthony Trollope. On the next to last day of 2011, I finished the last book in the Palliser series. It only took me four years to read the six titles that make up the Palliser novels (Can You Forgive Her; The Eustace Diamonds; Phineas Finn; Phineas Redux; The Prime Minister; The Duke's Children). That's a total of 4,340 pages--but who's counting?

I felt a little sad when I realized that I had just finished the last of the Palliser novels. I loved the Barsetshire novels, but the Palliser books were my dish. Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser, Madame Max (Marie) Goesler, Phineas Finn: these are characters I came to know over the landscape of six novels, a world entire. Of course, I cheered up once I realized that I can always begin rereading the series this year.

Trollope was an enigma: at times he seemed a stodgy conservative. He was obsessed with the ideal of the English gentleman (a complex idea that he worked out in every novel). While he purportedly disliked feminism, his female characters and their constraints are portrayed with sensitivity, compassion, and liberality. And he had a close friendship with Kate Fields, an American feminist, on whom a character in The Duke's Children was partially modeled. And, most endearingly, he accepted and befriended George Eliot (pen name of Marian Evans). Eliot loved Trollope for his admiration for her common-law husband, George Lewes, and admired Trollope's novels. She even asserted that she might not have attempted the panoramic scope of Middlemarch without Trollope's example (see Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope).

I like knowing this sort of thing, and I like thinking about how the works of my favorite writers interconnect. Middlemarch is my favorite novel; I've read it three times, (maybe four?) and each time I read the novel the experience is richer. I like to imagine Trollope and Eliot and Lewes sitting down to dinner and discussing life and literature.

Now that I've finshed the last of the Pallisers, it's time to move on to a novel I've been wanting to read for years: The Way We Live Now. Many consider this to be one of Trollope's finest novels, although the entire Palliser series was considered by Trollope himself (and many others) to be Trollope's finest achievement.

What was your last book of 2011, and what will be your first of 2012?

Wolf Hall: Parts V and VI

2011-12-18T17:04:00.001-08:00

Without the Wolf Hall Readalong, I'm not sure I would have finished reading this book. And yet, I'm glad I stuck it out. For readers who haven't yet read the novel and still might want to: Major Spoiler Alert.

Now that I've finally finished this novel, I find that there are two more novels planned to complete the story. That makes sense, because the novel ends on a note of incompleteness.

Hilary Mantel's 532 page novel Wolf Hall has as its hero Thomas Cromwell, and as its antagonist Thomas More, a historical figure who has been lionized in the play A Man for All Seaons. In Mantel's revisionist imagining, More is a far from attractive character. Mantel paints a mean-spirited More, unkind to his wife, relentless in his pursuit of heretics or political enemies, responsible for torture and death.

In contrast, Cromwell, of humble birth, a polyglot, is depicted as loyal, kind, compassionate, intelligent, and devoted to his family and his work. The story of Henry VIII, his battle to rid himself of one queen and wed another, and the legal battle to install Henry VIII as the head of the church of England are all told through the consciousness of Cromwell.

Every perception in the novel is filtered through Cromwell's senses, and his canny, intelligent mind. In parts V and VI of the novel, Cromwell draws even closer to both the king and to Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn finally gets her wish and becomes pregnant, weds Henry, and if crowned queen. The coronation is given a sumptuous description:

At every turn on the route there are pageants and living statues, recitations of her virtue and gifts of gold from city coffers, her white falcon emblem crowned and entwined with roses, and blossoms mashed and minced under the treading feet of the stout sixteen, so scent rises like smoke. The route is hung with tapestries and banners, and at the ground beneath the horses' hooves is graveled to prevent slipping,a dn the crowds restrained behind rails in case of riots and crush....So many fountains flowing with wine that it's hard to find one flowing with water.

Anne Boleyn is still an elusive, powerful, secretive character, and the power she holds over Henry is enormous while she is still carrying his possible heir. She gives birth to Elizabeth, who will be queen, but Henry is not pleased. A second pregnancy ends in miscarriage, and Anne's power over Henry waxes and wanes. Her time is almost up. And Jane Seymour has been a flitting presence, noticed by Cromwell.

The unpopularity of Anne (and her mysterious power over some men) is captured in this passage:

They compete to tell stories of how she is not worthy. Or not human. How she is a snake. Or a swan. Una candida cerva. One single white doe, concealed in leaves of silver-gray; shivering, she hides in the trees, waiting for the lover who will turn her back from animal to goddess.

The novel ends with Cromwell having seen More sentenced to death and executed. He sits alone at his desk, and writes these words: Early September. Five days. Wolf Hall.

I will defnitely be reading the next volume, Bring Up the Bodies, to see where Mantel takes the reader next.

Thanks to Natalie at Coffee and a Book Chick for coming up with the readalong-please check out her posts on the readalong, as well as the other participant's thoughts on Wolf Hall.

Wolf Hall Readalong Parts III and IV

2011-12-11T18:55:00.000-08:00

Wolf Hall Parts Three and Four: death, intrigue, heresy, subterfuge, spies. Cardinal Wolsey dies (you could say of a broken heart). Thomas Cromwell, the protagonist and unlikely hero of Wolf Hall shows political talent: he allies himself with King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Even as Henry VIII begins to distance himself from the Pope and consolidate politcal and religious power, his former friends and supporters are being tortured for various crimes, some of them religious.

The poet Thomas Wyatt enters the story. A strange anecdote is told of how, as a boy, Wyatt saved his father from being attacked by a pet lioness by diverting the animal's attention to himself. This story resonates, and had me wondering: is the lion in the story Henry (often referred to as a lion) or Anne Boleyn? And is Thomas Cromwell diverting the lion?

Portrait of Cardinal Wolsey

"What was England, Before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold." (213)

Hans Holbein's Portrait of Thomas Cromwell

"'Your father told us all about the lion. Nowadays, I think back on it, and it doesn't seem to me like a thing I would do. Stand still, in the open, and draw it on.' He pauses. 'More like something you would do, Master Cromwell." (287)

Wolf Hall is filled with violent torture and punishment. Cromwell thinks back to his boyhood, when he witnessed a heretic burned at the stake. Later, he watched as her friends came and gathered her remains-mostly bones.

"By the time the smoke cleared and they could see again, the old woman was well ablaze. The crowd began cheering. They had said it would not take long, but it did take long, or so it seemed to him, before the screaming stopped." (290)

Portrait of Anne Bolyn

"One of those afternoons when I told my king a little, and he told me a lot: how he shakes with desire when he thinks of Anne, how he has tried other women tried them as an expedient to take the edge off lust, so that he can think and talk and act as a reasoning man, but how he has failed with them...A strange admission, but he thinks it justifies him, he thinks it verifies the rightness of his pursuit, for I chase but one hind, he says, one deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood." (298)

The above quotation draws directly on the imagery of the Thomas Wyatt sonnet I quoted in my first post on Wolf Hall. It's one of the lovlier passages in the novel.

Wolf Hall is filled with beautiful prose and resonant images. As I read I feel a sense of forboding, as so many who are close to Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn fall. The tension and almost tedium of the King's desire to be free from his marriage to Katherine is like an overhanging cloud. And I keep remembering that when Henry finally achieved his desire, he was only married to Anne Boleyn for three years before he had her beheaded.

So far I find Hilary Mantel's novel well-written, complex, but hard going at times. This does seem to be the kind of novel best appreciated in retrospect. I'm looking forward to reaching the end-I'm very curious to see how Mantel concludes this novel, and whether I will coming loving it or feeling very "meh."

Check out Natalie's much more thorough review at Coffee and a Book Chick, where you can also find links to other reviews from the readalong.

Top Ten Tuesday: Childhood Favorites

2011-12-06T17:13:00.001-08:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
I love a good list. This week's topic from the folks at The Broke and the Bookish makes me wax nostalgic: when I first fell in love with books, with reading, with the instant escape to other worlds. I was the child who would hide under the dining room table, beneath a desk, or anywhere else I could find to become lost in a book. I longed for a window seat with a soft red cushion and curtains I could hide behind. When my mother found me with my nose in a book she would force me to go outside--whereupon I would take my book up into the higher branches of some tree, and read undisturbed (while getting the "fresh air" my mother believed in).

Here are just ten of the books I remember finding magical.

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. How I wished I had a wardrobe that opened onto another land.
2. Tales of Hans Christian Anderson, illustrated by Arthur Rackham. This was a beautiful old book that once belonged to my father. If you haven't seen Arthur Rackham's exquisite illustrations, you need to seek them out.
3. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.
4. The Princess and the Goblins by George MacDonald.
5. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I devoured every book in this series.
6. Nancy Drew and the....Carolyn Keene. Nancy had Titian hair, whatever that was. She had a blue roadster, a housekeeper, and a father who seemed awfully genial and lenient. I read the Nancy Drew mysteries one after the other. When I ran out of those I would borrow my brother's Hardy Boys.
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I know, I was precocious.
9. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I read and loved this book at age eleven, too young to question some of the more romantic premises of the novel.
10. A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. I don't remember much about this book except that I loved, loved, loved it.

These are the books that first come to mind when I think about my childhood favorites, but there were more than I could list. Then when I became a parent, I got to experience some of those same books all over again. My daughters loved books the way I did, and I remember a few of their favorites: Caddie Woodlawn, Little House on the Prairie, and many more. Some day I'll be reading these favorites to their children...

Do you remember being enthralled by books as a child? What were your favorites?

Wolf Hall Readalong: Parts I and II, in Which I Am Confused

2011-12-04T07:32:00.001-08:00

Do schoolchildren in Britain learn the kings and queens the way American schoolchildren learn the names of presidents? I think it would help to know the characters in this novel as historical figures, and to have a better idea of the intrigues of the court.

I am holding onto my knowledge of Thomas Wyatt and his poem "Whoso List to Hunt," and waiting for the appearance of Wyatt (or Anne Bolyen, or Henry VIII).

"Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind"

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind.

But as for me, alas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I, by no means, my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore,

Fainting, I follow. I leave off, therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I, may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written, her fair neck round about,

"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Wyatt is said to have written that sonnet about Anne Boleyn. She is the deer (or hind) in the poem, and Henry VIII is "Caesar" and the diamond collar says "touch me not" in Latin.

The first fifty pages of Wolf Hall were slow going for me. The character of Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York, and cardinal, dominated the narrative. I got confused when Wolsey was evicted from his palace, and fled to Esher, and suddenly the narrative went to a flashback. The unfamiliar characters, the fall from Henry VIII's good graces-it all confused me. Finally, I found my way, and became engrossed in Thomas Cromwell's story, his family life, and his losses. After a couple of forays to the interweb (I resorted to Wikipedia) I felt a bit more confident in my knowledge of some of the historical background.

Cromwell is an appealing character, and the loss of his wife and daughters to plague is touching. I hope I'll soon be so deep in this book that I won't want to come out.

Sunday Coffee: Thankfully Reading Wrap-Up

2011-11-27T15:19:00.001-08:00

How sad that this weekend has to end! Thankfully Reading (hosted by Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves) was a very relaxing readathon-and I felt really good about getting Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian finished. Blood Meridian was absolutely brilliant, on a scale with Melville's Moby Dick or Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Blood Meridian even had a mentally disabled character, like Faulkner's Benjy). This book will be living in my mind for some time. I can't imagine lightly picking up another novel after this. So I'll be spending the rest of my reading hours tonight reading Gwenolyn Brooks, who I think is not as well-known or widely-read as she should be. I have her Selected Poems on hand, and that is just the right way to finish off this readathon.

Today is my birthday, and I found out that I share a birthday with Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix, James Agee, Marilyn Hacker, and Bill Nye (the science guy). How cool is that?

Tomorrow I'll be starting the Wolf Hall Readalong, hosted by Natalie of Coffee and a Book Chick and Nicole of Linus's Blanket.

I hope you all had a restful, restorative Thanksgiving weekend. What will you be reading as November turns to December?

Thankfully Reading Day Two

2011-11-26T18:04:00.001-08:00

How are the thankful readers doing? I had a wonderful day yesterday, with limited reading opportunities. Nevertheless, I made progress in Blood Meridian. I read for a couple of hours in the car, then had a fantastic vegan feast with my husband, our daughter, and her boyfriend. Dear daughter cooked, and it was amazing: Seitan Roulade, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, and two kinds of pie-all made by my daughter. That was our delayed Thanksgiving feast. I drove home (too dark to ready anyway) and read until my eyes shut.

Today was a great reading day. I have just fifty pages left in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and I am in awe. My book is bristling with sticky notes, then finally I gave up and just started writing in the pages. McCarthy's writing is simply superb. I have so much to say about this book, but I need to finish reading, and then let it settle. Blood Meridian is brutal, gorgeous, shocking, and absolutely riveting. Not for the faint of heart.

Here's a little music for you: it's what's on my ipod right now:

I'll check in again tomorrow. Thanks to Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves for the brilliant idea of the Thankfully Reading readathon.

Thankfully Reading Weekend

2011-11-24T19:51:00.001-08:00

Thankfully Reading Weekend (hosted by Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves) starts Friday, November 25th and runs through Sunday, November 27th. This is a readathon without rules (an appealing quality). The idea is simply read as much as possible over the holiday weekend, posting or not posting as your whim dictates. Over seventy people had signed up when I checked late Thursday night.

So, what will I be reading? I started reading on Thanksgiving day, picking up Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, a book famous for it's brutality and violence, and equally well-known for the beauty of McCarthy's prose. I know I could have chosen something lighter, but there you have it--that's what I'm reading.

When I finish reading Blood Meridian, I will probably finish reading In a Cafe: Selected Stories by Mary Lavin. I only have about two or three stories left to read in that collection. Then I'll just see what I feel like reading. I have a short story collection by John Fulton called The Animal Girl, The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King, and The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood stacked up. No Way will I finish all of those, but I will choose one of them for the readathon.

I hope everyone had a peaceful, restful Thanksgiving. Will you join us in Thankfully Reading?

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I'd Want at My Thanksgiving Dinner Table

2011-11-22T06:27:00.001-08:00

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Authors I Want at My Thanksgiving Dinner
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

This could either be the best or the worst Thanksgiving ever. What do you think of this guest list?

1. David Foster Wallace. The author of Infinite Jest was brilliant, sensitive, depressive, and by all accounts a completely fascinating guy.
2. Flannery O'Connor. Even if she never wrote anything except "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People" I would be in awe of O'Connor's mordant genius.
3. Margaret Atwood. I want to ask her a few questions about The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has a gimlet eye, and I know she will be a good conversationalist.
4. George Orwell. I'll seat the author of 1984 next to Atwood so they can discuss dystopian literature.
5. Frederick Douglass. I have always admired the writing and the mind of the author of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
6. Abraham Lincoln was not just one of our greatest presidents, he was one of the country's greatest writers. I will seat him next to Douglass, who was one of his advisors.
7. George Eliot, author of my favorite book of all time, Middlemarch. She was a brilliant, witty women, who entertained many of the great minds of her time. Their wives, however, declined to visit Mary Ann Evans (Eliot's real name) due to her relationship with George Lewes. She is welcome at my table.
8. John Irving. The author of The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Own Meany, A Widow for One Year and other novels that I love will be seated next to his favorite author, the next on the list.
9. Charles Dickens. By all accounts he was an entertaining conversationalist, and I'd love to talk to him about Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and other novels I've read and loved.
10. John Steinbeck. The author of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden might have some insights about the great recession and the current social and political issues.

Looking at my list, I'm thinking the food will get cold while spirited debate rages on. What literary figures would you invite to Thanksgiving dinner?

Sunday Coffee: In Which I Accept Many Challenges

2011-11-20T06:12:00.001-08:00

The Community of Readers
I'll be at the kitchen table for most of the day, steadily working my way through a stack of ungraded papers. After a grueling October, with many deadlines and long, long days, November is flying by. I had the first week of November off, and read continuously. I'm reading blogs again, and rejoining the community of readers. Which brings me to: challenges and readalongs.

Some people might wonder why take part in challenges and readalongs; because they're fun, and because by doing so you become part of a community of readers. I wrote last week about the Mount TBR Challenge that Bev is sponsoring over at My Reader's Block. This week I'll tell you about some of the readalongs and challenges I'm taking part in as this year winds down and the new year peeks around the corner.

Thankfully Reading Weekend is sponsored by Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves. It's pretty simple: read as much as you can over the weekend. Hey, it's my birthday (Sunday), I'll read if I want to. Yes, I was a Thanksgiving baby--I was actually born on Thanksgiving day. Every few years my birthday falls on Thanksgiving, but this year my birthday falls on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. That gives me the perfect excuse for spending the day reading.

Thankfully Reading Weekend is flexible: read as much as you can, maybe knock off some of the books for your 2011 challenges, and cheer each other on. There will be a linky for the November 25th post, and a linky for a November 27th for your wrap-up post--but you don't even have to post if you don't want to.

For this challenge I hope to read at least two or three books-I'm so far undecided on what those titles will be.

The Wolf Hall Readalong is sponsored by Nicole at Linus's Blanket and Natalie at Coffee and a Book Chick. I've had Wolf Hall sitting on my shelf since shortly after the hardcover was published, and just haven't gotten to it yet. So I thought it would be fun to participate in this readalong.
If you think you might want to read along, go here for the full details and schedule.

Ben at Dead End Follies is sponsoring Smooth Criminals a Reading Challenge for 2012: more specifics on what I'll be reading for this challenge in a post soon. Go here for the requirements for this challenge.

I'm so excited for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2012. Hosted by Sarah Reads Too Much, this challenge has me thinking and making lists. Longer post later.
Are you participating in any readalongs or challenges? Do you have your list of challenges for 2012?

Book Review: A Watershed Year

2011-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

A Watershed Year
Susan Schoenberger
Guideposts
2011
paperback, 369 pages
a copy of this book was provided by the author through TLC Book Tours

Lucy McVie begins her watershed year two months after the death of her best friend Harlan. Lucy has devoted a year of her life to Harlan, staying by his side throughout his illness and eventual death, but she never found the courage to tell him that she loved him.

Now, as Lucy grieves the loss of her friend, she begins to recieve a series of e-mails from Harlan, e-mails he composed at the end of his life and arranged to have sent once a month for a year.

To be honest, I was afraid this novel would turn out to be a little contrived, like a Lifetime movie. Or maybe it would turn out to be one of those wish-fulfillment stories with a love triangle, and an ending that is telegraphed from chapter one.

Instead, A Watershed Year was genuinely moving, with a main character who is flawed but likeable. Lucy's watershed year is a movement toward happiness, but not the greeting card variety, nor the romance novel with a happy, if forced, ending.

At thirty-eight, Lucy has lost the real love of her life to cancer, and although there is a possible love interest on the horizon, the desire to be a mother has a new urgency for her. She decides to proceed with adoption, and soon finds herself on a plane to Russia. Even as she signs the paperwork and "greases some tires" with large sums of cash, Lucy suspects the adoption might not be entirely according to regulation. But her deep desire to be a mother to the four-year-old boy she calls Mat causes Lucy to push her doubts aside.

Susan Schoenberger has created a gem of a character in Lucy McVie. A professor of religion with a secret affection for saints, Lucy is honest, ethical, self-deprecating, and devoted to her family. She's also awkward, easily awed, and completely lacking in feminine wiles. Her relationship with Harlan, revealed through flashbacks, is sweet but poignant. Throughout the novel I wondered who the real saint was: Lucy, Harlan, both, or neither.

A Watershed Year turned out to be much more than I expected. A situation that might have been predictable or facile is neither. Lucy's watershed year takes her on more than one journey, and she encounters heartache, danger, and more loss. But Schoenberger leads the reader toward an emotionally resonant ending that had this reader in tears.

For more on the author, visit http://www.susanschoenberger.com/

Top Ten Tuesday: For the Longest Time

2011-11-14T18:38:00.001-08:00

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books That Have Been on My Shelf For the Longest But I've Never Read Also Known As: The List of Shame...
The folks at The Broke and the Bookish make Tuesdays fun. This week's list is....those books that have been on your shelf for an embarrassingly long time...and you still haven't read them? Here are my top ten, in no particular order:
1. Darkness and Day Ivy Compton-Burnett.
2. Manservant and Maidservant Ivy Compton-Burnett. Some time long, long ago, I read an article about a quirky, under-appreciated British writer called Ivy Compton-Burnett. This must have been a very persuasive article, since I have two books by the still under-appreciated Compton-Burnett.
3. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov. This book falls under the category of "books I pretend to have read."
4. Amy and Isabelle Elizabeth Strout. I loved Olive Kitteridge and Abide With Me, so I have no explanation for why I have never read Amy and Isabelle, which has been sitting on my shelf for about a decade.
5. The Water is Wide Pat Conroy. Hello, this book is set in my back yard! The more I hear about the history of the area where I live, the more I ask myself why I haven't picked this book up off my shelf.
6. Drown Junot Diaz.
7. A Reliable Wife Robert Goolrick.
8. 2666 Roberto Bolano.
9. Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel.
10. The Fountain Overflows Rebecca West.

Do you see why I signed up for the Mount TBR Challenge? I figure that between the Back to the Classics 2012 Challenge and the Mount TBR Challenge, I might clear some of these books off of my TBR bookcase.

What books have you had for the longest time that you can't believe you still haven't read?

Sunday Coffee: The Mount TBR Challenge

2011-11-13T11:18:00.001-08:00

The Mount TBR Challenge

Bev at My Reader's Block has come up with the perfect reading challenge for book hoarders: the Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2012.

Here's how it works: decide on what level you are going to commit to (I'm committing to Mt. Vancouver-25 books), post about the challenge, and then sign up at Bev's site here. My list (see below) comes from books that I already own. I'm listing thirty-three books, but who knows-maybe I'll go all the way to Mt. Ararat (40 books).

A Tentative List for the Challenge:

1. Daniel Deronda George Eliot.

2. An Object of Beauty Steve Martin.

3. Mystery and Manners Flannery O'Connor.

4. The Known World Edward P. Jones.

5. The White Lioness Henning Mankell.

6. Shame the Devil George P. Pelecanos.

7. White Jazz James Ellroy.

8. The Transit of Venus Shirley Hazzard.

9. Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler.

10. Amy and Isabelle Elizabeth Strout.

11. Cambridge Caryl Phillips.

12. A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement Anthony Powell.

13. Serena Ron Rash.

14. The English Teacher Lily King.

15. Shelter Jayne Anne Phillips.

16. The Forgotten Garden Kate Morton.

17. Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann.

18. Paradise Alley Kevin Baker.

19. Veronica Mary Gaitskill.

20. Snow Orhan Pamuk.

21. Fruit of the Lemon Andrea Levy.

22. Human Capital Stephen Amidon.

23. White Tiger Avarind Adiga.

24. Property Valerie Martin.

25. The Taste of Sorrow Jude Morgan.

26. 2666 Roberto Bolano.

27. Free Food for Millionaires Min Jin Lee.

28. Little Boy Lost Laski.

29. The Language of Bees Laurie R. King.

30. To a Distant Land James McConkey.

31. The Girl with Glass Feet Ali Shaw.

32. Yesterday's Weather Anne Enright.

33. Blaming Elizabeth Taylor.

Just looking at this list (compiled by scanning my bookshelves) I wonder if I will be able to wait until January to read some of the titles on the list. No worries: I have vast numbers of books from which to choose (shame!).

My home library has been accumulated over years (some of which were spent as a bookseller, with constant temptation). Lately I've curbed my book spending dramatically. When I do buy new books, I try to buy them for my Nook, because we've downsized, and are overflowing with books already. The Mount TBR Challenge: I can hardly wait!

Sunday Coffee: My Readcation

2011-11-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

My Readcation Draws to a Close.
Have you ever wanted to glut yourself on books? Like the character in the Chekhov story "The Bet" who ordered (and presumably read) six hundred books in four years (and learned six languages) I have frequently wished that I could just take a break from my life and do nothing but read books. In fact, I've used this blog to fantasize and wish for a readcation--a time to just stay at home and read books, nothing else.

Well, I finally did it. I took a staycation during our fall break, and turned it into a readcation. October was a particularly rough month. I won't give you the gory details--mostly since I've flushed them out of my brain, replacing those messy little stressors from the month of October with pages and pages of books, magazines, stories--whatever I could put my hands on to read. I read Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant, Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky, In the Woods by Tana French, and selected stories by Joyce Carol Oates ("Where is Here," "Pumpkin-Head," "The Story of the Stabbing,"). I finally finished Howard Dully's memoir My Lobotomy. And I took pleasure in opening up Poets & Writers the day it arrived in my mailbox, reading everything, including the letters from readers (those inevitably send me back to last month's issue, to read the articles I haven't read in that issue).

I don't know about you, but I don't read many magazines. My mother always gives me a subscription to Poets & Writers, which is one magazine I love. Besides helping nurture my writing, Poets & Writers is a great source for finding new writers and new books. I stopped buying magazines in stores because they are mostly ads for things I can't afford, and they cost as much or more than paperback books. But I recently subscribed to two new magazines, Yes! and The Sun.

In between books, stories and articles I puttered around the house, cooked lentil soup, and tidied up. I even dusted my snow globe collection. Am I the only one who finds housework strangely calming? Especially when I actually have time for it.

Friday was pay day, so I felt justified in buying a five-dollar latte (okay, that does make me cringe) and browsing at the local Barnes & Noble. Oops, buy two get the third free? I had to do it: Just Kids by Patti Smith, Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky, and The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. And I picked up The Cider House Rules by John Irving because the movie is mentioned in Broken Glass Park and I am highly suggestible. Did I say I felt justified? I meant I was able to rationalize the expenditure. I did violate my basic financial rule of "Thou Shalt Enter No Store". This is a useful rule for impecuious teachers. My other basic financial rule is "Thou Shalt Spend No Money." I'm working on that one.

Monday is back to school, back to reality. Today I will be getting out the big bag of school papers that I stuck in a corner last Friday, and I'll try to wrap my brain around school again. It does make me wonder, though: how many more books could I be reading on a weekly basis if I just decided not to do other things? Obviously going to work is non-negotiable, and so is bringing home papers to grade. But there are still hours of the day that I fritter away on things that are not as important or as enjoyable to me as reading a book. The past few weeks have been full of deadlines, extra duties, and long hours at school--so the blog has suffered. But my reading time has suffered too, and that doesn't sit well with me. Books are a consolation and reading is one of the enduring pleasures of my life--and my readcation was a reminder of that. Maybe my life needs mini-readcations every now and then (a weekend here and there, maybe?).

How much of your time is given over to reading? Where in your day or your week do you find the time to read for pleasure?

Book Review: Wherever You Go

2011-11-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

Wherever You Go
Joan Leegant
W.W. Norton
paperback $14.95
2011
253 pages

There are writers who excel at telling a story and there are writers who seem to effortlessly create lucid, beautiful prose. It is unusual to find a writer who does both equally well, but Joan Leegant seems to be such a writer. In Wherever You Go she spins her complex and inevitable tale so expertly that you will be reluctant to put this novel down, and she does it with beautifully crafted prose. It's always a pleasure to put yourself in the hands of a writer who has this kind of confidence and assurance.

Wherever You Go weaves together the stories of three characters. Yona Stern is a thirty-year old single woman living in New York, dating married men, and working at an art gallery. Mark Greenglass is a teacher of the Talmud who now lives in Jerusalem, having escaped a life of addiction through religious faith. And Aaron Blinder is a miserable college student whose father, a well-known Jewish writer, has exploited the Holocaust in his popular and melodramatic novels.

Each one of these characters is driven by an emptiness: Yona by the chasm between herself and her sister, an Israeli settler with a large family and a zealous husband; Aaron by his sense of failure and rejection; and Mark by his sudden loss of faith.

Yona, estranged from her sister Dena, goes to Jerusalem to mend the relationship, to make amends, and to beg for forgiveness. She finds her sister living in a West Bank settlement, entrenched in ideology, and completely uninterested in a relationship with her sister. While she is in Jerusalem, Yona has time to think about the events, ten years earlier, that caused her rift with her sister, set her adrift, and caused her to give up her dreams of becoming an artist. Yona is refreshingly honest with herself about her own shortcomings, the mistakes she's made, and the pain she's caused. She is an enormously appealing character, funny, self-deprecating, yet painfully earnest in her desire to make amends with her uncompromising sister.

Mark Greenglass is a man caught between two worlds. When he goes to New York to teach, he stays with his wealthy non-religious parents and secretly visits the drug-addicted former girlfriend he can't forget. Mark himself can hardly understand how he came to be saved by faith, and he is shaken to discover that the faith he has rebuilt his life on seems to have disappeared. He returns to Jerusalem to begin a new chapter of his life, one not centered in Orthodox practice.

Aaron Blinder is a mediocre college student who has followed Julie, a pretty classmate, to Jerusalem for a semester-abroad program. Aaron is painfully aware that he is a disappointment to his famous, difficult father. The semester-abroad program and Aaron's unrequited crush on Julie give Aaron another taste of failure, shame, and resentment. Aaron is primed for religious radicalism.

Leegant's narrative is artful and elegant, and the reader at first doesn't even notice the tightening of the narrative threads, so engrossing are the individual stories. I admit that I was unable to restrain myself; instead of savoring this novel slowly, I finished it in a single day, scarcely stopping for meals. Wherever You Go is a beautifully realized story of love, art, and faith. Highly recommended for all readers-I can't imagine the avid reader who won't find something to admire in this novel

For more about Joan Leegant and her work, visit http://www.joanleegant.com/

Book Review: The Conference of the Birds

2011-10-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Conference of the Birds
Peter Sis
160 pages
The Penguin Press
$27.95
a copy of this book was provided through TLC Book Tours

The Conference of the Birds, author and illustrator Peter Sis's first book for adults, is an adaptation of a classic twelfth-century Sufi poem. In Sis's lavishly illustrated version, a four thousand five hundred line poem is crystallized to a visual poem with a few spare poetic lines interspersed across pages of intricate images.

The poet Attar wakes from an uneasy dream and finds himself tranformed into a hoopoe bird. The hoopoe bird addresses all the birds of the world, promising to lead them to a King, Simorgh, who lives on the mountain of Kaf. The hoopoe leads the birds across the seven valleys: quest, love, understanding, friendship, unity, amazement, and death. Finally, only thirty birds have survived the journey. As the book closes, the thirty birds fly over a lake and see that they, together, are the king, and the Simorgh the king is each of them.

The images in The Conference of the Birds should be savored. The artwork on these pages is both intricate and subtle, and the story is told through cumulative layers of color, pattern, and symbolism. Images of circles,labyrinths, dharma wheels, and eyes alternate with mountains, hills, and valleys. Some pages are the faded tea color of an old map, while others are soaked with sumptous, heavenly blue.

The Conference of the Birds is a book to be apprehended rather than understood. If you have ever found yourself poring over a beautifully illustrated children's book long after your children are in bed, or if you enjoy allowing understanding enter through your mind's eye, this book will appeal to you. The Conference of the Birds is a sturdy, lovingly designed book obviously meant to be read and handled over and over again.

In this interview at BEA 2011 Peter Sis discusses his inspiration for The Conference of the Birds.
To have a look at the author's illustrations and view his other books, see the author's web site:
http://petersis.com/index2.html

Sunday Coffee

2011-10-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sunday Coffee: Finally Fall
My windows are open, finally. Even the dogs seem excited by the slightly cooler weather. The little Maltese-Chihuahua mix was quite frisky this morning. She suddenly and inexplicably became enamored of our neighbor's cat.

Last week was homecoming at my high school. Can I just say that I'm glad that's over? It was fun, but I'm glad it's over. My husband and I went to the football game on Friday night, and our undefeated team had to work just hard enough for their win so that it was satisfying.

Now for the grading to begin. I've been diligently working away at the accumulated papers that never seem to go away entirely. First quarter grades will be due week after next, and I don't want to be scrambling at the last minute.

I've been following the Occupy Wall Street movement with great interest. It really reflects what I've observed about young people: they don't need mainstream media, they don't care about our hierarchies, and they are passionate, flexible, and determined. Have you seen any of the videos of the speeches? Laws prevent the use of megaphones, so the crowds are becoming their own human megaphones. The speaker shouts out a few words or a sentence at a time, and the whole crowd chants back so that everyone can hear the speech. I find this brilliant. There is a video of Bill McKibben at Washington Square using this to great effect. It virtually forces the speaker to be pithy and to to the point (like twitter). It goes without saying that the movement is being built and spread on social media, and I can't wait to see where this goes.

Books! As I look back on September, I read more than I realized. I finished Dave Maine's Gamble of the Godless, Me Again by Keith Cronin, To Be Queen by Christy English, The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell, and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I started (and intend to finish) Burned by Ellen Hopkins and My Lobotomy by Howard Dully (nearly finished with this one). For professional reading, I've been working on James Pennebaker's Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions and Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity by Susan K. Perry. I'm about halfway through Aimee Buckner's Notebook Know-How and Kristen Painter's Living and Teaching the Writing Workshop. And during September I dipped into Rebecca McClanahan's Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively for exercises for my creative writing students. I'll keep reading this one, as it is beautifully written, and enjoyable not just for the exercises and ideas, but for the writing itself.

I notice that I tend to jump around in my reading much more than I used to. I have books that I read just during mealtimes, books that I read while at school, books that I carry with me everywhere. And still, somehow, there isn't time to read all the books that I want to read. I wish I could take a readcation and just hide away with my books and just read for a week or two.

What are you reading? If you could take a readcation, what would you read?

Sunday Coffee

2011-10-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

It's October! And temperatures here in coastal South Carolina have finally fallen below eighty degrees. I can open my windows-how refreshing. Today the temperature is supposed to be in the sixties, and remain there throughout the week. I might have to see where my jackets and coats are, finally.

Yesterday was the "Leap into Literacy" conference sponsored by Coastal Savannah Writing Project. Since I'm a Fellow, I presented at the conference. This was actually my first time presenting at a professional conference, and I really enjoyed it. My presentation was about the use of writer's notebook in the classroom (as a strategy for improving voice in student writing). I have a really pretty PowerPoint of which I am inordinately proud. We had a small turnout at the conference, but the people who came to my presentation were great, asking questions and interacting. I got positive feedback from teachers of all age levels. One of the attendees was a writing test evaluator from the Georgia State Department of Education (you know, those folks who write the prompts and assess the essays on the state test). He asked me a ton of questions, then requested an electronic copy of my PowerPoint. He even went to his car to get a flash drive. Afterwards I was like: "Uh-oh, what did I do?" I was so flattered that I didn't stop to think that the presentation on which I had worked so hard might become part of someone else's workshop or presentation. Since I've never even presented at a conference before, I didn't realize someone might make this request, and still have no idea whether this is commonplace. I definitely wish I hadn't just put my presentation on the guy's flash drive, but know I will be prepared for this request.

Here are the two books I highly recommended in my presentation:

Living and Teaching the Writing Workshop by Kristen Painter.
This book is a wonderful resource for the teacher as writer, and for the teacher of writing. The first half of the book is for the teacher-writer, and focuses on how the begin to keep your own writer's notebook, and how to develop topics and complete a writing project. The second half of the book is about launching and using writer's notebooks in your classroom. This book can be used by teachers of all grade levels.

Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook by Aimee Buckner. Aimee Buckner is a fourth grade teacher who is a cofounder of the Gwinnett County Summer Writing Institute for Teachers and Children. Her book is an incredible, detailed resource for teachers of any grade level who want to use writer's notebooks in the classroom.

I will admit it: my love for the writer's notebook borders on idolatry. I never go anywhere without a notebook and a pen (and a book, of course). I would not know how to go through life without reflecting on my experiences in writing. This is something I try to share with my students, and I find that nearly every student has the desire to reflection on his or her experiences in writing.

So, gentle readers, do any of you share my mania for keeping a notebook? Do you have a particular size, color, shape notebook you use religiously? Are all devoted readers also writers?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Want to Reread

2011-09-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Books I'd Like to Reread

Top Ten Tuesday is a brilliant meme from The Broke and the Bookish. Making Top Ten Tuesday lists is hands-down my favorite Tuesday activity. This week's list is books I'd like to reread.

I love rereading as much or more than reading a book the first time around. Sometimes I think I haven't really read a book until I read it the second time around. The danger is that a book you loved won't live up to the memory of the book. Recently I reread Middlemarch (third time around) and The Idiot. Each of these classics was even better than I remembered. Here are my top ten books I'd like to reread.

1. The Inferno byDante What could be better than a vicarious visit to hell, in the company of Dante and Virgil. Harrowing punishments lovingly described.
2. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann Can this book really be as profound and as moving as my memory of it? It is a looong book, but one of these days I will read it again. Sick people in a sanatorium escape the realities of life--and of course, everything is a metaphor.
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Fell.In. Love. When I read The Sound and the Fury I was entirely seduced by the lushness of the language, the dizzying experience of this tale told by an idiot.
4. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner My mother is a fish. That is one chapter is this mordantly funny and brilliant novel.
5. The Bone People by Keri Hulme Indescribable. Controversial. Disturbing. Unlike anything else you have ever read.
6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Doesoevsky Tears poured down my face as I read this book. Deep inside I am Russian and it is always winter. Why else would I be magnetically attracted to long books about inexplicably tortured souls?
7. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy See above.
8. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert This book is pure genius.
9. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West Exquisite. The most perfect prose. Emotionally complex and moving.
10: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose Francine Prose loves books as only a writer can, with a passionate devotion. Read this book immediately if you haven't read it already. Keep a notebook next to you as you read, because Prose will make you want to read every book she discusses.

That was fun! Now it's your turn. What books would you like to reread?

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

2011-09-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Despite a hectic couple of weeks at school, I am reading. Blogging about books, posting reviews, reading and commenting on blogs: not so much. I'm hoping that once I get past the grading frenzy that approaches as the quarter draws to a close, I will have a little more time for reading blogs and writing reviews. So here's what I've been reading:

During silent sustained reading time (every Friday) I usually read something from our school media center. I am more than halfway through My Lobotomy, a memoir by Howard Dully. This gut-wrenching book recounts the life of Howard Dully, who was the victim of a lobotomy at age twelve, mostly because of the decisions made by an egotistical and sadistic doctor, and a neurotic stepmother. I've also been reading Burned by Ellen Hopkins. Hopkins writes for a young adult audience, and her fiction is written entirely in verse. Students are enthralled by these books, so I thought I would see what it's all about. I'm impressed.

At home I've been finishing up the galley/advanced reader copy of Dave Maine's Gamble of the Godless, a strange and strangely endearing fantasy novel by a respected novelist who usually takes his stories from Biblical tales. Gamble of the Godless is available only as an e-book. A full review is coming soon.

Also at home, I started Christy English's To Be Queen this weekend. It was exactly the right book for my crazy life. To Be Queen tells the story of Aquitaine's early life.

Finally, I'll be starting Joan Leegant's Wherever You Go. It is a novel about three Americans in Israel. It looks like my kind of novel (complex, well-written literary fiction) so I'm looking forward to this one.

Oh, and amongst the published books I'm reading (or planning to read) I've been reading a manuscript by a talented writer and blogger. I'm a beta reader, which is kind of cool. My lifetime aspiration is to write a novel of my own, and it is impressive to read a work in progress that is so good. Who, you might ask, is this writer? The talented Mayowa Atte at Pens with Cojones. To get a taste of Mayowa's wonderful writing, check out his post "Notes from a Visit Home."

It's Monday-what are you reading?

Sunday Coffee

2011-09-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks I have been much more the teacher than the reader and blogger. I've missed my blog. Thanks to those of you you've stuck around; I'll try to reward your loyalty with something interesting to read pretty soon! Would you believe that we have already had progress reports? We like to start our school year early in the south, and the first quarter will be over in a couple of weeks. My students are writing in their notebooks (and I am writing with them), and we are developing our classroom routines.

This week was an especially busy one. We had Back to School Night on Monday (that's a 13-hour day), then National Honor Society induction, and a meeting for English teachers that kept us at school until 5 p.m. I always find it funny when I hear people talk about how teachers don't really work a 40-hour week. I had two days this week that stretched to 13 hours, and one that stretched to 10 hours. And that's not even counting the night I voluntarily stayed until nearly 6 p.m. planning and grading. I'm probably preaching to the choir, but I wish that the general public understood how many hours we put in. And I'm really not complaining about working those hours-I just dislike the assumption that teachers have it easy. (By the way, that's the title of a book: edited by Dave Eggers).

Next weekend I'm presenting at a local conference. I hope people show up! My presentation is on using writer's notebook as part of writing workshop. I love writing with my students. It can be challenging to work it all in. Not just the writing in class part of it, but modeling assignments and doing the work of writing alongside my students while also delivering instruction. My creative writing students get it, but they are predisposed to want to write. This year I am doing writer's notebook in all of my classes, and I'm really hoping to see some progress in my students: not just in their writing, but in the way they see themselves. One of the goals is to have all of my students see themselves as writers.

I brought a TON of papers home to organize and grade! Why did I do that? Oh, it's because I didn't grade all week, what with meetings and long days and whatnot. Also, it is really difiicult to find uninterrupted time for grading during the school day. So today there will be a few hours at the kitchen table with piles of papers. I'll be glad I did it.

With the crazy busy summer I had and the crazy busy beginning of the school year stuff I really feel as though I have become disconnected from my book blogging universe. BBAW came and went (I think). Challenges and other fun stuff have passed me by. It seems as though my reading/blogging groove is no longer grooving. I'm so far behind in reading my favorite blogs-how long has it been since I left a comment? Aaarrgh. I think I might even have missed some important national events, like "talk like a pirate day."

I will get my reading/blogging groove back.

Check back tomorrow for an unpdate on what I've been reading and what I plan to read. But I have to holla at PK of Aisle B for making sure I got a copy of To Be Queen by Christy English. I'm finally reading it! Wow, just started it yesterday, and I'm almost halfway through. In fact, To Be Queen represents a serious threat to my grading pile....

Check in tomorrow to find out how and what this teacher reads (and how I find the time). Hey, if you're reading this and you have a blog, what did you do when you lost your blogging groove? What did you do to get your blogging groove back?

Review: Me Again

2011-09-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Me Again
Keith Cronin
hardcover, 321 pages
Gale, Cengage Learning
a copy of this book was provided to me by TLC Book Tours

Me Again is a "leave me alone, I'm reading" kind of book. I started reading on Friday during a school day (silent sustained reading makes Fridays so satisfying) and didn't put the book down until I finished on Saturday.

The novel begins with this sentence: "I was born on a Tuesday morning. It was a difficult birth, because I was thirty-four years old." Jonathan Hooper wakes up after six years in a coma, and Me Again is the story of the physical, emotional and spiritual awakening that follows. But don't worry, you won't get any saccharine, uplifting wish-fulfillment story arc here. Me Again is refreshing for its humor and its unpretentious aversion to anything fake. And there is a lot that is fake in Jonathan's life--at least the old Jonathan's life.

Jonathan suffers a stroke and is in a coma for six years. When he wakes from his coma, he remembers....nothing. Not his family, not the physically gorgeous yet conceited girlfriend who visits him--nothing. With his memory bank wiped clean, Jonathan is able to look at his former life with remarkably clear eyes. And he soon figures out that the person he used to be wasn't really very nice.

As Jonathan recovers from six years of atrophy, he also begins to explore what little information he can glean about his life (without telling his family that he has no memory of them). Through Jonathan's eyes we see a jealous brother, parents in a dysfunctional relationship, and a shifty former boss.

Jonathan does have one friend in his new life. In the hospital's long-term recovery unity he meets Rebecca Chase, another young stroke victim who is struggling to regain her physical strength and adjust to her changed personality. Me Again explores the physical and personality changes that the two characters experience, and the struggle to accept the way they are now. Both Rebecca and Jonathan want their family and friends to accept the "new normal" of their lives; the two characters develop a deepening bond that threatens (and it threatened by) Rebecca's marriage to Bob, her college sweetheart.

Me Again has characters you can love, a compelling story line, a few secrets to uncover, and a fresh and humorous take on a serious topic. Readers who like Elizabeth Berg will probably love this book. Me Again isn't exactly "women's fiction," but the focus on human relationships, love over financial success, and the healing power of truth are all here. Me Again is appealing, and written with a directness and lack of pretense that will win readers over. Also worth mentioning is the absolutely scrumptious design of the book. I loved the cover photo (a small buddha figurine in a bowl of cereal). The cover image is perfect for Me Again (read it to find out why). But what I really loved about the book design was the beautiful shiny inside, which has the same image on its glossy cover. This typifies the care and craft that obviously went into the story on the pages of this satisfying and compassionate novel.

Keith Cronin will donate 25% of the money he makes from Me Again to the American Stroke Association.

Relevant sites:
http://www.facebook.com/keithcronin
http://www.keithcronin.com/

2011-09-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

On September 11, 2001 I was working as a bookseller. When the planes hit the twin towers I was standing at the information desk. One of our booksellers who had the day off called at a few minutes after 9:00. Minutes later the staff was huddled around a radio in the back of the store, listening in disbelief.

In the weeks that followed the tragedy, our bookstore was empty. All the stores were empty. It seemed meaningless to purchase unnecessary goods. Suddenly our consumer culture seemed trivial and shallow. People were rethinking everything about their lives, about what it meant to be an American.

I remember a great deal of kindness. People treated one another with compassion. The whole nation was in a state of bereavement, and strangers spoke to one another gently. We were all Americans.

American flags were suddenly flying from cars and from homes, and it became impossible to find an American flag. Flag factories increased production,trying to meet the demand.

My church was packed to the rafters, and not just on Sunday. The midweek services, which normally filled about a quarter of the church, were equally packed.

When customers did come to the bookstore, they were looking for answers. We fielded many requests for books about the prophecies of Nostrodamus, books about Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and the history of the political and religious conflicts of the middle east.

Many people were out of work. Strange things were happening to our economy. There was very little consumer demand. At our bookstore, we were running on a skeleton staff. Often people were sent home early, and most of us were working fewer hours than we were used to. At the same time people were flooding the store with resumes, coming in and asking for applications. But we weren't hiring, and no one else was either. The nation seemed to be suspended in a state of shock.

In January I took a position teaching high school English, replacing a teacher who had left in the middle of the school year. I later discovered that many others entered the teaching profession at about the same time. People wanted to be doing something meaningful and productive with their lives. Just chasing after money seemed pointless, meaningless.

In the year following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I never, ever would have predicted that this nation would be where it is today. Adverserial relationships abound. Teachers and government workers are excoriated and demonized. We are so divided politically that it seems we are two nations. Vitriol and scathing attacks typify our political discourse. It almost seems that people go out of their way to be divisive, angry, and insulting.

There is no fellow-feeling among Americans. Instead we have factions, and then factions of factions.

It makes me wonder. What happened to the unity, the gentleness, the compassion of the months following the attacks?

Monday Coffee: The Labor Day Edition

2011-09-05T17:42:00.000-07:00

What Are People For?

That's the title of a book by Wendell Berry, and also a very good question. Despite an overwhelming emphasis in our society on consumption of all kinds, I'm pretty certain that's not what I'm here for. It seems I'm here for the children (the tallish ones), and also for the stories. All summer I was daydreaming about a life that involved sitting in a cabin writing books. And then the school year started, and that fantasy got wiped out by the compelling reality of the students in front of me.

There is no way I can explain what it is like to have your life so completely taken over by this passion that is also, let's admit it, a burden. There are many times when I hear the political rhetoric about teachers and schools, and I want to find some other profession-it can be that demoralizing.

But when you are teaching and in flow (that magnificent, euphoric sensation when time disappears) there is no better profession. There is no profession so funny and so heartbreaking and so all-encompassing and so pitiless and so pitiful.

So that's where I am right now. Reading, yes, but mostly obsessively reading stuff that I'm teaching, or stuff that I think will make me a better teacher, or stuff that might help my students.

I'm about halfway through the utterly fascinating Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions by James W. Pennebaker. There is a whole stack of writing related books on my nightstand, and anything to do with writing or the teaching of writing feeds my mania. For those of us who are driven to turn everything, especially trauma, into a written story, Pennebaker's book explains why there is healing power in doing so.

On Friday I read with my students (silent sustained reading is golden). Keith Cronin's Me Again was my book, and I tore through it in two days. My review will be posted on September 13th.

Much of Saturday was spent reading Dave Maine's Gamble of the Godless, which I am thoroughly enjoying. This is a book available only as an ebook-an epic sci-fi fantasy with great characters.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, which will leave me confused all day long. My students will be having Socratic Seminar on Cry the Beloved Country, and I will be trying to enter grades for all the papers I am grading at my kitchen table. What will you be doing?

David Maine Blog Tour: Review of Fallen and Preview of Gamble of the Godless

2011-08-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the David Maine Blog Tour
This tour is the brainchild of Lori Hettler of TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog and novelist David Maine. What happens when a successful, well-published writer decides that now it's time for something entirely different? I'll let David explain that himself, here, in his guest post for Lori "On Being Indie."

The Blog Tour is a kick-off for the publication of David's new book, released in ebook format only: The Gamble of the Godless: The Chronicles of Avin Book I. Gamble is a Sci-Fi creation on an epic scale, the first in a series David plans. Check out Lori's Introductory Blog Post here for details on the entire blog tour. Don't forget to visit the next stop on the blog tour tomorrow (Thursday, August 24) at BookSexyReview where Tara Cheesman will review The Gamble of the Godless.

Review of Fallen by Davide Maine

Fallen
by David Maine
published 2005

What could make a man murder his own brother? Why would one brother be favored and the other brother rejected? What would it be like to commit the first sin, to taste of forbidden fruit, to be cast out of paradise?

The stories of Genesis are so primal most of us know them on a cellular level. The first act of human disobedience. The clash between two brothers in the original family of original sinners. The stories are almost too powerful. How does a writer take stories that nearly every reader thinks he knows and bring them to life?

David Maine does it by creating characters who are achingly human. The psychological acuity of Maine's writing is astonishing. Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, and all their offspring, become flesh and blood on the pages of Fallen.

Maine tells the story of the first murder, beginning many years after, with an aging, cranky, and surly Cain hiding from the world in the home of his son Enoch (Henoch in Maine's telling). The narrative of the murder is told backward, adding to the suspense. Abel is poignantly innocent and naive. Cain is strangely attractive, even when he is being sullen, resentful, and mean. The murderous act is sorrowful and inevitable in this telling.

Book I of Fallen tells the story of Cain as an old man, living in exile, and shows how he became that old man. Maine imagines an entire lifetime for Cain, the full story of his life before and after the murder, his life wandering, wearing the infamous mark, his marriage and family life. Book II is the story of the two brothers growing up, the rivalries and misunderstandings and resentments-all of the events and emotions leading to the murderous act. Finally, in Book III, we get the story of the original fall. This was my favorite part of the novel: Adam and Eve are like two rebellious teenagers who are caught and cast out by their father.The journey away from paradise is enthralling: Maine captures the aching sense of loss (especially for Adam), the confusion and helplessness, and Eve's pragmatic acceptance.

Fallen is absolutely captivating. The characters, cast out into the wilderness, are lost, human, fleshly and real. Eve's experience of childbirth is brilliantly imagined, and Maine's telling casts a human and humane light on the story of Cain. Fallen is one of those books that stays with you. Weeks after reading it, I find myself thinking about the characters and scenes.

David Maine is one of the most original writers I have encountered. His imagination seems to be of biblical proportions, and maybe that's why he's chosen to tell biblical stories in The Preservationist, Fallen, and The Book of Sampson. Maine switched genres with Monster, 1959. Now he is switching genres and formats, with his sci-fi epic fantasy The Gamble of the Godless: The Chronicles of Avin Book I, published in ebook format. I find David Maine's writing to be intriguing, entertaining and compelling, so I'm ready to take a leap into the sci-fi genre with a writer whose work I respect. I'm reading Gamble even as you read this, and I can tell you that so far I'm not disappointed. A full review will appear as soon as I finish reading. In the meantime, you can hop on over to Tara's BookSexyReview on Thursday. Or check out Steve Himmer's blog for a guest post and review. Or Michael Davidson's review of Gamble at The Open End.

Sunday Coffee

2011-08-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Ramblings on school, books, and other stuff

My brain, heart and body are 100% engaged in school now. That means a temporary lull in all things bloggish, although I do have at least one post scheduled for the coming week, and I hope to do more.

So, the first week of school is over and it went great. I couldn't have asked for a better start to the school year. I love my students. I love my teaching schedule. Okay, so I don't love lunch duty and all the mundane and minescule tasks I have to complete, but I'm a realist.

We had our first football game of the school year on Friday, and everyone was there. I mean everyone: our superintendent, several thousand parents students and fans--everyone. Our school, Bluffton, played against our arch-rival Hilton Head Island High School. We blew them out of the water (final score 76-0). Yeah, our team is good.

So this weekend I'm trying to get on top of next week (and rest up a bit). My honors students read Cry the Beloved Country for their summer reading, and I'm rereading this beautiful novel. It is such a pleasure to read a carefully constructed novel. I find it interesting that Paton wrote Cry the Beloved Country in part while traveling in America. He was heavily influenced by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I wish more writers were publishing social justice novels today; the time is ripe for novels of conscience. Some truths need the breadth of a novel, and the political rhetoric today is reduced to talking points and sound bites. Tales told by idiots, signifying nothing.

Besides rereading Cry the Beloved Country, I'm also reading James W. Pennebaker's Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. I've had this book on my shelf for years and just never got to it. It is absolutely fascinating, and confirms what I knew intuitively: writing about traumatic events is good for both your psyche and your body. Trying to suppress or inhibit thoughts about traumatic events (even those from many years ago) has an impact on your immune system.

Have you found writing to be healing? How many readers out there keep a journal and write about their lives? I'm a fanatical journal keeper I have notebooks and journals going back decades. Some are writer's notebooks, and some are personal journals. I don't go back and read them very often, but if I want to know what I was thinking when I was fifteen, I can find out (probably do not want to know this!). I can feel the physiogic effects of writing immediately: a few minutes with a notebook and a pen and I feel focused, calm. Do you keep a writer's notebook or journal? Do have the same experience?

Sunday Coffee: Back to School Edition

2011-08-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

This week was our teacher work week in my school district. After a summer of part-time jobs, travel, graduate classes, staying home with children, and time for recharging our batteries, we are back. We had meetings, meetings, and more meetings. We overheated the copy machines, prepared our syllabi, rearranged our classrooms and put up posters. We had professional development and more meetings.

Our district (a large and diverse district on the coast of South Carolina) has a back-to-school rally for teachers. My school hosted the rally this year, and our gymnasium was filled with pumped-up teachers, administrators, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, school nurses, and support staff (about 2,500 people in all). Our keynote speaker was the president of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, and he gave a very good talk with Power Point. One slide did cause the entire gym to erupt in laughter. The speaker related a success story--a young man who had attended a special program at one of South Carolina's technical colleges and become a certified welder. One the slide the smiling young man was shown with two figures: his salary before technical college, and his salary after technical college. The audience of teachers, all of whom have bachelor's degrees, many of whom have master's degrees, and some of whom have doctoral degrees laughed heartily when they saw the two figures: the technical college graduate went from making $500.00 a week to making $100,000.00 a year. Why was this funny? Because many teachers make $500.00 a week or even less. There is always some irony in college educated teachers telling their students that education leads to increased salaries: that certainly is not the case for us.

On Tuesday evening we had an orientation for our tenth grade students (my high school houses grades 10-12). We had a huge turnout--about 700 people came. Our sophomore class is pretty large (470 students). The evening was a big success, and I met many of my students and their parents. I was incredibly impressed. The students were all so polite and nice: every single one of them shook my hand and told me his or her name. The parents were so nice--I'm really looking forward to teaching this wonderful group of students.

Saturday I went in to put the finishing touches on my classroom. I have my copies made, my plans for the next two weeks, and now I'm in a state of nervous anticipation. Is anyone else about to begin a new school year (as a teacher, a student, or a parent)? Are you ready?

Sunday Coffee

2011-08-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm Going to Ramble

You are forewarned.

Challenges
Even though I haven't actually read anything for this challenge yet, I am committed to the Europa Challenge--the brainchild of Marie of The Boston Bibliophile. If you don't already read Marie's blog, you really need to fix that. She is erudite without being pedantic, and she writes smart, readable, honest reviews. Here's the pretty button:

I've never taken part in a challenge before, but this year I am committing to at least two. The other challenge I'm definitely taking part in is the Japanese Literature Challenge 5 hosted by Dolce Bellezza. Here is the utterly gorgeous button:

Here's another intriguing challenge I'm considering: Frances at Nonsuch Book has launched a reading challenge, The Art of the Novella Reading Challenge. She plans to read all 42 books published by Melville House in their Art of the Novella series. Of course, if you decide to participate, you don't have to read all 42 novellas (but you could).

Random Links
Can you imagine a reviewer at the New York Review of Books publishing a dialogue between a reviewer and a writer whose book was reviewed? That's not how traditional publishing and reviewing works. But here in the blogosphere, anything can happen, and Greg at The New Dork Review of Books has a great post about the blogger/novelist relationship--a follow-up to his review of Fight for Your Long Day by Alex Kudera. In the post, Greg and Alex have a conversation about the roles of the novelist and the blogger. Part 2 of the conversation will be posted on Monday.

And while I'm feelin' linky, here are three blogs you need to check out:

Read Heavily

Jacquelin Cangro

Books are My Boyfriends

I discovered each of these writers on twitter (my secret addiction). Special enough to pass along.

The Autumn Wind
Now that I'm going back to school on Monday, I'm really looking forward to those crisp fall mornings. NOT. Yes, I'm going back to school on Monday. Crisp mornings-not so much. It has been unbearably hot for just-about-ever here in Coastal South Carolina. We're talking triple digit "feels like" temperatures. I know you are feeling it too, because no matter where you live, you are experiencing the same thing. Thank goodness for air-conditioning.

There was so much more I was going to say. Like I was going to ask, where's my Grover Norquist? I need someone to step forward and get some politicians to sign a pledge: a pledge not to harm children, those living in poverty, the unemployed, and public education. I need a Grover who will convince public servants to promise that no matter what, they will not enact legislature or budget cuts that will affect this powerful special interest group: children, the unemployed, and those living in poverty.

Oh, and my high school students are much more mature than Congress.

Book Blogger Hop August 5-8

2011-08-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Book Blogger Hop Sponsored by Jennifer at Crazy for Books

To participate in the Book Blogger Hop, go directly here, and please make sure you read Jennifer's message and her whole post before you add your blog to the linky. To participate in the hop, you need to post about the hop and then add a link to the book blogger hop post specifically.

The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly event sponsored by Jennifer at Crazy for Books. The Hop is an opportunity for book bloggers (and readers) to visit one another and get acquainted. Each week there is a question (to start a conversation in the comments). This week the question is: What ARC would you love to get your hands on right now? That is an easy one to answer! I would love an ARC of this:

The early buzz has been phenomenal on this first novel by Justin Torres. We the Animals comes out on August 30, and I've already pre-ordered, but Houghton Mifflin, I still wouldn't turn down an ARC.... I'm looking forward to tearing the box open and reading this book as soon as it arrives.

NOW, what ARC would you love to get your hands on?

Review: In Her Wake

2011-08-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide

Nancy Rappaport

Basic Books

293 pages

a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

What relationship is more primal, more primary, than that between mother and child? To lose this relationship at a young age must be devastating, but to lose a mother to suicide would be shattering. Nancy Rappaport suffered such a loss, and her memoir In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide is her attempt to understand her mother's suicide. Rappaport acts almost as an investigative reporter, tracking down whatever information she can, to put together the puzzle of a mother, a desperate act, and the circumstances and motivations that prompted the act.

Nancy Rappaport was her mother's youngest child and her mother's namesake. Only four when her mother took her own life, Rappaport grew up in a turbulent time and a complicated family. Not until she was settled in her own family life, a graduate of prestigious universities, a medical doctor and practicing child psychiatrist, did Rappaport begin to seriously explore the mystery of her mother. Why did her mother kill herself? Was it because she had just had another set-back in the custody battle for her six children? Or was she simply so unstable that she could not cope with her life as a wife, a mother, and a daughter?

In Her Wake is a careful memoir, meticulously fair to everyone involved. Rappaport often keeps a clinical distance between herself and her subject. It doesn't take much imagination to speculate that Rappaport's profession might be, in part, a response to the early trauma she suffered. Her training as a psychiatrist, and her practice as a child psychiatrist, give her the professional background for understanding both her mother and her child self. And it was not only Rappaport who was affected, but also her siblings and step-siblings. In such a large family, the dynamics are complicated, and Rappaport does a good job of delineating the personalities of the individual children in the family.

Rappaports parents divorced when the author was quite young, and one of the puzzles she tries to solve is the cause of the divorce. This is tricky territory for the author, and it must have been difficult to conduct such a close examination of her parents' intimate lives. Clearly, the Rappaports had a volatile relationship, and their marriage might have been at risk no matter what. But an extramarital affair between Rappaport's mother and a younger man precipitated a separation and divorce. What most readers will probably find surprising and perhaps troubling is that Rappaport's father, Jerry, remarried, and his new wife was the ex-wife of his first wife's affair partner. When I reached this point in the narrative, I think I said "Whoa" out loud and put down the book. Rappaport grew up with her six siblings, plus her stepmother Barbara's three sons from her first marriage, plus the two daughters that Jerry Rappaport had with second wife Barbara.

That is a pretty complicated family dynamic, and Rappaport shows admirable fairness in her analysis of her own family. The narrative Rappaport constructs is absorbing and sometimes dark and sad. However, given the traumatic past this author is exploring, her overall tone is forgiving, and in the end life-affirming.

Nancy Rappaport explores her own mother's psyche through the use of interviews, newspaper articles, various documents, and her mother's own journals and unpublished novel. She is on a pyschological journey , and it is a journey that seems to have been necessary to the author; perhaps all children of suicides would feel this impulse to make sense of such a grave loss.

Rappaport's mother comes across as a vibrant woman, somewhat troubled, struggling with her own personal demons. It is also clear that there was a power struggle going on between Jerry and Nancy Rappaport that perhaps no one can entirely understand. The couple were wealthy, educated, and extremely privileged. The story of their lives takes place during turbulent times for our country; in Boston there were protests and violence over school desegregation, yet this family is curiously insulated, in a world of private schools and frequent travel to Europe. Money, privilege, and access to psychiatric treatment may have helped the survivors of suicide's aftermath, but none of it could save this troubled young mother.

Nancy Rappaport, the grown daughter of a suicide, now a mother of three, a wife and a psychiatrist herself, comes across as more interested in understanding than in being understood. She is more than fair to her father and siblings, and even goes to some pains to be conciliatory toward her husband's second wife (her stepmother). Jerry Rappaport's third wife, Phyllis, is also given her due and described in the most gracious terms. At times the narrative is somewhat clinical--Rappaport refers to several studies and reports--which adds to the sense of balance and fairness. Rappaport's writing is sophisticated and at times poetic, and the pace moves along at a steady clip. This memoir is everything a memoir should be: lacking in self-pity, fair, necessary to the author and others, and above all, interesting. Rappaport gives the reader a sense that she has answered some necessary questions for herself, and readers who have had similar experiences may find comfort in Rappaport's story. I would recommend this memoir to readers who have suffered any kind of traumatic loss in childhood, because Rappaport offers a guide for those who might be tempted to explore past wounds in a way that is healing, rather than destructive. This memoir is also worthy on its own merits: it tells a compelling story about interesting people, and anyone alive probably will find the dynamics of this particular family pretty fascinating.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Trends I'd Like to See More/Less

2011-08-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Trends I'd Like to See More/Less

Thanks to the always smart folks at The Broke and the Bookish for their Top Ten (my very favorite meme) lists. This week's list: the top ten trends of which you'd like to see more (or less).

More
1. Okay, this isn't a trend--yet. I'd like to see more of Big American Novels with a Social Conscience. If ever a time called out for a writer like Steinbeck, Dos Passos, or Upton Sinclair, this is it. Where is our Steinbeck when we need him (or her)?
2. Dystopian Novels for Grown-Ups. It never gets old (for me). As a way of thinking about the natural conclusion of today's social structure, the dystopian novel can't be beat. More like this: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood. More like Brave New World, 1984, and Animal Farm. More like Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
3. Stories from the Garden. I finished David Maine's Fallen recently (review to be posted soon), and I was entranced by this brilliant, profoundly human exploration of one of the oldest stories of all. Maine also wrote The Preservationist (his first novel) based on the story of Noah. His e-book will be released very soon, and I'm extremely excited to have a galley for it (the title is Gamble of the Godless).

Other writers who have elaborated on biblical stories: Thomas Mann (Joseph and His Brothers) and William Faulkner (Absalom, Absalom).
4. Historical Fiction That Gets It All Right. My favorite historical novel recently was Priya Parmar's Exit the Actress. I'll take more brilliantly written and well-researched historical fiction, please.
5. Short Stories. I LOVE beautifully written short fiction. Smart, gorgeous books like Robin Black's If I Loved You I Would Tell You This or Simon Van Booy's The Secret Lives of People in Love.
6. Women of Color are rockin' it when it comes to publishing break-out books. A few examples that come to mind: Dolen Valdez-Perkins with Wench; Lorene Cary with If Sons, Then Heirs; and Tayari Jones with Silver Sparrow. More, please.
7. David Rhodes, any time you are ready. More like Rock Island Line and Driftless. Realistic Fiction about regular folks.
8. More Quirky Stuff that Needed to Be Written Because It Is True. Like Notes from No Man's Land and The Balloonists by Eula Biss.
Less
9. I'd like to see fewer of those bitter, vitriolic political diatribes on the octagon at Barnes and Noble. Or wherever. You know, the kind of book that equates human beings who hold certain political views as satanic or inherently evil. Or books that declare that our entire world is about to come crashing down because of ______________. (You can fill in the blank any way you like). Less, please.
10. Fake Books. You know what I mean, don't you? Fake books aren't really books--they are an occasion for making money. It might be a celebrity "biography" (I'm lookin' at you, Snookie) or it might be about how to get rich, thin, or smart in 30 minutes. Every word is a lie, and we all know it--so why bother?

Okay, that's it: my top ten trends I'd like to see more (or less). What are yours?

Sunday Coffee

2011-07-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

Reading for Escape

What do you read when you want to just stop thinking? Maybe you spent your summer in a classroom, the economy is stuck in the doldrums, the politicians are posturing and debtageddon hovers. That's when you want a book that offers escape. When I was going through a dreadful divorce, I found solace in romance novels by Katie Fforde. At other times I've read about vampires and Swedish detectives. Right now the lassitude is so dire, I just want something that is totally engaging yet totally escapist. What would you read?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2011-07-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

I'm just getting my reading mojo back after being immersed in my Summer Institute at Coastal Savannah Writing Project. My Implementation Plan was due on Thursday, July 21st--that's where I put into writing the ways I will implement everything I learned in the four weeks of the writing project. It was really useful to me to think through and process what I had learned and how I might apply it in my classroom this year.

My current reading crush is Simon Van Booy. His collection The Secret Lives of People in Love is one of those rare books that feels necessary (like I want to carry it with me everywhere, and read every other word Van Booy has written). Here is a video of Van Booy reading a story from The Secret Lives of People in Love (and now I promise to stop gushing).

I've also been reading Kristen Painter's Living and Teaching the Writing Workshop. This is a wonderful, hands-on resource for the teacher-writer who wants to implement writing workshop in the classroom.

And on my Nook, I've been reading David Maine's strange and amazing Fallen. It is a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel, and unlike anything else I have read. The Old Testament stories are some of the most gripping, most profound narratives, and Maine is not the first writer to recognize this. Anyone who has a sibling has experienced sibling rivalry, and this story is about the original "nuclear family." It is fantastic. The reason why I'm reading Maine right now is I'm participating in a blog tour for the release of Maine's ebook Gamble of the Godless at the end of this month. You might have seen reviews of this author's well-received The Preservationist, which is based on the story of the Biblical Flood.

Finally, I'll also be reading Nancy Rappaport's In Her Wake for TLC Book Tours. This memoir is the story of the author's mother's suicide.

It's Monday--what are you reading?

Sunday Coffee

2011-07-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

When Writers are Charming

Have you experience this: you read a book, and that book makes such a deep impression on you that you are in something of a funk, unable to move on? You just want to go back to that book, or on to another book by that writer. That's sort of how I'm feeling after reading Simon Van Booy's book of stories The Secret Lives of People in Love.

How nice to find that there are plentiful videos of Simon Van Booy. Charm is not a prerequisite for writers (plenty of gifted writers have been perfectly appalling people). But Simon Van Booy gives the most perfectly charming, self-deprecating interview. Here's what I mean:

See?

And here's a longer interview with a bit more "writerly" questions.

Admit it, you're a fan now too, aren't you?

Review of The Secret Lives of People in Love

2011-07-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

The Secret Lives of People in Love: Stories
Simon Van Booy
Harper Perennial
a copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

The Secret Lives of People in Love is suffused with loneliness and with love. This is a quiet, spare collection that unfolds moments in unexpected ways. These stories are gentle in one moment, and devastating in the next. A few things are striking in these stories: a sense of voice that is confident and unique to this writer; simplicity of structure; sentences that read like lines of poetry. This is a book I would like to carry in my pocket forever.

Exquisite writing carries its own burden. Sometimes a line of writing is so beautiful that the beauty obscures meaning. Simon Van Booy's stories explore the tension between exquisite language and emotion and stark revelation: his characters are lonely, even when they are in love, and the reader often feels a disorienting sense of staring deep into the well of a stranger's soul. Van Booy creates characters who don't seem like characters--they seem like the souls of all the people you've passed on the street every day. A madman who knows he is mad and sits for days in an airport terminal becomes the most comprehensible and sensible person you could meet. A man keeps a secret--that a family story is a beautiful lie: "I don't see the point of truth anymore, it causes just as much heartbreak as lying." A reclusive man falls in love with a store manequin.

Many of the stories in The Secret Lives of People in Love are about people who have experienced unimaginable loss--yet this is not a sad collection. The stories in The Secret Lives of People in Love are resonant, quiet, meditative, eerie, but not sad. There is a cumulative hush that builds in the collection--the kind of quiet that falls over a city when snow has been falling all day.

Many of the stories are told by first person narrators. In "Little Birds" a boy walks the streets of Paris on his birthday. Prescient and wise, he is is an observer:

Even though I'm only fifteen and have not had a girlfriend as such, I can tell who is in love with who when I look at people. A woman in a wheelchair is being pushed across the bridge by her husband. They are in love....He tilts the chair toward him as though his body is drinking from hers.

Van Booy's characters brim over with insight born of silent observation. In some stories there is a sense that the sentences are lines of poetry strung out in paragraph form. "Distant Ships" is narrated by a man who has not spoken for twenty years; the sentences are crystalized thought hardened by silence. The end of this story brought tears to my eyes--sudden, genuine tears.

The Secret Lives of People in Love is dreamlike, beautiful, spare, yet generous. This is a story collection unlike any I have read. Simon Van Booy has written a rare and lovely collection of stories; I recommend The Secret Lives of People in Love to poets, lovers, recluses, and anyone who was ever in love or wanted to be.

Where I've Been and What I've Been Doing

2011-07-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

For the past month I've been participating in the Summer Institute at Coastal Savannah Writing Project. We met every week day, and what an intense experience it was. I am still processing everything that I experienced. Does this happen to anyone else: after an all-encompassing experience, you keep ruminating, thinking, recalling, everything that happened? There was just so much to do and to think about. We wrote daily, met with book groups, writing groups, and wrote collaboratively. There were presentations by the facilitators--so many strategies to use in the classroom. And there was research and reading--lots of it. In the whole month I did not read one book for pleasure. I lived, breathed and dreamed the Summer Institute. My own presentation was on the use of the Writer's Notebook as a strategy for developing voice in student writing. Once I had presented to my colleagues I found many things I need to change or improve. I will be presenting at a fall conference in October.

One last assignment remains: my implementation plan. This is where I show how I will incorporate everything I have learned in Summer Institute in my classroom this year. There are so many strategies I would like to incorporate--but at the same time, I want to keep my plan realistic. In the past I have incorporated Socratic Seminar, Writer's Notebook, and writing with my students. But I usually only try to adopt one new strategy in any given year. This time I am going to try to adopt several new strategies. And of course I have to actually write my implementation plan. So far I have done some research, gone over my notebook and notes, assembled all the books, notebooks, etc. that I might need, walked the dogs, given the dogs baths, and made falafel burgers. Mmmm. The falafel burgers were good (my adaptation of a Moosewood Collective recipe).

All of the reading I did in the past month was for the Summer Institute in some way. Should I review some of the books I read for the Institute? I did really love Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which I thought was quite brilliant.

Now reading: Simon Van Booy's The Secret Lives of People in Love (my review will be posted on Thursday). My TBR pile is literally a tower. More in another post about my grand reading ambitions for the next few weeks and months.

Thanks to all the wonderful folks who visited my blog during Blog Fest 2011. I wish I could have given a book to every one of you. I'd love to do another giveaway soon--it was fun. I did go back and delete all the comments from Blog Fest because people had left their email addresses in the comments. Out of respect for the privacy of those who commented, I thought it was best to just delete them all. But it was thrilling for me to have so many new visitors. Thanks to each and every one of you.

Blogfest 2100 Giveaway Winners!

2011-07-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

We have winners!

Thanks to Cinnamon of A Journey of Books for sponoring Blog Fest 2011. The winners of my giveaway are:

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster goes to Brittany Gale

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner goes to Asian Cocoa, of Asian Cocoa's Secret Garden

Mariana by Monica Dickens goes to Julie of Knitting and Sundries

Random.org was used to determine the winners.

Thanks to all who visited, and to Cinnamon for a wonderful Blog Fest!

Blogfest 2011 July 15-July 17

2011-07-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Blogfest 2011, sponsored by Cinnamon at A Journey of Books.

I will be giving away three beautiful classic books. All you have to do in order to be entered for this giveaway is leave a comment with which of the three books you would like to win, and why. AND please leave an email address so I can contact you if you win. That's all there is to it! No other rules, no restrictions!

Here are the three titles I am giving away:

A hardcover Modern Library edition of Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
A trade paperback edition of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
A beautiful paperback edition of Mariana by Monica Dickens, published by Persephone Classics

Please visit A Journey of Books for other wonderful giveaways.

But first, go the these links to keep hopping along the Blogfest:
Bitten by Paranormal Romance
Book Dads
Book of Secrets
Book Twirps
Book Hounds

Sunday Coffee

2011-07-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

The past three weeks I've been completely caught up in the Coastal Savannah Writing Project, with very little time for anything else. I've written a personal narrative, an informational piece, and I'm in the midst of researching and writing a persuasive essay.

On Friday we went to downtown Savannah for an all-day writing marathon. My group wrote on River Street, in the lobby of the Hyatt, in Ellis Square, and in Market Square (where the local "poet laureate" recited his poems to us). Then we walked over to the Telfair Museum and shared some of our writing with the whole group.

Most of my reading has been related to the class: The 9 Rights of Every Writer by Vicki Spandel and What a Writer Needs by Ralph Fletcher, plus articles and books for my presentation (Using The Writer's Notebook as a Strategy for Developing Voice in Student Writers). I really didn't know how all-encompassing this Summer Institute would be.

When I'm done with the Institute I plan to plunge myself back into reading. Lined up now are a lovely stack of books for The Europa Challenge. Plus a few titles I picked up the other day (buy two, get the third free...). More about that tomorrow.

Review: State of Wonder

2011-06-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

State of Wonder
Ann Patchett
Harper
2011
353 pages
An advance reader's edition of this novel was provided to me by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

For me, the fortunes of a book rise and fall with character. Character driven fiction is my literary ideal: if richly textured themes, convincing details, and beautiful writing are included, then I'm in book heaven.

State of Wonder kept me suspended in book heaven for two days, after which I mourned. I just wanted to savor the book for a few days, and didn't pick up another book until I'd had some time to process State of Wonder.

Ann Patchett's latest novel might just be as good as the impeccable Bel Canto. Marina Singh is a brilliantly written character (why do I want to compare her to my favorite literary female hero, Dorothea Brooke?). Marina is one reason why I could not put this book down: she is intelligent, cool, insecure, loyal, and strangely innocent. Her journey leads her from icy Minnesota, where she is a pharmeceutical researcher, to the Amazon forest, where she means her former medical school teacher, a woman who inspires a dreadful awe and respect.

Marina is sent to the Amazon by her boss, who is also her lover--the aptly named Mr. Fox. The ostensible reason for Marina's journey is to find out just what happened to her colleague and friend Anders Eckman, who has reportedly died. But Marina's journey into the heart of the jungle becomes a search for so much more. Marina faces her own past, and her reason for giving up a career as an obstetrician for the research lab; her fear of Dr. Annick Swenson, the doctor who was once her teacher and is now working in obsessively Kurtz-like fashion, on pharmeceutical research in the jungle; the powerful and fearsome forces of life and death.

The most vivid writing in State of Wonder is in the portion of the book set in the jungle. Marina spends time in the purgatory of Manaus, trying to locate Dr.Swenson, who doesn't want to be found. The Bovenders, a pair of global wanderers, give color to the Manaus scenes, and there is a gorgeous scene set at the opera in Manaus, where the elusive Dr. Swenson finally appears. Accompanying Dr. Swenson is a child named Easter, who will lead Marina further into the jungle than anyone else. Once Marina leaves Manaus, she and the reader enter into a state of wonder that continues until the end of the book. Marina encounters a village of mothers, wondrous plants and creatures, a gargantuan anaconda, and a tribe of cannibals. The sense of having left the "civilized world" and its morality behind is powerful. Patchett takes the reader on a journey down a river, snaking its way deeper and deeper into the heart of what it means to be human: what is love, what does it mean to give birth, what will we do out of loyalty or friendship? Each time the reader moves deeper into the book, the jungle closes behind her leaving the reader enclosed in a state of wonder. Highly recommended.

Review: Before I Go To Sleep

2011-06-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

Before I Go To Sleep
S.J. Watson
Harper
360 pages
a copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

Imagine waking up and having no memory of the previous day. Now imagine waking up every morning, unable to remember the previous day or week or twenty years. That is the intriguing premise of S.J. Watson's psychological thriller Before I Go To Sleep.

Christine Lucas has suffered a traumatic head injury and this is her life: each morning she wakes up next to a strange man who tells her he is her husband. Each morning he shows her a scrapbook and tells her about her life. But Christine is secretly seeing a doctor who aks her to keep a journal. It is these journal entries that tell the story of Christine's struggle to form an identity out of scraps of memory and stories told to her by her husband. She has some photographs, a scrapbook, and the journal, which she discovers each morning as if for the first time.

Before I Go To Sleep succeeds as a psychological thriller-it is suspenseful and creepy, and you'll want to keep turning those pages. It also succeeds as a meditation on the nature of memory and self; it is painful to see Christine try to piece together her own life, try to access memories, not knowing if they are memory or fantasy.

Christine's secret meetings with her doctor, her secret journal entries, begin to reveal cracks in the stories her husband Ben has been telling her. Totally dependent on Ben even for her sense of self, her history, her survival, Christine secretly works at rebuilding her memory. Through the journal entries, the reader sees a woman beginning to build a picture of her own life, her own personality. And the reader begins to sense that there is something important that Ben has been hiding from Christine.

I read Before I Go To Sleep in one sitting-it's that kind of book. It holds you in it's grip until the last page. The narrative builds to a kind of dreadful pitch, and S.J. Watson knows exactly when to tighten the screws. My only quibble with this book is a slightly too tidy ending. Some readers may feel that loose ends are a little too neatly tied. This almost seems beside the point-because Watson delivers what the reader craves, and exciting read. Before I Go To Sleep is a perfect summer read, suspenseful, chilling, with plenty of twists and turns. I appreciated the intelligence of the main character, the painful predicament in which she found herself, and her brave attempt to find her way out through writing.

For more information, check out the facebook page.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2011-06-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by the indomitable Sheila at Book Journey. I've really enjoyed participating in this meme over the last couple of weeks, and I'd like to keep it up at least through the summer. It has been so interesting to see what other folks are reading.

This week was not the fiendish reading week that I had last week. The Idiot and I are still besties, but I had to put the book down temporarily in the middle of a gigantically philosophical discussion between two characters. I have just over one hundred pages left, and plan to finish it this week. Strangely, this read-along has been fantastic for me as a reader, but the posts have had fewer comments than almost anything I've written for this blog. Maybe it is the daunting Russianness of it all.

I finished reading Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, and it sort of ruined me for other books for a few days. I just kind of wanted to sit with the experience of the book, and didn't want any other books in my head for a few days. My review will be posted June 29th as part of the TLC Book Tours schedule.

I also need to post a review of Jo Scott-Coe's Teacher at Point Blank, which I also finished last week. Scott-Coe has a compelling voice and I loved her book-I hope she will be publishing another soon.

I'm about halfway through How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique. She's from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, which is where my husband was born and raised. She's the only contemporary writer I can find from St. Thomas, and I bought her book mostly out of curiosity, but she is a very fine writer and I'm enjoying the book. It is a novella and stories-and I love the short story.

One of the things on my agenda for today is to explore my own bookshelves and see what I might want to read next. I have a book I won from Wendy at Caribousmom that really intrigues me: Being with Animals by Barbara J. King. I'm also going to spend some time with this handsome guy:

Isn't he ridiculously cute? That's Beaux, and he actually belongs to my daughter and her boyfriend, but he's spending a few days with us. So cute.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Summer Institute for Coastal Savannah Writing Project. I'm excited, and somehow just a little nervous. I expect to have less time for reading, but I'm pumped up about all the writing I will be doing.

It's Monday, what are you reading?

The Idiot Part Three

2011-06-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Idiot readalong is hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey.

There was so much talking in Part Three of The Idiot. Everyone goes to their dachas outside of Petersburg. The same painting by Holbein comes up yet again, this time in a long, erratic statement from the consumptive Ippolit:

Evidently Dosteovsky was obsessed with this painting. Ippolit describes the painting (it is the third time the painting is described in the book) in the middle of his long suicide note, which he reads to a crowd that has been drinking champagne all night. Another theme that is repeated throughout the novel is that of a man who has received a death sentence. In the case of Ippolit, the death sentence is a diagnosis of terminal consumption (today we call this disease tuberculosis).

Prince Myshkin seems to vacillate between a love mixed with pity and compassion for Nastasya Filippovna, and a chaste love for the virginal Aglaya. The two women represent two types of sexuality: the fallen woman, who cannot be a wife, and the innocent virgin, who cannot be a wife and remain unspoiled (was Dostoevsky thinking of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary? Myshkin is certainly a Christ-figure).

Part Three contains many scenes that involve the characters talking endlessly to one another: about love, about marriage, about money, about society, about philosophy, about each other. The best scenes in the section are the scene where Myshkin finally sees Nastasya Filippovna in a public place, tries to protect her, and his nearly challenged to a dual, and the final scene in the section, when he briefly sees Nastasya Filippovna after reading her love letters to Aglaya. Yeah, they're all in a relationship, and it's complicated.

Part Three didn't succeed for me the way Parts One and Two did, partly because there was so little action and so much philosophical talkiness. And I'm starting to feel aggravated at Myshkin's dogged innocence. People blatantly lie to him, try to get money from him, drink up all of his champagne, and call him an idiot to his face (when he is clearly the only good and pure man among them). Prince Myshkin takes it all with such Christ-like patience that I start grinding my teeth.

What I love about The Idiot is the emotional intensity of the characters-especially the women. Nastasya Filippovna, who has been "ruined" by her guardian, and seems to be going mad; Aglaya Ivanovna, who longs to learn, be educated, run away, escape her stifling life; Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who is "eccentric," tempestuous, compassionate--each of these women is trapped in a society which gives them no real choices, and yet each has an intellect and sensibility that puts the men to shame.

If you are taking part in the readalong, talk back to me! What did you think of Part Three? What do you think will happen next? Will Rogozhin murder someone? Will Lebedev recover his stolen money (or did he make the whole story up?)?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2011-06-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

My husband has been giving me funny looks. I walk past him, book in hand. He says "Is that the same book you were reading, or is that a new one?"

I've been fiending for books. (Just a couple of years ago I found out from my students that fiend is a verb now. Everything is a verb now.).

Thursday was my last day of school. Friday: I read a book. Saturday: I read a book. Sunday: I read a book.

This weekend I read: On Friday, S.J. Watson's Before I Go To Sleep for TLC Book Tours (review on June 22nd). Then Saturday I finished reading Jo Scott-Coe's phenomenal Teacher at Point Blank: Confronting Sexuality, Violence, and Secrets in a Suburban School. Sunday I read Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, also for TLC Book Tours (review on June 29th). I am still letting State of Wonder soak in. Somewhere near the middle of the novel I forgot it was a novel. Somewhere in the novel I forgot I was reading.

On my list for this week:
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky for a readalong hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. I'm very close to finishing Part Three of this novel, and will post about it on June 15th.
The 9 Rights of Every Writer by Vicki Spandel. This is my assigned reading for the Summer Institute at Coastal Savannah Writing Project (I begin on June 21st).
How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique. This is a novella and stories written by a writer from my husband's birthplace, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. I'm really excited to read this title.

If I finish all of these titles, then I will grab something from my bookshelves. I have a whole list of books I own and want to read. There are also books I've downloaded on my Nook: I'm just going to see where my fiending leads me.

It's Monday. What are you reading?

Sheila at Book Journey is the indefatigable host of It's Monday! What Are You Reading? Her latest post shows a bruised, banged up, smiling Sheila with one arm in a sling. Sheila is so awesomely energetic and incorrigably cheerful, even a trip to the emergency room doesn't keep her from smiling. Here's wishing her a speedy recovery from her cycling accident.

Sunday Coffee

2011-06-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday was the last day of the 2010-2011 academic year for me, and it feels like it went by so fast. Some years just seem to drag on, but this year sped by. As the year wound down, I started to think of all the things I'd like to do differently next year. I need to process all of these thoughts and get them down on paper, because August 8th will be here before I know it. Yes, that's right, we teachers will be back at school on August 8th. I grew up in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, and the first day of school was always after Labor Day, so returning to school in early August just doesn't feel right.

In eight days I begin the Summer Institute at Coastal Savannah Writing Project. This is good, because otherwise I would probably twitter my summer away. Right now all I really want to do is sit on my balcony and read books, a desire I have indulged over the last three days. I finished reading Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson (for TLC Book Tours). I highly recommend this thriller-I read it in one sitting (review to post on June 22nd). I'm also nearly finished with Teacher at Point Blank: Confronting Sexuality, Violence, and Secrets in a Suburban School by Jo Scott-Coe. Some of the most honest and compelling writing I've ever read about the teaching profession.

Yesterday I started Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, which I'm about to go read on the balcony. So far: amazing.

What are your reading plans for the day (or the summer)?

Top Ten Tuesday: The Places We Find Ourselves

2011-06-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

The Places We Find Ourselves
When I escape into a book, where do I go? Whether I enter a wardrobe and come out into a snowy land of talking animals, or take a bite of a madeleine and visit Combray, when I read I go somewhere.

1. Russian novels and stories take me to the steppe or to Petersburg or Moscow or the village. I love Dostoevsky and Chekhov and Tolstoy and Babel, and a book set in Russia will always intrigue me.
2. Boarding schools. Some of my favorite books (Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist) have explored the abuse of power and potential for corruption inherent in the closed environment of the boarding school. The school in Jane Eyre, Lowood, was based on an actual school where Charlotte Bronte's sister died due to the appalling conditions.
3. Institutes and asylums fascinate me for the same reason. Strange things happen in these closed environments. Sometimes, as in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, patients who are cured don't want to leave the safety of their hothouse environment.
4. The Garden is another suggestive place. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett beautifully exploits the richly suggestive themes of an enclosed and secret garden.
5. The Imaginary World Beyond the Wardrobe. As a child I was enthralled by the idea that you could pass a threshold and move from one world to another. As an adult I know that's what's known as "a book."
6. Into the Future. Dystopia is a place I love to visit. Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake allow me to think about the possible and the unspeakable.
7. Somewhere in Another Galaxy. Outer space lets us think about inner space. I'm not a huge science fiction fan, but sometimes I want to go on an intergalactic voyage. A Wrinkle in Time was a childhood favorite, and I still think about that book sometimes.
8. Wyoming. Annie Proulx writes with stark simplicity about the people of Wyoming. Makes me want to grab my cowboy hat.
9. Canada. Alice Munro's stories are firmly rooted in her home country. True, the small towns and fox farms of Ontario don't get much tourist traffic, but I feel that I know the landscape through her stories.
10. The Geography of the Imagination. You have to admire the audacity of writers who spin a tale that revolves around a place they've visited only in their imaginations. Franz Kafka never visited the United States, but that didn't prevent him from inventing Amerika in his imagination.

I love the women of The Broke and the Bookish for coming up with a new Top Ten every week.
Where do you travel when you read?

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

2011-06-05T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

Sheila of Book Journey hosts this meme. This is a fun way to find out what others are reading, and learn about new books. This is my last week of school for this academic year; we are winding down. Students are taking exams, and teachers are finalizing grades and starting to pack up their classrooms. I'm looking forward to two things: a summer of reading, and my participation in the Summer Instittute at Coastal Savannah Writing Project. I'll be in class for the whole day during the week, but I won't have lesson plans, grading, or lunch duty! I'm sure I will find time to read in the evenings and on the weekend, and I'm looking forward to reading with abandon.

So, as we head into the home stretch, here is what I am reading, and what I have lined up for the week:

I'm continuing to read The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky as part of the read-along at A Literary Odyssey. I've already posted on Part One and Part Two. Feel free to leave a comment if you have read The Idiot, or any other Dostoevsky novel. I'm taking this reading experience slowly and savoring it.

I've also been reading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. This is just reading kismet. This is another book I've been reading slowly. As it turns out, Dostoevsky admired the work of Dickens, and Our Mutual Friend was a book that influenced him while he was writing The Idiot. I hope to do a little research so I can discuss this connection in my next post for The Idiot.

I've also been reading Teacher at Point Blank by Jo Scott-Coe (she refers to herself as a recovering teacher). All I can say at this point is that Scott-Coe reflects on teaching within philosphical and pedagogical frameworks; she has written a memoir, but her memoir reflects on political, social, and gender issues, and so far it is fascinating.

Also lined up for review: Before I Go To Sleep, a thriller by S.J. Watson, and To Be Queen, historical fiction by Christy English.

And I picked up Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. at Barnes and Noble this weekend. I am working on some health issues, and this book looks like an approach that might work for me--and for my mostly vegan, always vegetarian dietary requirements.

That seems like plenty for this week, don't you think? Tonight is graduation at my school, and Thursday is the last day for teachers. I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch with a book with no lesson plans, grades, or other duties hanging over my head.

It's Monday--what are you reading?

Sunday Coffee

2011-06-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

Warning: Moral Outrage Ahead

The Latest Moral Panic
Something tells me the Wall Street Journal had no idea of the hornet's nest they were stirring up when they published an article about the supposed "dark side" of YA literature. This kerfluffle (or is it a brouhaha?) will probably have a beneficial effect on YA literature as a whole: if the response on twitter and the internet is any indication, people are fired up. In the end, more people of all ages will see what a wide and devoted following YA literature has. Here is the best thing I've seen on the topic so far today: Laurie Halse Anderson's post, "Stuck Between Rage and Compassion."

I was spending time with my young adult daughter this weekend, so I missed much of the conversation on twitter (#YASaves). I have a few thoughts on the topic, having raised two daughters to adulthood, having been a voracious reader from childhood, and being a high school English teacher. First of all, if you are a parent choosing books to share with your child (ages 8-13) there is still plenty of literature that is not dark. I'm thinking of some wonderful books my children and I loved, including Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family, and books like Caddie Woodlawn and the Little House on the Prairie books. There is C.S. Lewis--or maybe you prefer Philip Pullman. What about Chris Crutcher, and Jerry Spinelli? I don't have younger children, and I teach older teens, so I'm out of touch with the younger readers, but I know there is a wide choice of books available for readers in their "tweens."

When it comes to older readers, in my experience, readers find the books they need. My parents wisely never tried to censor or control my reading choices when I was growing up, and I treated my own children the same way. The most important advice I could give to concerned parents would be to know your children as people and as readers; if you have concerns or questions, an open, non-judgmental conversation is the best place to start. Maybe parents could go to the bookstore with their teens, and have conversations about what it is the teens like or love about the books they read.

My high school sophomores gave Book Talks last week, and I loved hearing their honest opinions about the books they choose to read. The classroom suddenly came to life with bubbly conversations as the students enthusiastically talked about the books they love.

When I was nine or ten years old I started reading adult literature; I read everything from Gone with the Wind to Victoria Holt. I also read what literature there was in the YA category back then: Go Ask Alice and The Outsiders. I can safely report that I remain uncorrupted. I do understand parental concern about what younger readers encounter, and to those parents I would simply say: talk to your children. Look for books together that reflect your family's values. But this manufactured outrage and concern about YA Literature as some kind of dreadful moral plague is misplaced, in my opinion. I don't think I have anything to say that someone else hasn't said better, but if you watch the video at the beginning of this post, you'll see that in the 1950's comic books sparked a similar "moral panic." (There's a book about this: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu CS Monitor review here).

I really didn't mean to go on for so long, but the spirit moved me. In other news, I went to the beach, spent time with my lovely and brilliant daughter, and continued to be enthralled by The Idiot (for specifics on my enthrallment, see my posts on Part One and Part Two). I have lots and lots of books just waiting for the end of the school year (more on that tomorrow). I can't wait to throw myself into a book (guiltlessly).

What's your take on the #YASaves conversation? Did a book save you?

Review: Tangled Webs

2011-05-31T20:25:00.000-07:00

Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Underminging America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff
James B. Stewart
Penguin Press, 2011
harcover, $29.95
a copy of this book was provided to me through TLC Book Tours

Tangled Webs is a painstaking examination of the role of perjury in our society. James B. Stewart details four cases that exemplify the corruption of the truth through lies: Martha Stewart who was convicted of perjury in a case involving the sale of stocks; I. "Scooter" Libby in a case involving the leak identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA operative; Barry Bonds, who faced perjury charges for lying about illegal steriod use; and Bernie Madoff, convicted of a Ponzi scheme. In each of these examples, people lied because they thought they could get away with it. James B.Stewart builds an argument that perjury endangers our society, saying "...the truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost." (224)

The subtitle: How False Statements Are Undermining America reveals the seriousness with which Stewart views the act of perjury. Although there is little conclusive data on actual acts of perjury, Stewart posits that instances of perjury are on the increase, and that a cavalier attitude toward lies and perjury is damaging our society.

Whether corruption, hubris, or sociopathy is at the root of perjury, there is no doubt that if perjury is prevalent, any sense of trust in our judicial system must collapse.

Stewart approaches his subject with legalistic scrutiny. Each section is crammed with evidence, interviews, factual evidence, and a complete chronology of the incident. At times all the details become overwhelming; the carefully drawn characters give some relief to the avalanche of fact. Stewart builds his overall case like a prosecutor, and at times this reader began to lose hold of the larger picture, and how the multitude of details fit in. But Stewart is convincing when it counts: through the slow accretion of verifiable details, Stewart shows how lies eat away at the fabric of public confidence. Of the Scooter Libby incident, Stewart writes: "In light of this sorry spectacle, could anyone be blamed for being cynical about the integrity of government officials? The loss in public confidence is incalcuable." (262)

Perhaps the ultimate goal of this book is to stimulate "a capacity for moral outrage" among its readers. In the end Stewart concludes that people like Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds, and Bernie Madoff lie because they "thought they could get away with it." Stewart calls on any administration--Republican or Democrat--to"reaffirm the rule of law, the importance of the truth, and embark on a sustained, viable, and public campaign to hold accountable those who commit perjury and false statements." (441)

Tangled Webs takes a serious look at the problem of lying in contemporary society, and perjury in our judicial system. There is no question that Stewart's goal is a worthy one; however, the book's strength is also its weakness. In building his case for the devastating effects of perjury, Stewart creates a dense mass of facts, and at times the reader may lose sight of the larger point being made. The conclusion of the book finally offers the reader an answer to the question "so what?" After building a case that perjury is a serious problem, Stewart shows the reader why it matters.

This book is for those who are savvy about our legal system, philosophically engaged by the moral dimension, and concerned enough to want to know more.

The Idiot: Part Two

2011-05-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky

translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Everyman's Library

615 pages (excluding notes)

Read-along sponsored by Allie at A Literary Odyssey

Part Two

'An astonishing face!' Replied the prince. 'And I'm convinced that her fate is no ordinary one. It's a gay face, but she has suffered terribly, eh? It speaks in her eyes, these two little bones, the two points under her eyes where the cheeks begin. It's a proud face, terribly proud, and I don't know whether she's kind or not. Ah, if only she were kind! Everything would be saved!' (36)

In Part One of The Idiot, Prince Myshkin falls in love with a photograph Nastasya Filippovna, a courtesan who was seduced as a young girl by her guardian, the remorselessly cruel and callous Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky. Nastasya Filippovna becomes the object of a kind of mercenary competition between several of the male characters in Part One. She is made various offers, from cash to "an astonishing string of pearls, which had cost an enormous price"--all part of a crass and crude attempt to reduce this damaged and beautiful woman to chattel.

Part One also establishes a theme of death by execution and murder, with Prince Myshkin relating several stories involving executions or near executions (often by guillotine). In fact, Dostoevsky was once the victim of a cruel prank, in which he was led to believe he was about to be executed for illegal political activities. He was actually blindfolded and facing a firing squad when the blindfold was removed and he was told he had been pardoned. This experience left an indelible impression on Dostoevsky, and Prince Myshkin's tales of condemned men are certainly based on his personal experience: "Maybe there's a man who has had the sentence read to him, has been allowed to suffer, and then has been told, 'Go, you're forgiven. That man might be able to tell us something.'

Throughout Part One and Part Two there are references to execution by guillotine, and to murder by knife.

Prince Myshkin goes to see Rogozhin, who had left with Nastasya Filippovna at the end of Part One. Nastasya has agreed to marry Rogozhin, but keeps putting the marriage off. While at the apartment where Rogozhin is now living, Prince Myshkin focuses on three significant objects: a knife with a stag horn handle, a painting of Rogozhin's father, and a copy of Christ's Body in the Tomb by Hans Holbein (a painting Dostoevsky says can cause a man to lose his faith).

Prince Myshkin becomes further entwined with Lebedev, with the General Epanchin's family, and with Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin (Kolya), Gavrila Adralionovich's brother. He continues to act the part of the holy fool, and suffers an epileptic fit, which is treated as both an illness and a spiritual experience (Dostoevsky himself suffered from epilepsy). Nastasya Filippovna makes a very tangential reappearance at the end of Part Two, an entrance shrouded in intrigue.

Reading The Idiot is an intense intellectual and emotional experience. This novel has me in its grip, and I would like to simply abandon myself to it entirely. Dostoevsky obviously expereinced life in the most intense and heightened way, and his novels are suffused with exquisite emotion. He was profoundly affected by art, and in addition to the Holbein above, this Holbein painting is referenced in the novel:

The patron who commisioned the painting, the Burgomeister JacobMyer, is depicted to the side with his two deceased children. On the right hand side of the painting are Myer's wife with their daughte, with his deceased wife behind her. A strange comingling of the living and the dead.

My next post for The Idiot read-along (for Part Three) with be on or about June 15th.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

2011-05-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through Books. Sheila impresses me through her irrepressible spirit and her seemingly boundless energy. Since I have a day off from school today,I thought I'd participate in this meme for the first time.

Here's what I was reading this week:
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I'm participating in a read-along with Allie at A Literary Odyssey, and this week I finished Part Two of this 615 page novel.
Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff by James B. Stewart, for TLC Book Tours (review on June 1st).
Teacher at Point Blank: Confronting Sexuality, Violence, and Secrets in a Suburban School by former high school English teacher Jo Scott-Coe.
Antigone by Sophocles (teaching this)
Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom (reading this aloud to some sophomores)
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens is still on my nightstand, and I'm eager to get back to it.

To tell you the truth, I don't even want to think about what I'm reading next. That is another long list! My head is full of books.

We only have nine days left in this school year. I'm weirdly in denial about this. I'm ready, but not ready, for this school year to end.

It's Monday, what are you reading?

Sunday Coffee

2011-05-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

How to Thank a Teacher

As teachers and students are wrapping up the school year, parents and some students might be wondering about "teacher gifts." This is probably more common in younger grades, but as a high school teacher, I have received many gifts from students and their families. Usually it is something small (a bottle of lotion, soap, homemade cookies, maple syrup). I've also receieved gift cards (often for bookstores), and I have to admit that was nice. And once I received an extremely high-quality key chain from a famous fashion designer.

I have a suggestion for a gift that is virtually free. If you want to thank a teacher, do it in writing. The thank you notes and letters that I have received from students and their families are the most cherished gifts I have ever been bestowed, and I have saved every one. Even if it is scrawled on the crumpled page of a spiral notebook, and torn out with those little fragments dangling, I cherish a personal note.

So if you want to make your teacher, or your child's teacher, feel appreciated, write a personal note. It doesn't have to be long, but it should be specific. Saying "I appreciate all that you have done for my son" is not as meaningful as "thank you for igniting my son's interest in books" or "thank you for helping Johnny increase his vocabulary."

I'm thinking about this because I've gotten a couple of notes from students this year, and they carry so much weight for me. It means everything that J. says I inspired him to write, or that A. remembers my passion for literature, and thanks me for helping her come to love the poetry of John Keats.

Armchair BEA

I want to encourage anyone who didn't make it to BEA (and anyone who did make it to BEA) to spend some time checking out the posts at Armchair BEA. Since we have a three-day weekend, I'm going to grant myself the luxury of spending some time checking out all the participant posts. Next year I plan to participate more fully, and not just lurk the first few days.

Why Do We Book Blog

For an insightful take on the question of why we blog about books, check out this well-written and thoughtful post by Red at What Red Read.

This question of why book bloggers blog about books has been in the blogosphere lately. The Reading Ape has a whole series of posts on the topic, and it was a question for Armchair BEA posts.

A Question for You

The question of why I blog about books is one I'd like to save for a fully conceived post. But here are some thoughts: I blog about books because writing helps me organize my thoughts, because writing about the books I have read deepens my understanding of those books, because writing is how I engage with the world, because I write for the entire bookish audience (bloggers, readers, authors, my Mom) hoping they will write back. Because I want to be a part of the conversation.

If you are a book blogger, why do you do it? If you are a reader of book blogs, why do you read book blogs, and what do you most appreciate?

Armchair BEA Recap

2011-05-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

I only joined the Armchair BEA for the last couple of days of the event, but I'm still glad I participated. Next year I'd like to take a more well-planned approach: now that I know how many events there are, and what's involved, I'll get myself ready to participate. The organizers did a wonderful job of providing a great deal of information, constant updates, posts, vlogs, and other fun stuff. I lurked for at first, then couldn't resist crashing the party near the end. My favorite part of Armchair BEA was reading the posts of the participants. I liked the introductions and the interviews because I really enjoy knowing more about the bloggers behind the blog. Although I didn't participate in any of the twitter parties, next year I plan to, because most of the participants raved about them. The more book blogger events I participate in, the more I like book bloggers. I will definitely be taking part in Armchair BEA next year.

Armchair BEA: Blogging About Blogging

2011-05-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is the final day of Armchair BEA, and today's topic is (blogging about) blogging.

How do you blog? Do you post daily, several times a week, weekly?

Do you participate in memes, read-alongs, and challenges?

Do you post structured reviews on a regular basis?

What makes your blog distinctive: do you have a niche, do you blog about a particular genre?

Are you happy with the number of comments your posts generate? Do you comment back immediately?

Are you happy with the number of followers or subscribers you have? Do you have strategies for generating more followers?

Do you use social media?

Most bloggers have to make a decision about each of these questions eventually. Some bloggers devote many hours a day to their blogs, and they may post daily. At some time most bloggers have posted because they felt like they"should." And many bloggers seem to feel they need to apologize if they don't post for a while. My posting patterns follow the school year: When school gears up the second week of August, my posts diminish. During the school year I post two to three times a week-high stress months (usually October, March, and May) I may post less than that. I hate writing posts just because I feel I "need to." Those posts usually end up sounding strained.

I do like memes, read-alongs, and challenges because that increases my interaction with other book bloggers. The conversations and friendships that are struck up in these group activities are the most rewarding part of blogging for me. As I said in yesterday's post, it's about relationships.

One insight that I've come to is that the best blog posts are those that tap into the blogger's passion. While I initially wrote only about books, I found that when I wrote more personal posts that the feedback was very positive. When I write about things that are really close to my heart, like my teaching job, my family, or my favorite books, the response is gratifying. Two of my own favorite posts were about my father (Remembering Dad with a Book in His Hands) and a book I love with a passion (Middlemarch, My Love). I wish I could always write from that genuine, intense place.

The book blogs I most admire are ones where the writer has an original, distinctive voice. It might be informal and warm, or professorial, but the voice is authentic and unstudied. I would like to find that voice for my blog-and I think it is harder than it looks.

Generating comments is a struggle for me. Sometimes I post a review or write about a book that mean a lot to me, and there are only a few comments. There are blogs that I visit on a regular basis that generate dozens of comments for every post, and I want some of that mojo. Still trying to figure that one out.

"Followers" sounds vaguely cult-like, and "subscribers" seems very impersonal. The number of readers my blog attracts is important to me, but I don't like participating in events for the sole purpose of "getting followers." I'd like to attract loyal readers by writing posts people will want to read--but there are days and weeks when my posts don't necessarily have that much juice. I appreciate the readers who continue to stay with me through thick and thin. I do think twitter helps generate traffic to the blog, and also is a way of widening the circle of potential readers. Plus, it's addictively fun.

I do love blogging about books, whatever the occasional frustrations may be. As a book blogger, I have the opportunity to write frequently for an audience that shares one of my greatest passions. My book blog is very personal for me, and I am always thinking about what I want to write for my blog. Why I blog about books, how I want to write and think about books for the blog, and how I want my blog to be a part of the large book blog conversation are questions I find perplexing and engaging. What's your take on all this? Remember, comments=book blogger love.

Armchair BEA: Relationships for Introverts

2011-05-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm very late to the party: I only signed up for Armchair BEA today.
The real BEA is forever out of reach, at least as long as I'm a teacher. This week we had final exams for seniors, and we are in our last days of instruction. Our underclassmen will begin their exams next Friday. I've been reading the Armchair BEA posts with pleasure and interest, so at the last hour, I'm in. The topic today is "Relationships." This really gets me where I live, because--even though I'm an introvert at heart--I really believe in the power of relationships. That doesn't mean I'm good at them (more on that later) but I see relationships as the most powerful, important aspect of my work and my life. In my teaching career, I think teaching and learning begin and end with a relationship of trust and sincere admiration. No matter how difficult a student is, I always try to find something to like in that person, and I believe that building relationships with my students is essential to being a good teacher.

It's true in book blogging too. Even though for the first few months of blogging, I was basically just talking to myself, I slowly realized how important relationships are to building an audience for the blog, and developing the kind of conversation that makes a blog interesting.

An aside: I'm not doing a very good job of tending to the relationships right now. I'm going to blame the job that ate my life, and my own kind of obliviousness. I'm working on it (and I'm definitely a work in progress).

I love, love, love getting comments on my blog. And leaving comments is equally engaging and fun, when I make the time for it. There are a few folks who have been incredibly kind and generous with their time and their comments. I feel funny about naming names, but I hope you know who you are.

One thing that really surprised me as a neophyte blogger was that writers would talk to me about their work, read my reviews, and leave gracious and grateful comments. That has been so nice. This is one of the interesting things about book blogging--the way it is a real conversation between all kinds of people in the book world: readers, writers, publicists, and other publishing professionals. It seems so democratic and egalitarian, and book bloggers (who are readers with enormous passion and dedication) are having a profound effect on the way books are marketed and sold.

One of the earliest relationships I developed with a writer was with novelist Priya Parmar. Her novel Exit the Actress was not yet published when I started following Priya's blog The Plum Bean Project. Priya's warm personality comes through in all of her writing, and by reading and commenting on her blog, as she read and commented on mine, I came to know a great deal about the process of writing and publishing a novel. Exit the Actress was more than just another ARC by the time I received my copy. My interview with Priya was the first (well, only) author interview on my blog, and my questions were not just boilerplate questions because I already knew so much about Priya and her book.

The authors I've interacted with through blogging have been so generous (to book bloggers, and to each other). This is one of the aspects of book blogging that surprised me, and also enriched my experience as a reader.

It's kind of funny-bookworms and writers tend to be introverted (unlike the extroverted majority). But through book blogs and social media, we can develop networks of friends, have intense conversations about our most passionate interests, and find kindred spirits.

I'd love to hear from you, readers. Tell me about a friendship or reader-to-writer relationship you've formed because of a book blog....

The Idiot

2011-05-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Everyman's Library

Readalong hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey

Part One
I finished the first part of The Idiot today, a little behind schedule. I first read The Idiot back in high school, and I remember carrying the Signet paperback around with me and reading it at every opportunity. Even at age fifteen, I knew Prince Myshkin was a holy fool and a Christ figure. I'm not sure if I understood much of the historical context, and I don't know what I made of all the philosophy, but this book inaugurated my lifelong love of Russian literature.

A few things that I probably missed on the first read: the first part of the novel (175 pages) takes place during one long day (Aristotelian unity!). At fifteen I hadn't seen La Traviata, nor had I read Dumas, so the references to camellias and La Dame aux camellias wouldn't have meant much to me. La Traviata tells the story of the doomed Violetta, a courtesan who nobly gives up her lover (so that the lover's sister can marry without scandal). At the end of the opera, Violette dies of consumption, but not before being reunited with her lover, and singing a beautiful aria.

The Idiot begins with a chance meeting on a train. Prince Myshkin, an impoverished Russian with a noble name (but not a rouble to his name) meets a social climber (Lebedev) and a rogue who has recently become heir to a fortune. The name of a stunning courtesan, Nastasya Filippovna, is first mentioned in this first scene of the book. Part One of the novel ends in Nastasya Filippovna's apartment.

Even this far into the novel, I am struck by how rich it is. Dostoevsky had a genius for writing about corruption, love, and money, and the complicated chaos that ensues when the three are combined. Prince Myshkin appears to be either a simpleton, or a saint. Throughout the first part of the book, people insult Prince Myskin, and call him an idiot to his face. At the same time, Myshkin has an uncanny ability to endear himself to strangers, conjure the truth from liars, and see into the hearts of women.

The character of Nastasya is the most entrancing and confusing after Myshkin. Brought up by her guardian, the wealthy and corrupt Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, Nastasya became her guardian's mistress. You don't have to look any further than recent headlines to recognize the arrogant, entitled, narcissistic personality of Totsky--who once, he has corrupted Nastasya, ruined her reputation, and earned her hatred and contempt, is eager to marry her off.

Corruption and money seem to be at the core of The Idiot. My first reading of this novel took place so long ago, I've forgotten most of the plot details. The characters, especially Myshkin, have stayed with me. Having read Crime and Punishment within the last couple of years, I'll be interested to see how The Idiot compares. And I've developed some understanding of Russian names (the variations on characters' names can be a serious obstacle to understanding Russian novels). It helps to know that it is customary for Russians to address one another by first and middle names (everyone has a middle name, as well as a last name). The middle name is the patronymic, and the patronymic is formed by adding an ending (for example, -in, -ev, -ov,-ovich for men, and -eva, -ova, -ina, -ovna for women) to the given name of someone's father. So, for example, Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky (his father's given name was Ivan). Then, if that isn't confusing enough, Russian first names are often given diminutives, or nicknames. So Katerina becomes Katya.For a reader who doesn't know all of this, reading a Russian novel can be extremely confusing--you might even think that a new character is being introduced, when really the main character is being address by a diminutive combined with her patronymic.The patronymic can also be used affectionately and made diminutive. In general, Russians express affection or respect through all the various forms of address, and something of the relationship between two characters can be conveyed by the way one character addresses another.

As with many great classic books, I'm struck by how relevant The Idiot is.Older, powerful men still exploit younger beautiful women. Money still corrupts. The innocent or pure are still assumed to be idiots.

Thanks to Allie at The Literary Odyssey for hosting this read-along. If you aren't already a reader of Allie's blog, you should really check it out. Allie has challenged herself to read 250 classic books, and her reviews and other posts are always thought-provoking.

Sunday Coffee

2011-05-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

The End is Near
The end of something is always near. Also the beginning. I'm still not sure who ~~Howard~~ Harold Camping really is, but I find it incredibly sad that some people took his words so seriously that they did drastically stupid, and in some cases, drastically criminal things. This kind of apocalyptic thinking just doesn't compute for me, and it would be funny if it weren't sad.

For those of us who teach, the end of another school year is near. The former students who are finished with their first year of college are popping in to visit, and I'm starting to think about summer. I'm also in that phase of the teaching year where I have a sudden retrospective idea of what I should have done differently. Now is the time to write those thoughts down, because by August I will have forgotten it all.

This summer I'll be participating in Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah. This wonderful program is one of the items Congress decided to eliminate, so funding was stopped in the middle of the year. That fact is just one of many things that doesn't make sense to me in this era of politics and education. Or maybe I should say the politics of education. The National Writing Project has a budget that is infinitesimal compared to, say, tax breaks for corporations or two wars. It is an organization with a huge "bang for the buck" since each teacher who participates goes on to train other teachers. NWP has a goal of improving the teaching of writing by training teachers and by allowing teachers to develop as writers. I find it stunning that Congress did not think the mission of NWP was important enough to save this program. The CSWP group met for orientation last weekend, and I am so excited about working with these writers. Everyone who participates in NWP says it is a life-changing experience, so I can't wait.

The past week has been a great reading week for me. I participated in the Dueling Authors:Austen vs. Dickens Tour at The Classics Circuit. I didn't finish my book (Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens), but I plan to-Our Mutual Friend is everything I hoped it would be, and I plan another post when I actually finish the behemoth.Then, as kismet would have it, I had just read Ordinary Thunderstorms for TLC Book Tours, and that just enriched my appreciation for both books. I was impressed by the depth of Ordinary Thunderstorms, and the rich texture of the novel. Ordinary Thunderstorms is set in London, and the Thames plays a critical role in this novel and in Our Mutual Friend. I love when the books I am reading connect.

Right now I have put everything else aside for Dostoevsky's The Idiot.I read this book back in high school--I remember carrying the Signet paperback everywhere I went. Most likely I read a Constance Garnett translation; now I'm reading the Everyman's hardcover edition translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The footnotes are very helpful; also helpful is the list of names I've started keeping by my side as I read. Russian names! Translations of Russian novels should include a short chapter on Russian patronymics and the endearing and confusing nicknames that every character must have. I'm reading The Idiot as part of a read-along sponsored by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. My goal for today is to finish Part One of the novel (I'm very close), after which I will write my first of at least two posts.

I'm really ready to gorge myself on books. That's what I normally do in the first weeks of the summer. I'd like to do a post on all the books I have lined up (I recently made of list of the books I have agreed to review, and those I really, really want to read right now. There are eighteen books on the list). Should I chomp my way through some fun genre reads, or should I get all serious and classic this summer? Maybe reading The Idiot will reignite my love affair with the Russians, and I'll plow through War and Peace this summer. Last summer I did this guest post over at Desert Book Chick about my long-standing passion for Russian literature. Maybe this summer I will indulge myself with a slew of Russians. June 9th is my last day of school-what will I be reading? What will you be reading this summer: classics, big fat beach reads, or both?

Review: Ordinary Thunderstorms

2011-05-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

Ordinary Thunderstorms
William Boyd
Harper Perrenial
paperback, $15.99
403 pages
a copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

A River Runs Through It
Ordinary Thunderstorms begins and ends on the river Thames. Adam Kindred, a climatologist, is in London to interview for a job. He takes a walk along the river, then walks into a restaurant. A chance encounter then hurls Adam out of the life he knew, into a life he must invent as he goes along--always looking over his shoulder. Adam's identity, his assured place in the world, disappears, replaced by a life hidden, lived on the edges of society.

William Boyd has written a swiftly moving, intelligent novel that succeeds on many levels. Ordinary Thunderstorms succeeds at the narrative level: it tells a compelling story. This is a thriller with expert pacing. As Adam is forced to abandon his identity, his name, his credit cards, his history, and all that attaches him to the social fabric of life, he descends into a Dickensian underground, and this is where the novel really succeeds. The denizens of London's underworld: prostitutes, petty criminals, cab drivers, and a lethal, mercenary hit man give Ordinary Thunderstorms a gritty, bleak texture.

The underground London Adam disappears into is contrasted the the sleekly sinister world of corporate corruption. Throw into this mix an attractive police officer from London's Marine Support Unit who lives on the Thames in a converted battleship with her pot-smoking father. Ordinary Thunderstorms seamlessly brings together sharply drawn characters from London's highest social spheres to the invisible sphere at the bottom. Boyd clearly has a love affair with the city of London, and with the river that runs through it, and this intimate journey through the city is what finally had me loving Ordinary Thunderstorms.

If you like intelligent writing, plenty of narrative action, and novels that ask more questions than they answer, you will love Ordinary Thunderstorms.

Dueling Authors:Austen vs. Dickens Tour - Our Mutual Friend

2011-05-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Dueling Authors: Austen vs Dickens
This is just the kind of semi-absurd competition I like. After all, could two classic authors be more different in style, subject, or intent? The sedate Miss Austen and the prolific Mr. Dickens would hardly engage in a smackdown. But it's kind of fun to imagine the pair facing off. Would they remove their kid gloves?

Rebecca Reid at The Classics Circuit came up with this idea, and it seemed like the perfect occasion to dive into one Dickens novel I've been meaning to read: Our Mutual Friend.

I chose the Penguin Classics edition of the novel, and I'm finding the excellent notes to be very useful. I also like the fact that this edition includes the original illustrations by Marcus Stone from the 1865 two-volume edition published by Chapman and Hall. The illustrations are helpful in comprehending some of the period details. There is also a lengthy introduction to Our Mutual Friend, but I prefer to read introductions after I finish a book, not before.

Our Mutual Friend begins in darkness and death. A young girl and her father row in deepest night on the Thames. They are dragging something unspeakable: a dead body, which the father has already relieved of his worldly goods, on the theory that a dead man can't own property. In true Dickensian tradition, there is a fortune attached to the dead man, a great deal of poverty, greed, social climbing, and social satire. Even though I am less than halfway through the novel, I can see the way the pieces of the plot are going to fit together: the dead body (thought to be the heir of a fortune made in "dust") is almost certainly not really the heir. And the mysterious young lodger at the Wilfer home may be there not just by coincidence. And the somewhat obnoxious but really very pretty Bella Wilfer may or may not redeem herself by the end of the novel.

Our Mutual Friend gives the reader everything at which Dickens excelled--and some at which Dickens perhaps went a bit too far. If you are at all put off by caricature, then Dickens may grate on you at times. He had a curious knack for blending caricature and character in a way that I find immensely entertaining. Compared to contemporary novelists, Dickens is verbose, almost hysterically so. The details add up--sometimes extraneously. A chapter early in the book set at the home of the Veneerings (rather shallow people) is so filled with satirical comments and contemporary allusions that most modern readers will resort to the end notes many, many times. And if you aren't immersed in Victorian trivia or a Victorian scholar, it may sometimes be simply confusing. But I advise the reader to persevere, because Dickens has an inimitable ability to evince the reader's sympathies. His characters, the good ones, will have you fretting on their behalf (Boffin, the "Golden Dustman" is too good for his own good, and is sure to come to grief). His characters, the bad ones, are such scoundrels they nearly defy belief--yet you will believe in them.

Dickens has the little details that delight, as in this description of a school mistress and her house:

It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden attached to her small official residence, with little windows like the eyes in needles, and little doors like the covers of school books.

That is Dickens: even the smallest details are precise and add to the reader's understanding of the character. Dickens gets the big picture too: only Dickens could come up with a fortune made in dust.

Reading an eight-hundred page novel in the age of twitter and texting can be a challenge. And yes, at times Dickens just seems wordy. But what strikes me, in reading Our Mutual Friend is how perfectly apropos this novel is. As our society becomes more and more characterized by a gaping divide between the very rich and the rest of us, as politicians decide how little or how much we ought to do for the poor, the elderly, and the young, Dickens is timely. Dickens exposes behavior and motives not at all different from what we witness in our daily life; his characters are as real and as relevant as any in contemporary fiction, and the greed, social climbing, and selfishness that Dickens satirizes in Our Mutual Friend can be seen in the newspaper, the blogosphere, and the cable news networks.

I wish I could give a full review of Our Mutual Friend, but I am deep in the middle of the novel. When I finish the novel I will have a follow-up post. In the boxing ring, I think Austen and Dickens are both champions. They are different weight classes, and their reach is not the same (Austen had drawing room reach, while Dickens extended the length of London at least). I love the work of each, so for this match I think it's a split decision.

Have you read this Dickens novel, or any others? Can you take on this eight-hundred page champion?

Sunday Coffee

2011-05-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday Coffee
Sometimes living on an island get get a little...insular. So the husband and I got in the car and drove today, with no particular destination in mind. It was a beautiful day, and we ended up in St. Mary's, Georgia, only because we had never been there before. There is a submarine base there, and a tiny waterfront with working boats (shrimp boats) and pleasure boats, as well as a ferry to Cumberland Island. There is a cute little park where my husband and I sat and watched the boats, the people, and this buzzard, which was diving at a tree with a nest-the mother bird kept chasing the buzzard away.

While we were sitting in the park, my husband and I were careful to observe all the rules of the park, including the one concerning the use of profanity: when in Rome!

Here is one of the boats we saw: I don't know how old this boat is, but my guess is it's at least seventy-five years old, and it is constructed entirely of wood.

This wasn't a productive week for those of us who use blogger. I didn't have any posts planned, but I wasn't able to read blog posts and comment this week, and I couldn't respond to the comments on my blog. Frustrating.

Here's a link I want to share with my readers. Beth Hoffman is the author of Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt; I've been following her on twitter where she is @wordrunner, and on her web page at bethhoffman.net.

I really love writers who are generous to other writers, and Beth Hoffman uses her blog to promote many writers. A recent guest post by Mitchell James Kaplan, author of By Fire, By Water discusses the importance of empathy for novelists: this post is definitely worth checking out. To find out more about Kaplan's novel, check out his web site here: mitchelljameskaplan.com.

Top Ten Tuesday: Jerks!

2011-05-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Tuesday
Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week's topic is:
The Ten Biggest Jerks in Literature
1. In Jane Austen's Persuasion, jerks do abound. The main character, Anne Elliot has an appalling family. Her father, Sir Walter, takes the number one spot on my list. He is stupid, stuck-up, and a crashing bore.
2. Also from Persuasion, Sir Walter's cousin William Elliot. Cad.
3. From David Copperfield, Steerforth, who seduces and abandons Little Emily.
4. Fred Vincy of Middlemarch, who eventually redeems himself.
5. Anse Bundren from William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Much of the dark humor in the novel arises out of this character, but in the end he is a self-serving old vulture.
6. Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby his casual brutality, his sense of entitlement, his deeply stupid nature make this guy a jerk.

That's all I can come up with folks-jerks should be easier to find. But villains seem to be more prevalent in literature than plain old every day jerks.

Sunday Coffee

2011-05-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

That Shakespeare Stuff Really Came in Handy

One of the perks of being a teacher is the way former students pop up all over the place. One night I was at a movie with my husband, watching the previews, and a head popped through the gap in the row in front of us and whispered "Mrs. Sumner!" I still have no idea who that was.

So Wednesday afternoon, I saw this tall person walking toward me calling out "Mrs. Sumner!" and it turned out to be a student who graduated last year. He just finished up his first year of college, and is moving halfway across the country--and he stopped by the school to say goodbye to me. Don't you love that? It turns out that all those Shakespeare lessons (the sonnets, Macbeth) were not a waste of his time after all. You know how kids will say: I'm never going to use this again in my life (like Shakespearean sonnets are some sort of archaic tool no longer useful in real life). Well, apparently my former student's English literature class heavily emphasized Shakespeare. So as R. put it: "By the way, that Shakespeare stuff really came in handy." Glad to hear it.

Our Mutual Friend

For a long time I've wanted to read the last novel Charles Dickens completed, Our Mutual Friend. This seemed like the perfect opportunity:

Sponsored by Rebecca Reid at The Classics Circuit, The Dueling Authors Tour promises to be great fun. It's a wonderful excuse to read a classic that I've been wanting to read anyway.

Smarty Smarty McSmart Smart

I have to admit that this guy makes me feel smarter for reading him but dumber by comparison. The Reading Ape had an interesting post about why we do this book blogging blather, and he specifically mentions challenges and readalongs. I'm still thinking on it, but I like the questions this Ape asks. In this case, one question he asks is whether we mistake the trappings of reading with the thing we like about reading. And whether we are avoiding the real thing itself (writing about reading) and talking more about the things that are "easier to write about?" I don't really have an answer for these questions, but I'm continuing to let them percolate in my brain.

For All the Books You Read to Me, Gave to Me, For the Library and the Bookshelves

Thanks, Mom. You are my original storyteller. You took me to the library before I could climb those big stone stairs. You led me to believe that books, libraries, and story were as basic to life as breathing, eating and sleeping. You gave me so many gifts, and this is one we continue to share. Love you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.

You Told Me to Read These Books

2011-05-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Tuesday: Recommended Reading
The weekly meme I can't resist, from The Broke and The Bookish.

Dear reader, you have brought my reading life to life. I used to be a solitary reader, going from one book to another in a desultory way. Maybe I read a book review in a magazine or a newspaper, or maybe I got a title from a book. But it was just me and the books. And then I met you. And you had opinions. Obsessions. Crazes even.

Book bloggers are an interesting lot. A community of people who may never have met (though there are lots of IRL get-togethers) having a conversation about books-and that conversation has deeply influenced my reading habits. (Kerry at Entomology of a Bookworm had a good post about that recently).

So here are a few influencers, and the books they've influenced me to read (or put at the top of my list).
1. Judith at Reader in the Wilderness has pleasingly eclectic taste. She convinced me to read The Small Room by May Sarton, and I'm glad she did.
2. Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza has the most enticing header. Her equally enticing review of Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski convinced me to put this book at the top of my TBR pile.
3. Another persuasive review is Greg Zimmerman of The New Dork Review of Books. Greg's taste often coincides with my own, and his reviews are always witty-he strikes a perfect balance between nerdy and hip. His reviews of David Foster Wallace's work got me to read This is Water.
4. And Infinite Jest is on my Nook thanks to Greg.
5. You Think Too Much is a great name for a blog. Robyn writes reviews that are somehow just right-intelligent, but not pretentious, and often from a slightly different angle. Her deep and abiding love for Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow has convinced me to read this novel.
6. It's hard to say where exactly this came from: somewhere in all the posts about books from Persephone Press, I read a great review of The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett.I loved this little gem, and I know I would never have read it otherwise.
7. Another one that is simply in the air: The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King.
8. The Master and Margarita is at the top of my list, also due to repeated rave reviews in the blogosphere.
9. Brenna at Literary Musings is another book blogger whose taste I trust. That's why I plan to read Norwegian Wood this month.
10. And if Norwegian Wood is not enough, Haruki Murakami fanatics in the blogosphere have caused me to also purchase The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.

Has this happened to you? What book have you read (or plan to read) based on a recommendation?

Sunday Coffee

2011-05-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Savoring Books
I loved this piece from The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates about how certain books just have that personal appeal:
Savoring
In the article above, Coates talks about how certain books just "call to him," and how he doesn't want "the journey to end." I know you know that feeling. For Coates it was Battle Cry of Freedom, The Intuitionist, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby.
Another wonderful piece from Coats had me wanting to read Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence all over again.
The Age of Awesome

Ta-Nehisi Coates has that passion for books--all kinds of books. I love it when that passion comes off the page.

I was sitting here trying to recall that feeling, and remember which books really triggered it for me. Definitely Richard Wright's Black Boy is on my list. So is Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. Middlemarch. Howard's End. The Sound and the Fury. Light in August.

Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True, and The Hour I First Believed.
Rock Island Line and Driftless by David Rhodes.

What books have called to you? Which books have you savored, not wanting the journey to end?

Review: House of Prayer No. 2

2011-04-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home
Mark Richard
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
published February 2011
hardcover, $23.95
201 pages
a copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher

If Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner had a child--a special child, crippled by time and memory, slightly touched in the head and the spirit--that child would be Mark Richard, and he would write this book. House of Prayer No.2: A Writer's Journey Home got under my skin from page one, and I don't mean that in a good way at all. The second person point-of-view has that effect on readers. Here's the first couple of sentences of Mark Richard's memoir:

Say you have a "special child," which in the South means one between Down's and dyslexic. Birth him with his father away on Army maneuvers along East Texas bayous. Give him his only visitor in the military hospital his father's father, a sometime railroad man, sometime hired gun for Huey Long with a Louisiana Special Police Badge.

This goes on for forever. It made me really want to hate this book. Here's another excerpt

One night while his mother is fixing supper, bad luck starts for the special child. He is in the living room, where he had seen an angel pass through Easter morning, watching The Three Stooges with the sound turned down real low because The Three Stooges upsets his mother. It is a good Three Stooges.

Richard defies every expectation of a traditional memoir. The House of Prayer No.2 is chronological in the sense that a rushing river is chronological: the memoir certainly pushes forward relentlessly, but it pulls the past and the future along with it. There is little mention of dates or years--the kind of thing that usually gives a memoir structure. And the device of using the second-person and the third-person (never the first-person) certainly defies the conventions of memoir.

Inexorably, and more or less against my will, Richard wore me down, first with the ineluctable beauty of his prose, then with the strange and wondrous workings of his mind, and finally with the unexpected spiritual dimension of the writing (this is a book in which the sacred and the profane rub elbows).

House of Prayer No. 2 is both a spiritual autobiography and the story of a writer's journey. Richard's sentences are like flood waters, carrying everything with them--past and present, all the details of the moment and the detritus of the past. Like this:

Say you are a special child. Say one reason you are special is because there is something wrong with your legs. You cannot run. Your legs will not move fast enough. When you try to run, your hips click and pop. When you have to run a race, like at the going-away party at a doctor's house in the old town, when everyone was running toward the doctor's house that would burn completely to the ground the next year, you pretend to trip and fall and not finish the race.

Richard takes the reader through a childhood filled with pain, but seems to distance himself from that pain through his unusual narrative technique. The child of an intensely religious mother and a perfectionist, alcoholic father. Richard is "special" in more ways than one: he pays attention to the world, but not like other children; he is extremely intelligent, but is perceived as "slow," and he has a condition which leads to his hospitalization and numerous surgeries that quite frankly sound brutal and primitive. This is a pretty good recipe for the fermentation of a writer. Then add some Faulkner:

You finish reading Light in August and you don't understand a lot of it and it doesn't matter. You are learning that time doesn't always move forward, sometimes it moves backward.

For this reader House of Prayer No. 2 gained strength as it went on--or maybe I just became accustomed to the backward/forward flow of time, the river-long sentences, and the surreal quality of Richard's life (or is it just his prose-hard to distinguish between the two). In the end I was convinced House of Prayer No. 2 was a brilliant book. Richard spends time in churches, bars, and boats, and all seem equally holy in his eyes.

There's one vignette in House of Prayer No. 2 that describes the genesis of Richards story "Strays" (from the collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World). This segment of the book would probably be as good as a college writer's workshop if you read Richard's story with it. He describes how he accompanied a friend to "a place where he has to collect some rent from some people." Richard waits in the car, pistol in the glove box, and watches some stray dogs:

They keep going around to one side of the house and keep sticking their heads up under the foundation, and their throats move as if they are drinking....You've got one of your little notepads on your lap and you need to borrow a pen, and as you drive off, he asks you what you are writing, and you don't answer but what you are writing is: At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house and lick our leaking pipes.

Richard goes home and keeps going over that sentence because "you've learned from Gordon [Lish] that everything you need is in that first line, all you have to do is unpack the story, its metronome is already ticking back and forth." If you read The Ice at the Bottom of the World you'll find that some of the stories in the collection end up implanted in you brain as if they were your own memories, disturbing as a bad dream, hallucinogenic as a strange drug. House of Prayer No. 2 is like that too. Recommended for the descendants of O'Connor and Faulkner, their progeny, and all who are touched in the head, the heart, or the spirit.

Review: If I Stay

2011-04-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

If I Stay
Gayle Forman
SPEAK/Penguin
259 pages

I wish I had my students with me right now to help me with this review. If I Stay is a book I had been hearing about for about as long as I have been writing a book blog. It is a novel written for YA readers, but If I Stay has an appeal that is much broader than that label implies. If you've been paying any attention at all to the numerous reviews, you probably know the basic plot of the novel: seventeen-year-old Mia is a gifted cellist who is critically injured in a car accident that kills the rest of her family. The title: If I Stay, is a reference to the decision Mia must make: will she decide to live, or will she slip away and join her family in death. Mia's friends, her rocker boyfriend Adam, and her remaining family (including her grandparents) are waiting for her, hoping that she lives. In a plot device that requires the reader to willingly suspend disbelief, Mia is detached from her body, and is able to wander the hospital watching herself, her family members, and her boyfriend.

Since character comes first for me as a reader, this book really worked for me. I loved Mia, her parents (former punk rockers), her boyfriend, her little brother, and her friends. Gayle Forman has a gift for writing about young people in a way that is realistic, and never condescending. The relationship between Mia and Adam is tender but real. Mia and Adam are in love, but their love is not without complication. The conflicts between the young couple revolve around music and identity; I liked these teen characters because they had real interests, and their relationship was based on true intimacy, not superficial attraction. Sexuality is not avoided, but it is not made all-important either, and I admired the delicacy with which Forman depicted the physical aspect of the relationship between Mia and Adam. Completely avoiding a physical scene would have seemed false, but the scene is not explicit or inappropriate for younger readers.

This morning in one of my classes I held up my library copy of If I Stay and recommended it to my students. Several students chimed in with recommendations, and we had a lively discussion about the book--I saw several heads nodding, and heard a few students say they'd like to read If I Stay. My devoted readers are a wonderful resource--I trust their recommendations. Now that I've read If I Stay I can happily recommend this novel not only to my high school students, but to adult readers as well. Writers would do well to read this book for its skillful pacing and narrative tension. Writing for a younger audience must really keep a writer on her toes. I know from personal experience how easy it is to lose a teenager's attention.If I Stay will appeal to teenagers especially because of the beautifully written characters, the inherent drama of the situation, and because teenagers are riveted by novels that directly confront death.Readers of all ages will enjoy this novel for pretty much the same reasons.

Review: An Ornithologist's Guide to Life

2011-04-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

An Ornithologist's Guide to Life: Stories
Ann Hood
W.W. Norton
published in hardcover 2004
paperback published 2005
237 pages

This is the kind of thing I do (or used to--maybe I'm reformed now): I go to Barnes and Noble, spend a couple of hours browsing, and in a fit of optimism, I spring for a hardcover book. Oh, I tell myself, I'm going to read this right now. And I can afford it, if I have soup for dinner for the next two weeks....

Then I move. And have to pack up all the unread hardcover books, some of them with the little 20% off stickers still on them. This, I tell myself, is why I am not a millionaire.

So we moved this month. And I unearthed a few embarrassingly old hardcover books, some of which I had not so much as cracked the spine.

The good news is, I finally read Ann Hood's wonderful collection of short stories (first published in 2004) An Ornithologist's Guide to Life. The stories show people acting like people: you know the kind of thing--running away with a minister and trying not to drink, bringing your mother across the country for a visit and still not being able to tell her you're gay, neglecting your children to sleep with the neighbor--that kind of stuff.

Hood's characters are sometimes in extremity, and sometimes at their worst, but they never seem like anything other than real people stumbling through life as best they can. In "Total Cave Darkness," a woman who seems to be running recklessly toward destruction may be headed straight for redemption. I kind of loved this woman, even as she was trying to hide the six-pack of beer she finally bought. I'm still rooting for her redemption.

Many of the stories in this collection are told from the point-of-view of children or teenagers who are watching as their parents behave badly. Very badly. Sometimes the adults are not the adults--just like in real life. I kind of favored the stories that were told from a kid p.o.v. I loved "Joelle's Mother," a story in which sisters are fascinated by their father's daughter from his first marriage. "Inside Gorbachev's Head" is another story that manages to bypass the predictable, as a college-age boy finally understands his parents' divorce in a new and disturbing light. And in the title story, a young girl observes the birds of Brooklyn and her mother's dalliance with a neighbor. But in "New People," it is a suburban wife who loses her innocence in a very disturbing story.

An Ornithologist's Guide to Life is a fine collection of stories, highly recommended for those who enjoy literary fiction.

Sunday Coffee

2011-04-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday Coffee
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
from The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot

So that's why April is the cruelest month (not because you have to file your taxes), and that's why April is National Poetry Month. Between testing, Spring Break, and Easter, we haven't had much time for honoring poetry in my classroom this month, but when we go back on Monday, it will be all poetry all the time. I'm going to be reading and writing poetry with all of my students, not just the creative writing students. One resource I'll be using is a book by poet Georgia Heard called For the Good of the Earth and the Sun. Heard is a poet who has worked in many schools, and her enthusiasm, energy, and zeal are admirable. Even though she works with much younger students than I do, I find many of her ideas translate to the high school classroom. I'll also be using her book The Revision Toolbox, and a book by Barry Lane, After the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision. Another good resource is Poetry Everywhere by Jack Collum and Sheryl Noethe, from Teachers and Writers Collaborative. T&W has a newsletter and a great collection of books for writers and teachers of writing.

I don't know how many teachers are reading this, but do you write with your students? My creative writing students keep a writer's notebook, and we write for maybe 15-20 minutes (free writing and prompts) in our notebooks every day. That is in addition to whatever exercises or writing assignments we do in class. I write along with my students, and now my writer's notebook is satisfyingly fat. It has a nice expandable pocket at the back, and I've stuffed all sorts of notes, poems, clippings, etc. in there. I love a writer's notebook that is stuffed with words.

Here's a charming, slightly obsessive habit Georgia Heard writes about in For the Good of the Earth and the Sun: she pastes poems she loves all over her house where she will see them (next to the mirror, by the door so she'll see it on her way out, etc.). Heard also recommends pasting favorite poems in your notebook (I've always done this) and memorizing poems. Memorization is a challenge for me--I feel like my brain is already an over-stuffed file drawer. But I keep trying. I do have "The World is Too Much With Us" sort of memorized, and copies of it are in my notebook, on my bulletin board--everywhere.

Do you have a favorite poem you carry everywhere? Do you have an over-stuffed writer's notebook?

Book Blogger Hop April 22-25

2011-04-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

The (Crazy for Books) Book Blogger Hop: April 22-25
Jennifer at Crazy for Books seems to have pretty much invented the Book Blogger Hop.Every week it seems the list of participating book bloggers grows longer--and an eclectic list it is. Surely there are one or two book blogs for you.

This week's question is "If you find a book that you love, do you hunt down other books by the same author?" Heck to the yes! Why do you think there is a book hoarding problem in my house (like the use of the passive voice there?)? Yes, when I first discovered the stories of Alice Munro, I sought out every volume published by her like it was my job. I'm a little miffed at Elizabeth Strout for only having published three books: I'm waiting.....If reading a wonderful book is a little like falling in love, then knowing there are more books out there by the same author is like knowing you will meet again. I'm not sure how much farther I want to take that metaphor, but I'm hoping Robin Black is working on some stories, that David Rhodes has another novel in the works, that all my favorite living authors will be well and keep writing.

Review: If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

2011-04-19T20:17:00.000-07:00

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This: Stories
Robin Black
Random House
hardcover, $24.00, published 2010
274 pages
paperback release, April 26, 2011

This is one of the most accomplished collections of short stories that I've read, and If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This reminded me of all that there is to love in stories. The beautiful completeness of the form, the spareness, the way the inessential is stripped away, and yet you still have life. If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This is Robin Black's debut collection, and in it she finds just the right tightrope balance between the ordinary and the unexpected. The opening story in the collection, "The Guide," is about a father and his blind daughter traveling to meet her guide dog--the father's replacement really. Everything in the story is pitch-perfect: the father's unresolved anger over his daughter's blindness, his guilty escape into an affair, the daughter's ability to see it all, and the father's inability to see so many things.

"If I Loved You," a story told in the tricky second person, holds death at a distance, barely. I'm still thinking about this story, how it works, and why. In fact, the stories and characters of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This are still walking around in my head, more than two weeks after reading the collection. Clara, the central character in "Immortalizing John Parker," is a portrait artist who seems to live an austere and orderly existence. Her unexpected secret, and the revelation of her secret to her former husband, are still resonating in this reader's mind.

In a short story collection there is often a kind of sameness to the stories. I didn't find that with If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This. Each story seemed to deliver its own peculiar pleasurable jolt: of surprise, of recognition, of rueful agreement. Not only that, there is a pleasing variety to the characters and their worlds. In "Harriet Elliot" a strangely adult fifth grader arrives at an experimental school and spins a fantastic tale of her own kidnapping. In "A Country Where You Once Lived" a father visits his estranged adult daughter and reaches a thoroughly unexpected understanding with his former wife. The final story, "The History of the World" just keeps going deeper and deeper: until the writer delves down into the most secret, the most unsettling, the truest places in her characters.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This brought me back to the story; this book reminded me of the beauty of this form. Reading Robin Black's collection was like watching the most slender, amazing, accomplished aerialist fly through the air time and time again--wondrous. I highly recommend If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This for anyone who needs stories (that's all of us, folks).

Top Ten Tuesday: Rewind

2011-04-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

This week on Top Ten Tuesday (brought to you every Tuesday by The Broke and the Bookish), we get to choose any Top Ten List we missed out on or would like to revisit. I'd like to be a little peevish today, and talk about my

Top Ten Bookish Pet Peeves
1. Neat, wish-fulfillment type endings. Yes, happy endings are lovely, but when they aren't realistic and inevitable (driven by everything that came before) then happy endings grate on my nerves.
2. Main characters without flaws, unlikable qualities, or any edge at all.
3. Predictability. Life is unpredictable and so is good fiction.
4. Novels where the female protagonist goes through a wrenching divorce, returns to her hometown, and ends up with her high school boyfriend, who is just broken-in enough to be good husband material now.
5. Characters without real jobs. And work to do when they are there.
6. Characters who have unrealistically nice apartments (think "Friends") given their occupations.
7. Novels that fail to take into account how hard and how much people IRL work--workplaces can't just be little set-pieces where characters have important conversations around the water cooler.
8. The dearth of stories and novels set in neighborhoods like Anacostia in Washington, D.C. (This allows me to invoke the wonderful Edward P. Jones, who writes about real people with really hardscrabble lives, in a realistic and empathic way. In Anacostia).
9. Movie tie-in covers. I know, it's picky of me, but I go out of my way not to buy books with movie tie-in covers.
10. Bad lies. Fiction is a continuous lie, but the writer must be an expert, practiced liar. I hate when I'm reading and something, some detail, jolts me out of that lie and makes me remember there's a writer behind it all.

Sunday Coffee

2011-04-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Glorious, Glorious, Glorious
I'm sitting out on the little balcony of our new apartment, enjoying what has to be one of the most glorious days ever. If, for a moment, I can push away all the worries, troubles, and problems of the day, month, year, decade, I can experience pure bliss. Just for a moment. The sun is shining, it must be somewhere near seventy degrees, and there is very little humidity (rare here in coastal South Carolina). I'm finally catching up on my Google Reader, and seeing all the blog postings I've missed out on between moving and working. I just realized this morning that I only have two instructional days to prepare for this week (woot!) and one teacher work day. That means I'll have four days next week to try to organize the new apartment, catch up on planning and grading, and generally try to get my life into order. Glorious, glorious, glorious.

Books Do Furnish a Room
Today I hope to put in a couple of hours organizing and culling my book collection. It is very apparent that I still need to pack away a great many books to make this smaller living space truly livable. I really do love my books, and can happily spend hours perusing my own bookshelves. I love to be surrounded by books, and find libraries and bookstores restore my soul nearly as well as churches. Packing and unpacking during our move, I realized that I could open a store selling three things: books, pens, and notebooks. As my students would say, my pen and notebook collections are redunculous.

My Reading Life
I've gotten a surprising amount of reading done, despite the move and a busy time at school. As I sorted and packed books, I realized I have a huge collection of books of short stories, and I wondered why I don't spend more time reading them. So I've been reading stories: collections by Robin Black and Ann Hood (reviews coming this week) and a collection by Mary Lavin, an Irish writer. I've also been delving into fairy tales: my creative writing students are writing poems based on myths and fairy tales. I am one adult who has never ceased to be fascinated by fairy tales, some of the most powerful stories ever told (and retold).

Last week we had our big high-stakes testing, and I was a Test Administrator for two of the three testing days. This was a strangely grueling and extremely quiet task. The first test day I was in testing for two hours, and the second day I was TA testing lasted for three hours. Testing Administrators are not allowed to grade papers, talk (that does make sense!) or read during testing. I'm sure you all feel my pain: three hours in a quiet room, and not allowed to read? On Friday I made up for this by giving my students silent sustained reading time (I read along with my students); we went to the school library, and I picked up Gayle Forman's If I Stay, which I finished quickly (review coming soon).

Feelin' a Little Linky
Here are a few links I'd like to share with you this week:
Lisa over at Lit and Life has a feature called Fairy Tale Fridays. I've been enjoying reading her posts.Lisa is one of my most regular readers, and I really appreciate her comments. Even when I become a complete slacker at posting, reading, and commenting on other people's blogs, Lisa loyally reads my blog and leaves a comment just when I need one.

Ellie at Musings of a Bookshop Girl posted today about a blog I'd never heard of: Read All Day. Nina Sankovitch suffered a terrible loss--the death of her sister--and decided, in her grief, to comfort herself with books. Now she has a memoir coming out, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.

Allie at A Literary Odyssey has two read-alongs coming up: The Illiad in May, and The Idiot in May and June. I've already committed myself to The Idiot, the book that made me fall in love with Russian novels (way back in high school).

Gentle Readers
I know some readers of this blog might object to being called gentle, but thanks to all of you who have persisted with me over the last year and a half. I'm feeling my way as a reader, blogger, and writer, and I'm so grateful to those readers who have stuck with me, and continued to give me the comment love I crave (hate to admit that, but I do love your comments). Have a glorious day.

Something Different

2011-04-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

The Out of the Comfort Zone Blog Hop April 14-17

There's a new blog hop: The Out of the Comfort Zone Blog Hop sponsored by Lucybird's Book Blog.

Check out this fledgling book blog hop, where you add your blog to the link, then visit the two blogs listed before you. Sounds pretty easy. You can always visit more than just those two.

What takes you out of your comfort zone? I picked up a book this morning when I was visiting the school library with my students. It's called If I Stay by Gayle Forman, and I had read zillions (possible hyperbole) of raves about this novel. But even though I teach English in a high school, and spend most of my waking hours with teenagers, I don't usually pick up books that are written specifically to appeal to the YA audience. So this book is, strangely, somewhat out of my comfort zone. I'm on page 161 right now, and I have certainly noticed that I can zip through a well-written YA novel more quickly that the books I usually read. I also notice that there's much I can learn about pacing and keeping the reader's interest: YA novelists are competing for the attention of readers who aren't necessarily committed to reading books. Teenagers have so many other interests competing for their time and attention, a novel has to really make a claim for their attention.

What is your comfort zone, and what have you read lately that took you out of the zone?

Falling in Love with a Book

2011-04-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

Once in a while I pick up a book, turn a page, begin to read....and immediately become completely absorbed. I'm in the world of the book. I can almost feel my heart and pulse slow to the pace of the sentences, so entirely am I immersed. Falling in love with a book is a little like falling in love with a person; you're struck by how in tune you are, how your breathing and the rhythms of your hearts fall in together. When you walk down the street, you notice how effortlessly your steps match, your hands touch as if by accident. You speak, and you are finishing each others' sentences....

When was the last time you had a love affair with a book? What was it like to fall in love that way? What book was it, when and why? And was it wrenching when you had to say goodbye, let go?

Sunday Coffee

2011-04-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

Surrounded by Books

It is a beautiful day in coastal South Carolina; a perfect day for the beach. That's probably where most of my new neighbors are right now. We are getting settled in to our new apartment little by little; my world is still dominated by books. We still have far more books than we have places to put them: more trips to Goodwill are in my future. My desire for simplicity (and an easier move next time) seems to be in direct conflict with my equal desire to acquire and read books. Therefore, I am still surrounded by piles and crates and boxes of books. This week I'll work on exercising some discipline and culling those book piles.

The Big Test

This coming week at school is the week of the "big test"--that standardized test by which we all live, die, and are evaluated. It's the test students must pass to get a diploma in South Carolina, the test that determines whether our school makes AYP, the test whose results will be used to judge teachers, students, administrators, schools, and districts. Not that there's any pressure or anything. Then next weekend is prom, then comes the swift advance of activities that mark the end of the school year. We are in the last quarter of the year, and yes, time does move more swiftly now.

My Reading Life

Now that we've finished moving I'm hoping to settle into a more focused reading life. I have a pretty imposing stack of books I've already agreed to review, and another stack of books that I simply want to read. Plus, there are the books I've recently read but haven't yet reviewed (including two wonderful short story collections, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black, and The Ornithologists Guide to Life by Ann Hood). I need to read more short story collections, and this is going to be one of my criteria for keeping or giving away books. I have to focus on quality, not quantity; the books I'm keeping will be books on writing, short story collections, classics, and the best new literary fiction. That still sounds like a pretty big list doesn't it? Yeah, well, I'm a work in progress.

Another routine I need to get back to is reading and commenting on my favorite blogs. This weekend I've been reading some of the posts for Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon. It seems that every time this event takes place something is happening in my life. One of these days....It does look like fun.

In my packing and unpacking I did come across a couple of long-lost or long-forgotten books that I have unearthed and moved to the top of my TBR pile. One such book is To a Distant Island by James McConkey. To a Distant Island tells the story of Anton Chekhov's journey to Sakhalin, and island penal colony, during a time when Chekhov was suffering from a depression so severe he was near a breakdown. That is a pretty intriguing premise, and since I love all things Chekhov, I intend to start this book soon.

Gentle Readers, have you grappled with the demon of acquisition? How do you decide what to keep and what to let go? Do you have some organizing principal behind your book collection? Or are you like me, somewhat afraid you will someday be found under a mountain of toppled books?

Review: A Fierce Radiance

2011-04-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

A Fierce Radiance
Lauren Belfer
Harper Perennial
532 pages
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

A Fierce Radiance is a richly imagined novel about World War II on the home front. As I read Lauren Belfer's book, I kept thinking of one of my favorite movies, Since You Went Away, a three-hour homage to the wives, daughters, and others who held up the home front during World War II. Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, and Shirley Temple star in the black and white film. Black and white images flooded my mind as I read A Fierce Radiance; the book's main character, Claire Shipley, is a Life magazine photojournalist, and her photo shoots contribute to the realistic portrayal of the time period.The novel begins just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and follows Claire as she covers the trials of a new drug-penicillin-that would come to change the lives of many Americans. Most of us take for granted that a simple scratch or infection will not be deadly, but before the discovery of antibiotics, a scratched knee, a blister, or a sore throat could lead to death.

Claire's story on penicillin leads her to encounter love, intrigue,betrayal and murder in this sprawling narrative that combines real and fictionalized events. A photographer in the mold of Margaret Bourke-White, Claire is divorced, with a young son, Charlie. Her daughter, Emily, perished from an infection that would be easily cured today. Therefore, the penicillin story is personal for her; it becomes even more personal when she begins to fall in love with Dr. Jamie Stanton, a researcher working to develop penicillin at the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

The penicillin story is almost as riveting as the romance between Claire and Jamie, and if you like well-researched historical fiction with plenty of interesting detail, A Fierce Radiance will be your kind of book. The characters walk around New York, especially Greenwich Village; they drink popular drinks from the period. Every detail rings true. The World War II time period seems to have an inherent elegance and romance--maybe it's all those black and white movies, maybe it's the clothes. Claire wears trousers and silk blouses as she goes about her work, and I picture someone like Lauren Bacall, her hair flowing over her shoulders elegantly. As the war heats up, the government takes over the research for penicillin, calling in the big pharmaceuticals (many of which still exist). Penicillin is needed for battlefield infections, and in reality it was developed and widely distributed for just that purpose. Other promising drugs are being investigated and developed at the same time, and this leads A Fierce Radiance into intrigue, and finally murder. And as the war ratchets up, Claire and her fellow Americans worry for their own safety, and for their nation.

A Fierce Radiance is an appealing historical novel with some intriguing plot twists and engaging characters. Claire is tremendously appealing for her bravado and her independent streak, and her job at Life magazine offers a glimpse of both the popular culture of the period, as well as entertaining portraits of Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce. If you like sweeping narratives and period detail, A Fierce Radiance is probably for you.

Sunday Coffee

2011-04-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

Where is Home?

We are in, but not quite ensconced. There are still more books than we have room for (and that is after giving eighteen shopping bags of books to Goodwill). There are still more clothes than closet space. Two and a half years ago we moved from a large house to a smaller house, now we have moved from a house to a two bedroom apartment: if we keep moving every two years, maybe I will really get rid of all the junk I've accumulated.

Here's an irony: as I was packing up my books, I came across multiple books on organization. Most of these books are in pristine condition. Then there were the books on simplicity and living the simple life. Easier said than done. We don't own stuff, stuff owns us. Giving away great big bags of clothing and books, pitching years worth of old paperwork, putting aside all those extra dishes to sell: it feels great, as if a great burden were being lifted. I wish I had the courage and the stamina to do more. This is where I have a conflict: I love my books, I'm attached to my books, my books have significance to me. But there is a point where your possessions become a burden, and ownership interferes with life, and the enjoyment of life.

Having to move your own possessions can really make you feel the burden. It all took much longer than I had thought it would. We were only moving a distance of about five miles; I rented a U Haul Truck and bought a whole bunch of black plastic garbage bags ( a great idea until you are staring at a mound of them, wondering what's inside). As we made trips back and forth, the concept of home shifted. Home became "the house" and "the apartment" became home. Just like that.

I have my little desk set up next to the sliding glass door to the deck, and I can smell Jasmine in full flower wafting in on the breeze. The Pomeranian feels compelled to bark at every passerby, a reflex I hope will wane.After days of torrential rain, the weather is gorgeous: sunny, warm, temperatures in the 70's. Too bad we have to go back to school tomorrow, because I would love just one day to walk on the beach. We moved during Spring Break, and I don't know how we would have managed it in less than a week. Our new place will soon be our comfortable home, with everything just so, and belongings where we can find them. I will get back to a regular reviewing and posting schedule, and probably keep accumulating books (and giving books away).

One benefit of packing and unpacking all those books was rediscovering what was already in my home library. I picked up Ann Hood's An Ornithologist's Guide to Life and was immersed in minutes. I'm already about halfway through the book (okay, so I took a couple of little breaks from unpacking). I love short story collections, and own many that I haven't read. It's just the thing for a time when you can't devote yourself to long stretches of reading.

It's about time I put my head into my school books. I'm really happy to be home now, and looking forward to getting back to reading and reviewing more regularly. Here's a parting question for you Gentle Readers: What is Home? Discuss below....

Top Ten Tuesday:Writers You Should Know

2011-03-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I can never resist a list.This week's list is Top Ten Authors That Deserve More Recognition. Here are mine:

1. Carole Maso. This American novelist has been described as experimental; her works are poetic and sometimes fragmentary. I think she deserves far more recognition than she generally gets: her novels include Ghost Dance, The Art Lover, Ava, and The American Woman in the Chinese Hat. Her book on writing is called Break Every Rule, and she does.
2. Margot Livesey is a Scottish writer now living in the United States. She's far from unknown, but I think the author of Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, and Eva Moves the Furniture deserves to be more widely discussed.
3. Ron Rash is a Southern writer known for Serena and The World Made Straight. His writing is so good it will set your teeth on edge.
4. Eula Biss has only published two books, a book of essays, Notes from No Man's Land, and The Balloonists, a meditation on marriage. Who knows what will come next, but I will definitely be reading it.
5. Rachel Ingalls is an American writer living in London who combines fantasy and satire in delicious ways. She's best known for her novel Mrs. Caliban, in which a housewife falls in love with a monster named Larry. She has a book of stories out from Graywolf Press called Times Like These.
6. Nella Larsen was part of the Harlem Renaissance, and I can't figure out why more people aren't reading and talking about her novel Passing.
7. Molly Gloss is a writer whose work I greatly admire. Her wonderful novel, Wild Life absolutely captivated me.
8. David Rhodes is my hero, and I have to mention him every ten posts or so. Rock Island Line and Driftless were two of the best novels I read last year.
9. Kathleen Cambor has only published two books, but I thought In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden, a novel about the tragic Johnstown flood, was extraordinary.
10. You've probably heard of Robin Black, who worked for nine years on her book of short stories If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This. As soon as I finish moving all these books to a much smaller living space, I'm going to write a review of this wonderful book, but for now I'll just tell you to go read them for yourself.

I'm curious, what writer do you love who deserves more recognition?

Literary Blog Hop March 17-20

2011-03-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome Literary Blog Hoppers! I am in the throes of a grading frenzy, but looking forward to spring break. The weather here is glorious, and suddenly flowers are in bloom. The roads are filling up with cars from Ontario and Ohio, New York and New Jersey. I constantly remind myself how lucky I am to live here in coastal South Carolina. My morning commute is more scenic than most: I cross two small bridges, and if it isn't still dark, I can see water, marsh, and osprey nests on the towers on which electric cables are slung.

This week's question from our hosts at The Blue Bookcase is: What one literary work must you read before you die? Several big books (War and Peace, Joseph and His Brothers) come to mind, but there is one major literary work I have always wanted to complete. Here's a hint: it all begins with a cup of tea and a madeleine....

Yes, I'd like to read Marcel Proust's masterwork In Search of Lost Time, or as it used to be known, Remembrance of Things Past. I did read Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove, but it was so long ago I feel as though I need to start all over again.

I own the Modern Library Edition (it looks like this)

But I know there are other translations, other editions available. Have any of you Literary Blog Hoppers tackled this enormous work? Any recommendations for the best translation? I'll be curious to see what books the Literary Blog Hoppers choose for this question: War and Peace, anyone? That's on my bucket list too.

Top Ten Tuesday, Belatedly

2011-03-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

This week's Top Ten Tuesday (oops, I'm a little late) is about the literary characters we'd like to have in our family. Thanks to The Broke and the Bookish for hosting this fun meme.

This one is so easy; just drop me straight into the pages of the much-loved, much-read Little Women. I must have read this book a dozen times as a girl, and the characters are as familiar to me as my own family. I'd happily live in this matriarchy, draping myself across my beloved Marmee's shoulders. We'd put on plays in the attic, write letters, knit stockings for the Union soldiers, pine for the boy next door, and squabble now and then. One sister is beautiful, selfish, and artistic, one is too good for this life, one is a scribbler, one is sensible and mature....I do imagine I would blend in with this family and find my own nature within the circle of girls and women....

Sunday Coffee

2011-03-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

This Sunday finds me feeling a little subdued; the natural disaster in Japan, and the images of the terrifying earthquakes and tsunami, makes book chat feel unseemly somehow. And now there is the threat of a nuclear meltdown, which could affect millions across the globe. It is a sobering thought.

One of my students suffered a tremendous loss last week, and Saturday morning I attended a memorial service for the father figure in my student's life. After the service I went to his home and talked with his family members, then my student walked me to my car. We've reached the point in the school year when I feel very close to my students, and when they have sorrows in their lives, I really do feel their pain. One of the elements of teaching that is probably unmeasurable is this: teaching is about relationships. It takes weeks and even months to build the trust between students and teacher, and even the best-intentioned teacher isn't always successful at this. But in my philosophy of teaching, building relationships is the most important thing I can do. Not to say that mastery of content or skillful instruction aren't important, but it all begins with a relationship between teacher and student. This has nothing to do with test scores or benchmarks or Adequate Yearly Progress. It can't be quantified or rewarded or mandated.

The public discourse on education and teachers distresses me, and when I've had time to think about and process what I've been observing, I plan to write about it (not necessarily here). I know this distress keeps bubbling to the surface in this blog, which is not a blog about teaching, but is a blog written by a teacher.

I hope I'll find time to post some reviews next week--I have several percolating at the back of my mind. There is a backlog of books for review that is really troubling my conscience (it's easily disturbed) and I hope to chip away at that pile soon.

I'm immersed in a wonderful book of stories by Irish writer Mary Lavin right now. I'd never heard of her, but I came across a reference to her stories in a short story by Eward P. Jones. I think this is the first time I've gotten a reading suggestion from a fictional character. The book I'm reading is In a Cafe: Selected Stories, and the stories are beautifully written, subtle, lush. The first story in the collection, "In the Middle of the Fields," begins this way:

Like a rock in the sea, she was islanded by fields, the heavy grass washing about the house, and the cattle wading in it as in water. Even their gentle stirrings were a loss when they moved away at evening to the shelter of the woods. A rainy day might strike a wet flash from a hay barn on the far side of the river--not even a habitation! And yet she was less lonely for him here in Meath than elsewhere.

The main character in the story is a young widow, and Lavin effortlessly captures the loneliness of the character and etches it directly into the landscape. Lovely writing.

What are you reading now? Have you made any reading discoveries?

I Am a Teacher

2011-03-11T19:19:00.000-08:00

I left school today at 3:00 (that's early for me) and my desk was cluttered with all manner of papers and books. I'll be going in to my classroom on Sunday, because it seems as though the only way I can work on grading without interruption is to go to school when the building is essentially empty. The quarter is nearly over, and even with ten-hour days at school, I can't seem to get it all done.

So when I read about all the bad, lazy, greedy teachers who are ruining public education in this country, I start to experience...cognitive dissonance, sadness, anger....

I can't process my responses to what seems like a concentrated attack on educators, and I can't understand how educators are being held responsible for poverty, social problems, and the disintegration of the family. But I do know that what I read and hear about teachers does not make any sense to me, nor does it in any way fit my experience of being a teacher. I am not exceptional, and I know that I routinely work 50-60 hours a week. Why do politicians and the American public continue to believe teachers work 30 hour weeks?

I've been away from the blog for almost two weeks, just too busy teaching, grading, and preparing to have time to post anything. I have been reading, and when things settle down a bit I'll be posting reviews of several books, including Robin Black's superb short story collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This.

Yesterday morning I sat at my desk before school, rereading a few chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird for class discussion. I experienced a brief moment of complete calm, losing myself in a story I have already read so many times before. Even in the midst of the pressure and stress of my school day, there is this: the pleasure of reading.

We started studying some of the strategies of rhetoric in my English 2 Honors class this week. We are reading speeches and analyzing the use of rhetoric--then we'll come back to To Kill A Mockingbird and analyze the closing argument Atticus gives in chapter twenty. I'm finding that rhetoric is a challenge for me and my students, so I ordered another book (so much for my book-buying moratorium). Yesterday it arrived: Farnworth's Classical English Rhetoric by Wade Farnsworth. I think I'm in love. First of all, the book itself is beautiful, and then it is filled with beautiful language. The explanations of the rhetorical terms are clear, and I love the intellectual clarity of classical rhetoric.

March is a time of year when students from past years seem to pop up out of nowhere. This week I saw three: a Marine in full dress uniform, trim and formal, who turned out to be a student of mine who graduated last year. I honestly didn't even recognize him. A young married woman, now a college graduate who is planning to apply to MFA programs for creative writing--I'll call her Esperanza. She was my student years ago, and bless her, she told my sophomores "This is the woman who made me want to be a writer." Today another former student stopped in to see me: she's in the Coast Guard, and was home on leave for a week. I've taught every child in her family, and feel as though I'm almost part of the family. This is what really constitutes the greatest reward of teaching. I know no greedy teachers: really, I don't know one single one. But we are all working for this kind of bonus: the student, or former student who tells us we made a difference. Like this young man, who sent me an e-mail before he left for boot camp, and told me: I will be writing to you, I want you to be a part of my life so expect a lot from me, because there's no room for failure in my life...I won't give up, and I know you won't let me give up either...thank you for your support.

Yeah, that one made me cry.

Review: 31 Bond Street

2011-02-28T20:20:00.000-08:00

31 Bond Street: A Novel
Ellen Horan
Harper Perennial
349 pages
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

31 Bond Street is a fictional account of a real murder; in 1857 a wealthy dentist, Dr. Henry Burdell, was found murdered inside his home at 31 Bond Street, New York City. Dr. Burdell's attractive housekeeper, a widow with two teenage daughters, was charged with the murder.

Ellen Horan takes the premise of an infamous murder, set in a meticulously researched New York bustling with crime, wealth, immigrants, poverty, and political corruption, and creates a fast-moving and intriguing story. Emma Cunningham is a widow who is in desperate circumstances when she first meets a dashing, well-to-do bachelor dentist. She has two teenage daughters whom she is eager to marry off to respectable men. She is running low on resources, and has few options other than remarriage. After meeting Dr. Harvey Burdell during a summer visit to Saratoga Springs, Emma Cunningham ends up leasing the top floor of his townhouse and managing his household. Such arrangements were apparently not uncommon at the time. Burdell turns out to be an unsavory character in more ways than one, and when he is found brutally murdered, Emma Cunningham comes under suspicion.

Henry Clinton, the attorney who defends Emma Cunningham, is one of the more engaging characters in the novel. While the character of Emma is morally ambiguous--she's hardly a woman the reader will warm to--Henry Clinton is a likable and charming character. His relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, is in direct contrast to the rather mercenary relationship between Emma and Dr. Burdell. Other sympathetic characters have important roles in the narrative, especially Samuel, Dr. Burdell's servant and an escaped slave. Another character who garners sympathy is John, an impoverished boy who works in Dr. Burdell's household, then as an errand boy for Clinton.

Ellen Horan has obviously done her research. The details, large and small, ring true, and she does a marvelous job of creating the bustle and complexities of New York City just before the Civil War. The racial conflicts, polictical corruption, and culture of the era provide a vivid canvas for Horan's story. The first part of the novel, dealing mainly with the relationship between Emma and Dr. Burdell, seems somewhat distant and controlled--neither character is especially appealing, and the third-person narrative keeps the reader distant from the most intimate thoughts and feelings of the characters (this distance is necessary to maintain the mystery at the center of the plot). As other characters, especially Henry Clinton, come more to the forefront, the novel becomes more engaging. As the novel progresses, the narrative seems to build more force, and in the last half of the book, beginning with the trial, the narrative pull becomes compelling, and the novelist seems to hit her stride. The best, most fluid writing comes in the last part of the book, when several loose ends are tied up, and Horan's writing seems to flow effortlessly.

31 Bond Street is a well-researched and tightly woven historical novel that will appeal to readers who like mysteries and thrillers set in the past. The novel addresses themes that are still relevant today, and tells a satisfying and intriguing story with a strong and convincing ending.

Sunday Coffee

2011-02-27T18:06:00.000-08:00

It is Sunday evening and I should be grading papers. All day long I did battle with a headache. I tried giving it caffeine and feeding it, and that seemed to help. Watching back to back episodes of Cranford was comforting too, despite a general feeling that I was being too lazy by half.

Yesterday I went to Savannah for the day; I attended a workshop in the morning at Armstrong Atlantic University, then went back in the afternoon for my interview and informational meeting for the Summer Institute of Coastal Savannah Writing Project. I'll be spending the month of July at the Institute, a daily commitment. That is a huge commitment for me, as I will end up with only about a week off this summer. But I'm really looking forward to the Institute, as I have only heard good things about The National Writing Project and their institutes. Everyone I know who has attended an institute says it was life-changing.

For more about The National Writing Institute, here is their web page. The National Writing Project is a program which trains teachers in writing and the teaching of writing. These teachers go on to share this training in the classroom, and by training other teachers. The Coastal Savannah Writing Program is relatively new--it is in its second year--and I'm really excited to have this opportunity.

Since there wasn't time for me to go home between the morning workshop and the afternoon session, I went down the street to a Books-a-Million. Sometimes I go into a bookstore and I'm just in the mood to find something new, but I don't know what. I'm like: Hey, bookstore, surprise me! I really didn't need to spend money on books or anything else, but my self-control wasn't operating yesterday. I came home with:
The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Burning Bright by Ron Rash
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

You may recall that I bought two books last weekend. Not good.

This weekend was Persephone Reading Weekend, and I'm sorry to say that life got in the way of that plan. I will still read The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and maybe post about that next week. I also need to post about If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black, which I finished last week.

Are there any teachers out there who have participated in the National Writing Program? I'd love to hear about your experiences. Do any of my gentle readers experience a sudden loss of self-control when entering a bookstore? Do you ever scrutinize the shelves for that book that is just going to speak to you?